By Lucas Nicholson. With the closure this year of the Oi Polloi shop in Manchester by its owners, JD Sports, it felt like it was an appropriate time to talk about the state of independent menswear stores in the UK.  This is something of a passion of...

Quite a lot has changed in the five years since we last updated this Paris shopping guide (and yes, I know just as much as changed elsewhere - we will also update the others!).  Kenjiro Suzuki has left, the Viaduc des Arts has drifted, and the ex...

By Manish Puri Some years back, I was having a drink with my partner, Gemma, and a friend, Nathan, who shared my interest in clothes. Over a few pints and packets of bacon fries we delved deep into matters political and philosophical, before turning...

One topic I thought it would be good to cover during Dry January was giving away clothes that you found - for whatever reason - no longer worked for you. Finding good homes for good things, essentially.  A good example of this is the suede jacket th...

  By J Patrick Truhn, with contributions from Maximillian Mogg and The Heritage Post. ‘Berlin’ and ‘sartorial’ are not words one is accustomed to seeing in the same sentence. This “poor, but sexy” (to quote a previous may...

Hello lovely readers, Here’s our regular update on what’s coming into the PS Shop over the next few months - apologies for the short delay.  This only covers Spring/Summer, but feel free to ask in the comments about anything in Autumn/Winter, an...

I know I spend too much time looking at clothes I want, and not enough at ways to wear the ones I have.  There are many reasons for this. There’s the familiar retail fix, the fact I wear a range of styles, the fact that I can afford them (and reme...

In our voluminous Guide to Cloth series, we’ve already done an article on tweed. But that was about the history, the style and a little about the types. There was no mention of bunches. Today’s article takes on that introduction, fleshes out ...

Every evening, our family goes to the living room after dinner and watches an episode of a sitcom together. My wife, me, and my two eldest daughters all on the sofa. It’s lovely family time and now such a tradition that no evening feels complete wi...

Tokyo is one of the most varied, creative and stimulating retail experiences in the world. Not only is the city huge, but each area has a distinct feel and atmosphere, reflected in its shopping. There are small, niche brands everywhere, as well a...

There are more vintage shops in Japan than anywhere else. Particularly in Harajuku, the fashion area of Tokyo, and in Koenji, a district about 40 minutes from the centre.  But elsewhere too - Osaka, traditionally a fashion centre in Japan, has high-...

This is intended to be a partner to the ‘If you only had five shoes’ article in our Wardrobe Building guide, which was all smart footwear. Today’s piece is shoes that aren’t smart enough for a traditional office or - perhaps a better defini...

  By Lucas Nicholson I recently visited Los Angeles for the first time, and spent a very enjoyable week being proved wrong. Admittedly my hopes hadn’t been high for menswear in the city, but what I witnessed was wide appreciat...

By Bernhard Roetzel. In part one of this article I gave an overview of the state of bespoke tailoring in Germany, including its history. Today I will recommend some specific tailors, including my own experiences. Volkmar Arnulf www.arnulf-massate...

I’ve admired the style of photographer Alex Natt - who takes most of the pictures for Permanent Style these days - for several years. He’s not the kind of person to talk about it much, and he certainly doesn’t post fit pics online, but to me ...

I've had a few requests over the years to do one of these, our wardrobe-building guides, about knitwear.  One of the challenges of doing so is that very little is right or wrong, and a lot is personal. Still, there are some helpful things that ca...

Looking after your clothes well has always been central to the PS philosophy - it’s not enough to buy better things, they need to be cleaned, altered and maintained. This requires time that many of us seem to have precious little of these days, but...

By Manish Puri. During a recent trip to Madrid, I paid a visit to Casa Seseña, run by Marcos Seseña (the fourth generation of the family), and one of the few shops in the world still dedicated to making capes. In part one, I covered their 123 year-...

Looking back on it, I think I found the first few years of doing PS as a full-time job quite lonely. It’s hard to make friends with anyone in the industry when you’re constantly commenting on them publicly. The kind of person I was interviewing w...

Pedro is a reader in New York - one I’ve known to say hello to, but never really had a long conversation with. It was lovely doing so a couple of weeks ago. He’s thoughtful about clothes and his relationship to them, self-aware yet also a real me...

Two new stripes in the PS Oxford shirt have been added to the shop today: a light pink and a pale green. As is often the case with PS products, they have been chosen as particularly understated, easy-to-wear styles.  The pink is the same as that use...

It may still be cold outside (in the UK), but it’s late April and time for a write-up of the Spring/Summer pieces I’ve liked from our favourite brands.  If you have any questions about other releases from these brands (or indeed brands not featu...

There have been quite a few queries about unlined shoes, particularly loafers, in recent months. Ones about longevity and fit specifically have come up multiple times. I thought it would be good therefore to do a post summarising answers to them, in ...

By Manish Puri I’ve been commissioning made-to-measure and bespoke garments for six years.  In any other sphere, that amount of experience might qualify me as an expert. So, it’s telling about the nature of bespoke - the slow production times, ...

Recently myself, photographer Alex Natt and Carl and Oliver from Rubato (above) spent a day vintage shopping in New York. It was a lot of fun, and also I think interesting for those that are fairly new to vintage, or can find the process frustrating....