Gentry style

I was heartbroken to find out Lenny Kravitz has been celibate for three years. Time was, I could go to sleep at night comforted by the fact that Lenny would be working over any one of Natalaie Imbruglia, Lisa Bonet, Natalie Portman, Penelope Cruz or Kylie Minogue. If you can’t trust Lenny Kravitz, who can you trust? To be fair to him, he’s probably worn his most valuable instrument down to a harnmless nub. But he’s setting a bad example and he’s not alone in this wilfull abstinence, there is a whole rash of sex-misers on the celebrity circuit. Gentry asks the question on everyone’s lips: why, oh why?
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Back in the mid-90s, before Russell Brand was born, before reality television had increased the volume of the nation’s drool, Portishead were laying down a kind cruelly suggestive sound that almost single handedly coalesced a ’scene’. Their shimmering music - trapped somewhere between malignant rock and a bashfully meditative drum n bass - was expansive, experimental pop, of a kind that hasn’t heard for some time. Radiohead’s more propulsive tunes are a distant relation, but achieve proximity by default. Their classic albums ‘Dummy’ (1994) and ‘Portishead’ (1997) tripped out such memorable and unsettling tracks such as ‘Glory Box’, ‘Sour Times‘ and the irresistibly epic ‘All Mine‘.
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Not too many years ago in London, I went in search of beach towels to take with me to France. Or maybe Italy. It was a long search and one that didn’t bear much terry-veloured fruit. I finally found a couple at SCP, but, nice though they are, it doesn’t seem quite right to buy beach towels in Hoxton, at the epicentre of contemporary UK furniture design. So, while dossing in LA, where beach accessorizing constitutes serious fashion, I’ve been stocking up on beach towels, beach blankets, beach towels and…lip moisturizer (my favourite LA-based Brave Solider’s Lip Defender keeps your sunsmacked lips in good health). Here’s my pick of the best beach towels on offer, cheap and cheerful via online shopping (all under $30 and some under $20).

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One of the cinema’s most beguiling and enthralling genres, the gambling movie is always a wild ride, sometimes taking the audience to the the thrilling heights of the winner’s circle and, more often than not, to the lonely lows of the loser’s personal hell. There is something vicariously sumptuous in gambling movies, it’s all about the minutiae, the resplendent details, the simple pleasure of ‘the game’ to be found in the turn of a card or the roll of the dice. It’s a strange kind of cinema, one of direct experience and implied meaning. Below Gentry look back at some of the best gambling movies ever made…

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A pair of shades is a pair of shades. that’s the way it tends to be nowadays with the woolly mass market coin-devils squeezing out the more innovative, idiosyncratic designers. However, fighting back the constrictive market forces like courageous members of the style justice league, intriguing new outfit CoLab have handed global vibe doyens Eboy, Geoff McFetridge and Rockin Jellybean a free-hand over a new line of eye-catching sunglasses. The limited range (just 1000 of each type) of handmade specials. Insect-light and with a touch of wit (such as the geek specs with worn leather tabs on the bridge to replicate the elstoplast effect) these modern classics are the perfect touch to summer, at home or abroad. Striking the right vintage notes for the modern gent, don’t be surprised to see the high street yoink the designs for their own ranges later in the year.

One of the great pleasures of LA life is driving around looking at the fabulous houses which were part of the Case Study House programme, after World War II. A far cry from the hideous McMansions that are a plague upon canyons from east to west, many of these sleek, elegant, modest homes are modernist masterpieces.
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Golfers enjoy the position of being the most elegantly dressed of sportsmen, just edging ahead in recent years over tennis pros, largely because of the gaudy Spanish outfits of Rafael Nadal. They retain an old-fashioned charm, a pressed and prim professionalism - always unruffled.  Gentry has written before about the cool cut of the green jacket but it goes beyond the winner’s circle of one. The whole field display a sartorial self-expression unfamiliar to most other sports in which uniforms tend to dominate. The promotion of such flair, within the defined boundaries of a code of dress, has thrown up some absolute classic looks. Gentry looks at some of the most dashing gents over the course of the years.

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The age of exploration may be long gone, with every inch of the world scrubbed clean by sat-nav, but we now find ourselves in the age of re-discovery. There are an amazing array of discarded architectural marvels going to waste - ready to be uncovered by the curious eye - left behind by the world, as if it had moved on to better things.

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There are a fine range of bags available to the gent. There are plenty of fashions to choose from and identify with; the swept back Italian leather satchel, the hip-to-be-square soho record bag, the modest backpack, the continental, vintage strapless clutch, even the tried and tested pomp of the leather legal brief. But now, fellows, we have a quandary; Totes. The fairer sex have been enjoying the practicalities of this spacious and versatile carry-all for a good few years now. Is it okay for men to muscle-in or is this shape of bag just too endemically hers? There are few barriers now regarding men’s accessories, so what’s the problem? One designer taking a shot at Tote glory is Gabrielecorto Moltedo, offering limited runs from his actory in Florence. Moltedo’s instincts should be trusted - after all,  his parents founded Bottega Veneta in the 60s. It could well be the ultimate summer bag for men, comfortably squeezing in picnic Peronis and a frisbee, as well as the weekend papers to lounge over. If other designers follow suit and offer a whole range of Totes for men, I can’t see the stigma surounding them holding up for very long. They’re just great bags, for whoever. What do you think?

Most footballers might be justifiably written off as knuckle-dragging, groupie-banging perma-adolescents, but there are a few, albeit a very few, who think on their feet, engage with the world around them and, for better or worse, use their unique position to express a range of political views.

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