Welcome to The Register, our new monthly review of our favourite reads, finds and styles. From here on in, we'll be directing our collective gaze towards all things stylish and culturally rich, with a few curve balls thrown in for good measure. With illuminating long-reads from some of our favourite titles to operatic treats on Youtube and the lowdown on the very best events to attend (when, of course, everything is back open), The Register will be a veritable smorgasbord of stories and style to take you through the weekend and beyond. Enjoy!
The Long Read
What the original Gossip Girl, Aileen Mehle told Vanity Fair before she died.
At the height of Aileen Mehle's society sleuthing, the gossip columnist was read by some 30 million Americans across 90 different newspapers and magazines. Writing under her pen name 'Suzy', Mehle gained unprecedented access to the rich and famous and spilled the beans in glorious prose each day. She moved among them like one of their own, with slicing wit and impeccable charm combined with a persuasive natural beauty. The excellent Bob Colacello, writing for Vanity Fair, was granted Mehle's last interview before she passed away in 2016 and it's an absolutely fantastic read. As she put it herself in a lecture she gave in 1978 at the Society of the Four Arts, in Palm Beach, “Being a bitch in print is the easiest thing in the world. I may nick a little here and nick a little there, but none of the wounds ever require sewing up.”
Style Notes
The Smoking Jacket in 2020
The Smoking jacket has long since given up its perfunctory duty as smoke catcher, and yet it persists as one of menswear's most iconic garments. Here at Favourbrook, we're not surprised about its enduring appeal, because as we've known since we began, timeless style is like a good recipe - you can embellish it here and there, but the basic ingredients are what makes it live through the ages.
NAVY VELVET COTTON |
BURGUNDY VELVET COTTON |
OLIVE VELVET COTTON |
The Smoking jacket's role these days is typically as an elegant piece of eveningwear on those occasions that are deemed more casual than would require black tie, but ceremonial enough to keep a sports jacket out of the reckoning. One might conclude that with lockdown 2.0 now keeping us housebound, that the more formal end of the menswear spectrum would be pushed to the back of our collective wardrobes, but in fact we think the situation provides even more reason to make an effort! To bastardise the pithy war-time idiom, "Keep smart and carry on!"
The Tube
Puccini's Gianni Schicchi
If you can't go to the opera, then let the opera come to you! Lockdown may have prevented us from enjoying the sheer joy of going to the Royal Opera House, La Scala, The Met... you name it... but we needn't be deprived of our favourite performances. Youtube has a wealth of full-length operas hiding amongst the ASMR and make-up tutorials, and we've picked a delightful Puccini number to watch this weekend. Gianni Schicchi, which premiered at the New York Met in 1918, is a short (its one act is less than an hour long) but hilarious tale of death, fraud, and one of Dante’s circles of hell. Like most of Puccini’s work, Gianni Schicchi is littered with fantastic music and is easy watching. A delightful interlude to a day stuck in lockdown.
Style Notes
Shine in Crepe de Chine
Chinoiserie is a style we love here at Favourbrook - it's delicate, traditional, ornate and exceptionally feminine. This season we've referenced the style to create a very unique piece: our Carnaby coat in Parkhurst heavy crepe de chine. Crepe de chine is a light and fine plain-woven fabric produced with an all-silk warp and weft. It has a beautifully soft handle with a lovely natural drape. We've cut it in our Carnaby coat silhouette this season, which is an elegant shape that finishes below the knee. What starts at the collar as a classic chinoiserie floral motif evolves into a bold geometric print quite unlike any other. There's no better way to make a statement this season.
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CARNABY COAT BLACK |
The Annals of the Weird and Wonderful
Take a trip down Cary Grant's memory lane.
Cary Grant is widely known as one of the most stylish men to have ever graced our collective screens, but did you also know that he was a pioneer of LSD therapy in the '50s, introduced to it by his then wife Betsy Drake. Vulture.com's Stefanie Cohen reveals what went down on the couch of Beverly Hills doctor Mortimer Hartman in the Hollywood heydays. “For many years I have cautiously peered from behind the face of a man known as Cary Grant,” said Grant himself. “The protection of that facade was both an advantage and a disadvantage. If I couldn’t see out, how could anybody see in?” Grant spoke often about his LSD experiences and with much candour. The article also traces the experiences of Grant's contemporary, actress Roberta Haynes, providing fascinating insight into a branch of psychotherapy that was at the time unregulated and experimental.
