I received a call from Derek on Tuesday evening: “All my outfits so far have been very casual. I have a meeting on Thursday I’ll be dressing for, will send you an update on that.” Now, most of us would consider a cravat and jacket to be relatively far off the casual mark, but not so the Stylederektor, and on that, I am delighted to share the following non-casual outfit:

“Firstly apologies for the strange look on my face. It is known in the family as The ‘Platt Lip’ (named after my mother and her eight siblings, whenever they became angry they would form their lip into almost a straight line). Why have I a Platt lip? well Mrs Stylederektor had my brand new Galaxy 3 ‘phone to take this photo of me in my business wear, and I was apprehensive as to whether she could use it correctly.

In my job I meet a real cross section of people. The key thing is to be well turned out, it generally shows respect to your clients.

I’m wearing a dogtooth check suit. I’ve owned several over the years. This one is a Marks & Spencer Autograph. White shirt from Hawes and Curtis. As Trappatoni, the great Italian Football Coach said, 4:4:2 is like a white shirt, it never goes out of fashion.

The tie is a black Churchill Spot from New & Lingwood. White silk square, and highly polished Church brogues.

So forgive The Platt lip, and just admire the outfit.”

One of Derek’s more eccentric updates there.

Loving the fine example of a parental technology breakdown though, in that he and Mrs Stylederektor got as far as using the new ‘phone to take the photo, but then fell down at the hurdle of simply taking another picture when the first one didn’t look quite right. You got that far people – just finish the task!

This incident belongs, I feel, to the well known school of ‘technology quirks of the over sixties’, which also includes: signing off texts (parents – we already know it’s from you), leaving a lengthy voicemail in response to a missed call (saying – ‘I had a missed call from you’) and confusion regarding the ‘reply all’ option on e mail.