Gustav Temple treads in Bogie’s footsteps to be fitted with a Borsalino Fedora. “When your head says one thing and your whole life says another, your head always loses.”Humphrey Bogart’s line from Key Largo (1948) rang in my head as I mounted the steps to Burlington Arcade in London. I may have been a long… … Keep Reading
Now that Goodwood Revival has swept its grounds for the year, where else is a chap or chapette to go in search of the vintage glamour of yesteryear? Where can a gentleman don his opera cape, top hat and walking cane, and a lady her finest party frock and feather boa, so they can mingle… … Keep Reading
Over a hundred dapper chaps and chapettes sauntered sans purpose through London. On Sunday 5th May 2024, a crowd assembled at the junction of Piccadilly and Jermyn Street, London W1. Usually the only notable aspect of this corner is the life-size statue of the great dandy Beau Brummell, but on this day even the Beau… … Keep Reading
Edward Sexton was the trailblazer of traditional British tailoring who rescued the image of Savile Row not once, but twice, writes Freddie Anderson. Edward Sexton’s journey of changing the suiting folklore of Savile Row began on Valentine’s Day in 1969. With business partner Tommy Nutter, they originally used the appellation of Nutters of Savile Row. Nutter… … Keep Reading
The costume designer for multiple oscar winning Oppenheimer travelled halfway around the world to get the right hat for Cillian Murphy. The recent release of Oppenheimer grabbed slightly more attention than a summer film release, partly by bizarrely being lumped in with simultaneous release Barbie, to the point where cinephiles were attending both films as… … Keep Reading
Titillating tidings of a new collaboration between silk maestro Geoff Stocker and this publication. Eastbourne Pier and fine silk headscarves are not bedfellows that immediately spring to mind. Yet on one damp day that purported to be during the English Springtime, this publication turned the salty slats of the wooden pier into the Silk Road… … Keep Reading
Paul Stafford on keeping his mettle as the most flamboyant dresser in Belfast for the last thirty years. Photos by Lee Mitchell. Are you Belfast born and bred? I was born and bred in Belfast, growing up on the Falls Road in the west of the city. Carnaby Street it was not, but in spite… … Keep Reading
Gustav Temple meets Katie Thomas, founder and doyenne of vintage-style lingerie brand What Katie Did, champion of the vintage scene and the pioneer for a retrospective revolution in ladies undergarments. This interview first appeared in CHAP Spring 22. How did it all start for What Katie Did? In the mid 1990s, I started collecting pieces… … Keep Reading
Ahead of the Third Grand Flaneur Walk on Sunday 14th May 2023, we recall 2022’s dandified stroll sans destination. This year, after two years of not being permitted to wander anywhere, with or without destination, a large number of flaneurs pressed their pantaloons, polished their canes and cultivated new buttonholes again, in preparation for the… … Keep Reading
A rainy day in Worthing seemed like the perfect setting in which to meet a young fashion designer whose new collection evokes a 1950s French Riviera. John Minns spoke to Scott Simpson about how vintage is the backbone of all his designs, his early mod influences, his views on the paucity of youth subcultures and… … Keep Reading
The Chap descended on a former convent near St Albans with a curious connection to Stanley Kubrick to re-enact scenes from Brideshead Revisited and The Shining. Photographs by Soulstealer Photography. Having hung up our cameras, model release forms and boxes of props for a year-and-a-half, it was with great excitement that a mob of popinjays… … Keep Reading
Chris Sullivan on how the end of WWI and the Spanish Flu pandemic brought about the birth of nightclub culture in 1920s London. The nightclub ethos as we now perceive it, with bars and dance floors on which men and women actually dance together, began in the 1920s. Before the era, aptly named the Jazz… … Keep Reading