Letter from the Founder

By the time you read this, The Rake will have celebrated its 10th anniversary and I will have moved past my 49th-year mile marker, compelled inexorably towards my mid century. Looking back on a magazine that was created to champion the idea that men get better as they get older, how does The Rake and the guy who created it hold up to scrutiny a decade later?

Well, let’s discuss the magazine first. When the first issue of was unveiled, I was quite proud of it, despite the fact it was something of a flop in trend-driven Singapore. We championed long-form journalism at a time when communication had been pared back to, we held discourse on classic style rather than allowing ourselves to be swept up in the caprices of trend and fashion. And in many ways ’s was a message of hope — that life flourished as a man moved into his forties, fifties or sixties; that internal content, as manifested in manners, was as important as a man’s ability to artfully stage his pocket-handkerchief; and finally that elegance, intelligence and wit, rather than frat-boy banality, should be the virtues a man aspires to.