Shopping for duty free tailoring

Flickr: Hakan Dahlstrom

OK, here's an idea. I've done some business travelling recently and as such been in a few airports. One thing that occurred to me whilst doing all this was that it would have been good to know where the best Duty Free shops are so I could plan a bit before leaving. So, here's a brief summary of my recent notes - anyone wanting to add their own destinations and comments would be more than welcome. I'm excluding spirits and tobacco because that's not what this blog is about - of course all the usual duty free stuff is available.

London City Airport: Tiny as you'd expect from a small airport but a good selection of Boss shirts (not to my taste), Mont Blanc pens and accessories for the rich and I bought a nice Dunhill tie for my meeting (at which nobody wore ties so it's unworn). This was £62 as I was travelling just outside the EU.

Gatwick North Terminal: Under modernisation, sports gear, Harrods, Kurt Geiger shoes, no doubt there will be more as works progress.

Gatwick South Terminal: Fat Face, Boss, Kurt Geiger, several others - remember to check the retail prices outside the airport as many people have a perpetual sale on.

Heathrow T5: Vast shopping experience if you have the time, dominated by Harrods which has most of the designer brands you'd want - Hilfiger, Polo, just about everything. Also several designer shops opposite.

Copenhagen: Actually bigger than Heathrow T5. We're talking Boss, Polo Ralph Lauren, Burberry and Hermes with their own shops and a couple of menswear shops with a selection including LaCoste and others.

Luxembourg: Small but perfectly formed - as long as you like Boss and Lacoste in the menswear department. I was thinking about Polo Ralph Lauren shorts, the shape of which seems to sit OK on my body - and there were none.

Istanbul: Less of the clothing, just one or two shops, but an extensive selection of scent (as most of them have) and a Mont Blanc shop to go and drool over (I do like Mont Blanc pens, why the hell I can't develop cheaper tastes I don't know).

Milan Lenate: Are you kidding, it's Milan! Superb shirt shop caught my eye, if only I'd needed some shirts. Sadly I didn't. Also good shoes and suits - does anyone really buy suits duty free, though? Not easy to return goods I'd have thought.

Newcastle: Believe it or not you can buy duty free in internal flights, look, don't stare, I didn't know. Mostly sports gear and the usual drinks and stuff, but some nice watches at a better price than average.

Zurich: Curiously little in the tailoring department unless I walked straight past it whilst looking for my wife's cosmetics, which is entirely possible.

Please note this is not intended as a definitive guide - I wasn't specifically looking to write this entry when visiting most of these over the last 12 months or so, and may well have overlooked items. I'll welcome corrections and of course additions as comments and will add to and update this entry - leaving a note and link to say it's updated as and when.

So, what have you found recently on any business or pleasure travels whilst in the duty free shop?

London Fashion Week: ten male style mistakes

Flickr: Paul-In-London

This is London Fashion Week and the weekend, quite unusually, is devoted to male dress. So, this being a blog for the older male, I thought it might be worth kicking off with a few mistakes we make too frequently.

10: Heavy aftershave or EDT in business meetings
You know that feeling when you're in a meeting and someone's smelling as if they're about to go on a really hot date?  Just don't do it.

9: The cheap, emergency shirt
This week I was away on business and had to go into a meeting immediately I came back. Knowing that I had a bunch of shirts being tailor-made so they'll be ready in a few weeks but not yet, I bought a cheapie from Marks and Sparks - twenty quid - to put on for the meeting. It. Looked. Terrible. Low-grade material, unflattering cut - it even made the suit and tie look cheap, as my wife reassured me on my way in (for which my thanks, you need a confidence boost for meetings). Cutting corners simply didn't work.

8: Clashing patterns
Don't listen to the 'never mix spots and stripes' brigade - they're wrong about a lot of things, as anyone with a colour-co-ordinated striped shirt and spotted tie combo will vouchsafe. It can look rather good. But be judicious: stripes on a suit are fine, so are stripes on a shirt but if you have them on a tie as well it can start looking like interference on an old telly.

7: Buying online and not admitting mistakes
A number of mistakes of mine - ties with which I was less than delighted, pocket squares which ended up looking dull - were made after seeing the items only online. That's on a computer with a backlit screen, which can make the colours look substantially brighter than they are in real life. If you find you've fallen victim to this, the next big error is to go into a strop and insist on wearing the stuff anyway.

6: Modelling your look on someone else
Actually this one's OK as long as they look a bit like you. But be realistic; if you're not tall, lanky and young-looking then the Matt Smith tweed-and-bow-tie look is just going to look middle-aged. One good tip I've seen is to look at pictures of fashion designers; if they have a similar body type to you, it might just be that they're designing for it.

5: Take the catwalk look too literally
Models on the catwalk are there to look extreme. You can take a few ideas and adapt them; maybe the preppy-looking ones are all wearing patterned pocket squares that tone in but don't match the tie; maybe the tweedy look is in, can you incorporate these things a bit without looking ridiculous? It should be fairly easy.

4: Skimp on the shoes
The old saying says you can tell an Englishman by his cheap shoes. Which is a bit rubbish when our best shoes from the likes of Church's are so good; invest decent money in your footwear and look after the shoes and they'll top and tail your look perfectly.

3: Wear boring socks
OK, this isn't essential. Nonetheless when I'm wearing a pink shirt or pink tie I like to tone in a bit with socks - it's a tiny touch that links the whole outfit together. Even if people think it looks ghastly they'll see where you were going with the idea.

2: The comb-over
No, seriously, I still see this. Listen, gents, if you're losing your thatch (or "it's changing" as I like to think of it, I reject this idea that ageing is about loss rather than development) then get it cropped and celebrate it - it's absolutely the only way. Nobody except you will find it at all worth remarking on - unless, of course, you adopt the comb-over in which case everyone will notice.

1: Jeans half way down the bum
Oh come on, even young people can't carry this look (although many think they can - see the picture above). We early middle agers would simply look ridiculous - don't even think about it!

So, ladies and gents, what are your favourite fashion howlers?

Related entries: Dress sense mistakes men make

Fashion by body type

Another men's clothing site has launched and this one has a twist - it asks about your build, colouring and body type then makes recommendations based on those parameters. Called Stylepilot it asks for a few basics - are you a V (wide shoulders, narrow waist), an inverted V (broad waist, thin shoulders) what colour is your hair and soforth.

It then makes recommendations from some leading designers - you can get some nice pieces from Gant, Polo Ralph Lauren, many others.

It has one element I'd call a flaw; I put myself in as an inverted 'V' and got entirely slim fit shirts coming out. Now, as Vs go, I'm quite inverted and trust me, some brands are a bit tight. The founder tells me that most people will look better in a 'slim fit' rather than standard fit, which looks like a tent and flatters no-one. I take the point to an extent but I'd still be inclined to look out for stuff that's too fitted (and get back to the gym so I can wear it a bit better).

The site is based on the principle that men don't really know what to wear. Mintel research says that 60% of us don't believe we have a good sense of style while Style Pilot's own research says two thirds of men need help to pick out clothing, while many of us have our clothes laid out by our partners every day. I'd find this a little debilitating, to say nothing of taking my partner for granted, but apparently it happens.

This is basically the same approach taken by a number of sites, but with extra pictures to help you identify body type. I certainly wish them well - I still won't be buying any slim fit shirts for a while.

Discounts on Smithfield Case

Yesterday I wrote about the success of the Smithfield Case personal shopping service. There was nothing to be gained for me in doing this, I was genuinely pleased to be recommending a service I found useful.

They took payment from my card as agreed - this really is an easy process - and sent me a discount code for anyone else who wants to try it. Feel free to order a case of clothes and add the code "CLAPPERTON-30" at the checkout and they'll give you £15 off your first selection.

This offer will expire on 7 April, and in the interests of full declaration I should say they'll give me a fiver for everyone who orders, up to a maximum of fifty quid. Once again I had no knowledge of this before the two previous blogs on the subject, which weren't written with any gain in mind - but I'd be daft not to mention this discount to you now.

If anyone else orders with them I'd be delighted to hear how you got on in the comments section below.

This is idiotic or brilliant...

I'm going to try a new service. It's called the Smithfield Case. In spite of its name it is nothing to do with a meat market in London. The idea is simple; you decide it's time you had some new clothes, the wardrobe's due for a refresh, so you order a case of them.

You can make specific requests of course but mostly the system seems geared towards blokes who can't be bothered signing up and hitting the "I'd like some decent clothes please" button. They deliver them, you try them on, decide what you like and what you don't. They pick the rest up and then charge you for the stuff you've kept. It sounds very simple, and of course you can specify stuff you like and stuff you don't - I've asked for "no jeans" for reasons that will become apparent very quickly to regular readers (he says, mysteriously).

They take your sizes, your preferences - I opted for "casual/weekend", ignored "edgy" for example - you say which colours you like and what styles you like wearing. You also set a budget and they're quite frank that the cheaper stuff isn't their market; anyone wanting trousers for under £75 will need to shop elsewhere.

So I'm just waiting for my first box to turn up. It might contain stuff from APC, Bertie, Diesel, Gant, Paul Smith, Reiss, many such designer brands.

Reasons I think it might work: I rarely have the time to go out and look at shops. And when I do I often find my wife has a better eye for what's going to suit me than I do. The convenience and the ability to ask her what she thinks at leisure could get me some very nice pieces.

Reasons I think it might not work: The idea of just getting "some clothes" bothers me a little. Many people will be a little more specific than that in their needs. Or a lot.

I'll let you know how I get on.

Paul Smith ties up with Leica

I spent a very pleasant lunch hour yesterday at Leica's shop in London - here's a link to it. It offers courses on photography before you buy and includes courses afterwards with some cameras - no point in spending £5K on an M9 if you're not going to find out a bit about it. Certainly playing with £20K worth of camera kit is a very good way to spend 60 minutes or so of your mid-life crisis, I found.

What really caught my eye for readers here were some very nice limited edition camera cases from Paul Smith, which are pictured here. The grey textured version is probably a little feminine but the brown leather is a beauty, classic in design and sporting the signature stripes for which Paul Smith fans seem to go totally berserk most of the time. It's out in time for Christmas and will set you back £200; make sure the recipient already has the D-Lux 5 digital camera for which it's designed otherwise that'll cost them another £644.

The other design point of note was on some of the more professional models, the red spot (like the one in the picture above) is going to be removed, with a more discreet logo on top. Apparently these are used often in war zones by photographers, and having a red spot just about where your eye's likely to be wasn't quite what they wanted.

Designers: a material difference

So I was at a tailor today getting orders for a new suit straightened out - more on that when it's ready in a few weeks - and I mention that I was at the designer outlet in Ashford, Kent, yesterday. And I picked up an Aquascutum white shirt for £28.

The tailor was impressed, or would have been if it hadn't meant I wasn't going to buy a shirt on the spot. So - I couldn't resist it - I asked why exactly it mattered that this was an Aquascutum rather than, say, a Marks and Sparks?

The answer, it appears, is in the fabric. Of course a shirt's got to be well cut but you'll know that if it's comfortable when you put it on, if the seams appear to be pulling (if so it doesn't fit), and if, like an atrocity I once picked up cheap from a designer range in a supermarket, it was designed for someone whose wrists are level with their knees.

The rest is in the quality of the material. Aquascutum simply has access to better stuff (ie it throws money at it) than the High Street brands.

So when you pay your money to a designer or tailor, that's one of the key differentiators. Bespoke tailoring of course means you can dictate the exact cut, material, collar etc. and if it doesn't fit absolutely perfectly you're welcome to take it back in a bit of a huff.

But if you were wondering about the price you pay for a designer brand then that's one of your pointers. Of course there's a premium to pay for a prestigious label too, which is largely a matter of supply v demand and how much the designer can get away with is worth, to the buyer as much as anyone.

Personally I thought for £28 I had a bargain.