Making More Than The California Man: An Interview With Jean-Pierre Mastey of Baxter of California And Baxter Finley (Los Angeles I’m Yours)
““We sort of trail blazed a new path of distribution for male grooming. Nobody’s really doing this yet. We specialize in selling traditional men’s grooming products that our competitors sell to Sephora or Nordstrom or other beauty chains you’d expect. When I thought about myself as a customer, I don’t go into those places. I avoid them at all costs. I don’t like going into these stores and dealing with people rushing at me, basically trying to sell me something. I like to go to lifestyle stores. If I’m going to buy men’s grooming products and accessories, I’m going to go to the same place I buy my shirts and where I buy my denim: there’s no reason why they can’t coexist and be under the same roof.””
Three Types of Chinos (Put This On)
“Khaki chinos are not, as they say, just khaki chinos. Though they’re always casual, they come in different flavors of informality, and it’s good to be sensitive to these differences when you’re choosing the right pair to wear for the day.”
Style Icon: President John F Kennedy (Mr. Porter)
“With his effortless American elegance and confident carefree simplicity, the tousled hair, the open convertibles and sunglasses, the photos on the beach or yacht, and the ties lightly flapping in the wind, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy seemed about as unselfconscious as a person can be. He definitely had the cool factor. He flirted with Savile Row for a brief time when his father was US Ambassador to the Court of St James’s from 1938 to 1940, seen in photos of the period sporting elegantly cut double-breasted suits à la the Duke of Kent, but JFK was for most of his life what he was: an Irish American, New England Eastern Establishment elite. Born in a suburb of Boston, he went to Choate, Princeton and Harvard and dressed the part. The Ivy League style was his style, as it was for his brothers and sisters.”
Fifty Years of Bond, James Bond (Vanity Fair)
“In March 1961, when he actually is the president, John F. Kennedy lists Fleming’s fifth Bond novel, From Russia with Love, as one of his 10 current favorite reads in a Life-magazine article. That same year, Broccoli, having parted ways with Allen and joined forces with another producer, a Canadian by the name of Harry Saltzman, finally gets the rights to turn Fleming’s books into movies. After an arduous and seemingly fruitless search to find a lead actor mutually agreeable to the two producers and their studio benefactor, United Artists, Broccoli circles back to one of the lesser-knowns among the candidates: Sean Connery. To confirm his hunch that this tall, handsome Scotsman could be the guy, Broccoli, while in Hollywood, arranges for his new wife, Dana, to join him in a screening room at the Samuel Goldwyn Studio. There they watch the only Connery footage that Cubby has been able to rustle up: Darby O’Gill and the Little People. Dana Broccoli’s response is instantaneous: “That’s our Bond!””