27/10/2023
This week, we’re diving headfirst into the captivating world of clothing with Rebecca Smith, author of “The Happy Dresser”! Join us on a journey as we explore the profound significance of garments in our lives, unlock the cherished memories they hold, and unravel the compelling stories woven into our very fabrics. We talk about the impact of fashion on our…
24/06/2022
Today’s guest is Alice Sherwood, author of the new book “Authenticity: Reclaiming Reality in a Counterfeit Culture”. We have a fascinating chat about the counterfeit goods and how brands are actually helping the fakers, storytelling in marketing, how almost all fashion design is an incremental process, influencer culture and how AI is making is both enabling the theft of information…
01/04/2022
Journalist Symeon Brown visits to talk about his new book about the world of influencers, “Get rich or lie trying”. We cover the rise of the modern influencers, how social media has enabled new ways of guerilla marketing using young fans, the fashionable surgery and Brazilian butt lifts, the dropshipping and financial trader scams and at the end of the…
21/10/2020
My guest in this episode is Thomas A Turner, acclaimed author of “The Sports Shoe – A history from field to fashion”, the definitive book about the evolution of the sports shoe form the early days of tennis shoes, via trainers to sneakers, technology, fashion, cult reissues and the current days’ hypebeast mania of the collectable collaborative investment sneakers. And…
08/01/2017
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”…
04/08/2016
Is it just me or has there been something of a deluge of denim-related books the past couple of years? And none of them really all that good? Like this really bad one or this slightly better one. At least from where I’m sitting there has been more enthusiasm than actual content, more styled and curated photography than actual words…
18/03/2016
Ok, let me just start by saying that I’m a little at a loss when it comes to this book. The provocative title, “F**k Ivy ** and everything else”, confirms my opinion of Mark as an enfant terrible of the menswear world. Which is strangely timely, given how much mention there has been of Ivy around here in recent times. And of…
20/02/2016
Coming up to the three year anniversary for the blog, I find myself pondering the direction forward. One option would be to call it a day, though I feel that would be a shame, given how many good folks read it, and how much I enjoy writing it. Another option would is to evolve. Reading an article about blog trends…
06/02/2016
This weeks book is a natural follow-up to my recent review of “Ametora“, the book about how the Japanese adopted the Ivy style from the US, improved it and exported it back. Well, in few words at least, the story is twistier and more involved than that. Yet “Take Ivy”, in both film and book, was instrumental in the process,…
24/01/2016
I tend to buy most of the books published within the scope covered on this blog, and they tend to follow a quite similar formula along the lines of “plenty of photos, a bare minimum of text, nice layout and a quality feel”. Most of them would be considered more for browsing than actually reading.This weeks book turns the formula…