A decade after Sebastian Horsley’s death, Gustav Temple recalls the decadent flash of dandyism that was extinguished on 17th June 2010 Dandyism is a setting sun; like the declining star, it is magnificent, without heat and full of melancholy. Charles Baudelaire, 1863 On this day ten years ago, Sebastian Horsley died aged 47 of a…
“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…
When m’learned colleague invited me to join him for a Chinese meal, my first thought was – isn’t at least one of us a little old to be gorging on cut-price fodder ordered in a dank Soho basement by pointing at lurid pictures on a laminated menu, to an oriental chap who makes a virtue…
Sophie’s steakhouse in Chelsea is one of those places that’s called ‘a London institution’, but then so was Bedlam, and nobody would think of going there any more. Yet the comparison is an unfair one. Sophie’s, which first opened in 2002, was ahead of the curve of the apparently never-ending Goodmans and Hawksmoors that came…
Dashing Tweeds make fabulous, flamboyant tweeds that fuse great British workmanship with innovative design and dandiacal flair. Neil Ridley and Horatio Scotney-Le Cheyne donned a selection of them to tackle a typical working day in the city All fabrics by Dashing Tweeds Individual items made by: Cycling Wear: Ready-to-wear cycle cape, cycle trousers and waistcoat,…
