SHOP THE RAKE VALUES

More from: James Medd

Style February 2021

GOTTCHA

The Teflon Don, the Dapper Don, folk hero and brutal Mafioso: the legend of John Gotti contained more than one narrative. Originally published in Issue 53 of The Rake, James Medd writes that Gotti, the fifth of 13 children born to Italian immigrants, couldn’t handle the role of Mob boss. In the end, this insecure, violent, swaggering outlaw was the man who broke the family business.
Style February 2021

ALL WORK AND ALL PLAY: Francisco 'Baby' Pignatari

Originally published in Issue 41 of The Rake, James Medd writes that Francisco ‘Baby’ Pignatari was not your average playboy. True, he enjoyed plenty of sexual conquests, and was harshly dismissive of some of the women in his life. He embraced danger and lived his life, as it’s said, ‘to the full’. But one thing set him apart: all the cash he burned through at night he earned through hard work during the day.
Style February 2021

PROFITS OF DOOM

They are the 0.1 per cent, a socio-economic group of their own whose wealth, conspicuous consumption, egos and at times criminal behaviour have served to illuminate modern western morality. Originally published in Issue 57 of The Rake, James Medd writes that hedge-fund billionaires, see themselves as ‘alphas’, as masters of the universe, heirs to the robber barons who built America’s global dominance. With investors like these, what could possibly go wrong?
Style February 2021

REEL BRITANNIA

Tea parties in the Hills, the sound of leather on willow by Sunset Boulevard … British actors might be en vogue in the U.S. right now. Originally published in Issue 43 of The Rake, James Medd writes that it’s nothing compared with the glory days of the twenties, when Hollywood fell hard for Blighty and an army of ex-pat thespians — with their tweeds and servants and smoking pipes — turned a corner of California into a rather overwrought version of the raj.
Style January 2021

Field Days: Patrick Lichfield

Originally published in Issue 45 of The Rake, James Medd writes that he was the working-class aristocrat who became a self-made man with the help of his blue-blood friends. But Patrick Lichfield, the dandy with a bouffant hairdo, had a gift for connecting with people, and he used it to great effect to create photographs that still resonate today.
Style January 2021

THE CLIMBER: Lord Mountbatten

Originally published in Issue 42 of The Rake, James Medd writes that by the time of his death — a fishing boat; the Provisional I.R.A.; shock and outrage — Lord Louis Mountbatten had established himself as an English gentleman, a feted statesman, and, to some, one of the most heroic military men to represent the United Kingdom and its territories. But it wasn’t always so. With vaulting ambition sparked by familial shame, this royal foot soldier went in search of a higher purpose.
Style January 2021

Let's face The Music and Dance

Originally published in Issue 59 of The Rake, James Medd writes that London in the early 20th century was a heady scene, where a privileged few caroused and created, remaking the modern cultural world in their luminous, capricious image. Yet looming over the ferment were the horrors of war.
Pleasure January 2021

Light Years: The Golden Age of the Night Club

When you think of the seventies, what do you see? How about Bianca Jagger on a white horse at Studio 54, or Grace Jones on a pink Harley-Davidson at le Palace? Originally published in Issue 42 of The Rake, James Medd writes that whilst the seventies was the decade of economic and social unrest, it was also the golden age of the nightclub, when fashion, music and art came together to create a lifestyle so desirable it needed a strict door policy at all times.
Style July 2020

PARADISE FOUND: Mustique

As late as the 1960s, Mustique was a couple of square miles of sand and wild cows. Now the Caribbean island is the bolthole of the gilded and bohemian elite. Originally published in Issue 56 of The Rake the transformation, writes JAMES MEDD, was the work of one man, a British aristocrat with reserves of willpower as deep as his pockets…
Icons April 2020

BLOOD BOND (THE SQUIRE OF NETTLEBED)

Peter Fleming was a law unto himself, according to his more regarded younger brother. The adventurer, spy and author deserves, then, to be remembered on his own terms.
Icons March 2020

The Fire in His Belly

As originally examined in Issue 68 of The Rake, Billy Joel’s best songs are an intriguing, genre-defying mixture of melody, musicality and lyrical brimstone. What’s with the attitude? Is he a great-but-flawed entertainer, or forever just a Bronx Joe made good?
Style February 2020

Sica and ye shall find

Originally featured in Issue 36 of The Rake, James Medd examines how Neapolitan style icon and Oscar-winning director Vittorio De Sica imbued his work with his inimitable spirit, giving even his self-confessed “bad films” a touch of playfulness and comic flair, as well as a sense of sophistication.