Eight ways to wear trek-inspired clothes in the city.

Question: what’s been the biggest story in menswear in the past decade or so? Answer: the inexorable rise of outdoorwear as fashion statement. With work-leisure and business-casual lines becoming increasingly blurred in a world that’s always on call, hoodies, fleeces and hiking pants have come in from the cold and been paired with more classic and tailored styles, in a look that’s been deemed “performance professional”. So how do you add that outdoorsy touch without going the full Ali G? These gentlemen prove it’s all about the cuts, the layers and the creative clashes. Best foot forward!

Final proof, if any were needed, that the word “anorak” is no longer pejorative. Modern rainproof jackets, like the multi-pocketed and zippered canvas and lightweight, metallic-tinted down varieties being modelled by these gentlemen, will keep the elements at bay without dampening your style. Practical enough to throw on over a T-shirt, yet fitted enough to counter-intuitively enhance a more tailored outfit, you don’t have to wait for one of those increasingly rare deluges to wear them. You’ll study their sharp cuts and winning detailing for a long time before the dreaded words “Kenny from South Park” come to mind.

Ah, the bum bag. Aka the belt bag, the buffalo pouch, the fanny pack, the kidney bag. A bunch of less than alluring names for something that was regarded until very recently as a less than alluring accessory, right? It was the exclusive preserve of hardcore runners (for stashing their rehydration pills) and 1990s festival-goers (for stashing, well, let’s not speculate). But now they’re back, made over and newly desirable, whether luxed up by Balenciaga or Gucci or quite literally elevated, in the case of this gentleman, who’s hoisted his smart green leather version into a rucksack position, making it technically, we suppose, a back-bone bag.

Nothing says “ultimate conspicuous comfort” more than this gentleman’s quilted-jacket-and-quilted-trousers combo. It takes the staple materials of hunting-shooting-fishing gear and nattily reboots them for an intrepid yet downy foray into the city’s canyons, where the top trophy you’ll bag is most likely a single-origin triple venti soy no-foam latte. You could follow this gentleman’s lead and accessorise with a checked scarf, but we’d advise against putting the outfit’s cushiony pliability to the test by walking out into oncoming traffic WhatsApping.

If someone comes up to you and starts enthusing about their “hot fuzz”, they’re not deploying some torrid euphemism or urging you to watch the Mr Simon Pegg/Mr Nick Frost comedy about Met cops going rural (good though it is). Rather, they are lauding the versatility of their teddy-soft fleece, which, in whatever iteration – leather-trimmed designer number or Patagonia’s polar OG – has gone way beyond normcore and, as this gentleman demonstrates, can be worn with a tailored topcoat to tone down the formality, ramp up the comfort and add a little “I’m-probably-not-going-to-climb-K2-but-I could-if-I-really-wanted-to” swagger.

Style cannot be imposed or inherited. It’s just something you carry with you. Never has this maxim been more fittingly illustrated than by this gentleman, who upends expectations by teaming his tweed jacket (read bookish, indoor) with a high-performance backpack, in this case from Patagonia (read sporty, outdoor, if not studying Magellanic penguin colonies from halfway up the Perito Moreno Glacier). It makes for a study of contrasts – of colours, textures, temperaments, old-school and new – and proves that, in an era when dress codes are all over the map, it pays dividends to go to the ends of the Earth.

About to embark on the 500-mile pilgrimage of the Camino de Santiago? About to head off to Pret for a chipotle chicken wrap? This gentleman’s choice of footwear and trousers is a measure of how far trek-inspired clothing has infiltrated the urban jungle. The colour-blocked Prada Cloudburst sneakers team nicely with the cuffed and zipped hiking pants, but both are sleek enough to work with smarter trousers and shoes. With “athleisure” done to death, we need a new term for such performance-enhanced dressing. Physicore, perhaps.

When Mr George Mallory made his ill-fated ascent on Mount Everest in the 1920s, he did so dressed for cocktail hour in a tweed suit and fedora. Today, in a dizzying inversion, many gentlemen, like this one, dress for cocktail hour as if they were about to tackle Everest. Khumbu Icefall-resistant hooded windcheater? Check. Cho La Pass-ready high-neck fleece? Check. Base Camp-compatible woolly hat? Check. Snow-glare-combating sunglasses? Check. The mountain-man moustache is an optional extra, but either way, all-terrainwear this rarefied will garner an avalanche of compliments.

He’s under starter’s orders, and he’s off…  to the boardroom to chair a meeting about next year’s sales strategy. This gentleman certainly isn’t the first out of the blocks when it comes to adapting the styles of track and field to navigate the city’s hurdles, but the quality of his kit – the bulked-up trainers, the go-faster-striped sprint pants, the streamlined Porter backpack – definitely errs on the casual yet attractively stylish side of sporty and means there’s no danger of his being lapped any time soon.

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