The Rakes Of The Year: Part One

Our annual Rakes of the Year list is bigger than ever for 2017, with a number of luminaries in the sartorial, horological and cigar worlds featuring heavily. Click through to discover the individuals who made the cut, many of whom both inspire and help to define The Rake.

Edward Sexton is a legend of his own making. From a tailoring point of view there are few people able to claim the sort of influence he has on the way suits are perceived. In 1969, Sexton revolutionised the sartorial arts. He re-purposed and re-styled them in such a way that they were shorn of the pre-war snobbery of Savile Row’s aristocratic past, allowing Britain’s working class and counter-cultures to make them their own. Suits would never be the same again, and the fulcrum was Edward Sexton and Tommy Nutter. TC Today, Edward remains the most distinctive tailor on the planet. There are tailoring fanatics who can distinguish an Anderson & Sheppard shoulder, Huntsman drape or Cifonelli lapel. With Sexton, he has an innate ability to take every aspect of a suit and design it in such a way that makes it unmistakable. A distinguished career belies a modest demeanour and accoutrements. His shop, on Beauchamp Place in London, is not without its charms, but functionality seems to take priority. It reveals two things: that he isn’t in need of large, opulent rooms with crafted wooden decor to feel important; and that reputation and talent will enable you to draw a crowd despite being removed from tailoring’s epicentre. His clients include young style icons like Harry Styles, who wears Sexton suits while performing. And Ben Cobb, the Editor-in-Chief of Another Man and a menswear influencer ne plus ultra whose idiosyncratic style has distinct Sexton influences, is a fan. Of course, Aleks Cvetkovic, formerly of this parish and now the Deputy Editor of The Jackal, could write the book on Sexton, such is his passion for the subject. One day we hope he will, as it is about time the comprehensive Sexton story was told. Cvetkovic said: “To hear Edward has been chosen to receive The Rake’s Lifetime Achievement award is heartwarming. His clothes are synonymous with glamour, sophistication and poise.” I have had the pleasure of trying one of Edward’s made-to-measure suits. He cut it, he was there at all the fittings, and he didn’t even let it out of the studio, as there was one thing he wasn’t happy with. This old-school professionalism and perfectionism isn’t commonplace today. His venture into making the Hollywood-top trouser shows that he continues to innovate and produce exciting new aspects to his offering that other tailors aren’t able to keep up with. There are many Rakes of the Year, and choosing one who stands out isn’t easy. Then again, when you consider that after all these years the ‘godfather of tailoring’ can boast an enduring mystique that is almost mythical, who else could it be? - Tom Chamberlin

There is an intimacy in menswear that doesn’t exist in womenswear. The number of style magazines for men is inconsequential next to the vast array of women’s titles. So it is down to a select few editors, journalists and visionaries to preach the gospel and report on, and determine, the direction in which menswear is heading. The trends this magazine covers, from travelwear to fabric innovation and classic style in a modern man, are niche, which well suits The Rake’s premise. We accept that luxury is limited in its reach. When, however, you take the wider market and audience into account, the truth is there are two people who are the most authoritative and influential drivers of what men wear and how we empower ourselves through clothing. And they are both women. Grace Gilfeather and Catherine Hayward have, through their talent and hard work, etched their names into the menswear lexicon. Grace is the Fashion Editor of British GQ and has worked there for 10 years, from being a fashion assistant to taking charge of the Condé Nast flagship’s stylistic DNA. Understandably, her reputation and ebullience have made her the go-to stylist and fashion director for brands including Chester Barrie and Marks & Spencer. Her execution of clean looks disguises an understanding of silhouette and sartorial sexiness. Be in no doubt that there are brands that have attempted this effortless stylishness while declining to seek Grace’s counsel, and they have failed. Catherine is something of a legend in the industry. She became Fashion Director of Esquire 13 years ago, having been enticed from her previous position at GQ. Her shoots demonstrate an encyclopaedic knowledge of the source material, incorporating colour, patterns, fabrics and styles, often doffing a cap to old-fashioned drape and formality. This means that no shoot is ever the same, and she can take each individual cover or model and build the looks around their attributes and disguise that which needs disguising. It demonstrates her detailed knowledge of the industry and a sensitivity for how men wish to present themselves. What is most gratifying about Grace and Catherine is that they are both liked throughout the industry. There are plenty of horror stories regarding personalities in similar positions who get their kicks out of being unkind, and who feel that artistic temperament is a good excuse for behaving awfully to others. Grace and Catherine represent what is best in this business, and as such they occupy a place in this magazine’s highest esteem. - Tom Chamberlin

A few issues ago, Nick Foulkes wrote a piece on the late, great Mark Birley, kicking off the feature with a quote that read, “I am afraid that Mr. Birley cannot come to the phone because he is busy relaxing”. It was a true story, and if there is anyone who could be the bearer of such an excuse now that Mr. Birley is no longer with us, and pull it off with equal aplomb, it is Nick Foulkes. There is a problem, though: Nick seems to have gone only halfway, and is just too busy without much sign of the relaxation. When not staying up past midnight beating everyone at backgammon, the multi-award-winning (and by that I mean appearing in this list no fewer than three times) author and journalist is celebrating another good 12 months. Since he last appeared as one of our Rakes of the Year, three years ago, he has (at bare minimum) written a 544-page tome on Patek Philippe, a comprehensive compendium on cigars — called Cigars — a book on Bernard Buffet, and become the editor of a new supplement on cars, boats and all things fun for Vanity Fair called En Route (this in addition to editing three further supplements for Vanity Fair throughout the year). I think we would all need and deserve a lie down after that. Oh, and he has become a dab hand at ‘self-portraiture’ and social media. Every post of his seems off the cuff but portrays a peerless sense of style. Every gewgaw, painting or outfit he exhibits on Instagram is immaculate in its cool and always contains a courteous nod to the tailors who made his clothes, notably Terry Haste and Mariano Rubinacci. (I believe all other donations are welcome, though.) From an industry point of view, his authority and influence is without question. And it should be said that Nick has influenced the careers of everyone who has been lucky enough to work for him, myself included. More personally, he has raised two kind-natured, talented and stylish young men, Max and Freddie, with the woman he describes as “by far the most popular thing about me”, his wife, Alexandra. Hearing someone say ‘I wrote the book on that’ has never sounded quite the same since I got to know Nick, and it’s as good a reason as any for having him on this list. From the Bentley Boys to the Marbella Club, from Nardi to the social history of the Battle of Waterloo, from the jet set to Britain’s gambling problem during the 1840s, the thing is that with Nick, he actually has. - Tom Chamberlin

It’s hard to think who else could pull off the devilish insouciance — the same effortless, imperious poise — of a three-pieced Withnail, ensconced in an armchair and holding a quadruple dram, but clutching an undersized coffee vessel instead. That’s the feat achieved on a regular basis in Tom Stubbs’s superb Espresso Stance series on his website, Style & Error (also seen regularly, along with his piquant video style stances, on Instagram). It’s a meme executed with more than a soupçon of Stubbs’s colourful vernacular — “Wheat/gold pinstripe Lionels [rhyming slang for flares, thanks to the former T.V. presenter and dancer Lionel Blair] which are as damn similar to Jagger’s wedding flares” — and humour that detracts precisely nothing from the seriousness with which he approaches the business of looking extremely good indeed. Stubbs is a designer-turned-stylist and commentator/influencer whose final runway show at Middlesex University, from which he graduated with a double first class B.A. Hons in Fashion Design, even had the heyday-era staffers at The Face in a fizz of admiration. He went on to bring stylistic nous to the earliest (and, of course, best) iteration of Loaded magazine as Stylist and Fashion Editor, despite that title’s hungry approach to T&A having not one iota to do with Turnbull & Asser. Nowadays, as well as being a regular pensman for titles including Sunday Times Style and How To Spend It, Stubbs writes for The Rake, his broader message suggesting that stylistic exuberance should regularly wave its middle finger at tradition (“Wide, very high-waisted with band- and side-adjusters, turn-ups, and single, large, arching, inwardly facing pleats”, he once advocated), as long as it comes home to roost in the adventurous realms of classic elegance. Davids Gandy and Gray, Jack Guinness and Tinie Tempah are among the notables who’ve drawn even more gazes than they otherwise might have done thanks to Stubbs’s styling smarts, while Dermot O’Leary would have distinctly less X factor under the studio lights were Stubbs not cannily curating the best from Thom Sweeney, Edward Sexton, Hardy Amies, George Cleverley, Emmett, E. Tautz, Drake’s, and J.M. Weston for the cause. But aside from his flair with a pen, and a mind that, one suspects, could involuntarily morph the Bay City Rollers into Pitti Uomo lens magnets in a single synapse flash, it’s that sheer moxie, epitomised by the Espresso Stance — the irreverent, weapons-grade-caffeine-injected humour that mysteriously enhances, rather than undermines, the gravity of his style statements — that is the reason we wish to salute Stubbs on these pages. - Nick Scott

When Toby Bateman, the Managing Director of Mr Porter, and Jeremy Langmead, its Content Director, appear at any stand of any luxury trade show, or visit the most liveried, chandeliered premises of the world’s halcyon brands, there is a moment when a sharp, audible intake of breath is followed by a palpable, effusive and very sincere sense of joy. Because these two men are the most powerful individuals in men’s luxury retail, capable of shifting the course of history and reversing the fortunes of even the most beleaguered but worthy brand through their unique formula of storytelling merged with effortless, game-changing electronic commerce. The fact that they are two of the nicest, most humble and fiercely intelligent individuals on the planet makes interacting with them an additional joy. Bateman recalls the planning stage of Mr Porter’s launch, looking at mood boards and mock-ups on the floor of the office of Net-a-Porter founder Natalie Massenet, as he presided over every detail that would shape the nature and form the character of the brand that would become the most significant revolution in the way in which men shop. Which is irrefutable evidence that Bateman was the first person to truly understand that male consumers wanted a combination of entertainment and acquisitional ability. They wanted to be told stories, to be charmed, uplifted and educated, not just about objects but about the very nature of manhood, in the process of shopping. Interacting with Mr Porter is like being spoken to and charmed by a group of the world’s most knowledgeable and stylish friends, and with its arrival Bateman obliterated the traditional barrier between sales person and client. At Mr Porter you are simply guided through an irrepressibly fun adventure, where at any moment you can pause to acquire a garment or accessory — but with the understanding that the decision is fully in your hands. Thanks to Langmead’s extraordinary editorial skills — he established and edited The Sunday Times’s style supplement and was the life and style editor for the London Evening Standard as well as, of course, having been Editor-in-Chief of Esquire — Mr Porter flourished to become a repository for phenomenal storytelling and an oasis of editorial calm amid what can at times be a maelstrom of sensory overload, both online and in our real lives. Every story is considered, charming and educational, and in precisely the perfect tone in which men like to be spoken to. It is, in particular, the brilliance of the offerings at Mr Porter, evinced by their collaboration with the most revered cultish brands — including Mr Freedom and Visvim — and the most established — such as Saint Laurent or Gucci — that in Langmead’s words makes it “synonymous with everyday life”. It has something for, and speaks to, everyone. In recent years, it has been Mr Porter’s special projects — the creation of the Kingsman brand that is showcased in both Kingsman films (the world’s most brilliant advertisements), and now Mr P., the luxury e-tailing juggernaut’s first in-house brand consisting of highly appealing, beautifully made basic garments that are almost zen-like in their reductive charm — that demonstrate why Bateman and Langmead are the kings of innovation and the ultimate game changers in the world they created and where they continue to occupy the top positions with brilliance. - Wei Koh

It was a year into developing The Rake, and things were not going well. Despite my decision to focus on bespoke tailoring and shoemaking, my initial forays into both had left me bereft of confidence in these most artisanal of arts. In suiting, the issue was that no jacket had yet lived up to my inchoate aesthetic ambitions, while in shoemaking it was as much a struggle with comfort as it was with style. In tailoring, I was rescued by the amazing Marc de Luca of Paris’s Camps de Luca. In shoemaking, my faith was restored by one of the greatest men I would meet in the course of my sartorial adventures: George Glasgow Sr. After an edifying visit to his storied premises, G. J. Cleverley, in the Royal Arcade in Mayfair, he looked at me and said, “Look, you’re never going to understand what I’m talking about until you try our bespoke shoes. So I’m going to make you a pair.” It was this extraordinarily generous gesture that yielded my first pair of “suspiciously square” chiseled-toe masterpieces that demonstrated irrefutably that beautiful shoes could also be damnably light and comfortable. And to this day, a decade later, having indulged in the peripatetic nature of the bespoke world, I always come back to, and encourage everyone to try, Cleverley when I want to be 1,000 per cent sure of perfection in fit and style. One day, George Sr. told me I should meet his son, George Jr., and at the time I had no idea it would result in one of the most enduring, sincere and pleasurable friendships of my life. While George Sr. is one of the most beloved and revered individuals in the bespoke world, George Jr. is better described as a force of nature. Instead of staying in London, George Jr. decided to decamp to Los Angeles, where, with his capacity to charm even the most jaded heart, he has single-handedly made Cleverley the most passionately embraced shoemaker of Hollywood’s luminaries, from Jason Statham to Kenneth Branagh to Colin Firth to Mickey Rourke to Sylvester Stallone. And these men are, in turn, but a small part of the global community that are clients and sincere friends of the Glasgows. Indeed, there is not a corner of the planet where Georges Sr. and Jr. would not be welcome with shouts of joy, open arms, effusive grins and full glasses, such is their devastating charm and generosity of spirit. In recent years the Glasgows have elevated the visibility of their brand to heretofore unknown levels with consistent placement in films like the Kingsman series and 2017’s Murder on the Orient Express. At the same time, George Sr. has embarked on a new career at the behest of his dear friend and client Daniel Day-Lewis, playing Day-Lewis’s financial adviser in Paul Thomas Anderson’s new cinematic opus, while George Jr. is poised to marry one of the coolest ladies we know. Glasgows, I salute you both. - Wei Koh

If there is a health benefit of smoking, becoming acquainted with Edward and Eddie Sahakian is it. Nothing bad has come from my getting to know these men. They are the personification of generosity, gentleness and generational bonding of father and son in business. As proprietors of Davidoff of London, on the corner of Jermyn and St. James’s streets, theirs is the most inviting shop in the area, whether because of the wares in the wide windows or the enticing aroma of cigar smoke. Personally, the journey I’ve taken from amateur to slight obsessive about cigars has been entirely down to Edward and Eddie, who have given freely of their time in the pursuit of my cigar education. This year, Edward was a recipient of an award that two fellow Rakes of the Year have received, the Havana Man of the Year award. This recognition was more overdue than Leonardo DiCaprio’s Oscar or Sir Steve Redgrave’s knighthood. Habanos, the cigar arm of the Cuban government, can be accused of bizarre behaviour, but it has gone a long way to redeeming its reputation by bestowing the award on a man who, without cliché, can be referred to as a legend. He is the only man in the world to have both the Havana Man of the Year and the Davidoff gold band awards. Then there is his son Eddie, who joined the shop after eschewing a career in the City of London during the crash. It is not as if he arrived not knowing about cigars: his father gave him a Cuban Davidoff No.2 when he was a teenager to teach him about smoking — that if he was going to smoke, he should smoke the best. Eddie represents the brand with all the confidence and knowledge of someone who has been in the industry as long as his father. If you come to know Edward and Eddie, you will come to feel what many already have — that strange feeling of guilt when buying cigars anywhere else, even at an airport. They command this sense of loyalty through ebullience, kindness and customer service above all else. The world would be a much less fulfilling place without them. For Edward’s accolades and the reassurance provided by Eddie of cigar smoking’s great future in Britain — not to mention their friendship — they were among the first names on our list of Rakes of the Year. - Tom Chamberlin

In developing this list you can’t be shy in acknowledging that fine work in one particular field can be so consistently commendable over the years that the same person appears more than once. Which explains the return here of the great Jemma Freeman, Managing Director of Hunters & Frankau. Jemma featured in our Rake of the Year awards two years ago, as the first Most Rakish Man of the Year who was, in fact, a woman. Once again, she is impossible to omit from our roster, as this year marks another rounded success for the cigar industry, most notably with younger smokers. To explain: social media has allowed cigars to have more airtime, from teenaged boys with diamond-studded Dupont lighters in this beach resort or that fast car to experts who give authoritative reviews of cigars, both Cuban and non-Cuban, like Mike Choi. Also, we can cite the rising number of young aficionados, like the team at 5 Hertford Street or Darius Namdar (who won the annual U.K. cigar sommelier award) at Mark’s Club, and the increase in sales of cigars to men under 40 in places such as Davidoff of London. With the smallest amount of digging, one name constantly pops up as being instrumental in supporting and guiding those with more than a casual interest in cigars, and that is Jemma Freeman. Who mentors and encourages those who wish to claim the notoriously selective Master of Havana cigar qualification, while at the same time always being the most impressive fount of knowledge on the subject? Ask Jemma about the telltale signs of fake cigars: hinge widths are involved, and it reminded me how little I know when talking to her about it. Finally, it is the continued high quality of regional and limited editions imported into the U.K. from Cuba — in what can easily be seen as testing times — that shows how Jemma is at the top of her game. From the Juan López Selección Superba to the Cohiba Talismán, which was recently released to great fanfare as the first global launch of a Cohiba in the U.K. since 1993, when her father launched the Siglo range at Claridge’s. We are still spoiled for choice on these shores, and it is clear that the lineage Jemma represents and the company she leads still generate enormous amounts of respect in Cuba and beyond. Even leaving aside her generosity and kindness in person, she anonymously brings delight, comfort and invigoration to anyone who wishes to set fire to a Cuban cigar, and who will never understand that there has been someone fighting for their right to do so in competition with every other market on the planet. And for that we doff our caps to her once more. - Tom Chamberlin

According to Pope Francis, “the age of authority has ended and the age of persuasion has begun”. And if the father of the Holy Roman Catholic church understands that today you need to reach individuals and win over each and every heart and mind, then you need to understand this, too. Because the luxury world is undergoing a transformation in which the most astute consumers have disavowed mass luxury and turned their back on the homogenous Peter Marino-designed edifices of egotism that have taken over the world. Instead, they have returned to the concept of unique, bespoke objects as an expression of their inner selves. It is for this reason that tailoring has experienced a renaissance and why vintage watches, each and every watch reacting differently to time and age, are the current obsession of today’s generation. But in this new world there are two customizers who rank so far beyond all others that you could say they were the men responsible for ushering in the epoch of individualism. The first is a British motorcycle builder named Charlie Stockwell, who is almost single-handedly responsible for connecting a new generation with, and bringing a new relevance to, Harley-Davidson, the American motorcycle company. While a student at art school, Stockwell vied with the idea of professors having the capacity to judge what is good or bad art. And his peripatetic journey took him to Warr’s Harley-Davidson, where he began by sweeping the shop floor before becoming one of the world’s most famous customizers. What is extraordinary about Stockwell’s builds is the incredibly rich narrative behind each bike, whether an Evisu bobber with hand-engraved engine parts, a bike for a Russian oligarch with a dystopian edge and a see-through gas tank to ride at Burning Man, or a bike for Jenson Button using F1 brake calipers from Akebono. He crafts far more than a machine but an entire story behind each build. Says Stockwell: “The first thing I do before discussing a bike is get to know the person. I like to study what he wears, what watch he’s got on, understand his character, and all of this will give me visual and psychological cues.” Stockwell is also a major trendsetter in the motorcycle industry as the first person to create Moto GP-inspired Harley-Davidsons with inverted Öhlins front ends and Brembo Radial calipers. He explains: “When I rang up Öhlins and explained what I wanted to do, they replied, ‘Are you crazy?’” Today, the style of bike Stockwell creates has inspired Harley-Davidson to launch bikes like the sports-themed roadster, while in the past the Crossbones Springer softail was clearly inspired by Stockwell’s legendary forties-style bobber builds. Now, when people own one of his elite machines, they don’t refer to it as just a custom Harley-Davidson. Those in the know, such as Pierre Lagrange, the proprietor of Savile Row’s H. Huntsman, speak of their bikes with a hushed reverential word: a Stockwell. Our second choice as a customizer of the year is a man who could have been content to coast in life, being, as he was, born into one of the most successful families in England. Instead, George Bamford set out to make a name for himself, and succeeded, as the world’s pre-eminent watch customizer. Because Bamford has an almost precognitive ability to predict the prevailing future in watch design and trends, he became the first to start modifying Rolexes, Patek Philippes and Audemars Piguets. His desire was to transform these watches into stealthy, sexy beasts, with dark PVD (physical vapour deposition) and DLC (diamond-like carbon) coated cases, with stunning contrasting dial designs and occasional nods to history but fixed firmly in the future. His watches were a home run: the man that would not wear a normal version of a Rolex Daytona, because it was too common, delighted in wearing a Bamford version of it, because it was that much cooler, that much more elite, that much more a symbol of insider cool. Some of the brands understandably had an issue servicing the watches modified by a third party, so Bamford set up his own service centre in London. And this year Bamford enacted a second revolution, announcing he would no longer modify watches from brands that did not officially sanction him to do so. Instead, he unveiled an incredible new strategy in collaboration with the watch industry genius Jean-Claude Biver, who made Bamford the sole officially authorised customizer for brands of the LVMH Group, including Zenith, TAG Heuer and Bulgari. In so doing, Biver brought a sense of underground cool and mystique to his large luxury brands, and suddenly the watches created by Bamford ignited a social media frenzy. What does the future hold for Bamford? With his new credibility, there are no limits to what he can do and with whom he can collaborate. How fitting would it be that some of the brands that once eschewed him could one day enter into official partnership with him? - Wei Koh

I remember taking a train with Ben Clymer, the founder of Hodinkee.com, after a visit to the Patek Philippe dial factory. We discussed the idea of e-retailing watches. After all, what was the point of emotionalising, in championing their aesthetic and technical values, and then not being able to offer them to the consumer? I applaud him because, within a year, he had implemented this exact ability to purchase a beautifully curated selection of vintage watches on Hodinkee. But let’s put this in context: Ben had by this point already created the pre-eminent web resource for watch-related content and the best repository for vintage-watch storytelling. Even more than that, Ben always knew what watch to write about and what story to tell, and that was due to his exceptional taste. Indeed, he is one of the people who have done the most to shape the prevailing taste for modern watches today, and much of the current vintage obsession expressed in the designs of modern watches can be said to be the ‘Clymer effect’. By adding the e-commerce component to his website, he also accessed a different revenue stream, which allowed him greater editorial independence, solidifying Hodinkee’s status as the best editorial resource online. And with the creation of limited-edition watches — in particular his steel Vacheron Cornes de Vache and his TAG Heuer Skipper — he unveiled an e-business model that is revolutionising the industry. Yet despite all his success he has remained humble, charming, affable and kind, which demonstrates his worthiness as a Rake of the Year. Aurel Bacs is almost single-handedly responsible for the way vintage watches are appreciated and valued today. The whole idea of patina, the variable fading or weathering of dials, hands, indexes and cases, is attributable to him. The idea of the best watches being unpolished and in an original condition is thanks to Bacs. And using his profound tastemaking ability in collaboration with Clymer, Bacs has shaped the tastes of the modern watch-collecting world to become deeply and intrinsically embedded in all things vintage. But more than that: he has elevated the values of vintage watches to align more closely with those of vintage cars and art. He explains: “Look, just to consider purchasing one of the great abstract Expressionist or pop masters, you are looking at close to $100m. So why shouldn’t the world’s rarest Patek or Rolex watch, which are incidentally made in much smaller numbers in some cases, be more in this league?” While he’s had innumerable successes, including selling the world’s most expensive Omega, a small seven-minute tourbillon wristwatch made for observatory trials competition, for more than a million dollars, it was his tracking down, securing and auctioning of Paul Newman’s actual Paul Newman Daytona that has been the master set-piece of his life. Sold in October 2017 for $15.5m — and sold including premium for $17.8m — it was a clear demonstration that Bacs is on track with his objective of having watches deservedly recognised as high art. - Wei Koh