The Rake Spring - Summer 2021 - Issue 77

letter from the founder

When I started The Rake, almost a decade and a half ago, Lorenzo Cifonelli was already a mythological figure to me. So it is with immense gratitude that today I consider him one of my closest friends. Sometimes, often while in my cups, I imagine a Valhalla of the sartorial arts’ greatest masters: Frederick Scholte and Gennaro Rubinacci seated besides an Odin-like Domenico Caraceni, with the superstars of each successive generation — such as Colin Hammick, of Huntsman, Douglas Hayward, the creator of Thomas Crown’s suits, and of course the inimitable Tommy Nutter — taking their rightful place at the banquet table. But when it comes to this generation, not only is Lorenzo’s seat at the table assured, it is clear that he will be regarded as the most influential…

letter from the editor-in-chief

It is Monday, July 12. Football seems to be locked out and unable to return home, and I find myself locked in and unable to get out. Why? Well, as for the former, who can say? The latter, on the other hand, is straightforward: I am having to selfisolate after a sub-24-hour trip to Cannes to shoot our cover star, Matt Damon, who was in town during the film festival to premiere his new movie, Stillwater. One day on the Croisette reminded me of how intoxicating and powerful Hollywood is. The security infrastructure to keep the stars and starlets safe, the sophistication of the Chopard penthouse at the Martinez, the baying crowds and photographers who had their work cut out trying to identify anyone famous beneath the face masks… All the…

contributors

Greg established his reportage style as a photojournalist in the 1990s, covering war zones in Burma, Chechnya and Sierra Leone. An assignment for The Sunday Times Magazine gave him his first access to the film industry, and he has now shot specials on more than 200 movies, including four poster campaigns for the Bond franchise. Greg has also enjoyed exclusive access to the Baftas, the Golden Globes and the Oscars, and is a regular contributor to Vanity Fair and British Vogue. In addition to his prodigious photographic output, Greg is a filmmaker, principally with his first-person, ‘moving reportage’ documentaries, and a product designer (his limited-edition Leica Q2, in partnership with Daniel Craig, is Leica’s fastest selling large-scale edition). His education platform, Skills Faster, is home to his successful Candid Photography…

the first — and last — gentleman

A while ago I was invited to a black-tie Christmas bash for the Royal Household at Buckingham Palace. After the initial thrill of being waved through the gates and gliding across the quadrangle into the hallowed environs, the incongruities started to pile up. Did the interior of the palace resemble a gilded Trusthouse Forte on steroids? Yes, it did. Was I really standing, kir royale in hand, next to a genuine Vermeer? Yes, I was. Could that be the erstwhile Wombles maestro Mike Batt conducting an orchestra in the ballroom? Yes, it could. Not long into the evening, a buzz went round the attendees and an orderly line was formed: the family were making their rounds. I happened to be standing at a corner, my vision of their progress obscured, when…

‘i know how all of henry viii’s wives died, but we’re taught nothing about the east india company’

Nikesh Patel recalls one of the moments that inspired him to become an actor. It was during a play at his school in London. While sitting in the audience, he was surprised to see a pupil several years his junior appear on stage. “It was a Sri Lankan kid from a few years below,” he says two decades later. “I looked at him and thought, What’s Krishnan doing there? But even that small moment, seeing someone on stage who looked like me, made a big difference in becoming an actor.” Since that light-switch moment, Nikesh has gone on to have quite the career. He is a thespian sort who leans more into theatrical work, a self-professed Shakespeare nerd, and now a common face on British television screens (he’s also rather popular…

hoist by his own fêtard

Acerbic newspaper columnists who wish to distil a human subject’s existence down to a nugget of scorn can always rely upon a fail-safe formula: hyphenated-descriptor + reductive noun form [h-d+rnf]. Whether it’s a veteran football manager being reduced to a ‘passion-sapping journeyman’ or a liberal-minded comedian to a ‘patience-testing snowflake’, it’s a tried and trusted way of spiking the editorial cocktail. (My all-time favourite appeared when Charlie Brooker, the man behind the dystopian sci-fi anthology Black Mirror, prefaced George ‘Dubya’ Bush’s name with “Teddy- Ruxpin-faced planet-vandal”.) Presumably, cuttings containing these barbed descriptors rarely make it into subjects’ Project Life scrapbooks, but when The Washington Post calls you a 38-year-old “discotheque-hopping fiancé” — and the bride-tobe is 21-year-old Princess Caroline of Monaco, the daughter of Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier III, and…