A Londoner's Diary

On and off I've been going to Milan for the menswear shows for over 15 years, but I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I don't know the city at all.

Plonk me down in any other fashion capital - New York, Paris, Tokyo, Swindon - and I will find my way back to the hotel with the knowledge and dexterity of a sat-nav software programmer (or a cabbie). And as for London, having lived here since 1977, I could walk from Hounslow to Epping without once looking at a road sign. But Milan? Can't help you, guv. Apart from the Duomo, the seven big hotels and the odd transvestite karaoke bar, I don't really know Milan at all. There are very few landmarks, the streets all look the same and, as every Milanese likes to tell you, 'everything here happens behind closed doors'. The fashion designers who show here twice a year (four times, if they do womenswear, too), tend to always show in the same places, but still I'm unable to join the dots.

In fact, because everyone in the industry tends to eat in the same restaurants and throw parties in the same venues, Milan Fashion Week has an air of Groundhog Day about it. Thankfully, though, the clothes change each time, and the standouts this season were Bottega Veneta, Miu Miu, Giorgio Armani, Burberry, Versace and Alexander McQueen to name only a few. Iwould imagine the first port of call for visiting fashion editors and foreign buyers in London this season will not be the latest nail bar, yoga guru or difficult- topronounce restaurant, but rather the Dover Street Market, which has rapidly become the coolest shop in the city. Every fashion capital has its boutique du jour - 10 Corso Como in Milan, Colette in Paris, the downtown Bloomingdale's in New York - and right now in London, Comme des Garcons' Mayfair mini department store is just such a place. There will always be those who say that Comme is just a little too cool for school, but they're on a roll at the moment, and not only have their recent menswear collections been better than ever (ask around; it's true), but the Dover Street Market has been a much-needed shot in the arm for British retail. There is a surprise on every floor (and there are five of them): vintage handbags, rare CDs, furniture, art, candles and books, as well as clothes. Years ago it used to be said that if you wanted to buy an elephant, all you had to do was try Harrods. These days I'd also try Dover Street Market. Imissed the Paris collections this season, but was in the city a few weeks ago for the live simulcast of Apple's Macworld keynote speech given by Steve Jobs. I have spent the past eight months writing a book about the iPod (a total labour of love that has turned me into an iPod obsessive, as well as a deranged musical archivist), and seeing my first keynote up close was an extraordinary experience. Jobs is nothing if not an evangelist, and watching him unveil the iPod shuffle and the Mac mini (the headless Mac that is already beginning to cannibalise the PC market) was like watching some sort of 21st-century tech-head Baptist minister selling computers out of the back of a space-age transit van formerly owned by the Jetsons. And I'm not being pejorative here - I have nothing but deep respect for Jobs, and considering his current strike rate (nearly every Apple product launched in the past eight years has been a hit), right now he could probably sell me London Bridge (if it came with an iPod dock). With the exchange rate soaring towards mid- Seventies ratios, New York is a great place to shop at the moment. I was there a few days ago for Fashion Week, and took time out between meetings to visit my own personal church, Barneys. Like a lot of people, I tend to spend more money when I'm away on business, although this time my shopping trip was purely on behalf of my wife (7 For All Mankind jeans and C and C T-shirts).

Years ago, a friend landed a job in New York, and when I asked him what the best thing about it was, he said, without a glimmer of irony, 'Being able to afford to go to Barneys every weekend.' The biggest thrill of my week - apart from staying in Frank Sinatra's old suite at The Carlyle - was meant to be my visit to the Museum of Modern Art, which opened at the end of last year after a massive renovation. It is an astonishing achievement, a gargantuan homage to the sort of modernism that only makes sense in the wake of postmodernism.

However, its design owes rather too much to our own Tate Modern than is good for it, and it has undoubtedly lost some of its former charm. In the Eighties, architects managed to turn everything from hotels to shopping malls into atriums; these days it's art galleries and shops. And they're beginning to look quite soulless. Next season's London Fashion Week will be a big one for us, as we're launching a biannual men's fashion magazine right in the middle of it. GQ Style will be published twice a year, and will feature everything you need to know about menswear, and I mean everything.

It will do exactly what it says on the tin. Last month we produced an issue of GQ totally dedicated to sex (all in the best possible taste, you understand), and a short while after it hit the streets I got an email from a contributor in Los Angeles. 'The Sex Issue? Well, that's a shocker,' he wrote. 'I must have missed the issues dedicated to the Pre-Raphaelites and Mephistophelean architecture.'

(c)2005. Associated Newspapers Ltd.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.