MY LOVE of dressing up is in a large way to blame for two of the maddest stunts I have done this year: going hunting on Exmoor with the Devon and Somerset Staghounds, and re-enacting the Battle of Naseby with the Sealed Knot.

Actually, I haven’t yet done my hunting, and may still chicken out because galloping across Exmoor when you can’t ride that well is a hairy prospect. But I kind of hope I don’t, because then I’ll be able to tell my grandchildren that I had a go before it got banned.

To see what kit I ought to wear, I visited London’s only remaining hunting supplier, Schnieder Boots, just off Bond Street. It’s run by a splendid shock-haired German, called Rudolf, whose grandfather founded the firm in 1907. I thought that he’d tell me the hunting end of his business had been drying up, but no, he says his clientele is more passionate than ever, still coming in to buy splendid W & H Gidden hunt coats and leather top boots at up to £2,000 a pair, and insisting that they’ll go to jail rather than meekly accept any government ban. He reminded me that it was Hitler who banned the sport in Germany.

Whatever you think of hunting, you’d need the aesthetics of the Taleban not to recognise the splendour of the uniform that goes with it. So many different hunts, each with its distinctive colours (buff facings, green velvet collars, etc) and subtle distinctions of dress (four or five buttons for the Master; three for lesser mortals; pink coats; black coats; and “ratting” kit for cubbing). You may disagree, but there is little to distinguish those who would end such a visually rich tradition from the vandals who destroyed the ancient Buddhas in Afghanistan.

• What is it about boys and uniforms? Actually, that’s one question I shouldn’t find too hard to answer because it’s a fetish with which I am greatly afflicted. It’s one reason why I nearly joined the Army after university, it’s the reason I get so terribly excited about military histories such as Richard Holmes’s Redcoat.

  You could argue that I would save myself a lot of trouble by popping into a fancy-dress shop and indulging my hobby in private. But this, it seems to me — and I’m sure most blokes would agree — would defeat the object of the exercise. It would be like wearing a green beret without having passed out as a Royal Marine, or wearing a Bullingdon coat without having had your rooms ceremonially trashed by a bunch of rich Oxford hoorays. A uniform simply doesn’t count unless you’ve earned the right to wear it.

  And uniforms are design classics: broad shoulders, slightly cinched waists, flared at the buttocks, narrow legs. I’ve just described the hunting coat, but it also applies to a lot of military uniforms. This is one reason why modern designers keep pillaging military fashion again and again.

  People whose hobbies involve dressing up in strange clothes — huntsmen, military re-enactors, freemasons or Morris dancers — get an awful lot of stick. But I’m sure a lot of that is inspired by jealousy. Show me the man who thinks uniforms aren’t sexy and I’ll show you a big fat liar.

  And here are a few reasons why uniforms are so great:

  1. They invariably have lots of juicy detailing — epaulettes, frogging, piping, coloured facings, regimental cap badges, embossed brass buttons — and men are suckers for detail.

  2. They’re cut to accentuate the male figure, sometimes to a ridiculous degree; for example, 19th-century cavalrymen wore their “cherry picker” trousers so tight that they could barely sit astride a horse. But then some girls go for that kind of unsubtlety.

  3. They’re all about rank, hierarchy, achievement, social gradation, camaraderie and, of course, militarism. And again, these are all things that blokes secretly love.

  4. They’re often nice to wear. I’ve never had trousers more comfortable than the baggy, soft-cotton-lined army-issue combats I had in the combined cadet force at school; and because uniforms are designed to be worn in tough conditions, they’re usually warm, durable and waterproof.

• My Sealed Knot uniform — in case you wondered, I’m a pikeman with Colonel John Birch’s Regiment of Foote — comprises red woollen hose (ie, girlie stockings), capacious black woollen breeches tied with a drawstring at the top and ribbon at the bottom, a linen shirt and a rather handsome red woollen coat with black piping. It looks quite magnificent and feels even better.

  What you don’t realise about 17th-century clothing until you’ve worn it, fought in it and got drunk in it, is how much more practical and cosy it is than modern dress. A linen shirt absorbs the sweat and smells so well that you can wear one for days without washing; the wool and those much-mocked girlie stockings keep you very warm; the loose period cut means that you never feel constricted, and when you’ve had a few beers and need a pee, there’s none of that nonsense about wrestling with your flies — a quick tug of the drawstring is all that’s needed.

  Some people find after a time that the Sealed Knot is no longer enough to satisfy their trainspotterish uniform urges. My brother, for example. Besides being a 1640s musketeer, he is also a Voltigeur with Napoleon’s Grande Armée. (He decided that while Redcoats look cooler en masse, the French Napoleonic uniform is individually more handsome.) The last time he came round he spend most of the evening painstakingly twisting lengths of wool in a precise shade of French 19th-century green so as to make the 160 strands needed in each of his epaulettes. At one time I might have mocked him for this, but I’m ashamed to say that once you’ve dipped your toe in the water, this sort of behaviour becomes perfectly understandable. Admirable, even. Period detail and authenticity: you can never have too much.

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