Some early influences

I have no idea whether or not people model their own dress and bearing consciously upon existing archetypes. The omnipresence of ‘lifestyle’ media, and its reported multi-billion pound turnover, suggest that this must be the case for a commercially-significant number of people in the North Atlantic region, even if their 'role models' are simply those anonymous, slack-jawed and dead-eyed skeletons gazing sullenly from the pages of Love, Vogue, Heat or the Sunday Mirror colour supplement every week. I flatter myself to believe that I am above such advertising-driven tat, but nonetheless have drawn inspiration from various sources in my time.

So, before getting into the didactic whys, wherefores and whethers of the random prejudices I alluded to in the first post, I thought it might be appropriate to give a short summary of the public figures whose style I have at some point in my life admired or attempted to copy.

1977-83           Han Solo.

Style signifiers: DL-44 blaster pistol; low-slung leather holster; blue or brown breeches with faux-cavalry stripe on out-seam; dark tan or black riding boots; black cotton or canvas gilet or blouson; cream, high-collared cotton jersey tunic shirt; saucer-shaped smuggling vessel with numerous modifications.

As a boy I achieved the Han Solo look by wearing black Adidas 3-stripe tracksuit trousers, black Dunlop wellies and a white St Michael polyester school shirt, topped by a quilted body-warmer or, for the Empire look, a black Harrington jacket. The latter had a bright red tartan lining (Royal Stewart, I believe), which somewhat undermined what little intergalactic revolutionary chic that had not been eroded already by the tracksuit trousers. Pistol by Palitoy (later Kenner).

1981-84           Indiana Jones. Style signifiers: leather flying jacket; Herbert Johnson poet's crown fedora (do not be fooled by the rude imitations advertised widely on the internet); bullwhip; satchel; khaki slacks; brown boots

The Indiana Bumwad effect was created by the acquisition from Bumwad senior of a battered green felt trilby by Christie’s, and wearing my hiking boots bought for a school holiday in Wales with a leather bomber jacket passed on from a friend of my mother. This jacket was in a lamentable light tan, and attempts to darken it with Kiwi dark brown shoe polish were only partially successful. I bought myself a bullwhip in Bahrain when as a family we visited my dad who was working there, and practiced trying to 'crack' it on the roof of his apartment in Manama, and seeing if I could wrap it round the TV aeriel. Sadly that sort of laissez faire parenting is now rare.

('The Indy' was in early-eighties Norfolk marginally less conspicuous than ‘the Solo’. Indeed I might at times have passed for a slightly simple farm-hand, albeit that the carriage of a bull-whip would to the casual observer suggest that I entertained eccentric views on animal husbandry.)

1979-81           Roger Moore’s James Bond (Moonraker, For your eyes only). Style signifiers: chalk stripe three-piece suit; dark blue trousers and bomber jacket; evening shirt; dinner jacket trousers; Walther PPK; various gadgets.

School uniform proved an important resource in recreating the gay, debonair je ne sais de vivre of the Moore Bond. Black or charcoal Sta-prest slacks teamed with the afore-mentioned St Michael white polyester easy-care shirt was the basis of the look. Black Clark’s Commandos completed the emulation of Moore Bond’s morning-after ‘walk-of-shame’ outfit worn in the early morning beach-buggy chase in which Countess Lisl is murdered by Kristatos’ men (including a young Charles Dance) and Bond is rescued by Columbo. The outfit worn for the raid on the docks in later scenes was again school trousers with the versatile Han Solo Harrington jacket doing service for the blue blouson.

My brother had a die-cast Walther PPK cap gun, packaged (by Lonestar?) to tie in with FYEO; I could occasionally borrow this, but had more often to rely on my own (The professionals) Beretta. (I consoled myself that this was Bond’s personal preference, despite Q’s objection to it as ‘a lady’s gun’.) It was possible to fashion a rudimentary silencer for the PPK from the compacted blue cardboard inner tube around which my grandmother wound her kitchen string. This fitted tightly on the end of the barrel; complete silence was ensured by removing the paper caps.

My other weapon was a small Sheffield steel pen knife with a badly-reproduced picture of a Broadland Wherry on the plastic handle. It was chiefly a stabbing weapon as it was not well balanced and therefore not suitable for throwing any further than from waist height into turf. Gadgets within reach included a Nintendo Game And Watch, a ballpoint pen that had a digital clock built into the barrel and a Yard-O-Led propelling pencil.

1987-1994       Stephen Fry. Tweed coat; pink shirt; pinstripe suit; smoking jacket

1987-2002       Beau Bumwad senior. Style signifiers: tweed suit (two or three piece); hound’s tooth or puppy’s tooth sports coat; Tattersall check brushed cotton shirt; plain wool or silk tie; plain brown lace-ups; cavalry twill trousers.

Both the Fry and the Bumwad senior looks depended upon access to a London tailor or at least the Dunn & Co in Norwich, and were beyond practical reach until I could achieve an earned income beyond that paid by the stock-room of WH Smiths. It was not until I had a decent wage that I could start emulating seriously these early style 'icons', and, from the base they provided, to develop my own ideas about how to dress.

Later influences will become apparent - assuming I sustain my interest in this endeavour long enough - but I will say a brief word here about the figures whose dress sense I admire generally or from whom I continue to draw inspiration even as a grown-up.

I have always admired the extremely conservative and formal figure that Evelyn Waugh grew into in the post-war years; the three-piece tweed suits in which he is typically depicted from the early 1950s onwards have been an enduring influence, and the first bespoke suit I bought was an unsuccessful attempt to imitate one of his. 

His diaries and letters demonstrate an unapologetic interest in clothing which persisted well into his dotage. His clothing was utterly coherent with the face he wished to present to the world, and, with his relatively humble origins and conspicuous emulation - and modification - of the style of his much grander friends, my adolescent self saw something of a similarity. My adoption of Waugh as an 'icon' might be due in part to his mild physical as well as sartorial resemblence to my grandfather.

His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, has a similarly formal, conservative air, although he tends to wear dark two-piece suits. Here he is in what looks like a keeper's tweed, which is what any serious-minded man of taste would wear for a highly public discharge from a London hospital:

He avoids the solecisms committed by his eldest son – the strangely shapeless and peculiarly-ironed double-breasted coats (sometimes worn without a tie), the flashy cufflinks and the second-hand car salesman overcoats. His other children have no discernible interest in clothing and need not detain us.

Ian Fleming is another conservative dresser with singular tastes. I particularly like the turned-back (or French) cuffs on his suits, although I have never seen the attraction of bow ties, whether knotted "with Churchillian looseness" or Blairite image adviser tightness.


Here we see him relaxing at home in his jim-jams:

Like his creator, the literary James Bond has a practical and coherent – if somewhat repetitive - dress sense, which is to say, like Kingsley Amis, that he is in effect a silhouette. He wears the same outfit of a dark blue tropical-weight two-piece suit, cream silk or Sea Island cotton shirt, black knitted silk tie and black mocassins throughout the series. He makes the odd peculiar choice, such as wearing leather sandals with a suit in (I think) The man with the golden gun, but otherwise his taste is pretty irreproachable. The interest lies in the details (or more particularly their absence) of his clothes - indeed we know only from Fleming's own directions to the art department at a US publisher that Bond favours two-button suits, which would have been unusual in 1950s England - and in what he does not wear (lace-up shoes, tie clip or bar).

The literary Bond is very far from the tailor’s dummy of the Moore and Brosnan years, and still further from the sullen adolescent thug of the Craig films, in which product placement has given way to product inundation, with the brand of every item, no matter how mundane, visible and available for purchase over the internet.

Nonetheless some cinematographic James Bonds are worthy of inclusion: Sean Connery is a predictable but solid example of style, particularly in the earlier, Terence Young-directed films. Indeed, I should probably nominate Terence Young himself, as there is plenty of evidence that Connery's Bond was modelled almost entirely on Young's own dress and bearing. And yes - I know this still was taking during production for Goldfinger which Young did not direct, but it's a cracking look for motoring in Europe: one that says "I am in control of my vehicle".

George Lazenby gets a bit of stick for his occasionally wooden acting, but he is usually pretty well-turned out; indeed I think he is the only film Bond to adopt literary Bond's preference for a black knitted silk tie. As for Craig, all his clothes look like they have just been taken from the wrapping; the suits wear him. His style is effortless in the worst possible sense of the word.

That's enough for now.