ISSUE 107
SPRING 2021
EXPAND YOUR MIND, REFINE YOUR WARDROBE
Josephine Baker “I wasn’t really naked. I simply didn’t have any clothes on. A violinist had a violin, a painter his palette. All I had was myself. I was the instrument that I must care for”
ROARING TWENTIES Are we set for another golden age of music, dancing and hedonism?
PHARAOHS AND FLAPPERS Ancient Egypt’s influence on the fashion and design of the 1920s
THE MARX BROTHERS The winning formula of the zany siblings
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ISSUE 107
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THE CHAP MANIFESTO 1 THOU SHALT ALWAYS WEAR TWEED. No other fabric says so defiantly: I am a man of panache, savoir-faire and devil-may-care, and I will not be served Continental lager beer under any circumstances. 2 THOU SHALT NEVER NOT SMOKE. Health and Safety “executives” and jobsworth medical practitioners keep trying to convince us that smoking is bad for the lungs/heart/skin/eyebrows, but we all know that smoking a bent apple billiard full of rich Cavendish tobacco raises one’s general sense of well-being to levels unimaginable by the aforementioned spoilsports. 3 THOU SHALT ALWAYS BE COURTEOUS TO THE LADIES. A gentleman is never truly seated on an omnibus or railway carriage: he is merely keeping the seat warm for when a lady might need it. Those who take offence at being offered a seat are not really Ladies.
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4 THOU SHALT NEVER, EVER, WEAR PANTALOONS DE NIMES. When you have progressed beyond fondling girls in the back seats of cinemas, you can stop wearing jeans. 5 THOU SHALT ALWAYS DOFF ONE’S HAT. Alright, so you own a couple of trilbies. Good for you - but it’s hardly going to change the world. Once you start actually lifting them off your head when greeting passers-by, then the revolution will really begin. 6 THOU SHALT NEVER FASTEN THE LOWEST BUTTON ON THY WAISTCOAT. Look, we don’t make the rules, we simply try to keep them going. This one dates back to Edward VII, sufficient reason in itself to observe it. 7 THOU SHALT ALWAYS SPEAK PROPERLY. It’s really quite simple: instead of saying “Yo, wassup?”, say “How do you do?” 8 THOU SHALT NEVER WEAR PLIMSOLLS WHEN NOT DOING SPORT. Nor even when doing sport. Which you shouldn’t be doing anyway. Except cricket. 9 THOU SHALT ALWAYS WORSHIP AT THE TROUSER PRESS. At the end of each day, your trousers should be placed in one of Mr. Corby’s magical contraptions, and by the next morning your creases will be so sharp that they will start a riot on the high street. 10 THOU SHALT CULTIVATE INTERESTING FACIAL HAIR. By interesting we mean moustaches, or beards with a moustache attached.
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CONTENTS 8 1920S V 2020S
How do the Roaring Twenties compare to the current decade?
10 SARTORIAL LOCKDOWN
We asked readers to submit evidence of the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on their wardrobes
16 ASK THE CHAP
‘Wisbeach’ ponders queries from readers on matters sartorial
FEATURES 22 INTERVIEW: ANDREW WILSON
Gustav Temple meets the first biographer of Patricia Highsmith to discuss the author in the year of her centenary
32 A NNA MAY WONG
Sunday Swift on the first Chinese actress to break into Hollywood
37 B OHÈME SAUVAGE
ur German correspondents Marie de Winter and Ferdinand Sturm O rush into the nightlife of the Roaring Twenties
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SPRING 2021
84 SARTORIAL FEATURES 44 ADJUSTABLE COSTUME
An interview with Mr. Kakuzi Kodaka, founder of the Japanese reproduction vintage menswear retailer
54 GET THE LOOK
The Roaring Twenties
58 P HARAOHS AND FLAPPERS
Egyptologists John and Colleen Darnell examine the connection between ancient Egypt and the fashion and interiors styles of the 1920s
64 J AKE’S THING
Liam Jefferies meets the made-to-order menswear specialist bringing mid-century Ivy stylings into the 21st century
68 CLARE BRADLEY
Minerva Miller discusses practical glamour and the lost art of mending with 2020’s Sewing Bee champion
76 GREY FOX COLUMN
David Evans consults two fashion experts to look at how styles of the 1920s were influenced by world events
LONGER FEATURES 84 JOSEPHINE BAKER
Chris Sullivan traces the sensational career of the girl from St Louis who became the reigning queen of 1920s Paris
94 THE MARX BROTHERS
The unique impact of four New York siblings on the early world of talkie cinema and their continuing legacy
102 W ORLD WHISKY
Gustav Temple takes a voyage around the world via five single malt whiskies that do not come from Scotland
106 COOKING FOR CHAPS
Don’t be scared of making a soufflé, says Nicole Drysdale, also providing further recipes for a perfect social occasion
Cover photo: © Rex Features/Shutterstock
ISSUE 107
110 B RIGHT YOUNG CITY
Chris Sullivan on how the end of WWI and the Spanish Flu pandemic brought about the birth of nightclub culture in 1920s London
120 E RIC RAVILIOUS’S HELICOPTER
Gustav Temple heads for the Sussex hills in search of the landscape of Eric Ravilious
REVIEWS 128 L ISA HILTON
Alexander Larman meets the author of several books about femmes fatales to find out how she deals with reviewers identifying her with her subjects
132 BOOK REVIEWS
The third volume of Rupert Everett’s memoirs, plus books on London clubs, Patricia Highsmith and an Agatha Christie homage
136 BERTRAM FIDDLE
Darcy Sullivan discovers the weird world of Seb Burnett and his most chappish game character
142 HOTELS: A USER’S GUIDE
Torquil Arbuthnot provides a handy guide to each type of hotel accommodation, from the socially dangerous to the mercifully unaffordable
148 THE CHAP TAROT
Pandora Harrison presents the fourth instalment of her series of Chap Tarot cards and how they can illuminate the curious
152 TALKING PICTURES TV
Sarah Cronin-Stanley on the television channel she launched six years ago with her father, which now reaches 3.5 million viewers a week
157 ANTIQUES
How Bakelite first came into production in the 1920s and its influence on fashion for several succeeding decades
162 CROSSWORD
With all this talk of the ‘Roaring 2020s’, how do the third decades of each century compare so far?
Spanish flu pandemic February 1918-April 1920. It didn’t actually start in Spain, but due to Spain’s neutrality in WWI their press wasn’t censored and it was first reported there.
Prohibition legislates in the US against the production, importation, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages from 1920-1933. Result: speakeasies.
Coronavirus pandemic starts spreading widely in March 2020. The true facts about the virus are reported accurately by people on social media.
Lockdown legislates against the purchase of alcoholic beverages from pubs, even as takeaways. Result: a different kind of speakeasy.
Mickey Mouse is created in Walt Disney Animation Studios in 1928. The goal of the character is to be a fun guy who gets up to amusing adventures.
Henry Ford introduces the Ford Model A in 1927 at $385, so that “no man making a good salary will be unable to own one and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God’s great open spaces”.
Disney announces new Mickey Mouse Funhouse series in 2021: “The goal of the series is to demonstrate imaginative play for children and encourage age-appropriate themes like social and emotional lessons about friendship and creativity”.
Elon Musk introduces the Tesla Cybertruck in 2022 at $70,000, with bulletproof windows that cannot be smashed with a sledgehammer.
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Oxford Bags nearly cause riots on the streets when they reach a staggering 44-inch width on the hem. Questions are asked in Parliament.
American Gangsters have stylish nicknames like Al ‘Scarface’ Capone, George ‘Bugs’ Moran, Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano, and Jack ‘Legs’ Diamond.
Albanian gangsters operating in the UK have less stylish nicknames like Albert ‘Diti’ Memia, and they don’t dress so nicely.
Skinny Jeans achieve staggeringly narrow proportions, leading to cases of infertility in young males. Questions are asked in Parliament.
Charles Lindbergh flies the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight in 1927.
Sigmund Freud’s influential paper The Ego & The Id is published in 1923.
Nobody has flown on any transatlantic flights except Tom Cruise, when he returned the US after expressing disgust at crew members not obeying social distancing rules: “We are creating thousands of jobs, you motherf—ers. I don’t ever want to see it again. Ever!”.
Madonna releases a heartfelt lockdown message in 2020 from a rose petal-filled bathtub, “It’s the great equaliser and what’s terrible about it is what’s great about it.”
Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin during the 1920s, after preventing the growth of bacteria when accidentally contaminating an experiment.
The silent movie era ends with the first talking picture released, The Jazz Singer in 1927.
AstraZeneca creates a vaccine for coronavirus after accidentally receiving £65.5 million from the government.
First silent version of a James Bond film released, No Time To Die, delayed from cinema screens three times so far since April 2020.
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Sartorial
Get The Look
ROARING TWENTIES Digby Fairfax delves into various retail outlets to assemble a wardrobe suitable for a 1920s chap
FOOTWEAR The ideal twenties style is a button-up boot constructed to resemble boots with spats. These are only made by a few bootmakers and are therefore rather pricy. Those from Adjustable Costume (adjustablecostume. jp) will set you back 96,580 Yen, or around £650. Stacy Adams in the US (stacyadams. com) makes a more basic version, the Madison Spectator Spat Cap Toe Boot for $135. A cheaper way to achieve the look is with a pair of plain black ankle boots and a pair of spats from Darcy Clothing (darcyclothing.com) for £65. The other footwear option is a pair of corespondent shoes, available from Shipton & Heneage for £199.
£65.00
£199.00
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£395.00
£124.00
SHIRT Separate collars are de rigeur for the 1920s, as the attached collar was in its infancy. Darcy Clothing make every style imaginable, as well as the collarless shirts to go with them, while Simon James Cathcart remove the fiddly insertion of collar studs with their Goji and Regatta Blue Club Collar Shirt at £124, made from 100% cotton sateen. A spearpoint collar is another choice, with many colours available, including marine blue and navy striped ribbed cotton with mother-of-pearl buttons, from Some Like it Holy at £59.
JACKET The three-piece suit was the most common suiting style of the 1920s, and Simon James Cathcart have nailed it with their Charcoal Check Eden Jacket (£395), available with matching trousers and waistcoat. Peaked lapels on a single-breasted jacket seals the deal for the 1920s look. This jacket would also work for those who prefer to don floppy Oxford Bags (see next page).
£99.00
BOATING BLAZER For a more relaxed, outdoorsy look, head to vintage suppliers such as Savvy Row (savvyrow.co.uk) for an authentic 1920s boating blazer. The new version, in the club colours of your choosing, is available from Walters of Oxford, with prices varying from £200 to £350. The budget option, though veering more towards a mod look, comes from Atom Retro (atomretro.com) at only £99, tailored by Madcap England. £199.00 Paired with the right accessories, this will cut the mustard for a 1920s style, as long as you avoid the matching trousers at all costs.
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Egyptology
PHARAOHS AND FLAPPERS Egyptologists John & Colleen Darnell examine the connection between ancient Egypt and the fashion and interiors styles of the 1920s
Photos of John and Colleen at the Armour-Stiner Octagon House by Rose Callahan
C
leopatra VII Philopator, the last scion of an ultimately bloody and incestuous dynasty that began with Alexander the Great’s invasion of Egypt, committed suicide in 30 BCE, so ancient historians claimed, with the bite of an asp. Yet prior to her death she was both an astute and capable queen – her Egyptian Horus Name was ‘Great One, Lady of Perfection, She who is Effective of Council’ – and a woman who truly knew how to party. Were she to be transported two millennia into the future, she would have felt at home among the strong-willed, boundary destroying, flamboyant flappers of the 1920s, and perhaps have enjoyed dancing along to her eponymous 1917 tune Cleopatra Had a Jazz Band. Five years before Howard Carter made the sensational discovery of the treasure-filled tomb of Tutankhamun, Cleopatra’s ‘Jazz Band’ in her castle on the Nile was winning over Mark Anthony with
“The treasures of Tutankhamun’s tomb – “gold, everywhere the glint of gold”—defied description, while the New York Times reported: “There are no figures that can estimate it. There are few minds that can conceive it.” But that didn’t stop everyone from trying to capitalize on it” her syncopated harmony. But such wild imaginings of the early jazz age may not have happened, were it not for another outsized historical character: Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1798, Napoleon led a
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Biography
Josephine Baker Chris Sullivan traces the sensational career of the dirt poor girl from St Louis who went on to become the reigning queen of 1920s Paris and an international star
T
he sun was shining as best it could in Paris on 15th April, 1975. 20,000 people lined the streets to watch Joséphine Baker’s funeral procession. Having already been awarded the Croix de Guerre, the Medal of the Resistance and named a Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur for her part in the Resistance, she was honoured with a 21gun salute, making her the first American woman to be buried in France with military honours. Joséphine Baker was a French icon, the poster girl for Les Années Folles or Roaring Twenties, who symbolised everything that was fine and admirable about her adopted country’s greatest decade. She was born Freda Josephine McDonald, in the red-light district of St. Louis on 3rd June 1906.
“Gifts arrived every hour – jewellery, flowers, shoes, hats, dresses, all of which Joséphine left in a big pile on the floor underneath a sleeping pig called Albert. When a friend suggested she hang them up, she said, ‘Oh no, they’re going to take them away and bring new ones tomorrow!’”
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Harpo
Cinema
The Marx Brothers Over 90 years ago, four New York brothers changed the parameters of comedy forever. Olivier Woodes-Farquharson explores their unique impact on the early world of talkie cinema and their continuing legacy
W
hen moving my family to Manhattan on a diplomatic posting a few years ago, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office allocated for us a spacious threebedroom apartment on the 28th floor of a typically vast block on the Upper East Side. More specifically, it was at the corner of East 93rd Street and 2nd Avenue, and despite having never actually visited New York until then, East 93rd Street rang the vaguest of bells in my usually dependable memory. A quick stroll through the mind palace and I stumbled across it. I was giddy in realising that I was to live on the very street where my lifelong heroes the Marx Brothers had been brought up.
“Despite Harpo’s silence, he is the beating heart of the movies, even when he is chasing whichever pretty blonde girl is nearest, honking his horn in blissful innocence, because he clearly would have no idea what to do next if ever he caught her”
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Nightlife
Bright Young City Chris Sullivan on how the end of WWI and the Spanish Flu pandemic brought about the birth of nightclub culture in 1920s London
“Nicknamed ‘flappers’ (derived from the way dancers of the Charleston flapped their arms), they were far more controversial than the later rockers, hippies or punk rockers, and caused an even greater hullabaloo”
T
he 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 Age or the Roaring Twenties, so-called ‘respectable’ women did not frequent late night venues, were not allowed into pubs and were not expected to trip the light fantastic. Their position in life was to make babies and clean the house. For the most part, the nearest thing to a nightclub prior to WWI was a barn dance or a pub with a pianist. The roar of the twenties was not just heard in the UK but all over the world, as folk rose up from the intolerable misery of the First World War, which had left 20 million dead and some 21 million wounded. Hostilities had ended on 11th November 1918, only to be replaced by another equally insidious confrontation: Spanish Flu originated in Kansas City in March 1918 and was exported to Europe by US soldiers. First reported in a Spanish press unhindered by the US propaganda machine, the US brazenly attempted to shift the blame by sneakily naming it the ‘Spanish’ Flu.
For most of us, the realities of a global pandemic were unknown in the 21st century, but now we can easily empathize with those in the 1920s who had suffered the greatest pandemic in history and how eager they were to dress up, fly out and finally get back on the lash. The result was the greatest global explosion of hedonism, art, music, style and libertarianism that had ever been witnessed. Major cities across the world went doolally: Berlin, New York, Chicago, Paris, Vienna and, last but not least, London, took the bulls by their wilting horns and gave them a damn good thrashing. And for once it was young women who led the way. In 1918 the Representation of the People Act was passed in the UK, which allowed women over the age of 30 to vote. This was only 2/3 of the female population. Meanwhile, on 18th August, 1920, the 19th Amendment was passed in the US that allowed all white female US citizens over the age of 21 to vote. Understandably, young women in the UK were furious. Thus, as an act of defiance, many aped their American counterparts by bobbing their hair, wearing shorter skirts, smoking,
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Tr ave l
HOTELS – A USER'S GUIDE Torquil Arbuthnot recalls the days when one could billet at establishments that ranged from the highly suitable to the socially dangerous, and he presents a handy guide to each type of hotel accommodation
S
adly 2020 was a year mainly of Colditz-style internment, with very little opportunity to leave one’s abode for a well-earned holiday or even to flee one’s creditors. One can only fondly remember evenings spent in the Hotel Splendiferoso on the Cap d’Antibes or wet weekends in a B&B in Rhyl. But once the quarantine is lifted and the bucket-andspade retrieved from the pawnshop, the Chap will want to saunter forth on his summer hols. As there are many types of hotel and accommodation available, this is a short guide to hostelries for the discerning traveller.
THE SEASIDE B&B The British seaside B&B is not known for its comfort but, like a Land Rover or a pork pie, does the job in an admirably no-nonsense fashion. True, the hot water will only be available for several minutes a day, there are a list of rules that would not be out of place in a German prison, and the management will steal the guests’ towels. But the bed will be comfortable and the breakfast magnificent. Since any holiday to the British seaside is bound to be ‘rained off’, a Chap will find himself spending time in the Residents’ Lounge. This
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The Seaside B&B
room will be dominated by a vast colour television perpetually tuned in to a documentary about meerkats. The bookshelves will contain sets of Mr. Alistair MacLean’s penny-shockers and Miss Georgette Heyer’s bodice-rippers. Although there are some board games in a cupboard, one will find oneself almost reaching the end of the game before realising that some vital piece is missing. The other guests will include a company director and his ‘secretary’, a party of spelunkers from Burton-on-Trent, and a family which considers itself too posh for Butlins. The Country Inn
THE COUNTRY INN Sadly the country inn is nowadays peopled by quacking lawyers, BBC producers and other riff-raff from London, all clothed via the Boden catalogue. The colourful locals in the public bar will play up to these interlopers, speaking rural dialects garnered from the popular televisual entertainment Poldark, and overcharging for botched work on their holiday cottages. But on the plus side there will be industrial-strength local cider on tap, and a shove ha’penny board in the corner. The inn will either be decorated with agricultural implements that look like instruments of medieval torture, or seafarers’ flotsam and jetsam. The food will be impressively solid, as will the gravy.
The bedroom will be up in the eaves and, instead of a welcome chocolate on the pillow, there will be a packet of pork scratchings. During the night one’s sleep will be disturbed by mysterious bumps and noises, possibly from smugglers evading the Revenue men.
THE BOUTIQUE HOTEL Everything in this establishment will be wincingly ironical or post-modernist, and the wallpaper will induce a headache. There will be ‘curated’ art on the walls, ie daubs by local art students. It will
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