Book Review: Fashioning James Bond: Costume, Gender and Identity in the World of 007, Llewella Chapman (2022)

Llewella Chapman, in Fashioning James Bond, makes an important move within film costume scholarship toward a sustained integration of practical production or industry detail, employed to inform the application of theory and the close reading of particular film texts. The publication of this work coincides with a key moment within the Bond franchise where the newest embodiment of the character has yet to be revealed. The legacy of Daniel Craig’s interpretation of the role was to remove the ‘glamour’ of the kill and re-sensitise audiences to the brutal reality of the assassin’s trade. In a parallel yet obviously less savage universe, despite the work of diverse authors such as Nielsen, Cook, Britton, Smith, Toylan, Betts, Williams & Dierker (1990, 1996, 1999, 2005, 2013, 2016, 2017, 2019, ) a fissure continues to exist between critical theory and creative practice in costume scholarship that speaks to, as Bell suggested, wider societal divisions between different forms of labour or the hierarchy between ‘thinking’, read here as designing, and ‘doing’, read here as set work or organising, sourcing, crafting, maintaining or creating the costumes (Bell, 2004). This publication gives further momentum to bridging the gap whilst also making visible, if not explicitly critiquing, the stratified systems prevalent within the industry.

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