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 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.

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.

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.

The mistake many people make when they go to a bespoke tailor is they often think they need to do something special - either an interesting design feature, or a particularly interesting or unique-looking cloth. I say do the opposite. Stick to something really simple, because this will be a suit that you will really want to wear, so start with something very straightforward and you will get an enormous amount of joy wearing it.

The tailoring may be a softer, more draped, but I don't believe it's any less smart. For sure it feels more relaxed, it's a different kind of elegance, but I'd never call it casual.