The Rake October 2018 - Issue 60

letter from the founder

The magazine you hold in your hands is 10 years old today. And the fact it exists at all is something of a minor miracle. The Rake is, on the surface, a magazine about clothes. But actually it is about far more. If you’ll bear with me and join me on a circuitous tour of my relationship with clothes, I’ll explain why. I’ve always loved clothes. Growing up in New York in the 1980s, I was required to wear a jacket and necktie to school. But rather than viewing this as an obligation, I looked at it as a pleasure. I would scour vintage shops on Astor Place and in the Village for Norfolk jackets, tweed jackets, jacquard dinner jackets. I would wait for the final seasonal reduction at department stores…

letter from the editor

The 10-year anniversary of The Rake is a good time to reflect. This may come as a bit of a shock to anyone who has had the misfortune of spending a few minutes in my company, but, unlike my learned friend and boss, Wei Koh — who grew up with the most comprehensive curiosity for cultural codes of clothing — my taste has always been somewhat regimented, literally. I have been a bannerman for a very specific style of dress for as long as I can recall, and it is my father’s City dress look. The 1970s beckoned the end of an era in which all men who worked in the City (usually former army officers) would be required to wear suits, bowler hats, tightly furled umbrellas, bulled brogues and, on…

contributors

CARTER BERG Carter Berg was born and raised in New York City. The impulse to become a photographer struck during spring holiday of his final year in college, when he was working as a production assistant on a fashion shoot. He says: “I watched the photographer and his crew from afar and thought, ‘I want to do that’.” He adds: “I learned quickly that the really memorable pictures are the ones that can happen in between the picture you’re supposed to be taking. You always have to be looking and have your camera at the ready.” His work has appeared in numerous publications, such as Elle Decoration, Madame Figaro and Departures. He has also shot advertising campaigns for Ralph Lauren, as well as images for several lifestyle books, including New York…

for one brief shining moment

Not long ago, I was in Dallas on business. I made the requisite pilgrimage to Dealey Plaza and viewed the world’s most infamous grassy knoll, but I also discovered one of the more striking monuments among the thousands to John F. Kennedy. The Sixth Floor Museum is housed in the building that was once the Texas School Book Depository. You climb the stairs, turn a corner, and are faced with the open window through which Lee Harvey Oswald fired his rifle at Kennedy’s motorcade on the afternoon of November 22, 1963, with world-shattering consequences. The museum plays host to around 400,000 people a year, and their comments in the visitors’ book — “Our greatest President”; “Oh how we miss him!”; “A beacon of hope, cruelly extinguished” — are ample evidence…

mr porter style council rake commends: new york

I love New York for many reasons. Of course, for her endless activity in every cultural form, and for her around-the-clock accessibility and unmatched diversity. But mostly it is the people’s energy that makes the city unique. There is an atmosphere and intensity around the gathering of people in New York that is probably unprecedented throughout the world. I love the vibrancy of the different boroughs and its fantastic neighbourhoods, where local shops or cafés remember your name or your favourite order. You can feel at home in New York quickly, and New Yorkers give you compliments when least expected. There is constant development and change affecting the architecture of the city; it’s fascinating, when I come back from my travels, to discover new sights. New York is a safe, easy-to-navigate city in…

hymns of the republic

We get him now, of course, but in September 1984, Bruce Springsteen must have felt like the most misunderstood man in America. Every musician wants a hit, but the success of his album Born in the U.S.A., then on its way to selling 15 million copies and reaching far beyond his usual fan base, had provoked reactions he could never have expected. Anyone who listened to the title track with any attention would see that, beside the stadium chant of its chorus, this was a protest song: the blue-collar guy who’s sent off to kill the yellow man returns to find he can’t get a job in the refinery and is left with nowhere to go. What Springsteen hadn’t realised is that most people don’t listen with attention, which is…