oh so saville row: a sartorial serendipity spring story

First: Happy May Day!

Woke in the middle of the night last night and the May Muse gave me a great idea about my little facebook contest, but that will have to wait, because we've just driven back from a long day, and Mr. Dot and I haven't had our dinner. First we went to Oxford (where we saw Jen the Style Crusader and finally met Mr. Crusader, who is wonderful: a superhero, actually) - and I can't wait to see her post on their early morning proper May Day celebration, because it sounds like they had an amazing morning. (Oh, too funny: I hadn't seen it first but now that I'm looking at it, what did she call her post? 'Happy May Day!'And it's an amazing post.)

BUT... after that we had a long beautiful country drive, saw other friends, got stuck in tons of traffic getting back into London, it's dark and rainy and we're starving, and I wanted to get a post to you before we ate. And I suddenly remembered: three weeks ago, we met the most amazing young man, Robert, shown here.



We were on our way to meet friends in town, and while we were hanging out in the striped chairs in Green Park first because it was so lovely daffodilly, we saw at a far distance, a man walking quickly. We both said 'he's so Sartorialist' and Mr. Dot was saying, RUN, JILL, you can catch him, but I could see he was too far and walking too fast.

So it was really freaky that later, we saw the same guy on Saville Row, right outside the shop.

In his own words: "I'm 20 (21 from 2nd May!) and am a 3rd-year undergraduate student at the University of Kent at Canterbury, where I'm reading Military History. Being in my final year here in Kent and indeed Graduating in the summer, I hope to move to London (my family home is, however, in South Wales) from the end of July and live there for about a year before hopefully going to Sandhurst to train to become an Army officer.

I usually buy my clothes new, but always try to go for a 'classic' or vintage look - indeed, I think my silk handkerchief was the only vintage thing I was wearing that day: it belonged to my late grandfather, who also dressed as I do - perhaps that's where the influence started! My trousers are from 'Cordings' on Piccadilly, and my Blazer is actually Marks & Spencer - not usually known for a vintage look!
My shoes are made by Loake, and were probably the most expensive thing I was wearing that day - a good pair of shoes is worth the cost! My hat is by Failsworth, who do both modern and vintage styles - that hat is one their best items.

I actually own very few vintage items of clothes - I have an Evening Tailcoat and Marcella waistcoat for White-Tie events, and both these items date approximately from the 1930's - the trouble with vintage is that so often one will be quite unable to find anything to fit: generally, people were much smaller even 50 - 60 years ago than they are today."



(And, to be totally random, a shot from the same day: we had rode in on a double decker bus, and this is a pink trench that caught my eye in the Burberry window in Knightsbridge).

So I can't wait to tell Robert his post is finally up, and I wonder which day in May his birthday is. Robert: thank you for posing and Happy Birthday (AND, Happy May Day).

And that, my friends, is the end to today's Sartorial Spring Story. Time for dinner!