A couple of years ago, a friend asked me for advice on dressing down his normal suit-and-tie wardrobe. Like many men, he wore suits (in worsted wool) to the office, and jeans or chinos at the weekend. The office was becoming more casual, however, a...

As Permanent Style is now 11 years old (that past year went quickly…) I thought it would be nice to consider what my favourite 11 posts from that little-more-than-a-decade. And I’d be really interested to hear what your favourite is too. It??...

This week is vintage week. You didn't know that, but it is. We're starting today with an article on a vintage piece of mine; we continue on Wednesday with the advice of three experts on buying vintage; and we finish on Friday with an interview about ...

Choosing a suit cloth is, in some ways, harder than any other area of clothing. Because they all look so similar.  If we leave aside the more aesthetic - and subjective areas - of colour and pattern, we are left with dozens of similar-looking suiti...

This is an update on availability of our book The Style Guide - with the sweet sweetener of an extract from the Accessories chapter. So far, The Style Guide has sold just over 1000 copies, out of a total run of 2000. So they're going pretty fast - ...

Update on the launch of 'The Style Guide':The Style Guide, the new book by myself and photographer Jamie Ferguson, will launch next Thursday at Fenwick of Bond Street, from 6:30pm.If you would like to come, please RSVP to [email protected]...

I was in York last week. It’s where my wife grew up, and I’ve been dozens of times over the years, though not for the past three or four. The centre has a lot more closed shops since Covid; it’s quite sad. But I did notice one big new shop on P...

When I was growing up, the ‘Duffer’ of St George meant hoodies. You saw them on people like Jamie Oliver and David Beckham, and ripped off in every street market. It seemed to be the definition of an empty hype brand. But that was the tail end of...

I’ve been buying and wearing more corduroy in recent years - including the new dark-brown jacket above, from Sartoria Ciardi.  I think the reason is that if you’re not dressing for a formal office, worsted is likely to feel out of place; flannel...

Linen has long been a favourite for tailoring intended for hot weather. Its prime appeal is it's cool to the touch (a lot more than wool, and a little more than cotton) because the fibre is a good conductor. Metal feels cool for the same reason. Li...

So this is pretty exciting. We've just completed on our first physical space for Permanent Style - a showroom and office on Harley Street, a couple of blocks from Oxford Circus. The plan is that this will have two functions: an office for me, Lucas a...

Printed (50oz royal twill)As more men wear ties to work again, it is important to understand the small but important differences between the textures of ties. This is essentially what drives the formality of a tie, and many men when returning to ties...

Someone asked me the other day when I'm going to run out of things to write about. To be honest I have yet to have that problem - there's usually too much rather than too little.But as one writes more (1612 posts and counting) it's nice to work on...

Mention: Great to have support Book proudly printed in London Increased quality on previous version - better paper, matte yet shows detail, crisp. And binding so can open fully Sold about 600 of the run so far. 

Last month, we organised a dinner at the beautiful Beaumont Hotel to celebrate The Style Guide - the book published earlier this year by myself and photographer Jamie Ferguson. There had been official launch events, and signings, at Fenwick's of Bo...

  In this next article in our series on shirtings, we describe and define the different types of fabric (oxford, chambray, denim) with both text descriptions and illustrations. They are set out in groups by the part of the process ...

[This is the latest in a series of posts on Cloth that has now built into something very substantial: browse the others on the dedicated page here] The use of synthetic fibres in cloth for tailoring is generally frowned upon by consumers, and wit...

  Oddly, readers ask about style points on trousers more frequently than on jackets. Perhaps it’s because we don’t cover them as much. In this article therefore - the seventh in the Suit Style series - we’ll tackle one of th...

Luxury fibres like cashmere or vicuna can make lovely, indulgent cloths for sports jackets. Having mostly stuck to linen, tweed or related mixes in recent years, I recently commissioned a jacket in 100% cashmere (from Eduardo de Simone) and it’s ...

In many ways, tweed should be the perfect material for a modern man. It is practical, hard wearing, and can be dressed up or down, from almost-formal to definitely-casual. On the formal side, a navy tweed jacket, grey worsted trousers and button-down...

This is a summary and analysis of the high-twist wools available from different mills and merchants.  As with the linen one we did last year, the aim is to set out most of the range so that bespoke customers know if their tailor is missing something...

This is the second in our series looking at style aspects of shirts. As with the previous one - on shirt collars - it will focus on sensible advice, rather than illustrating the myriad gimmicks with which menswear seems to be particularly plagued...

The next chapter in our Shirt Style series is on checks and related patterns.  The first, looking at stripes, was surprisingly popular.  I always imagined this type of article would be most useful in the long term - as a piece to look up, to li...

y Aleks Cvetkovic Having now been to my first Royal Ascot, it strikes me that the hardest thing to do with morning dress is to get the details right, and in so doing capture a kind of comfortable ‘old school’ elegance without looking like you’r...

Linen : Linen We haven’t done one of these in a while, but a reader requested one in a comment on the ‘How to pick shirt fabric’ article, and it reminded me how useful people find the sliding scales.  The idea is we break down two categories o...