Monocle the new global, European based brand launched in February. Founded by Tyler Brule (founder of Wallpaper) the core of Monocle’s output is a monthly magazine delivering the most original coverage in global affairs, business, culture and design. Alongside the magazine there’s a web-base broadcast component covering the same areas through a variety of bulletins, mini-documentaries and talk formats.
We welcome Monocle. At last there is a new magazine with depth and integrity that focuses on serious businss and cultural subjects. What is brilliant about the magazine is the sheer diversity of subject matter, including articles on John Smedley, H&M, an interview with Crown Prince Haakon of Norway and a Q&A with the CEO of Lego, in the first two issues.
A 1967 short film by Martin Scorsese about shaving?
We watched this for the first time recently and were blown away. An apparently simple film which shows a man shaving, ‘The Big Shave’ is most frequently interpreted by critics as a comment on America’s reckless, doomed involvement in the Vietnam War, particularly its self-destructiveness. (It’s still relevant today, of course.) But you also get a glimpse of things that would become part of the Scorsese cinemagraphic style, especially his use of violence to confront his audience. ‘The Big Shave’ turns an everyday banal ritual into the stuff of prophecy.
Now, we hope your everyday shave doesn’t end up like the man in Marty’s film. To ensure you avoid those pesky nicks and cuts, visit Murdock for the ten steps to the perfect shave. (No blood here, we promise.)
Over the last few decades Los Angeles has established itself as one of the world’s leading cultural capitals. For a long time the city struggled with its identity, Hollywood dominated and thrived whilst the urban landscape around the city declined. For years LA born artists would up-sticks and head for New York, while few artists would seek to settle in the city and even fewer cultural tourists would visit. But this has all changed.
Edward Wyatt of the New York Times desribes how new centers of gravity have emerged in the City of Angels for contemporary art and artists, that had suffered for years because of its lack of a central arts district. Now there is not one such geographic center but several: downtown, where a thriving gallery district operates in what used to be a nighttime ghost town, as well as in former industrial areas in Culver City and Santa Monica. And a new generation of curators have been lured to the major museums here. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Hammer Museum have each attracted energizing new talent in recent years. (more…)
British men are as sophisticated and cosmopolitan as they next, but we still don’t know how to say hello and goodbye to our male friends without feeling a little foolish.
This weekNick Angel in The Times investigates the ritual of the male-to-male greeting that men are most at sea. The fact is this: there is no accepted form for one man to greet and bid farewell to another man. With women it is relatively simple: a handshake if you don’t know them very well, and a kiss on one or both cheeks if you do. Sometimes a hug is appropriate. (more…)
One of our favourite buildings in New York is the Public Library at 42nd Street. It’s one of the great Beaux-Arts buildings, designed by Carrère & Hastings who won a competition to design it when studying at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and they drew heavily on French architectural ideas.
Borrowing themes and ideas from such iconic Paris buildings as L’Opéra, the architects adapted these for New York to create this a masterpiece.
Currently on exhibition at the Library is ‘A Rakish History of Men’s Wear’ (showing until April 07). It provides an opportunity for viewers “to trace the social, cultural, political, and aesthetic influences that have shaped the development of men’s fashion,” according to Paul LeClerc, President of The New York Public Library. “The Library’s rich trove of historical costume and fashion plate materials are an invaluable resource for anyone interested in understanding the forces that have shaped styles of dress from antiquity to today.” One of us at Murdock was in New York last week and recommends the small exhibition highly — full of great illustrations of classic, gentlemanly style.
We suggest you visit the exhibition late in the day, and head round the corner to the Bryant Park Hotel for a cocktail when you’re done. If it happens to be NY fashion week, you’ll see the entire fashion world all at once.
The bow tie is essential neckwear and you ignore it at your peril! Whilst our friends in America have never turned their backs on the bow tie, especially in the sleepy south, in London it has fallen out of favour despite having a noble place in the history of British men’s style.
The Duke of Windsor frequently wore the bow tie with an ink blue velvet dinner jacket. ‘My brother and I started to wear it often with a plain dark red carnation in the lapel’, Edward has said, but you don’t necessarily have to wear it with a formal dinner jacket. It looks striking with a linen suit at the races (or anywhere else), giving you a sharp classic look for summer.
At London store Murdock they are pioneering the return of the bow tie with their spring/summer ties by Turnbull & Asser, an exclusive London men’s clothier with a long history as shirtmaker to Royalty and international men of refinement (including James Bond himself). Turnbull’s main store is located on Jermyn St, the spiritual home of Mr Beau Brummel.
We like to celebrate and honour the great style icons of history, and there’s none greater or more stylish in the history of men’s clothing than Beau Brummel.
George Bryan Brummell, better known as Beau Brummell, was THE arbiter of fashion in Regency England and a friend of the insousiant Prince Regent. He led the trend for men to wear understated, but beautifully cut clothes, adorned with elaborately knotted neckwear. The exquisiteness of of English tailoring goes back to Brummel, for whom elegance was in the cut of the fabric.
Want to know who invented the modern men’s suit, worn with a necktie? It was Brummell, and it’s now the uniform for men the world over. Brummell claimed to take five hours a day to dress (no, he didn’t have a day job as such), and recommended that boots be polished with champagne. His style of dress came to define the style-conscious kind of masculinity we call ‘dandyism’. As inventing the suit wasn’t enough, he can also be credited with inveting the classic blue blazer (which every man ought to have in his wardrobe) worn with light colour trouers. The blue-blazer-with-khakis has its roots in Brummell’s Eton uniform.
BBC4 recently screened an adaptation of this icons life starring one of the actos of the moment James Purefroy, in which the contemporary Brumell stars in his own rock video. We also recommend Ian Kelly’s recent biography of Brummell which was the basis of the BBC drama. The book offers a brilliant portrait of the most stylish man ever, while also bringing to live the raucous life and times of early 19th century London.
One of our favourite buildings in 
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