Think of England (Martin Parr)

England has been a key subject of photographer Martin Parr's work since he started taking pictures. Think of England is a comic, opinionated, affectionately satirical, colour-saturated photo-essay about the identity of England. As Scotland and Wales consolidate their status as nations and Great Britain begins to unravel, this book of new work contributes to the debate about what it means to be English. Quintessentially English himself, Parr's great achievement as a photographer is his ability to transform the obvious into the surprising, reinventing clichés of Englishness as provocative revelations. His tour of obvious England takes in Ascot and the charity shop, seaside resorts, herbaceous borders, the bring-and-buy stall, cucumber sandwiches and cups of tea, baked beans and bad footwear.

Athos

monsieur en afrique

Peter Beard

Investing: Style Notes

Swiss private bank Vontobel is issuing equity-linked structured notes that track the performance of luxury goods retailers such as Hermes, Polo, Burberry, and Coach. Bloomberg reports:

The two-year note is aimed at private banks and asset managers, according to Georg Vonwattenwyl, Vontobel’s Zurich- based head of financial products distribution. The bank will issue as much as 20 million euros ($25 million) of the notes, which start trading July 16 on the SIX Swiss Exchange Ltd. and Germany’s Stuttgart and Frankfurt bourses.

Luxury goods companies in Europe are expected to post sales growth of 7 percent on average this year, after slumping 6.6 percent in 2009, according to a Vontobel report. Fashion companies returned about 50 percent last year, according to the Swiss bank, almost double the 27 percent gain in the MSCI Europe Index of 461 stocks.

Vontobel’s notes will return to investors any gain or loss on the basket of 11 stocks that also includes Bulgari SpA, Burberry Group Plc, Coach Inc., Cie Financiere Richemont SA, Louis Vitton Moet Hennessy SA, Swatch Group AG, Tiffany & Co. and Tod’s SpA.

The Swiss bank issued similar notes in 2004 that earned 20.3 percent for buyers that held them for all of their 18-month term.

I wonder if a similar instrument could be issued to track the profit performance of, for example, Brooks Brothers, Cleverley, J.Crew, J.Press, and Crockett & Jones?

Given the amount of cash we drop on their wares--hell, I am practically a shareholder--these companies should be doing quite nicely.

je combats pour moi

"Quand je ferme les yeux, j’aperçois parfois un sombre paysage de pierres, de falaises et de montagnes, à la lisière de l’infini. A l’arrière-plan, sur le rivage d’une mer ténébreuse, je me reconnais moi-même, minuscule figure qui est comme dessinée à la craie. C’est mon avant-poste, tout proche du Néant--là-bas, au bord du gouffre, je combats pour moi."

- Ernst Jünger

Day of the Weejun

Summer mornings are at the top of my list of favourite times of year. I rise when the owls are going to sleep, but when other birds are just waking up. The warm stillness when there is no one else about. The lick of dew on shrubs. New garden spider webs spanning the walkways. The red morning glow of the sun behind the distant mountains. The striking mix of rich brown, khaki, red, and green of the foothills. The hills are not like white elephants, as Hemingway would say, but rather like a collection of limited edition original twill from Bills Khakis. But even in the tranquility of deep summer there is a black mark. Every year July 14, or Bastille Day, seems to appear at the same place in the calendar, much to my frustration, and despite my best efforts. At Schloss von AC it is not a day of celebration, it is a day of mourning. I wear a pair of Weejuns, black boxers, and a generous smile on my face, as a tribute to the counter-revolution. How do you mark the occasion?

Rolex Blue-Water Performance

Poseidonians (C.P. Cavafy)

Ποσειδωνιάται


Ποσειδωνιάταις τοις εν τω Τυρρηνικώ κόλπω το μεν εξ αρχής
Έλλησιν ούσιν εκβαρβαρώσθαι Τυρρηνοίς ή Pωμαίοις γεγονόσι
και τήν τε φωνήν μεταβεβληκέναι, τά τε πολλά των επιτηδευμάτων,
άγειν δε μιάν τινα αυτούς των εορτών των Ελλήνων
έτι και νυν, εν η συνιόντες αναμιμνήσκονται των αρχαίων
ονομάτων τε και νομίμων, απολοφυράμενοι προς αλλήλους
και δακρύσαντες απέρχονται.

AΘΗΝAΙΟΣ

Την γλώσσα την ελληνική οι Ποσειδωνιάται
εξέχασαν τόσους αιώνας ανακατευμένοι
με Τυρρηνούς, και με Λατίνους, κι άλλους ξένους.
Το μόνο που τους έμενε προγονικό
ήταν μια ελληνική γιορτή, με τελετές ωραίες,
με λύρες και με αυλούς, με αγώνας και στεφάνους.
Κ’ είχαν συνήθειο προς το τέλος της γιορτής
τα παλαιά τους έθιμα να διηγούνται,
και τα ελληνικά ονόματα να ξαναλένε,
που μόλις πια τα καταλάμβαναν ολίγοι.
Και πάντα μελαγχολικά τελείων’ η γιορτή τους.
Γιατί θυμούνταν που κι αυτοί ήσαν Έλληνες —
Ιταλιώται έναν καιρό κι αυτοί·
και τώρα πώς εξέπεσαν, πώς έγιναν,
να ζουν και να ομιλούν βαρβαρικά
βγαλμένοι — ω συμφορά! — απ’ τον Ελληνισμό

Poseidonians

[We behave like] the Poseidonians in the
Tyrrhenian Gulf, who although of Greek
origin, became barbarized as Tyrrhenians
or Romans and changed their speech and
the customs of their ancestors. But they
observe one Greek festival even to this
day; during this they gather together and
call up from memory their ancient names
and customs, and then, lamenting loudly
to each other and weeping, they go away.

Athenaios, Deipnosophistai, Book 14, 31A (632)

The Poseidonians forgot the Greek language
after so many centuries of mingling
with Tyrrhenians, Latins, and other foreigners.
The only thing surviving from their ancestors
was a Greek festival, with beautiful rites,
with lyres and flutes, contests and wreaths.
And it was their habit toward the festival’s end
to tell each other about their ancient customs
and once again to speak Greek names
that only a few of them still recognized.
And so their festival always had a melancholy ending
because they remembered that they too were Greeks,
they too once upon a time were citizens of Magna Graecia;
and how low they’d fallen now, what they’d become,
living and speaking like barbarians,
cut off so disastrously from the Greek way of life.

Brooks Brothers Crew

Edward and Mrs Simpson (credits)

Written by late chum Simon Raven...

Congo Dandies: The Religion of the Cloth

Paradise is a Fabulous Suit

For the Congolese Sapeurs, haute couture isn't just an abiding passion, it's a religion.

By Anna Weinberg
Photos by Héctor Mediavilla Sabaté

Their canon of saints reads: Pierre Cardin, Roberto Cavalli, Dior, Fendi, Ferré, Gaultier, Gucci, Jourdan, Miyake, Prada, Saint Laurent, Versace, Yamamoto. A typical ballad runs: “Listen my love. On our wedding day/The label will be Torrente/The label will be Giorgio Armani/The label will be Daniel Hechter/The label for the shoes will be J. M. Weston.” Brussels, their shopping mecca, is referred to in Congolese as Lola, meaning paradise.

These are sapeurs, acolytes of a 25-year-old movement called la SAPE—La Societé des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes (aka Kitendi, the religion of the cloth)-—that revolves around the possession of the most expensive, most luxurious, most extravagant fashion in the world. Followers of SAPE wear $10,000 jackets and $500 shoes, but these mostly young Congolese men otherwise barely eke out a living in the rubble of Kinshasa and Brazzaville or the ghettos of Paris and Brussels, washing dishes or washing bodies, and sometimes selling their own.

Cont...

Thanks to D. in Dublin

My Friend the Mercenary

The Misogynist (Piers Paul Read)

Cuts You Up (Peter Murphy)

Houellebecq (BBC Interview)

Last Horizons

In recent weeks a number of scenarios and opportunities have been presented to me. An English chum has asked me to get involved with a safari and deep-sea fishing resort project in Mozambique. Another wants me to help start a hedge fund in South Africa. Two American chaps of my acquaintance have recently immigrated with their families to Uruguay. Another colleague is planning to move to New Zealand. Europe beckons, as always, and I think increasingly of picking up a villa in sunny Portugal, Spain, or Croatia, or a secluded mountain chalet in my beloved Germany or Austria. I shall give these proposals serious thought.

Lacrosse Victory Riders

The Lost Trail of the Sahara

Young Pipe Scholars

Methods of Dance (Japan)

The Art of Clubbability

Are you a clubbable type? I wonder. I ask this after leafing through a book on London clubs in my library, and following a vigorous game of squash yesterday morning. I belong to two clubs: the first, a sports establishment scoring high in the glamour scale, staffed by highly attractive towel girls and frequented by serious professionals, celebrity athletes, gold-digging single women, and rich housewives. The other, a traditional, quieter, more masculine club environment for professional chaps such as moi who appreciate a respite from the glitz.

A visit to either club is always a pleasure. I am naturally at home with like-minded chaps who dress in a tribal style with which I am familiar. Gents wearing madras shorts and yellow Brooks Brothers polo shirts. Khaki shorts and Weejuns. Tartan shirt, tan wool trousers, and thick brown brogues. Older men with sensibly short haircut, moderate sideburns, and aquiline nose. We exchange smiles and friendly greetings, and talk about the stock market. It is an agreeable place.

In truth I am somewhat of a solitary. Not misanthropic or anti-social by any means, but wary of extended human contact nonetheless. I do realise we are social beings; that is our nature. But interaction often leaves me exhausted. Do not get the wrong idea. I enjoy small talk and flirting over cocktails. And I would be thrilled to see you and when we finally do meet I am sure it will be a pleasurable way to spend an afternoon. Sincerity is my yardstick. No, the truth is people tire me. As the years pass I find I have less patience for fools; I am more discriminating in how and more importantly with whom I spend my time. Life is too short to tolerate knaves and cretins.

As much as I appreciate my chums, I treasure my privacy. And here, I think, is where private associations such as clubs play a role as a method of escape. For the modern world presents a growing challenge to those seeking refuge. The private sphere rapidly disintegrates. Traditional societal structures such as family, tribe, and church have been infiltrated, turned inside out, and delegitimised. Individuals, deracinated and confused, are afraid of getting lost in the emptiness if left by themselves, hence immersion in unending stream of information, images, messages. The proliferation of personal electronic communication devices means we are never, ever alone. Even our private thoughts are subject to remote control through self-censorship and threat of informants. The distinction between the private and personal, and the public and political, has been eliminated in favour of the latter, in accordance with Klagenfurt’s Third Allegory of the Forest. The woodcutters swarm the place. There is nowhere to hide from the blades. The searching lights follow us everywhere.

In this context, therefore, one could say the love between a man and a woman, and by extension the family and kin-based clan, because they create a kind of protective sanctuary, are subversive. Have you observed the way a couple in love often create their own special language and behaviours? Certain families are the same way. Love is the ultimate rebellion. It is our resistance. But for these reasons even love itself is under assault. It is being phased out by the market. Human emotions are cheapened by undue expression and repetitive misapplication facilitated by an omnipresent media apparatus. Relations between a man and woman have been reduced to an economic exchange of goods and services or contractual arrangement dissolved at will. In the realm of Eros, the brutal ‘law of the jungle’ prevails. Men have become atomised units randomly crashing into one another and then spinning away again. Under these circumstances love is impossible.

In this area most of all, I should note here, it would be accurate to say that my initiatives have not been as enduring as I had hoped; but it would be dishonest of me to deny that conditions have not lived up to expectations, which is putting it very mildly.

So, what to do? These are observations from a chap out of place, a trad against time, and nothing more. I have had an extraordinarily lucky, privileged life, for which I am very grateful, but it is also one marked by a peripatetic pattern that in certain moments today leaves me pensive and restless. The office routine continues, interrupted by social gatherings, research activities, and tennis matches. Days of wine and codeine afford me brief moments of unthinking pleasure as a dedicated psychonaut, but even these are unremembered and so the procedure is repeated again and again. The process of detachment grows, to such a degree that observers have taken note of it. I sense that my boat is preparing to sail. I have already embarked on a course of inner emigration. At some point the flesh must follow.

Three-Piece Tweed

Headdress (Amazing Baby)

Amazing Baby - Headdress (uncensored) from Admiral Cod Video

The Gentlemen's Clubs of London (1984)

The Last Days of Disco (Official Trailer)

Country Club Years

Under my flag I am free

Royall Lyme Bermuda Ltd.

When I am not wearing Creed, 1872, or Trumper scents, I often reach for a bottle from Royall Lyme Bermuda Limited. I first tried Royall fragrances as a young prep in a Tweed of three colours. I recall finding them at local men's shops in Connecticut and New York. Did Brooks Brothers stock Royall at one time? I wonder.

I like Royall Muske, which remains my favourite to this day. It is subtle enough, I think, to wear to the office on occasion, though I am careful as always to achieve a very moderate effect in light of its potential influence on women, which, along with the trad charm, impressive physique, and deep blue eyes, can be rather considerable. From the website:

"This hauntingly exotic fragrance intrigues with its lingering scent from the grain secreted by the shy Asian male musk deer to attract the female of his species. The Ancients used musk as an aphrodisiac. Royall's is mixed with harmonious aromatics to create its own uniquely masculine allure. Try it and experience the results for yourself!"

Sounds enticing enough, if a little mysterious; some things are better left uninvestigated. In summer months I sometimes switch to Royall Lyme, a light lime scent that goes well with lawn parties and cocktail receptions overlooking the ocean, where you will find that the young brunette hottie who keeps pressing her lithe figure against you will suddenly kiss your neck and tell you you smell good. And isn't that what it is all about?

Algarve: Terras do Fim do Mundo

© Christian Chaize