La Perla · Swim Trunks
James Bond in Casino Royale, 2006 — as worn by Daniel Craig
Where to find it
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The scene
James Bond emerges from the sea on the beach below Alex Dimitrios’s Bahamas villa during a reconnaissance that is meant to look like idle leisure. Solange Dimitrios is riding along the shoreline on horseback and notices him before he reaches the house, while Dimitrios remains up at the property Bond is surveying. The shot turns a routine surveillance pass into a charged introduction: Bond crosses the shallows in pale blue La Perla Grigioperla Lodato trunks, apparently relaxed but clearly taking in the villa and its occupants as he comes ashore.
The trunks are central to how Casino Royale presents Daniel Craig’s Bond as a harder, more physical reboot of the character. Costume designer Lindy Hemming selected the close, minimal cut specifically to show Craig’s physique, and commentary around the film repeatedly treats the image as a deliberate reversal of the classic Bond-girl reveal. Reviewers and Bond historians alike connected the moment to Ursula Andress’s entrance in Dr. No, with Casino Royale shifting that iconic beach image onto Bond himself and making him, briefly, the object being watched.
Martin Campbell frames Bond alone against bright water, sand, and sky so that the pale blue trunks read immediately against the tropical backdrop. The scene’s clean daylight and high contrast sharpen the outline of Craig’s body as he rises from the surf, while the camera’s attention to his walk out of the water makes the swim trunks the visual anchor of one of the film’s most widely remembered images.
James Bond emerges from the sea on the beach below Alex Dimitrios’s Bahamas villa during a reconnaissance that is meant to look like idle leisure.
La Perla was established in Bologna in 1954 and expanded into men’s underwear and beachwear in the 1980s, with Grigioperla serving as its men’s line. By 2006, that side of the business was visible enough that contemporary coverage of Casino Royale noted Daniel Craig’s Bond in a La Perla suit from the Spring/Summer 2006 Grigioperla collection, already on sale through Grigioperla stores. The Grigioperla Lodato is a compact, close-cut Italian swim trunk in nylon, made in Italy and documented on surviving production examples as size L. The screen-used pair sold by Christie’s was described as navy and powder blue, matching the film’s distinctive two-tone look: pale blue front panels, darker navy back and side detailing, a navy waistband, and a light blue drawstring.
Costume and collector documentation consistently identify it as a low-rise, body-conscious design from the 2006 line, with the shaped front and streamlined brief-short silhouette that made it stand out from looser boardshort trends of the period. Its appearance in Casino Royale was not a special one-off invention but a ready-made La Perla design selected for Bond’s Bahamas sequence. Christie’s later stated that two pairs were acquired for the film, with one retained by Eon Productions. The moment was widely read as a deliberate visual homage to Ursula Andress’s sea-emergence in Dr. No, but recast through Craig’s debut as Bond. After the film, the Lodato became one of the most famous pieces of Bond casualwear. Christie’s sold a production-worn pair in the 50 Years of James Bond auction, where it realized £44,450, and the companion pair was exhibited in Designing 007 at the Barbican in London in 2012. The original model has long been out of production, with later La Perla styles such as the Alberti and Maurilio often cited as near successors, while collectors now mainly encounter the Lodato on the secondary market.
Production Notes
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