A couple of months back I wrote an article titled ‘The Next Five Steps’, with the purpose of helping guys find their footing on the cliff face of men’s style.

However, based on a handful of e-mails that I have received since, it seems I haven’t done my job properly. Because although you corrected the rookie mistakes you were making and started to develop the way you dressed by branching away from denim and experimenting with color, there are still a number of you out there that are having trouble breaking the last fatal habit – the places that you shop. I touched on it briefly in the previous article by saying “don’t believe the hype” – i.e. do not be a sucker for brand names. Even though the advertising and fashion industry has led you to believe that clothing from the likes of Gucci and D&G automatically makes you stylish, that isn’t always true. Especially when you don’t understand how to buy clothes that fit you, both style- and body shape-wise.

There’s also the small fact that the majority of men out there don’t have the bank balance to afford designer clothing. In reality, you don’t have to spend a fortune on clothes when you are starting out on your style journey. It’s important to aim for as good a quality as you can comfortably afford, but this can be found at a lot of low to mid price ranges anyway. Sure, it may be worth spending a bit more on tailoring – but not £400 worth.

So without further ado, allow me to break down my top five places to buy clothes from for the man on a budget…

1. UNIQLO

What they do best: without going a little too overboard, EVERYTHING – and at amazing prices for the quality. Most of the time, I walk in the shop and my head explodes trying to figure it out.

I’m a particular fan of their Oxford cloth shirts, polo shirts with deeper plackets and chinos. I actually picked up some olive cargo trousers from UNIQLO a few years back for £15 that were a better fit than a pair of Michael Bastian ones I tried on. Unbelievable.