Daniel Craig’s Brioni dinner jacket (Tuxedo) in Casino Royale has been a great inspiration to many over the past four years since the film was released. But many of the fine details of the outfit are known thanks to an article by Christopher Bray and Nick Foulkes titled “Dressed to kill; Barbara Broccoli calls Daniel Craig’s Bond ‘a tough guy in a dinner jacket’. But getting his look right proved the wardrobe team’s toughest mission,” published 30 October 2006 in Mail on Sunday.
This black wool dinner jacket takes its cues from the most traditional of evening wear. It has a button one front, ribbed ottoman silk-faced peak lapels, ottoman silk-trimmed jetted pockets and buttons, and no vents. There are four buttons on the cuffs.
According to the article by Bray and Foulkes the buttons are horn, but this is incorrect. The dinner jacket as seen in the film has silk-covered buttons. The buttons on the trousers, however, are black horn.
The dinner jacket’s cut is very characteristic of Brioni, with straight and padded shoulders, a clean chest and a suppressed waist. The buttoning point is at the waist. The sleeve heads are roped for a more British touch, and the lapels are slightly on the narrow side and cut with belly and a high gorge.
The classic Italian-cut trousers have single reverse pleats, a mid rise and straight legs. Bond, as usual, wears neither a cummerbund nor a waistcoat here to give the outfit a more modern look and to show off Daniel Craig’s abs. The trousers have a silk grosgrain stripe down each outseam to match the dinner jacket’s facings. The waistband has a short pointed extension that fastens with a button and on-seam pockets.
Bond’s trousers are held up by braces, the most traditional method of keeping up one’s trousers. The braces are white moiré silk (a type of watered silk) with gilt brass fittings, made by Albert Thurston for Gieves & Hawkes.
The shirt is made by Turnbull & Asser in a white-on-white waffle weave. The shirt has a spread collar and double cuffs with a mitred corner. The front of the shirt has a placket with hidden buttons. There are short side pleats at the upper back of the shirt and darts to fit the shirt in the small of the back. S.T. Dupont made the palladium cuff links. The bow tie is black shantung silk.
Bond wears black calf two-eyelet derby shoes, the John Lobb Luffield model. He doesn’t wear patent leather shoes for a more modern look, he just shines them well.
Costume designer Lindy Hemming talked about the dinner suit: “For the evening suit, he [Daniel Craig] was happy to go with Brioni, the Italian design company we’ve used on the last four films, because he knows and likes their style. But, because of Daniel’s more muscular physique, the evening suit is a new shape, so he looks modern in it. It’s fashionable to wear suits at the moment, so it doesn’t look anachronistic, and Daniel likes the tailored look.”
James Bond: I have a dinner jacket.
Vesper Lynd: There are dinner jackets and dinner jackets; this is the latter. And I need you looking like a man who belongs at that table.
James Bond: How the … it’s tailored!
Vesper Lynd: I sized you up the moment we met.
James Bond did not have a proper dinner jacket in Vesper Lynd’s eyes, so provides him with one. The improper dinner jacket was can be assumed to one with notched lapels and multiples buttons on the front, which is the average dinner jacket rather than an exceptional one.
Vesper is able to do the impossible with this Brioni jacket and manages to provide Bond with a dinner jacket that fits perfectly without fitting it to him before hand. A person’s measurements will not be able to guarantee even an acceptable fit let alone a nearly perfect fit, though a good cut such as one from Brioni provides a better fit than most.
> The dinner jacket deserves a better hanger than this. Always make sure your suits' shoulders have proper support when not in use.
Is there such a thing as a good travel hangar? Hotel hangars get worse every year. I can't find a good one, and bringing real hangars from home they always end up broken even if I can fit them in the bag.
As you noted before, the Brioni shape didnt quite suit Craig in Casino Royale. To me he looked uncomfortable, having to almost inherit Brosnan's style. But Craig's Bond really came into his own with Tom Ford in Quantum of Solace. Much better fit.
I agree that Tom Ford looked great on Daniel Craig. Brosnan looked great in Brioni, though much too continental for James Bond.
Thanks a lot for this, Matt!
Nothing quite like it! Thanks so much for the closer view of this awesome suit. It's well-done, very classy, and very masculine, befitting the manly James Bond. The fictional detective always makes it look like as if he has a personal stylist. Or, does he really have one?
I agree that the Tom Ford suits fitted better. May I request that you make one on the Black tie from Quantum of Solace. Thanks.
I wore a business suit at a Black Tie gathering. I followed every rule except for the dinner jacket. Is this acceptable?
Anon 3, wearing black tie accessories with a lounge suit is not acceptable. A plain white shirt and black long tie would be better, though it would end up looking quite somber. A black tie waistcoat or cummerbund should not be worn with a lounge suit either.
Yes, the buttons on the jacket are Fabric covered as seen in this publicity photo
http://eftm.com.au/2011/11/daniel-craig-to-return-in-james-bond-23-skyfall-1746/daniel-craig-new-james-bond-movie-casino-royale
The buttons on the trousers are horn, though.
Matt,
Is it perfectly acceptable to wear braces and a cummerbund?
Definitely! Braces and a belt should not be worn together since they both serve to hold up your trousers. A cummerbund covers your waistband and does not compete with braces. A cummerbund serves the same purpose as a waistcoat, where braces are a necessity.
Would it be common to find side-adjusters on the trousers when there are also buttons for the braces?
Or is it a case of either/or?
Almost all of my ready-to-wear suit trousers and odd trousers, whether they have side-adjusters or belt loops, have buttons for braces.
Vesper did an absolutely great job sizing Bond by just one short notice. ;-)
This is in my opinion by far the best Back Tie ensemble Bond ever pulled off. I love the clear and straight lines of this dinner suit. Not as loose as Brosnan wore his Brionis and not as tight as Craig wore the Tom Fords, just perfect.
But I also have a question about the bow tie. Of course I always use a self-tie model but this is about 2.5 to 3 inches wide at the ends. The one Bond is wearing here seems to be smaller, maybe 1.5 to 2 inches I guess. I think this size harmonizes much better with a normal face size than the 3 inch models. But self-tie bow ties of the smaller size seem to be very rare. Does anybody know which brand Bonds bow tie is and where to get it?
The bow tie is from Turnbull & Asser.
Hi Matt, big fan of your site. I just wanted to note that I was at the Bond in Motion exhibit today in London where they have the bloodied dinner jacket on display from the movie. On closer inspection, the jacket is most definitely midnight blue rather than black. The bow tie is also clearly a shade of navy in real life.
Perhaps the lighting there made it look blue, because I know for a fact that it’s black. Are you sure it wasn’t a dinner jacket from another Bond film?
Postive. It was very clearly labeled as the Casino Royale Dinner jacket, and also very clearly blue under the white lights. Generally, under such lights, black will give a more greenish color. The grosgrain on the peaked lapels was visibly black, so you could easily see the contrast between the black lapels and the midnight color dinner jacket. I do agree, however, it looks black on screen. I’m sure the color grading had something to do with that. How are you so positive it’s black?
Costume design Lindy Hemming says it’s black. Here’s an article that quotes her: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E00E5DB1E3FF93AA35752C1A9609C8B63
Brioni also publicised that it is black, though Lindy Hemming’s word carries even more weight.
hmm strange. Perhaps it was the lights then, or they had an improper replica on display. I’ll have to look again when I go back to London.
I wonder why the trousers appear to have horn buttons instead of the grosgrain silk/fabric covered ones that are on the jacket. Why is that?
Maybe Vesper made him a dinner jacket and Bond used the trousers he had from his tuxedo?
Far-fetched but then again, it could not totally be out of the question for a character who apparently wears suits with such disdain.
Also, considering the bowtie, shirt, cufflinks and shoes, I doubt he would’ve pulled together a bad outfit after all.
Maybe the bad details balanced it out.
Trousers traditionally have different buttons than the jackets have. For a dinner suit, covered buttons on the trousers would be too bulky and disrupt the lines of the jacket. They also aren’t seen, so there’s no reason for them to be so decorative. Even Sean Connery’s lounge suits have different buttons on the trousers than what are on the jacket.
James Sherwood’s official T&A book describes the shirt as a 2×110 self-on-self weave poplin… does that sound right?
2×110 self-on-self weave sounds right, but poplin does not. Poplin and self-on-self are mutually exclusive as they are two different weaves, and this shirt only has one weave. Perhaps Sherwood meant to write “cotton” instead of “poplin”.
Thanks – that’s what I thought. I’d never heard of poplin used in that context.
Hi Matt, what is the fabric composition and weave used for the jacket and trousers? I’m assuming it’s a pure wool barathea?
Based on the ready-to-wear ‘James Bond’ version, it is pure wool barathea.
I believe this is the only time to date Bond has ever worn pants with single pleats. Every other pair of pants he’s worn have either been flat front, darted, double forward pleated or double reverse pleated (and the rare dreaded triple pleat). I think single pleats are looking more and more appealing to me without being overly baggy like double pleats though I’m still experimenting.
Curious about the length of the jacket. It appears to land at, or below, the length of Craig’s thumb. Current advice would suggest that the jacket should end at about where the thumb meets the hand, much higher – though I’ve always heard that a formal jacket should, in fact, run on the longer side. What is the ‘rule of thumb’ here?
I found a wool/mohair fully canvased jacket that is very similar (French), but the length falls right about where this jacket does – just above the end of the thumb. Curious to know if it is worth having a tailor fit the sleeves, or if the jacket length is a deal-breaker.
Don’t pay attention to the thumb. People can be proportioned differently. Generally, a jacket’s length should be half the distance from the base of the neck to the floor, but it may be slightly longer if necessary to cover your seat. Tall people can wear a slightly longer jacket. Formality doesn’t factor in much people there’s no reason why someone ahouldn’t wear clothes that fit them just as well if they’re not dressing as formally.