The Topman Saga: In Search of Bond Chinos

Ross Decarlo

The story starts from numerous people making suggestions as to where the enjoying death chinos came from, with ideas for some that were costing upwards of 200 pound but even then had sold out. All I can say is I am glad they had.

Then Mesta Bond worked his magic and found out the chinos actually came from the high street store Topman (Topman is a fairly cheap store that sells massive amount of clothes all around the UK); not where I would have thought Bond would have gone shopping.

The model number for the chinos worn in Bond was 68L19DGRY!

But to my disappointment, they were sold out online; never have owned anything from Topman I was not sure of there sizing anyway.

The job of starting to track them down as they were now a sake item, I asked who else may want a pair and numerous people were!

Online they have a store locator which as I later found out was about as much use as a chocolate fireplace!

But on the day they were identified I got the most success I had with Topman for the following 4 weeks!

I headed out to the first shop showing with stock visiting both Falkirk (a 40 mile round trip) getting 4 pairs! Then onto Stirling just seconds too late, getting beaten by some guy in front who lifted one of the pairs they had; still I managed to get one more pair 🙂

The following day I planned to head to Livingston and Glasgow, visiting a total of 6 stores which should have given me 11 more pairs. It turned out although on their website the stores show as having stock they didn’t so 140 miles with nothing much to show for it, albeit I did manage to get a number of shirts from COS in Glasgow while I was there.

One of the guys in the last store I went to tried to help. He phoned pretty much every store in the surrounding 100 miles and managed to track down a pair for The Mantis – 60 miles in the opposite direction. Well not one to be beaten, I headed to pick up this pair, a two hour trip, finally getting parked and in but they couldn’t find them. An hour of the staff looking and nothing! I still think they sold them to someone else. 🙁

Well not wanting to give up on a pair for mantis, I called customer services and explained my problems with the store and the fact I really needed this pair and I had found a pair in a store in Crawly which they confirmed they had. A very nice lady at customer service called and arranged for them to be sent up to a store nearby after a stock check was done on about 10 days time!

Well we all know things never run smoothly and they sent them to the wrong store; the same one that took me 2 hours to get there. Immediately I phoned giving threats of death if they sold them to anyone else asking that they transfer them to the correct store.

I’m now finally expecting my last visit to Topman on Tuesday to collect the last pair!

So my journey took me around 250 miles, 11 different stores and in return I can enjoy Death in a style that only Bond knows!