Jacket Required.

Just been down to that London for the weekend, a weekend which consisted of typical northern tourism in and around our great capital, drinking myself sober in beer filled dimple jars, traveling first class, sleeping in shit hotels, walking way too many miles and visiting the UK's biggest trade show Jacket Required.
This is the second installment of the British menswear tradeshow held in London, whilst not exclusively UK brands it features several of our favourite labels (one or two notably missing) showing their up and coming A/W collections, or Fall as they say in this world of fashion, it was nice to get an insight into how these things work and rub shoulders with some the cream of menswear 'royalty', press and PR peeps and neck some free beer.
Based in a massive open plan warehouse in the lovely surroundings of Bloomsbury, this was a pretty big deal and done really well too, it was good to catch up with loads of people I've only ever really met via the internet but feel like I've known for yonks and finally put some faces to names, plus making one or two new acquaintances I'll hope to work with in the not too distant future too.
The show had a few old favourites showcasing their complete collections such as Universal Works a with another range of classic schmutter, smart shirts and coats, nice colours, patterns and bits of tweed, Garbstore, with a top selection of simple parkas and shirts based around proper old school hiking wear, with great subtle touches and a dead cool logo, BSA/camporee vibes come to mind.
Newer labels which caught my eye were some nice looking bits from Common People, ace hiking shoes from Veras in great shades of suede/nubuk with coloured laces, posh and quirky from Bedwin, some uber smart cycling wear from PEdALED, eco friendly infused shirts and coats from Two Thirds. Tuk Tuk shirts looking good in a variety of hard sourced patterns, fruity is the word. I even noticed one label had done a retelling of one of my favourite and most hard to find coats ever.
Whilst I'm not sure it was frowned upon, I don't think it was encouraged to take photos, so I pretty much kept my G12 tucked in my bag most of the time, people are understandably precious over what gets out with regard to a seasons worth of new product in a show that's pretty much invite only - but it's fair to say polka dots and camo will be surfacing a lot more than they have thus far, plenty of colours on show too, but also a lot more subtle and muted tones in each collection. Hiking boots and high performance outerwear is certainly here to stay for the time being too and again there seems to be more time focused on accessories too, such as the ever growing popularity of socks and bags, talking of accessories I'm not sure if there's something in the air down there but everyone appears to have become short sighted over the last year aswell, if you weren't wearing NHS specs you were the odd one out, come to think of it this screen's looking a bit blurry now actually, I might need an eye test! Good show, enjoyed it.
Thanks to Leila from Spin for sorting things out, shouts out to Laine Kitsu, David Keyte, Carl from Spiv/Dickies, Mark tuktuk and Jazzy from Veras, top guys.