The Rake

The Modern Voice of Classic Elegance.

The Rake2 min readFashion
Contributors
Guy Aroch is one of the most indemand photographers in the world. He creates images for clients such as Hugo Boss, Coca-Cola, Puma, Estée Lauder, Michael Kors and Tommy Hilfiger. He has a unique style, using colour and obscura, and he has the ability
The Rake4 min read
Letter From The Editor
Calvin Harris would have love for me, having been born in the eighties, had he and I not got into a fight in 2009 over an interrupted live performance by Jedward. He probably won’t remember this, but in that former life, when I worked in television,
The Rake4 min read
Letter From The Founder
So I’m having dinner with a friend of mine and he tells me that he’s going to be a father again, and that his son is going to be born in May. Which is cool. Except that he’s 64 years old. Though he’s not just any 64-year-old. Until two years ago he w
The Rake6 min read
The Miracle Dude
Not long ago I found myself, through no fault of my own, at the stage version of Dirty Dancing. As expected, the auditorium was oestrogen-heavy, and as the rough-diamond dance teacher, Johnny Castle, got to grips with the artless Frances ‘Baby’ House
The Rake4 min readFashion
Rake Commends: Brussels
My better half is Belgian, which means we travel to Brussels fairly often to visit friends and family. With the Eurostar from London taking just under two hours, it makes the capital of Belgium — once the home of Hergé, Tintin’s creator, and Agatha C
The Rake6 min read
A Master Of Motivation
He was, to say the least, a shoo-in for Variety magazine’s 10 Brits to Watch in 2019 feature. Having become a familiar face on British screens with a role in the soap opera EastEnders, as well as in the English-speaking world with appearances in Doct
The Rake5 min read
Blond Ambition
The French excelled in the eighties. Pastels, big shoulders, and the triumph of smart-casual played to their fashion strengths, of course, but the emphases on exaggerated urban sophistication and free-floating existential angst were so up their allée
The Rake2 min readFashion
Look Of The Issue
Hopefully, by the time this issue of The Rake is available, the weather will look a lot different than it did when you read my inaugural style column in February. If you were to compare the accompanying illustrations, they would look very different,
The Rake5 min readFashion
Midnight Special
It would not be an exaggeration to say that when it comes to shirtmaking, Turnbull & Asser is king, and if that is the case then a Turnbull & Asser evening shirt is their crown. Winston Churchill, Robert Redford’s Jay Gatsby, and multiple James Bonds
The Rake2 min read
Set Apart From The Herd
The word ‘border’, among humans whose lingua franca evolved on the rain-soaked pastures of Albion, has become a politically emotive one of late: many of the denizens of that small, drizzly landmass voted to withdraw from a union forged in the wake of
The Rake4 min readFashion
Weaving Straw Into Gold
Bespoke is an addictive habit, but the degree to which one’s anticipation of the final result ebbs and flows is down to the level of trust between you and your tailor. Without trust, the process is achingly nerve-racking, for you know you might have
The Rake9 min read
Invest
There is probably no brand on the planet with more robust credentials than Panerai when it comes to aquatic adventure — credentials built upon since the 1940s, when it became supplier to Italian navy commandos. (The naval connection has dictated the
The Rake4 min readFashion
Pop Art
Having just graduated from high school, I found myself in London on my first trip abroad with $300 in travellers’ cheques, which was to last me the summer. It was June 1964. My travelling companion was my Martin D28 guitar. Bob Dylan was my hero, and
The Rake4 min read
An Open Book
Back in the day, when actresses who were not altogether Anglo were invariably labelled ‘exotic’, no one was pigeonholed as often as Isabelle Yasmina Adjani. Thanks to an Algerian Kabyle father, a German mother and a French childhood, Adjani exuded a
The Rake15 min readFashion
The Rake Personified
As much as I detest cigarettes, I miss the time when New York City was one big smoking section. This has less to do with the glorification of a smoke-based nicotine delivery system than coinciding with the last time New York City was actually cool. T
The Rake15 min read
Liev Forever
The late, legendary acting instructor Sanford Meisner once described the craft he imparted to others as “behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances”. It’s a diagnosis that sounds obvious at first, but gathers profundity, snowball-like, when co
The Rake4 min read
History In The Making
Sitting in the Palazzo Litta in Milan, awaiting the first of some 200 one-of-a-kind looks that would represent Dolce & Gabbana’s latest Alta Moda and Alta Sartoria collections, the audience lining the internal perimeter of the rose-filled palazzo cou
The Rake5 min read
A TASTE OF HONEY: THE MAKING OF THE ORIS DIVERS SIXTY-FIVE ‘HONEY’ FOR THE RAKE & REVOLUTION
O.K., let’s back up, to 2015, when Oris launched their much-loved Divers Sixty-Five. One of the hardest design challenges in watchmaking is the creation of a handsome, functional and original-looking dive watch. But that’s precisely what Oris achieve
The Rake5 min read
Reverse Psychology
It was one of those moments when there was a before and after. Overture and denouement. Or in the social anthropological/Jungian psychological terms, pre-liminal and post-liminal. But it was the moment in between that uplifted the soul and irrevocabl
The Rake6 min readDesign
Style With Substance
With the global media landscape so blighted by fake news, facile content and wilfully confrontational journalism, there’s an authentic moral integrity about Blamo!, the podcast founded by Jeremy Kirkland in 2016 that ploughs the fertile field of mens
The Rake3 min read
The Grande Dame Of Cognac
Wandering the hallowed grounds of Rémy Martin’s estate in Merpins, Cognac, one feels a sense of reverence, almost akin to entering a place of worship. This is a site steeped in centuries of family history: its cavernous cellars echo with the stories
The Rake11 min read
The Big Bang
It was when I was whisked past the queue at Area, one warm but windy Manhattan night in 1985, that I finally understood how much louder and larger the eighties were than the preceding decades. I was on a journalistic assignment with the group ABC — w
The Rake3 min read
Natural Born Killer?
O f all serious criminal offences, only murder is fetishised so eagerly in western culture. One cannot envisage a T.V. series entitled Drug Trafficking, She Wrote, or a movie called High Treason on the Orient Express, becoming standard Sunday night f

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