What Chelsea College of Art & Design Has Turned Me Into

Hand rendered interior elevation by BON, 2013

If I have an ethos as a budding interior designer, I am, like the belated and late modernist American architect Paul Rudolph, concerned with what he considered “the unique element of architecture” – the birth of “living, breathing dynamic spaces of infinite variety. ” Or to put it another way, it is about, as Willheim Dudok once stated, “this serious and beautiful game of space” 

Inevitably, it is a rational approach to space planning that my studies at Chelsea have begun to hone, along with the freedom to channel my interests in storage solutions, theatrical minimalism, colour schemes, illustration and 20^th century French design into my project work. Indeed, many spaces may impress or intrigue, but they are ultimately at a remove if they do not feel inviting or habitable. And as I progress, I hope to master the ways in which everything, especially the inhabitant, can be ensconced in its rightful place

- Excerpted from my designer statement for Chelsea College of Art & Design's 2014 Student Catalogue

The Mode Parade eBay Clear-out Again

On offer this week: Junya Watanabe MAN/Comme des Garcons, Burberry Prorsum, a Sony NEX E-Mount camera lens and a few vintage Hermes ties. Link below

Peruse as you please

The Mode Parade eBay Clear-out

It was about time. Items currently on offer include boots by Paul Smith and R.M. Williams, jackets by Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche and Dries van Noten and other things from Emanuel Ungaro and Fred Perry x Comme des Garçons SHIRT

Please peruse here

The Khalil Musa Portrait Shoot

As mentioned in my event coverage, Khalil Musa was the photographer-in-residence for I am Dandy: The Return of the Elegant Gentleman's coming out party at Gieves & Hawkes last week

Khalil is the sort of portrait shooter that goes for sharpness and flash in the studio; in concert with his direction, his results show the confident sides of his subjects - whether they are or aren't, I suspect - whilst rendering their differing personalities and appearances in bold, bright strokes. Put simply, his work is worthy of several advertising campaigns, which I mean in the best way possible

To whit, if The Balvenie are looking for a new ambassador, I would like to think that this shot sets out my candidacy. But who knows? They might not care for my shirt

I am Dandy: The Return of the Elegant Gentleman x The Last Tuesday Society, 21/09/13

   Next up for the dynamic duo of Rose Callahan and Natty Adams after the two successful carousels of tailoring and drink that were London's launches for I am Dandy is a 9pm talk on the book and the topic tomorrow evening at The Last Tuesday Society's The Orphanage Masked Ball tomorrow evening. It is held at The Adam Street Private Member's Club off The Strand, London. Apparently, debauchery follows directly afterwards

   Rose and Natty have some previous form at this sort of thing from a year ago in their stomping grounds of New York City, and as I know them to be garrulous and possessed of an awareness that guides their work rather deftly, they should leave a few quotes, anecdotes and admissions to stick in the mind. Indeed, on Tuesday night's Gieves & Hawkes signing party, it was Rose who summed up the labour of love that has taken her from her The Dandy Portraits blog to co-authoring its coffee table-bound evolution with a quote that encapsulates the personal ideals of at least some of the book's subjects: "Beauty and elegance matter"

   It will be my first time at the LTS rodeo and I haven't a mask to wear, other than what I let the world see. Still, if there's dancing to be done, rest assured of one thing: I'm your Huckleberry

I am Dandy: The Return of the Elegant Gentleman - Take Savile Row

Photograph by the delightful Kira of Scarlet Fever Footwear. L-R: Guy Hills, Winston Chesterfield, Robin Dutt, Dickon Edwards, Ray Frensham, Rose Callahan, Michael "Atters" Attree, Zack MacLeod Pinsent, Natty Adams, Tony Sylvester, your author, Gustav Temple and James Sherwood. In absentia: Nick Foulkes and Amechi Ihenacho

   For every human alive or dead who has considered the maxim "Be yourself" a trite speed ramp on the fast track to a lifetime of misunderstanding and bullying, there are those who have fashioned idiosyncrasy and self-editing into an armour against the world, a means to traverse that of others, or a charismatic gateway to bring different people into theirs. Combined with a particular grasp of tailored masculine presentation and a dash of absinthe (to start with), it is those latter three categories that comprise the myriad subjects of Rose Callahan (photographer; The Dandy Portraits and Rarebit Productions) and Nathaniel Adams (writer; Lives of The Dandies and The Chap)'s photographic text I am Dandy: The Return of the Elegant Gentleman, released this autumn by Berlin's Gestalten. Apparently, there was room for the additional category of "Dashing Dork," because thanks to a recommendation from my dear pal Winston Chesterfield, Rose and Natty readily incorporated your author into the book, with a generous page allowance, several captures highlighting Rose's shutterbug talent and a molecular surgery-level editing of my ramblings that may have taken Natty 72 hours, not including naps

   Last night, the UK-based subjects took the stage alongside the creators at Gieves & Hawkes, No. 1 Savile Row, to see in the first of the book's series of international launches, before impelling a minor frenzy of mutual tie straightening and fabric comparisons. I kid. If anything, as a launchpad for the blatantly spreading fame of Callahan and Adams, and an opportunity for me to double fist with a champagne flute in one hand and a tumbler of delightfully caramel-accented The Balvenie scotch in the other, the night's success was a prepotent portent of the action that will follow in Paris and New York over the next 4 weeks. And through that process, two special copies of the book will have been signed by practically every man in it. More will be made (out) of that in time, I know

   In-between sampling from the abundant generosity of our hosts, our publisher and our sponsors - The Balvenie; Reyka Vodka, which I'm tempted to use in my next Gimlet cocktail batches for unexpected guests - I took the opportunity to acquaint and re-acquaint myself with a number of folk that I've connected with via The Mode Parade over the years - Davide Taub (G&H's masterful head cutter); rising tailoring star Michael Browne; Shoe Snob Justin Fitzpatrick; tiemaker Shaun Gordon; my drinking buddy, Giant Beard - and those I would have eventually encountered the more I shed my self-professed avoidance of scenes: the other British-based subjects of the book, around half of whom I've already befriended or met - nonpareil party host Guy Hills of Dashing Tweeds; diarist and master of arcane recall Dickon Edwards (clad, as expected in his "Double Dandy" look: one of the late Sebastian Horsley's velvet suits); "gentlethug" punker Tony Sylvester of Turbonegro; The Chap founder Gustav Temple, whom I've even written for (to say nothing of the real world friends who lent their support in person). I particularly enjoyed reuniting with Rose's black watch-clad beau and husband, Kelly Desmond Bray, and meeting Victoriana Boy Wonder, Zack MacLeod Pinsent, with whom I shared the most effete fist bump in history, what with us both wearing chamois dress gloves as we did so

   Also in attendance was the quietly sagacious Stewart Gibson, correspondent for Dandyism.net - experiences with which loom large in I am Dandy's profiles - who has already written up his bemused impressions of last night's function. Intriguingly, his choicest descriptor - "representatives of a more considered contemporary dandyism" - was reserved for Winston and me, a generous stand to take on the appearance of a man wearing a bold Holliday & Brown archive print shirt and a Spider-Man pin in his buttonhole

Your author posing for the main event photographer, Khalil Musa, via Stylesight's coverage of the book party

   My actual thoughts on I am Dandy, having lived with my complimentary copy over the past week, and indeed on dandyism itself are topics for a later day. For now, I have to bask. Not in the prestige of being part of the project. Not even in the faintly ridiculous filmed interview I gave Gestalten five minutes after the bar was finally drained. And certainly not in having the spotlight shone on me and these other interesting individuals for one soggy London evening, knowing all the while who really merited the attention and feeling happiest that way. It's in the fact that this book is allowed to exist in this very world at this very time and people will care for it

   And also because in spite of ending the night in a tiny dive bar that was once a brothel (was it bigger on the inside in those days?) and being shot serrated daggers by a jittery man whose girlfriend gave me a friendly peck on the cheek, my head has remained pain free all day. Though that may be the only part I've gotten wrong

Not Dead

Just Working. I have to justify that "aspiring interior designer" tag somehow

Design Lust Object No. 7 - Paul Evans Furniture

The Cityscape sofa, circa the 1970s, by the American Paul Evans (1931 - 1987), idiosyncratic sculptor, artist and furniture designer

This is elegance writ grandiose; a piece such as this may do one a little good in a shy and retiring, minimalist, white interior. But really, it needs a natural-look veneer (perhaps something in stone or a caramel/wood colour), abstract art, large windows, a marble and metal coffee table, a fully stocked liqour cabinet and (to invoke the Beastie Boys) a handy "Bowie" mirror

At Home With Diana and the Vreelands

   This is how one's family should be seen behind their closed doors