Christmas presents 8: Discounted hand made jewellery

I'm delighted to say that we've been offered a discount. Whether you're considering hand made good quality silver jewellery for yourself or a partner. the guys at Corazon Latino will give you 10% off if you enter the code LIFEOVER35 (remember the capitals) when you check out.

I'm an existing customer and can confirm the quality is excellent. I reviewed some cufflinks a while ago and although they were a little large for my tastes I could see they were well made; I've subsequently bought another pair (the Andata on the site, they look superb and I wear them as my first choice most of the time) and a Sylvia necklace for my wife. This is versatile and beautifully made. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this company to anyone - not only are the quality superb and the prices reasonable, but I find when I order something on a Thursday afternoon I've got it by the Friday morning.

Sylvia silver jewellery on somebody else's wife (probably)

They are very good at offering advice if you phone up in a panic and want to buy a present but don't know quite what. The offer closes 21 December and if you order on that day then unless there is snow or a postage issue, you'll still have your gift in time for Christmas.

If you're buying jewellery, do have a look at the website and remember the discount - I certainly haven't been disappointed.

Declaration: I am not on any commission or incentive for this offer - it's just something I'm passing on which I hope will be useful. My thanks once more to Cath at Corazon Latino for making this offer to all readers.

Handmade cufflinks

I've been checking my cufflink collection lately and am considering adding something from Corazon Latino. It's a company that sounds Italian but don't be fooled, they're in Wiltshire. They've sent me a pair of the Arion sterling silver model to try out (£95).

The unusual thing about these, and I admit I'd normally look at something closer to the £60 mark, is that the backs are silver as well as the front. This means they won't tarnish unevenly and of course they'll respond well to silver cleaner. Which they'll need to; I have a pair of hammered silver cufflinks with a square design from a woman who makes them locally, and keeping them clean is a bit of a pain to be honest.

The Corazon Latino cufflinks are good for making an impression - slightly on the large side, more for an evening out than for a business meeting. The detail on the fastener at the back is a nice touch as it means they'll look pretty good from both sides, if anyone happens to be looking.

If I'm honest they're a little too big for most of my purposes; if I were buying from this site I'd probably be looking at the Andata design rather than these. But they're solid, hallmarked and come with a silver cleaning cloth - the site is well worth a look.

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?

Discounted tailoring for LifeOver35 readers

OK, back from holiday and I'm in a position to offer a 25% discount on tailoring. It's from Clements and Church and it's easy for you - just enter the promotional code CC76937235 during the checkout process online and they'll lop off twenty five pee in the pound for your first order.

Suits, jackets, ties, cufflinks, less formal stuff like denim and even umbrellas - they've offered this to LifeOver35 readers to celebrate (or market) the launch of their new e-commerce site.

I'm grateful for the offer and would be interested to hear how any readers get on. The offer is open until 14 May.

Declaration: just for clarity - LifeOver35 isn't getting a cut of this, there's literally nothing in this offer for us bar goodwill, we're highlighting it only because readers may be interested.

New accessory shop - ties, cufflinks, braces...

It's always good to welcome a new business so today I'd like to introduce a Dorset-based company called PerUomo - here's a link to the website - which gets brownie points immediately from me for using a model who looks as though he may actually have seen his 30th birthday, men's magazines please take note.

Cutting to the chase it has some good stuff on display. As regular readers will know I've been looking at refreshing my tie collection a bit as I've been doing a small amount of telly. One of my pet hates is boring Paisley designs; you get a lot which are self-consciously loud but end up a bit samey. The pattern on PerUomo's Italian pure silk green and blue is regular enough not to be utterly garish but spaced out enough to be a bit interesting, which is my idea of a good design. Others may disagree of course but at £34.95 it's certainly on my list of possibles. There's a good range of colours for people who don'y fancy this one. I can't speak for how well-made they are because I haven't actually seen one in the flesh, but I have no reason to doubt them.

To accompany this I might consider a pair of cufflinks from the company, although if I were matching them I'd have to see them in person to decide. There are a lot of designs similar to many I've seen before but I'm quite taken with this blue and white gilt pair. You know the routine, a shade too big and they might swamp an otherwise quite tasteful outfit. They also sell braces which are not my thing, but they have a good selection for wearers.

The family members who run this site already have one placeholder for a forthcoming range of cufflinks in addition to those already on the site. I'll be watching what comes in with interest.

Christmas gifts 7: Hand painted ties (and more cufflinks)

I was reading about ties in the Times a few weeks back - in the Luxx section, which they helpfully don't put on the Web. One of the designers highlighted was Victoria Richards, who makes at least some of the ones Jon Snow wears on Channel 4 News. She came out with some of the best tie advice I've ever heard other than don't wear bright colours to a funeral, which is that Snow - who's well known for bright ties - can get away with much louder ones than the rest of us because he's on telly and also because he's only on our screens for 45 minutes. This makes a lot of sense and is the reason you won't see me in anything like the example on the right here - but I certainly bought a couple from her over the weekend. If you have a look at her website do check Momo from the hand painted range - it goes well in all but the most formal meetings and it's distinctive enough to be a little different from anything else you're likely to see around people's necks. The ties are good quality, and although they're not cheap something individual and hand made for £60 sounds a pretty fair cost to me. When we visited her workshop she also had some excellent scarves for the female market, which took care of a Christmas present from me in no time. These aren't on her site yet so presumably it's evolving; I shall certainly be visiting it often during 2012 to see what's new.

P. S. Speaking of things that look good on shirts, I've been reminded that in my rush to tell everyone about the killer cufflinks yesterday I overlooked another set I'd seen and intended to tell everyone about. And deservedly so - the £60 sets from Welsh stained glass specialist GWYDR are very appealing and I can well imagine adding some to my ever-expanding Christmas wants list. Not that I know many people who'd fancy spending sixty quid on me, but if you don't ask...

In case you're wondering I'm not affiliated with either of these craftspeople - I get literally nothing if you buy them, click through to their sites, whatever. The only ad revenue I get from this site is from click throughs to the Google-fed ads on the left of the screen.

Christmas gifts 6: killer cufflinks

I wear a lot of shirts with cufflinks, which is just as well because they make present buying easy. Something nice, something unusual - I have a liking for handmade ones and there's a woman near us who works in silver - and now I find there's a chance of getting something that might actually be deadly. No, you thought I meant "killer" as in "really looking rather good" didn't you?

Well of course these links do that job too. They're from Bouf (the link is to the whole range of cufflinks, they have some seriously unusual stuff) and - wait for it - the balls are actual pistol shot from - it says here - the English Civil War. We are not talking reproduction or facsimile, a Roundhead shot this at a Loyalist or the other way around. Each set comes with a written account of where they were found - but yes, your cufflinks could have been used as a deadly weapon sometime in the last half-millennium if you're wearing these.

Good grief I want a pair of these. Just remind your partners we're all big kids at heart and these are genuine antiques and actual bullets!

My competition to nominate the worst ever Christmas song ends on Friday. Entry is free and here are the details - someone has to win all these prizes!