[Caption: Photographer Norman Eales offers his own interpretation of the James Bond girl. Essential elements: the beautifully wide cheekbones; the hair that falls fine and free; the mobile mouth, the unpainted fingernails; a crisp white silk shirt and not a superfluous bow; wide handstitched calf belt, narrowly pleated skirt. Would she find favor with James Bond? There’s no telling: They’ve never met.]
Barbara Griggs Introduces…Men Looking at Women
No. 1: Ian Fleming (Evening Standard, April 4, 1960)
Talking to Ian Fleming about women and the way they dress is hypnotically like chatting to the MI5 [sic] hero of his famous thrillers, tough, bon-vivant man-of-the-world James Bond.
The same enthusiasms and preferences, the same shuddering antipathies and prejudices, the same insistence on more woman and less fashion make themselves manifest—a draught of cold manly air blowing through the hot-house atmosphere of fashion.
And indeed, checking back afterwards, I discovered almost all of his most forceful remarks crystallized for me in one or other of the Complete Works, so perhaps Mr. Fleming will forgive me if I occasionally quote him in support of himself.
The Big Snare
“Women, of course, don’t dress for men,” he told me authoritatively when I went to see him in his brand-new dark-green and white office. “They dress for each other—or for an audience. And so they occasionally waste an awful lot of money, and occasionally go frightfully astray.
“High fashion, unfortunately, is their big snare. Most couturiers are destroyers of sex.
“Look at the sack, for instance: it didn’t look too bad on some wonderful young girl in Rome sometimes: but on who else?”
“Women should stay out of the streams of fashion; they shouldn’t be taken in by it. Just observe it enough to preserve their self-respect.”
Skirts are Tops
“What sort of clothes do I like women to wear? I love shirts and skirts and wide handstitched belts. I think women should stick to finely-pleated skirts; they flatter the walk immensely.”
(Tilly Masterton’s dress for a car-crash outside Macon in Bond’s book Goldfinger: “She wore a white, rather masculine-cut heavy silk shirt. It was open at the neck but it would button up to a narrow military collar. The shirt had long wide sleeves gathered at the wrists…she wore a very wide black stitched leather belt with brass buckles…her short skirt was charcoal grey and pleated…)
On the subject of shirts, Ian Fleming is a stickler for plainness: “I hate those bogus pockets and flaps. All decorations should have a basis of usefulness.
“I love white shirts—but a whole dress in white? I think it’s a mistake, except on a tanned skin. And it gives a woman such anxiety complexes: those backward glances down at their skirt as they walk out of a restaurant to see if they’ve sat in something. Too awful for them.”
Black Velvet
“For evening? Something long and plain—preferably black velvet. The frightful thing about it though, is the way it marks when you sit on it.”
( “Do you mind if we go straight in to dinner?” she asked. “I want to make a grand entrance and the truth is there’s a horrible secret about black velvet. It marks when you sit down.” [Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale])
Ian Fleming is forthright on the subject of shape:
“Women in this country have been brought up to be ashamed of their bosoms and behinds. They should wear them like flags.
“Her behind is the most distinctive part of a woman’s body: it shouldn’t be flattened out and concealed by all that scaffolding and wire and basketwork.
“Women should stick to their own shape; the moment you start pretending you’re a different shape you’re in trouble.
“As long as a woman’s flesh is clean and healthy, what does it matter what shape she is?
“Trouble is, women here simply are not clean: absolutely filthy, the whole lot of them. I’ve said so to beauty experts here and they agree with me.
“Englishwomen simply do not wash and scrub enough. And why don’t they use frictions more often? Those wonderful all-over Eau-de-Cologne ones?
…And Scents
“Scent? I hate the musky ones—anything that smells of patchouli; I like any of the light flowery ones, particularly lily-of-the-valley.”
(N.B.—Mr. Fleming is sensitive on this subject of scent. One of his rare recorded lapses was the occasion when he credited Balmain’s Vent Vert to Dior)
“Make-up I like as light as possible—as little as possible—and durable. I can’t stand women who keep fiddling with their hair or face all the time.
“I don’t care much for nail-varnish, unless it’s pale pink; unvarnished, well-polished nails are prettier.”
(Gala Brand in Moonraker: “Apart from the warm rouge on her lips she wore no make-up and her nails were square-cut with a natural polish…)
“I like dirty clothes for the country. They shouldn’t have that glossy Tatler look to them. A well-cut mac covers an awful lot of sins.
“What happened to the beret? You never see it now. When a good thing like that comes along, I think women should hang on to it. Men do.
“Why are women so obsessed with models? I can’t understand it. They’re such awful narcissists—almost as bad as actresses; thinking of themselves the whole time. Just not whole women.
“No man is taken in by an advertisement showing a handsome man—he knows he won’t look like that. But women are perennially taken in.
“Are Englishwomen better dressed than Frenchwomen now? I think we’re overhauling them rapidly. Frenchwomen, of course, know how to use great artifice. But they have hideous bodies and skin.
“The great thing is that we’re beginning to get thousands of really beautiful girls all over England.
“That last long summer got them all out like butterflies.”