Tabla de contenidos para December 2023 - Issue 91 en The Rake

Men go to comical extremes to avoid romantic entanglements. In an episode of the 1937 T.V. show Little Rascals, the seminal character ‘Spanky’ McFarland protests against Valentine’s Day by proposing to his fellow Rascals that they form a new club: the ‘He-man Woman Haters Club’. Hilarity ensues when Spanky nominates Alfalfa, a good-natured bumbling fool (and early adopter of drape-style tailoring), who is haplessly smitten with a girl named Darla. Personally, I have always preferred the tactic embraced by Hugh Grant in About a Boy: Grant is on a mission to disprove poet John Donne’s famous line that “no man is an island”. He attempts this by adopting a lifestyle he calls “island living”, which consists of essentially cutting yourself off from the world and breaking down your day into…

In the 1930s, the actress Luise Rainier found herself seated next to Robert Taylor, then on the cusp of matinee-idol status, at a Hollywood luncheon. Possibly stuck for small talk, she asked him to sum up his aspirations for life. Without hesitation, Taylor replied that he dreamed of owning 10 perfectly tailored suits. For decades afterwards, the German-born Rainier would repeat this anecdote to illustrate what she saw as the epitome of American materialism and crassness. The consensus among Taylor’s peers was that he, in turn, was illustrating the fatal sense-of-humour failure allegedly prevalent among the Teutons. But there’s a strong case for taking Taylor’s remark at face value: few Hollywood leading men, before or since, have been as aware of clothing’s power to maketh the man (and, by extension,…

New words and names, introduced in deference to anti-German sentiment after the first world war, have enjoyed mixed longevity. To this day, a Briton would say ‘hot dog’ instead of ‘Frankfurter’, but ‘liberty cabbage’ versus ‘sauerkraut’ was never going to bother the bookies. Former Schmidts are nowadays Smiths, Müllers are Millers, and one cannot see the Windsors going back to Saxe-Coburg-Gotha any time soon, though most Bumgardners have, for obvious reasons, reverted to the surname their ancestors used — Baumgartner — before Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s ill-fated stroll through Sarajevo. Similarly, in the canine world, some flashes of linguistic Teutophobia lasted the distance while other monikers slipped into the ether. ‘Alsatian’ remains more common parlance than ‘German Shepherd’, but ‘Dachshund’ is now de rigueur, not least because ‘Badger Dog’ — which…

Some watch-brand chief executives streamline operations, freshen up the e-commerce strategy, and make the right noises about sustainability. Since joining Breitling in 2017, Georges Kern has overhauled the brand’s entire personality, beefed up its sustainability credentials, and doubled its turnover, in the process creating a company — “a generalistic manufacturer”, as he puts it — that now struggles to keep up with demand. Having studied political science in Strasbourg, and later business administration at Switzerland’s University of St. Gallen, Kern, the son of a French mother and German father who now holds German, French and Swiss passports, cut his commercial teeth in a prosaic realm — a multinational food conglomerate — before moving into haute horology and rocketing through the ranks at TAG Heuer. “Like making movies, running a watch…

I think people either love Christmas or feel something close to indifference about it. For those in the ‘love’ camp, it is the most wonderful time of the year. For the rest, it’s great to get the extra days off work. The festive season brings good tidings of joy, but what I really love is the great tidal wave of wine. Jesus did, after all, turn water into wine, and a lot of it. The story of John 2:1-11 suggests that Jesus turned approximately 120 gallons of water into wine for a wedding ceremony, just to impress the guests. That is approximately 600 bottles — no wonder he went viral. It would appear that wine is quite significant when it comes to religion, at both ends of the spectrum. I…

Christmas, bringer of that warm, fuzzy feeling. The mulled wine, the mince pies, the mad rush of buying presents for those we love… Jubilant and traditional practices aplenty, but as a Londoner who works in property, I can’t help but ponder another glorious matter: who will have the best Christmas display? As a child growing up in London, I remember the Christmas lights, lampposts ornately adorned with angels and cherubs, and the brilliance of Harrods’ windows. As ‘holiday fever’ increased in intensity year on year, the build-up to the big day became more of a spectacle. At the same time, Christmas decorations enjoyed a meteoric rise on the London property scene. What began presumably as harmless fun has given way to a fabulous and brazen wave of holiday displays across…

Deep pan, crisp and even.” Many readers will recognise it as the punchline to one of the mercifully less excruciating Christmas gags that do the rounds each Advent (the question that presides it, of course, is, How does Good King Wenceslas like his pizza?). Undeniably puerile, the joke nonetheless makes at least as much sense — to the mincepie-bloated casual listener, anyway — as the carol itself, which was translated by the English hymnwriter John Mason Neale in 1853 from a Czech poem by Václav Alois Svoboda (the melody appears to be from the 13th-century folk ditty Tempus Adest Floridum). But what do we actually know about this putatively benevolent monarch? Well, firstly, he wasn’t a king: he was a 10thcentury Christian duke of Bohemia — today the Czech Republic…

Wassail, wassail, wassail. As much as we wish it were not so, we are severely lacking in peace on Earth and mercy mild. We seem desperate to find fault in our fellow man and to punish them accordingly. As John Proctor says to Old Mr. Giles, “Is it the Devil’s fault that a man cannot say you good morning without you clap him for defamation?” That being said, I have sought a warrant for the arrest of the American cultural consciousness, which has managed to convince us plucky Brits to abandon Father Christmas for Santa Claus. As Christmas arrives, we are already in the habit of letting the weather of the season dictate our mood — rather than the message that comes with the celebration of a baby in a…

I meet Conor MacNeill at the Almeida theatre in Islington, north London. He’s at the end of a stint performing in Portia Coughlan, a play written by Marina Carr. ‘Haunting’, ‘messed up’, ‘unremittingly bleak’ and ‘disturbing’ are words some critics have used to describe it. It’s about death, obsession and self-destruction. It’s heavy stuff, but MacNeill is warm and smiley as I chat to him in his dressing room, and he has good reason to be. The Northern Irish actor has had a busy couple of years, between theatre, T.V. shows and film work, starring alongside Liam Neeson, Jamie Dornan and Timothy Spall. It’s also not his first rodeo when it comes to handling complex characters or dark subject matter. This year alone he’s had a supporting role in The…

There is a 91-year-old woman in the south of France whose face might make you do a double prise. It might trigger a memory of one life fulfilled and another truncated. For she is the actress Marisa Pavan, sister of the fêted, flawed and funny Pier Angeli, a star who lived in fear of 40 but never made it that far. Refracted through the prism of twindom, paths taken and choices made are rarely more starkly contrasted. It was Pier — she landed on her stage name by splitting her surname in two — who made the first celluloid breakthrough. Barely five feet tall, Limoges-delicate and channelling the type of performances that made audiences wonder if she was O.K. afterwards, she made both men and women fall in love with…

Had he accomplished just one of the following things in 2023, Jean Arnault would have been deserving of the Rake of the Year award. Firstly, he recreated Louis Vuitton’s iconic Tambour watch, which was launched 21 years ago. It is now a sleek, beautiful and unique lugless, integrated-bracelet, sportschic watch that invokes the signature codes of its predecessor while exuding a fresh dynamic. Secondly, in picking up the mantle left by Harry Winston and the legendary Opus Watches, Jean has used Louis Vuitton as a platform to showcase the best in independent watchmaking, beginning with his debut collaboration with Rexhep Rexhepi. Thirdly, he has become a champion of emerging talent in independent watchmaking, founding the Louis Vuitton Watch Prize for Independent Creatives to identify and support the rising stars of…

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 to shoot our cover star, Zac Efron. farhad heydari When he isn’t on the…

Travelling on choppy water at 54 knots (100km/h) in the 2000 HP chase boat was a wet, knee-crushing, G-force-wrenching, face-distorting yet immensely exciting experience spoiled only by the fumes from the four massive outboard engines. We were hanging on for our lives, as even the smallest shift in direction threatened to send us flying into the Mediterranean waters off Cagliari in Sardinia. We were on the Panerai Luna Rossa Experience, a two-day adventure introducing the lucky owners of 37 special-edition Panerai watches to the thrills and high technology of America’s Cup yacht racing and to the horological delights of Panerai’s new Luna Rossa timepieces. As one of the longstanding sponsors of the Italian America’s Cup team, Panerai supports the astonishing technical innovation and research that Luna Rossa’s team undertake as…

Once you reach a certain elevation in Los Angeles, anything remotely resembling a bad view vanishes. From any vantage point in any direction you will be faced with picturesque hills dotted with stunning architecture and greenery, a spectacular urban sprawl, the Pacific Ocean, or mountains sometimes still capped with snow in late spring. Depending on the time of day you will get clear blue skies and a pleasant breeze, sunsets composed of colours you didn’t realise the sky could create, or an endless ocean of white city lights and neon. Every day new transplants come to the city pursuing work in the entertainment industry. Five, 10 years down the line, these views are why they’ve stayed. So it is perhaps not a surprise that rooftop bars and restaurants are a…