09/04/2017
The market for Harris Tweed jackets must be a strange one to operate in. On the one hand the company that makes the jacket has a brand, be it small or large, well known or maybe not. On the other, the second you decide to make something out of Harris Tweed, you’re taking on a second hugely well known and…
04/02/2017
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…
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…
03/04/2016
Honest, Guv, I wasn’t looking for trouble. Trouble in the way of another duffle-coat, that is. And certainly not another blue one. It was just that it started ticking all my boxes, saying all the right things. And it was just so very, very blue. And it can not be ignored. The royal blue wool is so vibrant it makes…
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…
12/02/2016
I have to confess, my wallet game has been sorely lacking, at least compared to the guys that put some effort into it. A few years back I was seduced by one of those technical type of card holders with a little lever underneath that serves up your cards, and protects you from electronic snooping. Kind of handy, but really…
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…
09/01/2016
Further on from the index to all the guides I wrote in 2015, here is a handy index to my reviews of the year. I’ve grouped them in a hopefully logical order, to aid in your thorough perusal of posts. You might like to read the handy indices to 2014 as well, they can be found here and here! The reviews of 2015: Trousers: Wrangler…