In one interview I was asked about my attitude to dress codes

In one interview I was asked about my attitude to dress codes. In truth, mine is simple: irrespective of the whims of event organisers, I wear whatever I consider appropriate and whatever I happen to have to hand. Remember how Anna Wintour dressed for the recent Met Gala? In a perfectly ordinary look, as though she had simply popped out to the opera, and she did not fall to pieces under the camera flashes in the least.

A notion now holds sway, purely one imposed by marketers, of course, that at every new public appearance one must invariably wear something new. This, evidently, does nothing to raise the quality of outfits, since people are merely chasing a rapidly changing picture, to say nothing of the fact that a decent suit may take some ateliers up to six months to make, and naturally, if one prefers a large number of ready to wear suits to an individual, one-off and expensive commission, one may end up with an entire wardrobe of careless stitching and imperfect fit, for instance.

Quite unexpectedly I came across a column by a Californian expert in men's fashion, who discusses the perfectly tailored jacket using the leaders of world states as examples, who, on the whole, do not always dress impeccably. It turns out that a model of classic men's style may be found in King Felipe IV of Spain, who has outdone even Daniel Craig in this respect.

But the most interesting thing is not that the King of Spain has a heap of impeccable suits and takes care to look good, without yielding to the pressure to appear in something new at every outing, but that, as it turns out, for most of his life he kept not merely to one style, but to garments made by one and the same man.

The Spanish royal family for decades made use of the services of one and the same tailor, Jaime Gallo, right up to his death in 2015. This man had been dressing Felipe IV since the age of eleven.