I think you have to humble yourself before the process of starting and running a business. Only the incredibly fortunate achieve their success quickly. Most people, it takes many many years of incredible hard work, and many periods of severe poverty, and it kind of makes it all the better.

I think you have to humble yourself before the process of starting and running a business. Only the incredibly fortunate achieve their success quickly. Most people, it takes many many years of incredible hard work, and many periods of severe poverty, and it kind of makes it all the better.

I'm an advocate for buying few, but very good quality pieces of clothing, and if you do that you need to take care of them.

Work really hard, think carefuly about how you spend every penny, and be absolutely true to your own vision of your clothes and your brand. It has to be personal.

I think you'd have to be a pretty brave man to say "never go out of style," but men's suiting has been relatively stable for 100 years now. The single-breasted, two-button gray flannel suit, you could've worn it in exactly the same cut, shape and fabric in 1910 as you wear it in 2010.

Buy products of genuine lasting value from brands that take their manufacturing seriously. I have things that are 75 years old, like the dinner suit of my grandfather's that was made in 1933 by a tailor in Edinburgh. Clothes develop stories. You can remember where you've been through clothing that you've worn. I want products that are going to endure. I hate that we buy things that are disposable. We need to buy products with integrity.

I think we like to romanticise about past eras, and for sure there have been great ones (like the 1820s maybe, or the 1530s) but I don't think London has ever been more culturally and sartorially rich as it is now.