Atomic Echo

Outside of those who have seen the preview in Paris I'm not sure who has seen or got their hands on Roland Mouret's venture into menswear under the label "Mr". The Guardian describes it as "The new label to covet" going on to say

"Mouret's new venture, brilliantly named Mr (his initials reversed) will be super luxurious but based around unfussy clothes that are designed to go together. Available from August, our favourite look has the whiff of Don Draper relaxing at the weekend about it - never a bad thing."

Monsieur Mouret is quoted by Fashion United describing it thus:

"I wanted it to be sensual, understated sexiness, almost Kubrick-like but something a woman could look at and immediately see that would be perfect for their husband."

Which is why I feel rather honoured that he gave me an engagement gift of one of his sweaters. Actually, he gave it to my fiancée for me, who has known him for years.

I've yet to wear it out of the house. In fact every time I try it on I'm mildly terrified of snagging it or spilling something on it.

I've never owned such a high-end item of clothing. I only get that nervous about new shoes or bikes usually.

I now understand how women feel when they buy a special dress. It's nerve-wracking.

That aside, it feels ever so nice on. It's merino wool with silk and cashmere, so light that it practically floats.

The knit is amazing, like crocodile skin but in wool. I could stare at it for hours.

And I have no idea what to wear with it to do it justice. You can't really team it with a pair of Old Navy jeans or something from M&S, even if it is from the Autograph range.

The label says it's a Dover Street Market exclusive, so I assume this is a style that will turn up there once the range starts going into stores.

One final quote from Mouret, via the NY Times:

"'I see this as a wardrobe, not a collection,' said Mr. Mouret. 'Men are shy, and they really want to be understood without talking.'"

It's easy to see why the collection is so desirable when it can be described in such beautiful language. And I really love the suit he's wearing in the pic on this article on Vogue.co.uk.

Site's been down for most of the last day due to host deciding to suspend my account due to a spambot going after a tag cloud and causing the movable type search .cgi script to overload a bit. Apparently this was causing a heavy load on their server.

So after a day of trying to get a response from the service desk the account got reinstated and I'm now going to back up everything and look at my hosting options. Any recommendations welcome. I just want a nice simple hosting deal which allows me to get on with things and not worry about outages and suspended accounts when my site gets spammed.

Genuinely I do. For all it's utter absurdity it's brilliant telly. And I'm going to miss the final because I'm at work, according to my diary.

What it lacks in class it makes up for in panache. It's a song and dance show that's actually quite old-fashioned: everyone tries their hardest and then the phone vote throws the rotten fruit.

The X Factor facebook page is quite something to behold as well. It's a very smart piece of work that's clearly been well thought out to hit the mark bang on. Name me another programme that can get several thousand comments and likes in a matter of minutes.

And if you're looking for the amount of news it generates, look no further than the volume of content Holy Moly has got aggregated under it's section of content tagged with the X Factor.

So we came up with our slogan and our company name - read the full explanation - now we've got to decide what to do with it. I'm blaming Eamonn for not admitting to drunkenly encouraging it for our lack of "vision".

I need to find some time to design the site and "brand identity" which is always a time consuming process. I'm using the pixie CMS from toggle which is open source, so it's a bit of a learning curve for me as well.

I think the name is one for a no-nonsense consultancy and creative agency. Now we just need to get some clients.

What can Pancake do for you?

Here's a hit I did for Chris Evans' BBC Radio 2 show yesterday trying to demystify the Tour De France for them.