Julian Glover as Aristotle Kristatos in For Your Eyes Only (1981)
Photo sourced from thunderballs.org.
Vitals
Julian Glover as Aristotle Kristatos, urbane but dangerous heroin smuggler
St. Cyril’s, Greece, Spring 1981
Film: For Your Eyes Only
Release Date: June 24, 1981
Director: John Glen
Costume Designer: Elizabeth Waller
Wardrobe Master: Tiny Nicholls
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
This year marks the 40th anniversary of one of my favorite James Bond movies, For Your Eyes Only, the grounded espionage adventure that brought 007 back down to Earth after Roger Moore’s space-trotting adventure in the polarizing Moonraker.
Subdued and serious, For Your Eyes Only was a departure from the underwater cars and land-going gondolas of Sir Roger’s previous outings, realigning itself with Ian Fleming’s stories after borrowing from the author’s 1960 short story of the same name as well as “Risico”, a story from the same volume that introduced the warring smugglers Columbo and Kristatos, portrayed on screen by Chaim Topol and Julian Glover, respectively.
As in “Risico”, Bond aligns with Columbo after realizing that his initial ally Kristatos is actually his enemy. Glover portrays Aristotle Kristatos with the sinister sophistication that made him a popular villain across ’80s franchise films from The Empire Strikes Back to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
What’d He Wear?
Bond and Columbo join forces with Melina Havelock (Carole Bouquet) to lead a commando team infiltrating Kristatos’ hideout at St. Cyril’s, an abandoned mountaintop monastery in the Peneas Valley. Unaware of the team scaling the mountain outside, Kristatos eagerly awaits the arrival of General Gogol (Walter Gotell) of the KGB, for whom he had retrieved For Your Eyes Only‘s MacGuffin, an ATAC communicator system purloined from a sunken British spy ship.
Kristatos dresses for his mountainous surroundings in an outdoorsy thigh-length jacket made from a cream padded cotton shell that has a reversible ribbed wool lining in the same color. The jacket was recently auctioned in December 2020, fetching £1,100. The Prop Store auction listing mentions only size markings in the jacket (“GB 42 USA XL”), so we may never know the manufacturer.
Kristatos lays out their next steps under the judgmental eye of Jacoba Brink (Jill Bennett).
The jacket has a full-zip front, up from the gently gathered waist hem to the tall standing collar. The collar can be fastened over the wearer’s throat (like a turtleneck) thanks to a two-button system on the inside of the shell, one button at the funnel-neck and another at the top of the collar that would close around the chin, though Kristatos wears the jacket fully open and unzipped. The jacket has raglan sleeves with ribbed-knit cuffs and hand pockets with a straight vertical zip closure.
A bad day for Kristatos. Note the buttons inside the jacket’s left collar and neck, which would be used to fasten over the throat if Kristatos were wearing it reversed. The buttons correspond to vertical buttonholes “hidden” among the ribbed wool along the inner right side.
Kristatos wears a sporty off-the-rack casual shirt that appears to be made from polyester or a blend of similar artificial fibers as was particularly popular through the 1970s into the ’80s. The all-over print consists of mini white circles that encapsulate a single dark navy dot, all neatly arranged and tightly spaced against a brick-hued brown ground. The shirt has a spread collar, front placket with white plastic buttons, and a breast pocket with the shirtmaker’s logo embroidered in white in the upper right corner. (The logo resembles a flattened “P” with an extended base, and I’m sure some BAMF Style readers may be able to readily identify it with more success than yours truly!)
Kristatos reaches for his last-ditch weapon, an out-the-front (OTF) automatic knife.
Kristatos wears khaki gabardine flat front trousers with wide belt loops for his brown leather belt, detailed with an elongated silver-toned buckle with a rounded end. His russet brown leather plain-toe loafers have raised heels, likely a fashion-influenced choice as, standing 6’2″ tall, Julian Glover was in no need of making himself appear taller to be a convincing villain. These slip-on shoes are sparsely detailed aside from short splits at each side of the upper where black elastic runs under the tongue to ease the wearer when putting them on and when dashing up a stone staircase to escape the clutches of a former comrade-turned-enemy.
Columbo catches up to Kristatos, whose high-heeled loafers don’t give him enough traction to get enough distance from his erstwhile ally.
Kristatos’ only ornamentation is a gold ring on his left pinky finger.
How to Get the Look
Julian Glover as Aristotle Kristatos in For Your Eyes Only (1981)
Kristatos affects a somewhat Alpine casual look while awaiting the KGB at his Grecian mountaintop hideout, comfortably layering a reversible padded jacket over a contemporary sport shirt and slacks. It works.
- Cream padded cotton reversible thigh-length zip-up jacket with tall collar, vertical zip-closure hand pockets, and raglan sleeves with ribbed-knit cuffs
- Brick-brown closely-dotted polyester sport shirt with spread collar, front placket, breast pocket, and button cuffs
- Khaki gabardine flat front trousers with wide belt loops and plain-hemmed bottoms
- Brown leather belt with curved silver-toned single-prong buckle
- Russet brown leather elastic-instep slip-on shoes
- Black cotton lisle socks
- Gold pinky ring
Jackets like this generally fell out of vogue after the advent of the light-wearing “puffer jacket” in the decades to follow (though down jackets had existed since George Finch debuted his during the 1922 British Mount Everest expedition), though a few quilted jackets closer to Kristatos’ outerwear can still be spotted in the modern marketplace:
- Helmut Lang Men’s Quilted Jacket (MODESENS, $620)
- Loro Piana Voyager Zip-Front Coat (Neiman Marcus, $2,525)
- Topman Considered Stone Padded Puffer Jacket (Topman, $91.67)
- Woolrich Men’s Sierra Stag Down Jacket (Woolrich, $247.50)
Prices and availability as of January 25, 2021.
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie.
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