De Carvalho family crest

"JEEVES” is the heteronym of António Sérgio Rosa de Carvalho. / Architectural Historian .
 

A Gentleman's London, Episode Eleven: New & Lingwood

NEW & LINGWOOD / LONDON / ETON

NEW & LINGWOOD

THE PAST

In 1865 Miss Elisabeth New and Mr Samuel Lingwood founded the business which still bears their names, New & Lingwood. They subsequently married and laid the foundation on which the business still prides itself, unsurpassed quality of merchandise and truly personal service.

 

In 1922 New & Lingwood opened a shop in Jermyn Street and although these premises were destroyed in the blitz during the Second World War, we re-established our presence in the street shortly after the war, this time at number 53, on the corner of the Piccadilly Arcade. It is fair to say that today New & Lingwood is unique in London in being the most traditional of the small number of gentleman's outfitters supplying bespoke and ready-made shirts, hosiery and shoes of the highest quality.

 

The company was formed in Eton to serve the scholars of Eton College, the most famous of English Public Schools, and soon gained official status as outfitters to the College, a great honour for the firm. For over 147 years New & Lingwood has served many thousands of Etonians, in many instances five or more generations of the same family, on the same site it has occupied since its foundation. This is a consequence of the high standards of quality and service that New & Lingwood have maintained.

 

In 1972 the old and famous shoe and boot-making firm Poulsen Skone joined the Company extending the classic range of shoes.

NEW & LINGWOOD

https://www.helenmasondesign.com/new-lingwood

 

HELEN MASON DESIGN

Based on previous experience of working with Helen, we chose her to bring together our vision for what is a unique flagship store in St James’s. Her strong work ethic and meticulous aesthetic meant that once she’d been given the complex brief, she delivered something that both our own staff, our builders and our PR agency were able to use extremely effectively. Not only did she unify the many elements of the project, she also worked long hours and late nights to ensure it was delivered on time and to budget. I wouldn’t hesitate to work with her again.

— Simon Malony, Product and Marketing Director | New & Lingwood

 

THE PROJECT

After producing events for New & Lingwood, we were delighted to be asked to work on the design of the refurbishment for their two flagship stores in Jermyn Street.

 

New & Lingwood is a brand with 153 years of rich, traditional English heritage, a storied outfitter for Eton and bespoke men’s wear maker that heralds back to 1865.

 

In 1922, New & Lingwood expanded from Eton into London and today have an international reputation as a quintessentially English gentleman's outfitters, with eccentric flair.

 

Their two London stores are located on the corner of the Piccadilly Arcade, facing Jermyn Street, and they’ve held residence there since 1946.

 

New & Lingwood have established themselves as a forward looking luxury design brand, and sought to refresh their Jermyn Street stores to reflect this development.

 

THE BRIEF

To create an open, bright and vibrant design which reflected the brand’s character and wit. Introduce more retail theatre to the space whilst retaining the unique heritage and maintaining continuity for loyal customers.

 

THE METHOD

We provided a design overview for the refurbishment - from conceptual drawings to the final finishing touches – with a hands on approach throughout the project.

 

Working closely with Mark Clark Associates, we filtered the ideas of the fantastic creative team at N & L, then presented conceptual designs, colour rendered perspectives and mood-boards, which enabled the client to visualise and approve the proposed changes.

 

The refit was extensive, requiring a total refurbishment, so each store was closed in tandem whilst the work took place.

Working successfully within a strict timeframe the transformation was completed on schedule.

 

The smaller store was transformed into an opulent silk and gown space, with fittings and furnishings deliberately chosen to tell a story and to coordinate with the larger store.

 

With the installation of a layered lighting scheme, rich silk drapes, a bold tartan carpet and multitude of meticulous finishing details the stores were transformed.

 

We employed British companies to reflect the brand’s ethos and create classic style and quality craftsmanship throughout the stores. Cabinet makers, Silk weavers, Paint manufacturers, Carpet makers and Velvet suppliers were all sourced in the UK.

 

The tone was set using Mylands beautiful paints. Museum Teal was used throughout both stores, a beautiful tranquil colour and a perfect backdrop to showcase the product. In contrast the Theatreland Red feature walls offset the picture walls to perfection.

 

N & L are famous for their Jacquard silk dressing gowns. In tribute a bespoke silk fabric was created especially for the project and incorporated in the changing room drapes and numerous stairwell and cabinet panels.

 

THE RESULT

The stores now have an ambient welcoming appeal, with natural light streaming in through new entranceways,

Scrumptious design detail throughout and a stunning new lighting design all bringing fresh life and energy to the brand

Our Eton Connection

 

Our Eton Connection

Not just a uniform, a mark of honour and pride

https://www.newandlingwood.com/eton-connection

ETON STORE

118 High Street, Eton,

Windsor, Berkshire,

SL4 6AN

 

Since our founding in 1865 New & Lingwood has proudly outfitted the students of Eton College. From uniform essentials, our extensive offer of house and society colours through to refined tailoring, shirts, shoes and silk accessories, our Eton store has something for gentlemen of all ages.

 

We apply personalised name tags to all newly purchased uniform and any alterations are made at no extra cost. Plus, we will provide free dry cleaning for the first term of the new school year.

 

Additionally, each new boy who purchases his full school uniform from New & Lingwood will be invited to sign our uniform register which will entitle him to two free formal shirts upon his departure, post A Levels.

A Portrait Artist Fit for a King (but Not a President)

 

THE GLOBAL PROFILE

A Portrait Artist Fit for a King (but Not a President)

 

Jonathan Yeo, about to unveil a major new painting of King Charles III, also counts Hollywood royalty (Nicole Kidman) and prime ministers (Tony Blair) as past subjects. But George W. Bush eluded him.

 

Mark Landler

By Mark Landler

Reporting from London

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/02/world/europe/jonathan-yeo-portrait-artist.html?pgtype=Article&action=click&module=RelatedLinks

 

Published May 2, 2024

Updated May 15, 2024

 

Few famous Britons, it seems, can resist the chance to be painted by Jonathan Yeo. David Attenborough, the 97-year-old broadcasting legend, is among those who have recently climbed the spiral stairs to his snug studio, hidden at the end of a lane in West London, to pose for Mr. Yeo, one of Britain’s most recognized portrait artists.

 

Yet when it came to painting his latest portrait, of King Charles III, the artist had to go to the subject.

 

Mr. Yeo rented a truck to transport his 7.5-by-5.5-foot canvas to the king’s London residence, Clarence House. There, he erected a platform so he could apply the final brushstrokes to the strikingly contemporary portrait, which depicts a uniformed Charles against an ethereal background.

 

The painting, which will be unveiled at Buckingham Palace in mid-May, is the first large-scale rendering of Charles since he became king. It will likely reconfirm Mr. Yeo’s status as the go-to portraitist of his generation for Britain’s great and good, as well as for actors, writers, businesspeople and celebrities from around the world. His privately commissioned works can fetch around $500,000 each.

 

Painting the king’s portrait also marks a return to normalcy for Mr. Yeo, 53, who suffered a near-fatal heart attack last year that he attributes to the lingering effects of cancer in his early 20s. The parallel with his subject is not lost on him: Charles, 75, announced in February that he had been diagnosed with cancer, just 18 months into his reign.

 

Mr. Yeo said he did not learn of the king’s illness until after he had completed the painting. If anything, his depiction is of a vigorous, commanding monarch. But it gave Mr. Yeo deeper empathy for a man he got to know over four sittings, beginning in June 2021, when Charles was still the Prince of Wales and continuing after the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, and his coronation last May.

 

“You see physical changes in people, depending on how things are going,” Mr. Yeo said in his studio, where he had decorously turned the as-yet-unveiled painting away from the gaze of curious visitors. “Age and experience were suiting him,” he said. “His demeanor definitely changed after he became king.”

 

The portrait was commissioned by the Worshipful Company of Drapers, a medieval guild of wool and cloth merchants that is now a philanthropy. It will hang in Drapers’ Hall, the company’s baronial quarters in London’s financial district, which has a gallery of monarchs from King George III to Queen Victoria. Mr. Yeo’s Charles will add a contemporary jolt to that classical lineup.

 

“What Jonny has succeeded in doing is combining the elusive quality of majesty with an edginess,” said Philip Mould, a friend and art historian who has seen the painting and called it “something of a unicorn.”

 

Fighting Child Marriage in Malawi: At age 13, Memory Banda’s 11-year-old sister was forced to wed a man in his 30s who had impregnated her. It was a moment of awakening for the self-described “fierce child rights activist.”

 

A Portrait Artist Fit for a King: Jonathan Yeo, about to unveil a major new painting of King Charles III, also counts Hollywood royalty (Nicole Kidman) and prime ministers (Tony Blair) as past subjects. But George W. Bush eluded him.

 

Inspiration in Germany’s History: Jenny Erpenbeck became a writer when her childhood and her country, the German Democratic Republic, disappeared, swallowed by the materialist West.

 

Mr. Yeo is no stranger to depicting royals. He painted Charles’ wife, Queen Camilla, who he said was a delight, and his father, Prince Philip, who was less so. “He was a bit of a caged tiger,” Mr. Yeo recalled. “I can’t imagine he was easy as a father, but he was entertaining as a subject.”

 

Still, a sitting monarch was a first for Mr. Yeo, whose subjects have included prime ministers (Tony Blair and David Cameron), actors (Dennis Hopper and Nicole Kidman), artists (Damien Hirst), moguls (Rupert Murdoch) and activists (Malala Yousafzai).

 

Mr. Yeo said there was an element of “futurology” to his work. Some of his subjects have gone on to greater renown after he painted them; others have faded. A few, like Kevin Spacey, who was tried and acquitted on charges of sexual misconduct, have fallen into disrepute. The National Portrait Gallery in Washington returned Mr. Yeo’s Spacey portrait, made when the actor played a ruthless politician in the series “House of Cards.”

 

Gazing back over his A-list subjects, Mr. Yeo has developed a few rules of thumb about his art. Older faces are easier to capture than younger ones because they are more lived in. The best portraits capture visual characteristics that remain relevant even as the person ages. And the only bad subjects are boring ones.

 

“He didn’t want me to pose, he just wanted me to talk,” said Giancarlo Esposito, the American actor known for playing elegant villains in the crime classic “Breaking Bad” and the recent Guy Ritchie TV series, “The Gentlemen.” As an actor, Mr. Esposito said, he was skilled at projecting a persona, “but there was no way to fool him.”

 

“It was an opportunity to be Giancarlo, unmasked,” said Mr. Esposito, who said he last posed for a portrait as a child at a county fair.

 

A loose-limbed figure with a quick smile and stylish eyeglasses pushed far back on his forehead, Mr. Yeo learned his appreciation for the charms and foibles of public figures by being the son of one. His father, Tim Yeo, was a Conservative member of Parliament and minister under Prime Minister John Major, whose career was undone by professional and personal scandals.

 

At first, the elder Mr. Yeo had little patience for his son’s artistic dreams. “My dad definitely assumed I’d need to get a proper job,” he said, giving him no money when he took a year off after high school to try to make it as a painter. Mr. Yeo’s early efforts showed his lack of formal training, and “obviously, I didn’t sell any pictures.”

 

Then, in 1993, at the end of his second year at university in Kent, he was struck by Hodgkin’s disease. Mr. Yeo burrowed deeper into painting as a way of coping with the disease. He got a break when a friend of his father — Trevor Huddleston, an Anglican archbishop and anti-apartheid activist — commissioned him for a portrait.

 

“He asked me mostly out of pity,” Mr. Yeo recalled. “But it turned out spectacularly, better than anyone expected.”

 

The commissions began to flow, and Mr. Yeo became sought-after for his revealing portraits of famous faces. In 2013, the National Portrait Gallery in London mounted a midcareer exhibition of his work.

 

“He brought the portrait back,” said Nick Jones, the founder of Soho House, a chain of private members’ clubs, which worked with Mr. Yeo to hang paintings by him and other artists on its walls. “Portraits were always such severe things,” Mr. Jones said. “He was able to add layers and bring out the personality of the people.”

 

It helps that Mr. Yeo is well-connected, prolific and entrepreneurial. He is cleareyed about the commercial side of his art. “No matter how you dress it up,” he said, “to some extent, you’re in the luxury goods business.”

 

Successful but creatively restless, Mr. Yeo began experimenting. When aides to President George W. Bush contacted him to do a portrait and later dropped the project, he decided to do it anyway, but as a collage of images cut out of pornographic magazines.

 

The Bush portrait went viral on the web, and Mr. Yeo created collages of other public figures, including Hugh Hefner and Silvio Berlusconi. It was provocative but time-consuming work — he bought stacks of skin magazines to assemble enough raw material — and his supply dried up when, he said, “the iPad killed the porn-magazine industry.”

 

Mr. Yeo also became drawn to the uses of technology in art. He worked on design projects at Apple. He painted the celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver, via FaceTime during the pandemic. And he created an app that offers a virtual-reality tour of his studio, a well-appointed space in an old workshop that once turned out organs.

 

But on a Sunday night in March 2023, Mr. Yeo’s busy life came to a terrifying halt. He went into cardiac arrest — his heart stopping for more than two minutes. Mr. Yeo said he believes the crisis was linked to his cancer treatment decades earlier. While he did not see a bright light at the end of a tunnel, as others with near-death experiences have described, he recalled a palpable sensation of floating outside his body.

 

Mr. Yeo, who is married and has two daughters, clung to life. After recuperating, he found that his vocation as a painter — temporarily diverted by his detours into technology and other pursuits — had been rekindled. Soon, he was immersed in the portraits of Charles, Mr. Esposito and Mr. Attenborough.

 

“It definitely makes you feel, ‘Let’s not mess around anymore,’” Mr. Yeo said. “It’s like dodging a bullet.”

 

Mark Landler is the London bureau chief of The Times, covering the United Kingdom, as well as American foreign policy in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. He has been a journalist for more than three decades. More about Mark Landler

These Butlers Are Neither Carson Nor Hudson

 

Account

These Butlers Are Neither Carson Nor Hudson

 

The rise of “executive butlers” — a breed whose job combines silver polishing with being a concierge and a maitre d’ — reflects the changing nature of the very rich.

 

By Plum Sykes

Plum Sykes reported this story from her home in Britain’s Cotswolds region. She has written about society for magazines and in several novels.

May 14, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/14/style/executive-butlers-country-houses.html

 

In Britain’s bucolic Cotswolds region, the arrival of summer is typically marked by a migration. Specifically, the return of a rarefied group to grand country houses in counties like Oxfordshire or Gloucestershire, where preparations begin for a season of hosting guests at picnics, luncheons and events like the Chelsea Flower Show, the Royal Ascot horse races and “the tennis” — shorthand for a center court box at Wimbledon.

 

Owners of those country estates — let’s call them the one percent of the one percent — of course do not handle such preparations themselves. These are relegated to butlers, whose job, like for others associated with the lifestyles of the ultrawealthy, has evolved.

 

As personal assistants have been rebranded as executive assistants and child care providers as executive nannies, buttling has become a career that involves not only polishing silver and folding napkins but also lifestyle management.

 

The modern butler — also known as, wait for it, an executive butler — is still in most cases a man. But he is no longer a grandfatherly type in morning trousers that stays in the background, if not out of sight. More likely, he is fresh-faced, wears a lounge suit with a Charvet tie and is by his employers’ side whether they are at home or not.

 

“They’re like a private maitre d’ now,” said Nicky Haslam, 84, the English interior designer and social fixture. “In the old days the butler was in the house all the time. Now, if the family is on their yacht, the butler goes with them.”

 

This was not the case as recently as the 1990s, when butlers for the most part reflected the archetype popularized by characters like Hudson, from the TV show “Upstairs, Downstairs”; Carson, from “Downton Abbey”; or Stevens, from Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel “The Remains of the Day.”

 

Among that ilk was Michael Kenneally, a mischievous Irish butler employed for decades by my cousin, Sir Tatton Sykes, at his country estate, Sledmere, in the county of Yorkshire.

 

His antics were legendary. If children were visiting, he would sometimes accessorize his formal uniform with a curly-haired wig or glasses with plastic eyeballs on springs. His pièce de résistance was riding through the dining room after dinner on a bicycle with a port tray balanced on the handlebars, a trick that was noted in his obituary in The Telegraph. When he died at 65 in 1999, his funeral drew a crowd of about 300 people, and he was buried alongside members of the family that had employed him for 40 years. On the headstone marking his grave, the epitaph simply read “The Butler.”

 

The profession’s evolution in recent decades is a signifier of a societal shift in Britain: What rich people want has changed because who rich people are has changed.

 

That group’s makeup has shifted from being primarily aristocratic families, the type long associated with traditional butlers, to include a new breed of self-made, high-net-worth individuals who have built fortunes in industries like technology and media and who see butlers less as part of the furniture and more as a flashy accessory.

 

Graeme Currie, 53, exemplifies the modern butler, a role that he said requires “sparkle, darling, sparkle.” He has been employed by some of Britain’s highest-profile families and was the head butler for 10 years at Weston Park, an estate in the county of Staffordshire that is the ancestral home of the Earl of Bradford and can now be booked for private events.

 

This summer Mr. Currie — who has tawny hair and, often, a light tan — is planning to travel to various destinations in Europe to buttle at vacation houses. In his spare time, he breeds toy poodles, some of which have competed at dog shows like Crufts.

 

Mr. Currie is the sort of person who can whip up an espresso martini blindfolded and comprehend the precise level of froth someone might prefer for a coconut-milk cappuccino. He developed such skills in part from a career in hospitality that has included jobs on the Queen Elizabeth 2 ocean liner and at ritzy London hotels like the Dorchester and Claridge’s and restaurants like the Ivy.

 

“The difference between me and an old-fashioned butler is that I’ve had the experience of people paying for dinner and of always being critiqued,” Mr. Currie said.

 

Seasoned butlers like him can make around 100,000 British pounds a year, or about $125,000. The job’s starting salary is closer to 40,000 pounds, or $50,000.

 

For butlers with full-time positions, various costs — food, lodging, even fancy uniforms — are subsidized by employers. And those who work in Europe are typically afforded the same mandatory benefits granted to other workers, like a minimum of 20 vacation days. Many develop schedules with their employers that include regular time off on the weekend or midweek to account for other days when they are expected to work long hours.

 

Mr. Currie was drawn to the profession for a reason that many butlers are: He is passionate about taking care of people.

 

“One thing I always say is that I’m very good at remembering who people are and what they want,” he said. “You’ve got to have a whole repertoire in your brain because people ask for things they have never asked for before.”

 

That repertoire can vary wildly depending on a butler’s location, said Niels Deijkers, the managing director of the International Butler Academy in Simpelveld, the Netherlands.

 

Mr. Deijkers recalled a story he had heard from an executive butler who was with a family on a yacht. “The client pointed toward the coastline and said, ‘Tonight I’d like to have dinner on top of that mountain — please arrange it,’” he said, explaining that the butler contacted a restaurant in the area, which “set up a table for six and flew in everything with a helicopter.” (Mr. Deijkers estimated that the dinner cost “around $300,000.”)

 

Andrew Gruselle, 53, has encountered similar demands in his time working on Lamu Island, off the coast of Kenya, where he has managed grand beachfront properties with staffs that have included cooks, housekeepers and pool attendants.

 

In his typical uniform of loose cotton shirt and seersucker Bermuda shorts, Mr. Gruselle has performed a range of duties: serving trays of fresh mango or papaya for breakfast; arranging water-skiing excursions; recommending fabric shops; securing reservations at the Peponi Hotel, a Lamu hot spot; and wrangling six donkeys to stage a makeshift Nativity scene at Christmas.

 

“When someone comes out here,” he said, “you have to be very careful that they are looked after properly, and that it’s a seamless experience for them.”

 

Carole Bamford, 78, expects nothing less of the head butler at Daylesford House, her country estate in Gloucestershire, one of several homes she resides at with her husband, Anthony Bamford, the billionaire owner of the British construction company JCB.

 

Events held at Daylesford House by the couple, known formally as Lord and Lady Bamford, are among the most coveted invitations in the Cotswolds. This spring Lady Bamford, who is the founder of Daylesford Organic, a popular British lifestyle brand, hosted various lunches with themes inspired by plants grown on the estate like snowdrops and tulips.

 

Leading the preparations for those lunches was, yes, Daylesford House’s head butler, whose résumé reflects those of traditional butlers, in that he has been with the Bamfords for more than 20 years.

 

“He was with the queen for about eight years before me,” Lady Bamford said.

 

But his job also involves many duties expected of modern butlers, too.

 

Lady Bamford recalled a recent lunch where the menu included lamb, purple sprouting broccoli, a cheese board, panna cotta and rhubarb bellinis.

 

“Who makes the bellinis?’” I asked.

 

“Well, the butler,” she said.

 

Susan Beachy contributed research.

 

Plum Sykes is the author of “Bergdorf Blondes,” “The Debutante Divorcée,” “Party Girls Die in Pearls” and the just released “Wives Like Us.”

Scientists may have solved mystery behind Egypt's pyramids | BBC News

Laird Hatters

https://lairdlondon.co.uk/pages/about-us

 

 In 2009 Zofia founded the company in London and shortly after, Alex joined the team as our principal hat maker. Shortly after Laird Hatters opened its first shop with ready-to-wear headwear in London in the same year. Fast forward to today and we have 4 stores in Central London, one in Cambridge, and most recently another in Oxford. Our creative team is also involved regularly in high fashion collaborations with British designers and our headwear features in London Fashion Week and London Collections: Men. We also make bespoke headwear projects for clients, as well as for TV shows and film.

 

At Laird, we hand make hats and caps of distinction for both men and women, and are passionate about sourcing the best British cloths, and supporting British textile manufacturing. A Laird hat evokes a rich English and Scottish heritage, with a modern nuance. The great fabric finishes and rich colour palettes make our headwear stand out, as well as the wonderful craftsmanship. Our look is slick, with strong lines, deep colours and bold statements.

 

Our aim is always to give our clients a wonderful, stylish product, but also great service in our shops or online: friendly, personal, prompt and informative. Laird Hatters is here to make you look and feel great!

 

PR showroom appointments - please contact (task pr)

Magazine Press loans please email - info@lairdhatters.com