Browsing Category : Blog

Handmade Crown sneakers from Northampton


If you’ve been following this blog for a while you can’t have failed to notice that there is a lot of love for the traditional leather shoe. A hand worked leather upper with a solid Goodyear-welted sole results in a solid, long-lasting piece of footwear. If there is a downside, it does also make for a fairly hefty piece of…

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A micro guide to menswear shopping in Helsinki


A couple of weeks back I found myself with a few hours to spare in the Finnish town Helsinki. Now this may sound like a case of waking up in a foreign place, sore of head, empty of wallet and no recollection of how I got there. This was nothing of that nature though, I did actually willingly fly there, as…

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Is there a relationship between quality and cost?


An interesting topic revealed itself yesterday, spurred on by WDW noticing that yet another of her items of clothing was ripe for recycling. Not that it had totally failed in it’s mission, it was still quite serviceable in that it had no holes, failed seams or other mechanical failures. It was just not in the same condition as when it…

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Adventures in stealth – the camo dufflecoat by London Tradition


Regular readers will recall the custom dufflecoat London Tradition made for me last year. Remarkable in the intensity of the blue, it elicits comments whenever I wear it. It’s got an amount of different that makes it impossible to ignore. Which is a good thing in these days of accepted blandness and disposable fast fashion. Wear something unique and you…

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“How to be Chap” – Book review


Gustav Temple is a driven man. A man dedicated to a quite single-minded mission. Since 1999 he has been tirelessly promoting the Chap lifestyle through his magazine, The Chap. There was a first inkling of a book in 2011, the quite jokey “Am I Chap?”, but it took until 2016 for his magnum opus to be unleashed. “How to be Chap”…

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My favorite Instagram photos of 2016


As the year comes to a closing the totting up of the wins and losses, the balancing of the debits and credits, the memories of the good and the bad of the expiring year are on the table. I’ll no doubt be blogging up a storm again from next week onwards, but this fine morning, enjoying a moment of peace…

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The anatomy of a cult object – The deerstalker


Great title, right? Not something I came up with, mind you, I purloined it in a dastardly manner from an old friend who wrote a painfully meticulous book detailing every little component of the early Jaguar XK120, definitely a cult object in it’s own right. Todays post though? The deerstalker hat. Traditionally a hunting cap first heard of in the 1860s and…

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The truth about #hygge


Observing the current obsession in the UK with the apparently Danish concept of “hygge” is both amusing and disturbing. Firstly, trying to package and sell such a concept is in itself a strange task, based as it is on an apparently untranslatable word that involves an increasingly wide selection of absolutely necessary food, drink, accessories and whatnots to achieve some…

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Another boot upgrade to gaze upon


I recently found a pair of really splendid looking boots. The leather was unusual and lovely, the brogueing to a very nice pattern and the lacing and shape very satisfying. They did indeed provoke instant lust. And they were very much on offer as well, so it was a given that they would be travelling home with me. There was…

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