Travel test

WHAT: Spoke 12oz Original jeans, £125 [€147], spoke-london.com WHERE: Seacation. EXPERIENCE: We all know jeans come in all shapes and sizes, but too often it seems not our own particular shape and size.

Cue London brand Spoke’s online 60-second Fit Finder, which offers more than 400 combinations, with each pair hand finished to order.

There’s a free delivery and returns service just in case the fit’s not quite right first time, as I found (nobody was more surprised than me at having to request a 35in waist as opposed to the original 36in!).

Reordering was a very simple and swift process.

As for the jeans, I wanted an unfussy non-faded black pair with a zip fly and a smidge of stretch for travelling by car to the cruise terminal at Portsmouth, but to still be smart enough for evening wear on board the ship.

Bingo. The Original is made of 98% 12oz Turkish denim blended with 2% Elastane for a little bit of comfort ‘give’.

So, when what was supposed to be a two-hour car drive to the port turned out to be four hours of M25 and M3 gridlocked traffic misery, the jeans arrived in a very respectable and comfortable state, unlike the wearer’s temper.

Once up the gangway, the wearer calmed down with a cold beer at the pool bar. Then for the next four nights the jeans teamed up simply with either a casual long sleeved shirt or polo shirt for the ship’s various restaurants, bars and theatres.

Spoke recommend not washing them too frequently to preserve the indigo dye from over-fade, but when you do stick them in the machine it’s at 30C maximum. QUIBBLES: None.

VERDICT: Fit (and fitted) for purpose – quality jeans with clean lines, no daft rips, fading or embellishments. Not cheap, but very cheerful. 10/10.