SHOP THE RAKE SALE

More from: David Smiedt

Style December 2020

THE CONQUERING HEROINE: Bebe Buell

Her first four dates on moving to New York were Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Mick Jagger and Todd Rundgren. It was the early 1970s: free love reigned, and the singer, muse and model Bebe Buell was queen.
Icons November 2020

Lynda Carter: The original superheroine

Lynda Carter’s classic seventies take on Wonder Woman is the only version worthy of the name. Though not for the reasons we might assume.
Icons October 2020

A history of women racers

Before there was Danica Patrick and Ashley Force Hood, there was Liane Engeman and Shirley ‘Cha Cha’ Muldowney. THE RAKE pays tribute to the women who blazed a trail in motorsport, burning off gallons of sexism and abuse as they did so…
Style September 2020

STAND UP, BE COUNTED: Lena Horne

Lena Horne spent an extraordinary seven decades as a singer, dancer, actress and activist in 20th-century America. What prejudice must she have faced — and faced down. Her epitaph will ring through the ages: ‘Nobody black or white who believes in democracy can stand aside now.’
Icons March 2020

Together Again, Kid

Originally featured in Issue 38 of The Rake, David Smiedt expertly examines how the death of the legendary Lauren Bacall in 2014 shone a new light on her marriage to Humphrey Bogart, evidence that love can conquer all, including the increasingly invasive spotlight of a celebrity couple.
Icons September 2017

Cathy Moriarty: The Bronx Knockout

Cathy Moriarty was perfectly cast as the doe-eyed wife whose cheekbones were no defence against Jake LaMotta’s temper. Raging Bull, the 1980 classic, made Moriarty an overnight success, but Hollywood has not been kind to her since.
Icons August 2017

Debbie Harry: Sylph-Perpetuating Myth

At the height of her punk power, Debbie Harry was lionised as she ironised. But at all times she was in control, a woman whose image was no one’s business but her own.
Icons July 2017

Ingrid Bergman: Swede Disposition

Even in her twilight years, Ingrid Bergman did what she had always done: repelled the Hollywood forces that would judge her, reduce her, control her.
Icons April 2017

The Heart Grows Fonda

She is a libertine, a political and social activist and at the age of 79, Jane Fonda remains her gauntlet-hurling, shit-stirring, couldn’t give a damn self.
Icons January 2017

Diamond Gal: Audrey Hepburn

The impact Audrey Hepburn had on pop culture is immeasurable, but to remember her as just an actress or a style icon does little justice to her character or biography. From…
Icons September 2016

Dual Control: Dominique Sanda

How might a woman elicit, from a man, both his most gentlemanly instincts and his darkest inner desires simultaneously? Dominique Sanda had this, as well as on-camera versatility, whittled down…
Icons July 2016

Raising The Teutonic: Veruschka von Lehndorff

She is the daughter of a doomed German resistance fighter who used modelling as an escape from the pain of her childhood. ‘I am Veruschka’, she would say, ‘and I’d…