Navy in New York: The Chesterfield Coat and Suit in Live and Let Die

Original article published 23 December 2010

I am in the process of rewriting and republishing old articles about James Bond’s outfits that are in need of a refresh and expansion. All former comments are preserved below. I previously wrote very little about this overcoat because the late Christopher Laverty thoroughly covered it on his blog, Clothes on Film. Now I would like to take the opportunity to provide my take on it in honour of what would have been Roger Moore’s 98th birthday this week. This outfit has a special meaning to me, as I live and work in the same neighbourhoods where Bond wears this outfit.

James Bond’s navy double-breasted chesterfield coat in Live and Let Die is Roger Moore’s only overcoat of the James Bond series. It is one of the most popular coats of the Bond series, not just for being a beautiful piece of tailoring but for how it establishes Moore as James Bond. This coat is Moore’s first proper item of clothing as Bond, after his introduction wearing a dressing gown with matching pyjamas.

This outfit helps ease Moore into the role of 007, without being too fashion forward. It has left the 1960s proportions behind, but like what Bond wore in the 1960s, the outfit doesn’t lean heavily into trends. It follows a familiar colour palette that focuses on shades of blue. The navy double-breasted overcoat references Bond’s naval heritage without it being a military-style coat. It’s not as obvious as the tie is about Bond serving in the Royal Navy, but it looks appropriate for a naval officer out of uniform. Sean Connery briefly wears a navy chesterfield coat as part of his first outfit as Bond in Dr. No, but his is single-breasted. The double-breasted style is far more striking and more naval.

The coat, made by Moore’s longtime tailor before the Bond films Cyril A. Castle, makes a statement without being loud. It’s a classic double-breasted chesterfield coat, albeit in a shorter-than-traditional length that’s just about the knee. The coat is a flattering length that balances the coat’s length and Moore’s leg length to make them both look as long as possible. In closer shots the bottom of the coat is off-screen and looks long, while in further shots Moore’s legs appear very long. Cyril Castle’s brother Claude Castle was the head cutter at the firm and likely cut this coat. The coat is tailored with lightly padded shoulders and has a dramatic shape with a full chest and fitted waist, despite no front darts. It was tailored with a considerable amount of iron work to achieve such a three-dimensional shape.

It appears to be made of cashmere or a wool-cashmere blend due to its sheen and lighter weight. Cashmere is lighter and more insulating than wool, making it a practical fibre in addition to its pleasingly soft hand. Cyril Castle was not averse to using luxury fibres.

The coat has a traditional and formal 6×2 double-breasted fastening. The middle buttons are low on the waist to create a sweeping lapel line, emphasising the coat’s wide, bellied lapels. While the wide lapels are a reflection of 1970s trends, they give the coat more of a 1930s look due to the coat’s overall traditional style. The wide lapels look bold but not outdated, and while they help the coat fit in with contemporary fashions the coat is the opposite of fashion forward.

The coat’s traditional style is unusual for Roger Moore’s Bond in the 1970s, a time when Bond was known to lean more heavily into fashions. It’s a fitting coat for his ‘disguise’, as CIA Agent Harold Strutter calls it—’whiteface in Harlem’. No matter how fashionable Bond may look to post-1970s eyes, he is dressed conservatively compared to most of the villains in Live and Let Die. This coat especially has very little to tie it to 1970s fashions, and its an especially conservative piece for Cyril Castle, who was located physically in Mayfair’s Conduit Street but with his heart in Soho’s Carnaby Street.

The coat is trimmed with large (probably 45L) dark navy polyester buttons, with one large button (probably 30L) on each cuff. The sleeves are finished with turnback cuffs, a traditional detail found on various types of overcoats, notably the greatcoat and polo coat. These gauntlet cuffs are done in a style more typically found on jackets than overcoats. Cyril Castle commonly put gauntlet cuffs on all kinds of coats and jackets, including many of Moore’s dinner jackets, suit jackets, blazers and sports coats in The Saint and The Persuaders!. Moore’s only other garment to feature them in the Bond films is his dinner jacket in The Man with the Golden Gun.

The coat is detailed with a dark navy velvet collar, a traditional feature commonly found on a chesterfield as well as on the sportier covert coat. The hip pockets are straight with wide flaps, and the coat lacks a breast pocket. Only the left lapel has a buttonhole. There is a long single vent at the rear. The lining is navy.

Two examples of this overcoat have sold at auction. The first one sold at Christie’s in South Kensington on 12 Dec 2001 for £1,762, and this is the same coat that is featured in the blog at Clothes on Film. The wrong coat is pictured on the Christie’s website, but the photos of the coat at Clothes on Film show the correct coat. The second coat sold at Bonhams in New Bond Street on 4 October 2023 for £19,200. This was part of an auction titled ‘Sir Roger Moore: The Personal Collection’, and the coat came from Roger Moore’s own wardrobe.

Underneath the chesterfield, Bond wears a light navy worsted flannel suit, also made by Cyril Castle. The suit is a shade lighter than the overcoat, in a vivid shade of navy sometimes called French navy. The cloth is worsted flannel, a milled worsted that has some of the look, feel and warmth of a traditional woollen flannel but in concurrently sturdier and lighter-weight cloth that has a slightly less old-fashioned look. This cloth appears to be in a traditional medium weight of around 13 ounces, which is fairly heavy by today’s standards. The suit coat isn’t seen much in the film, but the double vents can be seen when Roger Moore is swinging around on the fire escape in the Harlem alley. However, Roger Moore wears this suit in many promotional stills as well as in the opening gun barrel sequence, which was also used for The Man with the Golden Gun.

The suit is cut the same as the tropical suits in light grey and beige that Bond wears in San Monique. The suit jacket is tailored in Castle’s dramatic English style, with two buttons in a medium-low stance, a swelled chest and a suppressed waist. The shoulders are lightly structured with natural sleeve heads. The lapels appear to be around 3 1/2 inches wide, so they’re in the medium-width range. The front has slightly open lower quarters with a pronounced roundness at the bottom.

This is the only suit or jacket that Moore’s Bond wears from Cyril Castle that has straight pockets, which gives this suit a more business-like look. Slanted hacking pockets were Cyril Castle’s preferred style from the mid-1960s onward, which he put on most of Moore’s jackets during this time. The skirt has long double vents and the cuffs are flared with kissing ‘link’ buttons, with back-to-back size-27L buttons. The buttons are made of navy polyester to match the suit. Polyester buttons were commonly used by the best English tailors at this time for their smart, plain look and vast colour selection and were not a means of cost cutting, which they would be today in place of natural materials like horn or corozo.

Like the chesterfield, the suit jacket has a classic English style overall with hardly any detail that dates it to the 1970s. The link-button cuffs are the only unusual detail on the jacket, but they’re not a style widely associated with the decade.

The suit trousers have a darted front with three-button side adjusters, two rear pockets, two cash pockets in front under the waistband, no side pockets and slightly flared bootcut legs. The flared legs are the only aspect of this outfit that dates it to the early 1970s. The flared trousers and the link-button cuffs are the only fashion-forward elements on this otherwise classic and conservative business suit. It’s the kind of suit Bond would wear to M’s office, if Live and Let Die had an M’s office scene.

The shirt, made by Roger Moore’s longtime shirtmaker Frank Foster, is a fresh take on the light blue cocktail-cuff shirts that Sean Connery commonly wore as Bond, and it’s the one part of this outfit that has the most in common with Connery’s Bond style. It is sky blue poplin—in a very fine quality like Sea Island cotton—with a semi-spread collar that has a high stand at the back and a wide tie space. The shirt continues the Connery Bond tradition for two-button cocktail cuffs, which have a deep but simple, streamlined shape that is rounded at the corners, but less rounded than on Connery’s cuffs from Turnbull & Asser. The cuff is cut with the same shape as Roger Moore’s one-button button-down cocktail cuffs from The Persuaders!, but the different button arrangement significantly changes its appearance.

The buttons on the front are hidden by an unusual raised fly placket with one stitching line down the centre. A fly front makes more sense when the shirt has double cuffs so no buttons are visible on the shirt, but there’s nothing wrong with this shirt’s configuration since the cocktail cuffs elevate the shirt over ordinary button cuffs. The shirt has a close fit with side darts at the rear.

Roger Moore distances himself from the previous two Bond actors by wearing a striped tie instead of a solid tie with this outfit. This is Bond’s first non-solid tie, except for the tie he borrows from Sir Hilary Bray for his disguise. This tie is a Royal Navy military tie in silk reppe from Benson & Clegg, appropriately worn here by the naval commander that James Bond is. The tie should only be worn by those who have served in the Royal Navy, but it’s not a uniform tie. It has a navy ground with a narrow red stripe atop a slightly narrower white stripe. The red and white stripes provide an effective focal point among the sea of blue. The stripes ascend from the wearer’s right hip to left shoulder, the traditional British direction for military stripes. This direction also harmonises well with the left-over-right buttoning of a man’s suit and subtly helps draw attention up toward the wearer’s face, since most people in the Western world read from left to right. The majority of James Bond’s striped ties throughout the series follow this traditional British direction. Bond ties it in a four-in-hand knot, sometimes with a dimple.

Benson & Clegg still produce this tie, and it is 3 1/2 inches wide. It’s possible that Moore’s tie is the same width, but it is difficult to tell under his jacket and it could be slightly wider.

Bond’s shoes are black tassel loafers, which have a high vamp and trendy higher Cuban heels. These shoes may be from Gucci, since he wears an identifiable pair of Gucci bit loafers later in the film with his black shirt. With the chesterfield, Bond wears black leather gloves to match his black shoes.

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