One of my favourite menswear writers, Jason Diamond, recently wrote a feature over at GQ about the idea of fashion illustrators acting as influencers. The article frames this as a somewhat unusual proposition — after all, you might expect most people to turn to photographs first and foremost when looking for a source of clothing-related […]
Image credit: dusan jovic on Unsplash In 1981, a designer at Casio named Kikuo Ibe secretly went about creating a new kind of timepiece. His motivation was personal. He had recently been heartbroken when a pocket watch given to him by his father shattered when he accidentally dropped it. Ibe’s response was to set about […]
Image credit: Tullio Saba / Public domain Having come of age a few decades after Muhammad Ali’s prime, for a long time I only knew him by a motley assortment of details from his life outside of the boxing ring: His conscientious objection to the Vietnam War, his religious belief and humanitarian efforts, his youthful, […]
Image is my own / All rights reserved Every year without fail the daffodils in my garden sprout and bloom prematurely. Just as soon as they perk up from their wintery dos at the first signs of warmth and sunlight, the last snow of the season inevitably buries them up to the neck. My heart […]
Image credit: Analia Baggiano on Unsplash This is Part 2 in a series on Swatch. If you haven’t already done so, you can read the first instalment here. Earlier this week we looked at how Swatch as a company came about. Born from necessity and canny business strategy, Nicolas G. Hayek combined a large swathe […]
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 3.0 If you’re a regular visitor to this site you may have noticed that this is partly a blog about clothing and partly a real-time record of my psychic deterioration in the face of a growing watch obsession. The more I get into watches, the less I seem […]
Image credit: kate gabrielle / CC BY 2.0 One of my very first trips to the cinema after months of housebound isolation during the pandemic was to see a repertory screening of The Servant (1963). If you know the film, you might recognise a degree of irony in this, given that — SPOILER ALERT — […]
Image credit: Karl Zetterström / CC BY 4.0 There are a good number of contradictions that characterise my relationship to clothing. I have a habit, for instance, of acquiring far too much of it all while agonising constantly about paring things down. I’m drawn in by concepts like ‘basics’, ‘essentials’ and ‘timeless classics’ all while […]
Given its symbolic resonance — not to mention a history spanning millennia — picking a wedding ring might be the most important styling choice someone can make. From noble to naff, the signet ring has had a wide range of associations over the years, but today it’s a piece of jewellery anyone can make all […]
Image is my own / All rights reserved As far as workwear is concerned, you would be hard-pressed to find a more prevalent brand than Carhartt. Its only rival might be the likes of Dickies, or Timberland and Dr. Martens if you add shoes into the equation. Moreover, despite its widespread streetwear adoption several decades […]