Review: SprezzaBox

In which G.M. Norton receives a box of goodies for the discerning chap.

Please allow me to introduce SprezzaBox to you, a monthly subscription service for the modern gentleman.

The way SprezzaBox works is you pay $28 per month (£18) and in return, you receive a box of five to six surprise goodies.

After a while, each box then becomes available to buy as a one-off purchase through the SprezzaBox website. 

An American enterprise, SprezzaBox is currently unavailable to subscribe for those in Blighty. Although I do hear that plans are indeed afoot so I thought it was worth making interested parties aware of their existence.

Review: Pretentious Pocket

In which G.M. Norton exposes himself in public and enjoys a jolly good stuffing.

Last week, I exposed myself in public. I didn’t do it just once either, but three times.

I should perhaps explain at this point that I was exposing my new pocket squares from Pretentious Pocket.

Pretentious Pocket are a New York pocket square company with attitude.

The brains behind this pretentious outfit is one Justin Ross Lee.

National Male Grooming Day

In which G.M. Norton shares his grooming routine.

To help celebrate National Male Grooming Day on Friday 21^st August, I was approached by Mira Showers to share my bathroom adventures (fear not, you will not be seeing any bare flesh). Perhaps they read about my Well Groomed Man exploits in Modern Barber Magazine. In any case, here are a few dastardly ruses that I follow to look my best.

The bathroom is probably my favourite room in the house. It’s my refuge away from the children, an area of calm from the stresses of everyday life. So to spend a few moments each day alone in my sanctuary is sheer bliss.

Fancy ties for fancy people

In which G.M. Norton gives his full backing to the Two Piece Tie. 

“Bond mistrusted anyone who tied his tie with a Windsor knot. It showed too much vanity. It was often the mark of a cad.” Ian Fleming (From Russia With Love, Chapter 25)

If 007 had this to say about the simple Windsor knot, goodness knows what his thoughts would be on more elaborate knots such as the Eldredge and Trinity styles that have popped up in recent years.

Personally, I find these type of knots very striking indeed. I love simple and understated, but I also like something a little unusual to satisfy my peacock tendencies.

On film: Kingsman - The Secret Service

In which G.M. Norton sees Colin Firth in a completely different light.

I had the pleasure of watching ‘Kingsman - The Secret Service’ recently, after a recommendation from a Norton of Morton reader.

In case you don’t have the foggiest what Kingsman is, it is a spy-thriller starring Colin Firth. The description is thus:

‘A super-secret organisation recruits an unrefined but promising street kid into the agency’s ultra-competitive training programme just as a dire global threat emerges from a twisted tech genius.’

The underlying message is that class is how you behave, not how you’re born.