Tinker, Tailor, Shoulder, Spy.

007. Three digits, one man, five billion dollars in revenue. James Bond is the ultimate brand.

After the front page of Google, Daniel Craig's pecs must be the most valuable space on earth. Pay per nip advertising - his agent's missing a trick.

A third of Skyfall's £100million budget was paid for by product placement deals and who can blame them. Bond is a living god: the Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit of all things cool.

I can't wait to see it. The 'intelligent' and 'ambitious' girl will still no doubt have legs up to Orion's belt. There'll be a fuel guzzling Aston Martin leaving Jeremy Clarkson slobbering for metaphors, an Omega watch, extreme violence, all washed down with a swig of Heineken.

The other thing that's guaranteed is sharp threads. I've blogged about the Bond tailors in a previous post. If your business involves a needle and thread, then kitting out Fleming's finest has got to be the ultimate gig.

Anthony Sinclair (Sean Connery), Doug Hayward (Roger Moore), Brioni (Piers Brosnan) and Tom Ford (Daniel Craig) all have got their 007 wings. It might mean sacrificing a hundred suits during filming but imagine the payback? A honey pot the size of Canada faced with a hurricane of fifty pound notes.

Whilst the saviour of Gucci dines out with the Broccoli massive, at least a few crumbs fall from the table to tailors like myself who are still scratching our way up.

Even before the hype, one of my customers was at my doorstep, a feverous look in his eye, thrusting the picture below into my hands and muttering the 'Little Britain' catchphrase, "Want that one."



Single breasted, two buttons, straight pocket flaps. Looks rather classical. Then you spot the gorge on the lapel. It's higher than usual. And check out the fronts. They're more cut-away than normal. As for the jacket length, it's on the short side. Not 'Top Man' freeze your bum to death short, but certainly more contemporary in length. Finally the shoulder.

The shoulder is to tailoring what terroir is to wine-making. It's shape and character sets the tone and silhouette of everything below and is the first thing somebody notices because it's in their line of sight.

Essentially there are two types of shoulder. One that is 'natural', often soft and unstructured, and one that is straighter and more constructed.

Style forums are full of posts declaring the Italians as the godfathers of the "natural" shoulder. It makes sense that in a hot climate, a tailor would want to offer his customers lighter weight cloth, and as such need to use light-weight scaffolding underneath.

The hallmark of a Neapolitan shoulder is one of little (if any) padding and canvas. They also cut the sleeves wider at the top, and this excess cloth is sewn, or 'eased' into the shoulder / armhole.

This combined with a clever manipulation of the seams when sewing the sleeve and the shoulder together will often create a slight 'puff' or pucker. Some of this can be shrunk away by pressing, although many dandies declare it a thing of beauty.

This is often referred to as a shirt shoulder, or "spalla camicia," a picture of which is shown below and made by Napoli Su Misura.



Italians don't have a monopoly on the less is more school of thought. Anderson and Sheppard's soft 'drape cut' is very similar. Here's Karl, one of their ex employees and now running his own show, wearing a coat with a typically soft, rounded shoulder.



Military and horsey Savile Row tailors such as Dege & Skinner, Gieves & Hawkes and Huntsman tend to go for a bit more welly in the shoulder. The same can be said for Brioni and Caraceni. It's probably why they do so well in the States as the Yanks, like myself, prefer a more imposing shoulder line.

An example can be seen below in what I consider to be one of the finest and most iconic suits ever made.



The shoulder is straight, there's certainly some padding and I think it flatters and draws attention to his naturally broad shoulders.

Piers, in his Brioni, also has a more constructed shoulder, however his are 'roped' at the end.



The Roped Shoulder, or Con Rollino, is named as such when the sleeve is higher than the shoulder line, as if it has been draped over a rope. I think it looks more formal and is what my customer wanted, similar to the Tom Ford special in my first photo.

As far as Michelsberg is concerned, we've always used padding in the shoulders including a 'sleeve-head,' which sits between the sleeve and the shoulder and is shown below.



I explained to Jon, Debbie and Sandra in the workroom that a 'rope' was the goal and we got busy. It wasn't easy, but then doing new things never is. We cut the crown (top) of the sleeves with more fullness (so there was extra cloth to create the rope) and added another layer of construction in the head-roll, which I'm pointing out with my stitch-cutter below.



With some scratching of chins and clever sewing we achieved the following.



There are still a few things to sort out but that's what it's all about. Pushing the boundaries, being open to new ideas and not being afraid to fail.

I've made my peace with the crushing blow that I'll never get to be James Bond. Which leaves the next best thing. Dressing him. Velvet collar, Daniel?

Nobody does it better..

I remember it like it was yesterday. I'd just finished watching the Dukes of Hazard on the telly and my Father came into the lounge and told me a Bond film was about to start and I'd enjoy it. Understatement at its finest.

Watching your first Bondy is as much of a rite of passage into the world of manhood as loosing your virginity, except it lasts a bit longer. I popped my 007 cherry to 'Goldfinger'.



Sean Connery in my opinion is, and always will be, the ultimate Bond. That deep Scottish bur, the way he moved like a cat, nonchalant with confidence oozing from every pore.

Here was an Alpha male who was as smooth as the mink glove in his overnight bag and twice as hairy. An Aston Martin DB5 and Pussy Galore on his arm was always going to help, but it was the cut of his grey three piece suit that nailed it.



Check out the line of the shoulders - masculine, defined, wonderfully imposing. Armani might be famous for 'ripping the stuffing' out of English tailoring but here is an old-school English constructed garment at its finest.

His tailor was Anthony Sinclair, who pioneered "The Conduit Cut" after the address of his Mayfair studio - slimline, single-breasted, two-buttoned. I try to incorporate many of these Conneresque features into my suits - narrower shoulders, slimmer sleeves, skinny lapels, ticket pockets and side vents.

I'm also a big fan of the two 'forward' pleats on the trousers, which is very British and favoured by the chaps on the Row. This is as opposed to 'reverse' pleats which are preferred by the Italians.

Connery played Bond with a steely intensity and his suits, in subtle shades of grey, blue and brown were understated and reflected his serious, business-like approach to saving the world.

This is in sharp contrast to Roger Moore who brought a lighter, laid back approach to the debonair 007. Polished, refined, effortlessly charming, he had the British thing down pat, but the raised eye-brow, bouffant hair, shocking one-liners and silk cravats made him as menacing as a Chiwawa and as camp as Christmas.



Roger Moore's tailor for his Bond films was Doug Hayward in Mount Street, Mayfair, who sadly died this year. He was regarded by many as a genius and customers included the likes of Michael Caine, Patrick Lichfield and Michael Parkinson.

He offered them a glass of bubbles when they arrived, was great fun, a good listener and like all good tailors was discreet. A working class lad made good, he deplored the stuffiness of some of the Savile Row institutions and describes his place as "relaxed, nice and easy. And besides, I get a lot of birds in."

The Seventies was certainly not my favourite decade when it comes to matters of style. It was a time of Disco and the Bay City Rollers. Platform shoes, kaftans and kipper-ties were worm with impunity, so the odds of coming out of it with your sartorial dignity intact were always going to be stacked against you.

I think Roger managed to keep his head above water, and even cut quite a dash in the number below - the 'superfly' bell-bottom trousers, wide lapels, flared waist and slightly raised shoulders have a touch of the 'pimp daddy' about them.



In fact, I have a friend in the South who actually commissioned a Roger Moore style light-blue Safari-Suit to be worn on a night out in Leeds, after a day of drinking and watching the cricket with the lads at Headingley.

And so to Mr. Brosnan.



Excessive pouting aside, I thought Piers did quite a good job of Bond. Quite smooth, well spoken, could probably take a punch and was no doubt a hit with the ladies the world over.

Of all the Bonds, I think a suit actually suited him the most, whereas Connery would be more at home in a rugged cable-knit sweater, and Roger, a silk dressing gown and calf-skin slippers. Piers was born to wear a three piece, but at the end of the day, neither he, nor his chest wig, came close to matching the true might of Mr. Connery.

His suits, including the one below, were made by Brioni. It has to be said these guys in their factory in Abruzzo can give the chaps on the Row a serious run for their money. The jackets are sewn by hand and then finished off by machine, take about twenty hours to produce with an off-the-pegger costing over five thousand euros.



Here's something that made me smile:

After the release of Die Another Day (2002), Piers Brosnan was approached by a man in a Dublin bar who asked to shake his hand. He complied and the man said, "That's the closest my hand will ever get to Halle Berry's arse."

And finally to our current Bond, Daniel Craig. In Casino Royale, he was often in t-shirts, jeans and a leather jacket (Armani), but when a suit was called for, he was also kitted out by Brioni.



I must say I loved the film but he just wasn't Bond. Or at least he wasn't my Bond. The Bond with the Scottish accent who had me spellbound after I'd finished ogling Daisy Duke in those jean shorts.

He was just another Jason Bourne type character with a chest the size of two terrace houses in Barnsley, tearing it up with a multi-million pound budget and awesome production team behind him. Hard, tough, gritty, credible - yes. Suave, sophisticated, hairy - no.

I am really looking forward to Quantum of Solace. Craig is a cracking actor and I'm pleased to say his tailor (Tom Ford, former creative director of Gucci and Yves Saint Lauren) managed to find enough cloth to cover his torso, after he reportedly ruined over forty suits during its production.

I am confident if will be a block-busting, action-packed, edge of the seat, extravaganza, with perhaps a few scenes dedicated to showing us his sensitive side. And chest.

When it comes to being 007, Roger, Daniel and Piers have all done well, as have Hayward, Brioni and Ford in dressing them.

But like Michelsberg and Tailoring, when it comes to Sean Connery, nobody does it better.