LOCK & CO HATTERS LAUNCH AN OFFICIAL JAMES BOND HAT RANGE FOR 60TH ANNIVERSARY

Lock & Co Hatters have launched a 007 x Lock & Co collection As part of the 60th anniversary of the James Bond franchise. The initial release of three hats including the Odd Job bowler can be found on the Lock & Co site here.

This partnership celebrates the milestone 60th anniversary of James Bond, whilst paying homage to the longstanding marriage of two iconic British brands.

Inspired by both the past and present, this exclusive collection references the extensive James Bond archives, from Dr. No and Goldfinger, to On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Focusing on the sartorially significant moments (of which there are many) this collection reimagines some of the most iconic hats seen throughout the decades, from the Lock & Co. Trilby worn by Sean Connery in the first ever James Bond film, to the Oddjob flat top bowler, as well as the ultimate Bond girl Fedora inspired by Tracy Di Vicenzo…

My friend and Bond nut Peter Brooker, co-author of From Tailors With Love, An Evolution of Menswear Through the Bond Films went to the launch and interviewed the managing director Ben Dalrymple about the collaboration. The full interview can be found on his YouTube channel, below are some moments transcribed. 

How does a collaboration like this come about?

It's odd, actually, because we're known to have hatted James Bond for 60 years. But unofficially, we've sort of had a lovely partnership with EON. From the first gun barrel seen in Dr No. From then on, we enjoyed some nice hats in some of the films. This is the first time that we've made the partnership official. So yeah, you could say 60 years in the making. In reality, yeah, it's a lot of work. Because we want to make sure it's a really unique product, and the quality is there. And we want to do right by EON as well. I guess we didn't want to do a pastiche of what has existed in the past. We wanted to be sympathetic to what we've done, but not try and create some sort of replica.

So these hats are a homage and not replicas? Does that give you kind of a license to modernise a couple of the hats?

Yeah, you're absolutely right, it does give you license to modernise. I think it allows you to bring the materials up to date, different manufacturing, different availability, materials, new technology, focus on sustainability, all of those sort of things that you can do, by not trying to do exactly what you did 60, 50, 40 years ago.

I think also it's, there's, there's an element of wearability, durability, that wouldn't necessarily be built in something the film. We want our products to last 30 years. So the lining will be quite different, the fit will be a little bit different. It's a great compromise between paying homage to the originals, but also with a view to - they're actually great hats, they're very wearable, and they'll last a long time.

How far up the food chain, does this go in terms of collaboration? Were  you're on the phone to Barbara Broccoli or Michael G. Wilson?

We work very closely with quite a small team. We worked with Meg Simmonds who's the archivist and there's nothing that she doesn't know. So that's extraordinarily useful for guidance on the view. And then Jenny and Sam Blanchard (head of licensing) who was at the event, guiding us on the do's and don'ts. The James Bond franchise is a fantastic brand. The last thing we want to do as another British brand is step on any toes or do something out of turn. But what surprised me, having worked with other partners before with other companies, is just how natural this felt. It felt very easy. We both knew what we were trying to achieve, which is lovely.

Where are the archives for Lock & Co? Did you manage to access them for researching this release?

Yeah, they're in the London Metropolitan Archives, right. We we've not been able to access the archives for a couple of years. And we're talking centuries of Ledger's. If you're looking for somebody or something, it would literally be entry by entry page by page through documents that are barely held together. But even in recent history say over the last 60 years, let's say record keeping wasn't as smooth. When you're printing out a receipt when you're even handwriting, you don't necessarily take copies of that for yourself. So actually it is quite difficult, in many respects to try and find things. But we're determined, and I know that EON would particularly like to see the archives and see what we can find. And she'll (Meg) would have a very good handle on when and where the artists were and would have likely come into the shop.

Do you have hats in the archives as well as ledgers? 

Not as many as you might imagine, that's usually held on site here. If you imagine a great big air conditioned room very carefully, temperature and moisture controlled. And then just racks and racks of shelves of our ledgers, plus newspaper clippings, magazine clippings, photographs, paintings, maps, lots and lots of things going on the shop. So yeah, it's a real treasure trove, but not the easiest to access.

Did you manage to get a chance to go into the EON archives? 

Not yet. That's coming actually, we are trying to do something really special for the 60th anniversary in October. Our hope is to create a Bond room at Locks where the Heritage Room is. That's something that we're working on at the moment in the planning. It is incredible, but also a huge honour. I mean, not everybody gets to do in their private life, enjoy something, but also in their business life get to do the same thing. So that for me is, you know, is magic.

How does it work for your international demographic? Maybe you can talk about that.

Obviously our main businesses is very specifically in London. We're a British brand, but I would say we're London centric, because we've been in this location for over 300 years. Naturally we try and reflect the best of London. We try and be a good citizen, a good neighbour, and reflect community. In terms of international outreach - very popular in the US and in Europe, and hugely, hugely desirable in Japan. AND now into China as well.

Is Hat Wearing a fashion that is coming back? 

Wearing of hats is definitely coming back into fashion. I don't think it will ever be where it was in, say the 1930s 1920s, where you wore a hat as much as you would wear a pair of socks. Sadly. But certainly in terms of people now moving away from fast fashion, understanding quality, that something you buy once that may cost more, but you buy it once and it lasts 2030 years is a much better investment. The average item of clothing is washed 10 times and then thrown away. That's not sustainable and it's not cost effective. So I think people are waking up to that now it's nice to see great tailoring in popular culture. And thanks largely to film franchises like Bond, Kingsman.

Recently the outfit it's becoming really synonymous with style again. Which is lovely. It's lovely to see younger people have an international demographic in Jermyn Street, St James, Savile Row.

So why only one shop? Would you not consider launching a Lock & Co outlet in the US? 

It's a really good question. Because if we're successful, thankfully we are, then why wouldn't you open more shops? But actually that's the opposite of what we would want to do. Because anything else would be a pastiche? People say your website is very different from the shop. Well, yeah, because when you move the mouse, it doesn't creak. And when you tap, click, some dust doesn't fall down. And that would be weird, you know. So I think I like it as it is. And it works well as it is. I honestly don't think we could deliver what we do in a brand new shop in New York.

And you got the grandfather clock in the shop that is a million years old right? 

The clock is from 1727. And still works. So before this was a hat shop, it was a coffee shop. And coffee shops were the centre of business in a modern London. Generally coffee was expensive, valuable, and very, very exclusive. If you're in business, it would be a done thing to have coffee in a coffee shop. And it was the way you'd make deals. But it would also be the way you would wait for your boat to stop in the Thames and your imports would come in. So coffee shops became synonymous with business and maritime. We opened in 1676, on the other side of the street, came here in 1759 when the clock was already in position, and it's stayed there.