More from: Stuart Husband
Icons May 2022
Michelangelo and the yearning for tragedy
8 Minute Read
‘We lived in silence… He has only one way of expressing himself: his work.” So said Michelangelo Antonioni’s first wife, Letizia Balboni. It’s true, the Italian director was notorious for taking existential inquiry — and his own artistic purity — to another level. But what a legacy of film he left behind…
Icons May 2022
The Ballad of Justin and Twiggy
7 Minute Read
Great rake and sixties face Justin de Villeneuve recounts how he met, invented, loved and lost the world’s first supermodel, Twiggy.
Style April 2022
THE OLD ROMANTICS
It took them a while — and certainly longer than they’d have liked — but 40 years after the release of the classic album Rio, Duran Duran have forged a legacy that bears comparison with some of their eighties brothers.
Icons March 2022
The Last Samouraï
Alain Delon’s broodingly fragile allure, stellar performances and effortlessly louche ensembles have enshrined him as an enduring emblem of style.
Style March 2022
‘THERE WAS THE POPE AND THEN THERE WAS ENZO’
Enzo Ferrari built the legend of il Cavallino Rampante — the Prancing Horse — with obsessive devotion and gargantuan will, and motor racing was never the same again. In fact, it’s a surprise, even in Italy, that he had to share top billing with the Vatican City’s finest.
Icons February 2022
BLUE-EYED GIRL
‘What a person sings,’ Françoise Hardy once said, ‘is an expression of what they are.’ Hardy, the acclaimed chanteuse, used sadness and light to turn the pop ballad into an art form.
Style February 2022
PISTE DE RÉSISTANCE
There might have been fondue and furs rather than pools and pisco sours, but Slim Aarons was equally happy capturing the good life at 1,500 metres as he was in a tropical paradise. Stuart Husband takes a walk through the photographer’s winter wonderland…
Icons February 2022
L’ART DE VIVRE
He is one of the world’s leading interior designers, commissioned by various Rothschilds and potentates. She is Yves Saint Laurent’s muse, androgynous and enigmatic. Together, writes Stuart Husband in Issue 44 of The Rake, François and Betty Catroux blazed a trail through post-war Parisian style, defining as they did the ‘art of living’.
Style February 2022
SPIRITUAL LEADER
He’d joined a sewing circle by the age of four, and by 12 he was learning the art of cutting at a tailoring house in San Sebastián. It’s no wonder that, by the end of his God-fearing life in 1972, Cristóbal Balenciaga was known as ‘the master of us all’.
Style January 2022
THE BIG BANG
‘In the future, everyone will blame the eighties for all societal ills,’ said Peter York, the author and cultural commentator. Are the 1980s fair game? Was the decade of power suits and voodoo economics a gaudy omen or wilful anachronism? Stuart Husband backcombs his hair, fishes out a designer label, and takes a trip down memory lane…
Style January 2022
HEART OF A WARRIOR
Toshiro Mifune, the actor who formed an illustrious partnership with Akira Kurosawa, brought charisma, ironic self-knowledge and intense physicality to no fewer than 150 film roles. “I’m not always great in pictures,” he said, “but I’m always true to the Japanese spirit.”
Style October 2021
THE KIDS WERE ALL RIGHT
The American economy was growing at four — yes, four — per cent a year. A different kind of pandemic had cast its shadow. And history, we were told, was at an end. The 1990s had a raucous seize-the-day spirit, writes Stuart Husband, and New York was their ringleader. Nostalgia has seldom felt so good.
