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A blog dedicated to the interesting, scandalous, useful and cutting edge in the world of men’s style, fashion and grooming.
This week’s Monocle features a story on a London store called Albam that has made its name by promoting local production—meaning within the UK, or failing that, within western Europe—in favor of the higher profit margins but questionable labor conditions of East Asian factories. It’s a common enough tale, but we couldn’t resist a little peek at how things work across the pond.
French Love: The lovely Natalia Vodianova is trying her hand as a lingerie designer with an “unnamed French brand.” Here’s hoping she signs on for the ads. [SassyBella]
Lagerphobia: Apparently even Karl Lagerfeld is tired of Karl Lagerfeld. [Canadian Press]
Pack it in: The anatomy of a canvas pack. [A Continuous Lean]
Crash Course: Europe’s (former) richest man lost $28 billion over the past four months. Apparently he still has his health, as well as $17 billion. [Luxist]
The Camera Man: A web-based photo retrospective of Marc Jacob’s favorite photographer. [FashionIndie]
Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Men: Apparently casual misogyny and the occasional angry crotch grab go over pretty well with the Park Slope housewife set. [New York Observer]
A Gaping Void: Documentary proof that Europeans love the Gap. When we said continental flair, this isn’t what we had in mind. [IHT]
The White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Whale: Ladies and Gentlemen, the preppiest movie of all time. [A Continuous Lean]
A Ram Market: Esquire tries its hand at objectifying sheep. Hilarity ensues. [Esquire]
Making Waves: Portugal turns to wave power, making them more vulnerable to the whims of Aquaman. [Inhabitat]
The Northern Lights: Canada isn’t quite as sartorially challenged as you’d think. After all, they’re trendsetters on some fronts… [Complex]
The Don: Every man has a little Nixon and a little Kennedy on his shoulders, tempting him towards good or evil. Apparently Don Draper is no different. [Vulture]
It looks like the grand tradition of the schoolyard brawl is slipping away. A recent survey by The Economist ranked the U.S. 17 out of 18 in terms of the battle-readiness pre-teens. French-speaking Belgians are the roughest kids on the block, with almost half of eleven-year-olds in at least three fights over the past year, with the Czechs only slightly behind. The U.S. comes in at 14%, second only to the famously peace-loving Germans.
This just confirms what talk radio hosts have been saying for years: kids these days are soft! Isn’t there some sort of national anti-effeteness program we can institute?
We also noticed that Spanish women are particularly violent, a potentially invaluable nugget of information.
Whether it’s Africa or flight attendant training school, the subject often makes the photographer. And as subjects go, brothels are a pretty good one…as long as you keep the kids away from the coffee table.
Prostitution has been legal since 2001 in Germany, and lensman Patric Fouad recently made a tour of the small-scale dens of iniquity that have popped up in the seven years since, resulting in his monograph, Brothels in Germany. They alternate between sterile hotel rooms and fantastical holdovers from old-world courtesanship, managing to be both exotic and bleak. It might be a place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.
At this point, Google is less a tech company than an enormous mass of information, absorbing museums, libraries, laboratories, phone companies and whole species, until eventually it contains everything in the world. (Akira, anyone? Anyone?) At this point, its only competitors are Apple and religion. It’s going to be a brave new world…especially if you’ve got a smart phone.
Travel is one of the finest uses of leisure…but leisure’s pretty hard to come by these days. Luckily there are always a few photographers on the case.
Max Wanger has taken what used to be called a Gentleman’s Tour of Europe, skipping between Paris, Rome and Florence (and Tokyo for good measure) and coming back with a set of pictures that use the location to the greatest effect.
If you were wondering what the Parisian kids are up to these days, this would be the easiest way to find out.
After Monocle used their brand to launch a shop, a newsstand and a half-dozen brilliant collabs, it was only a matter of time before more pubs got in on the action.
The first to catch on is Fantastic Man, a boutique European biannual best known for favoring designers over models for their cover shot. But apparently two issues a year leaves them a little free time for other pursuits like perfumery, because they’re debuting the magazine’s signature cologne next Monday. They’ll follow it up with a candle collaboration with Acne, but we’re still waiting for a bit of apparel to creep into the mix.
As Pepsi recently discovered, the world of soda bottle design can get pretty contentious, so it’s worth remembering what it looks like when it’s done right.
Afri Cola was a German, Jolt-style caffeine bomb popular in the ‘60s and ‘70s—and briefly, Seattle in the ‘90s—and while the taste didn’t catch on quite the way you’d expect, the design may be the best we’ve ever seen. As far as vintage colas go, this one seems ripe for a revival—and the more caffeine the better.
In case you were puzzled by the French sizing of the F-Troupe lace-ups, we thought we’d lend a hand.
This chart should help you make sense of a fairly confusing system. There are a lot of different systems out there, but it’s probably simpler than you think. British sizes are more or less the same, European sizes don’t vary too much from country to country, and we doubt your sartorial travels will take you much farther than that. When in doubt, round up.
And avoid Chinese sizes at all costs.
With bikes are well on their way to becoming status symbols, it might be time to consider upgrading to something a bit more European…
This Opa from Dutch Workcycles sports a sprung leather saddle and powder-coated frame for an old world look, but the touch that sets it apart from the Schwinns of the world is the covering on the back half, including the encased chain, that lets you hang saddlebags over the back—or an adventurous companion, if you’ve got company.
Just watch out for thieves.
As any number of trend pieces will tell you, times is hard, and any number of previously whimsical professions are becoming all to real. Apparently art thieves are next in line.
This past Friday, a group of armed robbers made off with two paintings from a Dutch museum, including a Dalí work called “Adolescence.” Of course, we’ve seen our share of glamorous heist movies—in fact, we’ve probably seen more about thieves than pirates—but knocking off an undefended museum is hardly what Hollywood led us to expect. And we feel safe in saying Cary Grant would disapprove.
Steve McQueen’s gotten a lot of cred as a style icon in the past few years, but memorabilia has been pretty hard to come by.
But a few of his more iconic items are going on the block, specifically a pair of his prized racing watches. This HEUER Monaco might be our favorite watch in the world. It’s a relic of the European racing culture McQueen loved, and they genuinely don’t make them like this anymore.
Of course, a $10,000 starting price will give anyone second thoughts, but it’ll be interesting to see who comes away with it.
Ladies and Gentlemen, this man is an asshole.
Our old friend Jared Paul Stern just filed this dispatch from the world of unimaginable wealth. He’s tasked with the world’s richest asshole, and we have to hand it to him: he made a pretty good choice. Introducing Mr. Marcus von Anhalt…
European shoes usually vary between boxy British brogues and the slimmer Italian dress shoes favored by Mr. Ford. But it looks like Spain has a few tricks of their own…
Magnanni may be operating under an Italian name, but they’ve been using Spanish designs and cobbling knowhow for upwards of 50 years, including a trick called the Bologna Construction that uses a glovelike layer of leather in place of an insole—a pretty good idea, as far as we’re concerned. If you’re curious to see it yourself, they’ll be taking designs for custom models at Bergdorf Goodman on October 2nd and 3rd.
This umbrella dome popped up in Rotterdam Friday night—a cross between Jacques Demy and Buckminster Fuller—with a DJ and bar in tow to liven up the night. The cops shut it down some time around 2am. It’s part of a guerilla civic planning project dreamed up by local architects, but it looks like they might have a future in event planning.
