Last week we held an event for readers at Trunk in Zurich, signing books and the magazine, as well as bringing Wool Walkers so everyone could have a chance to try the new coat. 

It was a lovely evening, buzzy and fun, and I never tire of meeting the spectrum of PS readers – young guys exploring suits for the first time, older ones who have had their suits made at Anderson & Sheppard for generations. 

A few friends popped in too – Andrew Borda, a writer for PS; Paul Fournier, a menswear friend for many years; Ingo Zorc at Bucherer, who we did the big billboard shoot with two years ago; and Pawel, the reader Manish ran into in Thailand. 

It was a lot of fun, although as per usual the thing I found most interesting was learning about Zurich – a city I’ve only ever been to once before, and then only in a previous life. 

The Trunk and Monocle stores are next to each other in the chic south-east part of town, and that’s where we stayed too. It was wonderfully relaxed, and we went swimming in the lake both days (luckily it was still 24 degrees). 

Mats (Klingberg, Trunk founder) was telling us about how the shop opened, back in 2018, and particularly found its feet during Covid. 

During those odd years, people in Zurich were allowed to meet up with up to five others at a time, so everyone spent time having dinner at each other’s houses. 

Monocle was able to remain open because it was a newsagent, not just a shop, and a lot of people ended up hanging around the area, taking away coffees (and later negronis) and chatting on the street. 

I always forget that (impressively) Monocle doesn’t do Instagram, and focuses all its efforts on gatherings like this – there was one on the same night as our events too, in partnership with a German department store. 

It’s a focus on smaller groups of people – less of a reach – but perhaps a richer connection to those people. It certainly seems to work for them and the crowd at the event. 

One of our first questions to readers we met was what other menswear stores we should visit in town. The general answer was that there isn’t much, and Trunk is certainly in a small group at the top, but one that came up repeatedly was VMC. 

We went to VMC the following day, and it really was impressive. You could tell immediately it was the kind of place PS readers would love, because the staff all had the look (a casual, workwear one) and knew the brands inside out. 

Unlike workwear stores in London, the brand mix was really wide – both in terms of price and style. There was a lot of Freewheelers, Real McCoy’s and At Last, but also Goldwin fleeces, Smedley polos and several craft brands we’d never heard of. Those included Rakki and Casa-Isaac, and I ended up getting a Rakki sweater. 

In an interesting parallel with Monocle, VMC doesn’t sell online and never has. It’s almost 40 years old, and a lot of shops I know that took that stand against e-commerce (often Italian) folded as a result. VMC seems to have survived, perhaps as a result of its closeness to customers. 

Elsewhere in Zurich we popped into the Ludwig Reiter store, as there isn’t one in London any more. Some of their chunky derbies are good options for that style of shoe – the roundness is mitigated by a thin welt, and they use quite a comfortable, slightly banana-shaped last. 

We also went to Dee-Cee, which was founded by an ex-employee of VMC and has a similar vibe. They had some more fashion brands among the Japanese repros and traditional outfitters, such as Kapital and Stone Island. 

There wasn’t much else – a couple of decent department stores, Pelikamo and the Swedish brand Rose & Born – and it was always a pleasure to return to Trunk and Monocle’s quiet corner of town. 

Trunk is celebrating its 15-year anniversary at the moment (London, not Zurich) and there are some interesting collaborations coming in the next few weeks. In store, I was after another pair of Paraboot Barth shoes, but apparently they’re gone for the year now. Oh well, I’ll wait. 

Thank you to everyone who came out last Thursday, and I’m so proud PS is of so much use to so many people. Thank you to Adrian, Gretchen, Mats and everyone at Trunk for hosting us as well. See you all next time. 

I was wearing: Sartoria Salino jacket in Maison Hellard ‘Mildmay’ cloth, being covered in full soon. With a cream knit on the shoulders (it was cold in the evening… shoulder season).