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Tuesday 25 June 2024
The House of Beckham: Money, Sex and Power by Tom Bower / VIDEO: 'BECKHAM' Documentary Series | Official Trailer | Netflix
The House of
Beckham: The explosive new 2024 biography of the Beckhams from the bestselling
author of Revenge Hardcover – 20 Jun. 2024
by Tom Bower
(Author)
The
explosive new book from Britain’s leading investigative biographer, Tom Bower
As one of
the most famous and influential couples in the world, David and Victoria
Beckham have attained iconic status. The ultimate power couple have together
built a multi-billion-dollar global brand. For decades, adoring fans have been
captivated by the glamorous world they have created, while their unrivalled
fusion of showbiz, fashion, football and celebrity has been cultivated
alongside the image of a strong marriage.
When the
much-trailed Netflix documentary Beckham aired in 2023, viewers were offered an
even more intimate insight into their private lives. Produced by the Beckhams
themselves, the series raised many questions, not only about their success and
personal relationship, but also about the ruthlessly successful management of
their image in the media. Are their lives really as perfect as the Beckhams
would like the world to believe?
Through
extensive research, expert sourcing and interviews with insiders, Britain’s
most celebrated investigative biographer, Tom Bower, has unearthed a succession
of revelations that give surprising insight into the reality of ‘Brand
Beckham’. Exploring the couple’s relationship, and the truth about their
football and fashion careers, their finances and their new life in Miami, The
House of Beckham unravels the extraordinary reality of the business-savvy
cultural icons to tell an engrossing, often astonishing story of money, sex and
power.
The House
of Beckham by Tom Bower review – a sex-obsessed hatchet job
The
journalist’s supposed exposé of David and Victoria Beckham’s gilded lives is a
hilariously bitter hybrid of tabloid gossip, old news and sloppy writing
Anthony
Cummins
Sun 23 Jun
2024 07.00 BST
Nobody
imagined that last autumn’s Netflix series Beckham was a warts-and-all
confessional. “There were some horrible stories that were difficult to deal
with,” said David, alluding coyly to reports in 2004 that he’d done the dirty
with Rebecca Loos, not named in the film. “It was the first time that me and
Victoria had been put under that kind of pressure in our marriage. Ultimately,
it’s our private life.”
This new
book from renowned investigative journalist Tom Bower exists simply to say:
“No, it isn’t.” Forget the summer-hazed scenes of amateur beekeeping and
opening up about OCD: Bower’s top line is that we should see David as a
tax-avoiding serial shagger who was never even that good at football – and as
for Victoria, she’s a talentless nonentity who’d probably be divorced if she
didn’t need to monetise their marriage and feed her addiction to the limelight.
Such is the
gist of this hilariously bitter book, best understood as a silent howl of rage
for the litigation-muzzled dogs of Fleet Street; Bower might as well have
scrawled “not fair” in crayon when he tells us that Beckham’s lawyers put paid
to the Sun’s interest in a long-lens snap of him on the Med with “a beautiful
unnamed blonde” in his lap.
As a tale of
dosh and sex, the emphasis is firmly on the latter. Bower tries gamely to nose
his way through the cul-de-sacs of Beckham’s accounts, truffling through
earnings and investments in Madrid, Miami and Dubai, but the best he has on the
tax stuff simply recycles a seven-year-old scoop in Der Spiegel, when hacked
emails revealed the extent of Beckham’s ire once concern from HMRC nobbled his
longed-for knighthood (“unappreciative cunts”).
The book’s
main purpose is to piggyback on the Netflix doc while spewing all over it the
regurgitated contents of every tabloid story ever to print Beckham’s name
beside that of another woman, whether decades-old tabloid kiss-and-tells or
nudge-wink gossip about him attending parties with models Helena Christensen
and Bella Hadid. “True or not, the report was damaging” is the kind of
formulation Bower appears to favour, which muddies the waters somewhat. Kate
Beckinsale was “suspected of getting too close to David, although no evidence
ever emerged”. Beckham and Charlize Theron “barely took their eyes off each
other” at the draw for the 2010 World Cup. He’s even been “at parties where
others enjoyed cocaine”, which no journalist would ever do.
Another
source confirms that Beckham once advertised fish fingers: hardly a clandestine
activity, by definition
Even if you
think celebrities are fair game, The House of Beckham fails on its own grubby
terms, because it’s all old news. I’ll admit that when I first heard of this
book I was cynically wondering what skeleton in the closet might have made
Beckham queue so long to see the Queen in pre-emptive atonement. But fresh dirt
is conspicuous by its absence, despite Bower vaunting the “previously untold
aspects of this extraordinary story” – which are what, exactly? Of more than
1,000 endnote references, all but four point to sources in the public domain
(overwhelmingly, old tabloid tales) and of those four “confidential sources”,
well… One of them is used to stand up a quote that Victoria’s early
dress-making relied on “fabrics, seamstresses and pattern makers” from the
designer Roland Mouret – which is something Vogue reported in 2008 after, er,
her own PR team put it out. Another source informs Bower that Beckham, filming
his first ad in 1997, was “quiet. There was nothing polished about him at all”
(hold the front page). Another confirms that Beckham once advertised fish
fingers: hardly a clandestine activity, by definition.
Those fish
fingers really bother Bower. “As a child, announced the advertisers, Beckham
had eaten fish fingers. That was disputable. Neither Beckham nor his mother had
ever mentioned him eating that particular food.” The lying bastard! He once
said he didn’t use a body double in a Guy Ritchie-directed H&M ad – but he
did! Visiting Victoria in hospital after his third son was born, he drank
Coca-Cola, “despite being paid to promote Pepsi”! In the end, Bower has to
resort to telling us three times over that, by agreeing to become an ambassador
for Qatar’s World Cup, Beckham “ignored its funding for Hamas”.
Beckham
exploited his appeal to gay men, “big spenders on underwear”, says Bower,
nothing if not a man of the world. His fame apparently stems from our
“nostalgia for a tattooed lad enjoying his manly bravado” – what? – yet he and
Victoria failed to comprehend that “there was a limit to the public’s
fascination with two aspiring people from Essex” – a tin-eared self-own if ever
there was one.
Bower isn’t
incapable of conjuring a nicely feline phrase capturing the absurdity of his
subjects’ lives (“On one critical matchday he was in London having dinner with
Geri Halliwell after another miserable attempt to relaunch Findus”), but for
the most part his writing is ludicrously bad here: “Famous among music fans as
a June weekend of drink, dance, dalliance and a great deal more, David Beckham
was enjoying three days of hectic partying at the Glastonbury festival.” That
chapter ends with the suggestion that the Beckhams were there in 2017 to
cynically stage their coupledom for the press – but when he says “rekindling
memories of the Darkness in 2003 was forbidden”, he means Rebecca Loos, not
Justin Hawkins opening the Pyramid stage.
A failure of
research and craft, it’s also a failure of humanity. He’s constantly needling
Victoria, “never the prettiest”, for her acne and “Cuprinol tan”, for how it
was intolerable to be among other players’ wives, “many better looking than
her”. “Few men would have resisted Rebecca Loos,” Bower writes. I shudder to
imagine just how much pleasure he got from solemnly reporting that, in 2003,
Victoria was voted “the world’s best-dressed woman for the second year running”
– by readers of Prima. It’s ugly stuff: the reunited Spice Girls might have
been renamed the Geriatrics because they were “all over-30 mums with boob
jobs”. No doubt Bower would say Victoria plays the press, but never does he
pause to reflect that she’s operating in a world in which a guy nudging 80
years of age can feel securely on the high ground peddling innuendo about
eating disorders.
Bower, whose
previous subjects include Gestapo officer Klaus Barbie and the fraudsters
Robert Maxwell and Conrad Black, is absurdly unreflective here. He recounts how
Andy Coulson, then editing the News of the World, “relying on a variety of
sources” (lol) was “fired up against the Beckhams still selling the image of
their happy marriage”. Coulson, another Essex lad who coincidentally happened
to be cheating on his own wife at the time he broke the Rebecca Loos story, was
later jailed for conspiracy to hack phones; Neville Thurlbeck, the reporter who
brought him the scoop, was also jailed; as was the story’s broker, Max
Clifford, later imprisoned for sex offences. Bower tells us that Coulson’s team
celebrated an early splash with a knees-up in Mayfair: “First editions of the
newspaper had long been on sale outside King’s Cross station when the
celebrating journalists staggered into the dawn.”
That kiosk
doesn’t even sell newspapers any more; meanwhile, Beckham’s dog has a devoted
following on Instagram. I might, instinctively, have found that cause for
regret, somehow – but then I read the petty, nonsensical, slipshod crap Bower
gives us here. Then again, it probably isn’t meant for anyone but the Beckhams
themselves, as a kind of bad-minded re-edit of the Netflix film, left
gift-wrapped on the door of their $5m Burj Khalifa condo. When Bower devotes a
paragraph to reciting the testimony of a Bosnian woman who claimed to have
slept with Beckham five times in 2007 – “utterly untrue”, Bower adds – it can
be there for no other reason than to annoy them. It’s the trajectory every
investigative hack dreams of: start by writing about fugitive Nazis, end by
trying to piss off Victoria Beckham.
Monday 24 June 2024
Beatrix Ost on Being Yourself is the Ultimate Style | Racked | Artist in Residence: Beatrix Ost’s Virginia Estate
HOMEPLACE
Artist in
Residence: Beatrix Ost’s Virginia Estate
At this
fairy-tale home, magic awaits behind every door
By DANIEL
WALLACE
https://gardenandgun.com/feature/artist-residence-beatrix-osts-virginia-estate/
December
2017/January 2018
Beatrix Ost
has lived many lives. The seventy-seven-year-old Virginia resident’s grand and
evocative paintings and sculptures have been exhibited all over the world, and
she’s also been a screenwriter, a model, and an actress. She’s published
several big, beautiful books; her most recent, The Philosopher’s Style, is a
compendium of her photographs, paintings, bons mots, and stories. She designs
jewelry, and other artists and designers have made her their muse, for years.
But she has become best known for being Beatrix, for how she looks, the clothes
she wears, the way she conducts herself in the world—in other words, her style,
her very way of being. For better or worse, she has become her art, and the
rest of it—her painting, design, sculpture, and writing—orbits her like many
smaller moons.
The first
time I met her was in September. Fall had just arrived, and she was sitting on
a bench outside of Estouteville, the home she’s lived in for the last
thirty-five years, applying a fresh coat of bright red lipstick. She wore a
straw-yellow turban; beneath it I could see wisps of her violet hair. She
draped a dark shawl over her shoulders. Her blouse was ivory lace, and her
skirt, black, reached almost all the way to the grassy drive—her look is often
a cunning combination of both vintage and designer pieces. Pearled and golden
rings decorated her fingers, and she wore a necklace she designed, made from
bomb scrap metal by Laotian artists with an engraving that reads, “In your body
is a good place to be.”
The aphorism
is appended to all of her emails as well.
I drove from
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to Estouteville to see her, and though it’s three
hours away, a half hour or so from Charlottesville, I made it there exactly
when she had asked for me: 3:00 p.m. Neither of us could believe it. “You knew
you were coming to see a very punctual German woman,” she said, and smiled
warmly.
She pointed
to a huge wooden structure that looked like a tree house, but without the tree.
“Shall we talk up there?”
Scattered
all around the estate are homemade pieces like this, made of sticks and vines
and slats of wood found on the property, built by the farmers and gardeners who
take care of the place. Benches, gazebos, little altars. Almost everyone who
works at Estouteville eventually becomes an artist of some kind, which Ost
encourages; but the inclination is also something that might arise naturally
from time spent immersed in the beauty and history of this place.
We made our
way to the top of the structure, brushing away the leggy stems of a wild
rosebush, where we had a gorgeous view of the house. The building of
Estouteville began in 1827, in what you would call Palladian, Roman Revival, or
Jeffersonian style, or perhaps all three. James Dinsmore, Thomas Jefferson’s
master carpenter, who helped him construct Monticello and the University of
Virginia, designed the home. Made of brick, wood, and stucco, Estouteville from
the outside could not be statelier, or more serious, or more awesome. But giant
Tuscan porticoes always have that effect on me.
Ost and I
sat there and talked about various kinds of magic for a while, because magic is
what brought her and her husband, Ludwig Kuttner, here.
“We had a
house on the Hudson, in New York, but it burned down,” she said. “To find a new
home, we held a pendulum above a map of America and let it swing and swing, and
it came to rest on this area of Virginia. Sothe-by’s took us to some other
houses, but when we came here, we knew this was the place.”
After years
creating art and acting in her native Germany, Ost came to New York City with
Kuttner in 1975 “for fun,” she has said, and they loved it so much they moved
there. She was a part of the thriving eighties art explosion but never felt
entirely accepted by the scene: A flamboyant young European woman with the
charming but somewhat aristocratic mien of a dispossessed heiress did not fit
in with the urban edge in vogue in New York at the time. In 1982, they moved to
Estouteville, the seat of her expression ever since.
From our
perch in this treeless tree house, I could see that Beatrix touch: the bronze
sculptures standing on
the lawn,
the marble orbs, and the trunks of dead oaks painted bright green, blue, and
red. “When trees die, we paint them,” she said. “But the one we painted green,
after we painted that one, it came back to life.” She shrugged. Behind us wound
a hedge maze she designed herself.
A small
village of outbuildings also surrounds the main house. The hay barn has been
repurposed as an office; the former slave quarters, a guesthouse. Estouteville
was a stop on the Underground Railroad. When Ost and Kuttner fixed it up, they
found a secret space beneath the house where people on their way to freedom
would hide.
The sun took
an angle on us, and we headed inside. “I’ll make us some tea,” she said, and
left me alone in the Great Hall. I feel certain now that this was her plan,
allowing me a few minutes alone to absorb everything around me, this new world
I’d been welcomed into, which was unlike any I’d been in before. Ost and
Kuttner spent years repairing and refurbishing Estouteville but changed none of
its architecture: Everything there is original to the house, including the
haunting bucrania—a frieze of ox skulls, dozens of them—that line the metope.
But there is no place your eye can rest without seeing something astonishing,
beautiful, or engaging, much of the astonishment created by Ost herself.
Surrealistic paintings, heads made of wax, fiber sculptures, a collection of
pewter, wooden hands. Everything in it could be in a museum, but being there
doesn’t feel like being in a museum: It feels like I’ve walked into the dream
of someone dreaming about a museum.
She brought
back some tea, and we sat in the Great Hall and talked about Estouteville,
where she has lived for almost half of her life. She loves this house, the
history of it and the myth of their arrival. And she’s drawn to its symmetries:
The rooms off the Great Hall are identical in size but filled with different
and wondrous objets, glass owls and crystal balls, gifts from friends, from
other artists, mementos from a peripatetic life—a vast, exotic, and haphazard
collection.
“The rooms
are like a Rorschach test,” she said. But the charm also lies in how the house
flows from the inside out, the outside in, with porticoes in the back and the
front, one for watching the sun rise, the other for watching it set. The pool,
one of the many improvements she and Kuttner brought to the estate, looks like
a giant’s teardrop, and she uses it almost every day. She told me she always
has a deep sense of wonder and surprise at being where she is, in this house,
surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of Virginia acres. “It is a gift to me.”
Architecture,
art, and magic. What else is there? Numbers. We talked about numbers, too. The
number seven is an important one, because things seem to happen to her in
sevens. She had a vision of her seven-year-old self recently, and the girl
said, “Remember when you were seven? You knew everything.” She found love for
the first time at fourteen. It goes on like that for her. This year—2017—she’s
seventy-seven, so it was bound to be, if not a good year, at least an important
one, an interesting one. She even found a pied-à-terre in Charlottesville she’s
begun fixing up, for when she doesn’t want to come back to the too-quiet
country after a night on the town. She is a vital woman, and, who knows,
possibly immortal. “I feel like I’m entering the next third of my life,” she
said.
And then
there’s this: “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the
past.”
She could
have said that, but she didn’t: Thomas Jefferson did. He would have loved her.
Saturday 22 June 2024
The Stormtrooper Scandal
The
Stormtrooper Scandal
Ben Moore
Pictured:
Ben Moore. Image credit: Stuart Bernard
https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2024/25/the-stormtrooper-scandal
This
stranger-than-fiction new documentary uncovers the tale of an audacious
get-rich-quick scheme from inside the art world.
When a
London-based curator and artist called Ben Moore announced in 2021 that he was
about to launch a sale of digital artworks known as NFTs, with images based on
the iconic stormtrooper helmets from Star Wars, interest was sky-high. Buyers
and investors around the world competed to own one of these prestigious
artworks, many customised by leading contemporary artists. When the sale went
live on 6 November 2021, every piece sold out within seconds and Ben and his
colleagues became instant millionaires.
But within
days, it became clear that all was not what it seemed…
The film has
access to key figures at the heart of the story, including Ben Moore, the
charismatic London curator at the centre of the apparent con-job, as well as
artists who had their work featured without their knowledge, including Jake
Chapman, D*Face and Chemical X, as well as the collectors who were caught up in
the frenzy - before being left with nothing.
The
Stormtrooper Scandal is a story of speculation, greed and betrayal that took
place on a new digital frontier - an unregulated world where appearances can be
deceptive. But was this a scam, or a well-intentioned bid to make a fast
fortune that spiralled out of control?
The
Stormtrooper Scandal is a DSP production (part of Banijay UK) for BBC Two and
BBC iPlayer. The Producer is Isabelle Rogers, the Director is Stuart Bernard
and the Executive Producer is Magnus Temple. The commissioning editor for BBC
Arts is Alistair Pegg.
Publicity
contact: CB
Review
The
Stormtrooper Scandal review – inside the Star Wars art sale that wrecked lives
This look at
how a charmless impressario and a bevy of cryptobros made millions from an NFT
scheme – only for it to collapse into a legal nightmare – is just mind warping
Lucy Mangan
Thu 20 Jun
2024 22.30 BST
Here’s a
tricky ethical conundrum – how much can you command yourself to care about the
suffering of a monumental dickhead? Do you say a breezy “Not at all!” and move
on with your day? Do you say “I have limited resources and prefer to expend
them on non-dickhead entities, ta?” Do you say “No dickhead is all dickhead,
just as none of us is entirely free of dickheadery ourselves – thus our common
humanity demands of us always a degree of empathy and compassion?” Have a
think, then test yourself again at the end of 90 minutes of The Stormtrooper
Scandal. Send the results on a postcard to the usual address.
The
Stormtrooper Scandal tells the tale of West London art curator Ben Moore, who
came a cropper when he moved into the shadowy world of NFTs (non-fungible
tokens, here in the form of digital art) and cryptocurrency without,
apparently, knowing a damn thing about NFTs, cryptocurrency or the intellectual
property that inheres to art of various kinds.
Moore had
been putting on Art Wars shows – assemblies of Star Wars stormtrooper helmets
customised by various artists, including big names like Damien Hirst, the
Chapman brothers and Anish Kapoor – for several years since 2013 for charity.
They improved his profile but didn’t bring him in any decent money. What to do,
what to do?
Artist Bran
Symondson, a friend of Moore’s, introduced him to the idea of selling as NFTs
pictures of the helmets he had accrued over the years. As far as I understand
it – and the film does such a good job of trying to explain it that if I
haven’t then I can only apologise and/or suspect that trying to understand it
is a fool’s game – this means taking a picture of a customised Stormtrooper
helmet and giving that picture a unique digital identifier on a blockchain
(think of it as an invisible watermark) so only one person can “own” it. The
owner – or “owner” – can then trade it on the NFT open market with people who
also understand or purport to understand what’s going on, what they’re getting
and why it’s worth anything at all.
Anyway.
Moore finds some “cryptobros” online who can help him with this, commissioning
further artists to create non-physical customised helmets (and here I confess,
I really do begin to part ways with an understanding of events). He then
announces a massive “drop” of these items/non-items, and the hype starts
building.
Come the
day, the entire collection sells out in five seconds. Furious trading ensues
and Moore and the cryptobros take a cut of everything and make (estimated)
millions. Then some of the artists become aware that pictures of their work
have been taken and sold without permission. To the apparent total surprise of
Moore, this matters and ultimately ends in the NFTs becoming worthless. Irate
artists, investors – including some ordinary people who can ill afford to lose
their money – and lawyers start, and continue to this very day, to make his
life a misery.
The question
of whether Moore was unlucky, thick, neglectful, incompetent – or worse – is
the question that pervades the film. Artist Chemical X calls him “a posh boy
chancer”, which is a description that certainly seems to match the vaguely
shambolic yet complacent figure who is interviewed about his failures and
possible transgressions on screen. Perhaps he was at least partly duped by the
crypto team, who disappeared back into the cybershadows without leaving him any
way of tracing them (he never learned their real names). Perhaps the greed of
investors and their lack of due diligence played their parts. But the idea that
Moore didn’t know he was sailing close to the wind seems highly improbable.
Moore’s lazy
charmlessness and shifty equivocations on camera don’t help his cause. He was
eager to get the project off the ground, he explains, and thought he would sort
out “any problems” later rather than risk delay or abandonment. He thinks
anyone would have been tempted to do what he did with the prospect of so much
money “on the other side”.
Perhaps
appropriately, given the heavy online dependencies of everyone involved, a
popular phrase (or meme, if memes can be non-visual) from social media keeps
running through my mind as the dismal story unfolds – god grant me the
confidence of a mediocre white man. It seems to be a bottomless resource, but
one without which we might all be better off.
The Stormtrooper Scandal aired on BBC Two and
is available on iPlayer.
Friday 21 June 2024
Savile Row, A Glimpse into the World of English Tailoring . Japanese edition by Yoshimi Hasegawa (Author)
Savile Row, A Glimpse into the World of English
Tailoring
Japanese edition
by Yoshimi Hasegawa (Author)
Described
as “hallowed ground” for menswear, Savile Row in London’s Mayfair district is a
place unlike any other, one where skilled craftsmen draw on the world’s finest
tailoring techniques to create outstanding bespoke suits. The timeless English
style of tailoring has appealed to men around the world, transcending fashion
trends, over a history of more than two centuries. This volume is Japan’s first
visual book to pair cinematic photography and text in covering the history and
background of Savile Row, the people who keep its traditions alive today, and
the distinctive philosophies of each tailoring house.
○
Introduces 11 tailors that represent the changing face of hallowed ground
today, from storied houses with Royal Warrants to newer, up-and-coming shops.
○ Research
for the book took place over the course of two years and included interviews
with more than 50 people involved with Savile Row. Nearly all the photographs
were taken specifically for this volume.
○
Introductions to each tailoring house and the section on military tailoring are
presented in both Japanese and English, while the main text is in Japanese
only.
● Table of
Contents
Introduction:
Hallowed
Ground for Menswear / The Origins and History of Savile Row / What Makes Savile
Row Special / The Savile Row Bespoke Association / Why Savile Row is Called
Hallowed Ground / The Aesthetics of Dressing Well / Military Tailoring
Tailors:
Richard
Anderson / Anderson & Sheppard / Dege & Skinner / Ede & Ravenscroft
/ Timothy Everest / Gieves & Hawkes / Huntsman / Norton & Sons / Henry
Poole / Spencer Hart / Walsh & Jefferies
Directory:
Addresses
and contact information / Bespoke tailors and related companies / Map
● Author:
Yoshimi Hasegawa
Hasegawa is
a journalist who covers the cultural appeal of Europe, and particularly
Britain. Her articles on topics such as Bespoke tailoring, Bespoke shoes,Harris
Tweed, Aran sweaters, and single malts whisky have appeared in numerous
magazines such as GQ JAPAN and other media. Recent publications include Eikoku
oshitsu goyotatsu shirarezaru roiyaru waranto no sekai [Purveyors to the Royal
Household: The Lesser-known World of Royal Warrants] (Heibonsha Ltd.).
Wednesday 19 June 2024
Dunhill Bourdon House, London
Alfred
Dunhill Limited (known and stylised as dunhill) is a British luxury goods
brand, specialising in ready-to-wear, custom and bespoke menswear, leather
goods, and accessories.The company is based in London, where it also owns and
operates a leather workshop. The company is currently owned by Richemont
Holdings (UK) Limited and managed by CEO Andrew Maag.
Early
history
The
business was developed by Alfred Dunhill after he inherited his father's
saddlery business on London's Euston Road at the age of 21 in 1893. Alfred
Dunhill, responding to the growing demand for automobiles at this time,
developed a line of accessories called "Dunhill's Motorities". This first
collection included car horns and lamps, leather overcoats, goggles, picnic
sets and timepieces, which provided the company with the strap line of
"Everything But The Motor".
Within a
few years, the business moved towards the luxury market with the opening of two
Dunhill Motorities stores in Mayfair. By this time, Dunhill's had become known
not only for motoring accessories but also for motoring attire. The Dunhill
Motorities catalogue featured over 1,300 items.
The launch
of the Dunhill pipe was a logical step from Motorities; in 1904 Alfred had
patented a "Windshield Pipe" to help a driver combat the effects of
wind and weather in his open top car. Alfred's first tobacconist and pipe shop
opened in 1907 on Duke Street.
Alfred
retired from the business in the 1920s. In the position of managing director
and President were his brother Alfred-Henry, then daughter Mary and finally his
grandson Richard and with the interests of the Dunhill family at heart, the
business continued to embody the attributes and characteristics of Alfred's
personality.
Alfred
summarised his retail philosophy in an article written in the summer in 1923:
"My experience in the motorists' trade has convinced me that, if one can
exactly meet the desires of a good class of public, time alone is necessary to
make it profitable. Compared with quality, price is relatively important."
Later
history
By the late
1970s, Alfred Dunhill was offering a range of 3,500 luxury products in more
than 20 stores round the world. The brand had expanded into offering a full
range of men's ready to wear clothing.
In the
1990s, Alfred Dunhill's store on Jermyn Street was renovated to evoke the
atmosphere of a private club, complete with a marble-floored humidor and a
barber's shop.
Homes of
Alfred Dunhill
Alfred
Dunhill have built a series of retail emporiums for men around the world,
referred to as the Homes of Alfred Dunhill. These Homes aim to represent the
experience of luxury, allowing the customer to live the brand. The retail
environment is distinguished by a range of services – which include a bespoke
tailoring service, dunhill barbers, bar or restaurant and screening room. The
Homes are located in London and Tokyo.
The London
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Saturday 15 June 2024
Princess of Wales Appears in Public for First Time Since Cancer Diagnosis
Princess of Wales Appears in Public for First
Time Since Cancer Diagnosis
Catherine took part in a ceremonial parade to
celebrate the birthday of her father-in-law, King Charles III.
Stephen
Castle
By Stephen
Castle
Reporting
from London
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/15/world/europe/uk-princess-kate-middleton-king-charles.html
June 15,
2024
Updated
8:39 a.m. ET
Catherine,
Princess of Wales, appeared in public on Saturday for the first time since her
cancer diagnosis, smiling while riding in a carriage with her three children as
she took part in a ceremonial parade to celebrate the birthday of her
father-in-law, King Charles III.
Crowds
gathered in central London to watch as the princess and her family participated
in an event full of military tradition, music and pageantry, dampened only
slightly by a light rain that turned into a downpour as the ceremonies
concluded.
Her
appearance was welcomed as a sign of improvement in her medical condition and a
significant moment for the British royal family, which suffered another blow
this year when King Charles announced that he, too, had cancer.
However,
when announcing late on Friday that she was well enough to attend the events on
Saturday, the princess made it clear that her recovery still had some way to
go.
“I am
making good progress, but as anyone going through chemotherapy will know, there
are good days and bad days,” Catherine, 42, said in a statement released to the
news media. “On those bad days you feel weak, tired and you have to give in to
your body resting,” she added. “But on the good days, when you feel stronger,
you want to make the most of feeling well.”
Officially
a U.S. Resident: For years, Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, have
considered California home. Recently, he updated his residency in a corporate
filing.
An
Explosive TV Interview: When Prince Andrew agreed to be interviewed on the BBC
in November 2019, he likely didn’t expect it would one day inspire a feature
film. Here’s what to know about “Scoop” on Netflix.
Catherine
rode with her three children — Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince
Louis — in a state carriage to watch the military parade. She waved
occasionally on the short carriage ride before moving to watch the ceremony
from an indoor vantage point. Later, there were cheers from the crowd when she
appeared on the balcony of Buckingham Palace alongside her children and other
members of the royal family to watch a Royal Air Force flyby.
Earlier,
her husband, William, Prince of Wales, who is colonel of the Welsh Guards, wore
their ceremonial uniform and was on horseback. The princess, who is colonel of
the Irish Guards, which played a prominent role in the parade, wore a white
dress with black trim by Jenny Packham, a hat by Philip Treacy and the Irish
Guards Regimental Brooch.
Catherine
was hospitalized for abdominal surgery in January, and until Saturday she had
not been seen at an official event this year. In March, she said publicly that
she was undergoing a course of preventative chemotherapy.
In another
sign of her progress, her office said she had started to work occasionally from
home and was meeting with her official teams when she felt able. The princess
also said in her statement that she hoped to join some public engagements
during the summer, while adding that she “is not out of the woods yet.”
Evidence of
her recovery will be especially welcome to Britain’s royal family, given that
her health issues coincided with those of King Charles, who was treated for
cancer in January. He has started his return to public life, and last week he
attended ceremonies in France to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the D-Day
landings that presaged the end of World War II.
On
Saturday, Charles, who celebrated his 75th birthday in November, rode in a
carriage rather than on horseback, as is typical during the procession, which
is known as the Trooping the Color.
The event,
which has been an official celebration of the monarch’s birthday for more than
260 years, is based around a parade that starts at Buckingham Palace and then
travels along the Mall, decorated by flags, to Horse Guards Parade, a
ceremonial parade ground by St. James’s Park, before heading back to the
palace.
After
arriving at Horse Guards Parade, the king inspected the troops, who wore the
ceremonial uniform of red tunics and bearskin hats. Among the spectators
watching the intricate military ceremony were Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and
his wife, Akshata Murty.
The
celebration also featured a 41-gun salute in Green Park.
The parade
included about 1,400 soldiers, 400 musicians and 200 horses — including three
from the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment that ran away and were injured in
April during a rehearsal.
Stephen
Castle is a London correspondent of The Times, writing widely about Britain,
its politics and the country’s relationship with Europe. More about Stephen
Castle
A France in Turmoil Mourns Françoise Hardy, Its Voice of Melancholy Cool
A France in Turmoil Mourns Françoise Hardy, Its
Voice of Melancholy Cool
An overwhelming outpouring of tributes felt like a
quest for some anchor in shared memory.
Roger Cohen
By Roger
Cohen
Reporting
from Paris
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/14/world/europe/france-francoise-hardy-tributes.html
June 14,
2024, 9:05 a.m. ET
It was like
Françoise Hardy, the wistful singer and songwriter of a certain French
melancholy and style, to slip away in the midst of a political storm, for it
was never the clamor of power struggles that interested her, but rather an
inner world of solitude, love betrayed and loss.
With France
in turmoil after President Emmanuel Macron’s sudden plunging of the nation into
an unexpected legislative election campaign, the country’s leading newspapers
nevertheless devoted much of their front pages to Ms. Hardy’s death this week
at the age of 80, hailing “the icon” of French music.
For Gabriel
Attal, the prime minister, it was the loss of “this singular voice of a fierce
tranquillity that cradled generations of French people” that felt overwhelming.
For Brigitte Bardot, “France has lost with her a little of that nobility, of
that beauty and that luminous talent, of that elegance that she conveyed all
through her life.”
It was as
if the country through Ms. Hardy’s life had come full circle, from her birth
during an air raid in Nazi-occupied Paris in 1944, seven months before the
city’s liberation, to a moment when a far-right party once led by a man who
belittled the Holocaust is now possibly on the brink of power.
The Nouvel
Obs magazine caught a general atmosphere of disorientation in the country as it
wrote of Ms. Hardy “wandering the road of lost hearts” at the “end of the
summer, the end of the afternoon.” It continued: “As you are leaving on a
voyage, how to say goodbye to you?”
This was a
play on her 1968 hit “Comment Te Dire Adieu?” (“How Can I Say Goodbye to
You?”), a riff also reprised by Mr. Macron in a tribute to her. The real
question that hovered in the air seemed to be: What might France be saying
goodbye to?
A snap
election called by Mr. Macron after a heavy defeat to Marine Le Pen’s far-right
National Rally in European Parliament election could lead to her emerging as
the dominant force in the National Assembly, which might in turn oblige Mr.
Macron to break a taboo of the Fifth Republic by naming a prime minister from
Ms. Le Pen’s party in early July.
Ms. Hardy,
distinguished by the knowing look in her glittering eyes and a delivery that
was often deadpan and borderline detached, never had any illusions about life’s
bitter surprises. She grew up with a single mother; her father was married to
another woman. Success intrigued her but never bewitched her, as she retained a
reserve and fragility that was part of her fascination.
Chic,
willowy, elegant and tantalizingly elusive, she burst on the scene at the age
of 18 with her 1962 hit “Tous les Garçons et les Filles” (“All the Boys and
Girls”), which went on to sell 2.5 million copies and landed her on the cover
of Paris Match in early 1963.
Of a
breathtaking lyrical simplicity, with a minimalist guitar accompaniment, the
song told of a young woman’s loneliness watching young couples “their eyes in
their eyes, hand in hand” walking heedlessly toward their tomorrows as she
suffered and pined.
If ever
there was proof that some things just sound better in French, this song
provided it. “Les yeux dans les yeux, la main dans la main” is translatable as
above, but only at great cost.
Bob Dylan
was entranced; Mick Jagger was fascinated. The world beckoned. So, too, did
movie roles. She toured widely. Fashion designers and great photographers
dedicated themselves to capturing her reticent, teasing beauty. In 1968 she
appeared in a golden metal minidress by the Spanish designer Paco Rabanne that,
like so much in her life, summoned the word “iconic.”
Yet, to the
last, Ms. Hardy trod a lonesome road. Passion was possessive, she came to
believe, and so inevitably destructive. In her 2004 song “Le Jardinier
Bénévole” (“The Volunteer Gardener”) she wrote, “I’ll open my arms wide so you
can take flight,” words that caught her view of the deeper love found in
maturity.
She once
said, “The melodies that move me most, that are the most beautiful, inevitably
have an element of melancholy that links us to the divine.”
Her 1981
marriage to the singer and songwriter Jacques Dutronc was marked, she observed,
by more absence than presence, yet through all the pain evident in many songs,
they never divorced and remained on good terms.
It was
perhaps her 1973 song “Message Personnel” (“Personal Message”), written the
same year as the birth of her son Thomas Dutronc, that reached most deeply into
her loneliness, contradictions, dignity and elusive search for love:
I am
afraid you are deaf
I am
afraid you may be a coward
I am
afraid to be indiscreet
I cannot
tell you I love you perhaps
But if
one day you think you love me
Do not
think your memories disturb me
And run,
run until you are out of breath
Come and
find me again.
A France on
the brink lost some essence of itself with Ms. Hardy’s dignified disappearance
and in the overwhelming outpouring of tributes to her seemed to be searching
across acute division for some anchor in shared memory.
Roger Cohen
is the Paris Bureau chief for The Times, covering France and beyond. He has
reported on wars in Lebanon, Bosnia and Ukraine, and between Israel and Gaza,
in more than four decades as a journalist. At The Times, he has been a
correspondent, foreign editor and columnist. More about
Roger Cohen
Thursday 13 June 2024
A Gentleman's London, Episode One: Emma Willis
Emma Willis
Launched: 1999
The story: Having worked for other menswear
brands, Willis launched her own label in 1989, focusing on bespoke shirts made
in England from the finest materials. Initially she sold her bespoke shirts in
City offices before putting down roots on Jermyn Street in St James in 1999.
All her shirts are designed, cut, stitched and
finished at Bearland House in the centre of Gloucester – “British bespoke shirt
making is rare as is having one’s own manufacturing employing and training
locally,” says Willis, who also established a charity Style for Soldiers in
2008, which provides smart clothing to injured service personnel.
The service: Willis, who employs an all-female
team of cutters, makes beautiful bespoke shirts using the very best Swiss and
Italian fabrics in quiet, elegant designs and colours. Her clients are mainly
men, and span everyone from film producers to hedge fund managers, farmers and
property dealers, but she has many female customers too and a ready-to -wear
collection on Net a Porter.
Why she loves it: “Our shop is very social
with our customers often meeting and befriending one another,” she says. “I get
visitors from all over the world and post pandemic this has been even more
enjoyable with the sense of relief to be able to see each other again and meet
new people.”
For Willis though, the best part is the people
she meets in her shop. “I never know who it may be next and all those amazing
contacts have enabled me to do with my charity and other initiatives.”
Wednesday 12 June 2024
Françoise Hardy, French pop singer and fashion muse, dies aged 80 / Françoise Hardy - Tous les garçons et les filles
Françoise Hardy, French pop singer and fashion
muse, dies aged 80
Singer and actor who wrote some of her country’s
biggest pop hits had suffered with lymphatic cancer for many years
Remembering Françoise Hardy: France’s girlish yé-yé
star was a groundbreaking musical artist
Ben
Beaumont-Thomas
Wed 12 Jun
2024 01.19 BST
Françoise
Hardy, whose elegance and beautifully lilting voice made her one of France’s
most successful pop stars, has died aged 80.
Her death
was reported by her son, the fellow musician Thomas Dutronc, who wrote “Maman
est partie,” (or in English, “mum is gone”) on Instagram alongside a baby photo
of himself and Hardy.
Hardy had
lymphatic cancer since 2004, and had undergone years of radiotherapy and other
treatments for the illness. In 2015, she was briefly placed in an induced coma
after her condition worsened, and had issues with speech, swallowing and
respiration in the years since. In 2021, she had argued in favour of
euthanasia, saying that France was “inhuman” for not allowing the procedure.
Hardy was
born in the middle of an air raid in Nazi-occupied Paris in 1944, and raised in
the city, mostly by her mother. Aged 16, she received her first guitar as a
present and began writing her own songs, performing them live and auditioning
for record labels. In 1961, she signed with Disques Vogue.
Inspired by
the French chanson style of crooned ballads as well as the emerging edgier
styles of pop and rock’n’roll, Hardy became a key part of the yé-yé style that
dominated mid-century French music. It was named after the predilection for
English-language bands of the time to chant “yeah”, and Hardy had a hand in its
coinage: an early song, La Fille Avec Toi, began with the English words: “Oh,
oh, yeah, yeah.”
The
self-penned ballad Tous les garçons et les filles was her breakthrough in 1962,
and sold more than 2.5m copies; it topped the French charts, as did early
singles Je Suis D’Accord and Le Temps de L’Amour. In 1963, Hardy represented
Monaco at the Eurovision song contest and finished fifth.
Her growing
European fame meant she began rerecording her repertoire in multiple languages,
including English. Her 1964 song All Over the World, translated from Dans le
Monde Entier, became her only UK Top 20 hit, but her fame endured in France,
Italy and Germany. In 1968, Comment te Dire Adieu, a version of It Hurts to Say
Goodbye (originally made famous by Vera Lynn) with lyrics by Serge Gainsbourg,
became one of her biggest hits.
Hardy was
an object of adoration to many male stars of 60s pop including the Rolling
Stones and David Bowie. Bob Dylan wrote a poem about her for the liner notes of
his 1964 album Another Side of Bob Dylan, beginning: “For Françoise Hardy, at
the Seine’s edge, a giant shadow of Notre Dame seeks t’ grab my foot …”
She was
also courted by directors, appearing in films by Jean-Luc Godard, Roger Vadim,
John Frankenheimer and more.
Hardy left
Disques Vogue amid financial disputes, and signed a three-year deal with
Sonopresse in 1970. This creatively rich period saw her record with Brazilian
musician Tuca on 1971’s highly acclaimed La Question, and continue her
multi-lingual releases, but by the contract’s end her stardom had waned and it
was not renewed.
She spent
the mid-1970s chiefly focused on raising her son Thomas with her partner,
musician and actor Jacques Dutronc. Releases restarted with 1977’s Star, and
Hardy embraced – not always enthusiastically – the sounds of funk, disco and
electronic pop. A longer hiatus in the 1980s was punctuated by 1988’s
Décalages, billed as her final album, though she returned in 1996 with Le
Danger, switching her palette to moody contemporary rock. She released six
further albums, ending with Personne D’Autre in 2018.
Having
first met in 1967, she and Jacques Dutronc married in 1981 – “an uninteresting
formality”, she later said of marriage in general – and separated in 1988,
though they remained friends. She is survived by him and
their son.
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