At the start of Goldfinger, James Bond is swimming in what is supposed to be a dry suit, but it is likely either a wet suit or merely a stylish costume intended to look like a diving suit. It’s Bond’s first outfit of the series intended for sneaking around in the dark, though it’s not as iconic as later sneaky and tactical outfits such as the jumper and polo that he wears later in Goldfinger. The diving suit serves the film’s plot, but it also serves as Bond’s superhero uniform at a time when superhero comics were becoming more and more popular at the time.
The diving suit is jumpsuit made of a stretchy, shiny black fabric, likely with spandex and nylon and possibly coated in rubber. It has a satin look to it, and if it’s not a proper wet suit at all it could be a jumpsuit made of heavy rayon satin. It may have been purchased for Sean Connery since the fit does not suggest it was made for him. It is too tight in the shoulders and too loose in the chest and arms. It zips down the front, has a high collar up to the jaw, long sleeves that cover the base of the hand and fitted legs that expose the ankles.
This diving jumpsuit has two purposes beyond swimming: concealing an ivory dinner jacket underneath and looking cool. A proper dry suit, which we are supposed to believe this is, would keep a dinner jacket underneath it dry, but in reality this suit does not keep Sean Connery dry. At no point does Sean Connery wear his dinner jacket under the zipped dry suit either. The shape of his body, not the silhouette of a structured dinner jacket, can be seen through the diving suit. Bond needs to look streamlined in this suit. A larger size would have been necessary to fit the diving suit over his dinner jacket, for a final shot unzipping the suit to reveal the dinner jacket. However, there is no shot showing Bond unzipping the diving suit. There is a cut to a shot of him with his back to the camera, and he turns to reveal an already unzipped diving suit as he reveals the dinner jacket. The shot is from the waist-up, so the trousers don’t need to be there.
The moment passes so quickly that we don’t notice the trickery, but we see enough to be amazed and amused with how Bond cleverly revealed the third of his iconic dinner jackets (even if the From Russia with Love dinner jacket was ultimately worn by a man in a James Bond mask). This is also Bond’s first ivory dinner jacket of the film series, which benefits from the contrast with the diving suit. The reveal of the dinner jacket makes the dinner jacket itself even more iconic than it would be without this moment. The dinner jacket has little screen time in Goldfinger, but it is used more in Woman of Straw, the film it was originally tailored for. Still, the dinner jacket ends up being one of the most memorable wardrobe items not only of the film but of the entire James Bond series.
Wearing a dry suit over a dinner jacket may seem like a far-fetched idea, even for James Bond, but according to an article in The Telegraph, a Dutch spy in World War II successfully wore evening clothes under his diving suit. Because he also pretended to be drunk, a wrinkle-free suit was not a requirement. Mythbusters tested wearing a dry suit over a dinner jacket in 2010 and also had success in keeping the clothes dry and looking fairly wrinkle-free after the ordeal.
It’s possible to keep a dinner jacket looking presentable after packing it into a dry suit. Sean Connery’s tailor Anthony Sinclair said about his tailoring, ‘You’ve got to put guts into a suit. Any well made suit you should be able to take it, roll it into a ball, crush it, stamp on it, sleep in it, and there you are, you’re back again.’ Zipping a dry suit over a dinner jacket is a similar kind of abuse, and Sinclair’s tailoring combined with sturdy English cloth should make this stunt possible. The cotton shirt, however, will not escape wrinkling.
On his head, Bond wears a mask and snorkel disguised as a seagull. It’s an effective disguise for the audience as we don’t expect Bond to pop out of the water. However, it also turns Bond into a joke as much as anything does in the Roger Moore era, but it’s quickly forgotten when Bond removes it and tosses it away. The crocodile submarine in Octopussy is a similar gadget that slightly overstays its welcome by comparison.
Bond wears a long tube of explosive tied like a sash around his waist, and it may also serve as support for the wire shot by his grappling pistol. A small black rucksack with royal blue straps contributes to the look by adding a much-needed pop of colour to help outline Bond’s silhouette in the dim scene.
One reason why this diving suit is not a dry suit is because the feet and ankles are exposed. When Bond is out of the water, he’s wear his usual black shoes and black socks. The shoes are the same elastic-gore demi boots with leather soles that he wears with numerous other outfits throughout Goldfinger. Not much thought was put into making this aspect of Bond’s outfit believable, but the filmmakers never expected audiences to be analyzing the film with such scrutiny 60 years after the film was release.
Bond wears his Rolex Submariner on a black, olive and red striped nylon strap over the diving suit’s sleeve. When Bond removes the diving suit he relocates the watch to his wrist to wear with his dinner jacket. Wearing a dive watch, especially on a nylon strap, with black tie would have been considered unfashionable and tacky at the time, but since Bond had just been diving in his dinner jacket the watch has the diving context. The watch fashion statement in Goldfinger is now used as evidence of being able to wear such a watch with black tie, but people forget that the main reason Bond is wearing the Submariner is because he was swimming and he needed to keep the watch on to keep track of the explosive fuse. Bond wore a dress watch with his dinner jacket in Dr. No, as would have been expected of a gentleman at the time, and Connery never again wears a diving watch with black tie in his subsequent Bond films. Ultimately, this Submariner that Bond wears for diving and for his mission set a precedent for Bond wearing dive watches with dinner jackets later in the series, and now it’s a popular practice for people who aren’t even James Bond fans.
Thanks for writing about this pretty quickly, Matt ! Connery looks great in it. The wonderful and sometimes jazzy score sure helps making the beginning of the scene totally iconic. I have always found hilarious the fact Connery is completely dry when they immediately cut after him (or more accurately his head only) going out of the water (that satin nylon cloth must have incredible drying properties). He also never wore anything else than his trusted bespoke leather shoes for infiltration ! Could Connery’s Bond be the dandiest of them all ?! Haha.
On another note I always wondered why they didn’t make him wear the watch with a metal strap for going underwater. Would it be less secure than a strap and buckle system ?
The watch they had was Cubby’s Rolex, and previously it was on a leather strap. They probably didn’t want to spend the money on a bracelet for it, so this is what they ended up with. A proper Submariner bracelet would have been ideal, but I believe this strap still works well.
I was a qualified Ship’s Diver in the Royal Navy in the 1970s. This is nothing like anything in use in the Navy at that time, and is certainly not a dry suit! The material aside, there were no zips on a RN dry suit, and it was a 2 man job to get in and out of it.
Thank you for sharing your expertise. There’s nothing realistic about this outfit, but it doesn’t need to be for Bond!
“True Lies” pays homage to this scene.
The strap is not a NATO strap but a standard one piece strap with standard buckle and holder. You have behind the scenes stills of Connery showing the back of the strap. The NATO G10 strap with its metal holders and specific one-piece construction was designed years later and issued in 1973 by the British MOD. In Spectre however, it was an Omega branded (and priced) NATO strap on the Seamaster 300 issued by Q in black and gray stripes.
Thank you for setting this straight!
Possibly the greatest introduction of an ivory dinner jacket in the history of cinematography! Cleverly enhanced by the contrast to the dark diving jumpsuit and submariner watch.
Not strictly related to this outfit, but do you think Bond’s a little overdressed for the nightclub he visits? It doesn’t seem to be the kind of place one might wear black tie for. That’s not to detract from Bond’s outfit, which is Connery’s best evening wear after the “Dr. No” dinner suit.
Yes, he is a bit overdressed. A suit would have done just fine.
I used to go dingy sailing when I was younger, so I’m familiar with dry suits. They can have a zip but need tight rubber seals at the neck and cuffs. That would cause Bond’s shirt, bow tie and hair to look very disheveled, even if his dinner jacket makes it OK. It also makes it a bit awkward to put on and take off – doable by yourself but the amount of rustling involved would probably ruin any attempt at stealth.
So unfortunately as fun and iconic as this scene is, it lacks credibility. Now if they showed Bond tying his bow tie after taking the dry suit off (which would also look quite suave) and quickly combing his hair it would be more realistic.
There’s a quote by Connery along the lines of “I always approached playing Bond by entering through the comedy door”. This rankles with me a bit and it’s not really true at least at the outset. There’s very little humour in the novels. Bond is portrayed as a cold blooded assassin and this carried over into the first two films in which there is very little humour, and this is the character I enjoyed watching the most. The famous ‘one liners’ that some fans seem to love but mostly I dislike could go back to Dr. No “That’s a Smith and Wesson – and you’ve had your six”. Originally Bond pumped more bullets into the professor but the scene was cut by the censor. The cheeky quips were added to take the hard edge off the films and thus avoid further censorship, more’s the pity IMO.
By the time we get to Goldfinger we’re no longer dealing with a cold blooded assassin and instead Bond is having a wink at the audience and the opening scene is clearly intended to set up this new direction. Why a seagull on his head? Completely unnecessary if he’s surreptitiously sneaking up on the power plant below the waterline. The ability to rip off an alleged wet / dry suit and have an immaculate dinner suit on underneath stretches our suspension of disbelief to the limit. Hair perfectly coiffed? Was he really wearing black calf leather-soled shoes while under water? It’s just silly really and I file this along with the numerous internal inconsistencies and logic leaps that irk me throughout the series as they could have been handled so much better.
This dinner jacket along with the Thunderball midnight blue shawl are my favourite black tie rigs in the entire cannon and I assembled facsimiles of both for myself I liked them that much.
I’ve always thought Connery played three versions of Bond… there’s the one from Dr. No & FRWL which is mostly played straight, serious, and with a bit of dry humor… the tongue in cheek superhero in GF/TB, and then whatever version of Bond he played for the remainder of his films where he basically doesn’t care anymore (even the famous panther walk is essentially gone).
Yeah that’s a good summary. TB is my all time favourite for a number of reasons (plot, location, wardrobe, five beautiful Bond girls, great villains …) but I can’t deny that was the film that rocketed the series further even than GF into Austin Powers gadgets and fantasy superhero territory, starting right off with the completely unnecessary jet pack! (Followed right after by the even more gadget loaded Aston!)
There’s and excellent book by pioneering TV travelogue host Alan Whicker – his autobiography ‘Within Whicker’s World – in which he recounts visiting the set of YOLT and seeing Connery just thoroughly fed up with the entire shooting match as the Japanese version of paparazzi were hounding his every waking moment. I think that put the nail in the coffin for his portrayal of Bond and from then on he was just phoning it in. I agree with another online poster who said that DAF is to all intents and purposes a Roger Moore film! Imagine OHMSS with Connery!
I think the four Guy Hamilton films can all be grouped together. The three Lewis Gilbert films can also be grouped together. I’d likewise group the John Glen films; The Living Daylights is very much like Moore’s last three films minus some of the humour, though Licence to Kill is quite different from the other four. I’d group OHMSS with Glen’s films since it was his first Bond film. The director groupings are more consistent than actor groupings.
I don’t know about a wetsuit over a dinner suit… Tend to think it may have a few pieces wrinkled up, even if it was kept dried. However, I personally have slept a whole night through my Anthony Sinclair suits, and I toss and turn a lot. By daylight, still a suit I could go to work in.
Maybe what we saw in Goldfinger is a bit of an overstretch, but not that far off. Somewhere at night in Mexico in the 1960’s? They won’t care too much that your coat is slightly wrinkled or your trousers a little bent out of shape.