London Fashion Week and its intoxicating  mix of inspiration, craziness and verve is upon us. The manner in which the London branches of the design shows have accrued respect and influence over the last two decades is truly amazing. This has given a real fillip to the quality of work being produced by artisans and craftspeople in the UK. Today’s blog features the excellent collection of pocket squares from Rampley & Co. Find them at www.rampleyandco.com

It is wonderful to be able to showcase a quintessentially British company whose products are manufactured in the UK; Macclesfield to be precise. The re-invigoration of traditional industries in areas such as Shoreditch, Hackney and the textile-producing areas of Northern England has been nothing short of miraculous. Not only do Rampley & Co manufacture in the UK, their designs are often based on the work of British artists such as J.M.W Turner and William Swainson. We are particularly keen on the Harris Tweed collection which utilises the fabrics made by another example of a resurgent industry. Those wonderful muted and sludgy colours are deeply gorgeous.

You know how dear to our hearts art is at AlaraApothecary, so our love for beautiful silk squares printed with images from paintings in the National and Tate Galleries will come as no surprise to anyone. It is about time the British male re-acquainted himself with his inner dandy. The nation that gave the world Regency fashion and Beau Brummell has been reduced to dressing in toddler-wear and trackies. It is truly distressing. First impressions count, and if you don’t believe that to be true then we have a lot of work ahead of us. Below are pictures of some eye-candy rocking pocket squares. I rest my case.

Obviously an obsession with one’s image is not an attractive trait. However, once you decide that looking the best you can given your resources is a public service, giving the rest of us something fabulous to look at, it all begins to make sense. For all would-be nonpareils and nonesuchs out there, get thee to Rampley & Co. You could also demand their squares for birthdays, Christmas, Bar mitzvahs. There’s even a handy guide for the multifarious methods of folding your pocket square. Who knew? This confirms our suspicion that men are just as vain as women are. Fact.

Latest gem from Rick Stein while he was filming in Laconia, Greece. The word laconic comes from the taciturnity attributed to the people from that region. He retells the story of Philip II of Macedon threatening to invade and destroy Sparta after invading Greece. He sends a message to the leaders in Laconia saying,’If I invade Laconia, it will be destroyed never to rise again’. The Spartans replied with a one-word message ‘If’. He never invaded Laconia. I really must read Herodotus again. If you’ve never encountered this master historian and teller of tall tales, I urge you to rectify that error ASAP. He’s a hoot. I love that story. It almost overthrows my favourite example of a pithy message which is that sent by General Napier after he disobeyed orders and occupied Maini in the Sindh region of India. He sent a message home saying ‘Peccavi’. If you are not a latin-mass attending Roman Catholic, you need to do some research to find out why it’s such a good message.

Battlefield stories are full of these yarns. It is sometimes difficult to reconcile the indomitability of the human spirit with the agony and horrors that we are capable of. Deploring man’s warlike nature does not seem to have any effect on our behaviour. Of course, there will always come a time when we have to fight for our beliefs, in micro or in macro, with physical weapons or not. It brings to mind the old Chinese curse,’May you live in interesting times’.

Gallows humour is nothing new. One of my favourite stories is told about the US Commander Chesty Puller during the Korean War. Finding themselves outflanked by the Chinese army in the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, he said,’We’ve been looking for the enemy for some time now. We’ve finally found him. We’re surrounded. That simplifies things. Great. Now we can shoot at those bastards from every direction’. Talk about accentuating the positive. To all the warriors out there, no matter what your circumstances are – never bow down and never give in.

I leave you with another story about the Spartans. Their main meals consisted of a stew called Melas Zomos ( black broth). This gastronomic delicacy was made from pig blood, pig legs, salt and vinegar, and nothing else. Hmmmmm. Apparently the addition of vinegar was considered to be a sissy step too far, but it was included to stop the blood from clotting. That fact alone is wrong on so many levels. There’s an apocryphal story about a traveller from Sybaris (source of the word ‘sybarite’.The people from Sybaris loved their pleasures). After tasting Melas Zomos, presumably at spear-point, he said ‘No wonder the Spartans do not fear death. ‘