On the 14 May 1971, Roger Moore appeared on The Dick Cavett Show, alongside Enoch Powell and Jonathan Miller, to discuss his upcoming series The Persuaders!. This television appearance on 14 May 1971 in London occurred near the end of filming The Persuaders! but before the series premiered.
When Moore appeared on chat shows he usually wore clothes made for his roles. For this occasion, Moore atypically wears a three-piece suit from his tailor Cyril Castle that was not made for The Persuaders! or for any other role. This suit does not have quite the same level of flash expected from Lord Brett Sinclair, but it’s more like an update of Moore’s Simon Templar style for the new decade. It displays Moore’s own elegant taste rather than any of his characters’.
The suit is a classic dark grey worsted, though the exact type of fabric is difficult to pinpoint due to the quality of the video. There is a hint of a dark stripe can be seen in the lapels.
The button-two suit jacket has Cyril Castle’s distinctive cut with a full chest, soft shoulders and gentle roping at the sleeve heads. Setting this suit apart from Moore’s usual suits are the peaked lapels on a single-breasted jacket, giving this suit a dressier look and taking it out of the business suit category. The lapels are a bit wider than a medium width but do not look excessive. The lapels have a small amount of belly and a pronounced roll at the base. The jacket overall has a fairly classic silhouette that would not look dated today. It is similar to Tom Ford’s classic “Windsor” model than Daniel Craig wears in Spectre but with a less dramatic shape.
A few years later in Street People, Moore would wear a similar suit that has a bolder Italian flair with much larger lapels.
The jacket is detailed with long double vents, slanted flap pockets and single-button gauntlet cuffs, a common detail found on many of Moore’s jacket of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Though slanted pockets are a sporty detail, they harmonise nicely with the angled of the more formal peaked lapels.
The waistcoat has six buttons down the front, with the bottom button worn open, and most likely two welt pockets on the front. The trousers have a bootcut leg, though the rest of the details of the trousers are no visible. Like Moore’s other trousers of this era they most likely have a darted front and jetted cross pockets.
The pale lilac shirt is one from The Persuaders!, and it has a spread collar, a plain front and button-down cocktail cuffs that fasten around the wrist with a single button. The button-down feature keeps the cuff from getting caught on the suit jacket’s sleeve and gives a roll to the cuff like a good button-down collar has. The shirt is made by Moore’s longtime shirtmaker Frank Foster.
The navy tie, in a shade leaning towards ultramarine or indigo, is made of a double-ribbed-weave silk like many of those that he wears on The Persuaders!. It is made in a four-in-hand knot. He matches the tie with a puffed silk pocket square in a slightly different shade of navy in his suit jacket’s welt breast pocket, avoid the ‘matchy matchy’ look of a tie and pocket square of the same silk. A pocket square is unusual, but not unheard of, for Moore. The Bondian navy tie prevents Moore from looking too flashy.
Complementing his bootcut trousers are tall black zip boots with a square toe. While providing more context to his bootcut trousers than his slip-ons in the Bond films do, these boots are the only part of the outfit that look excessively fashion forward.
I have a dark grey peak lapel suit I purchased a few years ago, it is my go to for an interview or a big meeting. You can wear any shirt and tie combo really with this colour. You can even bring out flashier shirts and ties, the dark grey colour makes sure it doesn’t over power everything. An elegant suit from Sir Roger and grey tailoring from Cyril Castle.
A great ensemble! I really miss Roger Moore.
Looks like quite a fat knot on the tie. Did Roger Moore use a four-in-hand as Bond? This looks like a Windsor.
Moore always used a four-in-hand knot. This knot is very asymmetrical, so it doesn’t look like a Windsor knot.
A Windsor knot rarely gets that long, so it’s probably just that this tie happened to be wide where he tied the knot. I think it looks great with the wide lapels!
I wish he’d worn a tie that created a little more contrast with the suit….
I saw that clip on YouTube, Roger Moore was styling in that episode. Yes, I do share the same birthday as Mr. Cavett.
Looks like the tie is striped, but maybe that’s just due to the quality of the capture from the video.
Those stripes you see are what I believe to be ribs. Roger Moore wore many different solid ties with pronounced ribs during this era.
Thanks Matt. By the way, here is a clip from his appearance on What’s My Line? in late 1971 (last 5 minutes or so). I wonder what you think of his turnout here?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmwQNV6VR80
These clothes are straight out of The Persuaders!
John, Thanks for sharing this clip. Great picture quality too considering it’s almost 50 years old. This blazer only featured, briefly, in one Persuaders episode. It looks great here on Moore though I’m not sure that tie is the greatest match. I mean, he must’ve nicked other ties from the series which would have matched better with light brown!
Great post, Matt. A peak lapel on a SB lounge suit does break the “rules” a little but it being Roger, he pulls it off with aplomb. He did wear these type of ankle boot in several Persuaders episodes and even as Bond. He wore a pair in brown in FYEO when arriving in The Dolomites. There is definitely a stripe in the suit and finally, I had taken the tie to be some dark shade of purple. Whatever the colour, I don’t care that much for it though I’m sure I’ve seen it worn in The Persuaders (possibly the episode The Time and The Place which would’ve been filmed a little over a month before this interview). It complements the colour of the shirt, I suppose.
Moore wears purple ribbed ties in a few episodes of The Persuaders, but the shade of purple is much different. I think that this is more of an ultramarine navy.
Thanks, Matt. When I look at it again I can see what you mean.
Hey Matt,
Have you seen the outfit Moore wears in another interview he did with Dick Cavett in 1981? It’s very reminiscent of his blouson he wore in For Your Eyes Only. I’ll attach the link here in case you haven’t seen it.
https://youtu.be/aHlirPa9D0I
I’ve seen that one too. That is indeed the blouson from For Your Eyes Only, but with a long-sleeve shirt underneath instead of short sleeves. The trousers may be the ones he wore aboard the Triana.
Thanks for the another interesting article. Did you happen to see this interview :
https://youtu.be/4svz0HeKn7E
I’m assuming this is a Golden Gun suit, but can’t quite work out which one it is?
I think that’s the suit from the dinner with Goodnight scene.
By 1971, men’s suits had really gone full-on seventies! I was always sort of glad The Saint and The Avengers ended in 1969, because this is what they would be wearing if the shows had kept going. It would have been too jarring with the more understated, sharp looks we had got used to. Watch OHMSS and DAF back to back and it’s really apparent. Was there ever a time in the modern era when mainstream men’s fashion changed so dramatically?
The Avengers started up again in the 1970s, and Macnee wore the same style that he did in the 1960s. Different people adopted the wide 1970s look at different times. It started before OHMSS. Roger Moore wasn’t wearing the DAF extremes in The Persuaders, though they were made at the same time.
I was a kid in the seventies and remember most of the menswear trends with derision – the decade that style forgot! I have to admit that Moore acquits himself reasonably well with this outfit before he succumbed to kipper ties and flared strides later in the decade. (I could have certainly lived without the side zip boots!)
It’s interesting that certain details like one-button gauntlet jacket cuffs and button-down cocktail shirt cuffs are recognisable to us now thanks to internet nerdiness but I wonder how noticeable these things would have been in the seventies without blogs such as this one to inform us of these finer points.
Cavett also looks very decent in a more casual (cotton? corduroy?) and trendy suit. Shirt collar, tie width and lapel width are subtly broader than what we associate with the sixties but have yet to achieve the laughable proportions that came into vogue later in the decade.
Rod, I certainly look back on the ’70s more fondly than you do. There was a lot of garbage, yes, but there also was in the ’80s, ’90s, ’00s — all decades I lived in. And right now — especially now — I sort of appreciate the attempts at blurring gender lines from the likes of Michael Fish and others, even if the results weren’t always good. I didn’t appreciate the ’00s when I lived in them, even though I could find clothes that fit me a lot easier than I can now. Guess it’s a matter of perspective. A lot of ’70s suits don’t look so bad to me. Some are pretty atrocious though.
I think all the Roger Moore interviews with Dick Cavett are worth watching and very funny. I watched this full show in particular and Moore does an excellent job of diffusing the tension/seriousness that had built up to the point when he came on. I imagine his sense of humor would likewise be indispensable to a spy that routinely has to deal with potentially world-ending situations and intense moments.
In another interview, Moore and Cavett make endless bottom puns regarding the moment in the Spy Who Loved Me when Stromberg fired at Bond’s chair. I feel the scene is enhanced now that I can imagine the same jokes must have been running through Bond’s mind as that scene played out….