EDITOR’S LETTER>> still had some good ideas. Stylistically, Dr No, the first film, was
certainly better than the first attempt to bring Bond to the screen. A
year after Casino Royale was published in 1953, “Jimmy” Bond was
played on American television by an actor called Barry Nelson. They
changed his nationality (he is now a Yankee), his job (CIA agent) and –
sin of sins – his clothes, kitting him out in a loose-fitting shawl-collar
tuxedo and what looked suspiciously like a clip-on tie.
While he was a hero in print, it took the movie to turn Bond into
a star, took Sean Connery’s legendary swagger to turn the besuited
British secret agent into a fully fledged sex symbol and style icon. With
Dr No, Connery was suddenly the best-dressed man in the cinema.
He wore Turnbull & Asser shirts with French cuffs, specially made
by Michael Fish (who went on to open his own hugely influential
shop, Mr Fish); he wore a Nehru jacket and razor-sharp suits made
for him by Anthony Sinclair on London’s Conduit Street. Connery was
both smart and casual and the knitted short-sleeved shirt he wore
when helping Ursula Andress out of the sea has been a casualwear
classic ever since.
He was influential in other ways: because he always favoured two-
piece tropical-weight suits (about 4-6lbs) that offered serious mobility,NOVEMBER 2015
Celebrated photographer Rankin was the creative eye charged with delivering all the
imagery associated with Spectre, including behind-the-scenes photographs curated for
an official companion book, the best of which he shared with British GQ exclusivelyNOVEMBER 2015
Ahead of his fourth turn as Bond, in Spectre, Craig
fronted British GQ alongside costar Monica Bellucci.
Photographed for us by RankinOCTOBER 2002
Pierce Brosnan, who starred as 007 in four James Bond films, received his first GQ Men
Of The Year Award in 2002, winning Actor Of The Year. His final outing as the spy, in
Die Another Day, was released the following month. Photographed by Julian Broadmen bought them in their hundreds of thousands;
because he wore a white tuxedo, it began filling the
pages of countless fashion magazines. Such an icon
was Connery that in 1966 GQ devoted an issue to his
interpretation of Bond style.
True to the books, Connery’s style was always under-
stated: in Goldfinger, the outfit he wears to drive his
Aston Martin DB5 (gunmetal grey with leather oxblood
interior) consists of a tweed hacking jacket, plain
cotton shirt, plain tie and heavy cavalry-twill trou-
sers with cross pockets and narrow buttons, angled to
fit neatly over his suede chukka boots. This reflected
his military background and his need to be smartly
turned out at all times. Pierce Brosnan, more than >>04-20EditorsLetter_3351554.indd 33 12/02/2020 09:49
APRIL 2020 GQ.CO.UK 33