Armour on or off? Why Tom Ford is the perfect fit for James Bond
Versace, Cardin, McQueen, Calvin Klein… the Bond series has been associated with many of the world’s most famous queer fashion designers. But there is no more perfect fit for Daniel Craig’s Bond than Tom Ford.
When I say Ford is a ‘perfect fit’ for Bond, I refer to both men’s psychology, rather than their taste in tailoring.
According to those in the know about such things (whose expertise I will have to defer, as my knowledge of tailoring is next to zero), Tom Ford’s Bond suits - especially in Skyfall and Spectre - are an awkward fit for Daniel Craig’s muscle Mary physique. Bond Suits creator Matt Spaiser observes that “Ford’s suits are generally constructed in the armour-like Savile Row tradition”. At first glance, this would seem to fit with Craig’s portrayal of the character, beginning with Casino Royale, which includes a memorable exchange about armour.
However, Craig was still clad in Brioni suits in Casino Royale, not Tom Ford. And it’s a (more comfortably fitting) Brioni suit which Craig wears in the closing shot, his armour resolutely back in place. But, as I argued in my queer re-view of Quantum of Solace, Bond is concealing his true self in this iconic scene. The clothing may go some way towards making the man but the man inside the suit is crumbling and, as the films progress, we see Bond disintegrate further. The suits are the only thing holding him together.
Tom Ford began his association with Bond with Quantum of Solace, and it continues to the present day. When costume designer Jany Temime came on board with Skyfall, she took a ‘second skin’ approach to clothing Bond. In an interview, Temime said “The association of a suit with armour isn’t good. A suit can also be a continuation of yourself.”
It may seem perverse to put Bond in Tom Ford suits, which are traditionally a bit bigger and armour-like, but make them fit so tightly so they operate as a second layer of skin. But it’s this which cuts to the heart of the character’s psychological state.
As Shakespeare says in Hamlet, “the apparel oft proclaims the man”. The tightness of Craig’s clothes draw our attention to them. It’s a conscious decision to have his clothes fit unconventionally. Bursting out at the seams is a conscious ‘lewk’ and it tells us a lot about what’s going on in the character’s head - which is somewhat important when we have a character as taciturn about his feelings as Bond.
I have no armour left...
There’s a conflict, then, between the orthodoxy of good tailoring and the needs of the story, and the story always has to triumph, something Tom Ford recognised when Temime came to him with her designs. As Temime has noted, Ford being a filmmaker himself meant he knew immediately what she was up to.
Ford has written and directed two of my favourite films: a 2009 adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s gay classic A Single Man and 2016 psychological thriller Noctural Animals. Both films are - as you would expect - impeccably well designed. But the conspicuous sheen of both films provoke us into looking below the glossy surfaces to the darkness beneath.
The opening scene of Ford’s film of A Single Man shows a gay man (played by Colin Firth) going through his morning ritual. Because of the death of his partner, Jim, he’s almost entirely absent as a social animal, merely going through the motions, robot-like: “By the time I’m dressed, and put the final layer of polish on the now slightly stiff but quite perfect George, I know fully what part I’m supposed to play.” George is suffering from the disconnect between his public persona and his true self, which has been exacerbated by the death of his partner but was always there to an extent. His immaculate attire conceals his broken heart and crushed spirit.
The too-good-to-be-true aesthetic draws attention to the dark realities faced by the central character who is putting on a brave face - and his armour-like clothing - while all the time being eaten away from the inside by past trauma.
No wonder the Bond team approached Tom Ford then.
...you’ve stripped it from me
Until recently, Ford would do anything to avoid opening up. And that included deflecting questions by taking off all of his clothes, which he did for a provocative nude Out magazine photoshoot in 2007 and again for a 2010 interview appearing in The Sunday Times. The irony was not lost on his latter interviewer: “For a man whose success is all about clothes, Tom Ford has a surprising taste for nudity.” The interviewer in question was AA Gill, a friend of Ford’s, and he gamely followed suit by stripping down to his birthday suit as well.
This built on the bad boy reputation Ford had built up throughout the noughties. In 2002, he made headlines while working at Yves Saint Laurent by featuring a full-frontal male nude in the advert for his new fragrance. In a 2004 GQ interview, he famously declared that all men should experience anal penetration from another man, declaring “It's really not that different than having a massage.” Ford also propositioned the straight interviewer, Michael Hainey. Perhaps emboldened by Ford’s brazenness, Hainey told Ford: “You seem entirely fabricated. I think it's all artifice with you.” Ford gave an evasive response.
In hindsight, the controversy seems calculated: it helped to build his brand. But Ford himself says he now cringes when he reads these interviews, regrets saying some things (although he still stands by the part about all men experiencing anal penentration) and blames the booze for loosening his tongue.
Addicted to alcohol for nearly two decades, things came to a head in his forties, when Ford (in his words) ‘unravelled’ and quit drinking entirely. He still has his struggles with mental health. Like James Bond, he struggles with sleep. Most of the time he only gets three or four hours a night and, like Fleming’s Bond, has to resort to sleeping pills. His treatment for anxiousness is to take a bath (he takes three to five every day).
In 2017, aged 55, Ford finally gave what appeared to be an honest account of himself in an interview. Although he kept his clothes on, the armour was off.
Ford spoke candidly about how childhood bullying still affects him. Although he grew up in a supportive household, he was a target for bullies because he took an attache case to school, had a taste for flamboyant clothing and didn’t go in for conventionally manly pursuits, like team sports.
“[My Childhood] was generally happy. However, it has taken me a long time to come to terms with the fact that actually there is a lot of pain associated with those moments in life where you didn’t feel safe and you felt vulnerable in a way that felt dangerous. And I think I shoved them to the back of my mind and didn’t really confront them. And I think that they’re very present. Still to this day, if I walk past a group of kids, they can be eight years old, playing soccer, and that ball comes towards me, I panic! Because, oh my god I have to kick that ball and they’re all gonna laugh ‘cause I’m not great at soccer. It’s a sort of instant panic. You know, if I’m in a crowd, you know you remember being chased by other kids to get out to your car before they could grab you and beat you up, to your mum who was waiting for you. And I still sometimes feel that nervousness. Which sounds silly coming from a grown man. But I think those things are always with you.”
Whether he has made the conscious link himself or not (and many of us don’t for many, many years) Ford appears to be another victim of shame rooted in childhood, something he has in common with Craig’s James Bond.
Arm yourself because no one else here will save you
In 2016, Ford told an interviewer he realised he was gay when he was 17, which is somewhat late as these things go. Ford attributes this to growing up in Texas in the 1960s: “I suppose I didn’t really imagine homosexuality existed back then.” It was only when he went to New York and met people who had gay identities that he recognised who he was. While identifying as a gay man, Ford has expressed skepticism about labels. In 2009, he told Vogue he thought of himself as 65% gay, 35% straight. In the 2017 Telegraph interview, he expressed his view that sleeping with a man didn’t automatically make someone gay. ‘Gay’ is an identity after all, and there are plenty of ‘men who have sex with men’ (to apply the nomenclature used by public health bodies) who identify as straight. And, as Alfred Kinsey famously observed, sexual orientation is a spectrum.
Tom Ford now lives what some would call a ‘homonormative’ life with his husband and kids, perhaps another parallel with Bond, who may be destined for a similarly settled, ostensibly well-adjusted period of his life. We’ll see how that turns out when No Time To Die is released.
When it was announced on 007.com that Ford would be continuing his association with Bond for Craig’s final film, the designer said:
“I could not be happier to be dressing Daniel Craig as James Bond again in the upcoming film, No Time To Die. James Bond epitomizes the TOM FORD man in his elegance, style and love of luxury. It is an honor to move forward with this iconic character.”
Beneath the stiff, press release-like tone, there’s an acknowledgement that Bond and Ford share more than “elegance, style and love of luxury”. “Move forward” implies the character may grow psychologically. We can reasonably expect the clothing to co-ordinate with Bond’s inner state. Hitherto, Bond’s wearing of Ford has revealed hidden layers to the character, his outward appearance conveying his tightly-wound inner turmoil. Craig’s Bond is never quite at ease, despite how glamorous and unperturbed he may seem.
In No Time To Die, will we finally see the armour come all the way off?
I found this book co-authored by Matt Spaiser of www.bondsuits.com and Peter Brooker of https://fromtailorswithlove.co.uk/ very helpful. As I stated above, I have next to no knowledge of tailoring so their book was an education. Amongst other things, I learned that I am reassuringly average in having a ‘six inch drop’ (read the book if you don’t have a clue what that means).
