Product Details
Valet is an independent print publication dedicated to classic menswear and timeless style. The discerning and sophisticated man doesn’t seek to be told what to do. He seeks the knowledge to empower his own decision making, and the confidence to know that those decisions are well informed. He doesn’t want to be told what to wear, but to be shown how to decide for himself. The man who is interested in being shown how to cultivate his own style, on his own terms and in his own language has no refuge in today’s landscape. Since the conception of conventional menswear magazines, much has changed. A new cohort of men has appeared and is growing. They are sophisticated, educated, and diverse. They are of different ages and political sensibilities, live in different countries, and speak different languages. Each issue of Valet is a beautiful object to keep and collect, because it is as uncompromising about its appearance as it is about the elements of style that it describes and the language in which it speaks to its readers. Not only does Valet celebrate timeless style through its written and visual expression, our very editorial objective is to publish content that shuns the ephemeral and focuses on the eternal. Articles are detailed historical, sociological, meandering, literary, poetic works. It is not news or gossip. It doesn’t age or expire. Valet Issue 1 started in a bar in St Petersburg about a year ago. Its founders worked for another prominent print magazine that took a subject and used it to explore the Big Themes of life. We wanted to do the same with menswear and classic style. In Issue 1, you will find a veritable banquet of original content, from history, philosophy, and literary criticism, to interviews, guides to cloth, and original fiction. In the first of two chapters, we have articles ranging from the history of the umbrella in life and literature, a guide to corduroy by Bernhard Roetzel, an ode to menswear for foul weather by Andrew Yamato of New & Lingwood, a breakdown of three suiting traditions, a conversation between a man and his valet about what best to wear in a downpour, an interview with Sean Crowley of Crowley Vintage in New York, several obscure photograph essays exploring such things as cloth in motion, the abstract notion of ‘Ruin’ coupled with extracts from the famous essayist Owen Barfield on the poetic soul of the word, stills from the film noir Une si jolie petite plage (1949), and more. The second chapter houses essays that take a number of esoteric approaches to menswear, exploring it through the lens of various fields of expertise, from history, philosophy, memoir, fiction, and academia from other disciplines. We have essays about menswear in the novels of Jane Austen, a literary analysis of a particular overcoat in a poem by Philip Larkin, a philosophical essay on how dressing well when it’s wet can foster social connection and even a transcendence from the confines of solitary consciousness, a hilarious and stentorian essay about what it’s like not to care about clothes by Peter Hitchens, and even original fiction, all inspired by menswear in one way or another. 20.5 x 14.5 cm.
