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.

Alec Lawless R.I.P.

Long-time readers of this blog may remember an interview with Alec Lawless of Essentially Me, who tailor-made scents for customers. You wanted something unique for you, you went to him. Here's the post.

As you'll gather from the title of this one I've had some terrible news. He designed some perfume for my wife as I suggested I'd probably arrange, last year; this is why she was on his customer list and that, in turn, is why today she and not I had an email saying he'd died in an accident whilst on holiday. I have no other details.

I met Alec once. He was a nice guy, a bit larger than life, you'd have sworn he was an ex-actor rather than an ex-teacher and oenologist. He was more than willing to talk to someone who was only vaguely starting up a blog with no real plan behind it, and when it came to meeting up with my wife and making a perfume for her he was professional, dedicated, pleasant and happy to take as many goes as it took until she was happy.

He wasn't a close friend or anything, but a smashing bloke to interview. I doubt that he was much older than his early fifties. My thoughts, inevitably, are with his family and friends.

Egg-sacting times for Tefal

Occasionally on this blog I write about a gadget. Occasionally they're even affordable. This one is: the Toast'n'egg from Tefal. My thanks to the PR company for sending me a sample. I can confirm that it works - and for under £40 is a reasonable enough buy if you want to cut down a bit on washing up.

Of course I'm not completely satisfied. It's great if you're making breakfast for yourself. Two slices in the toaster, egg in the poacher and you're away. So far, so excellent. But there's another option. It will take up to four eggs for boiling.

This is another good thing but - and here's the rub - if I'm cooking four eggs then I'm probably cooking them for more than just me. And if it's all the same to everyone, I'd quite like the option of a four-slice toaster.

No doubt someone in product development thought of this, looked at the size, told someone in marketing about it and someone decided the thing would just be too big. If I'm right, that's probably not a bad call - but then why make it cook so many eggs if the whole lot won't be ready and hot all at once?

This is probably a quibble. For the price it's a perfectly good kitchen gadget. I'd bet, though, that loads of people will stick with a saucepan and separate toaster.

Some nice Chess pieces

To Mayfair and the launch of a new designer brand. Chess London started selling good quality clothes with good fabrics at the end of last week. For the moment it's online only, and the first howler is that they don't appear to have reserved the chesslondon.co.uk domain alongside chesslondon.com - anytime they want a seminar on online presence I've written books on the subject...

No matter. The clothes look very good and with prices like £130 a shirt they'd better; clearly this is good in comparison to the top-end designer labels but when online tailors will make something  to measure exactly for a similar price the quality had better sing out.

For the most part it does. Designer Ali Riaz told me about the quality, about the detailing (and a lot of work has clearly gone into the lining of the jackets) and the fabrics. He cited Holland and Sherry as one of the top-end fabric suppliers the company uses (although once again I have to point out that two of my suits are tailored from fabrics from exactly that company put together by King and Allen, for similar prices to the off-the-peg stuff available here). His view was that every supplier has a basic range and a luxury range and Chess London sells only the top; if I'm honest I'd be hard pressed to tell the difference.

He was also a little bemused when I asked whether there was a full floating canvas in the jackets, not fully understanding what I meant (here's where I explain it in a previous post). From what I could gather the facing is indeed sewn into place so your jacket won't pucker up if it gets rained on.

And the jackets did look pretty damned good, as did the trousers. Some of the knitwear was a bit young (see the post on mid-life crisis) - if you're reading this blog because you're actually over 35 I'd be a bit careful of some of that.

But if I can find room I might well be in the market for a jacket and couple of shirts sometime soon. It's good to see a British brand starting up to compete with the international set. It's all online at the moment and at last week's launch they were hoping some retailers would turn up. There's every reason to wish Chess London well for the future.

Avoiding the mid-life crisis look

It’s another one of those weeks. You know, the ones in which the style magazines and women’s pages are telling women they shouldn’t have their hair long beyond a certain age, their bodies need to be a particular shape, men need to wear darker suits as we get older. Every damned week, in other words.

There’s actually something in some of this – there are few things worse than someone desperately trying to cling on to a youth which has pretty clearly departed the premises some time previously. But the ‘rules’ needn’t be that stringent. Here are a few thoughts on avoiding looking as though you’re trying too hard:

To read the rest of this blog entry please click this link to be taken to the Wizard Jeans blog where it continues. There is no hard sell and it is written from a completely independent point of view.

Decked out for the Jubilee

My thanks to the people at Chatham Marine for making me aware of their GB 2012 deck shoes. Deck shoes tend to hover around the outskirts of what's in and out of vogue if that matters to you; what matters to me is that they're comfortable, casual and look good with jeans. I hate to over-think things.

These are going to be "in" just for this year, though. As you can see, they're coloured red, white and blue, and this is entirely because there's this Olympics happening in the same summer the Queen has her Jubilee celebrations. The soles are also coloured as you can see from the second illustration, with a full-blown Union Flag (not called the Union Jack unless it's at sea, and if Scotland pootles off as it's threatening to then it could well end up as the disunion flag - but I digress).

They're fun and attractive for the right street party occasion. They'll date before the two-year guarantee wears out, of course (I'd suggest a Tardis blue model for a 50th anniversary I happen to know of next year...look, stop staring...) and at £99 from sizes 1-9 they're not a cheapie. But they're proper deck shoes made by a company with a seafaring history, so they'll grip a wet deck properly, the eyelets won't rot and they're made of proper leather. So if you want proper deck shoes for actual decks, they'll do very nicely - although for designs less tied to a particular event you might want to check the website and consider a slightly quieter design.

Body confidence: clothes that help

I’ve just been attending a conference at London’s Olympia, all about making communications work on technology. I know, it’s an exciting life. I sat through presentation after presentation and concluded, very quickly, that the shallow stuff matters. The worst presenters were the ones in the least well-fitted clothes.

OK, I’ll amend that. The worst was the guy who wore the ill fitting clothes then didn’t notice he was standing in front of his presentation so the audience couldn’t see it. But you get the idea. The more awkward the fit, the more awkward the manner. This is true of both sexes and it’s interesting to see how attitudes to what sort of body type ‘works’ in different historical contexts.

For the rest of this post please click this link for the Wizard Jeans blog where it appears.