Harem  pants, Ugg boots and leggings…. These are just a few of the fashion items that men hate women to wear according to a recent survey.  Casting my mind around, I have come up with the male equivalent of sartorial no-no’s that women hate to see.  However I have to confess that some females are equally guilty in partaking of the below!

 1)    Football shirts

 All over England, men of all shapes and sizes suddenly feel the need to don sweaty pieces of white and red polyester that costs the earth as the World Cup finally kicks off.

This is done in an effort to “support the lads” ie the England football team.  This seems rather strange – after all did men feel compelled to wear pale blue shirts with enormous flamenco sleeves to support Torvill and Dean’s Bolero routine in the Winter Olympics?  Or sport a pair of giant bottle-top glasses as Eddie the Eagle skied down the slopes in Calgary? 

 And I have yet to spy any male in a full set of cricket flannels when it’s England v Australia in the Ashes.

 The sad truth is even England footballers don’t look that great in kit.  That’s why Fabio Capello made sure the whole squad looked smart as paint in their made to measure, Marks and Spencer suits.  Fabio knows three piece suits look better than three lions any day.

 2)    Track suit bottoms

 They are always grey, inevitably spattered with white paint or bits of pizza with a few lager stains.  Their owners can be detected lumbering down the high street, resembling an elephant’s bottom.  There’s only thing that looks worse than a bloke in trackie suit bottoms – and that’s a woman.

 3)    Surfing Shorts

 Why is it men who wear restrained and tasteful colours all the year round suddenly feel compelled to run amok with colour, like toddlers in a Crayola factory?  Suddenly garish surf board shorts sprout along the beaches, decorated with huge hibiscus prints worn by men who normally deem stripy underpants sartorially risky.  The beach boy look is best left to others.  Stick to something in one colour or a tasteful print – your holiday photos will thank you for it. 

 4)    Cargo trousers

 These are now on the way out, thankfully, having peaked in popularity a few years ago.  There’s a whole myriad of things to hate.  The range of vile colours that resemble a muddied paint box – sludge brown, cabbage green or battleship grey which eternally depress the soul.

 Then there are the saggy pockets on the legs that encourage the wearer to fill with possessions thus appearing to have a rampant  fungus like growth up their legs.  If you want to resemble a beast of burden get a man-bag instead.  You won’t look any less ridiculous.

 5)    Shorts

 There is something very appealing about a man wearing a crisp, well-pressed pair of shorts in summer.

 However, most shorts never appear to have seen an iron for their limited summer life.  Made of cheap cotton, they have more wrinkles than a tortoise and fade dramatically after the first wash.

 To look best in shorts try on a few pairs to ensure that the proportions suit you otherwise you could end up looking like an over-sized scout.  Try and go for better quality fabric so the image is Out of Africa rather than out of Matalan.

 6)    Feet

 There’s no hiding your feet in summer sandals.  However, if your prehensile talons look less human and more suited to an iguana than a basic pedicure will set you off on the right foot.  Clip those nails properly and pinch an emery board (not a wood file!) to file down those snaggly ends.  Rub away hard skin with a pumice stone and you’ll soon have fairy feet. 

 However if you feel your feet are beyond redemption then please protect them from public view.  Take a tip from Princess Diana who hated her feet so much she never wore sandals.  Try canvas deck shoes or loafers (without socks) for a casual and summery look and no-one will be any the wiser as to what horrors lurk beneath.

By Lindsey Nicholls

Monday, 14th June 2010

Two things of late got me thinking about the history of our shop and court, the first was one of our oldest customers telling me he was a fourth generation (and perhaps fifth, his son just made an appointment) to patronise our premises over the many  years a tailor has been on our site. He regaled us with tales of his grandfather having all his military kit made here “when he was feeling more flush”. He himself bought his first dinner jacket at number 4 Castle Court in 1942, only to buy another a few months later after leaving and losing it after a “particularly fun night out on the razzle”.

The other was a chance meeting with a local historian who was beginning his research into the area of Birchin lane, where our court is. Its an area of the city that was relatively unscathed by the great fire of 1666 and in fact our court marks the boundary where the fire stopped. Like all good research it began in the local watering hole…. or one of them.

He began telling me that whilst reading some Shakespeare (as you do)  he stumbled upon a reference to our dear old Birchin Lane.

‘Thou sayest thou has twenty pound; go into Birchin Lane; put thyself into clothes;’

And so began his work, spurred on by our own interest and we in turn commissioned him to produce for us all in Castle Court a history of our location and premises.

No sooner had work begun when many more books opened to reveal words, poems and histories of tailoring..

‘No sooner in London will we be,

But the bakers for you, the brewers for me,

Birchin Lane will suit us,

The costermongers fruit us’

1600, Thomas Heywood

I will be soon putting on our blog a more thorough history and but in the meantime it is nice to know that we are the ‘last’ surviving tailor in London’s original Savile Row an area known since medieval times as the place to go and buy bespoke.

It is also rather fitting that next week we are in addition to our shop in Castle Court opening a new workshop on Birchin lane, where our city customers can (if they ask nicely) watch the suits being cut, constructed and finished.