December 2022 - Issue 85

The Rake

The Modern Voice of Classic Elegance.

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Contributors
Kurt, a photographer born in the blue-collar creative breeding ground of Akron, Ohio, and raised in Argentina and Mexico, was influenced by the eclectic cultural and geographical contrasts he experienced as he travelled as a young boy. He picked up a
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The Rake
FOUNDER & EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Wei Koh ART DIRECTOR Rob French rob@therakemagazine.com ART EDITOR Kim Lang kim@therakemagazine.com PUBLISHING COORDINATOR Brigita Baniunaite brigita@therakemagazine.com RAKE AMBASSADOR Matteo Mango EDITOR-IN-CHIEF & HEAD
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Letter From The Editor-in-chief
News of great joy, news of great mirth, Christmas is upon us, and our purpose across the Christian world (believer or not) is to remind one another about the possibility of a life in which magical acts of kindness, charity and togetherness can happen
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‘I Was Always Trying To Make People Laugh. I Never Thought Of It As A Profession’
Ben Bailey Smith likes to make people laugh. The actor and comedian’s alias, Doc Brown, has become a household name in the U.K., rapping humorous verses that are as witty as they are thoughtful. Bailey Smith — or Brown, rather — was picked to perform
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Crowning Glory
A widely held misconception about my breed is that our designation derives from our physical resemblance to the British monarch who reigned from 1660 to 1685. Yes, the extent to which our elongated ears and their abundant, face-framing feathering res
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Man Of The West
In episode one, season one of The Sopranos, Tony laments the egregious failings of the modern American psyche to his nonplussed therapist, the forbearing Dr. Melfi. “Let me tell ya something,” he says. “Nowadays, everybody’s gotta go to shrinks, and
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On That Bombshell…
“I don’t wear panties any more — this startles the Hollywood wolves so much they don’t know what to pull at, so they leave me alone.” As far as sentences that need unpacking go, it’s quite the doozy. As far as being in a position of bitterly earned a
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Letter From The Founder
Though it is an artistic embellishment of his response to an 1897 article in the New York Journal by his biographer Albert Bigelow Paine, I’ve always been terrifically fond of Samuel Clemens’s (aka Mark Twain’s) quip that “the reports of my death hav
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Invest
In a sane world, Hollywood director James Cameron would be associated with ‘the deep’ not only for his direction of Titanic — the first film to rake in more than a billion dollars at the box office – but a far more rarefied endeavour that came 14 yea
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Boy Is Father Of The Man
From 2001 to 2007, much of my energy was focused on joining the army. You may ask what made me eschew military life in favour of writing about Goodyear welts and saddle stitching on lapels, but that is a story for another time. Those years were somew
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Speed… And Sophistication
Opening a new stretch of road might be marked with a genteel ribbon-cutting ceremony in many countries. However, in 1950 the Mexican government chose a more interesting way to celebrate becoming the first in Latin America to complete its section of t
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The RAKE Of The YEAR
By now, the grief at the passing of the Queen has begun to subside, and her regnal cypher, which in the U.K. we see as standard on police officers’ helmets, Royal Mail vans and various quotidian objects, serves as a reminder of what was, rather than
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‘The Ability To Achieve The American Dream Isn’t The Same For Everybody’
The subtly implied, schmaltz-free happy ending is one of romcom screenwriting’s magnum effectum. Executed well, it makes tear ducts behave like windscreen sprayers. It can also persuade cinemagoers, in future, to rush for the exit at the first sign o
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Circuit Breaker
I remember it clearly: sitting on the edge of my hotel room bed, watching the final laps of the 2011 Canadian Grand Prix. Jenson Button, in his McLaren, was chasing down Sebastian Vettel in his Red Bull, a superior car. The British former champion ha
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Coming To Town
LIGHTING TECHNICIAN: DERRICK KAKEMBO HAIR STYLIST: MICHAEL GRAY AT DAVID ARTISTS MAKE-UP ARTIST: NORIMITSO GOTO AT DAVID ARTISTS FASHION ASSISTANT: DANI KLEINMAN MODELS: AIDEN BRADY / JO PRICE ■
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Survival Instincts
In 25 years of writing about things expensive, I’ve come to realise that a common denominator shared by aspects of the so-called luxury lifestyle is passivity. It’s mostly about getting others to do things for you, lounging about achieving little, be
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Seismic Shift
There are moments in every watch lover’s journey when they catch themselves overthinking things. Should I go gold? Is that in-house? Is it Patek time (or not)? I know because it happens to me. I often find myself surveying my humble line-up and being
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Daddy Of Baddies
Pacino or De Niro? Best-ever Bond? Did Solo or Greedo shoot first? What’s in the Pulp Fiction briefcase? There’s no shortage of debate to occupy celluloid-loving chin-strokers over their pints of Old Fusty Hedgerow. The conundrum that dominates such

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