June 2021 - Issue 76

The Rake

The Modern Voice of Classic Elegance.

The Rake2 min read
Contributors
Charlie Gray is an international fashion and portrait photographer based in London. He is known for his playful, cinematic and intimate photographs that capture his subjects iconically. Gray is inspired by past photography masters Richard Avedon and
The Rake1 min readSocial Science
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FOUNDER & EDITORIAL DIRECTORWei Koh EDITOR-IN-CHIEF & HEAD OF BRANDTom Chamberlintom@therakemagazine.com ART DIRECTORRob Frenchrob@therakemagazine.com ART EDITORKim Langkim@therakemagazine.com VIDEOGRAPHERMarcus Ebanksmarcus@therakemagazine.com DIGIT
The Rake3 min read
Letter From The Editor-in-Chief
Adventure is worthwhile, Aesop says. I have seen giraffes copulate (quite funny) and have been hustled into an apartment in Havana to take a look at fake cigars (less funny). In my spice drawer at home I still have a tub of cinnamon bought from Jemaa
The Rake5 min read
Mad About The Boy
He looks like just another Hollywood hunk to us now, but Guy Madison was once one of the most familiar faces in America. His role as television’s Wild Bill Hickok in the 1950s made him one of the biggest stars on screen, an icon of undemanding mass e
The Rake7 min read
The Wild Whirlwind Of Mustique
Towards the end of 1976, Colin Tennant threw himself an elaborate 50th birthday celebration on Mustique, the Caribbean island he had bought on a whim nearly two decades before. The week-long carousing culminated in a party billed as a latter-day Fiel
The Rake4 min read
‘My Agent Said I Was Born For The Role. The Description Was, “Young, Smart And Physically Frail”’
Had Harrison Osterfield arrived a decade or so earlier, his Surrey accent and floppy hair would have made a fine fit for an English actor in Hollywood. But on his first day at the BRIT School, London’s college for the performing arts, the 24-year-old
The Rake2 min read
Small Wonder
“Introducing the Canine Collection! Be sure to compliment [sic] your summer outfit with a four-legged friend.” So read a tweet, accompanied by pictures of imploringly winsome puppies, from an online fashion store in 2016, prompting animal rights grou
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Mark Of A Man
I envy Mark Cho, or at least I do when I make the cardinal sin of judging my interior by people’s exteriors. Cho, the principal of The Armoury and Drake’s, provides a sense of faultless unflappability. He is a busy man with a calm demeanour. With his
The Rake6 min read
Invest
What is it about meteorite that makes it so captivating as a raw material? The romance of a substance being genuinely extraterrestrial — of having undergone an interplanetary journey since the formation of our solar system before crashing into some N
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Baring Her Soul
According to the polar-fleeced nerds at Lonely Planet, the population of Smygehuk — the southernmost town in Sweden — is approximately 1,500. Now imagine if every one of them had seen your mum naked. That was the case for a young Nena von Schlebrügge
The Rake6 min read
‘Fun And Elegance — The Magic Meeting Point’
In 2015 The Rake published a fashion story that was shot over two days at the Capri Palace, the five-star jewel in Capri’s crown. It was a major logistical effort to pull off; I know this because I was the fashion assistant for the shoot, and spent d
The Rake7 min read
The Rake And Revolution Boutiques At Patina Maldives
This summer and for the rest of the year, we are going to want to remake our vital bonds with this planet. We’ve lived through an era of seismic change in which we’ve been isolated, alienated, disconnected and alone. But now, with the increasing numb
The Rake11 min read
What Slim Saw
“I believe in fairytales. For six decades I have concentrated on photographing attractive people who were doing attractive things in attractive places.” These words have the ring of F. Scott Fitzgerald about them: they could have been spoken by a Nic
The Rake3 min readFashion
Religious Conversion
In the first half of the 20th century, Loro Piana produced a fabric known as Priest Cloth, which was used, perhaps obviously, in making clerical vestments. The wool was imported from Tasmania, which is to wool what California is to oranges or Ontario
The Rake4 min read
A World In A Grain Of Sand
There are plenty of brands with Leica’s prestige, though none of them make cameras. From car manufacturers to clothiers, haute-horlogerie marques to architectural sights, there are labels that transcend product. Yes, Leica may make cameras — this has
The Rake15 min read
Skål Of Thought
Donnie Darko, Groundhog Day, Run Lola Run… There’s no shortage of movies that hinge on the quantum-mechanical theory illustrated by Erwin Schrödinger and his hypothetical cat. Without Einstein’s general theory of relativity, Interstellar could have b
The Rake9 min read
It Was A Wonderful Life
There’s a photograph taken in Palm Beach in 1955 that seems to encapsulate the breezy allure of post-war America. The Vogue model and socialite Patsy Pulitzer, unscrubbed but poised in pleated shorts and a print blouse, poses nonchalantly on a seapla
The Rake1 min readCrime
Riviera Days
We at The Rake have always had a soft spot for Plein Soleil, the 1960 French film by René Clément that starred a mesmerising young Alain Delon as Tom Ripley, in the first (and arguably best) cinematic adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s classic novel
The Rake8 min read
Small Is Beautiful
While the headline of this story could easily allude to my public penchant for sausage dogs, it in fact references what I believe is one of the most important tourbillon wristwatches of all time. I speak, of course, of the new Chopard L.U.C Flying T
The Rake8 min readAutomotive
Button Up
in association with Jenson Button was Formula One’s cheerful yet tenacious underdog who, when he finally got his hands on a winning car, never looked back. On entering the sport in 2000, he was the youngest Briton in F1 history. In 2009, aged 29, he
The Rake5 min read
Old Dog, New Tricks
On my Mount Rushmore of Cool — no, wait, make that seated in my Halls of Valhalla of Cool — and presided over by the unassailable king, one Terrence Stephen McQueen, would be, in no particular order, Miles Davis, Chet Baker, James Byron Dean, Bob Mar
The Rake6 min readDesign
‘Virtual Reality Is Being Realised — Everything We Were Promised… But It Won’t Match The Real Thing’
Michael Friedman, formerly the official historian at Audemars Piguet and now the watchmaker’s Head of Complications, views horology through a uniquely philosophical lens. For him, the relationship of timekeeping objects to broader civilisation has lo
The Rake3 min read
Un Esprit Universel
If you can declare yourself one of the giants upon whose shoulders Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the English horologist George Daniels stood when devising their most profound masterpieces, you’ve already got a pretty tidy handicap in the game of being
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Letter From The Founder
I miss travelling. For the first time since the pandemic swept through the world like wildfire, and irrevocably transformed our lives, I have to say, “Seriously, I can’t fucking take it any more”. I choked it down, suppressed it for more than a year,
The Rake4 min read
The Frame Game
I have said it before, but it remains a detail that proves remarkable to me: there are select brands that began their lives in countries that do not exist any more. There is something impossibly romantic, even fantastical, about that. Granted, this i

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