Daniel Craig’s first kill as James Bond was brutal, bloody and unforgettable. The clothes that he wore for it have a rather more elegant story.
By David Mason.
Daniel Craig on the set of Casino Royale photographed by Greg Williams for the cover of his book, 'Bond On Set', published by Dorling Kindersley (16 October 2006) - available here.
Credit: Greg Williams
James Bond has dispatched his enemies in many unusual places over the past sixty years, but few can have met their end in surroundings quite as unglamorous as the men's lavatory of a cricket club in Lahore.
It is here, in the opening moments of Casino Royale (2006), that Daniel Craig's James Bond makes his first kill.
The sequence is shot in stark black and white. In Prague, corrupt MI6 section chief Dryden returns to his office late at night to discover Bond sitting quietly in the shadows. Dryden knows why he is there.
"Your file shows no kills, and it takes..."
"Two."
Dryden asks Bond how his contact, Fisher, died.
"Not well."
The film cuts to a men's lavatory, where Bond and Fisher are engaged in a fight of extraordinary violence. There are no gadgets, ingenious weapons or clever one-liners. Bond eventually forces Fisher's head into an overflowing basin and holds him beneath the water.
It is brutal, messy and distinctly unlike the effortless killing audiences had come to expect from 007.
It is also Bond's first kill.
The First Kill.
Credit: Danjaq, LLC and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.
The fight lasts only a few minutes. The clothes in which it was fought have a story which continues to this day.
DRESSED TO KILL
Costume designer Lindy Hemming had been given the considerable task of dressing a new James Bond.
Daniel Craig as James Bond following the complete Lindy Hemming transformation.
Credit: Collection Christophel
Craig's Bond would ultimately become an exceptionally elegant one, but the man we meet at the beginning of Casino Royale isn't yet the polished secret agent who later walks into the casino at Montenegro in a dinner suit.
He is younger, tougher and rougher around the edges.
His clothes reflect it.
For the fight with Fisher, Craig wears an unusually casual suit of dark navy linen, worn open over a pale blue short-sleeved shirt and accompanied by a brown leather belt and brown suede chukka boots.
The combination is relaxed. Almost deceptively so.
Daniel Craig, looking relaxed in linen.
Credit: Danjaq, LLC and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.
Both the suit and shirt were made for the production by Academy Costumes of London.
Unlike many pieces of movie clothing whose origins have subsequently had to be reconstructed from photographs, interviews and educated guesswork, there is remarkably little guesswork necessary here.
Academy's original patterns and cutting notes from Casino Royale still survive.
And twenty years after they were first used to dress Daniel Craig, Academy has returned to them.
TWENTY YEARS LATER
There is something particularly satisfying about returning to these clothes for the twentieth anniversary of Casino Royale.
Earlier this year, Anthony Sinclair and Academy Costumes collaborated to reproduce the shirt and linen trousers worn by Craig during the Madagascar sequence — the clothes in which the new James Bond first exploded onto the screen.
James Bond explodes onto the screen in the Madagascar Shirt & Trousers
Credit: Collection Christophel
Now the two houses have gone back further.
Not merely to another outfit from Casino Royale, but to the clothes Craig wore at the very beginning of Bond's story.
Daniel Craig's First Kill jacket pattern.
Credit: Academy Costumes
Using Academy's surviving original patterns and cutting notes, the First Kill Suit and Shirt have been recreated twenty years after the originals were made.
THE SUIT
The original suit was made from a substantial 265g/m² pure linen, woven in a plain weave and dyed a very dark navy blue.
It's an interesting choice.
Linen is more commonly associated with the pale creams, sands and tobacco shades of summer tailoring, but navy transforms its character. It retains linen's coolness and informality while giving the garment the authority of a dark business suit.
The First Kill Jacket recreated by Academy for Anthony Sinclair (2026).
Credit: Anthony Sinclair
The jacket is soft and unconstructed with a relatively high-fastening two-button front. It has four-button cuffs, double vents and open patch pockets at the hips — an appropriately informal detail for a linen suit.
The trousers are equally straightforward: flat-fronted, with straight legs and plain bottoms, and worn with a medium-brown leather belt.
The First Kill Trousers recreated by Academy for Anthony Sinclair (2026).
Credit: Anthony Sinclair
And then Bond gets into a fight.
For costume makers, this creates a rather different set of requirements from those faced by a Savile Row tailor dressing a gentleman for dinner.
Academy's records show that twenty-six suits were made for the production, providing multiple examples for Craig and his stuntman and allowing for continuity through repeated takes of a fight in which the clothes were subjected to rather more punishment than the average linen suit could reasonably expect.
A SHORT STORY
If the suit is unconventional, the shirt beneath it is even more so.
It is made from an exceptionally lightweight 110g/m² pure linen, again in a plain weave, using blue and white yarns that give the cloth its subtly textured appearance.
Several duplicate First Kill Shirts were made for Casino Royale (2006).
Credit: Danjaq, LLC and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.
The shirt has a tall, two-button spread collar and front placket. More conspicuously, it has short sleeves.
Traditional menswear orthodoxy dictates that a short-sleeved shirt should not be worn beneath a suit. James Bond, apparently, didn't get the memo.
The First Kill Shirt recreated by Academy for Anthony Sinclair (2026).
Credit: Anthony Sinclair
There are several reasons why the choice makes sense.
The most obvious is practical. Linen and short sleeves are an eminently sensible combination in a hot climate — particularly when the wearer is about to engage in an intensely physical fight in a men's lavatory.
There may have been a visual advantage too. Craig had famously transformed his physique in preparation for the role, creating a noticeably more muscular Bond. Short sleeves certainly did nothing to conceal the results.
Daniel Craig had worked hard to build a new Bond physique — and Casino Royale made little effort to conceal the results.
Credit: Pictorial Press
But there is also an intriguing precedent.
Ian Fleming was himself fond of short-sleeved shirts — and so was the James Bond he created.
The literary Bond frequently wears short sleeves in hot climates, and the look subsequently found its way onto the screen. Sean Connery famously wears short-sleeved shirts with lightweight trousers in Thunderball and You Only Live Twice.
Was this a deliberate nod to Fleming? We don't know. But the connection is irresistible.
Ian Fleming combines the formality of a bow tie with the informality of his favoured short-sleeve shirt.
Credit: Everett Collection
Casino Royale represented a conscious return to Bond's beginnings. The film went back to Fleming's first Bond novel, stripped away much of the accumulated cinematic baggage and showed us a Bond who was not yet the finished article.
Whether by accident or design, putting this new Bond into something his creator might conceivably have worn seems entirely appropriate.
PERFECT FOR A STICKY SITUATION
Linen has a long history with James Bond — the perfect cloth for keeping cool when the heat is on.
Few situations, however, have been quite as sticky as this one.
The First Kill Suit and Shirt are the clothes worn at a pivotal moment in the Bond story — when James Bond is on the verge of becoming 007.
Because Fisher was only the first.
Linen: Perfect for a Sticky Situation.
Credit: Danjaq, LLC and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.
Back in Prague, Dryden reaches for the gun hidden in his desk.
Bond has already removed the ammunition.
Dryden asks whether killing gets any easier.
Bond shoots him.
"Yes. Considerably."
James Bond becomes 007
Credit: Collection Christophel
Two kills.
00 status.
And the world's favourite secret agent is reborn.
Footnote:
The First Kill Suit and Shirt are available to order from Anthony Sinclair.