More from: Stuart Husband
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.
Style October 2021
THE PRESIDENT THAT NEVER WAS
How different would the 21st century have looked had John F. Kennedy Jr. lived? Impossible to say, of course, but that hasn’t stopped some observers casting the liberal scion in the role of American saviour.
Style September 2021
The Royalty of Revelry
Media mogul William S. Paley and his socialite wife Barbara ‘Babe’ Cushing Mortimer Paley were more than just a complex It couple — their famous New York soirées took American style and glamour to dizzy new echelons, writes Stuart Husband.
Style September 2021
The King and Queen of Buckingham Palace
She was the long-necked ‘Swan’, poised and free-spirited, with connections to the glamorous American elite. He was choice European aristocracy, cynical and noble, with a Clark Gable moustache and ‘real’ money. Originally published in Issue 48 of The Rake, together, says Stuart Husband, Lee Radziwill and her husband Prince Stanislas burned brightly on both sides of the Atlantic throughout the heady days of the sixties.
Style September 2021
VULTURE CAPITALISM
Lionel Walter Rothschild, the 2nd Baron Rothschild, was born into the 19th century’s richest banking dynasty, though the family business did not call to him. No, Walter preferred animals — and the more exotic the better — to his Victorian peers.
Icons September 2021
Magnetic Imaging: Marlon Brando
He got his physicality from a hard-drinking, abusive father, and his poet’s soul from an alcoholic, artistic mother. The synthesis endowed Marlon Brando with a unique presence and intensity he channelled through acting — exactly the kind of truth-telling, one of his friends noted, for which he could lay down his life.
Style August 2021
THE FIRST — AND LAST — GENTLEMAN
He carried his own suitcases, had little time for sentiment (or tact), and did nothing to subvert his reputation as a ‘bloody prickly thing’. Yet Prince Philip, who died in April, was also resilient and loyal, a dashing polymath who dragged a creaking institution into the 20th century. The Rake reflects on his fascinating life.
Style August 2021
FOR ONE BRIEF SHINING MOMENT
What might have been? What might have been had John F. Kennedy avoided Dallas in November ’63? Would he have remade the world? For as long as we yearn for the counterfactual, the legend of Camelot endures..
Icons July 2021
Patrick Swayze: The Miracle Dude
Patrick Swayze combined macho swagger and fluid elegance in a unique way, and his acting style — a kind of artless sincerity — helped turn movies such as Dirty Dancing and Point Break into pop-culture classics. Yet what remains of Swayze’s life and work is more significant still: an unfashionable sense of joy.
Style June 2021
THE WILD WHIRLWIND OF MUSTIQUE
Colin Tennant was the mercurial British aristocrat who, with a little help from Princess Margaret, made the island of Mustique a byword for high-society escapism. His character earned him comparisons to Prospero — and a reputation for controversy.
Style June 2021
IT WAS A WONDERFUL LIFE
Truman Capote famously called them ‘swans’ — for their combination of looks, sophistication and long-necked hauteur. Babe, C.Z., Slim and girlfriends personified America’s post-war splendour, and they did so with elegance, style and restraint. Compared with today’s Insta influencers, theirs was a radical beauty, writes Stuart Husband.
Style May 2021
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’.
