December 2018 - Issue 61

The Rake

The Modern Voice of Classic Elegance.

The Rake5 min read
Letter From The Founder
By the time you read this, The Rake will have celebrated its 10th anniversary and I will have moved past my 49th-year mile marker, compelled inexorably towards my mid century. Looking back on a magazine that was created to champion the idea that men
The Rake2 min read
Contributors
Michael is a Floridian turned New Yorker, and a photographer. He began his career in the fashion industry as an agent for models. While developing and maintaining the careers of some leading models, he had a desire to get back to his lifelong goal of
The Rake7 min read
‘The Fact I’m Allowed To Have This Conversation Without Fear Of Repercussion… That’s Massive’
Garments purchasable at TheRake.com Turn on the television and the actors you’re likely to see in major roles will fit a very specific demographic: white, male, and of a fairly well-to-do background, even if the characters they’re playing are not. In
The Rake3 min read
Letter From The Editor
I love Christmas. I am writing this letter from Los Angeles, smiling at the Santa-and-his-reindeer decoration that arches across Wilshire Boulevard in 30-degree heat. The global deification of Father Christmas seems more consistent than the celebrati
The Rake6 min read
The Pint-sized Barbarian
He never feared failure, and this is the only way you can be successful in life. I learned that from Dino.” So said Arnold Schwarzenegger at the funeral of the Italian film producer Agostino ‘Dino’ De Laurentiis. Dino’s C.V. reads like a surrealist n
The Rake7 min read
‘There Was The Pope And Then There Was Enzo’
Should you visit the Museo Enzo Ferrari in Modena, you’ll find as many examples of the sporty dream machines the legendary car magnate lavished on the world as you could wish for, from 1948 Touring Superleggeras and GT 2+2s from 1968 to the 2002 mode
The Rake1 min read
Craft Work
For the past few years, the profile of Hong Kong-based Craftsman Co. has been in the ascendant. Founded by friends Tobe Fong and Ng Tze ‘T.C.’ Ching, the brand’s beautifully crafted custom and bespoke leather jackets have won them a legion of devoted
The Rake2 min read
A Dreaded Creature
Rastafarians, Wookiees, ghillie-suit-wearing snipers: we’ve heard all the oh-so-droll comparisons inspired by our extraordinary matted pelts, and passersby expecting a reaction to these quips (generally the type of intellectually flaccid Homo sapiens
The Rake3 min read
Strife Through A Lens
As a movie that almost got shelved, Vox Lux is in good company: Bladerunner (Ridley Scott’s script rewrites sent the budget spiralling), Star Wars (a violent storm caused project-threatening shoot delays), and Jaws (the lack of script, cast or shark)
The Rake8 min readFashion
Invest
Garments purchasable at TheRake.com “I look at a stone,” the British jewellery designer and master goldsmith Elizabeth Gage once said, “and it tells me what to do.” With a glance at these cufflinks, her words immediately carry resonance and relevance
The Rake3 min readFashion
Business Is Blooming
Over the past 50 years, the provincial town of Filottrano, nestled on the east coast of Italy, has undergone a transformation: once a community reliant on farming, its residents are now dependent on the bustling textile industry. One of the companies
The Rake4 min read
Salad Days
Modern tales of the discovery of beauty are so predictably twee and naff. The latest doe-eyed ingenue just happened to be slinging mango tangos at Just Juice in Westfield when some assistant from a modelling agency that thinks its name is far clevere
The Rake7 min readFashion
Fabric Conditioning
Garments purchasable at TheRake.com It is galling, most readers will agree, to take a much cherished suit to a high street outlet and hand over hard currency to have its fabric’s natural oils ravaged by perchloroethylene: equivalent, no less, to payi
The Rake15 min read
WILL & TESTAMENT
Special thanks to The Carlyle Hotel, New York Sometimes, as an introduction, cover stories such as this do some scene setting. Often it is in a trendy L.A. diner that 30 years ago served strictly grits, burgers and intravenous-drip coffee but that ha
The Rake2 min readFashion
The Armourer
Menswear entrepreneurs don’t come more energetic, more unwaveringly productive, than Mark Cho, the co-owner of the renowned British heritage label Drake’s, and the co-founder (with Alan See) of The Armoury, a specialist multi-brand outfitter focused
The Rake2 min readFashion
The Meticulator
It’s hard to think of a more aptly named establishment than Brio, a Beijing boutique that, like many such Eurocentric outfitters based in Asia, operates with a zeal born of frustration. “When I graduated from university and went to Hong Kong to work
The Rake2 min read
The Soothsayer
At its heart, luxury menswear is about craft, ritual and community. One of the great secrets of the industry is that, while beautiful clothes are lovely, it is being part of an international network of thinkers, makers and mavericks that makes it tru
The Rake2 min readFashion
The Treasurer
Some men ‘get’ style, in the same way that Frédéric Chopin got how the simple physics of felted hammers striking strings could be woven into poetic ballades, scherzos and nocturnes. Kelly See, the co-founder of Manila-based men’s lifestyle store Sign
The Rake2 min readFashion
The Unionisers
While France is obviously a major hitter in the field, and superb ateliers can be found in the largest cities of America and Japan, the national powerhouses of modern bespoke suiting arguably remain England and Italy — the former having given birth t
The Rake2 min read
The Documentor
It was only a matter of time before Jamie Ferguson earned a place in our Rakes of the Year issue, as he’s contributed to the magazine with the same reverence, wit and commitment for several years now. In this industry, journalists, editors and influe
The Rake2 min read
The Dignifiers
Imagine the ultimate triumvirate for The Rake. Three men who encapsulate artistry, elegance, sophistication and intelligence. You’d be hard pressed to improve on the trio of Bernard Fouquet, Nick Fouquet and Oriol Elcacho. You will recognise them fro
The Rake3 min read
The Liberators
Sure, legendary Harvard dropout Bill Cunningham may have been the first to democratise style by pointing his camera at Manhattan’s sartorially resplendent sidewalk habitués for his 1978 New York Times series On the Street. But it was Scott Schuman wh
The Rake9 min readFashion
The Most Rakish Tailors Of The Year
I find that as I grow into the old, cantankerous curmudgeon that is my true inner nature, I take increasing umbrage at the oft-quoted catchphrase of the English metaphysical poet John Donne: “No man is an island.” What a bunch of horseshit. I am an i
The Rake2 min read
The Curators
Matt Hranek’s extraordinary ability is to seemingly be everywhere at the same time. Check out his cryptically non-eponymous Instagram account, @wmbrownproject, and along with his 40k-strong following you’ll tap into a non-stop, twenty-four-seven, 365
The Rake2 min read
The Edifiers
Henri Matisse was the man. Following the advent of the camera, at a time when the capacity to depict reality, previously considered the ultimate barometer of great art, had become democratised, France’s artists realised they were at a crossroads. The
The Rake2 min read
The Gentrifier
What’s in a name? In Shakespearean terms, it is two equally dignified households bearing a grudge that goes back a while; at least, I think that’s the context. These days, especially in style, names evoke a fantasy. They are transformational vessels
The Rake3 min readFashion
The Deliberators
It wouldn’t be unfair to say that during the decade-plus The Rake has been educating the masses in the codes of classic style, we have done so mano a mano. Which, to a large extent, makes perfect sense. Men who dedicate their lives and wardrobes to t
The Rake13 min read
The Champions Of Humility
To paraphrase Winston Churchill commenting on Russia in 1939, when trying to do some research on Ali Fayed you get the sense that he is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, so non-existent is any information. Then suddenly the miasma is di
The Rake2 min read
The Purifier
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a top-grade clothing outfitters must be in need of an aggressive social media campaign. But should it be? Bo Yang, the owner of Bolognese shirtmakers Marol, has singlehandedly proved
The Rake2 min readFashion
The Sustainers
Sustainability is more — far, far more — than just a marketing bijou for Ethan Newton and Kenji Cheung, co-founders of Bryceland’s Co., a Tokyo-based outfitters that sees heritage as a future-proofing endeavour rather than a nostalgic one. “Before we
The Rake4 min readFashion
I Gattopardi
Were you to have stumbled across Dolce & Gabbana’s Alta Sartoria post-show open-air dinner, set in the stunning grounds of Villa Olmo on the shores of Lake Como this year, you might have had reason to scratch your head. No sooner had the main course
The Rake4 min readDesign
RADO X THE RAKE & REVOLUTION CAPTAIN COOK ‘GHOST CAPTAIN’
When you think of Rado, the first quality that comes to mind is the brand’s pioneering status in case material innovation that evolved over the past half century at a pace unmatched by any other brand. As early as 1962, Rado introduced the legendary
The Rake7 min readFashion
Iwc Pilot’s Watch Automatic 36 Special Edition For The Rake And Revolution
Garments purchasable at TheRake.com One of my favourite lines in one of my favourite movies comes from Tom Cruise as Vincent in the epic Michael Mann thriller Collateral (2004), when he says to Jamie Foxx’s Max: “Now we gotta make the best of it, imp
The Rake5 min readFashion
Stylish Times
Hublot and Manchester United; Bremont and Jaguar; IWC Schaffhausen and the British Film Institute. Collaborations, in the more exalted echelons of the horological world, are becoming more diverse. Given Vacheron Constantin’s recent partnership with A
The Rake3 min read
The Enhancers
Nick Foulkes likes to declare upon introducing Pierre Lagrange to someone new: “He invented money.” While humorous in intent, it is not so far from the truth. Lagrange is something of a legend in the hedge fund world. He co-founded GLG Partners in 19
The Rake6 min readFashion
The Gentlemen Aviators’ Collection
Scotland-based Aero Leather Clothing is one of the best makers of historically accurate military flight jackets. This particular model made specifically for The Rake’s collaboration with IWC is a Battle of Britain jacket. As leather became short in s
The Rake2 min readFashion
The Scrutinisers
As business backstories go, theirs is one with more than its fair share of fairy dust sprinkled upon its pages. Ed Shaikh was a highly successful Ralph Lauren salesman (the third-highest achieving in the U.S., no less) and Gable a New York-born gradu
The Rake8 min readFashion
Jewel In The Crown
Unless you have recently awoken from a coma or been marooned on a desert island, you have no excuse for being unaware of the house-sized Cartier box that appeared on New Bond Street in London. It covers the front of the historic Cartier shop and is o
The Rake2 min readPopular Culture & Media Studies
The Modernisers
Richard Biedul is something of a polymath. He was a solicitor before he became Britain’s most in-demand model, and most recently he has flourished as a style and art director, a capacity in which he has been a tireless champion of domestic design tal
The Rake5 min readFashion
The Bow Monde
Garments purchasable at TheRake.com I have always been interested in why we use the colour of a bow tie to differentiate between the degrees of formality in gentlemen’s evening dress. ‘Black tie’ is the less formal and popular version, while ‘white t
The Rake6 min readFashion
Voice Of A Generation
When portable alarms were first mooted, the dominant on-the-go timekeepers were carriage clocks followed by pocket-watches. All were large enough to accommodate the added mechanism, but, more importantly, their size allowed the inclusion of gongs or
The Rake9 min read
Mary Randolph Carter On Ethical Materialism And The Joy Of Junk
Once every century or so, a woman so epically stylish, so fiercely and independently brilliant, grows up to reshape the world around her, refracting it through her imagination and unique taste. That to me is Mary Randolph Carter, a woman who in many
The Rake6 min read
It’s About What’s On The Inside
It was remarkably refreshing to interview the Earl of Snowdon. Not once did I feel like there was a party line he needed to sneak into our discussion via his press strategists. Not once did I feel like there was anything other than authenticity in hi
The Rake7 min read
‘In Italian We Say This Car Is A Bolide — A Meteorite, A Metallic Fireball Sculpted By The Wind’
Flavio Manzoni is affable and softly spoken, extremely humble despite many accolades, and a man of impeccable style. Nine years ago he was tasked with creating Ferrari’s in-house design centre and setting the company’s design direction. It was not a
The Rake3 min read
The French Prince
There are three things you need to know about Louis-Michel Liger-Belair. Firstly, from the moment you taste his wines — anything from his village-classified Vosne-Romanée up to La Romanée Grand Cru Monopole — it’s an experience there is no returning
The Rake3 min read
Rich In History, Young At Heart
If you think Switzerland is worth visiting only for its mountains, you surely haven’t stayed at Les Trois Rois. One of the country’s oldest and finest hotels, it sits on the edge of the Rhine in Basel, a tangible memory of an older, grander Europe. S
The Rake3 min read
Un Conquistador Malodorant
Here’s a little-known wildlife fact: skunks’ posterior glands contain enough spray for only a handful of predator-disarming strikes, and once they use it up it can take 10 days to produce more. Hence, before releasing that jet of sulphurous thiols, t

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