The Rake

Last year the coolest guy I ever met died. Unlike the two million people around the world who have perished as a result of Covid-19, my friend died in an accident. He was working on his pick-up truck when it must have come off a jack-stand and crushe

Imitation is a funny old thing — the sincerest form of flattery, they say. As it happens, I agree; I indulge in it often. My only party trick is half-decent impressions, which people seem to find relatively amusing, and it’s useful around the dinner

A couple of years ago, Her Serene Highness Princess Virginia Carolina Theresa Pancrazia Galdina von und Zu Fürstenberg, or Ira, as she is (mercifully) known, asked me to write her life story. Ira is just fabulous. I first met her in Marbella; she is

Since its cornerstone was laid one crisp autumn morning in 1792, the neoclassical residence-cum-seat-of-power that would go on to be named after the blanched Virginia freestone from which it is constructed has become a hotbed of occasionally mawkish

Grace Jones is an intersectional iconoclast whose fluid approach to style, identity and creativity was decades ahead of its time. Transcending national, sexual and racial stereotypes, she has cross-fertilised music, fashion, cinema and her own life i

Turnbull & Asser burgundy paisley traditional silk Jacquard gown In his captivating tome A History of the World in 100 Objects, the British art historian and former museum director Neil MacGregor explores the breadth of human endeavour via the prism

Over the past few decades, Manchester’s fame has most commonly been associated with the beautiful game, in which the town’s two leading football clubs — United and City — have dominated. (Since the Premier League’s inception, in 1992, they have won a

Had you taken a stroll on Wimbledon Common during the latest U.K. lockdown and encountered a conspicuously elegant woman muttering Gallic phrases to herself — she would have been shy of five-feet-six, with auburn hair, and dressed in a style she hers

‘Fashion Leader Favors A Lengthened Hemline’, read a headline in The New York Times on November 29, 1961, accompanying a picture of a svelte woman about to cross the road. This, the caption informed readers, was “Countess Crespi in green wool suit wi

“It takes nine tailors to make a man,” said the Elizabethan writer John Heywood. Well, Mr. Heywood, we have news for you. These days, we think it takes only seven. And not the seven you’d necessarily expect. You see, we men, we simple creatures, can

When Maria Grazia ‘Lella’ Lombardi, a butcher’s daughter born during the second world war in a small Italian village near Turin, stepped out of her Matra at the end of the 1975 Spanish Grand Prix — the last to be held on the Montjuïc street circuit —

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Every watchmaker has their signature house hero, the identifiable brand calling card: there’s Rolex’s robust and bulletproof Submariner, Audemars Piguet’s knockout Royal Oak, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s ultraclassic Reverso. But some brands also produce a sel

“What I think we missed most in 2020 was the human contact. Spending time with friends, enjoying their physical presence, their warmth of spirit, their conviviality. For me, 2021 will be a year to remake these bonds, to luxuriate in the company of my

Longines’ winged hourglass logo hasn’t graced just aviation pieces: as well as the Army Air Corps and the International Aeronautical Federation, the French Navy is among those to have benefited from the precision instruments of a manufacture founded

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a ‘grand tourer’, or GT, can be defined as “a car designed for comfortable long-distanced touring”. The term, derived from the Italian gran turismo, originated in the mid-century with cars made by marques s

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