As evocative quips go, my favourite among them is, “I don’t know nothing ’bout birthing no babies”, uttered by Scarlett O’Hara’s servant Prissy when commanded to aid in the impending arrival of her progeny. My go-to comeback has always been “I ain’t got no morning suit” each time my dear friend Ahmed ‘Shary’ Rahman, a man whose largesse overflows like the sweet goblets of wine in Valhalla, has invited me to Royal Ascot, the most fabled horse-racing occasion in all of Christendom.

O.K., so here’s the deal. It is ironic that as the individual that started a magazine about style, to my greatest shame I am not so secretly something of a slob. The comedic value of this was made abundantly clear to me at the previous Pitti Uomo, when the temperature shot to nearly 40 degrees and, unlike my immaculately dressed brethren, I was the first to sartorially tap out and don a pair of Rubinacci Gurkha shorts paired with a shirt more appropriate to the doorman of a moderately priced south-east Asian brothel. Of course, I’d forgotten that was the day I was to meet Ring Jacket’s President, Kunichi Fukushima, son of the company’s legendary founder, Jhoichi-san, a man with a style that is nothing less than regal. Upon being introduced to me as “the founder of ”, he did a doubletake at my garish ensemble and replied earnestly, “Are you sure?” Those acquainted with me in Singapore know that I am likely to