The Plain Clothes Detective is sleuthing out real people who like pared down style. Fighting back against logos, fripperies and bling. Ageless graphic minimal chic.

The Look:  Seersucker Shirt by Carolyn Massey from Asos, Jacket; French Connection seven years old, Jeans; Grey Levis 511, Shoes; Clarks Ebony Vintage Desert Boots.

Louis always looks cool and has some good tips. Through him I discovered Vans Authentic white canvas shoes which they actually make in women’s sizes as well as men’s. Praise be! Often all the best trainers and shoes, it seems to me, are in men’s sizes only. Louis is a trainee stone carver so his budget is fairly minimal. He finds things in second hand shops, buys new items very selectively and  hangs on to old favourites.

       The Look: Black trousers; Woolworths – South Africa, T-shirt; Basic Gap, Mandarin Cashmere Jacket;  Shang Hi Tang, Bag; Louis Vuitton, Shoes Callaghan

The Look: French workwear jacket, 10 years old Portobello Road. Black Capri Pants; Gap.

We’re very fond of these workwear jackets, they go anywhere, are really durable and improve with age. You have to ferret them out, the stall that stocked them in Portobello no longer exists but you can find them on the The Carrier Company website, T. Burrows do a man’s version and Margaret Howell and Uniqlo have produced them in the past. Lindsey wears hers all the time, especially when  heading off to do some shopping for her ‘Dinner Tonight’ column in The Times.

The Look: Jacket;  Malcolm Levine, 10 years old (Malcolm has now left Chiltern Street for the US). Trousers; Gap, this year.  Shirt; T. Burrows, James Street, W1.

“Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humour, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Here is Nick Baker in his patch of woodland in Kent, where he escapes from London to recharge. He always looks rather elegant, in an understated way. He is very discriminating and his forte is finding classic designer items in the sales. He is a great fan of T. Burrows in James Street W1, near St Christopher’s place. There will be more on T. Burrows (Michael Gennoe and Alan Murray) later, the shop is worth an entry of it’s own, stylists from various European fashion mags can often be seen nipping in there to check it out.

The Look: Dress; Cos, Ankle Boots; Natural Shoe Store last year.

At the moment skirts are either to the floor or above the knee. The gripe is that in a floor length number, if you are a certain age, it’s hard not to look like a relic from Cranford. Above the knee skirts mean you love the way your legs look, which is not always the way, knees being a key issue here. So where are the perfect just below the knee skirts? Check out your Mad Men boxed set for how, in the fifties, skirt length was just that bit longer and more flattering. Here’s a current version we found earlier.

The Look: Navy Blue Cotton Sailcloth Jacket; the Carrier Company £54, T Shirt: Gap.

Production Designer Andrew Sanders has minimalist taste and likes clothes that perform well under pressure when out on location. This jacket is well made, will last forever and gets better with age. It’s categorized as a gardening jacket but you could take it anywhere.

The Look: White Sailor Trousers and Matelot Top; Gap about 3 years ago. Shoes; Bensimon

Finding clothes is quite a problem these days if you are into low key fashion. Mary always looks very chic, but she is frequently frustrated by the amount of fussy details on current clothes and why so many things are very low cut, when not everyone wants to have everything on show. The current trend is for seventies style colours and loud details…a bad look then and a bad look now. Mary is in classic matelot gear, sort of early sixties St Tropez, when St Tropez was very cool. It still works.

The Look: Jacket from Pietra Santa, Italy where Emily also buys her stone. Trousers; (5 years old) Joseph.  Shoes: Wedding Shoes by Emma Hope (12 years old), originally white, dyed black by Emily.

Here is Emily in her monastery in Italy where she has been preparing for her show ‘The Maremma Heads’ to be seen at The Fine Art Society, Bond Street from 8th – 28th July.
As for her clothes, she uses a lot of plain black very effectively and is always altering or dying things she feels aren’t quite right. She has been known to splurge a fair bit on items that catch her eye, but she works very hard, in a tough, dusty environment, breaking into large rocks and a trawl round the shops is a bit of well earned, light relief.

Craig’s jacket, circa 1991; made from organic hemp by Ronnie a tailor in a basement on Bishops Bridge Road. Craig dyed it blue.  T shirt; organic linen made to measure by playwright and fashion designer Lorna Holder.

Craig Sams has always been ahead of the game in fashion, business and pretty much everything else. Here he is with his favourite seagull outside his greenhouse in Hastings. Having founded, among other things, Green and Black’s chocolate with his wife Josephine Fairley, his latest project is Carbon Gold a biochar fertiliser.

His overall view on clothes is this: if you shop for clothes quite often they don’t fit properly, the sleeves are too short, trousers don’t fit round the waist etc. It therefore makes more sense, long term, to have things made to  measure. He roots out small independent tailors, uses organic fabrics as much as possible and hardly ever buys anything new. As a result he has a lifetime supply of suits, shirts and t shirts.
Audrey of Hasting repairs everything, relines waistcoats etc; salvaging garments that would otherwise be thrown out.

Gone are the days when you could easily find a loose, plain white, cotton T Shirt. Now they are either stretchy, too tight, too thick, fitted, polyester etc etc etc. The nearest thing is to raid the men’s departments, root out an extra small and alter the sleeves, the length etc. What an effort for such a basic, easy and essential item. We used to find loose, white Hanes t shirts but those days seem to be long gone.