Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2024 - Issue 95 i The Rake

When I was growing up in Manhattan in the 1980s, it was not cool to be Asian — so much so that I managed to talk my way out of learning Mandarin as my second language. At the time, anything that smacked of my cultural heritage embarrassed me. Even when my family spoke to each other in Chinese when we were in public, I could feel a flush of self-consciousness and shame heat the back of my neck. Instead, profoundly inspired by the first scene of Claude Berri’s Manon des Sources, when the cinematic world was introduced to the transcendent Emmanuelle Béart tending goats à poil, I was inspired to take up French. However, my penchant for all things Francophone (including referring to my parents precociously as mere and pere)…

I hadn’t been in the living room of Gay Talese’s East Side brownstone more than 10 minutes before he said, “You wouldn’t go to a wedding or a job interview dressed like that, would you?” Probably not. I was wearing a puffy Dodger-blue hoodie over a dress shirt. Did Talese equate our author-writer conversation with the formality of occasions such as a wedding? Probably so, and he’s long regarded sartorial style as a sign of respect. “When I go to interview someone,” he tells me, “I always felt I was representing myself as a professional and I had to dress the part. It’s a sense of separateness, not protection; a sense of self and pride. Most people will dress for a funeral. I dress for being alive, not being dead.…

‘Pathfinder’ is a loaded term. The Pathfinders of British army parlance are a platoon within 16 Air Assault Brigade whose job is to jump into hostile territory with what they can carry on their backs and conduct reconnaissance until it is deemed safe and reasonable for everyone else to join them. By that point things like helicopter landing points and the best routes to and from the enemy have been established. Swap in words such as ‘restaurant’ and ‘accommodation’ for the military jargon and you can quickly comprehend the subject of this issue’s Sketch. The Pathfinder in this case knows everything there is to know about an area before others join him there. He knows what clothing is required, whether you need a Mini Moke, a scooter or even a…

If you’re going to be a footnote in history, you might as well be a spectacular one. In 1972 Nina van Pallandt was linked to Clifford Irving, who happened to be working on one of the most audacious literary grifts of the 20th century. Irving, you see, somehow convinced the storied publisher McGraw-Hill that he could deliver the autobiography of the billionaire recluse Howard Hughes. In an act of chutzpah that makes it look like Stephen Glass did nothing more than dangle a modifier, Irving produced a manuscript having never spoken to the gilded hermit who was too busy storing his urine in glass jars to participate in a book. The fraud was so egregious that Hughes emerged from hiding to repudiate it, and Irving spent almost two years in…

We’ve all encountered them: those charismatic individuals who command a room’s attention without ever raising their voice, who exude — effortlessly, almost silently — imperious magnetism through every pore. The apparel made by Canali is that person in fabric form. And if personifying clothing and its makers in this way seems a stretch, let’s examine the human traits that, over the nine decades since Canali were founded by brothers Giovanni and Giacomo (a fabric magnate and tailor, respectively), have propelled the brand from its humble beginnings to the menswear stratosphere. “Respect and responsibility are, first and foremost, the values of the Canali family, infused into the company ever since it was established 90 years ago in the Lombardy commune of Triuggio,” Stefano Canali, the third-generation Chief Executive, tells The Rake.…

Everyone seems to want to go to The Newt, and I cannot figure out why. Very rarely in life are there multifaceted reasons why the monied and social set wants to converge on one place — usually there is a singular motivating factor. People are attracted to 5 Hertford Street for Robin Birley’s taste; they go to Davidoff of London for the Sahakians; they go to Bellamy’s for the fish fingers and smoked eel mousse; and they go to Palm Beach for the tax benefits. There is always what I believe is called, in corporate parlance, the ‘red thread’ — a unifying feature — but after my stay at The Newt, whose ribbon cutting was in 2019, I remain unsure what it is. The concept is a wonderful thing —…

I an McKellen as Gandalf is a fine example. Others include Diane Keaton as Annie Hall, Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly, Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow, Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury, and Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, respectively, as Jeeves and Wooster. But perhaps there’s no greater example of an actor being a shoo-in for their role than James Mason’s turn as the enigmatic anti-hero Captain Nemo in Disney’s 1954 adaptation of Jules Verne’s sci-fi novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. For viewers who know Nemo’s backstory, the late British actor’s purring inflection and saturnine gravitas offer, via the lens, tantalising nods to the hidden depths of a character whose name — drawing inevitable comparisons with Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name — in Latin means ‘nobody’. We first…

It is August again — my favourite issue of the year, because it comes out at a time when many of you will be on your Adirondack chairs overlooking one of the many lakes in Muskoka, smoking a Montecristo Double Edmundo and drinking a sundowner while listening to the loon birds. Or drying off on a sunbed after a Mediterranean plunge, from a boat or otherwise. The possibilities are endless, but if there’s a demographic I like to think knows how to turn relaxation into an art form, it is The Rake’s readership. If that is you, what will you find in these pages? Well, we are indulging in the wonders of far-off lands, for this is our Travel Issue. It can be read in one of two ways: either…

Ciao, ragazzi! It is I, your favourite Drunk Funcle, coming to you this month from sunny Rome, where I have been living for the past five months while I make my new movie, A Simple Favour 2. Italy has always been a favourite vacation destination for me and my wife, Laurie (Tipsy Faunt to my Drunk Funcle), and there are dangers to working in a place where you normally have fun. But it has been a wonderful experience, and I’ve discovered a lot about how Italy runs its day-to-day life. A few things I’ve learned: • Pedestrians don’t have the right of way. The zebra crossing is simply the one place where a driver who runs you over might feel bad about hitting you.• Unlike the French, Italians love it…

Chopard Alpine Eagle 41 Xp Tt in grade 5 titanium Chopard’s Co-President Karl-Friedrich Scheufele, his sister, Caroline, who is Artistic Director and also Co-President, and his son and heir, Karl-Fritz, rarely refer to the maker’s Alpine Eagle watches as a ‘line’, or even a ‘collection’. To them, it is a ‘family’ of watches. The word resonates within the hallowed walls of 8 rue de Veyrot, the manufacture’s Geneva H.Q., because Chopard is one of the last major family-owned companies left in the watch industry, having been so since 1860. Add to that the fact that the Alpine Eagle is the only horological concept in existence co-developed by three generations of the same family (it was Karl-Fritz who first argued for a sportier iteration of the St. Moritz novelties his father…

There was the customary holding of breath when Chargeurs, the French conglomerate, bought the dinky but respected British heritage brand then known as Swaine Adeney Brigg. Customary because there is always a sense of snobbish scepticism when interlopers take charge of beloved institutions, as was seen with Huntsman when it was bought by Pierre Lagrange. Boy, how things have moved fast. The brand has been reforged as Swaine, and while the name has shrunk, its retail space has not. In fact, the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it space in Piccadilly Arcade is no more, and Swaine have a new, gargantuan, multi-floored flagship on Bond Street in Mayfair, with a workshop in the basement, as well as a smaller boutique in Burlington Arcade. Big, bold strategies such as these need confident leadership, and Swaine have…

brian bowen smith Brian, who was born and raised in New York, became a professional photographer via a less-than-traditional route. After catching the eye of Herb Ritts while performing as a pro athlete in a print campaign, the legendary photographer became a friend and mentor, helping Brian to find his personal photographic style. He has been working steadily ever since, shooting for countless publications and commercial clients, as well as publishing two books and focusing heavily on his fine art photography. Brian lives in L.A. with his wife and young son, and when he is not shooting you will find him surfing, snowboarding or riding his motorcycle. He has made a welcome return to The Rake in this issue, shooting our cover star, the Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada, in Santa…

Who is the most swooningly romantic of movie directors? A case could be made for Jean Vigo or Wong Kar-Wai, whose poetic-erotic offerings, from L’Atalante to In The Mood For Love, are equally adept at the shimmer and the simmer. But both would surely doff their caps to Nicholas Ray, whose films, according to the Harvard Film Archive, are “among the most heartfelt and disarmingly authentic works of the Hollywood studio era, intimate portraits of indelibly three-dimensional characters and lyrical intimations of loneliness or loss”. Whether bringing a skewed eye to the genre picture, like his 1954 western Johnny Guitar, or practically inventing the troubled teenager in 1955’s Rebel Without a Cause, Ray’s work foregrounded the wounded underdogs and outcasts he keenly identified with. He was acclaimed as the auteur…

With a Swiss father and a German mother, you might think I would be like the psychotic but alluring Dobermann, or those oafs from Rottweil. I am, in fact, the product of two noble houses: the elegant and poised Standard Poodle (or ‘Pudel’ in mutter’s native tongue) and the majestic Bernese Mountain Dog. They met on the slopes of Gstaad — he was resplendent in his tri-coloured coat of black, rust and white Swiss cross on his chest; she slender, athletic and smart as a whippet, with a beautiful dark curly coat to save her from the frigid temperatures at altitude. Poodles are not the only dandies you can see preening around Paris with their midriff and legs showing. They are among man’s oldest companions. Raised in the lakes and…

You would be forgiven for thinking that a time-only watch could not be complicated. After all, there are often no subdials, no chimes or jumping hours to be seen. But the reality is that to make an incredibly thin watch is incredibly difficult. Thinness in the eyes of most watchmakers is one of the greatest complications, and making ultra-thin movements is the domain of a few specialists — think Piaget, Richard Mille and Bulgari. It is often expensive, and requires specialist technical and mechanical knowhow. To make a thin movement you have to make significant changes in movement architecture. The construction is inherently less stable, and requires a lot more care in manufacturing and design to work well. It is complex stuff, and that is why so few makers even…

A. Lange & Söhne have always been a collector’s favourite. Makers for whom, traditionally, you would have had to dig deeper to find and get into. That changed in 2020-21, when we all spent more time at home and enthusiasts had the chance to indulge themselves. The German brand is obsessive about build quality and finishing, with a clear line-up of complicated and sporty creations — its design ethos is distinct in a crowded watch market. While the name is far from a household one, Lange & Söhne have been developing a reputation among a new audience of younger collectors. To illustrate their convictions in what they do, they arrived at the largest annual trade show, Watches and Wonders, last year with only one novelty. And a limited one at…

I shan’t forget my 22nd birthday. I was at work, diligently going about my first job as a ‘promotions executive’ for a regional newspaper group in north-east England. When noon came around, the women from the circulation department (led by Diane, whose figure made Marilyn Monroe look like a boy) said we were going to the Golden Lion pub across the road for a celebratory drink. “But we’ll have to be quick,” warned Rita, the supervisor. “The first edition of the Evening Despatch goes out at three, and it’s always chaos when there’s no one in the office… ” It was around 6pm when one of the paper’s delivery drivers pushed me out of his van in the direction of my front door, leaving me to stagger up the steps…