I don’t know how I persuaded them but they gave their permission. I was 16 years old when my parents agreed that, if I saved enough money, I could buy an Interrail card and spend a whole month of the summer school holidays travelling around Europe by train with a friend. At the time I had a job at a local supermarket where, every Friday night and all-day Saturday, I got to stack the shelves, ferret out yoghurts beyond their sell-by dates and, my favourite, sit at the checkout. And so the piggy bank gradually filled up and an Interrail pass was purchased (entitling the bearer to free rail travel across Europe). Also bought: a Thomas Cook “European Timetable” that was about the size of a phone directory (if you remember them) and which listed all the key train schedules.

Over the following weeks we covered a lot of territory. One day we were in Sweden and the next in Austria. We even made it down to the south of France. Our accommodation was a tent or a night train (we scanned the directory for ones that would allow for a decent night’s sleep). We lived off of bread and cheese. My contribution to the GDP of each country we visited was close to zero – I was a cheapskate backpacker. We were living the dream.

There is a good and much-needed debate taking place about how cities can manage tourism in a way that delivers benefits to the citizenry and doesn’t create models where the prevalence of Airbnb’s, for example, erodes the availability of affordable housing for locals to rent. This is a wise and healthy conversation to have. So why does some of the language used make me uneasy?

When you speak to politicians, activists and tourist chiefs, often their proposed solution to the problems they are facing is to get rid of the “bad tourists” and focus on the “good” ones. They talk about making more money from fewer people (day trippers are to be replaced by folk happy to stay a week in five-star accommodation), of attracting people who will spend time delving into the local culture and not just drinking cocktails on the beach all day. In this battle to reshape tourism, the 16-year-old me would today struggle to find myself on any city’s wish list of potential visitors, even if, like many a backpacker, that hurried trip gave me a passion to return to cities again and again and hand over increasing amounts of my salary.

But even the backpacker is held in higher esteem than the true scum of the earth: the mass tourist. These people are the lowest. They arrive by coach and cruise ship, they buy all-inclusive hotel deals, they drink to excess, they move in swarms and they don’t even appreciate the local handicrafts. 

Before my parents dropped dead, they were rather partial to a coach-trip holiday organised by their club. Should such people really be excluded from having a holiday just because they can no longer drive? I got chatting to a retired lady at Palma airport the other day who had just been on an all-inclusive holiday and loved it – her husband had died and she wanted, she told me, somewhere that would sort everything for her. Does she need to stay at home now? I know lots of people who love a cruise – are they at fault when they step off the ship if the streets fill up? Or is the problem port-city leaders who fail to control the size or number of ships docking? When a family just wants a week at the beach, the only holiday they’ll get all year, does this really make them “bad” tourists?

Cities that struggle from over-demand should, of course, look at how they reduce the total numbers of visitors. But when you start doing this on the basis of wealth and class then you lose sympathy. Travel is a wonderful thing. Time away is an amazing privilege. Sun on our faces is restorative. Let’s not make this a freedom unavailable to nice regular folk – or smelly teenage backpackers.

Carolina Castiglioni usually designs her label’s biannual collections with herself in mind, so venturing into menswear didn’t come naturally (writes Natalie Theodosi). “There was demand, especially from Japanese male customers who kept coming into our boutiques to shop for themselves,” says Castiglioni, who realised that most of Plan C’s designs – slim tailoring, roomy cotton shirts, workwear-inspired parkas and denim jackets – could work for men.

“There have always been menswear inspirations in my work, so we focused on unisex pieces that can be styled in different ways,” says the Milanese designer, who unveiled her first men’s collection at last summer’s Pitti Uomo. From the beginning, Plan C’s successful formula has been high-quality wardrobe classics sprinkled with novelty and excitement via the right accessories. You’ll find the label’s menswear designs at its standalone boutiques in Tokyo and Osaka this season, as well as a handful of multi-brand boutiques such as Dallas’s Forty Five Ten.
plan-c.com

It’s ironic when a cry for individuality becomes a global phenomenon (writes Grace Charlton). Cutesy bag charms can now be seen swinging and clanging off suede Miu Miu bags or, better yet, irreverently clipped on to a Birkin by Hermès (starting price €8,950). One brand catering to this childlike desire to collect tiny trinkets to parade around town is Labubu, the brainchild of Hong Kong-born artist Kasing Lung. From Sydney to Seoul, these fluffy, cloyingly cute figurines with scrunched-up faces are dangling off the arms of fully grown adults.

Luxury brands are also contributing to the craze. Loewe retails popular bag charms in the shapes of tomatoes, ice cream cones and chow chow dogs. Bottega Veneta applies its signature intrecciato, a braided-leather technique, to create animal keyrings. Jokes of arrested development aside, as the luxury industry raises prices to brace for a downturn, smaller items such as key chains, bag charms or lipsticks represent an entry point for consumers with less-disposable incomes. We can only hope that this particular sartorial statement reaches critical mass and fizzles out – no doubt for the next totally unique item to take its place.

“Where are we headed?” asked a moustached man in a Saville Row suit so sharp that it would have made Tom Wolfe feel underdressed (writes Blake Matich). “Haven’t the foggiest,” said a tall gent in a pith helmet. “But someone’s in charge, surely?” No one was. But that was precisely the point of this saunter sans purpose. And so the accidental leaders of some 100 dandies ambled off – perhaps by muscle memory – in the direction of Soho.

Granted, the intrepid duo didn’t have far to go. The Grand Flaneur Walk, organised by Chap magazine and now in its fifth year, starts at the statue of Beau Brummell in St James’s and has no set destination. Brummell, the quintessential 19th-century dandy who spent a mere five hours getting dressed each day, once said that “to be truly elegant one should not be noticed.” By that logic, this writer was among the event’s most elegantly invisible participants. It’s hard to stand out when the person next to you is wearing a floral-patterned Gucci suit with a straw boater and the serene expression of someone who has never heard of cargo pants. Another attendee was dressed like an 18th-century corsair after a particularly lucrative raid: period buckle shoes, velvet dress breeches to the knees, a waistcoat that looked incomplete without a pair of flintlock pistols and a cravat accessorised by – wait for it – another cravat. Even London made an effort with a day adorned in clement May sunshine. 
 
To read the full piece, click here.

Visit: Welt: Evening with Otzi at Grenson, London

To coincide with London Craft Week (a citywide celebration of UK makers that comes to an end tomorrow), shoemakers Grenson and furniture maker Otzi have collaborated on an exhibition at Grenson’s Lamb’s Conduit Street shop. Pop in over the weekend to peruse the fine handmade-leather goods and maybe even pick up one of the pair’s workshop stools. Crafted by Otis Ingrams of Otzi and inspired by classic workshop seating, the stool incorporates a distinctive shoe-welt detail in a nod to Grenson’s Goodyear-welted footwear.
grenson.com; otzi.ltd

Watch: The Phoenician Scheme, Wes Anderson

Beloved auteur Wes Anderson returns with this globetrotting espionage thriller. Regular collaborators Benicio del Toro, Willem Dafoe and Bill Murray are in tow, along with some intriguing first-timers, including Michael Cera, Riz Ahmed and Mia Threapleton. The tone is darker than Anderson’s typical work but, as with all of his films, artful symmetry, cool costuming and deadpan humour are all part of the neat package. 
‘The Phoenician Scheme’ is released on 23 May

Read: Suspicion, Seichō Matsumoto, translated by Jesse Kirkwood

Author and publisher Roberto Calasso once called Seichō Matsumoto, who is best known for crime fiction, “the Simenon of Japan”. In this new translation of a taut 1982 novella, a former Tokyo hostess seduces a businessman. After their wedding they are involved in a car crash; he drowns, she survives. The question is whether the defence lawyer who takes her case is helping an innocent woman or falling into a moral quagmire. 
‘Suspicion’ is published on 29 May