The style evolution of Daniel Craig: from basic to Bond to high-fashion chaos – in pictures

The year, 2000. The complexion, a little sweaty. Daniel Craig is 32, with an illustrious theatre career under his belt. His role as the charismatic but luckless Geordie in the classic TV show Our Friends in the North has made him famous. Now he’s playing supporting roles in movies like, um, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. The suit and tie is a hint of things to come, although Bond would never countenance that buttoning arrangement.

It’s the Venice film festival and Craig is plugging Road to Perdition in the most 2002 outfit imaginable: Converse, faded jeans, a white v-necked T-shirt and suit jacket, a copy of Is This It by the Strokes tucked into the pocket (probably).

Needle-scratch! He’s only gone and landed the role of James Bond! And it’s required a serious glow-up (as we didn’t say back in 2006). Here’s Craig and Eva Green promoting Casino Royale in full Bond mode: icy-blue stare, icy-blue tie, classic tailoring for days … even the silk handkerchief is exactly the same shade as the jacket.

What’s this – he’s grown a beard? Some fans are scandalised by the very thought of a Bond with facial hair. But Craig was starring as Lord Asriel in The Golden Notebook at the time – the fuzz inspiring some Bond obsessives to nickname him Goldenbear.

Cut to 2015, and Craig is on the red carpet for his fourth Bond film, Spectre. He’s even performed as 007 with the Queen, for the opening ceremony of the London Olympics in 2012. That tuxedo doesn’t just fit him like a glove, it’s a second skin, an identity. But soon Craig is keen to break out …

And … he’s blonde? And wearing jeans and a leather jacket? Craig was filming Logan Lucky at the time, which required a bleach job. Onlookers noted his resemblance to the Bond villian Donald Grant in the 1963 movie From Russia with Love.

He’s promoting Logan Lucky, the blonde has grown out and the look is artfully dishevelled: shirt unbuttoned to the sternum, cardi slightly askew, shoes defying the Bond-style adage “never brown in town”.

It’s 2019, and Craig is back on the Bond trail for his final outing as 007, perhaps expressing his ambivalence about the role by wearing those Converse again while surrounded by his super-glammed-up female co-stars, all of whom are sinking into the grass in heels.

It’s later that year, and Craig is at the Toronto film festival debuting what will turn out to be another successful franchise – Knives Out. The suit is sharp, the shades are to die for, the selfie is stone-faced.

It probably doesn’t get much posher than debuting No Time to Die to Catherine, Princess of Wales at the Albert Hall in London. And Craig has pulled out all the stops for his last hurrah as Bond – a double-breasted pink velvet tuxedo by Anderson & Sheppard, impeccable bow-tie and dress shirt by Budd … even the hanky seems to have been styled by some kind of origami master.

It’s another needle scratch! Craig is post-Bond and promoting Queer, in which he plays the role of a drug-addled writer who falls in love with a younger man. He’s also the face of Spanish fashion house Loewe, whose designer Jonathan Anderson kits him out in this custom-made cream suit, worn with tortoiseshell aviator shades from Jacques Marie Mage. It’s looser than his super-tight Bond suits. He’s liberated!

And now he really has gone to town … Paris, to be precise, to see Loewe’s fashion show with his wife Rachel Weisz. They’re serving high-fashion chaos, with Craig in oversized combat trousers, an ayahuasca trip in jumper form, little neck scarf and yellow-tinted glasses, and grown-out salt-and-pepper hair. He’s 56, and he DGAF.

So we’ve arrived at the London gala screening of Queer just this week, and it couldn’t be more different from No Time to Die. It’s at arthouse joint the Curzon Soho, the royal family is nowhere to be seen, and Craig is wearing a baggy grey Armani suit with an enormous tweed overcoat and capacious scarf, all of which match. The yellow glasses add that glint of Burroughs-style madness. He’s living his best life. As Craig said to the Guardian this week, “What are you fucking saying? That I’m too old?” Perish the thought.