05/10/2013
For most of my life, entering a clothes shop, all on my lonesome, has been a pretty traumatic affair and something best avoided. I’m well aware that many guys have an aversion to clothes shops, for a variety of reasons, others proclaiming shopping as too tedious (yet they will happily spend all day shopping for fishing gear or model trains).…
04/10/2013
These days (and even starting with those words make me feel like an old man) it’s all about the social media, and all the various platforms that are more or less popular at the moment. It’s not enough to just write blog posts, they have to be announced on Facebook and Twitter as well. Plus Twitter is there to handle…
11/08/2013
Sometimes in life you’re not aware that you have a problem until one day someone offers you a solution. This is one of those times. Out of the blue I received an email from Robert Kay, owner of new menswear brand Robert Owen. He wrote to let me know about his new venture, undershirts for gentlemen. Now, much as I’m…
10/08/2013
Being of the age I am, denim has always been a part of my life, in some form or another. From the stonewashed jeans of the 80’s to the increasingly boringly styled and baggier jeans of middle-age, I’ve never been without a pair or two, even though other types of trousers have come and gone. And while I wouldn’t characterize…
14/07/2013
Last week an email from a friend in the garment industry prompted me to put my thinking cap on with regards to the business of sales and price reductions. It turned out to be a lot more difficult than expected to write something even halfway sensible about, as the more I thought about it, the wider the topic ranged, and…
04/06/2013
Now, we’ve all seen (and probably fallen victim to) any number of garments purporting to be recreations/reproductions/remakes of certain classic/vintage/army/workwear whatevers and so forth. I was reading one of the “M” books by Norwegian cartoonist Mads Eriksen the other day and came across this absolute pearl of a strip. I realise Norwegian isn’t a language everyone understands intuituvely, so I’ve…
20/05/2013
In a bit of a departure from my usual topics, I’d like to write a bit about health today. Not really health in general, but more specifically the transition from being overweight, middle-aged and not very fit, to being less-overweight, sadly even more middle-aged, and reasonably fit. It might not sound like much of a difference, but for someone like…
08/05/2013
Today’s waistcoat is another Mallory by Nigel Cabourn, and yes, it’s the second of it’s kind I’m presenting. The first, in a brown Harris Tweed was number 2 in the series of Waitcoat Wednesdays. This one is the same, yet completely different, at least to me! If you’ve not come across Nigel Cabourn before, he and his company is based…
01/05/2013
A sunny, but surprisingly windy, Wednesday and I’m back with another waistcoat in celebration of the now obligatory Waistcoat Wednesday. This weeks cheeky little number is a canvas shop waistcoat from ARN Mercantile, the family business I’ve previously written about in my series of labels to watch. ARN are very passionate about what they do, how it’s done, the materials…
24/04/2013
Quite a special waistcoat this week. One I’ve had for a while, but not really been confident to wear until now. Bought it a size too small by mistake, and only thanks to losing weight I can now get properly into it. A very distinctive waistcoat, courtesy of Nigel Cabourn. Three different colours, in quality Madras checked linen, again based…