Issue June-July 2009 - Issue 4 (2024)

Home/Men's Lifestyle/The Rake/June-July 2009 - Issue 4

The world’s preeminent publication dedicated to the renaissance in gentlemanly sophistication and style, THE RAKE recaptures the codes of classic men’s elegance. Inspired by icons such as Cary Grant, Fred Astaire, the Duke of Windsor, Gianni Agnelli, Sean Connery, and their contemporary counterparts, THE RAKE provides incisive, in-depth commentary on magnificent menswear, and the many other elements of gentlemanly living, from manners and ethics, to art and design, tasteful travel, health and well-being, the intellectual and philosophical, to homes, modes of transport, entertainment, food and drink. THE RAKE is the modern voice of classic elegance.

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in this issue

IN THIS ISSUELETTER FROM THE EDITOR“All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honour, duty, mercy, hope.”— Winston ChurchillI SHOULDN’T LIKE THE English. Australian by birth, my bloodline’s a mix of brave-hearted Scot, fighting Irish, and haughty French. Aside, perhaps, from a common fondness for drink, the one trait these nations share is a natural, inborn animosity for what Australians call “Pommy bastards”, the Scots “Sassenach”, the Irish “f*ckin’ @#$%s”, and the French, well, whatever unintelligible obscenity they’re muttering under their breath before surreptitiously coughing in the cross-channel tourist’s soup. (I jest, of course, but you get the gist.)Yet, despite genetic predisposition, I’ve always had a ‘thing’ for England. I’ve spent several years of my life living in London. I adore English style, music, film; English…2 min

IN THIS ISSUECONTRIBUTORSOne of the world’s most highly regarded men’s style writers, G. Bruce Boyer is the author of two seminal books on classic menswear, Elegance (1985) and Eminently Suitable (1990), and the cinematic fashion histories Rebel Style (2006) and Fred Astaire Style (2005). He is coauthor of a three-volume study of 1930s American menswear, Apparel Arts (1989), and a contributor and consultant to The Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion (2004). Boyer’s feature articles have appeared in august journals including Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, Forbes, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Cigar Aficionado, and L’Uomo Vogue. His latest book, Black Tie: A Short History of the Tuxedo will be published in October — in keeping with that theme, in his first contribution to The Rake, Boyer muses on his adventures in formalwear…3 min

ARBITERA TALENT TO AMUSEAs Noël Coward’s chum, Lord Louis Mountbatten, surmised upon his death in 1973: “There are probably greater painters than Noël, greater novelists than Noël, greater librettists, greater composers of music, greater singers, greater dancers, greater comedians, greater tragedians, greater stage producers, greater film directors, greater cabaret artists, greater TV stars. If there are, they are 14 different people. Only one man combined all 14 different labels — The Master.” Yet The Rake could add one more accolade to Coward’s precocious curriculum vitae. Of his generation, only Fred Astaire rivalled The Master as a 20th-century ‘man of mode’ who created a vocabulary of elegance entirely his own.Noël Coward’s sartorial blueprint was drawn in 1924 when (aged 24) he starred in his self-penned play The Vortex, a decadent co*cktail of maternal love,…5 min

ARBITERBRACE YOURSELFOscar Wilde once noted that trousers should hang from the shoulders and not from the waist.In this, the great wit was correct, of course. And to achieve such a feat, one requires braces (or suspenders, as they’re known in the United States).Why braces instead of a belt? A veritable instrument of torture, a belt will cinch your waist, threatening to squeeze the daylights out of you just to keep your trousers up. It will require you to pull and tug at your waist several times throughout the day to maintain the waist at the same level. A belt, furthermore, will never consistently achieve the perfect meeting of trouser end and shoes. No, to achieve the perfect line — the trouser end just barely touching, flirting as it may seem, caressing…6 min

ARBITERTHE CONNERY CUTThe men’s magazine James Bond story is something of a cliché. Just as TV stations will inevitably roll out a ‘Bond Marathon’ (“Double-O-Heaven!” scream the promo voiceovers) whenever a new film in the franchise hits screens, so too will men’s magazines eagerly leap on the Bond-wagon, churning out the same hoary old lists of Sexiest Bond Girls Ever, Greatest Gadgets, Coolest Cars, trotting out tired trivia, and re-entering into ceaseless debate over which actor is/was The Best Bond.Yawn. The Rake refuses to get into all that. You’ll have to look to our mainstream men’s mag brethren for insipid lists, and as for the best Bond debate, really, there’s no argument — Connery will never be bettered (sorry Mr. Craig, though we do deeply admire your Tom Ford attire and adrenalin-fuelled…5 min

ARBITERPOCKET GUIDEWhile the term ‘style icon’ is bandied around with overfamiliarity and trigger-happy prodigiousness in popular culture today, very few of the individuals selected for best-dressed lists hold a candle to the Astaires and Dukes of Windsor of the halcyon era of men’s elegance.So, it’s with some awe that we witness the arrival of a true style icon, fusing inventiveness and knowledge to usurp and reinvent the rules of sartorial strategy with the dexterity of a juggler and the poetry of a true artist. That this man is Luca Rubinacci should come as little surprise considering his pedigree.Rubinacci’s London House is the most renowned Neapolitan tailoring firm in the world. And while Italy’s other gem Caraceni is revered in Rome and Milan, it is Rubinacci that has become the byword for…2 min

Issue June-July 2009 - Issue 4 (2024)

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