The Register: Berkeley Square Fair, Tosca and the Art of Looking Expensive

October in London is the month the city stops pretending it is interested in anything other than art. Between now and Christmas, the capital will be swarmed by collectors in white trainers who say "interesting" when they mean "how much", critics who say "challenging" when they mean "I fell asleep", and the rest of us, who simply enjoy a good look at something beautiful or shocking or shockingly beautiful.

This is where we come in. Below you will find the exhibitions worth queuing for, the opera worth dressing up for, two style stories for galleries and gala nights, and a Long Read to see you through the interval. As ever, we have a vested interest. Culture is only improved by good tailoring and great style, so dress accordingly

THE CULTURE CALENDAR: OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER

The LAPADA Berkeley Square Fair
27 October – 1 November, Berkeley Square, Mayfair

The art world decamps to W1 for the week, in one vast marquee and a great many expensive coats. Tuesday is the Collectors Preview, at £125 a head, so if you were not planning to collect anything, congratulations on your free Tuesday; standard entry opens on Wednesday 28th, with tickets from £29. Nearly 100 specialist dealers bring museum-quality art, antiques, jewellery and design, every piece pre-vetted by a 70-strong specialist committee, at prices from £500 to several gazillion. The headline act is L.S. Lowry's Station Approach, Manchester, offered by MacConnal-Mason at over £3 million, which works out at rather a lot per matchstick man.

Our advice: do the fair, then do the late bit. The fair coincides with Asian Art in London, whose late-night gallery openings take in St James's on Sunday 1 November and Mayfair on Monday 2 November. Last year they were drop-in and free, which in Mayfair counts as a performance piece in itself.

Dress code: anything you would not mind being photographed in beside a Georgian commode. We suggest a velvet jacket, which hides spilled prosecco and flatters the work, plus gives you plenty of dinner options in Mayfair. Arlington? 5 Hertford Street? (This writer's daughter visited the latter last weekend and said she had the steak of her life, which given she is only 18, probably doesn't count as a valued recommendation, but do with it as you will).

Painting the French Riviera
Royal Academy, Piccadilly. Until 31 January 2027

Monet, Matisse, Picasso, Cézanne and friends all ran off to the south of France for the light, and then spent a century painting it. It is the most sensible career move in art history. The RA has gathered well over a hundred works, plus the literature, cinema and fashion that made the Côte d'Azur the world's favourite place to be sunburnt in good clothes. Reviewers are being unusually effusive; one calls it "a near-miracle of light and colour".

It is a five-minute walk from our Piccadilly Arcade waistcoat shop, which is a coincidence we are choosing to treat as destiny. Book a timed ticket; tickets start at £24, our waistcoats are somewhat more, but arguably more life-affirming.

Tosca
English National Opera, London Coliseum. 30 October – 11 December

A greyscale close-up of a woman's face with a bold red paint streak across her mouth and lower face, evoking a sense of emotion and contrast.

Puccini's tale of love, politics and a very bad evening at the police chief's, in a new production directed by ENO's Annilese Miskimmon, set in a concert hall in a European state overtaken by civil conflict. Sung in English, a touch over two hours with one interval, and tickets start from £25. Under-21s go free, so bring a teenager and improve them.

Dress code: black tie, or its velvet cousin.

Also worth leaving the house for...

The 90s: Art and Fashion - Tate Britain, 8 October to 14 February. Curated by Edward Enninful, on the decade when art and fashion shared a flat. Expect a lot of attitude.
Tim Walker's Fairyland: Love and Legends - National Portrait Gallery, 9 October to 7 February. Five years in the making; portraits and fantastical landscapes from our favourite fashion photographer, who has never knowingly under-dressed a set.
Renoir and Love - National Gallery, 3 October to 31 January. Forty paintings, including Bal au Moulin de la Galette, shown in the UK for the first time. Lots of people dancing in good hats.
Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant - Tate Britain, 12 November to 11 April. Bloomsbury's most tangled creative partnership, in paint.
Van Eyck: The Portraits - National Gallery, 21 November to 11 April. The first ever show devoted to his portraits. The headwear alone is worth the ticket.
Peggy Guggenheim in London - Royal Academy, 21 November to 14 March. The story of the Cork Street gallery she ran in 1938–39, a short walk from our Pall Mall and Piccadilly Arcade stores.
Nan Goldin: You Never Did Anything Wrong - Hayward Gallery, 24 November to 7 March. Five decades of intimate, unflinching photography.
The London Museum reopens - Smithfield, 28 November. The old Museum of London, now in a £437 million new home in the General Market. Seven million objects, so wear sensible shoes under your good trousers.

MENSWEAR: THE PRIVATE VIEW

Green Nene Velvet Nehru Jacket

£1,290

Navy Wardour Nehru Jacket

£1,190

Navy Velvet Black Bees Nehru Jacket

£940

Navy Mayfair Velvet Nehru Jacket

£790

Burgundy Mayfair Velvet Nehru Jacket

£790

Black Newbridge Corduroy Artist Jacket

£575

Olive Mayfair Velvet Artist Jacket

£575

Rust Mayfair Velvet Artist Jacket

£575

If you're hobnobbing around Mayfair's fairs and private views this season, then your wardrobe is going to come up against some rather lively hedonists with a penchant for getting noticed. The art world doesn't tend to harbour many wallflowers so be prepared to witness clothing that may have walked straight out of a costume department. Don't be tempted to compete. Instead, lean in on velvet, the answer to the whole October-to-November social calendar. It reads as formal under gallery lighting, and slightly rakish by the time the second glass of something cold arrives. It also pairs with an opera programme, a private view and a very long dinner without anyone noticing you've gone through three events in one outfit.

A velvet dinner jacket might be forcing the formality a touch, so instead opt for our Artist's jacket or Nehru style, both of which look incredibly smart but without the sharp angles of eveningwear.

WOMENSWEAR: CURTAIN UP

Carnaby Coat Black Thenford Silk Velvet

£1,750

Camisole Dress Black Heavy Crepe Satin

£590

Carnaby Coat Black Stotfold Silk Organza

£1,850

Serena Circle Dress Black Georgette Silk Georgette

£1,020

Carnaby Coat Rust Kew Silk Velvet

£1,490

Kemi Jacket Black Gold Sheringham Silk Velvet

£1,300

Lounge Trousers Navy Cotton Velvet

£650

Coming Soon

Palazzo Pants Black Plain Georgette

£790

Can't see your size, please enquire

Floria Tosca is an opera singer, a diva and a woman who knows exactly what she is wearing when she walks into a room. That is the brief. Whether you are at the Coliseum, the Royal Academy's members' room or a dinner that has run on until the cheese board, a velvet or silk coat does the dramatic work for you. The trick is to treat the coat as the whole outfit's headline, and to keep the rest quiet. A black dress underneath, nothing fussy, and let the coat do the talking. Better still, wear it open, so it moves when you walk down the Coliseum stairs.

THE LONG(ISH) READ: FINE AND DANDY

This month's recommended reading is for anyone who has ever wondered why a man in a velvet jacket is considered a menace to polite society, and a woman in the same fabric a style icon.

Fine and Dandy, in The Oldie, by Shaun Cole and Miles Lambert (the editors of the Yale book Dandy Style: 250 Years of British Men's Fashion), is a short, sharp history of dandyism in three acts: Beau Brummell, Baudelaire and Oscar Wilde. Brummell, the supposed patron saint of understated elegance, was in fact a lifelong conspicuous consumer. As the authors put it, he lived "as if he were a wealthy aristocrat" and used London society as "his canvas for self-promotion". Haven't we all?

If you want a second helping:

The Beau Brummell greatcoat story
A coat made in about 1803 that turned up in the vaults of Coutts bank in 1956, apparently never collected. The most patient order in tailoring history.

Tate's Sargent and Fashion guide
On John Singer Sargent, who pinned, draped and tucked his sitters' clothes himself, and whose Madame X had a slipping strap that scandalised Paris.

That's The Register for October. If you spot us in Berkeley Square, we'll be the ones looking at the people, not the pictures. Until November...