“Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service.” Captain Willard, Apocalypse Now My mission was not to find a colonel in the Vietnamese jungle who had gone mad and to kill him, but to catch up with an … Keep Reading
One of the biggest challenges in writing about someone like Marilyn Monroe is that people have been writing obsessively about her for almost a century. Books on her famous lovers, confirmed or rumoured, are generally the first thing one comes across. Another focus is her impact on fashion. There’s rather a lot on her reputation … Keep Reading
It has come to our attention that many good folk will be confined to barracks during the coronavirus epidemic, and to while away the long hours in one’s homestead we are offering self-isolating chaps a completely free digital edition of The Chap. The risks even of popping out to one’s local newsagent are such that … Keep Reading
It has come to our attention that there is a lot of fuss and panic over some new disease that causes people to buy entire shelves full of lavatory paper and don face masks. Since this publication is in the habit of offering what we feel is useful sartorial advice to gentlemen and ladies, we … Keep Reading
Chap Spring 20 is our Hollywood Golden Age special. Our main interview is with dapper actor Alec Baldwin, with profiles of Ava Gardner and Robert Mitchum and a top five Ava Gardner film list. We also meet living 60s legend Rita Tushingham from 1961’s A Taste of Honey. Photographs of lovely ladies in vintage Hollywood … Keep Reading
From a new collaboration with famed lip weasel stiffener Captain Fawcett comes Debonair, a moustache wax for gentlemen. The creation of Debonair was personally supervised by Gustav Temple at the Captain Fawcett Grooming Factory, following a stunningly simple brief: give me a moustache wax, my good man, that conjures up old leather armchairs and aromatic … Keep Reading
A sumptuous offering in a lavish gift box containing all four elements of The Chap's Flaneur men's grooming range. At the heart of the set is Flâneur eau de cologne, the gentlemen’s fragrance based on classic men’s scents of the early 20th century. On a masculine base of amber, patchouli, vetiver and vanilla come … Keep Reading
2019 marked the 70th anniversary of the original release of Ealing classic Kind Hearts and Coronets. StudioCanal have lovingly restored the film for this special anniversary re-release, with every scene cleaned up and restored to its former cinematic glory. Dennis Price stars as the vengeful Louis Mazzini, who murders all those who stand in his … Keep Reading
Kentucky is regarded as the first of the Southern states, sitting south of the Ohio River on the eastern side of the United States. It is a green and pleasant land, literally. There are miles of gently rolling hills, clean air and plentiful amounts of fine pure mineral water. All these elements play a large … Keep Reading
One of the fourteen countries that straddle the Equator, Ecuador took its name from that imaginary line and offers an engaging place for the traveller to explore with much historical interest, museums and art galleries but, more significantly, it’s the best place in the world to buy a Panama hat. I took a trip out … Keep Reading
Why am I writing about Disneyland in The Chap, you ask? Because, for the past four years, Disneyland in Anaheim California been the epicentre (not Epcot Center – that one’s in Florida,) of Dapper Day, and Rose Callahan and I had been invited by the event’s organizer to give a presentation about our book I … Keep Reading
This broad sartorial term sometimes confuses those in receipt of a wedding invitation, who panic and think they have to go and buy a new suit – when in fact they already have several in their wardrobe. A lounge suit is simply an informal business suit and can be anything from a plain blue two-piece to a pinstriped three-piece. Also known, rather pejoratively, as a ‘City Suit’, the most important attribute is that it should be dark in colour, but this can range from charcoal grey, via all the shades of blue, to jet black. A lounge suit can be…
The man’s shirt collar has been shrinking over the years. Not only shrinking, but also it’s been running away from the knot of your tie. You can see it clear as day; those collar points are spreading farther and farther apart. I believe part of this is caused by the erroneous notion that the “fashion elite” like to press on the public, that there are certain collars that work best with certain face shapes, and they have a ritualistic standard that is all you should follow. Now I’m not completely disputing that there is some balance between face shape and…
Ava Gardner loved drinking, staying up all night, sex, jazz, four-letter words, dogs, driving fast and Frank Sinatra. Her luminescent white skin, jet black hair, emerald green eyes, feline grace and dancer’s elegance was known to have stopped even the most hardened casting couch-abusing Hollywood producer dead in his tracks. She was thoroughly unimpressed with the movie business, considered acting not only silly but an embarrassing torment tolerated only to fund her extravagant lifestyle, was the prototype jet setting hedonist who, pursued by paparazzi, was constantly in the headlines for fighting and drinking and staying up all night. I’d say…
‘Never Brown in Town’ goes the golden sartorial rule, but as we all know, ‘Town’ only refers to London, leaving vast swathes of the country, and indeed other countries, in which to wear the clothing of the country is entirely appropriate. If there is not at least one garment made of tweed in your outfit, then you are not dressed for the country. Tweed, especially Harris Tweed, has protective qualities that will serve you while striding through the bracken, picking blackberries on the greensward or even while navigating the tides of nylon that swarm past us in every town and…
