Removing the logo and draw string from the Jed North James Bond shorts

In this article you can find out how to make our Jed North Agile gym shorts more similar to the shorts worn by James Bond in the Jamaica sailing/fishing scenes in the movie No Time To Die.

The Jed North Agile shorts are worn by James Bond when he's sailing his Spirit Yacht, diving and fishing. We can see Bond walk from the yacht to his Jamaican villa wearing blue shorts, and a melange grey Orlebar Brown OB-T shirt. 

Daniel Craig as James Bond in No Time To Die
photo © Danjaq, LLC, MGM

In the film the shorts have a blue drawstring and no visible logo - but since the discovery of the brand of the shorts was announced in November 2021, we know that Bond was wearing Jed North Agile gym shorts - shorts that have a bright yellow/green drawstring and large logo in the same colour.

The costume department had selected these affordable shorts and made the effort to remove the logo and replace the drawstring.

These adjustments are fairly easy to do yourself on the shorts and using some tips from the people at the AJB forum I was able to do it as well.

First of course you need to buy a pair of Jed North shorts, which are available for $25 on Amazon.

Draw String

First, the drawstring. The original Jed North drawstring on my size Large shorts has a length of approximately 140cm (55") and a width of 11mm. 

So the first step is to buy a shoe lace in the colour dark blue of a similar size.

Some people have suggested that the navy draw string on Bond's shorts have metal tips but this is not confirmed.

 Compare the original yellow strap which is 55" long and approximately 11mm wide, with the Booyckiy shoe laces of 63" and and 52", both around 10mm wide.
photo © Bond Lifestyle

On Amazon you can find several shoe laces that are close. The best laces that I found can be seen below, from Booyckiy. These Booyckiy laces are 10mm wide, and come in 52" or 63" length. The laces match the original lace in width, but are either longer or shorter. Both work but I recommend the 63".

Buy Booyckiy [2 Pairs] 2/5" Flat Sneaker Shoe Laces 26 Colors Shoe laces in 27"-72" Laces on Amazon

Once you have the blue shoe lace, the next step is to remove some of the vertical seams on the outside of the back of the shorts. The stitching that holds the clothing label in place also holds the draw string in place. 

There are two vertical lines of stitching that have to be removed, only one line is pictured here
photo © Bond Lifestyle

Removing the stitching takes some patience and needs to be done very carefully. if you don't have tiny tools like a seam ripper or scissors to do this, or the patience, it might even be worth asking a tailor nearby to do it for you, as this is probably the hardest part. The material of the shorts is polyester and pretty fragile. I created a tiny hole by accident, barely noticeable but I should have been even more careful. A suggestion by cannonball_run7 on Instagram: use seam rippers and take the thread out from the inside of the shorts.

After I took out the stitching, my inner label/tag and the small size "L" label fell off, so those might have to be re-attached later although the shorts are fine without the label as well of course.

Once the stitching has been removed, don't take the draw string out yet, but first securely tie the new shoe lace to the draw string. This way you can pull the old string out while the new one is pulled in.

Before pulling out the yellow drawstring - tie it to the new blue drawstring, making a small but strong knot

The knot should be as small as possible while still being tight, so that it can pass through the small hole where the laces go in and come out.

Once the new blue string is in place, untie the knot - and be careful not to pull the other side of the string into the shorts, they will be VERY hard to pull out again.

Removing the Logo

The second part of the adjustment is to remove the Jed North logo of the shorts.

Close-up shot of the Jed North logo on the shorts
photo © Bond Lifestyle

Removing the logo requires a flat iron, (warm) water, a piece of cloth and/or paper towels and dishwashing liquid.

The idea is to make the logo wet, heat it with the iron (using a piece of cloth or paper towel in between to not damage the fabric) and scrape off the logo with your fingernail.

To do this, set the iron to Medium heat or the Polyester setting (my iron had a Polyester setting).

Lay a piece of cloth underneath the shorts, or place the shorts on an ironing board.

Then make the logo area wet (I used warm water).

Cover the logo area with another thin cloth or a paper towel.

So carefully use the tip of the iron to heat up the first one or two letters of the logo, keep moving the iron and making sure you're not burning / melting the fabric.

We are going to remove the logo letter for letter, so there is no need to heat up the whole logo at once.

It really only needs to be very warm, not super hot, so after a little while, put the iron down, lift the piece of protective cloth or paper and try to carefully but firmly scrape off the first letter with your fingernail.

Parts of the letter should let go fairly quickly after a few seconds, so if it doesn't, warm it up some more.

Note that it is normal that the outline of the letters will stay visible at first, so don't try to completely remove everything yet, just make sure that most of the letter is gone and that you only have a thin outline left.

Here I have removed the first three letters of the logo, but the outlines are still visible
photo © Bond Lifestyle

Make your way through all the letters and the block logo at the end.

Don't go too fast, and don't rub too hard, as to not damage the fabric.

Now you should have only the outlines left, or perhaps you were already able to remove it all.

After using the iron and scraping with fingers, the outlines are still visible, through parts of the color that are stuck in the grooves of the fabric
photo © Bond Lifestyle

I couldn't remove the outlines with my fingernail anymore, so I used this tip from Cg23 at the AJB forum to use some liquid dish soap, some warm water and a tea towel to remove the last remaining outlines and small pieces.

Put a drop of dishwash soap on the logo, make it wet and use a damp towel to rub the last pieces off, which worked quite well for me. 

Then, we're basically done! I hung the shorts outside to dry and I was happy to see that the logo and removal process had left no mark on the fabric.

The final result: blue shoe laces (63", read more above) as the draw string and no Jed North logo.
photo © Bond Lifestyle

Your screen accurate Jed North James Bond shorts should now be ready for a trip to Jamaica!

If you have any more suggestions for this removal process, please share your experience in the comments below.

Buy the Jed North shorts at Amazon

Click here to watch the Instagram Live Video where I replace the draw string and remove part of the logo

Read more about James Bond's Jamaica Outfit