The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: Let’s Talk Costumes

The much anticipated Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare has finally landed on Amazon Prime. After a limited theatrical run, you can now catch the summer b-movie blockbuster on Amazon Prime. The costumes designed by Loulou Bontemps are a real standout in the film. Most of the costumes were sourced from Darcy Clothing and Thomas Farthing, with individual pieces sourced from Portobello Green Market, and the uniforms from Hero Collections according to her instagram page. 

They have a delightful factory behind their high street store right by the castle. It’s all made there. And my goodness did we take almost all their stock! It was such a wonderful experience to work with Katherine (founder) and her team sourcing so many costumes from this wonderful fashion house. - Loulou on Darcy Clothing.

The film is at its best when you focus on how beautiful the clothes look on screen. Especially the suits worn by Babs Olusanmokun who plays spy operative Heron. This spy subplot was an entirely fictional part of the film which did not feature in the book. In fact, during this rescue attempt no one died from either the German side nor the British. 

When I commented on the suits worn by Babs on Loulou's instagram channel she clarified who made his suits. “Babs’ suits were mostly Thomas Farthing & vintage. The ties are all original vintage pieces. Such a gent our Babs.”

Loulou Bontemps told the Hollywood Insider; 

“The 1940s and 1950s are two of my favorite decades in fashion history, so to do a World War 2 movie with Guy Ritchie I knew would be a wild and fun adventure.

Guy cares about clothing, fabrics, how everyone looked on camera, so I knew this one would be an adventure. It’s difficult doing research on anything special forces in the 1940s, the picture references were mainly in books, especially Damien Lewis's book that the film is based on.

I really dug deep into that world of merchant seaman and you can see the textures and prints and the style in which all of these lads in those days wore those clothes. 

Each of the characters had their own unique sense of style that they notice. in the fitting it’s important to let the actors take the lead in how they want to wear it. I'm only going to present them with clothes I want them to wear anyway.

I look through it with Guy's eyes, in his films he has a gang look to them. They don't just look fantastic on their own but they brilliant as a unit.”

What about the watches? 

There has been several articles that have speculated on the watches from the movie. According to Watch-ID, 

The watch is a vintage Jaeger LeCoultre "Dirty Dozen" wristwatch.Jaeger LeCoultre produced thousands of watches that were issued to World War II soldiers in 1945 and these watches have been nicknamed the "Dirty Dozen" collection. The watch worn by Henry Cavill has a green nylon strap just like the original Dirty Dozen watches.

According to this article in GQ,

The brief was that the watches needed to be reliable, durable and discreet, with black dials, Arabic numerals and luminous hour markets.