Tabla de contenidos para August 2020 - Issue 71 en The Rake

One night in the mid 1960s, Sammy Davis Jr. was nearing the end of a sold-out show at the Chi Chi nightclub in Palm Springs. He wound up a song and embarked on a Jerry Lewis impression while soft-shoe-shuffling his way off stage. In a holster on his right thigh was a .45 calibre pistol, loaded with blanks; Sammy was one of the fastest draws in Hollywood, and a quick pull-and-fire often served as an explosive finale to his act. Due to some oversight, however, the pistol was, on this particular night, already cocked. As he reached to pull it, the powder from the blank shot through the holster and onto his mohair tuxedo pants. Smoke started rising, and a circle of skin on his calf began to burn. Some…

This year will be remembered for two things: Covid-19 and the movement against racial inequality. Lena Horne died too long ago to have anything to do with the first, but she knew plenty about racial inequality. Born in 1917 in Brooklyn, Lena Mary Calhoun Horne had African-American, Native American and European ancestry, which combined with aquiline elegance and a shimmering intelligence to make her, in some commentary, ‘exotic’ — racist shorthand for black but not threateningly so. She could sing, dance and crack wise, and by 16 was drawing eyes from the leads as part of the famed Cotton Club chorus. By the early 1940s the gravitational pull of Hollywood could not be denied, but even then it was coloured by, well, colour. Early screen tests saw her auditioning for…

The characterisation of Constantin Brâncusi as the creator of an art form that emphasises clean geometrical lines balancing forms inherent in his material with the symbolic allusions of representational art perfectly encapsulates the tailoring vision of Michael Browne. For it is Browne who has achieved what the Greeks referred to as the infusion of anima, or ‘spirit’, in normally lifeless cloth to endow it with a sense of living, dynamic energy. Browne does this as Brâncusi did in his sculpture — not through embellishment but through the reductionist language of clean, fluid, purposeful tailoring brushstrokes augmented by inordinate handmade details that make his clothing feel alive and as though it is bristling with energy. His are garments that are informed by velocity, embodiments of the Italian poet Filippo Marinetti’s Futurist…

The Rumble in the Jungle, which took place on 30 October 1974, isn’t just the most thrilling piece of sporting theatre in history: the ingredients for it to go down as such were manifold from the outset. There was a $10m purse, put up by the kleptocratic president, Mobutu Sese Seko, of what was then Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). There was an ostensibly invincible world heavyweight champion with 37 successive victories behind him (all but four of them by knockout), and who was at the peak of his powers, pitted against a charismatic talisman seven years his senior who had been stripped of his heavyweight crown several years earlier as punishment for his refusal to be inducted into the U.S. Army. There was a postponement of…

Dude, I want Steve McQueen’s other watch!” was my exclamation upon meeting Hanhart’s co-managing director Felix Wallner at the 2017 Basel Fair. He chuckled in amusement and replied, “Wei, everybody wants Steve McQueen’s watch. We have hundreds of requests each month to recreate the 417 Flieger Chronograph.” O.K., just in case you’re not sure what timepiece Wallner and I were losing our collective minds about, let me clarify. Steve McQueen is correctly identified with two other watches, in particular the iconic TAG Heuer Monaco 1133 B, which he and Jack Heuer selected and which he wore during his 1971 film Le Mans in a partnership that continues to be one of the most evocative even to this day. Then there is the Rolex 5512 Submariner, which he was photographed with,…

Someone wise once told me that love is a verb: it’s something you do. Among all the sage soundbites I have been fortunate enough to receive over the years, this is the most profound. Love is not just a state of mind, it is not a feeling, and it is not in fact anything without some form of action, for it is by our actions that we are judged. What is love-in-action? And how did love for our common man become so dysfunctional and undermined? It can seem like a Battle of the Bulge-type scenario, where we dig our own foxholes and fear lifting our heads above the threshold to see how our neighbour is doing. Understandably, in the current climate, the world, or the countries we live in, can,…

Why do the words ‘celebrity’ and ‘scandal’ make such amorous bedfellows? One theory is that volatile, complex humans gravitate towards fame; another is that fame corrupts. Both probably have some truth in them. Another, more compelling, hypothesis is that celebrity acts as a kind of barium sulfate for the personality, exposing the basic human flaws that exist in all of us, thus creating a modern equivalent of the adulteress in St. John’s Gospel. The bigger the celebrity, the larger the dose of white, chalky liquid and the longer the queue of ordinary people eager to cast the first stone, safe in the knowledge that their own faults remain hidden. A prime case in point is a certain blue-eyed megastar of the 20th century, who was born in 1915 to Italian…

Ralph Lauren Purple Label Polo Bear sweater I will labour under the assumption that you all had the good sense to watch the HBO documentary Very Ralph. If you haven’t, do: you’ll not only see Wei Koh, our most noble and sovereign founder, as one of the many distinguished talking heads, but become intimately acquainted with the genius of Ralph Lauren and his way of working. What you will see is a visual signature that subtly permeates every collection, every store, every advertisement. There is no wrong answer as to what one might consider to be ‘very Ralph’. To each his or her own, and God knows Ralph Lauren has covered a lot of ground. For yours truly, there is nothing that encapsulates the spirit and essence of Ralph Lauren…

“When a warrior fights not for himself but for his brothers… his heart truly has achieved contempt for death, and with that he transcends himself and his actions touch the sublime… ‘The opposite of fear,’ Dienekes tells Xeo that night, ‘is love’.” From Gates of Fire, on the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, by Steven Pressfield One of the world’s greatest tragedies is that abuse is a cycle. And it is the victim and not the abuser it falls upon to break that cycle. Many are not able to. The language of violence and self-hatred is too deeply burrowed into their psyches and too inseparably enmeshed in their souls. The seduction of their rage is too strong. It overpowers their self-control and consumes them, leaving the path free for the monster…

There are certain shops — although the term ‘shop’ barely does them justice — that raise retail to a spiritual, almost religious, level. They are much, much more than places where money is exchanged for goods — neither Pritzker prize-winning architecture nor square-meterage nor contemporary artworks set these establishments apart. Instead, it is a combination of other factors: superb, authentic products, of course; great staff, who if they were not working there would be among the customers; a heroic resistance to change and fashion; and the presiding genius of an individual who has made it his or her life’s work. The best way I have of defining such places is that to enter them is to enter a world in which it is impossible to imagine anything even remotely unpleasant…

A former Editor-in-Chief of The Rake, Nick spent several years as a staffer at U.K. Esquire and GQ Australia, and is now the Editor of the U.K. edition of Robb Report, as well as a regular contributor to The Rake, the FT’s How To Spend It, Hole & Corner, and Director, the Institute of Directors’ magazine. His writing has also appeared in a range of titles including The Observer, Radio Times and Women’s Health, as well as branded content titles for Hackett, Bentley, Lexus, Toyota and Richard Mille. An ardent believer in old-fashioned journalism, he frequently dreams of a mass public burning of rehashed press releases posing as editorial. His sartorial philosophy is summarised by a self-coined axiom: “Style and fashion are like love and infatuation.” For this issue of…

Bill Clinton had Buddy. Arguably Paul McCartney’s finest love song was inspired by his Old English Sheepdog, Martha. Some of the greatest friendships in fictional history — Tintin and Snowy, Scooby and Shaggy, Charlie Brown and Snoopy — were between human and dog. But you have no proper notion of how profound the human-canine bond can be unless you’ve experienced that between a K9 handler from the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group and the dog at his or her command. “Your emotions run up and down the leash,” is how one highly experienced handler from Red Squadron put it — a man by the name of Will ‘Cheese’ Chesney, with whom I carried out Operation Neptune Spear, the raid in which 24 U.S. Navy SEALs ended the life of…

Lewis Hamilton’s fix-it list, on the evening The Rake catches up with him at the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team headquarters in Austria, is longer than usual. A few days before our conversation, a rare off day saw the six-time Formula One world champion, competing in the Austrian Grand Prix in Spielberg, Styria, penalised five seconds for a collision with Red Bull’s Alex Albon before finishing in fourth place. “I just can’t wait to get back into a car tomorrow — I just want to get going,” he says, frustration seeping through the thousand-megawatt smile Hamilton wears even when expressing exasperation to people he’s only just met. “Last weekend wasn’t good, in terms of the result. Luckily, usually the time between races can be this long period of that uncomfortable feeling…

This is one of those stories that really matter, that replenish abandoned hope, that validate the faithful, and give pause for thought to the cynical. For our millennial readers, this is a @TanksGoodNews story if ever I’ve heard one. The story of brothers Solomon Golding and Kidane Cousland strips away the superficial filters of modern-day influencers and presents two young men who have quietly enacted revolutionary change within their chosen professions. Solomon became the first British-born black dancer for the Royal Ballet, Kidane the first black officer cadet to win the ‘Sword of Honour’ at the Royal Military Academy of Sandhurst, Britain’s officer training academy — its West Point. Kidane still serves in the British Army, as Adjutant of 29 Commando Royal Artillery, based in the Royal Citadel in Plymouth,…

As a story of the underdog defeating the industry giant, it is not without precedent. In 1966, three Ford GT 40s swept first, second and third place at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, prompting an irate Enzo Ferrari to boycott all motorsports a few years later. Another David versus Goliath story took place in 1976, at the ‘Judgment of Paris’. There, for the first time in history, a panel of experts, including Aubert de Villaine, the legendary patron of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, and Odette Khan, the editor of La Revue du vin de France, selected a chardonnay produced by Chateau Montelena, from Calistoga, California, as the world’s greatest white wine. That’s right. In a blind tasting, the 1973 vintage made by the Croatian-American winemaker Mike Grgich just one…

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…

‘Hardboiled’. To the kind of noir detective fiction fan whose paperback collection becomes more dog-eared on a daily basis, it’s an endlessly emotive word — evocative of a man constantly confronted by an intimidating psychological assault course; an individual sentenced by some murky, sparsely hinted-at backstory to negotiate the path of least moral resistance through a zone strewn with organised crime and presided over by a legal system that itself is flailing in quicksand on the moral high ground. Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe and Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer are the key archetypes. Now imagine that post-war ‘hardboiled detective’ as a world war II veteran from Louisiana, living in the Watts neighbourhood of Los Angeles in the decades immediately after the second world war. So far, so typical. But then bear…