It’s not a secret that I’m into “Bond Girls,” so when I saw it was a theme for one of this year’s Retro Lovely special editions, I immediately knew I had to submit something. I chose one of my favorite James Bond film girls to emulate: Plenty O’Toole from 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever, played by the gorgeous Lana Wood.
Marilee Caruso did the pretty hair and makeup and took the photos for our six-page feature. I didn’t think I’d be able to pull off an early-1970s look, but Marilee made it work and I ended up loving the results. She also shot Missy Maybe’s lovely cover set for the same issue!
More after the jump…
I was also unsure about whether or not a sense of the character would translate well via a pinup shoot, but I think it did. The purple dress basically fell from heaven into my lap. And when I say fell from heaven, I mean that it was the first thing to pop up when I searched “purple maxi dress” on Google. It was a good, inexpensive Amazon find that shipped free with Prime. I did have to deepen the front “v” down to the waistband to make it a better facsimile of Lana’s dress in the film (and pin the dress some as it was a bit too big), but I think the dress as-shot ended up communicating Plenty as well as anything I could have had made.
The necklace was also key as it’s a flashy statement piece that becomes Plenty’s signature during her brief sequences in the movie. I found a vintage 1970s Etruscan-style drop necklace that was very close to the one Lana wore in the film. It wasn’t a wide choker style like hers was, however, so I purchased a jeweled choker that matched both my necklace and the choker portion of the movie piece. Together, they replicate Plenty’s jewelry pretty well!
To evoke the mood of early 1970s Las Vegas – the setting for the film! – we decided to use Marilee’s late-midcentury white boudoir set. It’s a fairly good stand-in for James Bond’s suite at The Whyte House, where Plenty ends up getting chucked out of the hotel window and into the pool below. To scatter around the room, I bought a bunch of fake diamonds and those rectangular casino chips that appear in the scene where Sean Connery’s Bond – posing as “Peter Franks” – meets Plenty at a Whyte House craps table.
You can get this issue (and all of my previous publications) via my LinkTree.