The advertisement read: "While laudable efforts are made by elderly pop icons to feed the world's hungry millions, children too poor to clothe themselves adequately are roaming our inner cities dressed in their PE kit. Please help us to smarten up our children! Children in Tweed will collect unwanted items of tweed suits, hats and coats, and distribute them to the nation's youth. One hacking jacket could raise the self-esteem of an entire housing estate."

Condescending? Meet the Chaps. An unnerving ensemble of "gentlemen" who decry the consumerism of the modern age and yearn for the return to a bygone era of brogues, cravats, horn-rimmed spectacles and Cavendish tobacco. The self-proclaimed anarcho-dandies began worshiping everything 1940s five years ago and now, it seems, they think we should too.

Yesterday they embarked on their latest jaunt: a tour of east London's council estates in a 1959 vintage burgundy Superpoise van to distribute donated tweed to kids. This was not, the de facto chief Chap, Gustav Temple, told me, entirely tongue in cheek.

"There's a serious message here: people of lower incomes who live on council estates tend to wear the same shiny blue tracksuits and hoodies - and dressing like that, like criminals, doesn't give them the best chance in life. They are condemning themselves to a life of poverty, a life of petty crime."

As testament to his dedication to the cause, Gustav shows me a photograph of his three-month-old son. A shocked-looking child dressed in a blue tank-top and corduroy trousers stares out, a pipe hanging ominously from the side of his mouth.

We rendezvous at 11am at the Shoreditch home of fellow Chap, Johnny Vercoutre. Also in attendance are Michael - "Either give them a damn good thrashing or a damn good tweed" - Attery, (or Atters as he prefers to be known), and Glory, a Great Dane the size of a small horse who Johnny says will protect us.

After half an hour's drive east, stones start raining down on the Superpoise. "I think this must be an estate," says Atters.

Gustav spots a gang of kids on the corner. We park the van and sit still for a few tense moments before Gustav emerges from the van and declares: "Who would like some free tweed?"

"Free weed?" snaps one of the kids.

"No, no, ta-weed. Jackets, hats, ta-weed. Are you interested in wearing this instead of your standard council estate dress - we do have moleskin."

A swarm ensues. "Let's go pimping," says AJ, 14, swaggering around in a green trilby. Hussein, 16, is fully attired in jacket and trilby, and smoking one of Atters' cigars.

"Fab-you-loos," he says, mocking an aristocratic drawl, "I look absolutely buff."

"Boff? What's boff?" interjects Atters.

"It means divine, mate. Absolutely divine," replies Hussein, winking at his mate.

Soon, all the tweed is gone. So, unfortunately, are the keys to the back door of the Superpoise, Johnny's mobile phone and - for a few terrifying seconds - Glory. "Er, bring her back young man," stutters Atters when he spots her going walkies with a teen. He swaps the dog for one of his cigarillos.

Once things have quietened down a boy who, like me, had watched it all from the kerb, offers his thoughts. "The funny thing is that these blokes actually think we like their clothes. If anyone wore that round here they'd be rushed, beaten up in seconds. We're mocking them and they can't see it."

Safe and secure back in the van, Gustav, Johnny and Atters are none the less upbeat and plotting another trip at Christmas. "I think that went very well," reflects Gustav. "We certainly put them on the straight and narrow."

"Agreed," nods Atters. "But can we stop at a tobacco shop - all my Hamlets have gone"