The Bureau Collection: An Exclusive Capsule

The autostrada tracks along the coast, running south, deep into Puglia. We’re blaring out our favourite Italo Disco tunes and the occasional aria on the car stereo. The long horizon is punctuated by the occasional trullo and the bright blue Adriatic, as we make our way towards the glistening white walls of Ostuni, which slowly comes into view like a mirage, rising above us and into the Italian sky.

It’s late in the afternoon by the time we get there and drop the car off just outside the old town. We drag our suitcases up steep, winding, cobbled streets, through the heat and a maze of alleys, to our hotel, to wait for the temperature to drop a few degrees.

We’re in Ostuni with Jules Porter, of London restaurants Leo’s and Juliet’s, for a lazy couple of days and long nights. Once the sun starts to go down, bathing the town in fantastic golden light for a few hours, we head out into the evening, in search, first, of a few cold local beers, and then dinner.

Jules grew up in Byron Bay, Australia. More correctly he grew up in the cafes and bakeries and wine bars his mum ran. He moved first to Sydney, and trained first as a ballet dancer, before finding his way to London in 2008 and enrolling in drama school.

“I met my partner at the time at drama school,” Jules explains over an aperitif before dinner. “And very randomly a chance came up to take over a greasy spoon. So we opened a café, Milk, really just to stay in London, because I needed a visa. And it was much more successful than we ever thought it would be.”

Milk grew into Juliet’s Quality Foods, an homage, in some ways to the food Jules had grown up with in Australian cafes. Jules though, since he was a child, had always wanted to open a restaurant, and specifically an Italian one. “Restaurants and food and cooking are an expression of care and love,” Jules says. “And for me, Italian food is the greatest, most conductive vessel for that idea.”

Ostuni, with its gothic revival cathedral, expansive piazzas, too-perfect sunsets, white walls, and steep hills, resembles a postcard, a place where time has stopped. We settle down in its maze of backstreets, in the shade, make friends with the waiters, pore over menus and wine lists and settle into plates of local delicacies; braciola and orecchiette and cime di rapa. All well deserved after a day of ascending and descending of Ostuni’s hills in the heat.

Our Bureau Collection is shaped by all this, the romance of travel, hot days in new places, humid nights and long dinners. It’s an effortless wardrobe for those drawn to distant cities and inspired by the well-worn elegance of writers and explorers, and those who blended the two.

It balances rugged utility and understated refinement. Hard-wearing fabrics, practical pockets and relaxed silhouettes made to accompany everything from a morning ride through winding streets on a Vespa to lingering lunches, aperitifs and evenings on the terrace. It is as suited to a hike in the wilderness as a sunlit piazza somewhere along the Mediterranean.

Versatility sits at the heart of the collection. Every piece has been considered as part of a complete wardrobe—modular, uncomplicated and hard working. A single suitcase is all that's required; each garment works seamlessly with the next, allowing you to dress with confidence wherever you’re headed.