Unleash your inner James Bond

When Ian Fleming wrote the first of his dozen James Bond books in 1953, he couldn’t have expected 23 blockbuster films to follow. The latest, Skyfall, will be released later this year and can be expected to produce another clamour to see the world’s coolest spy still seducing the fittest female bodies that ever slipped between silk sheets.


One key to Bond’s success is that we know so little about his private life. Fleming gave him “a comfortable two-bedroom flat in a plane tree-lined square off the King’s Road”, but that’s all we get — the rest is top secret. Do we need more details, though, when we can create our own fantasy? Because all of us, men and women, have an inner 007.

Be your own bond

James Bond is all about desire and when we watch a movie we want it all: from the louche lifestyle to the Lamborghini. Bond isn’t nice, and that’s what we love about him — he’s a sexy killer with expensive tastes: handsome, fit, and ruthless. He moves in fast circles, he’s used to the best and the latest of everything — from five-star hotels to yachts, casinos, Cannes, Klosters, princesses and polo.

So get this straight: he doesn’t like kitsch, frills, pink, salad or fruit. Bond doesn’t cook, he will not even work out how to use a coffee machine. He is preoccupied with killing people.

However, he could make the perfect espresso with his collector’s hob-top from Alessi (£92). The 9090 was the first Alesso coffee maker — Fleming probably had one.

But it’s cocktails that Bond is best at. At six o’clock he whips out Brissi’s classy, classic silver-plated shaker (£79) and pours perfect martinis into elegant, silver-banded Brissi Venezia glasses (£10 each), from John Lewis. If there is any left over, nostalgic for the ski-slope look, he might pour the precious liquid into a fridge carafe with zip-up neoprene jacket from Eva Solo.

To woo a visitor, Bond favours a retro-slick sofa — Ligne Roset’s Ploum by the Bouroullec Brothers is cocoon-like enough to lull the infatuated into a sensual stupor, though 007’s fingerprint rug from BoConcept might give them a hint of who they are dealing with.

When, inevitably, the guest ends up in the bedroom, the bed is sleek and boutique — BoConcept’s storage bed has the advantage of room underneath to dump a failed assassin.


For bedlinen, Bond only sleeps in the highest thread-count crisp white cotton, the sort that wouldn’t be out of place at the Halkin Hotel in SW1, such as L&B’s monogrammed sheets from its shop in Motcomb Street, Belgravia.

Bond is romantic, too, and adds va-va-voom to the boudoir with a sensational Marie Coquine chandelier glittering with crystals that dazzle his love victims — a snip at £20,300 at Baccarat (baccarat.com). If that doesn’t work, he can always wrap his lover in luxurious psychedelic Seventies bath towels from Jonathan Adler. And on rare nights in on his own, Bond never curls up with a good book. Instead he zaps through the channels on his Panasonic Viera TV (£3,999 from Selfridges)... and perhaps admires one of his own movies in 3D.

* Designing 007: Fifty Years of Bond Style is at the Barbican from July 6 until September 5, featuring 007 sets, gadgets, cars, costumes and sketches, from Dr No in the early Sixties to Skyfall this year. To buy tickets and for more information, visit barbican.org.uk