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…
07/11/2015
Lookbooks are a strange thing. Brands spend time and money producing what amounts to a sort of picture book surrounding their collection, setting the look and mood of how they would like their product to be seen. Not the plain product photos you’ll see in the webshop, with all the details and such shown, but staged photoshoots, with props, weather and lifelike…
29/07/2015
I love London. So much so that I entertain fantasies of living there permanently. The vibrancy, the hustle and bustle, the masses of people, the efficiency of the Underground system, the sounds, the streets, the museums, the shopping and more. Exciting and interesting, no doubt about it. Yet, most likely mostly a fantasy. The masses of people, the noise and…
14/05/2015
I’ve previously written about Realm & Empire and how they delve into the IWM archives for inspiration. Given that the weather around here of late has been dodgy in the extreme, I’ve had a lot of use of their waxed jacket I reviewed a while back. This time though I’m taking a look at their Artisan jacket and Demob shirt. The…
12/04/2015
The green waxed jacket, normally with a Barbour label somewhere on it, is a staple of the British look. Maybe not so much for the average British chap, but for the those aspiring to the hunting and gentleman farming look of the more elevated gents, the traditional green waxed jacket had a definite place. I have no problem with that…
17/12/2014
It’s a known fact that much of the menswear styling we see today is based on styles originally developed for military applications. It might initially seem quite odd that the military should have an influence on civilian menswear, until you consider that while a uniform is to a large extent about function, it also has an element of looks about it. The function part is easy enough…
15/10/2014
South of the River Thames in London is an area I seldom venture into. Nothing personal against it geographically speaking, but it does seem like all the good stuff is on the other side of the river. Well, apart from the Imperial War Museum, which is a truly great museum and well worth the trip. It’s even good from a menswear…
01/02/2014
Most human endeavours are in some way aimed at improving the human existence. Be it through culture, engineering, medicine or other ways that make life easier, safer or more pleasurable, we progress as a species. I quite often feel a real sense of pride in observing the innovations in science and technology. The complexity and sheer dedication going into the…
14/04/2013
The other day I was having a look at my friend Grey Fox’s blog and suddenly found myself staring at a photo with a quickening pulse. Something about it was different, though I’m hard pressed to describe it in words. The photo is of a guy, in a cap and coat, in tweed. Surely something seen a thousand times before?…
28/03/2013
Ventile is a name we’re increasingly often coming across these days. Is it a new innovation, or something that’s been around for over 70 years? Well, as it turns out, it’s the latter. History has it that it was developed in the late 1930s by the British Cotton Industry Research Association in Manchester, or the Shirley Institute, as it was…