Dress for Success with Fielding & Nicholson and Risch. With some trepidation myself and Dominik Risch of Risch Shoemakers, Zürich, planned to hold an event on the 25th May.
After initially doubting the idea, we went about setting up the space and sending out invitations to old and new clients. We were not disappointed and ended up filling the showroom, with almost 50 attendees on the night! The plan for the night was a presentation by me on how to dress for success in a post-COVID world, a presentation by Dominik on the art of shoe making, followed by a charity auction in support of Medicines Sans Frontiers.
The evening was a massive success and the tailoring prize raised £2,300, with the shoes experience raising an additional £800 (not bad for my first time as an auctioneer!). The main advice of my talk was that the traditional office wardrobe of business wear and smart casual has now been split into three segments: High quality suit and shirt pieces, smart casual wear and what I termed ‘casual casual’.
We’ve found that the suit has become less worn, but when it is being worn the quality and fit needs to be higher than before, using better cloths than we have traditionally opted for. The smart casual wardrobe consists of jackets, casual shirts, matching chinos and / or smart casual trousers such as flannels or patterned wool.
The ‘casual casual’ can now also be tailored with bespoke jeans, high quality sweaters, hoodies, sneakers, casual pants, polo shirts and T-shirts. The talk was well-received but by far the highlight was when our client Sami Kalliola spoke about his experience of bespoke and creating a new ‘boho chic’ outfit for a wedding.
The outfit is completely unique and consists of a plain beige lightweight suit, blue waistcoat and nehru style collar. Sami picked up two pairs of shoes on the evening, one which matched perfectly with the suit fabric. Sami mentioned that all his previous tailors had been ‘sh*t’ which brought about roars of laughter. He’s a very happy client and this was a brilliant stage to share his observations.
Another good friend of the brand, Phil Rush, won a competition we held and we flew him in from the UK to attend in person. Phil is a lovely chap and thoroughly enjoyed himself. Following the evening we went for one to many glasses of champagne. I was happy to wake at 5am and get the flight back, exhausted. Phew..!
All in all a very enjoyable evening and many of the guests exchanged details and will undoubtedly become good friends. We’re planning a series of events, including a fine wine tasting in London next, so watch this space.