Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2023 - Issue 86 i The Rake

It takes a lot of heart to wait. It takes a kind of crazy, unwavering, blindly quixotic and bordering-on-irrational faith to wait. And that is the reason we are invariably moved by stories of individuals who have that kind of insane, beautiful heart. Take, for example, the story of Florentino Ariza in Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera. Ariza falls in love with Fermina Daza when he spots her through an open window, but her father separates them and sees her married to someone else. That marriage lasts 50 years, and throughout it, Ariza remains faithful in his hope they will be reunited. He goes through opium addiction and sex addiction, and I imagine touches the bottom of the ocean in existential terms, but he is always…

1. NEWLY SIGNED TO 20th CENTURY FOX, 1947 “A career is born in public — talent in privacy.” Marilyn Monroe may have died 61 years ago, but, like many old-school goddesses — Venus, say, or perhaps Voluptas — she remains omniscient. She’s one of the American Film Institute’s top 10 screen legends. She’s also a meme, a gif, a screensaver, a T-shirt, a tattoo, a myth, and an icon — literally so, in the case of Andy Warhol’s venerated screen prints. She’s rarely out of the news. Recently it was reported that a get-well note from her estranged father — “Dear Marylyn (sic)… lots of thoughts and wishes are with you every day” — sold for $31,000 at a Beverly Hills auction. Prior to that, the release of Andrew Dominik’s…

To describe Slim Giorgi’s raisons d’être requires a liberal use of hyphens. Pictured here with her beloved pooch (@mrgreigejunior) and photographs, including one of “my dear mama”, Slim — who is of Italian, Greek and Scandinavian ancestry — trained in fashion design in Rome, where, at the Alta Moda, she rubbed shoulders with Dolce & Gabbana’s muse Marpessa Hennink (she has also enjoyed a 30-year friendship with the skincare pioneer Dr. Barbara Sturm). Previously an art director and fashion model, Slim has restored properties in the former British West Indies, the U.S. and Italy. Then there’s her photography and literary endeavours, which “allow me to share insider knowledge with a wider audience interested in style, culture and travel suggestions, and so on”. An avid reader (Proust’s In Search of Lost…

A udemars Piguet, already the creator of many sought-after timepieces, decided to push the envelope in 2019. The manufacture debuted the bold Code 11.59 by Audemars Piguet collection, a range of sophisticated watches that bear unique aesthetics. ‘Code’ was inspired by modern lingo, and, in millennial speak, the trend of shortening words. ‘11.59’ was meant to remind us that Audemars Piguet are always ahead of the game, constantly on the brink of tomorrow. The technicality and precision behind Code 11.59 by Audemars Piguet showcase the brand’s multiple talents in the field of complicated watchmaking. Audemars Piguet were pioneers in the invention of complications in the 19th century, with the release of the first chiming wristwatch. The manufacture then played a pivotal role in the revival of complications in the 1970s…

I am resistant to change. It has always been that way. When I was young, I found myself quite badly maimed by a boat propeller; my brother and grandfather had only recently died, so my family’s life could be considered somewhat in flux — an annus horribilis of our own. From then on, a sense of security and certainty became a priority of mine, and I have dedicated myself to honing the art of hazard perception while keeping plans B and C ready to go, just in case. I mention this because, as it turns out, my approach to life has proved extremely useful in the job of editing The Rake, and now my distaste for change has stubbornly seen me to this, my 50th issue. In all honesty, when…

If you have a penchant for the excitement of live motorsport, or the accessibility of world-class tennis, chances are you’ve seen Immy Barclay around. Barclay is an acclaimed presenter, integral to the coverage of a number of the world’s most prestigious sporting events, including Wimbledon, MotoGP and, more recently, Formula One. She regularly interviews sporting titans — from Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal to Valentino Rossi and Lewis Hamilton — with an easy charm that brings out the best in her subjects. Her warm demeanour helps, of course, but so do her language skills. A multilinguist, Barclay is comfortable in Italian and can turn to Spanish, French and Portuguese as well as her native English. It gives her another gear, allowing her to unlock doors that many of her contemporaries…

The best black Russian cocktails money can buy — of the sort you’d expect to be slid across the bar by some manbunned shaker-juggler in Barcelona’s Paradiso or New York’s Katana Kitten — offer up a glorious chemosensory harmony akin to the seraphic choral majesty that will emanate from the skies when the Second Advent unfolds. Think smooth, oily texture from the (ultra-premium) vodka mingling with hints of caramel and vanilla from the (uber-premium) coffee liqueur. The cocktail invented in 1949 at the Hotel Metropole in Brussels by a Belgian barman, Gustave Tops, has two crucial ingredients. The genetic code of the Black Russian Terrier is a far more complex, and yet equally mellifluous, concoction, containing at least 17 components: DNA strands including those of the Airedale, the Giant Schnauzer,…

It’s a modestly utilitarian object that you’d look at for a long time before the terms ‘high’ and ‘falutin’ came to mind. A round, black ceramic ashtray, five inches in diameter, circa 1950s. The reason that this unassuming receptacle for ground-out butts sold for nearly $24,000 at Bonhams in 2018 has everything to do with its provenance: imprinted three times in white raised lettering on its side is the legend ‘Stork Club’ — a name that, like Proust’s madeleine, conjures up a vanished world, in this case of New York café society, when the Stork ruled the roost as the world’s most soignée and storied night spot. From its inception in the roaring twenties as a speakeasy for Jazz Age gangsters to its heyday in the 1950s, when the list…

Don’t you hate seeing that all-caps ‘DELAYED’ notification blinking beside your flight? Twiddling my thumbs at my departure gate, I observed fellow wayfarers amble in and out of the watch boutique opposite me. The intricately finished and painstakingly complicated timepieces of Blancpain’s Villeret collection, and those of sister brand Breguet, grabbed the attention of these window shoppers. To my dismay, most of them walked past the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe, probably thinking to themselves, Ah, just another dive watch. How many of these passers-by realised that Blancpain was, and is, an indispensable pioneer in dive-watch technology? Before Blancpain watchmaker Jean-Jacques Fiechter’s fortuitous near-death experience, divers just snapped on tough watches, crossed their fingers, and took the plunge. His chance meeting with Captain Robert ‘Bob’ Maloubier and Enseigne de Vaisseau Claude…

charlie gray Charlie is a London-based international fashion and portrait photographer known for his playful, cinematic and intimate images. He is inspired by past photography masters Richard Avedon and Terry O’Neill and filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Michael Mann. In this issue, he teamed up with Angelica Zollo to shoot Michelle Yeoh for the cover. You will no doubt be accustomed to Charlie’s work in the magazine by now, and certainly this shoot benefits from his prodigious use of colour and natural light. See more of the images of Yeoh on page 72. angelica zollo Angelica Zollo is a writer, producer, director and musician. Her directorial debut — the award-winning feature film Trauma Is a Time Machine (2018) — played theatrically across the U.S. and is available on all streaming platforms.…

“To call woman the weaker sex,” Mahatma Gandhi once said, is a libel; it is man’s injustice to woman.” Indeed, the phrase was a vapid platitude the moment it was coined. Exhibit A: the voids between the genders in terms of pain threshold and life expectancy — case closed. There are plenty more exhibits up the prosecution lawyer’s sleeve, too. (S)he might turn to the history books and cite the fearless exploits of Zenobia, Cleopatra, Lakshmibai, Theodora, Joan of Arc or Empress Dowager Cixi. (S)he might delve into the annals of popular music and point out how different its narrative would be without the exploits of Debbie Harry, Patti Smith, Siouxsie Sioux and Chrissie Hynde. Marilyn Monroe’s irresistible turn in Some Like It Hot (see page 144), in which she…

Let us view this sodden tale through a lens in which alcohol plays a crucial part. We’re talking commercial scent. In 1977, the perfume behemoth Fabergé decided to launch a female-skewed counterpart to its men’s juggernaut Brut 33. It was imaginatively called Babe. A face and indeed a profile were required to match that of the alpha-male types promoting the famous green bottle: Joe Namath splashed for cash in America, Kevin Keegan did it in the U.K., and Franz Beckenbauer was the German campaign star. It was also Elvis’s noted choice of scent. Margaux Hemingway got the gig. Born in Portland in 1954, she was the granddaughter of arguably the 20th century’s greatest novelist. Yet fewer surnames also carry with it the patina of incandescence and self-administered destruction. The writing…

I should begin by acknowledging that I am biased. I’m biased because, as a bespoke tailor, I believe that the way forwards for the fashion industry is to reflect on how and why we shop, and to change our habits so that we buy quality, ethically made products that will most likely last until they (or we) die. The question of why we shop has generated a vast amount of research: it’s driven by endorphins and the need for status and utility. But with this has come the guilt of overindulgence as well as an awareness of the damage we are doing to Mother Earth. The past three years have been strange for all of us: I don’t know anyone who has been completely unaffected by Covid. But what I…

If you ever wondered whether Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar-winning movie, The Great Beauty, was based on a certain Roman lifestyle, look no further. I write this at Villa Furibonda (Villa Furious), on the exclusive Appia Antica, Rome’s oldest cobbled road, where ancient catacombs are found beneath splendid villas flanked by towering pine trees and cypresses. It is here, at Villa Furibonda, that Countess Marisela Federici has been holding court with the international jet set for decades. Dressed elegantly in all black (her silk robes are strictly handmade) — including a black pillbox with a veil (she follows diligently Queen Victoria’s example by wearing black since her husband’s death in 2016) — Marisela welcomes me with the warmth and wit typical of a woman who has experienced and mastered life’s many events…

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 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 – www.carusomenswear.com CERRUTI…