The Rake Febuary 2018- Issue 56

“But what about our editorial integrity?” Thus was the chest-rending bleat of protestation from some of the younger journalists when it was announced that, as we move forwards, our website, our social media and, yes, even our magazine would synergistically serve our e-commerce offer. “Well, first of all,” I replied, “you do not work for CNN, you are not stationed in the Korean demilitarised zone, or embedded with the Marines in Afghanistan. You, for whatever reason, felt the call to not just be a journalist but specifically a wordsmith in the luxury sector. Second of all, what kind of editorial integrity do you think you have when a lovely P.R., who has made no investment in the livelihood of this title, instead approaches you directly to fly your ass business-class…

So often letters like this begin with some sort of anecdote — “I was sitting in a bar one day” or “I bumped into a friend of mine recently” — that inspires a fun little analogy. My life is rarely this exciting, so it is hard to do something quite as clever, but nevertheless, I should perhaps kick off the year by reflecting on the year just finished. Cynical as I am, I am planning for this year to be much worse than last. On a geo-political basis, I can’t see much to be excited about. I expect shit people will win a lot and questionable decisions will be made. Compared to 2018, 2017 will look like the happy highways and blue remembered hills of Housman’s land of lost content. Then again,…

Kalle is a Swedish director and photographer. A master of the atmospheric cinematic moment, he shoots both print and motion for an advertising client list that includes Paul Smith, Gant, Johnnie Walker, Volvo, Hackett, Peroni, Rolex, H&M, Neiman Marcus and Mr Porter, and editorial clients including GQ, Vogue Italy and Russia, Marie Claire, Esquire, Elle Malaysia, DuJour and Madame Figaro. He is as comfortable recreating stolen moments that evoke a 1960s Italian film as he is staging cinematic stories out of a fifties American drama. Across his visual styles, the candid moment is elevated to art with a languorous, fluid elegance and a natural intelligence. For this issue Kalle joined us to shoot our cover star Damian Lewis (page 82). Ed is a screenwriter and journalist. Two years ago he came second…

The most important American film of 2017, and the worthiest successor to Moonlight’s best picture Oscar, was Get Out, a psychological horror-satire about a white woman who brings her black boyfriend home to meet her parents. It is a masterpiece: immaculately paced, queasily perceptive to the hypocrisies of white elites, a rise-through-the-octaves howl against semi-camouflaged prejudice. “I have four children. They go to the movies all the time, but they rarely see themselves reflected there.” The plot could also be read as a Trump-era riff on Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, a landmark film released half a century before it with a similarly symbolic representation of the generation above. If Get Out cleverly cast actors with progressive associations (indie darling Catherine Keener and The West Wing’s Bradley Whitford), Guess Who’s Coming To…

Asterisked items available at www.TheRake.com Miami Beach has been one of America’s pre-eminent resorts for almost a century. Before that it was a strip of mangroves on a small barrier island that was cleared in the 1800s to make way for a coconut plantation. It was incorporated into a city during the real estate boom of the early 1900s. It hit its stride architecturally in the Art Deco period of the 1930s, and set the trend for glamour and nightlife in the fifties and sixties. It has survived economic downturns, crime waves, hurricanes and drug cartels. Miami is a survivor. It has a rich and cultural diversity, and often feels more like a South American outpost than an American city. I have been coming to Miami since the nineties (the downward side of…

He was known as the quintessential Svengali — a word derived from George du Maurier’s 1895 novel, Trilby — in which the title character, a singer, is entranced via hypnosis by the roguish antagonist, making her unable to perform without Svengali there to lead her to a state of reduced peripheral awareness. Aside from his leonine features and movie-star-turned-director/photographer status, what exactly was it that hypnotised Bo Derek about John Derek, a man 30 years her senior who became not just her lover but her mentor and sole creative collaborator? Born Derek Harris in Hollywood in 1926 to the silent filmmaker Lawson Harris and the film actress Dolores Johnson, Bo’s beau-to-be had matinee idol looks that saw him, in his youth, singled out for a movie career by David O. Selznick…