A Moment of Prada

Reason #13530632 why I love Prada... check that packaging for one tie! I love packaging... often it's a make or break for me. Prada always gets packaging right. In fact, they have almost got the entire luxury shopping experience, from store design to service, spot on. It is the service which sometimes disappoints, but I love the way they present everything.

I love this tie too.. it's very Prada with its slightly geeky quirkiness. It's hard to see, but in the print each safety pin has a 'ghost' image in grey which adds visual depth. My other favourite tie is a Prada one from 2007 with lots of mini military aircraft on. I'm forever scouring eBay for the other ones they did that season with helicopter and satellite designs.

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I spent a large part of the weekend searching for a suit. I must have tried on every vaguely slim fitting designer suit in London, from Prada to APC, via Jil Sander, Raf Simons, Dries van Noten, Margaret Howell and Dior Homme. In the end (much to the relief of my bank balance) I ended up in Topman, which seems to be the only place which has anything off-the-peg which vaguely fits my size. I am not tall (an optimistic 5'8" AND A HALF), and I am not as slim as designers would like me to be at that height. Size 44 is far too small on the body, and size 46 is usually a stretch. Size 48 jackets often fit perfectly on the shoulders, and size 48 trousers are usually the right size on the waist, but size 48 suits are designed and cut for someone about five inches taller than me. Even Dior Homme's slimmest cut size 48 was drowning me in fabric. The biggest problem is with the trousers... obviously they can be shortened, and even the legs can be slimmed down (apparently), but the whole construction just doesn't work on a guy of my height. The rise (waistband to -er- crotch distance) is just too high on trousers designed for someone much taller, and it totally throws off the proportion. The Prada jacket I tried was beautiful and fitted very well, but when I put the trousers on too I suddenly looked ridiculously shrunken and the look quickly faded from Italian architect to 'little boy dressing up in dad's clothes.'

The quality of Topman suits is far from perfect, but you can mix and match different jacket and trouser sizes (which come in different lengths), and they do super slim cut tapered trousers with a very low rise which are an absolute godsend for mal-proportioned midgets. I know you *should* get any off-the-peg suit altered anyway (as men's magazines constantly bang on, and on), but in real life it's a bother. If I'm going to spend lots of money on a designer suit, the last thing I want to do is to have to spend another few hundred pounds on alterations before I can so much as wear it. And then there's the issue of actually finding time to see a tailor, and then to go back to collect the damn thing... Enough ranting. All I want is to look something like this, without having to resort to a dodgy Chinese height augmentation operation..

Raf Simons fall/winter 2005.