A very traditional men's outfitters

Enjoying the New Year's celebrations in Dorset, the males in the party visited a very traditional menswear shop in Swanage as one of us had forgotten his dinner jacket. A similar lapse of memory two years ago had led to the discovery of this shop by another friend who had left laden with bags of purchases, including a Harris Tweed jacket and other goodies.

It's one of those shops that smells deliciously of new clothes as you enter. It takes some minutes browsing to see what is available - and there is much more than is at first apparent. Initially I assumed that the hat boxes were for decoration, as only a few rather ordinary hats were on display. I had been thinking about buying a hat for a while and, to my amazement, it turned out that the boxes were full of trilbies, panamas, tweed caps and hats of all kinds.

Grey Fox

Well, naturally, I came away with an elegant brown fur Newmarket trilby. The photos are not high quality as they were taken on my mobile phone, but they give some idea of the possibilities. The service was outstanding, my friend had his new trousers adjusted to fit him within ten minutes - all by the business's owner (since 1968). A modern business fusing this standard of service with more modern marketing would be an unbeatable force.

The moral of the story is, don't be put off by traditional window displays; get in there to discover the hidden gems.

I rather patronisingly assumed that this traditional business wouldn't have a website; well, it does, although I doubt they're set up for high-volume on-line selling - Ashleys Menswear Ltd, 44 Station Road, Swanage, BH19 1AF.