Kent & Curwen

vive le dandy !

Sid Mashburn

La caduta degli dei (Official Trailer)

Luciano Barbera

Tennis: Father vs. Son

BCBG: Bon Chic Bon Genre

tenue correcte exigée

Preppy Chic

Yuppies: The State-of-the Art Manual

When I was at school, yuppie and preppy were pejorative terms. I can still recall being confronted as a small child by a gang of swarthy young foreign proles in the mean streets of New Canaan for wearing an "alligator" on my polo shirt. In fact I learned to fight in my Lacoste shirts and Sperry Topsiders. After school and university in the 1990s I started a banking career in New York City and then later moved back to London to work in investment management. The yuppies depicted in the image (at left) were still very much in evidence. I was not aware until just recently, however, that an actual handbook had been published on the species. (Likewise it was not until years later that I learned of the American guide to preppies). I never understood why wearing proper clothing, having a job, and sporting a side-parting should be targets for ridicule. Given the nature of those in the creative arts who wrote such handbooks, however, and that of the people who read them, maybe I should not be surprised. Perhaps there is a special name for these people. I certainly can think of a few. Can you?

Lui Magazine

Club Tropicana (Wham!)

Madras Monday: J.Crew Style

Beauty

Crystal Japan (Bowie)

Fatal Strategies

"The energy of the public sphere, the energy that creates social myths and dogmas is gradually disappearing. The social arena turns obese and monstrous. It grows like a mammal and glandular corpse. Once it was illustrated by its heroes but today it refers to its handicapped, its weirdos, its degenerates, its asocial persons – and all of this in a gigantic effort of therapeutic maternity."

- Fatal Strategies, Jean Baudrillard

Pink Pirate Cocktail Bermudas

© EB

Big Star

Misbehavin'

Madame Motor Car

Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight

Brooks Brothers: Country Jackets and Flannels

Ecru Alternative

Do you, ecru? I do. The word is derived from the French word for raw or unbleached and was once considered synonymous with beige. It resembles the colour of a hawk's feather and is often used for lingerie and wedding gowns. I have three shirts in the colour of ecru: one button-down number from Brooks Brothers, another from Brooks Brothers with a forward point collar, and the last a slim-fit Hemrajani model with spread collar. The ubiquitous bleached-white dress shirt seems to glow increasingly bright in the California summer sunshine and as such becomes a distraction not only to myself, but also to innocent passersby. Ecru provides a more serene, but no less handsome, alternative. Consider it for your next dress shirt acquisition.

Old Hat

Mountain Excursion Group: Ascending and Descending

Training hard in the foothills above my home. An aggressive assault on the peaks, and then a steady withdrawal through the valley of the winds. A trek to the top, I find, always clears my mind; getting away from Azania enables me to refresh my perspective and begin anew. We live in an increasingly dangerous, inverted world and it is imperative we rise above it. Civilised human values are most often reasserted either in solitude or in the company of loved ones and like-minded comrades. In these hills are mountain lions, coyotes, bobcats, raptors, songbirds, and various reptile species. In the photo at bottom I am wearing a Thor Steinar shirt, khaki hiking shorts, and black New Balance trekking shoes.

Horsley

RIP 1962-2010

Cleverley Loafers & Seersucker-in-Plaid

Work hard play hard, and one begins to undergo the consequences. A bit of blood in the undercarriage, the result I suspect of drinking large amounts of champagne and whiskey, has forced me to slow down and spend some time chez maison. I have therefore taken the opportunity to inspect the inventory and see what I have in stock for summer wear. In this exclusive archival photo you can see quite clearly a pair of Cleverley loafers cradled in the adoring embrace of a J.Press sport coat. I think they make a splendid trio. The shoes are popularly known as 'butterfly loafers,' for some reason, I have learned, but I certainly do not look or feel like a butterfly when I wear them. The sport coat is a plaid seersucker number with enough spilt G&Ts in the fabric that one could probably fashion a decent cocktail if one wrung hard enough. Better spilt gin, I suppose, than spilt blood. Per aspera ad astra.

Bowie Prep

The Last Tuesday Society

"Decadence comes from the latin word cadere--which means to fall. It is the beautiful way to fall. It’s a very slow movement which has lots of beauty. It can be a kind of self-killing in a beautiful way, a tragic way."

Viktor Wynd

Admiral Cod On Tour: Peru