I can do you Ivy for £35, excluding tip.

I think you can get a decent vintage shirt, for a tenner. I've even got one as low as $3 with all the trimmings, in batiste oxford.

Last edited by THAW !!!! (2013-03-31 05:40:38)

Outlet Ivy ?

The Galleria in/near Hatfield has  Lands End and Gant outlets and a big TK Maxx (which seems to have a better choice of shoes than most branches, I've had Eastlands, Bass, Walkovers and Sperry there in last few visits).
Bicester Designer Village has Brooks Brothers (never seen anything worth purchasing tho') but few other likely candidates.

Factory shops can be a goldmine as well and only a Google search away.
The Midlands seems to be a hot-bed of shoes and raincoats/outerwear.

Any other suggestions ?

Outlet Ivy can be a dangerous dead end.

I was at the Outlet next to Dinseyland Paris yesterday:

Lacoste: the once proud vision of Reme totally and utterly destroyed. Cheap and nasty, except my wife bought several pique dresses, but for men forget it.

Ralp Lauren: overload of logos even on the chinos, poor quality and the fit ain't much better, but there was a massive line to the tills. The madras looked good initially, but on closer inspection it was just printed. A good business model though, everyone seems to like it, except me.

Facconable: absoutely miles above all the other competitors there. Great cloth, shame about the logo on the shirts, but this could be removed. Only problem, shirts 110 Euros. Not cheap for the student or limited budget. In this case, John Simons a much more cost effective and more definitive collar roll alternative.

Oh yes, the Facconable shop was empty.

Last edited by 4F Hepcat (2013-03-31 09:39:28)

Does this perhaps link with the current interest in Community Clothing? 
JFM, one can't help feeling, was being a little disingenuous.  He was, when the mood took him, a bigger clothing snob than most.  The snobbery, in fact, was - and often still is - the point.  Would you really all celebrate if you could find everything you wanted at a Westfield-type shopping centre?

In fact, I can't help wondering if this is partly why 'DressedWell' has sprung into action.

I've often thought that the notion of being 'sussed' carries a highly negative charge.  Nonetheless, it is about ninety nine point nine per cent of the Modernist aesthetic: being 'In The Know', abandoning a look, a style, a club, a form of music when it goes 'wavy', i.e. available to, not 'the masses' but those one considers 'inferior'.  A forum like 'DressedWell' is built upon this ethos.  But my aversion to buying in 'the high street' arises out of pure snobbishness - which is only a loaded word, after all, for discernment or discrimination.  If it were not so, chaps like TRS would happily drink the brand of coffee I buy in Aldi, 'Barista'.  But he doesn't.  He tells us he doesn't.  Nor does he want to buy his boxer shorts from M&S. 
JFM was an out and out clothes snob, his stance encouraged by his 'Ivy mentors' back in the mid-80s. 
It's all highly understandable if not always admirable.