The Staple: White Shirt

It's pretty safe to say that there's not much more of a menswear wardrobe staple than the classic white shirt. I've blogged about it before, but this return of my somewhat-sporadic updates was prompted by an email dropping into my inbox from the lovely people at Jermyn Street shirtmakers Charles Tyrwhitt. Entitled the White Shirt Challenge, it's a classic Ronseal job: take a white shirt and make it interesting. Now since last LFW, I've been toying with the idea of a fur collar, so in my best Blue Peter mode, I decided that this was the right moment to trial it. I picked up an old baby's faux-fur jacket in a charity shop in Hastings for 4 quid, made a template of the collar shape of the shirt and chopped off a portion to fit the collar. Luckily fur has a shaggy edge, so it didn't need to much careful trimming and (not being a dab hand with a needle or thread), I safety-pinned it in place. For some reason, it made me think military, so I upended my enormous box of badges and made this lil militaria-inspired collage on the breast before teaming the finished article with a pair of Helmut Lang military trousers, a Reiss patent belt and these lovely (and in need of a resole) Russell & Bromley patent boots. Et voila: look complete. I'm pretty pleased with it tbh - it's been a while since I did any kind of bloggy/customisation thing and this one came around at the right time. LMK thoughts through the usual channels. And who knows, a regular return to blogging soon? Let's hope so.