What Does Secret Service Wear To Formal Events

Wedding-1

For the wedding of James and Tracy Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, James Bond wears a form of semi-formal day wear called "black lounge," known to the Americans as a stroller and to the Germans as a Stresemann. It is an updated version of morning dress with a lounge coat replacing the morning coat (known in America as a cutaway coat). For James Bond's wedding in the very warm setting of Portugal, black lounge is more suitable than morning dress.

For business in the United Kingdom, black lounge was was traditionally worn alongside the lounge suit, having roughly the same formality, but this practice fell out of favour by the 1970s. As time went on, black lounge became an intermediate formality between a dark lounge suit and a morning suit (a less formal style of morning dress where all three pieces match in grey).

Dimi Major of Fulham, London tailored George Lazenby's lounge coat, waistcoat and trousers. Bond's lounge coat is black but sometimes appears to be blue on film. The coat has peak lapels and two buttons on the front, and it is tailored with straight shoulders with natural sleeve heads, a full, clean chest and a suppressed waist. Traditionally the black lounge coat worn in this manner has only one button, to mimic the 20th century morning coat's single button, but two or three buttons are also correct styles. Notched lapels are also acceptable, but peaked lapels are more appropriate for a wedding. The pockets are jetted on a slight slant, the cuffs have three buttons, and there are double vents at the back.

The waistcoat is dove grey lightweight tropical wool and has six buttons. The narrow straight-leg trousers match the waistcoat in dove grey tropical wool, and the style most likely matches the other trousers in the film with a darted front and Daks-style button-tab side adjusters. Traditionally trousers worn with the black lounge outfit are the same as with morning dress: striped or checked, only in black, white and grey. Though Bond breaks with tradition, he does not insult it.

Bond's soft white cotton poplin shirt from regular James Bond shirtmaker Frank Foster has a tunic collar with a detachable spread collar, a front placket stitched 1 cm from the edge and double cuffs. The tie is an ice-blue satin, tied in a Windsor knot. The tie's light, cheerful colour makes it perfect for the wedding party.

Bond wears black plain-toe slip-on shoes with elastic side gussets on chisel-toe last, though the traditional shoe would be a cap-toe oxford or balmoral, shoe or boot. Whilst the traditional hat for such an outfit would be a black Homburg or bowler, Bond brings along a less formal black trilby. And since it is his wedding, Bond wears a white carnation in his lapel buttonhole, not pinned to his lapel. A small cord sewn to the back of the lapel holds the flower in place.