Watchonista: Volume 03 Exclusive Preview – Being Bond

The next James Bond film won’t begin filming for “at least two years,” according to Producer Barbara Broccoli. In the meantime, let’s celebrate 00-you-know-who with a deep dive into the agent’s most classic gear and figure out what it might cost to live like Bond.

Contrary to what most people think, in both the Sir Ian Fleming novels and the film canon, James Bond is something of an equal-opportunity drinker. He quaffs champagne (with a preference for Bollinger and Dom Perignon) and famously ordered a very specific “sour-mash” bourbon mint julep in 1964’s Goldfinger. Then, in 2006’s Casino Royale, Commander Bond actually invented a cocktail on the spot that he christened The Vesper, after his love interest in the film.

But the cocktail most closely associated with 007 is, by far, a vodka martini…
 

The first car we see Sean Connery’s Bond driving is a little Sunbeam Alpine convertible in 1963’s Dr. No, but again, between the novels and the films, Bond’s automotive choices can be varied and keyed to a specific location.
 

One example is Sir Roger Moore’s Bond getting behind the wheel of a 1977 Lotus Esprit that doubles as a submarine for Bond’s dramatic underwater adventures in The Spy Who Loved Me…
 

Always impeccably dressed, Bond’s peacockish and exacting fashion requirements are legendary. And in 1974’s The Man with the Golden Gun, it even prompts this snarky response from M when Bond asks him who would pay $1 million to have him killed: “Jealous husbands, outraged chefs, humiliated tailors. The list is endless!”

So perhaps his uncompromising fashion standards are why…
 

Bond’s wristwear is not deeply explored in the novels (although, supposedly, Sir Ian Fleming was a fan of the Rolex Explorer). For Bond films, on the other hand, sharp eyes will spot the occasional Rolex, at least one Breitling watch, and in 1964’s From Russia with Love, Sean Connery’s own gold Gruen Precision…
 

[But] since 1995, when Pierce Brosnan sported an Omega Seamaster in GoldenEye, Bond has been 100% an Omega guy…