Melbourne Museum is currently exhibiting Designing 007 celebrating 50 years of the design and style of Her Majesty's finest (and sexiest) literary and celluloid secret agent, James Bond.
Created by ex-British Navy Commander-turned-novelist Ian Fleming, James Bond made his literary debut in Casino Royale (1952), but it's the film franchise starting with 1962's Dr No that captured the popular imagination.
Designing 007 celebrates everything that was (and still is) so sexy, so desirable and so much bloody fun about James Bond. It's got all the good stuff - TWO Aston Martins, Oddjob's lethal bowler hat, the prototype for Rosa Klebb's nasty shoe, Jinx's orange bikini and Honey Ryder's white one (Arf! Arf! Arf!), Q's whizzy gadgets (including the flick-knife briefcase of From Russia with Love) and the awesome white pant-suit worn by Tiffany Case in Diamonds Are Forever (I can say without exaggeration actress Jill St John was a pygmy).
The best thing about the exhibition for me is the work of production designer Ken Adam. His beautiful ink, pencil and watercolour concept sketches are shown off to amazing effect (the interior design concept for Goldfinger's Fort Knox is genius). See kiddies, what you can do without a computer?
No other film character has provided such an endless source of aesthetic pleasure in fashion, drink, travel, technology and lifestyle and the best is here to enjoy until 23 February 2014.
Muddy and Dusty say check it out.
