As with your clothes, fairly quiet good taste rather than any kind of ostentation is your aim [FRWL 1]. Gold cigarette cases, gold lighters, gold wristwatches (especially if they feature little windows to tell the day of the month, the month and the phase of the moon), gold wristwatch bracelets, gold signet rings and gold stock-pins are all thoroughly undesirable [T 9, FRWL 25, TMWTGG 5]. Unnecessary ornament of any kind, in fact, is inclined to be suspect. Never even contemplate having a money clip made out of a Mexican fifty-dollar piece [FRWL 1].

Confine yourself to just three items. Each of them can be made to work actively for your 007 image:

• Luggage. Your suitcase is a straightforward pigskin Revelation, battered but once expensive [DAF 6]. Your small attache case, also of battered pigskin, is a different kettle of fish, or so you maintain. Concealed under the leather at the back, you say to your companion, there's a hidden compartment containing secret documents. Its very difficult to detect, obviously, you say. Your companion will find it impossible (You can't be expected to take the documents out to show her). This last factor gives the documents idea a considerable edge over the more authentic arrangements whereby the case contains a silencer and thirty rounds of .25 ammunition [DAF 6] or, more elaborately, fifty rounds of .25 ammunition, two throwing knives built by Wilkinson's, a cyanide death pill, and fifty gold sovereigns (And a silencer in your tube of Palmolive shaving cream) [FRWL 13].
• Wristwatch. You carry a Rolex Oyster Perpetual Chronometer on an expanding metal bracelet [OHMSS 15]. Explain that this is not just a matter of needing a reliable watch in your job. With the bracelet collapsed in the palm of the right hand and round the fingers so that the base of the watch lies across the middle knuckles - demonstrate this - the Rolex makes a most effective knuckleduster. Add meaningfully that a man you met in Switzerland could testify just how effective, if he were still around [OHMSS 16].
• Safety Razors. You use a Gilette of the old fashioned heavy-toothed type, or a Hoffritz of the same general pattern. The Gilette, with the shaft slipped between the first and second fingers of the left hand, so that the blade carrier rests flat along the knuckles - demonstrate this again - will serve as a twin of your Rolex for offensive purposes [OHMSS 15]. The handle of the Hoffritz is a hiding place; A reasonably sophisticated one, you say modestly [TMWTGG 8]. It may contain a code (random groups of numbers written out small), a microdot (any fragment of typescript that contains a full stop or a comma), or a cyanide pill (any sleeping or other pill thin enough to go into the handle).