Tyler watch

An occasional series. One of the many delights of the Saturday FT is the superlative ponciness of Tyler Brûlé. His diary is reminds me of those software advertisements showing young men with chiselled jaws punching the air as they look up from their spreadsheets, which were captioned “The Power to Succeed.” If one of those mannequins had an inner life, it would be Tyler’s.

This week, greatly daring, he has taken a train. That’s not all. He’s travelling with a new suitcase.

“This was my first official business trip incorporating my new, slimmed-down packing regime. Gaby (my trusty assistant) has been following my decade-long quest for the perfect bag and has taken some delight in seeing how I’ll cope with my mini-compact duffel bag from Porter.

When I spotted it in the Aoyama branch back in August, I decided it was going to be my 48-hour bag for jaunts to Zürich, Milan and New York. After a few test trials in September, I set myself the challenge of travelling exclusively with the 50cm long, 20cm wide and 30cm high bag, no matter how long the trip.

This, of course, prompted a total packing rethink, including the downsizing of my toiletry kit. A good edit was long overdue anyway, and I managed to strip the contents down to anti-perspirant, hair wax, face oil, nail clippers, three types of essential drugs (nausea, muscle ache and sleeping pills) and a new addition – shower gel.”

You see, being a full-time consumer is something at which no time can be wasted.

“I’ve always relied on whatever soap was on offer in the hotel and concluded that I was losing valuable minutes picking cling film off bars of Bulgari soap, confusing shower gels with moisturisers and hair conditioners with bubble bath. Transferring Sea Breeze’s “super cool” body soap into a small pump dispenser seemed a bit fiddly at the time, but it shaved a good three minutes off my morning regime”