Today, an introduction to what I find I need to combine with my generic suits and shirt combo for the average day of working hard in the Finance mines of the city of London. I've recently realised that I've taken on a sort of Tom Baker meets Ted Baker style and quite like it for the winter months.
These are my daily essentials currently. Shoes (obviously), scarf, phone, watch, bag and overcoat.
The iPhone is pretty self explanatory. I'm a nerd first and foremost, and I need my nerdy shinies, so I load it up with games, apps and comics (don't judge, they make perfect tube reading) and chuck it in my pocket. Keeping a charger at work and home means I don't have to worry about it dying on me and the Belkin skin has kept it impressively undamaged over the last 6 months.
Next in the heap are the shoes, from our good friends at Blue Inc. I started off honestly not too keen, because the soles were pretty much frictionless, but after a couple of weeks these are my go-to work shoes. They're just so comfortable and go with most of the suits I've got without being too plain. Also the lack of laces makes life easier at 6am when I leave the house. These make me especially happy because of how difficult it is to find shoes in the canoe-like scale I need for my size 12 feet which don't leave me hobbling like a giant with back pains.
Moving along to the pile of colour, that's a hand knitted 9ft long scarf made by my loving mother a few years ago for a Tom Baker Dr Who costume. It was abandoned for all but fancy dress until this winter when I realised it was both awesome and incredibly warm. Now I rarely leave the house without it. This has lead to people humming the Dr Who theme while walking behind me and a fair number of questions about TARDISes (TARDI-I is clearly not the proper form but sounds funnier...) I honestly wear it because I enjoy walking around with a giant scarf flowing in the wind, made more fun when wearing my huge jacket. The over-coat was randomly found around my house, no doubt inherited from some cousin or relative, but it's a solid jacket and incredibly warm and sturdy. It also allows me to wear it with a suit on, but never creases the suit underneath, a useful feature of an overcoat. The ridiculous length of it also means that people often ask to try it and end up looking like they're wrapped in a large black duvet.
Possibly my favourite item in the pile is the bag. At first glance it's not too special, but on further examination, this Fuchs messenger bag is made of fully waterproofed felt (it's survived monsoons with lecture notes in and not a drop on them), with a really awesome design using velcro that means it can be dis and re-assembled to varying sizes, very useful if like me you end up either having one bag thats always too big, or two bags that never quite fit everything. This bag at full size can easily hold a laptop, slr, a couple of books and some water. The fold over top also means that on the tube I know noone can get in and nick my stuff. I've only ever seen this bag sold on www.charlesandmarie.com (a fantastic site), but not sure if theres any left in stock, if you've got the cash, I'd recommend it, 1 1/2 years of daily use and not a scratch on it.
The last and newest item is my new watch. A Nixon Spencer
For some scale, here it is lined up with my other recent watches
In order, A TokyoFlash Scope, Nixon Spencer and a Fossil watch I forget the name of.
As you can probably tell, I like large watches with something a bit different about them. The Fossil one is a kinetically charged watch with half the face missing so you can watch the pendulum spin. The Scope is frankly just shiny and cryptic and the Spencer is beautiful and has the dual analog-digital time. I'm sure I'll find a new one I want soon enough, but until then, this makes me very happy.
So those are my accessories on the typical work day, but this leaves out the biggest and best one obviously, my lovely lady;
Although most of you would probably prefer her accessories....
(by the way, I've still got some stored pics from food trips/restaurants I can write up if anyone's interested...)
