Inspired by: Jean Paul Gaultier, James Bond

His name is Bond, James Bond. The tuxedoed agent 007 has been the ultimate role model for men’s fashion for more than 4 decades, with 6 different actors and 23 films. Jean Paul Gaultier has once again been inspired by what he’s seen on the silver screen. This time it was for his Fall 2011 Menswear Collection, which he presented last month. There were tuxedoes, guns, champagne, wetsuits, high-tech looking vests, and gadgety sunglasses featured in this collection. But what’s a Bond-inspired collection without a Bond Girl? Yes, he had that too, by using androgynous male model Andrej Pejic. I went to my local library and picked up the 8 James Bond movies they had available, and just from these movies I found countless tuxedos, 2 fur coats worn by Bond Girls, 5 wetsuits, champagne, guns, high-tech gadgets, and well, you get the picture. Gaultier had all of these things in his collection, so I can only imagine what I would have ended up with had I watched all 23 films.

In the following 3 stills you can the examples of suits, guns, and champagne as you see in the images from Gaultier's collection above.

Adding a bit of humor to his collection, Gaultier features half-suit/half-wetsuit looks, the classic James Bond move of taking off a wetsuit to reveal a perfectly dry tuxedo underneath, à la Sean Connery in Goldfinger (as seen in the before and after stills below) and Pierce Brosnan in Die Another Day .

At this point (above), Pierce Brosnan has just gotten out of the freezing water in Iceland. This is the shot where he is taking off his wetsuit and the following shot, he’s magically back to being his dapper self (with the exception of his wet hair) wearing a cashmere turtleneck, which is dry of course.

And now, the Bond women and their fur coats. Again, this is only from the 8 films I collected stills from, I'm sure there are countless others.

The only thing Gaultier missed out on was having Andrej Pejic wear a bikini to complete the James Bond theme, but that would have been going a bit too far. Here are a few examples.

Also last month, John Barry, the multi-award winner who wrote the score for 11 of the James Bond films died on January 30th. He wrote the James Bond theme song.

Jean Paul Gaultier  Fall 2011 Menswear Collection, photos courtesy of Style.com.

© 2011 - 2015, Louise Junker.