Men's grooming has come a long way since the 1980s rites of passage of julienning your face with a plastic razor and spraying the Lynx so enthusiastically that you couldn't see the other side of the changing room. Nowadays, it's difficult to grow up oblivious to the sea of moisturisers, shaving balms and hair styling options promising to fix your flaws at every turn. But after a winter of skin-parching cold and indoor heat, your face does need more than a cat's lick, and after its growing pains, the menswear grooming industry does seem to be maturing, with a new breed of products that aren't muskily fragranced, covered in shiny silver lettering, or otherwise trying too hard to be manly but aren't too fussy, either. You don't want to have to carry a portable beauty cabinet, but you do want a bottle of something to freshen up with. The new Super range from Dr. Perricone is the latest case in point, being a range of midpriced skincare products made without parabens, colours or added fragrances. That's not to say they don't smell, though - the Super name refers to various superfood ingredients and when we tried them out, someone gleefully shouted: "This one smells like Haribo!" Dr. (Nicholas) Perricone made his name selling anti-ageing creams, but the Super range goes from sun protection to applescented spot serum and hand and cuticle cream.

Paul Smith is, to a large extent, the man behind the modern recognition of British menswear and - as we discover elsewhere in this issue - still someone who makes time to watch out for the wellbeing of the scene and its new talents. This season, his collection is one of many menswear offerings based around the colour blue. That in itself hardly constitutes a trend, of course - blue is arguably the most dependable and widely deployed colour in men's clothes per se - but the spring/summer collections were all about taking the colour out of the realms of practicality and back into a painterly phase. From navy to azure, lapis to indigo, the whole tonal spectrum of blue was presented on the Milan and Paris menswear catwalks and a siren call for designers at Versace, Kenzo, Margiela, Trussardi and Louis Vuitton. Paul Smith's collection was a contemporary salute to his London mod roots; loud, bright and true. With this shirt, Smith's icy and oil hues conjure a variety of shades that manage to be both sun-faded and saturated. Cut high like a cardigan or Harrington jacket, it's also bang on a second trend: our current fixation for smart shirts and jackets evolving into light summer garments that take tailoring somewhere fresh.

Designers seem to have finally figured out how to make men's shorts that feel like your favourite trousers: in other words, they're now coming up with new designs that actually fit and flatter your shape. These tailored, clean-lined silk taffeta shorts by Omar Kashoura are a first class specimen of the trend, and a splendid antidote to all those premium cargo shorts of the past couple of summers. Kashoura, who was raised in Leeds by Turkish parents and educated at Central St Martins in London, is a perfect emblem of modern British menswear, as well as proven master of the well-turned-out summer wardrobe piece. It's the talent of designers such as Kashoura that inspired the fashion authorities to announce that, from this summer, British menswear will get its own "week", rather than just a day tagged onto the ends of the women's ones. He and his contemporaries' recent contributions led to January's announcement by the the British Fashion Council of something called "London Collections: Men." This summer, from June 15-17, British menswear designers, tailors and heritage houses will all be given a new showcase aimed at promoting both the creative and commercial importance of Britain's menswear brands and merging talents.