18/12/2015
The Vintage Showroom is a small vintage clothes dealer just by Seven Dials in London. The owners are Doug Gunn and Roy Luckett, and given the number of small vintage clothes shops around the world, or even London, the story could just as well have ended there. Except, Doug and Roy are finders and collectors extraordinaire, so the shop is…
17/12/2015
The smartphone has to be the curse of modern times. One dip in to your pocket and you know if anyone has phoned you, texted you, mentioned you, poked you, prodded you or in any other way attempted to annoy you. Also if anything has happened in the world, your car is unlocked or whether the book you reserved at the…
16/12/2015
A new laptop at work meant I was looking for a new backpack with the space to carry it. Packs with space for a full 17″ laptop are less common than the smaller capacity ones, and if you want it to look good as well, that narrows it down further. I frequently use my pack as a carry-on as well,…
13/12/2015
Shackleton Company – providing heroic menswear for today’s man Ernest Shackleton. Now that is a name indeed. You can sort of imagine a child with a name like that going one of two ways, either an antarctic explorer of heroic nature, or a Wallace (as in “… & Gromit“). In this case though we know Shackleton turned out the heroic…
08/12/2015
In the past two years I’ve bought some pretty decent denim. I could mention the Iron Hearts, all Japanese ruggedness, or the Livids, made by four hands in Norway, the Steel Feathers, designed in Norway and made by Japanese craftsmen, or the Tenders, quirkily British and hand dyed. This time though I wanted something even more different, and when I…
06/12/2015
I’m always looking for things that have that added ingredient of different, be it a vintage car, a strange back-street caffe, or another jacket for the collection. Realm & Empire have been mentioned here a few times before, as one of a handful of British companies worth keeping an eye on. By some incredibly fortuitous dealings, R&E have managed to…
04/12/2015
Delving again into my stack of menswear books, today we have “100 years of menswear” by Cally Blackman. Cally is no novice when it comes to fashion, or writing about it, with at least 4 previous titles and a position as lecturer at institutions such as Central Saint Martins College. This professionalism is obvious when you take a look through…
01/12/2015
When it comes to duffle coats Gloverall is where it to most intents and purposes started. No, Gloverall didn’t invent them, far from it, but when the British armed forces decided they had more than they could possibly use, what with it being peacetime and all, it was Gloverall that brought them to the public. And when the surplus duffles ran…
15/11/2015
Today’s book is a heavy one, and full of knowledge and facts. It’s clocks in at some 300 odd pages, profusely illustrated and lots of text. Published in 2002, this is a timeless tome indeed. And properly hefty, in it’s hardbound format. This is not a book to be taken lightly! The full title of the book is “Dressing the…
14/11/2015
There are a few British company names that strike me as being incredibly evocative. Barbour is one, Gloverall is another. The story behind Gloverall is so quintessentially quirky and British that I shake my head in wonder every time I think of it. Way back after WW2 the company was called Gloves & Overalls Ltd. in 1951 though bought a…