Branded Male

Standing up to "The Best of 2007"

It's the time of year when every newspaper and magazine in the known universe wheels out its "Best of 2007" list. In lieu of doing exactly the same thing, I decided to compare the culturati's lists of things I should have read, watched, listened to and worn with my actual choices. We rarely agreed.

BOOKS

I should have been reading: Man Gone Down, by Michael Thomas: "This first novel explores the personal histories behind four desperate days in a black writer's life." (The New York Times Best Books of 2007)

I actually read: The Janissary Tree, by Jason Goodwin. This superbly entertaining mystery set in the Ottoman Empire is Goodwin's first novel and the debut outing of the detective Yashim Togalu. Debonair and cultivated, Yashim just happens to be a eunuch. He's also an excellent cook, but I don't think that particular talent is related to his misfortune.

MOVIES

I should have seen: 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days. "Greeted with universal approval from the critics, an exceptional, masterful piece of film-making that combines social realism, political comment and nail-biting tension" (The Times, 100 Best Films of 2007)

I actually saw: The Lives of Others. By far my favourite film of the year, this masterpiece set in East Berlin before the fall of the Wall has it all: love, loyalty, betrayal, suspense, political sophistication and terrific, heart-stirring music.

MUSIC

I should have bought: M.I.A - Kala. "The Sri Lankan-born U.K. rapper's inspirations run all over the globe, with a Day-Glo sensibility rooted in the Native Tongues hip-hop of the Jungle Brothers and De La Soul, but with the political rage of Public Enemy." (Rolling Stone, The Top 50 Albums of 2007)

I actually bought: Stacey Kent - Breakfast on the Morning Tram. One of the finest jazz singers of our time interpreting lyrics by the novelist Kazuo Ishiguro: what's not to like? (Oh, and like anybody else with a soul, I got into Amy Winehouse, too.)

FASHION

I should have worn: Tim Hamilton. "Nominated for the CFDA's 2007 Swarovski Award for new talent, Hamilton is well on his way to becoming America's next great menswear guru." (Refinery 29, Best New Designers of 2007)

I actually wore: Made-to-measure suits from obscure Paris tailors. Shoes by Edward Green, StefanoBi and Santoni. Shirts from Thomas Pink and Eglé Bespoke. Spectacles from Oliver Peoples. Various items from Paul Smith and Agnès B. And surprisingly nice wool trousers from Benetton.

PRODUCT

I should have acquired: An iPhone. "Choosing the product of the year is usually a tricky business...Not in 2007, when there was only ever one serious candidate - Apple's iPhone." (International Herald Tribune)

I actually got: A Tag Heuer Carrera Automatic watch. I'm also in love with the Pilot Vanishing Point fountain pen that the Branded Female bought me for Christmas. Beautiful.

In fact, all this consumerism is making me feel queasy. I'm off for a walk around the city. One of the very best things to do, on any day of any year.

Boxing Day pleasures

Hardly anybody outside the British Isles - except, I think, in parts of the Commonwealth - uses the term Boxing Day to denote the 26th of December. The etymology of the term is obscure. Apparently, it was the day when lords of the manor presented hampers (or "boxes") of food and gifts to their staff. For many of us Brits, even if we're not wealthy landlords, it's the most enjoyable part of the entire Christmas season.

For one thing, the worst of the stress and gluttony of the period is over. You get to lie in bed, perhaps have lazy sex, consider and then abandon the idea of going to the cinema. You eat a light breakfast of fruit juice and cereal, happy in the knowledge that the main meal of the day will consist of bubble and squeak. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this delicious concoction, it basically involves crushing together and then frying the leftover vegetables and potatoes from Christmas dinner ("bubble and squeak" refers to the sound they make while cooking in the pan). You then serve this with cold turkey, cold pork and Branston pickle, preferably with a glass of Champagne.

Traditionally, Boxing Day morning is the time of The Hunt. Chasing and killing foxes is strictly off-limits these days, but in the grounds of manor houses, in narrow country lanes and outside remote inns all over the English countryside, you can still see gatherings of men and women in scarlet jackets and white breeches mounted on snorting, glossy horses, packs of foxhounds tumbling and yapping around their hooves. Somebody toots a horn, and they're off. The sight gives Boxing Day a cruel elegance.

For some, it's the start of the sales: perhaps a chance to pick up some items for their spring wardrobes at bargain basement prices. For others still, it's the moment to return unwanted gifts; a period of barter and exchange. Boxing Day is perhaps not the best day to work in a store.

Ideally, though, Boxing Day is the time to play all the CDs, leaf through all the books, admire the Playboy annual or the Pirelli calendar, and maybe watch a DVD or two. In the evening, you meet friends for a drink with your new cuff-links a glitter; or steal surreptitious glances at your ravishing new watch.

Boxing Day is the honeymoon of Christmas. It is one of the best days of the year, and all the sweeter for coming so near the end.

A suntan from Santa

This morning I received an unexpected early Christmas gift. The Branded Female took delivery of a package containing a bunch of men's skincare products, sent to her as a freebie from some PR agency or other. As she's unlikely to test them out for her own blog, she passed them on to me.

The products are from Laboratoires Didier Rase. One of them is an "Anti-Ageing Emulsion" (for some reason the French prefer the word "emulsion" to "cream", which gives me the unfortunate impression that I am about to paint my face), while the other is a "Bonne Mine Emulsion". In French "une bonne mine" (pronounced "meen") denotes a healthy complexion. In other words, what I've got is a bottle of fancy moisturizer and some fake tan cream.

No problem with the anti-wrinkle stuff: I don't have that many lines, and in any case I never expect these concoctions to work, so I slapped it on with abandon as I would any other moisturizer. The self-tan was a bit more daunting. I've always preferred to tan the natural way. In fact, I have an old-fashioned suspicion of the chemical variety. But as we're off to Marrakech after Christmas, which provides a good excuse for looking a bit bronzed, I decided to throw caution to the wind. I smeared the gloop on evenly, not forgetting my neck and ears, as instructed.

The question is, how will the experiment work out? Will I end up with a face like the side of a Florentine palazzo: off-ochre with hairline cracks? Or will I resemble a Hollywood matinee idol? Then there is the unnerving George Hamilton possibility.

So far, so nothing. My skin feels hydrated and faintly taught, but otherwise it remains distictly British (with perhaps a soupçon of olive thanks to my mixed Huguenot-Jewish ancestry).

The only noticeable difference came when the Branded Female kissed me on the cheek as a reward for making breakfast. "Hmm," she said, wrinkling her nose. "You smell funny."

Yes, but so does suntan lotion.

War of wordcraft

Hollywood and Manhattan both seem a very long way from here, but I've been following the writers' strike with interest. As a full-time writer myself for more than 20 years, I've always been irritated by the low wages and general lack of respect that my craft (and it is a craft) commands. Even marketing consultants, that strange breed of freelance opinion-givers, are able to charge higher fees than writers.

Cinema audiences tend to forget that if they've enjoyed a movie, it's due in large part to the writer. Yet it's the director who invariably gets all the media attention. The most telling thing about the writers' strike is that way that various supposed "comedians" - Jay Leno, David Letterman, Craig Ferguson, Conan O'Brien et al - are lost for words unless they have a team of writers behind them. Leno has no less than 12 writers, it transpires. I do a little stint on French TV once a week and - guess what? - I write the whole thing myself. I can barely imagine how witty I might be if I had 11 other guys writing with me. It makes me wonder what these American TV presenters actually get paid for. Pointing their suits at the camera and working their jaws, presumably.

But what the writers' strike has most effectively drummed into me is how cruelly underpaid I am. Under the original contract negotiated by the Writers' Guild, the major Hollywood movie studios must pay a minimum of US$106,000 for an original screeplay. Wanna know how much I got for my last book? It will never be that much, long tail or not. Reports also suggest that the average Hollywood writer takes home about US$200,000 a year.

Maybe I should move to Hollywood, like my friend Lisa Marks? Better still, maybe I should stop being grateful for the financial crumbs that magazine editors and advertising agencies dish out for my words and start demanding higher fees.

There's an early New Year's resolution for you.

Clubbed

Observation: It's perfectly acceptable to go to a nightclub when you're over the age of 35 - if you don't mind being mistaken for a drug dealer.

Carla Bruni for president

So it transpires that French President Nicolas Sarkozy is involved with slinky singer and model Carla Bruni. As he was (if you believe the press) cuckolded and then dumped by his glamorous wife Cécilia, this feels like vengeance. I couldn't resist a muffled "Good for him!" as I heard the news this morning.

But what does it mean for Brand France? Is it a positive thing that our President has a lifestyle that fuels gossip magazines? Or did we prefer the calmer, more senior Chirac version of politics? And more to the point, does anyone care?

My feeling is that the public cares, very much. America has never renounced its fascination for the Kennedy clan; and even Clinton had a soap operatic glow that played well to the crowd. France is supposed to be a decadent country - fashion, luxury goods, wine, a stately yet coquettish capital city - so it makes sense that we should have a president who appreciates fabulous women. The precedence for this goes all the way back to Napoleon and his various mistresses.

And while rumours of corruption still flutter around the avuncular Chirac, the ruthless, tabloid-pleasing Sarkozy has vowed to stay clean. His colourful private life may be mere sleight of hand, but it keeps him in the international press and brings some much-needed glitter back to the image of France. If I were a more cynical person, I might almost think it part of his strategy.

Blazing a trail in China

A little while ago, in a post about my recent visit to Brussels, I lamented in a light-hearted way the fact that young men didn't seem to feel the need to get dressed up for dinner any more. Why couldn't they invest in a decent jacket, at least?

This provoked an opportunistic but nicely worded email from Patrick, who handles publicity for a service called DressMonkey.com: "a luxury brand that doesn't cost a fortune because it cuts out all the hype". DressMonkey offers custom-made blazers, online, at a fraction of the price you'd pay for off-the-peg in most stores. My scepticism about this claim was tempered by the site itself, which seduced me with its unpretentious good humour. So when Patrick offered me an interview with the founders of DressMonkey, I accepted out of curiosity.

The business turns out to have been created by two young Americans living in China. Yes: all the jackets are made in China, which explains the rock-bottom prices. But instead of fretting about the potentially negative image of Chinese goods, the guys at DressMonkey have turned this into an advantage. Their names are Jeff Horowitz and Richard Colegate Dale III: "Excuse the WASP mouthful," says the latter, adding that his friends call him Coley.

With his background, Coley admits that he could have ended up in a cushy job in finance, but instead he took a different tack and studied Chinese. During a study abroad program he met Jeff. "It's kind of a trend now to end up working in China, but at the time we were ahead of the curve," says Coley.

After stint working for Accenture in China, Coley became frustrated with the office ambience and began thinking about setting up his own business. He joined forces with Jeff, and they were inspired by their friend Adam Williams: "DJ and blazer connoisseur." They discovered that by working with the right suppliers and micro-managing the relationship, they could provide high quality custom-made blazers to online shoppers. "We really got some pretty amazing deals," says Coley. "The hardest part was getting a foot in the door at the fabric mills because we were buying 100 metres of cloth instead of 100,000."

The next challenge was to set up the site itself: especially the form that enables users to enter their measurements and special requests, thus turning basic templates into dream garments. Now, though, DressMonkey seems to have got it right.

"We're aiming at a 25-to-35-year-old customer who probably works in an office," says Coley. "I find that there are two extremes: those who order the basic blazer and are happy with it, and those who go for the ultimate customisation: the cut, lining, stitching and all the little details. Some of them are great designers. They come up with combinations that you think will never work, but when the blazer comes back from the factory it looks amazing."

The service has been up and running since June, so it has yet to go into profit. But Coley is hopeful that satisfied customers - of whom there are already quite a few - will spread the word. "I don't think the fact that we're based in China is a disadvantage in terms of our image," he says. "It's about time people realised that 90 per cent of the clothes they wear are made either here or in Vietnam."

The name DressMonkey sums up the site's playful, somewhat cheeky air. But there's nothing facetious about the end product. Basic models come in tweed, camelhair, wool, corduroy, velvet, cotton and linen, with a starting price of under US$200 (and we all know how little that is these days) and a seemingly endless array of customisation options (the number of buttons, patch or slash pockets, epaulettes, you name it).

Personally, I'm going for the nailhead tweed in a fairly classic style. DressMonkey even offered me a press discount, but I refused on the grounds that two young guys running their own business need the extra cash even more than I do.

Absinthe of malice

The last time I drank absinthe was at a club in Soho (London) whose name now escapes me. Whether that's because it was a few years back or because I was already too far gone to form memories at that point is open to question. But I was intrigued to read in Advertising Age that absinthe is currently being marketed as a trendy drink in the United States, much as it was in Britain at the time of my bar crawl (literal, I fear) in the late 1990s.

If you're into living dangerously, absinthe has much to recommend it. A favoured drink of Oscar Wilde, it's said to have contributed to the slow death of Modigliani (among other illicit substances, notably hashish and ether) and to the madness of Van Gogh, perhaps even provoking the famous ear-slicing incident (not the whole ear, contrary to popular mythology - but a sizeable chunk of it). Hemingway, that inveterate boozer, was inevitably a fan, once writing in his diary: "Got tight on absinthe last night. Did knife tricks."

You may either be pleased or disappointed to learn that only low levels of thujone, the hallucinogenic chemical deriving from wormwood (artemisia absinthium, the plant that gave absinthe its name) survive in current varieties. This is hardly surprising, as it's what got absinthe banned in France in 1915. These days absinthe is a herbal, vaguely medicinal, perfectly legal yet undeniably potent tipple. The variety of brands available include Kubler (the most common in the US) from Switzerland and several from France, including La Fée, Libertine, Partisane and a Pernod-branded offering. More amusingly, Goth rocker Marilyn Manson has launched his own brand - called Mansinthe - in association with Swiss producer Matter-Luginbühl.

So will absinthe take off in the States, as the marketers of Kubler hope? It's notable that on my various return trips to London, I've never seen anybody ordering one. That could be because, I'm afraid to say, most absinthe tastes unspeakably vile. And also because it takes a lot of guts to order a drink known as "la fée verte" - the green fairy. I bet that's one slogan the marketers of today's absinthe won't be resurrecting.

Old, gifted and bloke: what to buy men for Xmas

I quite like the verb "gifting" - as in, the act of giving somebody a gift - which seems to have appeared in the English language only recently, courtesy of the United States. Like everyone else, I'll be doing a hell of a lot of gifting very soon. And for some reason, I find men harder to buy for than women. When I begin my Christmas shopping, my mother and sister are always sorted out much more quickly than my father (unless I take the easy way out and just buy him lots of books).

Apart from the latest crime potboilers, then, what are the best things to buy men of a certain age for Christmas? The old cliché would have it that men are always given socks and ties. Personally I never mind receiving socks, because you can never have too many of them and they're not something you spend a great deal of time shopping for yourself. And if they are a little dashing and colourful - from Burlington, let's say, or Paul Smith - all the better. Ties are trickier items, because here you're moving into the territory of personal taste. Your idea of a flamboyant pattern may have your father worrying that he's going to look as though he's vomited each time he wears your gift.

For similar reasons, scarves are another sensitive area, although you probably can't go wrong with solid, masculine colours like navy, deep burgundy or camel. Bright red is a little too Father Christmassy to appeal beyond January, while white is elegant but impractical.

In fact, any form of clothing is touchy. I don't think I've ever liked one sweater or shirt that anybody has ever bought me. It's always an alarming moment, because it suddenly feels as if your loved ones don't really know you at all. "Don't they notice what I wear the rest of the year?" you think. "I mean, have they ever seen me in Fair Isle?" So the golden rule here is: keep the reciept.

How about technology? Men love gadgets, of course, which are to us what this season's handbag is to women. But boys' toys don't always go down that well with the more mature man. My father never really got into his MP3 player, for example. And joke gadgets like key rings that answer when you whistle are only fun for about an hour.

I went through a phase of giving exotic presents from abroad. Over the years, my father has been forced to feign delight at such items as a vintage mahjong set from Hong Kong, a Viking recipe book from Stockholm and a fez from Istanbul. Fortunately, I realised that I was simply showing off about my globetrotting and in fact he'd much prefer a bottle of decent claret from closer to home.

This year, I came to the conclusion that you can't go wrong with classic accessories. You know: gloves, wallets, key-fobs, silk handkerchiefs, leather-bound address books and diaries. These are the kind of things you hardly ever buy for yourself, but are always happy to receive.

At least, I hope so. Otherwise I will be a victim of that other neologism: re-gifting. That's when your gift is gratefully received, then hastily re-wrapped and given to someone else.

One lump or two?

A witty line from the book Le Portrait, Pierre Assouline's exceptional novel about the Rothschild banking dynasty:  "A true gentleman is a man who uses sugar tongs even when he is alone."