The Rake August 2018 - Issue 59

I say this with the greatest respect: I’ve always thought the Broccoli family, in particular the producer Barbara Dana Broccoli O.B.E., has missed a trick regarding the potential of the Bond franchise. They could have taken a page from the Marvel Comics empire and extrapolated their characters into infinite films and Netflix series to the point that there would not be a living soul whose consciousness was not intertwined with multiple, simultaneous James Bond narratives — and loving it. For example, a television series on how young Commander Bond becomes 007 — the spy with the licence to kill chronicling the transformation of, in Ian Fleming’s words, “a blunt instrument wielded by his government” into the lethal sophisticate we know and love — would have me riveted. Then there’s the…

I was paid a rather neat compliment the other day. A style expert who moonlights as a popular left-wing commentator in Britain, whom we will call Bowen Thrones, publicly referred to The Rake as an “obscure clothing magazine for bored aristocrats”. There are certain pejorative phrases up with which I will not put, but in this instance, considering the authority behind the opinion, I feel I can rest easy. The Rake is open to all, and the articles are supposed to educate, entertain and reminisce (perhaps flatteringly) about the past. When Mr. Thrones indicates a conviction in the Croesian riches that come with Britain’s loftier families, I can only assume he has been sucked into the narrative with perhaps little hope of rescue. Long gone are the days of high-society…

ELLEN VON UNWERTH Ellen von Unwerth, born in 1954 in Germany, gained attention with her sensual Guess campaign in the early 1990s, followed by campaigns for Absolut, Agent Provocateur, Aston Martin, Belvedere, Chanel, Dior, Ferragamo, G-Star, Guerlain, H&M, Jimmy Choo, Lacoste, L’Oréal, Mercedes-Benz, Rolex, Shiseido, Tommy Hilfiger, Veuve Cliquot, Victoria’s Secret, and many more. She is a regular contributor to magazines all over the world, such as Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Glamour, i-D, Interview, Playboy, The Face, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and many international Vogue editions. She also directed short films for clients including Dior, Guess and Katharine Hamnett, as well as a range of commercials and music videos. Her book projects are an important part of her career. Her first book, Snaps, was published in 1994, followed by Wicked (1998),…

George Raft didn’t want to give the name. Interviewed in 1980, his final television appearance, the then 85-year-old actor, dressed stylishly in a charcoal peak-lapel suit over a black polo neck, was asked about his habit of giving money to those struggling to break into his fickle industry. The interviewer pushes him and he declines. He pushes again; again, Raft declines. The interviewer jokingly lets slip that the recipient in question went on to become the biggest name in television. Raft smiles. Still he won’t name her. Raft is, the interviewer says, too much of a gentleman. The interviewer takes another approach. How about all the famous women he’d dated? Would he name them? Raft smiles. “You can name them,” he says. “I’ll do what I do, and if my work…

Barcelona to me is special because it is one of those rare cities of the world that captures the essence of beach and urban life in equal measure, with the added temptations of great art, style, architecture and fabulous cuisine. Regrettably, my Barcelona trips are all too often for work. Nevertheless, I have spent enough time there to be able to make some recommendations for your weekend away. It is a city I love, and, as far as I am concerned, compared to other European cities it is too often overlooked. Usually I like to stay in the centre of Barcelona, because it makes it easy to travel to my meetings. ‘Central’ for me is the Passeig de Gràcia; my favourite hotel there is the Mandarin Oriental Barcelona, which is also,…

It’s easy to hate Sid Vicious. He is, after all, to blame for embodying one of the 20th century’s most exciting art movements in the form of a drooling, talentless junkie in a swastika T-shirt. Beyond the ferret-faced, sneery urchin cartoon, though, there’s another Sid, not much more real but closer to something celebratory, romantic and even meaningful. Like the Marquis de Sade or Francis Bacon or Quentin Tarantino, he took ugliness and nihilism to their extremes, and found beauty in them. He said it best in an interview filmed in December 1978, close to the end of his brutishly short life. “What would you like to happen over the next year or so?” asks the interviewer, to which Vicious replies, “I’d like to have fun… That’s my object in life.”…