And you had Austin in the provinces selling Brooks Brothers up until the 90s, certainly in the 80s. In Chester at least.

But I suppose in the pre-internet world, you had to be very sussed (at risk of using that word) i.e. in the right place, with the right shops and access to get at the clobber. Inevitably, that meant London, but of course, you had all the Cunard Yank thing going on and Harry Stedman's (dad and lad) when Liverpool was the centre of youth culture for a brief time, before the Merseybeat Sunset....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_MqfF0WBsU

In the UK, I assume that for a long time London was the best accessible spot for getting ivy kit. But over a decade ago the internet became widespread, and the days of London being an 'ivy hotspot' (if ever those days existed) became ancient history.

True, good stuff can be found in London - but then so can all those dreadful French jackets that spoil so many outfits on the what are you wearing thread.

Still whatever floats your boat. Personally I'll stick to vintage with select new US and occasionally UK bits. Rarely the latter though.

Practical sure - I can understand why cotton jackets are now considered superior in many ways to the manmade norm for summer jackets back in the day. Now we just need someone to produce a cotton sack jacket that actually looks good.

Actually O'Connell's do some I've considered numerous times, but even on sale I can never take the plunge. Lapel gorge is too high for one thing. Probably the vent is too long too.

Its all about 3 for a tenner FOTL tshirts down SB market. That's where all the cool kids go.

Of course, a city that has 18 million people is going to have a lot more going on than a regional city. London is going to win by sheer numbers alone. But if we were to use percentages or ratios to repesent a town and not the vastness of population, I wager that London is only as moderately hip or sussed as say, Manchester. From an Ivy perspective, we may find the port city of Liverpool was vastly more in-tuned with the zeitgeist of modern jazz and American style in the 50s, as a percentage of population of the city, than London.

Incidently, there was in yesterday's Telegraph a column by a journalist espousing the position that he would rather be poor in London than rich in Hull. The comments to this ridiculous article were enlightening, but the article betrayed the elitist and bigoted views of our metropilitan elites. Interestingly, the said journalist has started his career writing for a socialist rag, which didn't surprise me.

If you expand the geographical area to include continental Europe, then from a modern jazz and American style point of view during the late 50s and early 60s, then London was a provincial back-water, closed and inward looking.

And army bases, a significantly larger presence in western Germany and also Japan which played a major-part in the modern jazz diaspora into these countries. But a significant factor in the UK was the restrictive music union which all but forbid professional American musicians from playing paying gigs in the UK. Hence all the major tours by JATP, Chet Baker et al up until the early 60s missed-out the UK.

The belief that London was center of the modern jazz scene is a myth.

He looks like your standard Essex based hardcore/jungle Dj from 1993