June 2019 - Issue 64

The Rake

The Modern Voice of Classic Elegance.

The Rake3 min readFashion
Contributors
G. Bruce Boyer has been a noted men’s fashion writer and editor for more than 40 years. He was associated with Town & Country magazine as Men’s Fashion Editor for 18 years. His feature articles have also appeared in Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, Forbes,
The Rake5 min read
Letter From The Founder
I may be in grave danger of segueing off my chosen path, smashing through the guardrail and careening down the sheer and precarious cliff of hypocrisy with what I’m about to say. But certain recent occurrences in my life have left me feeling extremel
The Rake5 min read
Escaping The Tyranny Of The Ordinary
America likes to think of itself as the gold standard of homeliness and righteous living, all apple pies and milk and cookies, but over its short life its greatest sons and daughters have been subversives. From George Washington to Malcolm X, Mark Tw
The Rake5 min read
Rake Commends: Dubai
Dubai has grown impressively in a short space of time to become the financial and logistical hub of the Middle East. My trips there are mainly work related, though there have been many times that this city has proved to be a stellar destination for a
The Rake4 min read
Letter From The Editor
A self-congratulatory story for you. At a friend’s birthday party early last year I was accosted by a fellow guest who introduced himself by saying he was rather enjoying the fact that not only was he at the same party as the editor of his favourite
The Rake2 min readFashion
Creased Lightning
A facet of this magazine, and what makes it stand out from the crowd, is that it takes great pleasure in extolling the virtues of noble fibres such as vicuña and cashmere. A great example is last year’s collaboration with Fratelli Piacenza and New &
The Rake4 min read
The Danish Girl
Long before the Marvel movie studio decided to monetise the shit out of their IP by cramming Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Black Widow and the other one played by Jeremy Renner into Avengers, another more formidable clique of celestial being
The Rake9 min readFashion
Invest
Richard I earned his ‘Lionheart’ appellation for his efforts as a military leader and warrior, not least his whipping the proverbials of Saladin and his men in the Battle of Arsuf during the Crusades. So it’s apt that this Chopard piece — one set to
The Rake4 min readFashion
‘It’s About Empowering Women — Reshuffling The Pack’
When Daisy Knatchbull eschewed sartorial convention and turned up at Ascot’s Royal Enclosure wearing a bespoke morning suit constructed by her then employers, Huntsman, few observers saw her attire as a challenge. As Knatchbull puts it, “it wasn’t so
The Rake3 min read
Introducing… The Überhund
Had Friedrich Nietzsche, in his 1883 allegorical masterpiece, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, posited the überhund as the ultimate transcendence of caninity rather than the übermensch as the ultimate transcendence of humanity, his magnum opus may not have ea
The Rake5 min readFashion
Budd, King Of Shears
It is tempting to use some kind of horticultural pun when discussing Budd. To do so would be a bit misleading, because unlike a fledgling spruce or blossoming fruit flower, Budd’s might has permeated the sartorial landscape like the roots of a mighty
The Rake11 min read
When Eden Rocked
The summer of 1969 was not exactly dull. The moon landings, the Manson murders, Woodstock, the Vietnam war… The images of the time are etched into the collective consciousness: the grainy flickering frames of space-suited astronauts looking like Mich
The Rake13 min read
King Of Hearts
Special thanks to the Corinthia Hotel, London, and the Grenadier Guards If your lifestyle exhibits even a smidgen of torpor or apathy, you might consider the business of being Kevin Hart to be — as Captain Blackadder put it — a fate worse than a fate
The Rake3 min read
How To Short The Bond Market
www.orlebarbrown.com/007 Who’s your favourite Bond? It’s a question we’ve all been asked before, probably even George Lazenby. Is it Daniel Craig for his tortured, muscle-bound super-spy? Or Sean Connery for his twinkling charm, slick suits and sex a
The Rake8 min read
Playing The Long Game
In a world of Instafame, influencers and overwrought celebrity, Tom Hughes is a refreshing anomaly. Unfazed by the glittery appeal of stardom or the hype of social media, the 34-year-old acknowledges that he belongs in a bygone era and pines for a si
The Rake7 min read
The Fabric Of Time
Driving through Biella, the northern Italian province famous for its woollen milling industry, provokes a feeling somewhere between romantic nostalgia and sadness. About a 90-minute drive north-west of Milan, the city remains Italy’s woollen milling
The Rake6 min read
Late Nights Listening To The Sun Sessions
There’s a point to be made about Elvis Presley’s early life that touches on our music in a unique way. Forget the bloated, drug-addled, gun-toting, ludicrously dressed Elvis of his later years, the horror figure that haunted Las Vegas singing to midd
The Rake6 min readFashion
Leg Spin
With thanks to Half Moon Bay, Antigua, the exclusive new resort on the island of Antigua, and home to the Rosewood Half Moon Bay Hotel, set to open in 2022. Like Theresa May, Elon Musk and the shareholders of Flybmi, trousers get a poor deal. They’re
The Rake4 min readFashion
L’art De La Simplicité
Given a mechanical wristwatch’s propriety as a family heirloom — what is better suited to being passed through the generations than a reminder of the human relationship with time, crafted to outlast its first owner many times over? — it’s tricky to t
The Rake7 min read
Long Live The King
Being a restaurant critic must be quite good fun. Negative reviews are enjoyable to read, so I only presume they are even better to write. Personally, I have never had a column but my internal monologue can formulate the most brutal takedowns using a
The Rake5 min readFashion
Talking Italian
Turin-born Luca Faloni’s eponymous company was born of frustration: his inability to get beautifully cut clothes, made of the finest materials, consistently and at a reasonable price. Now, the brand he founded in 2014 has garnered a reputation for th
The Rake3 min read
Reinventing The Spiel
It’s not clear exactly when the behemoth that is the English language sucked up a word that once referred exclusively to a diminutive French shop — ‘boutique’ — before spitting it out as a cheap marketing bijou that could be used to refer to anything
The Rake4 min read
The Prince Of Queens
On his 21st birthday, a pampered African prince rejects the fiancée his parents have chosen for him and flies to New York to find a woman he genuinely wants to marry. So begins Coming to America, a 1988 romantic comedy that infuses the ancient templa
The Rake3 min readAutomotive
Love Me Tender
Details cannot lie. Inspect closely the Riva Rivamare. Forget about the phantasmagorical Riva badge and pay attention to the chandlery. The shape of the chrome buzzer, the two small position lights close to the chrome integrated anchor, the three ste
The Rake6 min readCooking, Food & Wine
The Tigress Between The Covers
Do you subscribe to the concept of synchronizität, or synchronicity? Introduced by Carl Jung in the 1920s, it was sanctified and given full expression in his 1952 paper ‘Synchronizität als ein Prinzip akausaler Zusammenhänge’. The Acausal Connecting

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