If you can’t be an adventurer, dress like one. The phrase, although it may seem like it is from a Timberland or Jack Wolfskine campaign, is mine and comes to advertise the Navarone Outdoor brand, which I just invented but which if it existed would be based on the clothing from the great adventure movies. In the cinema there are two types of adventurers: those who dress in an exotic and even extravagant way – ie Lawrence of Arabia, Beau Geste, Sandokan or Gunga Din – and the discreet ones. Among these, those who must go unnoticed stand out—Miguel Strogoff when he has to cross the Tatar lines and is characterized as the anonymous merchant Korpanoff, abandoning the elegant but too conspicuous uniform of the tsar’s postmaster. And what adventurers have to be more unnoticed than commandos or members of special operations? Which brings us to The Guns of Navarone.
J. Lee Thompson’s 1961 film based on the wonderful novel by Alistair MacLean is one of the best war adventures ever made. It could be debated whether it is not better The challenge of the eagles, also based on a phenomenal novel by MacLean, but in this one the way to go unnoticed is basically to go dressed as German soldiers (if someone can pass as a German soldier wearing the haircut that Clint Eastwood wears under the Gebirgsjäger cap). It is true that in The cannons of NavaronThe Allied saboteurs also disguise themselves as Germans (with better luck than Aldo the Apache’s men in the La Louisiane tavern in Damn bastards), but what we are going to look at is their other clothing, with which they arrive on the island.
What models does the command take me! Inspired by a Savile Row tailor’s idea of what a Greek fisherman is. The five clothing options for going to destroy those pesky Nazi megacannons are an example of functionality, understated elegance and masculinity as Churchill, Lord Mountbatten or my father would understand it. Well, maybe we could argue about Andrea Stavros’ (Anthony Quinn) sleeveless, shearling-lined fur coat, but the rest of Andrea and the other commandos’ clothes are what I would like to wear on a daily basis. It is known that, just as women dress to be admired, men dress to admire ourselves, or to look like the admirable man we would like to be. I leave this reflection here, free of charge.
If Anthony Quayle, Stanley Baker, David Niven and Spyros Pappadimos, in addition to Quinn-Stavros, show how formidable they can dress to carry out a coup on an occupied Aegean island, all with the relevant complement of the Sten and Niven submachine gun in addition with a beret, Gregory Peck offers us a clothing model that is the epitome of manliness and elegance tout court. Peck as Captain Keith Mallory, member of the Long Range Desert Group, LRDG, and climber) embarks on adventure with a splendid navy pea coat (navy blue nautical jacket), blue-gray pants, frayed slate blue sweater, high-top boots with light sock cuffs on the outside, and sailor hat. On the wrist, if you look closely, a Gruen Precision watch that a sponge fisherman from the Sporades would hardly wear.
And now comes the biggest thing. For a few days I’ve been doing the same! I found in a second-hand clothing store in Barcelona, Holala Plaça (“unique clothing for unique people”), near the CCCB, a wonderful jacket like Peck’s, and at a good price, and in Decathlon Ramblas a Tribord Adventure knitted cap What’s left of cinema? The cap label has the mysterious notation 43º22’04″N1º46’53″W, which I thought was the secret location of the Navarone cannons but which turns out to be that of a Decathlon in Hendaye, next to the Bidasoa. No matter, the outfit gives me Captain Mallory’s exact look, and even courage; and when we are going to carry out a commando action, Hendaye catches me closer than the Dodecanese… Navarone Outdoor, you know.
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