Men's brands have been vigilant in promoting the bag as a central component to a modern wardrobe, and the pattern of rising sales of men's carryalls suggest that their ubiquity on the spring/summer runways for 2012 wasn't a one-off. Bottega Veneta's woven leather totes have been a logo-free statement of luxury for women since they were introduced in the 1960s, but creative director Tomas Maier recently began offering a range of them to men. Their refined luxury has now been supplemented by a whole suite of more assertively modernist designs and finishes for bags like the one you see here. Here in the UK, Mulberry has quietly been growing its men's bag business for several years, with help from its celebrity fans and Louis Vuitton, now under the creative direction of British designer Kim Jones, is having a major push towards its designer luggage. From totes to festival-focused knapsacks, the gear designed by Jones stresses refined luxury and stylish practicality. With Burberry's brisk sales of its men's bags, Barbour making some eye-catching offerings and the low-on-branding, high-on-luxe Jas M.B. (who is interviewed elsewhere in this issue) swinging from the hip in London again, homegrown names are getting plenty of the action too.

"Wear a towel instead of a coat - it's very chic," declared her majesty Vivienne Westwood, a longtime advocate of sustainable thinking in fashion. Orating as only she can to the New Economics Forum last year, the designer repeated her conviction that consumers are too reliant on disposable fashion. She believes that clothes should be bought to last, and bought less frequently. "I think we should stop buying clothes for six months," she said. But of course, cleverly, she didn't say anything about not buying towels; instead, she went and made this beauty. So while restraint and normalcy have never been Westwood's strongest suites, this towel from her archive is designed to be a versatile - even practical - statement for summer. As an emblem of London cool and Britishness, the claret and blue towel can be worn as a scarf or sarong, but will most likely find its perfect place beside the seaside. The ultra-limited World's End collection is named after and sold in the King's Road shop formerly known as Sex, and rooted in favourite pieces and prints from Westwood's half-century in fashion. Before spring/summer turns to autumn/winter, there seems every chance that we'll witness the end of the world as we know it; but as long as we're on a beach without sand down our shorts, we're sure we'll feel pretty fine.

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.