Tom Ford `confirmed` as James Bond`s tailor, Brioni retired

In a move that will shock the espionage community to its foundations - James Bond has changed his tailor. After weeks of dangerous undercover investigation, The Times reveals who'll be measuring 007's inside leg.

(Note: MI6 revealed that Tom Ford would be providing Daniel Craig's suits in "Quantum of Solace" last month).

A little question for you. In the last James Bond film, when Daniel Craig pouted, kicked and card-sharked his way around Montenegro, who made his suits? The fashion freaks and film buffs among you will know, obviously, but does anybody else? You may remember his watch (an Omega, with its branding slathered across the screen at every opportunity) or his cars (an Aston Martin and an, um, Ford Mondeo) but what about his dinner jacket? What about that iconic bit of Bond apparel?

A clue. It was made by the same company that dressed Pierce Brosnan, all the way back to Goldeneye in 1995. Nothing? OK, freaks and buffs, you can join in. Yes, that's right. It was the Italian house of Brioni. There was no advertising campaign, you never saw the brand name in the films, but it was them, all along.

“Pay attention, Rifkind,” said my commissioning editor, whom, for the sake of this piece, I suppose we should call E. “We've had a tip-off. Top-secret source. You don't need to know who. In the next Bond film, Craig isn't being dressed by Brioni. He's been dressed by Tom Ford International. We want you to find out more. Good luck out there. God knows, you'll need it.”

It should have been an exclusive, that. Tom Ford International. Only, since I started making calls, news has been leaking out. E wasn't wrong. My mission has taken me to London, New York, Panama and Rome (even if only by telephone and e-mail). This is a story about high fashion and intrigue. A Licence to Kit, revoked. Subtlety versus billboards.

Depending on who you speak to, it is about the triumph of American branding over European discretion. Secrecy and lies. Did James Bond ever had an adventure set in the fashion world? I don't think so. He wouldn't have stood a chance.

We think Bond, we think suits, we think Savile Row. In actual fact, we probably shouldn't. In one of the excellent essays in the Bond style bible Dressed To Kill (Flammarion), Nick Foulkes reminds us that this is not information that we ever get from Ian Fleming's Bond. That Bond does talk labels, but only when it comes to his enemies.

For example, in Goldfinger, we have Mr Du Pont “dressed in he conventional disguise in which Brooks Brothers cover the shame of American millionaires”. He himself is a study in anonymity and mystique.

The best we get is a “dark-blue single-breasted suit, white shirt, thin black knitted tie, black casuals” (The Man With The Golden Gun) and that is as descriptive as it gets. Bond, writes Foulkes, is “able to take a morally superior stance when faced with excessive dandyism”.

It is Sean Connery's Bond who first starts harping on about Savile Row in the film of Dr No (1962), and even he really shouldn't. Terence Young, the director of that film, actually had Connery dressed by his own tailor, Anthony Sinclair of Conduit Street. It was this pared-down, subtle 1960s style that shaped the world's impressions of 007 and it lasted, pretty much, until Roger Moore started faffing about in ski-jumpsuits, kaftans, safari jackets and anything else that took his bonkers fancy throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

“The Bond franchise is a very unusual thing,” says Lindy Hemming, costume designer on every film from Goldeneye to Casino Royale and, as such, perhaps fashion's answer to Q. “I'm not sure I prop- erly realised it at first. These are films that are going to be watched for ever and ever. You need to watch out for the clothes. You need to make sure they can be looked at for years and years without looking too... fashion. With Roger Moore, I think the decision was taken to be fashionable. We laugh at it now, but I'm sure it all looked good at the time.”

It was Hemming who took the - perhaps brave - step of dressing Britain's most iconic export in Brioni, an Italian designer. Timothy Dalton's Bond, she says, dressed like an off-duty policeman. With Brosnan, she wanted something new. “More modern. More European. Classic and beautifully tailored, but not so ex-military.”

There were also practical considerations. Large numbers of suits are required. Multiple suits for Bond, suits for stand-ins, suits for stuntmen. Suits need to be tailor-made, but quickly. Savile Row tailors tend to be smaller operations, and can take weeks over a single suit.

Hemming says that she considered various European designers, including Armani, before settling on Brioni. Not a quick process. “I was taken to the factory to see how they were made,” she says. “They were absolutely open to any sort of idea. They have a lifetime of making clothes for presidents and politicians, and they don't have that thing that they can't change what is going on. Whether it be 13 inside pockets, or one jacket with no vents and another that needs to open down the back. Some other companies are like elephants. They take a long time to change direction.”

Antonella De Simone, Brioni's very Italian co-chief executive, is equally effusive about her company's relationship with Bond. “Our tailors would go to London for all the fittings,” she says, from Rome, where I choose to imagine her flanked by femme fatale assassins in slinky kimonos and, perhaps, petting an octopus. “Bond has always been an icon of style and sartorial elegance. And we dressed other characters, too. Mrs Moneypenny. In Casino Royale, everybody at that casino table was dressed by Brioni. And these were very strange guys. A big black man, a fat man, the models. All the people on the table.”

Hemming and Brioni both insist, and vehemently, that no money changed hands. Or rather, to be more precise, Brioni did not pay for the privilege of dres- sing Bond. This is some sacrifice. Hemming tells me that, when Pierce Brosnan put on his Brioni suit on set, he used to say “I'm putting on Bond.”

“This is not our policy,” declares De Simone. “We were chosen for our art, never for money. We want to be discreet and elegant. Outside the glamour and the noise.”

Film stills of Brosnan or Craig in a Brioni suit did appear on the odd shop wall and in internal brochures, but the company insists, repeatedly, that there has never been a Brioni advertisement featuring Brosnan or Craig. In latter years, perhaps, this sense of discretion was beginning to fade. Just before Casino Royale came out, Brioni launched a £3,000 Bond-themed tuxedo, which had “James Bond” stitched into the silver lining and was sold in a few select stores. You may have seen a still of Daniel Craig, bow-tie draped loosely around his neck, on a poster in Harrods.

It seems fair to expect more of a trumpet-blare from Tom Ford International. While Hemming insists that every sartorial item worn by Brosnan and Craig thus far was sourced by her, she does concede that, these days, Eon (the producer of the Bond films) has a whole team devo- ted to securing product placements in the films.

Such things are big business. More- over, with box office takings sinking, and internet piracy rife, many regard product placement as the future of film. In Casino Royale, Bond's Omega watch and Ford Mondeo have already been mentioned, and Virgin Airways bought a cameo (as they have, it is also reported, in Quantum of Solace).

Ian Fleming was fond of listing items and brands as a lazy way of establishing scenes and characters (with the Walther PPK and the Martini being only the most famous examples) but matters do seem to have soared to another level. Pierce Brosnan's final outing, Die Another Day (2002), is widely regarded as the most product placement-heavy film ever made, with 25 promotional partners, right down to Bond drinking Bollinger and using a Phillips razor. According to Variety, £31.3 million was raised in one deal alone, when Aston Martin replaced BMW as the film's official vehicle supplier.

Amid all this, you wonder why Brioni didn't shout it from the rooftops. Exactly how its relationship with Eon ended is shrouded in mystery. “Perhaps it is like an auction?” suggests Antonella De Simone, archly, from Rome.

Others point to the departure of Um- berto Angeloni, the chief executive, from Brioni last year while, in the same period, the Bond films gained a new costume designer (with Lindy Hemming stepping down in favour of Louise Frogley).

By the middle of last year, rumours were emerging that Bond would no longer be wearing Brioni. As to who would replace it, nobody knew. Early speculation centred on Dunhill, not least because Daniel Craig wore a Dunhill dinner jacket to the premiere of Casino Royale.

“Nothing has been confirmed,” said a Dunhill spokesman, only last week. “Although there's a possibility that it won't be us.” A possibility? You think? What with filming already having started? A pretty strong possibility, I'd say. Last September, six months after Craig wore his Dunhill tuxedo, Dougray Scott suddenly emerged as the new face of that brand's golfwear line, The Links Collection. Scott, of course, was widely tipped to succeed Pierce Brosnan as Bond, before Craig got the gig. Did Craig himself suddenly have some particular reason not to be wearing Dunhill?

Eon appears to have decamped en masse to Panama for filming. From its temporary base over there, which may well be underwater and made of glass, a spokesman admits that Tom Ford International will now be dressing Daniel Craig. Then, she appears to take fright, insisting that any announcement has to come from the designers themselves, and diving, fretfully, off the record. That same day, for the first time, Craig discus- ses his suits with journalists on set. A strange coincidence.

Alas, Tom Ford himself, perhaps surrounded by henchmen, perhaps stroking a fluffy white cat, will not be drawn at all. His spokesman offers only a terse “no comment” and then stops answering her e-mails. Is Tom disappointed? Is she now in a shark tank?

Ford left Gucci in 2004, after being widely credited with turning the company around. For a while, he was thought to be moving into film. Then he set up his new company, Tom Ford International, which was originally expected to be a small, chic, boutiquey sort of endeavour. That all changed last year, as plans were announced to expand globally. Milan in 2008, London in 2009, and Los Angeles in 2010. He doesn't just want to be the guy from Gucci, he wants to be the new Gucci. Will a huge James Bond billboard campaign be a part of this?

The classic Bond tuxedo scene is, after all, a recent one. It is in Casino Royale and it is tacky as hell, but audiences were reported to have cheered. It is when Craig's Bond and Eva Green's Vesper are getting dressed for the big card game. Bond has just given Vesper a dress, and goes back to his room, to see a tuxedo lying on his bed. “But I already have a dinner jacket,” he says. “There are dinner jackets and dinner jackets,” retorts Green, Frenchly. “This is the latter. And I need you looking like a man who belongs at that table.”

And he dresses, and he looks at himself in the mirror. For a very tiny instant, if you know exactly what you are looking for, you might just see the Brioni logo on the suit bag. I had to watch it twice.

Is this kind of modesty a thing of the past? Is everything about Bond now for sale, right down to the clothes off his back? We shall have to wait and see. Or, we could tie Daniel Craig to a bottomless chair and set about him with a carpet beater. Just a thought.

Loved them - and left them

The cigarettes

Like all real men of his era, Sean Connery's Bond was on 60 a day: a special Balkan and Turkish mixture with three gold bands on the filter denoting his naval rank of Commander. Sadly the health gestapo's reach extends even to 007, and Bond had his last puff in, rather fittingly, Die Another Day (2002).

The kilt

George Lazenby appeared only once as Bond, in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969). It may have been the kilt. Frankly, he didn't have the legs for it. Still, every cloud: in one scene a Bond beauty reaches underneath and writes her room number on his thigh in lipstick.

The car

The Lotus Esprit S1, which becomes a fully armed and equipped submarine in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), has been voted the most memorable car in film history. And with good reason: in its range of emotions, flexibility and impact, it clearly out-acted Roger Moore.

The pen

Every spy needs a classy implement with which to sign his bar bill, and Bond's choice was the Mont Blanc. In Octopussy (1983) it also doubled as a receiver for bugged conversations, and a container for concentrated nitric acid to burn through the bars of a prison cell. Parker, eat your heart out.

The gun

Told in Dr No (1962) that his .25 Beretta is, frankly, a bit of a girly gun, Bond is given a Walther PPK - and a legend is born. It's his weapon of choice in 18 movies until being replaced by the Walther P99 in The World is Not Enough (1999).

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