Whoever is entrusted with dressing the next James Bond would be wise to keep Dunhill’s Simon Holloway on speed dial. While the raffish ease of Lord Snowdon still lingered at the edges, this season’s leading man was Roger Moore’s Bond.
Taking cue from cinema’s most stylish secret agent, Holloway gave the blazer, one of the cornerstones of British formal dressing, a starring role. An eight-button blazer nodded to a young Prince Charles in the 1970s. “I really love the way he dresses,” said Holloway. “You can tell he loves clothes, and that’s very much my mantra.” That appreciation underpinned the collection. “I think it’s great when you have men who celebrate the rituals of dressing, from tailoring and accessories to fine haberdashery,” he added.
In rich shades of blue, the blazers appeared in multiple versions, many cut from worsted cashmere woven in northern England. Crafted in a Panama weave, the fabric offered the elegance of traditional tailoring while staying cool, breathable, and resistant to creasing, qualities Bond himself would likely appreciate. After all, a man may survive a high-speed chase, a villain’s lair, and a shaken-not-stirred martini, but a wrinkled jacket is beyond the pale.
“The social season in England is in full swing right now,” Holloway remarked, fresh from a day at Ascot. With the Chelsea Flower Show just finished, Wimbledon approaching, and the Serpentine Gallery summer party ahead, the Dunhill wardrobe is rooted in real occasions rather than fantasy. “There’s a need for it. It’s not a movie,” he said. “It can feel like one because it’s so rarefied and exceptional. But thousands of people are getting dressed for these events, and we play our part in that.”
If the social calendar provided the backdrop, the clothes supplied the cast, from handsome reefer jackets, a cross between a blazer and a pea coat, to soigné eveningwear in hopsack wool and silk seersucker. Midnight-blue dinner suits were paired with crisp white linen shirts, while velvet slippers were embroidered with playing-card motifs borrowed from vintage Dunhill lighters.
Dunhill’s refinement might seem destined for a mature, knowing clientele. Yet younger generations are proving receptive too. In Tokyo, Holloway recently met a 25-year-old client assembling his first serious wardrobe. Fathers, he noted, increasingly bring their sons, keen to pass on the rules of dressing before the algorithm persuades them that luxury begins and ends with a logo hoodie. Holloway himself owns a sizeable collection of vintage Dunhill suits from the 1980s; he marveled at how contemporary and wearable they still appear. Fashion may move quickly, but the best pieces are in no hurry to follow.