The Rake June 2019 - Issue 64

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 extremely wary about luxury objects and their capacity to seduce. From the beginning, the objective of this magazine was to discuss suits, cars and mechanical watches based not on what they represent sociologically — because far too often they are wielded as aggressive symbols of affluence — but because whether it’s that Patek Philippe chronograph, Joe Morgan suit or Riva yacht, some brilliant and talented human beings have spent a significant portion of their finite energy on Earth bringing something beautiful into existence. And in using the…

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 magazine but that we were wearing the same outfit (burgundy smoking jackets, if you must know). His name was Piers Ashfield, and he told me he had been reading The Rake from day one. This issue of the magazine hits the newsstands a few days before Trooping the Colour. Officially known as the Queen’s Birthday Parade, it is the United Kingdom’s principal annual state occasion. The premise is simple: to the tune of the massed band the Queen inspects her troops from the Household Division…

G. BRUCE BOYER 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 New York Times, The New Yorker, Departures and Plaza Uomo, among other titles. He was the first American fashion journalist to write for the Italian fashion magazine L’Uomo Vogue. He is the author of three books on the history and direction of men’s fashion: Elegance (W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1985); Eminently Suitable (W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1990); and True Style: The History and Principles of Classic Menswear (Basic Books, 2015). In this issue Bruce reminisces about the early…

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 middle-aged women and passing out his sweat-drenched cheap scarves. I’m talking about the shiny young man who walked into the Sun Records studio in the morning of his life full of hope and confusion, with charisma and talent bursting transcendently out of him. Elvis came of age in the very middle of the 20th century, in the decade following two world wars and a soul-searing economic depression. And it was for the post-war American 1950s to delve chaotically into the issues of race, working class anxiety, mass culture, corporate consumerism…

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 family vacation, especially because of its unparalleled connections to the rest of the world via Emirates airlines. Dubai offers the modern international traveller a plethora of fine dining options coupled with world-class entertainment and rakish retail therapy… all in the middle of the Arabian Desert. My favourite hotel of choice in Dubai tends to be the Four Seasons, located at the D.I.F.C. (Dubai International Financial Centre). The hotel operates as a very efficient business destination without neglecting the luxurious perks, including unrivalled service, of a Four…

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 Twain to Bob Dylan, Harriet Beecher Stowe to Madonna Louise Ciccone, the Americans who really matter have been rebels and outsiders. To these add Paul Theroux, a fine novelist, a great travel writer, and that supposedly rarest of things, an American ironist. Theroux has always been on the move. Though he looks the epitome of east coast preppy, his background is quite humble. His father, Albert, was a salesman for the American Leather Oak Company, his mother, Anne, a teacher, and he was the third of seven children, born…