This outfit, which was shot for the recent cover story of Plaza Uomo magazine, is probably one of the most casual ever featured on Permanent Style. Much like the first image of our popular ‘Which office are you?’ post, it is the informal end of a...

Being able to judge the relative formality of an outfit is a key component of dressing well in modern, variable working environments. Many things contribute to this formality:Most obviously, formal items of clothing such as a suit, tie, or handkerch...

The hatch-grain loafers I commissioned with Gaziano & Girling back in 2012 have consistently been among my favourite shoes - both for me and for readers. The mid-brown colour is tremendously versatile (everything from cream to mid-grey trousers...

Layering knitwear can be both stylish and practical. Practical, because it gives particular warmth on a cold day - more, usually, than a shirt under knitwear. The multiple layers are also easy to add and remove as the temperature varies. And stylish,...

I am a 39-year-old father of three wonderful daughters. My family is without question the most joyful and important thing in my life.  Why is this relevant to Permanent Style? Two reasons.  First, this demographic is not well-represented in the ima...

These 'Building a Wardrobe' pieces have now been collected into a Guide, which will expand over time. You can see the list at the right (on desktop), at the bottom of this post (on mobile) or simply on its own page here.  When you first sta...

This latest article in our Wardrobe Building series is on sports jackets, odd jackets, or just jackets. Whatever you want to call them.  It’s an area with little understanding. I loved the exchange in The Times that a reader highlighted recentl...

This is part of a long-running series of articles known as the Guide to Suit Style, covering everything from the number of buttons on a suit to the difference between made-to-measure and bespoke.    It will continue to be added to over the next...

This series of posts on building a core wardrobe has proved incredibly popular - and now has its own dedicated Guide page here.  I’m sure it’s useful to guys that are just starting out, trying to decide whether to get that versatile pair of b...

As the last post on building a wardrobe - focused on Neapolitan tailoring - proved popular, I thought I'd do a second looking at shoes. But rather than look at my whole shoe collection, which numbers more than 40 pairs and would take a long time to...

   Readers often ask for 'capsule collections' of types of clothes - shoes, suits, ties etc. There are many reasons such a list is useful. It can point to the 'essentials': those things that provide the foundation of a wardrobe. It can suggest in...

   A capsule collection has many uses. When you travel for long periods, for example, you want a small but versatile collection of clothes that has a large number of permutations, and suits different occasions. And if you commute by bike (as I d...

If the suit has a future as a day-to-day item of clothing, it will surely be in more practical cloths than the fine worsteds of the past 30 years. Those, you would have to think, will be reserved for more formal wear. Suits and jackets, meanwhile, ...

Of all the articles I’ve written in our Wardrobe Building series, this might be the hardest. Even if we’re just looking at smart trousers, the pairs that suit somebody will vary hugely with lifestyle and with taste. A pair of whipcords is prob...

The key functional aspect of trouser cloth is the body that enables it to drape well and hold its shape. It should throw a nice, clean line down the leg, hold its crease, and recover from wrinkling when hung at the end of the day. Unfortunately, th...

Charcoal is a surprisingly useful colour in an odd jacket. Great with muted tones of tan, green or brown, it's also dark enough to go with lighter grey flannels. And charcoal is my favourite colour to wear with cream trousers. It tends to tone down...

The memory that comes back vividly is cycling over to the Drake’s office, on a Boris Bike. I was going to see Matt and Nathan for some reason, and then going for a drink afterwards. I had a moment of sheer panic. Riding along, I started freaking ou...

Men need a new uniform to adapt to air conditioning. Here’s a suggestion.Let’s start with history and practicality. Suit jackets were never meant to be taken off. A man, no matter what his place in society, strained to have a clean collar and cuf...

Today, the question I get more than any other is: what cloth should I use for a sports jacket?  Selecting cloth for a jacket is not easy, at least once you’ve gone beyond the navy blazer. Compared to a navy or grey suit, there's a dizzying range o...

Understanding formality is a cornerstone of dressing well.  Only when you understand that flannel is more casual than worsted, and a derby more casual than an oxford, can you begin to understand the impression clothes create - and how to put appropr...

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...

It’s taken a while to get to these remaining questions from our ‘You are the interviewer’ post (thanks again for those - some great questions in there). Hopefully I’ll be able to get through them all over the Christmas break. Today, we’...

Readers have asked for a while for this post: something recommending a core, versatile shirt collection. The idea of suggesting such ‘capsule’ collections is that they help a newcomer build a wardrobe, prioritising the things that will give them...

I had my first suit made at Anderson & Sheppard 12 years ago, in 2010.  As I begin a series looking at the making of a new A&S jacket, I thought it would be interesting, even fun, to look back at that first suit and the ones that followed it...

Last month I wrote a fairly comprehensive piece on the ways to deal with rain damage on shoes, when it happens.  In this article, I’ll outline the best ways to prevent that damage happening in the first place - both in terms of which shoes you wea...