Are bow ties cool? Doctor Who returns...

Photo: Credit: BBC/Todd Antony/Adrian Rogers Copyright BBC

Tune into the BBC this evening or in the very near future and you're going to find the trailers for the new season of Doctor Who starting up. This is of course a cultural milestone (and yes I'll write something about the Olympics soon) and leads to a major, major style question: Are bow ties cool? You can click on the picture for a larger image.

This is actually not a straightforward question. There are a few things the good Doctor does that aren't actually all that cool but he and actor Matt Smith get away with them. Take bow ties anywhere other than somewhere formal. He, and predecessors Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee, got away with these spectacularly (in the sixties you'd have seen more of them anyway, when Troughton was in the role). By now, wearing them without a tuxedo you tend to have to be pretty damned young to get away with them and have them "ironically". Or you're playing a 900-year-old Time Lord. Conversely, my continuing inability to tie a bow tie is most certainly not cool. I told you it wasn't straightforward.

This isn't all Smith does that won't work elsewhere, though. Take braces. As you'll see from the pic, he wears them and he wears them well. You need an ironing board flat stomach to get away with those or they start looking like a contour map of your gut.

I like Harris Tweed jackets. My wife doesn't. What I do know is that they have to be carefully cut - it's appallingly easy to end up looking a bit charity shop and a bit pretending-to-dress-middle-aged-without-realising-you're-actually-pretty-old. In fact I'd say anyone who, like me, woke up in January 2010 and found themselves old enough to be Doctor Who's dad should probably steer clear unless the cut is seriously flattering.

Trailer for the new series appears below for anyone who's interested:

Duchamp and T-Lab sales

Two of my favourite clothing suppliers have sales on at the moment. Let me add I have no affiliation or vested interests here - I get nothing if you buy a single tie or t-shirt, or the entire stock, it makes no difference at all to me.

First, Duchamp. A fine tie maker is how I'd describe this company; I bought a white shirt a couple of weeks ago and the arms are a bit long, serves me right for not going tailor-made (or indeed putting weight on and having a thicker neck than a man of my arms-length normally would). Everything is 50% for the moment because they're running down their excellent summer collection, not that you need to worry about the styles going out of fashion. Think sumptuous, think thick silk ties, think patterned pocket squares. I find the trick is to pick out one piece you like. The picture of the model here is a good example. He's younger than the people for whom I write this blog and can get away with a bit more dandifying than some of us; the tie as the sole interesting feature, or a plain tie and the pocket square, would work better than the whole ensemble in my view. I've gone for a couple of darker ties, a single pocket square and a couple of shirts including the aforementioned white one - and a textured white for parties.

I must remind myself sometimes that this blog is supposed to make money eventually, not cost me a fortune.

You can find what's in the sale at their various premises - I liked the one in Westfield in Wood Lane although the shop in Regent Street left me curiously cold - it's finished online but to get an idea of what they do and find outlets you can click here.

Meanwhile the more casual among us might remember I've written about T-Lab before now, good quality T-shirts, nice designs, nothing OTT but a bit more interest than plain white or a colour. They have a sale on and until 19 July you can click on their website here and get 20% off everything. My own favourite of the moment is the GBR shirt (pictured) which is sufficiently GBR-ish to make a good option for the Olympics but not so in-your-face that it's going to date immediately. Also cheaper than officially licensed Olympic kit...

Good quality, reasonable prices, I've bought items from both of these myself. And I do assure you once more I get nothing for saying so.

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

Don't let Branson tell you what to wear

One of those things that annoys me intensely is when people tell me what to wear. When I started up as a journalist I would be summoned to meetings in the Institute of Directors which, at the time, would not let people in without a tie. This struck me as a complete liberty. I wasn't scruffy, just tieless. It's different now.

But there's another insidious trend - people telling me not to wear ties when actually I have some of which I'm rather fond. Richard Branson holds forth in this article about how he is "delighted" that the tie-wearer is usually the odd one out at a meeting. Not in my experience he isn't, but there's no problem with the idea that we move in different circles.

I like my ties. There are some good designers around, I've mentioned a few of them on this blog, here and here for example. Opposite is a picture of one by Victoria Richards, and I've highlighted others in the past. Hand painted or woven to an individual design by someone who knows what they're doing, these are never boring and can be a lot of fun to wear. I've had several compliments when wearing one on television. There's nothing wrong with the mass produced variety either; designs from Liberty, Duchamp and others can be attractive. The dull single-colour variety I tend to leave to the dull meeting or funeral.

This isn't, though, a polemic to say everyone should wear ties. No, if Richard Branson doesn't want to wear a tie then that's clearly fine by me - why should he? No, what I object to is his decision that it's a victory of some sort when other people don't wear one. I'd still be annoyed to get told to wear one when I didn't wish to, but my neckwear is my own choice, thanks.

Sorry if Branson doesn't agree. But then we're probably not going to go to the same meetings anyway.

More ties that bind

Regular readers will be aware that I've been looking at hand-painted or at least individually designed ties recently. I was on stage speaking on social media for O2 this week and had a few compliments on the Victoria Richards blue bar model I was wearing at the time. She's due to put some new designs up this month, more on which when they arrive.

There are also some good new designs on Sue Forrest's site this week; I'm getting Pink Link from the Spring 2012 collection which will add a nice splash of colour to my neckware. Today, though, I wanted to draw your attention to Julie Riisnaes. She sells through Etsy which defaults to dollar prices but you can select pounds and she's in the UK.

Some of her ties are a bit brash for me but I have one of the Mosaic pattern (pictured with her permission) and it looks very good with a grey suit. The reason I draw these to people's attention is simple: they're hand painted, therefore unique, and look good - and at £16 only just over a quarter of the price you'll pay for a Victoria Richards, a third compared to one of Sue Forrest's.

There are reasons for this. Julie tells me she buys plain ties in and paints them - which is absolutely fine. they don't feel quite as solid as one of Victoria's, but then that's fine. So she doesn't make ties. She also paints the visible side and leaves the other blank apart from a signature.

So that's pretty much where the cost differential comes in - they're attractive and lively and I may well wear mine on TV sometime; I probably wouldn't if I were moving around on stage as the blank underside might show. But as long as you understand what you're getting, a hand painted design at this price makes something unique accessible to a much wider market. Recommended.

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.

Getting knotted - more on ties

I've been refreshing my tie collection this year. I've done a bit of TV and if I'm honest the ones I have, although they're fine face to face, tend to end up showing up as pretty dull. The studio lighting doesn't do them all any favours.

Over Christmas I wrote about ties from Victoria Richards andI remain a fan. She designs them for Jon Snowand they look distinctive without - necessarily - appearing garish. Granted she can do brightly-coloured if she's asked. Her website will be stocking up with new designs in about eight weeks; in the meantime a load of ties come up as out of stock, which is frustrating.

Tie 15, Sue Forrest Ties

So I've been looking elsewhere and found Sue Forrest, - notice the spelling of her website omits one 't' in "sueforresties.co.uk' and hasn't bought the .com version. Based in Hay on Wye, which is always going to earn Brownie points from me as I had my honeymoon nearby (COUGH) years ago, she hand paints her own designs onto silk and makes them into ties. They don't have names like the Victoria Richards models, and I appreciate my buying "Percy Bar" from Victoria probably sounds a bit more exciting than buying "Tie 15" from Sue. But it's a nice design; regular enough to be coherent but fairly obviously hand painted and therefore unique - even someone buying the same thing will have some slight variants due to the hand made nature of the thing.

I like it very much. Her website says people tend to love or hate her ties which I can understand - but to enliven a standard dark suit and white shirt they're an excellent look, and at £45 not bad for something hand made and unique. You'd pay more for many so-called "designer ties" in a department store. I'll be keeping an eye on her site to see what else comes up.

I did think I'd found something original at first - an exchange of emails, however, tells me she also supplies Jon Snow and he's a good customer. I am not stalking this man.


As with previous posts on the subject I have no affiliation with these craftspeople - this blog is not incentivised by any vendors in any way

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.

The dreaded tie-in-soup disaster

Flickr: BuyAlex

You're at a dinner, you're somewhere formal, and you lean forward to enjoy your soup. And everybody's staring at you - because your tie is now in the bowl with the spoon.
Most of us can avoid this sort of embarrassment, but how to stop a tie flapping about in the wind is no simple matter. I've always avoided tie clips like the one on the right, I like to leave my ties unfettered - but recently I've given up and worn one, first because it looks pretty good but second because it does hold the tie in place.

A tie pin can be as good, not as effective on patterned ties as plain ones because they tend to get a bit lost. My big preference - and I've only just discovered these - is the invisible version. It's a little bit of material that matches your shirt and has a buttonhole in each end. You put one end on a shirt button, thread the other through the tie bar (the loop of material at the back) and do the other button up and unless someone's looking really carefully they won't see you're wearing it, they'll just see a tie held mysteriously in place.

Tailors often do them with shirts - my regular supplier, A Suit That Fits (sponsored link which as always costs you nothing) issues them as standard with every shirt.

If only I'd realised what they were earlier I wouldn't have thrown so many of the blasted things away...

Tied in knots

So, it's been New Year Sales time and I've found, as always, more luck in the menswear departments than my wife has found in clothing for females. I have a number of theories as to why this might be; first, much as I hate stereotyping, the shopping experience tends to be aimed more at women than men - so the good stuff sells out more quickly. Second men have less variety in their clothing, often - so if someone has a load of shirts to offload they're going to apply to most of us (and of course the common sizes vanish very quickly).

Flickr: cambiodefractal

Which is why I've done a lot of shopping online - and there's nothing better for price comparison than shopping in this way. And it's this time of year that the cost of so-called 'designer' items really starts to hit home.

I was looking in particular at ties this year. Some of mine are fine in person but when I'm presenting they can look a bit funereal under lights. And I'd just love to find the answer to a few questions, highlighted by ties but they apply to a lot of items:

1. Are people really crazy enough to pay over £100 for a tie because it has the right label on it? Actually let's just tick "yes" for that and carry on.

2. Is there any sort of standard for tie manufacture? Some of my older ones went flimsy quite quickly and look terrible when knotted. And a tie that looks bad when you knot it is pretty useless. Instead of telling me on a website that a tie is designed by a particular individual, or that it's hand made, wouldn't it be good if someone could tell me whether it's reinforced adequately, how well stitched it is and whether the little loop you tuck the back into is going to fall off after the second time you wear it, like a Van Heusen I bought last year?

3. My favourite bugbear - what exactly do you mean, "designer" goods - whether ties, scarves or otherwise? If you can prove to me that nobody actually designed the other stuff then fine, but I strongly suspect everything's been designed by someone at some point. After that we just get back to point 1.

Personally I'm going to continue getting stuff I think looks good and which matches my outfits, and the hell with the name on the back.

I can't tie a bow tie

Flickr> RubyGoes Happy New Year

OK, big confession time - and a New Year's Resolution; I'm going to learn to tie a bow tie. There's a video and a blog entry on the A Suit That fits website (sponsored link to the homepage, the blog is at the bottom and you won't be charged) so I have no excuse.

Possibly more interesting from the psychological point of view and the study of the fragile middle-aged male psyche is that I also have no reason to learn to tie one. The last Black Tie event I attended was the Baftas in 2008, to which I was invited as a freelance journalist and ligger; I bought an off the peg suit, wore a bow tie that fastened at the back and thought I looked perfectly OK. No doubt a gentleman could have told the difference at a glance, as the saying goes, so presumably I'm not a gentleman.

There's been nothing since so why I should think it's remotely important that I acquire this skill I don't know. Nevertheless I've ordered a small tasteful (oh yes it is) dark red example of the breed in the John Lewis sale, should be with me anytime now - and I'll look forward to fiddling with it, just in case.

Mid-life crisis? Work displacement? Does one have to exclude the other..?