WARDROBE, PLEASE GROW OUT OF CONTROL.

I want my wardrobe to take over my entire living space. I’m not talking socks in the butter dish and ties in the marmalade but rather a sense of glorious mis-matchery, my clothes becoming an almost subconscious choice, integrated with my living space (if that makes ANY sense). I used to think it was silly for men to have too many clothes; and the longer I examine men’s style, the more I believe we are mis-fed with contradictory fashion advice. Some people tell you to edit down, create a working wardrobe, buy only what’s neccessary; but in my experience, it’s a mean-spirited, boring way to live when life’s too short. I want chaos. THE BEST-DRESSED GUYS I KNOW (more on that very, very soon) all have sprawling, evolving, bought-on-a-whim wardrobes.

My messy wardrobe, yesterday.

An order of sorts is needed; I want things to be categorised in one place, but I think thinking about what I wear too much, being too calculated, often results in total FAIL. Fail for me, fail for my clothes. I keep adding things like a recipe, like George’s Marvellous Medicine; it often feels like this beg-steal-borrow approach, acquiring rather than just buying, inheriting, borrowing.

Somewhere in there: b Store shoes, Gasius t-shirt, vintage Laura Ashley trousers, Cheaney brogues, an Edifice trench.

I used to have a real complex with buying just ‘designed’ pieces and wearing them in the context the designers wanted me to. It felt like cheating to buy bits of womenswear, customise things myself (dyeing, re-sizing, cutting), or combine non-fashion items like the workwear jumpsuits and bags I talked about recently.

But in my analysis of stylish guys over the past year or two, it’s just a key component in everything they do. A model on a recent shoot had the most amazing necklace, a wooden deer’s head and a giant metal key. The former, a Christmas decoration looped to a shoe string; the latter, a toy spray painted gold. Worn with sample-sale McQueen and H&M. All of this is what I want to investigate; who needs wardrobe minimalism when you can make your own jewellery or swap clothes for free?

Bags, in bags, by a bed.

It’s also more pertinent given my recent PERSONAL ORDERS with designers. It’s impossible to calculate exactly what I’ll be wearing and how I’ll be wearing it, which makes whim-purchases the only option. The burgeoning list of Carolyn’s cape, Carola’s shirt and trousers, Omar’s shearling-collar jacket and Martine’s padded shirt just got added to with Lou Dalton’s jodphurs, denim and velvet shirt and waxed jacket. Perhaps they won’t go together, perhaps they will, but I’ve stopped worrying and learned to love the chaos.

BRIGHT LIKE NEON LOVE.

Maybe I’ve been listening to too much Cut Copy (I have), but the title of their album just sprung to mind when I found these press day images on my laptop of PETAR PETROV‘s wonderous a/w 09 collection.

So what looked like by-the-numbers PETROV on a catwalk (and even that’s a thing of wonder) up close appears to be much more nuanced. Navy and pink gloves in perfect leather. A powder-pink shirt under a hot pink knit. A FEW THINGS IN CHARTREUSE. Even CHARTREUSE SHOES, which you would be looking at now had my camera not died. Imagine them like this: similar to Raf’s S/S 09 Doctor Martens, in softer matte leather, and NEON. I’ve been toying with the idea of HEAD TO TOE NEON (monochrome, naturally) since Topman Design’s neon tracksuits this season, which of course sold out. It’s also something Carola Euler picked up on for her A/W 09 range, and of course Calvin Klein Collection S/S 09 as immortalised in about a thousand Spring biannuals.

But the idea of doing it in winter, against crisp whites… well, A/W clothes do go on sale in the height of Summer. That’s about justification enough for me.