It's not uncommon for The B'rah'vo Benjamin to be mistaken for Charlie from Busted.  Outwardly he shirks off the comparison and furrows his enormous brow.  Secretly he loves it and takes the grooming of his thick dark eyebrows very, very seriously.  Turning up the collar of his Ralph Lauren shirt, he assesses the clientele of The Builder's Arms pub from the doorway.   Holly and Polly clad in Miss Sixty denim wave frantically at him from their perch in the corner.  Ruffling his hair, which now closely resembles straw after his summer surfing and modelling for Quicksilver, Benjamin strides over to them, careful to ensure that everyone can see his Emporio Armani Boxers above his Diesel jeans.  'A pint of Guinness and two Smirnoff Ices please,' he booms taking out an Osprey wallet.

Though it's easy to find thin knits in a multi- tude of colours these days, it's decidedly harder to find a nice thick knit in a colour that goes beyond the classic mail-order- catalogue spectrum of browns, neutrals and blues. So when Prada sent out post- modern, Pop Art-coloured waffle knits at its especially cerebral autumn/winter show in Milan in January, it was a potent message. On a screen behind the models, Marshall McLuhan-like aphorisms came and went, suggesting this was Prada's take on design in a digital world: Have material and visual culture become evolved or convoluted, revolutionary or revolting? Who are we, and who is the Prada customer?

"I can buy any expensive material I want, but I am also always attracted to trashy touches," explained Miuccia Prada backstage. There were '70s inflections to her idiosyncratic offerings for chaps who don't fear bright ideas. This covetable sweater, our pick of the lot, is made of pure merino wool in a cablè lana canestro - "basket-style" - knit. And Prada's futurist-but-retro take on menswear was echoed by other style-setters. Coloured chunky knits were the order of the day at Adam Kimmel, Gucci and Hermès, who all sent out blue incarnations of the cable sweater. YSL, Jil Sander and Lanvin played safer with grey versions of slouchy chunky knitwear.

While bright colour undoubtedly looks better on some shades of skin than others, red's power is surprisingly universal. Don't be afraid of it (unless you find yourself knee- deep in mud in a bull's field of course); face the winter with a defiant splash of colour.

Style-conscious contemporary urbanite seeking a portable entertainment unit in the modern metropolis? Don't reach for that touch-screen so fast; there's more to mobile lifestyle-enhancement than iPhones, you know. The aptly named hip flask is enjoying a revival in the most unusual places. Perhaps fashion designers read the winds and sensed an especially icy winter when they created their new collections; maybe it's another phase of their sporadic love of field sports. Whatever the motivation, flasks appear to be swinging alongside the most discerning gentlemen this season.

Kim Jones, who sent his models down the catwalk with hip flasks dangling from their belts, instigated the resurgence. Now, in the middle of the hunting season, William & Son - the shooting and luxury goods label established a decade ago by William Asprey, seventh generation member of the famous family that established its own luxury brand in 1781 - has produced this elegant example.

Since the 18th century, people have been producing slim, ergonomic flasks for carrying distilled, usually alcoholic, drinks without drawing attention to themselves - at the rugger or the races, it remains the ex-public schoolboy's more presentable alternative to the brown-bagged bottle. But it would be an injustice to a noble tradition of heroes and adventurers to dismiss it as a drunkard's accessory: the intention was always for the contents to be shared, making it possible to toast success wherever it came.