What the MR PORTER team is wearing right now.

There are few things that build a man’s character more than taking a style risk. Some things we can pull off; some things we’re doomed to fail with. That’s just how it works. But if you never try, you never know, and trying is part of the fun. At the moment, from belt bags to tie-dye, fashion is full of daring stuff and since we at MR PORTER work on its front lines, it’s only right that we share with you some of the risks we’ve been taking lately…

I’m doing that thing where I’ve developed a deep level of nostalgia for something I was never really that into the first time it came around. Lay the blame on the heatwave, because the thing in question is tie-dye, and it’s really brightening up my summer. This particular thing started for me on a trip to San Francisco in March (where I did some shopping in a skate shop I’m definitely too old to shop at), but I can’t pretend I haven’t been influenced by the brave souls who have put tie-dye on the luxury fashion agenda in the past five years, including Mr Craig Green, Mr Pierpaolo Piccioli at Valentino, Mr Gosha Rubchinskiy and The Elder Statesman’s Mr Greg Chait.

Anyway, the great thing about tie-dye is that it essentially doesn’t go with anything, so you can wear it with everything. It all feels wonderfully slack, as if, as soon as you sling one of these pieces on, you’re not chained to the daily grind, but, in fact, just a step away from dragging a set of bongos to the beach, or moving to a treehouse in Oregon. The reality, of course, is that the main difference it’s made to my life is I now roam round the office looking like a carnival fortune-teller – one that stares intently at a multi-tabbed Google Chrome window instead of a crystal ball – and people sort of swerve out of the way politely. Maybe the whole tie-dye thing, on reflection, is just a symptom of heat-induced madness. I mean, do I seem OK? Should I worry?

I’ve long wished that I could wear white jeans, but have never considered myself worldly or refined enough to do so. Every time I think of buying a pair, a voice in my head pipes up and says something like, “Who do you think you are, Serge Gainsbourg?” Anyway, I finally plucked up the courage to give it a go this summer and invested in a pair from Arpenteur in advance of the Henley Royal Regatta. As it turns out, I needn’t have worried. Everyone said I looked fine. I did get quite a lot of tomato ketchup on them, though. White denim is a style risk after all – just not in the way that I’d originally thought.

This may not seem like such a risk in the grand scheme of things, especially with men’s fashion in the current state of extremities that it is, but for someone who is far more comfortable in a black or white T-shirt and jeans, a shirt with a wild jungle print on it, or one festooned with 16 sailboats, is something of a departure from my usually sober style preferences. But this summer has been rather unpredictable – whether it be in terms of climate or world politics. So if you’re not one for baring much skin and wearing, say, sheer vests, or buying clothes bearing political slogans (post-ironic, sincere or otherwise), the least you can do is wear something with a bit of a daft pattern on it.

Socks and sandals have, at least as long as I’ve been alive, been regarded as two things a man could never wear at the same time. Indeed, is any clothing combination more universally abhorred? The concept even has its own Wikipedia page, which refers to socks and sandals – I think rather kindly – as “a controversial fashion combination and social phenomenon”. Socks and sandals are not for fashion writers; they are for retired uncles who belong to the local birdwatching society and drink shandy in the garden. But, like dad sneakers and belt bags, the flagrantly unfashionable has become strangely cool. (Socks and sandals being sucked into the fashion machine is the combined fault of Mr David Beckham, Mr Justin Bieber and Vetements, which put them on the runway last season – since then, it’s been fair game.

I’m not often bothered by trends when it comes to my own style, but I know an opportunity when I see one. It is hot outside at the moment, and the idea of squashing my feet into my chunky, stuffy Ozweegos didn’t appeal, but neither did baring my hobbit feet to the office. So I bought some Birkenstocks and socked up. I can’t say I got many compliments, but perhaps I just didn’t notice – my feet were singing too loudly with a breezy comfort to notice.

We can mark the bum bag’s transition into a legitimately fashionable accessory to around the same time we started calling them belt bags, waist bags, utility harnesses or any of their other aliases. Once it shed its humorous connotations, a whole new world opened up. It’s all about convenience above anything else. I mean, why stuff your pockets with your phone, your wallet, keys and whatever else when you can store it away in a Saffiano leather-trimmed camouflage-print buckled belt bag by Prada? Especially when you’re scatty, like me. These new iterations in leather, nylon and camo-print aren’t just on trend – utility wear is back in fashion, after all – they’re entirely practical too. Time to buckle up, I say.