Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2021 - Issue 75 i The Rake

It’s a sad sign of the experience we’ve lived through when I find myself writing my second consecutive Founder’s letter in homage to a great man who has passed away. A collective sob was felt throughout the sartorial universe when we learned of Gigi Dalcuore’s death in February this year. We felt the loss keenly because, of course, the world would now be deprived of a great master, a man capable of that rare act of tailoring transubstantiation — of rendering life, dimension and sculptural form from what was once two-dimensional cloth. Dalcuore clothes were infused with anima, with a soul that was imparted by him through his shears as he cut each garment. But the hurt we experienced was far greater because our planet had lost a wonderful human…

Though rock is now filed firmly in the Heritage section alongside jazz and folk, its official history still rules our thinking about popular music. Everything started with Elvis Presley, the wisdom still goes, and before him there was only dross. Nat King Cole is one of the great victims of this belief, his decades of work reduced to a single function. Like Slade, Mariah Carey, The Pogues and Bing Crosby, he is a fixture of our lives in that narrow window between the middle of November and Boxing Day, when we hear his impossibly rich voice launch for the 74th year running into The Christmas Song, reminding us of chestnuts roasting on an open fire and Jack Frost nipping at our nose. He deserves much more. Just as that effortlessly…

The chain of peaks after which my kin and I are named is gradually losing its crisp-white appearance due to climate change depleting its glaciers. Conversely, my coarse, element-cheating coat — which, with its fine woolly undercoat, should serve as inspiration to the likes of Zegna and Loro Piana when creating their world-beating techno-fabrics — will remain forever white, even when the pigment cells in my follicles are long expired. “White hair often covers the head,” wrote French author and my compatriot Honoré de Balzac, “but the heart that holds it is ever young” — he should have replaced the word ‘but’ with an ‘and’, though. For white hair does not denote maturity, in those who have it for life, but rather cheats the ephemerality of youth. As with our…

In the final weeks of 2011, obituarists abruptly found themselves caught up in a pre-Christmas rush: two billionaires had died within two days of each other. There was no shortage of archive material on the first: Steve Jobs, the roll-necked, dad-jeaned Apple guru who had led his company to world domination and whose worth, according to Forbes, was $8.3bn. The second subject couldn’t have provided a starker contrast: Julio Mario Santo Domingo was fiercely private where Jobs was public, and exquisitely tailored where Jobs was doggedly casual. He was an urbane industrialist who spoke six languages and wrote poetry and short stories on the side. Yet the prime source of his fortune, making him the first Colombian to break into the ranks of the ultra-high-net worthies, was beer. So much…

In old-school Ivy League speak, Paul Feig is a ‘renaissance man’ — in other words, a polymath devoted to art, style and humanitarianism, and an individual who excels in each discipline. He has established a reputation as a groundbreaking director, with triumphs such as Bridesmaids and Ghostbusters under his belt. He is also one of the world’s style icons, as the single Hollywood luminary championing classic sartorialism. But it is perhaps in his roles as the founder of the award-winning gin brand Artingstall’s and as the host of Quarantine Cocktail Time on Instagram that he has become most familiar to us over this past, remarkable year. To be specific, Quarantine Cocktail Time, in which Feig danced, narrated, entertained, teased his wife, Laurie, and instructed us on mixing boozy creations, applied…

ADRIANO MENEGHETTI – www.adrianomeneghetti.com ALBERT THURSTON – www.albertthurston.com ALFRED RIFUGIO – www.alfredrifugio.it ALICE MADE THIS – www.alicemadethis.com AMOUR LUX – www.armorlux.com ANDERSON & SHEPPARD – www.anderson-sheppard.co.uk ANDREA POMPILIO – www.andreapompilio.it ASPREY – www.asprey.com AUDEMARS PIGUET – www.audemarspiguet.com AUDI – www.audi.co.uk BALLY – www.bally.com BAMFORD – www.bamfordwatchdepartment.com BARBANERA – www.barbanerastyle.com BASELWORLD – www.baselworld.com BATES – www.bates-hats.com BEGG & CO. – www.beggandcompany.com BELL & ROSS – www.bellross.com BELSTAFF – www.belstaff.co.uk BERLUTI – www.berluti.com BERRY BROS. & RUDD – www.bbr.com BLACKHORSE LANE ATELIERS – www.blackhorselane.com BLANCPAIN – www.blancpain.com BORSALINO – www.borsalino.com BREGUET – www.breguet.com BRIONI – www.brioni.com BROOKS BROTHERS – www.brooksbrothers.com BRUNELLO CUCINELLI – www.brunellocucinelli.com BULGARI HOTEL – www.bulgarihotels.com BUDD SHIRTMAKERS – www.buddshirts.co.uk BULGARI – www.bulgari.com CALABRESE 1924 – www.calabrese1924.com CAMOSHITA UNITED ARROWS – www.united-arrows.jp CANALI – www.canali.com CARMINA SHOEMAKER – www.carminashoemaker.com CARUSO…

Freddy Carter has more than the required amount of high cheekbones and unfettered charm to propel his career as an actor. While the 28-year-old was growing up surrounded by the farms and coastline of Somerset, and amid short stints in Cyprus and the United States, a life in front of the camera wasn’t always obvious. But his parents loved the theatre, and a particular trip to London to see Mark Rylance play the wild man of the woods in Jerusalem inspired a 16-year-old Carter. He debated applying to university, even just as a safety net, but instead auditioned for the Oxford School of Drama, and got in. Carter spent no time hanging about after graduation, immediately joining the cast of the Sir Trevor Nunn-directed Wars of the Roses at the…

The rubric for Pocket Guide was written with guys like Michael Hainey in mind. Before becoming a Deputy Editor of Air Mail, he was the Deputy Editor of GQ, the Executive Editorial Director of Esquire, and the author of a must-read memoir, After Visiting Friends, that unearthed the truth behind his father’s mysterious and premature death. It was Graydon Carter, Air Mail’s Editor, who gave Michael his big break, at Spy magazine in 1989. Michael’s style typifies the ‘uniform’ — an ensemble of single-breasted suit, shirt and sweater, but he adds, “I like to think of my style as the best of British, French and Italian combed through the American eye”. When we had our chat over Zoom, he was wearing essentially the same outfit but in a different permutation…

special thanks to the Prince de Galles Hotel, Paris all garments available to order on TheRake.com Why has Lorenzo Cifonelli, the creator of some of the most mythical and coveted tailoring in the world, whose family invented the famous Cifonelli shoulder — which Karl Lagerfeld said he could recognise at a hundred metres — decided to partner with The Rake to bring a new accessibility to his signature style? Why is it that Cifonelli has harnessed all of his technical acumen — the secret of a Cifonelli coat is that it is leaner and more fitted than any other jacket yet remains extraordinarily light and offers unrestricted range of movement — with the intention of creating garments of extraordinary value? Why has he teamed up with the revered luxury cloth…

Kurt Iswarienko, a photographer born in the blue-collar creative breeding ground of Akron, Ohio, and raised in Argentina and Mexico, was influenced by the eclectic cultural and geographical contrasts he experienced as he travelled as a young boy. He picked up a camera for the first time while working as a lighting technician on film sets in Hollywood, and his cinematically driven eye found its creative niche working within the static frame. Known for drawing emotionally charged narrative performances from his subjects, and a visually sculpted lighting style, Kurt has photographed everyone from Oprah Winfrey to Brad Pitt, and created media campaigns with a number of diverse brands. During the Covid pandemic he adapted his process to produce still and motion projects remotely, logging more than 40 such shoots in…

There are generally two breeds of interviewer. The first kind are assiduous about getting prepped for their subject. Sir David Frost was the exemplar here; when I turned up to interview him some years ago, he spent the first few minutes making ostentatious reference to a slew of recent stories I’d done, which was both impressive and not a little disarming. The second group takes a — how to put this? — more cavalier approach. Larry King was indisputably their champion. Over 25 years and his many thousands of interviews fronting Larry King Live, CNN’s highest-rated, longest-running programme that reached millions across America and some 130 countries around the world, the Brooklyn-born King displayed what The New York Times called “the folksy personality of a Bensonhurst schmoozer”, making a kind…

In the biz, it is known as ‘ugging up’. It may not ring a bell, but you’ll know it when you see it. We are referring to that point in an actress’s career when she is justifiably tired of being judged as much for her ethereal looks as her talent. And so, in the services of character, she strips away all vestiges of glamour. Nicole Kidman did it in 2002’s The Hours, as Virginia Woolf, with a prosthetic nose that was as riveting as her Oscar-winning performance. Two years later, Charlize — do we really have to note her last name? — followed suit as the serial killer Aileen Wuornos (Monster). There was also Anne Hathaway’s dramatic weight loss and cropped ’do in 2012’s Les Misérables. Again, a gold statuette…

Alexander Hascher’s mission has taken him on an epic transcontinental journey and resulted in the creation of one of the most innovative garments in men’s classic style: the lightest jacket the world has ever known. “My family is German but I grew up in Singapore,” the founder of Sacco tells The Rake. “From an early age I loved tailoring, and in particular jackets. I adored the style of men like Porfirio Rubirosa and Gianni Agnelli, who looked so immaculate in their Caraceni jackets, even at the height of summer in the south of France. As a teenager I would go out in the evening with a blazer or sports coat, which was not compatible with the tropical milieu of my home city. But for me a jacket is about manners…

“No one loathed the idea of getting old more than Dorian, so he wanted to experience everything, constantly reflecting on questions of morality and sin. His biggest wish was that his portrait would age instead of himself.” The stories humans tell each other reflect our fears as profoundly as our hopes, so it is no surprise that Oscar Wilde’s 1890 Gothic work — his only novel — is but one literary treatise among countless whose core theme is the tormenting brevity of being young. Myths akin to the ‘Fountain of Youth’ idea have sprung up, independently, in different cultures the world over since the birth of storytelling. From Gilgamesh’s fruitless quest for immortality to Peter Pan and Benjamin Button via Faust’s used-car-lot-esque deal with Mephistopheles, fiction tells us that resistance…

I described him in my last story with these words: “His countenance is known the world over. His visage has become an obsession for men and women alike. There are legions devoted to his ineffable style, his ability to move effortlessly between sublime sports chic, pitch-perfect preppy-dom, and transcendent black tie. He says little, but his warm, fathomless brown eyes speak volumes of his extraordinary depth. And while he may be small in stature, he exudes a heroism and strength of character that is singular and inspirational. And the mere rumour of his appearance on a skateboard literally broke the internet, with millions of fans vying for the chance to meet him.” I speak, of course, of the Ralph Lauren Polo Bear. But what his fans may not know is…