#style

Search

Introducing The Rake Values

Chris Mads

May 20, 2019

Introducing The Rake Values

Fashion is expensive. It is a well-known, thought little-discussed truth of the stylish classes that looking good, on the whole, takes money. There are stories of those who have pulled off a brilliant find hand have managed to come out looking like they have just rolled out of the front row at LFWM for the cost of a Nandos, but it is very rare. On the whole, buying well-made and good-looking clothes takes investment. And so it should, what you are buying is carefully crafted

Vans x Harry Potter are the shoes you need this summer

Chris Mads

May 15, 2019

Vans x Harry Potter are the shoes you need this summer

Accio trainers! I'm not going to deny, or apologise for, being a Harry Potter fan. The boy wizard, his friends and their adventures were the seminal fiction of my youth. I loved the books, I enjoyed the films and I do spend a fair amount of time trawling EMP's Harry Potter collection. If you haven't checked it out you should - it's here. So I am unashamed to admit that I love the look of these. Vans (yes those Vans) has teamed up with the folks behind Harry Potter to create a

Dressing Camp: Met Gala 2019

Chris Mads

May 7, 2019

Dressing Camp: Met Gala 2019

The Met Gala 2019 took place last night. The "Oscars of the fashion industry" took its theme from the current Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition Camp: Notes on Fashion. Historically, the theme for the evening has caused problems for guests - in 2014, event chair and Vogue editor Anna Wintour declared Benedict Cumberbatch as the only person who got that year's white tie theme absolutely right. For this year's iteration and its Camp theme, there was something of a style guid

A uniform: What do my clothes say about me?

Chris Mads

Apr 2, 2019

A uniform: What do my clothes say about me?

"You look very dapper. Do you always look so smart?" I had just stood up from the table to say goodbye to the contacts and clients I was having a drink with when this casual observation was directed my way. The scene was Yumn bar in Croydon's Boxpark and my attire was a three-piece, navy blue, double-breated suit from Next, with striped tie (also Next) and brown monkstrap shoes courtesy of Topman. Written down like that, the ensemble does seem dressier than the setting requir

untitled image

Chris Mads

Mar 12, 2019

Wolf & Badger opening party for LFW - VLOG

I took a trip to the new Wolf & Badger store in Coal's Drop Yard for a party to mark the launch of LFW. #style

Testing trends from fashion week

Chris Mads

Jan 16, 2019

Testing trends from fashion week

Pics credit to Shannon Flanders, Topman, Rowan Row, KRXU and Oliver Spencer The great and the good of the fashion world are currently in the midst of a whirlwind tour which kicked off in London with #LFWM last week and has since rolled into Florence, Milan and Switzerland...and counting. As ever there have been a lot of new looks and style ideas for AW19 pouring out of the shows through the websites and Instagram accounts of those in attendance. As a high street-shopping chap

Clearing out the wardrobe

Chris Mads

Nov 26, 2018

Clearing out the wardrobe

“The first step in solving any problem is recognising there is one.” This sentiment has been expressed in many forms and outlets, though possibly never better than by Jeff Daniels in the opening scene of Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom – yes I’m a journalistic cliché, but if you’ve not seen it then watch it here. Anyhow, recently I invited you to join me in a trip as I try to fix my wardrobe and style credentials after years slumming in the back alleys of ill-fitting jeans and s

My style manifesto

Chris Mads

Nov 8, 2018

My style manifesto

“Clothes,” according to designer Michael Kors, “are like a good meal, a good movie, great pieces of music.” I love the idea of clothes as something you enjoy and which allow you – through your personal choices of what you like and what you champion – to express yourself in another way. But my own relationship with style is not that simple. To keep it brief, I was not a stylish child. Or teenager. Or young adult, to be honest. My childhood is recorded in rafts of photos of a c

The summer of the waistcoat

Chris Mads

Jul 12, 2018

The summer of the waistcoat

A few years ago a young man sat at a desk in a small English town and rubbed his hand across a clean-shaven chin. As he sipped a cup of tea he peered out of the window at what was, presumably, a fairly mundane view, and contemplated the world going by outside and his place in it. Fast-forward a few years and it is all change. Now that man spends much of his time on international flights; constantly rushing for place to place. Gone is the hairless visage, replaced with a beard

Chris Mads

Jun 19, 2018

The art of the smart t-shirt

Is it ever acceptable to wear a t-shirt to a formal occasion? It is not a question I have ever really pondered because I've thought the answer was simple: No. That is until this weekend. To mark Father's Day on Sunday, my sister Kate and I had got our dad tickets to The Play That Goes Wrong. Apparently it's very funny, but I can't speak from personal experience. We were meeting at Christopher's (which I can recommend from personal experience) for dinner afterwards. But S and

Dressing for short men: Topman jeans

Chris Mads

Jun 6, 2018

Dressing for short men: Topman jeans

Shopping for jeans can be a very testing experience, primarily because jeans are quite a personal item of clothing. If you wear jeans then, chances are, you wear them a lot. So you want a pair which are comfortable, wearing, stylish and - most of all - which fit. The latter is a problem for those of us who are shorter in the leg. For the last few years I have been living in the same two pairs of (cheap) jeans which I cut off to make them fit. So, as I mentioned previously, I

Styling for the shorter man

Chris Mads

May 30, 2018

Styling for the shorter man

"Dressing well is a form of good manners." I heartily agree with this, much mis-quoted, assertion from style legend Tom Ford. But I have a problem. I am one of those people to whom the fashion world does not cater. I am 5'5", relatively slim and boast an impressively compact 28-inch leg. Believe me when I say there are not many shopping options out there. First, a little context. The lack of decent clothing available to me has not always been apparent. Simply put, this is bec

The dos and don'ts of wedding etiquette

Chris Mads

May 22, 2018

The dos and don'ts of wedding etiquette

Wedding season is upon us. I love weddings, particularly summer ones. What better chance to sit back and enjoy someone else's happiness in the company of family and friends. And maybe a drink and a dance or two. Who knows? But weddings do throw up all sorts of problems with etiquette, from dress to behaviour. First off I'm going to give you two key rules: 1) Ignore everything Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughan taught you in Wedding Crashers 2) All rules only apply about two thirds

Royal Wedding style tips

Chris Mads

May 21, 2018

Royal Wedding style tips

The Royal Wedding is in the bag and hopefully the happy couple have now settled in to enjoy the afterglow. Behave yourselves. As I write this the nation's newspapers and bloggers are currently picking through their thoughts on the big day. But I am focusing on one simple thing: what style tips can we take away from this most stylish of days? Some of the most sartorially conscious people on the planet were there. And some of the best stylists were doubtless involved in arrangi

Style Files: Steve McQueen

Chris Mads

Apr 16, 2018

Style Files: Steve McQueen

"There he was, about 5'7", skinny, but on nights out in Munich, if he walked into the bar, the women - whoomph - would be around him." So Tom Adams described one of the coolest-looking men who ever lived - Steve McQueen. The pair met filming the classic movie The Great Escape. McQueen's reputation as a womaniser comes as no surprise, but when I first saw this quote the thing that struck me was the first half of it. Steve McQueen was 5'7" I am aware 5'7" is not astoundingly sh

Chris Mads

Feb 7, 2018

Harry Potter has given us a style icon

I think I've stumbled across a new style icon without really realising it. The silver screen has offered us a fair few sartorial leaders over the years. Names that spring to mind include Steve McQueen in The Thomas Crown Affair - and everything else, Anne Hathaway's Andy Sachs in The Devil Wears Prada, Audrey Hepburn in everything, Cary Grant in North by Northwest, the casts of The Talented Mr Ripley and Call Me By Your Name and all of the various James Bonds. But there is on