Spectre opens with Bond on a mission from his former, late boss to kill a man named Marco Sciarra, played by actor and stuntman Alessandro Cremona. Like most Bond villains, Sciarra stands out in a crowd, which helps Bond follow him through the mobbed streets of Mexico City during the Day of the Dead festival. Making Sciarra stand out is his cream silk three-piece suit and his bright red neckwear.
The silk suit is perfect for the moderate weather of Mexico City, where it is sunny but not hot. The button two suit jacket is tailored with soft shoulders and natural sleeve heads. The lapels are medium-narrow in width, and there are slanted pockets with narrow flaps on the hips, double vents in the rear and four buttons on each cuff. The suit’s buttons are urea and fade from beige to grey. The edges have pick stitching.
The suit’s waistcoat has five buttons down the front, and Sciarra fastens all of them. It is detailed with two welt pockets at the waist. Tradition dictates that bottom button on a waistcoat should be left unbuttoned, even though Sciarra’s waistcoat is cut for all of the buttons to fasten. However, the rise of Sciarra’s trousers is not long enough to reach the fourth button on the waistcoat, which is necessary to be to allow the bottom button to be left open without revealing the shirt underneath.
The suit trousers have a flat front, a medium-low rise, wide straight legs with plain hems, and a waistband with a short extension and button closure. Sciarra does not wear a belt with his trousers, allowing the waistcoat to sit cleanly over the top of the trousers. However, Sciarra also does not wear braces, and consequently the trousers slip down and reveal the shirt between the bottom of the waistcoat and the top of the trousers. A higher trouser rise and braces would bring the outfit together more seamlessly and elegantly.
Under the suit, Sciarra untraditionally wears charcoal grey shirt. The dark shirt and light suit show that Sciarra is the opposite of James Bond, who is wearing a white shirt with a darker suit (after he removes his Day of the Dead costume). Sciarra’s shirt has a spread collar, double cuffs and a front placket. The buttons down the front are matching dark grey, and he fastens the cuffs with round silvery mother-of-pearl cufflinks.
Dark shirts are typically not worn with suits because they poorly frame the face with the collar closed. Darks shirts are also less formal. The contrast of a dark shirt and light suit, however, can still be nice. This would necessitate a two-piece suit rather than a three-piece and an open collar without a tie. Warm-weather suits such as this can more easily be worn without a tie than traditional business suits can be.
Around his neck he wears a Charro Moño Doble, a large mexican-style double bow tie with lacy fringes in red silk grosgrain ribbon. The large expanse of bright red successfully frames the face despite the dark shirt since it—along with the waistcoat—obscures most of the shirt. And the bow matches the blood soaking his suit! Though Sciarra is not Mexican, he dresses to fit in and wears it well.
Sciarra coordinates his beige socks with his suit. His shoes are light brown calf plain-toe bluchers with a chiselled toe and rubber soles. Plain-toe bluchers are cut from a single piece of leather with tabs sewn on top of the vamp for the eyelets. Light brown shoes are the perfect match for a cream suit, not the navy and other dark suits that they are popularly worn with today.
At the very beginning of Spectre, Sciarra wears a Panama hat to disguise himself in the crowd at the Day of the Dead festival. The Panama hat is made of white straw in a fedora style with a C-crown, front pinch, a narrow black ribbon at the base of the crown and soft wide brim. It’s the perfect complement to a cream silk three-piece suit.
Sciarra’s dress has a passing resemblence to Raoul Silva’s cream jacket outfit from Skyfall. Both villains wear a jacket of cream silk, a waistcoat and a dark shirt. Both also wear something very flamboyant. For Silva it’s the print of his shirt and for Sciarra it’s his unusual neckwear. The similar dress of the two villains may have been an attempt to connect them (both are revealed to be SPECTRE agents), or it may just be the way costume designer Jany Temime likes dressing flamboyant men.
Excellent write up, as usual Matt. When I first saw SPECTRE, this outfit reminded me of Scaramanga’s all-white outfit and the straw hat reminded me of that guy in Casino Royale.
Will you be covering the combat gear that Bond wears during the “Cuba” finale in GoldenEye?
I think, from memory, Matt has already covered that outfit.
I have not covered that one. I’m not so fond of the combat gear, but I’ll see what I can come up with.
There’s an excellent writeup here: https://bamfstyle.com/2014/03/17/bond-goldeneye-cuba-green-assault/
It’s like trying get to write up the black combat outfit from the end of TND. Not much to talk about, but in saying that the green khaki outfit is more interesting.
It’s really too bad Temime seems to have something against braces except for black tie? It’s odd. No one would have to know Bond or anyone else wearing waistcoats in these movies have them on. Their very point is to stay hidden, which the waistcoat would do even when the jacket is open.
Those bow ties are common in Mexico particularly among members of Mariachi bands. They may have a specific name but I don’t know it. Probably has roots in Mexican formal / traditional dress but are we not supposed to assume that Sciarra is not Mexican but Italian? (Name, wife, house in Rome etc.)
It’s a Charro Doble Moño, a type of double bow tie. It would appear that the character is Italian and just wants to dress as the locals do.
Great article as always! Like with many other minor characters from the series who’s outfits you have covered, I am able to apreciate the details and subtle creativity much more after your in-depth analysis. Sciarra’s suit isnt so impressive to me though and looks like an average MTM suit at best. It is more classic than what we are used to seeing nowadays but the low rise of the trousers, the high button stance of the jacket and the awful narrow pocket flaps (wich looks bad enough on a slim-fit jacket but terrible on jackets with more classic cuts, so unbalanced!) takes away from the elegance of it. Is it possible this suit is made by the same company who produced the suits for C in this film? The cuts appear similair to me. It certainly isnt Timothy Everest at least.
The neckwear is a wonderful touch and its great to know what it is! I can’t help but think it would have been interesting if this character actually was mexican instead of italian. I dont believe we have had a mexican villain in the series so far while there has been plenty of italians and europeans. Having the italian Sciarra wear the mexican bowtie in the strongest of red is a rather clever symbolism though, with him about to execute a terror attack on the city soon after! This is why there is nothing like a Bond villain!
On a side note, Matt, did you alter the colour balance of the images? They look considerably better than in the film itself!
I don’t see enough in common with C’s suits to say they are from the same source.
Yes, I did alter the colour balance.
C’s suits were made by Burberry, as I recall. I doubt this one is from the same maker.
I took another look at C’s suits (I only compared it to this from memory) and indeed I see now there arn’t that many similairities, just that both suits suffer from a too high button stance (in my opinion).
I found this outfit very interesting, especially the neckwear which emphasizes the flamboyant nature of the character. I am in Mexico City right now, visiting Bond filming locations from not only Spectre, but also License To Kill. High on my list of things to do while I am here is to acquire one of these Charro Doble Moño ties. As always, great article.
Interesting outfit. I also am not a fan of the high button stance. Nice observation, comparing Silva outfit to this outfit.
Do you know who tailored this suit?
Also, does the trousers feature side tab adjusters?
Very nice article, can anybody tell me which company the suit is from?