Built in a time that feels so distant from us that it might as well be another planet, they number is in the thousands across the country. One of which I visited dated, in part, back to the First Crusade in 1195 AD. These places are so filled with mystery and beauty that they have always intrigued me. Built for Nobles, Counts, and wealthy families, these spectacular houses are often preserved today by private owners, and even still the families that inherit them.

Surrounded by miles of forest and land all around, they often served as self-sustaining homes and some as opulent hunting retreats away from the urban centers of royalty and commerce.

Visiting them is always an experience that one can’t easily put into words. It has to be experienced. The long private roads through the tall dark forest, the anticipation and mystery, and then the reveal: a spectacular house with towering architectural features and ornate facades. The great rooms, the hunting of pheasants and stags, the sprawling gardens and entire private villages of servants that make the property livable.

All this was in my mind as we took the winding Appalachian path through the woods filled with towering hemlock and rhododendron. Not in the French countryside to see another grand mansion, but stateside to see something entirely different. The single lane wove through the hill, continuing upward. Past a small creek and opening to meadows with deer in tall grass. Then back under the canopy of leaves dancing in the rays of light and cool mountain breeze.

We came to the main gate. I prepared myself and my camera. Passing under the intricate gilded iron bars, the expanse of the great gardens opened up. The calm of the fountains and the warm faces of the guards greeted us, and with the turn of my head, I saw it.

The greatest and largest private house in the entirety of the United States. A house built, not by Nobles, but by the minds and capital that created the railroads and shipping empire that would take America into its greatest period of industrialization and prosperity in human history.

This is The Biltmore Estate.

The Biltmore Estate

Built by George Washington Vanderbilt II, grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the legendary “Commodore” who created the family fortune in shipping and railroads, Biltmore was the product of one of the great American dynasties of the Gilded Age. George’s father, William Henry Vanderbilt, inherited that empire and nearly doubled the family fortune before his death in 1885. A few years later, George turned to architect Richard Morris Hunt to create an extraordinary country estate in the mountains of North Carolina.

George Vanderbilt first came to the mountains of western North Carolina in the late 1880s. Asheville was then becoming known as a mountain resort and escape for the industrialists of the time, celebrated for its mild climate and the extraordinary landscape of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Vanderbilt was captivated by it. Looking west across the French Broad Valley toward Mount Pisgah, he began to imagine something considerably more ambitious than a summer retreat: a great American country estate.

Beginning in 1888, Vanderbilt quietly began purchasing land around Asheville, assembling parcel after parcel until the estate eventually encompassed roughly 125,000 acres. The equivalent of 8 1/2 Manhattans. Much of what he acquired was not the untouched wilderness one might imagine today, but exhausted farmland and heavily cut woodland. Transforming it would become nearly as ambitious a project as building the house itself.

For that task Vanderbilt turned to Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect behind New York’s Central Park, and together they planted over 3 million trees and shrubs on the estate.

At the same time, Richard Morris Hunt, one of the most important American architects of the Gilded Age, was commissioned to design the house.

The original idea was considerably more modest. An early scheme called for a Colonial Revival country house of only about 6,500 square feet. But the scale of the land demanded something greater. In the spring of 1889, Vanderbilt and Hunt traveled through England and France studying the great manor houses and châteaux of Europe. From that journey emerged the plans for an enormous French Renaissance château, drawing particular inspiration from the Loire Valley châteaux of Blois, Chambord, and Chenonceau.

Construction began in 1889 and continued for six years. When Vanderbilt welcomed his family to Biltmore for Christmas Eve in 1895, the house stretched across 175,000 square feet, more than four acres beneath one roof. It contained 250 rooms, including 35 guest bedrooms, 26 servants' quarters rooms, 43 bathrooms, and 65 fireplaces.

And for all its old-world appearance, The Biltmore was remarkably modern.

Electricity and indoor plumbing ran throughout the house at a time when the battle between Edison’s direct current and the alternating-current system championed by Tesla and Westinghouse was still being decided. There were elevators, telephones and a fire-alarm system, along with an indoor swimming pool, gymnasium and bowling alley. It was a French château conceived with the resources, technology and confidence, and optimism of Gilded Age America.

Getting off the trolley, I stepped onto the gravel of the estate grounds. I felt as if I were an industrialist returning home from a week in the city managing my empire. George Vanderbilt himself, however, was not quite that man.

The great Vanderbilt fortune had been built before him, first by his grandfather Cornelius and then vastly expanded by his father, William. George inherited rather than created the immense capital that made Biltmore possible, and for that reason I find him a less compelling figure than the formidable men who built the empire before him.

Yet standing there, it was difficult not to admire what he did with it. George was a voracious reader and collector, more drawn to books, art, architecture, and intellectual pursuits than the railroads and commerce. If I had inherited an empire like that, I thought, I would have tried to double it yet again, not for the sake of the money, but for the sake of building something even greater.

I did have to admit, though, if he did not build the Vanderbilt fortune, he transformed a portion of it into something extraordinary: a complete world of architecture, landscape, agriculture, forestry, art and literature that, more than a century later, still bears the imprint of his particular vision and taste. Despite the fact that I'm not much of a fan of some of its Gothic-esque features, it is a spectacular house.

When you consider the fact that the Vanderbilt Fortune was all lost after five and six generations, there isn't much that remains today except for a great projects like this. In comparison to the Rockefellers, you can still see Rockefeller Center, and their fortune still remains.

It was said that at a family reunion of the Vanderbilt sometime in the middle part of the 20th century, not one of the 165 attendance was actually a millionaire. There's something to be said about the way the Rockefellers raised their children to not be consumers only, but also builders themselves.

Despite all this, and the fact that I’m not much of a fan of some of its Gothic-esque features, it is without a doubt a spectacular achievement.

Walking inside, the entrance is perhaps not as grand as you would expect, but once you get inside, your eye is drawn to the light of the glass-roofed atrium, which fills the otherwise dark house with light.

The space is filled with palms and seating for breakfast or playing cards. The elegant wooden beams add warmth to the space, and the hanging electric light gives it the feel of an outdoor space but still proteced for the elements for refined relaxation in the sun.

Moving past the grand halls and sunlit atrium, we stepped into the grand dining room lined with tapestries, rustic taxidermy of stags, and what was once the meeting place of the most powerful people in America.

I stood there wondering what decisions may have been contemplated here by George’s brothers when there where visiting. While this dining room was quite grand, I struggled to see them using it daily. It reminded me of a home I grew up in with a formal dining room, something that seems to be all but gone from modern homes.

Moving further back into the house, we saw multiple rooms, one of which literally took my breath away: the billiard room. With two large billiard tables, hunting taxidermy on display, and all encased in beautiful mahogany walls, this was about as masculine as a room gets. Perhaps the Travelers Club took inspiration or vice versa.

This was a room that made you want to put on a tuxedo, pour a glass of Scotch with a good friend, and talk for hours. What many supposedly informed people today would call a “man cave,” a term I despise on the simple premise that a cave is a place to hide.

This was not a cave for children pretending to be men, nor was it some little corner of the house where a man’s wife had graciously given him permission to decorate as he pleased while the rest remained her domain.

No, this place was none of those things.

Biltmore was a place built with conviction rather than compromise, and the billiards room was perhaps one of the clearest expressions of it.

Walking back past the dining room and through multiple rooms on the rear of the house, my eye was drawn to a sliver of light peeking out through the curtains. Walking up to it, I saw the rear views out of the house. Mountains, forests, and spectacular grounds. I stepped further down the hall, passing the exceptional furniture and decorations, and out onto the balcony.

The fact that many of the trees were planted can almost be taken for granted if you didn't know it. It feels as if the forest had always been there. Almost virgin, ancient, and mysterious. Though the 125,000 acres that existed in the Vanderbilts' lifetime are no longer intact today, it does remain untouched. Large portions of the estate were given to the state of North Carolina and formed what is today the Pisgah National Forest.

With my recently renewed interest in fly fishing and pheasant hunting, the property seemed to conjure up visions of past hunts on the grounds. I've always wanted to have a piece of property of my own, of course, not on the scale, but the intentionality of it all was inspiring. The fact that George had planned every little aspect, even down to the forest itself, shows you the world-building capabilities of this man.

Of course, George spent a lot of his time on the grounds, but the large portion of his time was spent in his study and library. Unfortunately, the study was not open to the public, but the library was on full display, and it is perhaps the most incredible private library I have seen in my life, next to Carnegie Library in New York City.

Standing in front of those shelves, I began to understand George Vanderbilt a little better.

The Library rises two stories, surrounded by dark walnut bookcases and deep red fabrics, with an enormous fireplace anchoring one end. Above it hangs The Chariot of Aurora, an 18th-century ceiling painting by Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini that Vanderbilt purchased in Venice and installed across the room.

But unlike many grand libraries of the period, the books here were not simply decoration.

George collected roughly 24,000 volumes during his lifetime, about 10,000 of which remain in the Library itself. His interests ranged from English and American literature to history, philosophy, travel, art and architecture. More than 4,000 were in French, and he had a particular fondness for Balzac, Dickens and Sir Walter Scott.

He was also an extraordinary reader. Beginning at the age of twelve, George kept journals titled Books I Have Read, recording 3,159 books by the time of his death in 1914 at the age of 51. That’s an average of more than 80 books a year.

In a recent piece on Jackson & Co called How to Curate Your Own Library, I talked about having a space in your home where your curiosity lives. George had a voracious curiosity about the world around him. This is a quality I admire, and one he wanted to share with his guests. The books were there to be used, and guests could take them from the library and bring them back to their rooms any time they wanted, throughout their stay.

As I continued through the house and up the spiral staircase, I thought about the idea of the country estate itself. It is perhaps the ultimate luxury, but the desire behind it can take many forms.

Ian Fleming had Goldeneye on the north coast of Jamaica, where he escaped each winter to write. His home was surprisingly spartan. The windows did not even have glass in them, leaving the house completely open to the Caribbean air. Victor Hugo did much of his writing in exile on the island of Guernsey. Writers have always sought out islands, hotels, shacks and far-off houses where the world grows quiet, and the endless stimulation of daily life disappears.

George was not a writer, but he understood the value of solitude. The only trouble with solitude is that it can become incredibly lonely. So George built a retreat large enough to become its own little village, filled with friends, family, and interesting guests.

If I were to choose my own, considerably more humble version of Biltmore, it would be a country house within an hour or so of Paris, where I live now. A place with charm, space for a proper study, a well-appointed kitchen for my wife’s love of cooking, and an old outbuilding that could be converted into a garage for working on my classic cars.

Perhaps a four- or five-bedroom manor house built in the 19th century by a modest industrialist or merchant. Something a little neglected, needing perhaps €100,000 worth of work and care to bring it back to life.

At the top of the stairs, I was suddenly reminded of Normandy, the region where I lived during my first 6 months in France. A wonderful time with my wife, where we lived in her family's house dating back to the Middle Ages. Hanging on the wall was an old etching of Mont-Saint-Michel.

If you are unfamiliar with it, Mont-Saint-Michel is a tidal island just off the coast of Normandy, so close to Brittany that the two regions have argued over it for centuries, though it is, in fact, Norman.

When the tide comes in, the island is surrounded by water. When it retreats, miles of sand open around it. At the top sits a medieval abbey, rising above walls and narrow streets in a way that hardly seems real.

It is the sort of place that looks as though Walt Disney should have invented it. In fact, its strange silhouette rising out of the sea later served as one of the inspirations for the castle at the beginning of every Disney film.

When we came to George's bedroom, I was curious. Would the room be masculine like the billiard room, or a largely French feminine design more fitting to his wife? This often can tell you a lot about a couple because in modern homes, people spend the most amount of attention on the “Master bedroom”, but the imremebered, back in Vanderbilt's time, a wife and her husband slept in separate rooms. What I saw did not disappoint.

While it was admitely dark in most of the house, I think a lot of this had to do with the fact that the pull-down blind was partially covering almost all the windows. I assume this is to protect the furniture from the sun, but imagine how much brighter and more inviting the room could be.

It was the bedroom, not of a railroad tycoon, but of a philosopher and adventurer. Filled with things George had collected over his travels, it made me think, though decidedly less ornate, of the home of Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Filled with things gathered from a life well lived.

Between his and his wife’s room was a massive sitting room supposedly used to write correspondence and sit together in the evenings, watching the crackling fire.

After his wife Edith’s bedroom, a long continuous tour of guest bedrooms, sitting rooms, and dark mysterious hallways filled with stunning art ensued. I can't remember everything I saw, but the overall impression it gave me was of a man and his wife who considered every single stitch, statue, and stick of furniture that went into this place. Everything intentional. Every piece of art, in good taste even today.

One interesting find was a Victrola cabinet that has an exact match to one that has been in my family for generations. It now sits in my sister’s new home, and I was proud to see that at least some of the things in this otherworldly house were not completely out of reach to the average person at the time.

Coming back downstairs, you realize that on the normal tour they give you only get to see a small percentage of the home. Which, while disappointing, adds to the mystery.

In the basement, far underground, there are the normal wine cellars and kitchen that you would expect, but the most impressive rooms, especially for the time, were the Pool, and bowling alley. These had over ten changing rooms about the size of a small bedroom. Of course, the men and women of the Gilded Age could not be seen in their bathing suits walking the halls of the house.

The pool, which has not been filled since the 70s because of a leak, was never treated with chlorine in its day, so with every use, thousands of gallons of water had to be filled every single time.

One doesn't think of men of this time being particularly health conscious, but Biltmore did have its own gymnasium by the pool and bolling ally equipt with showers and some kind of early version of a workout machine. It had me wondering what clothes they would wear for the gym back then, seeing as they would essentially go out hunting in wool suits.

On the way out of the house, you go by one wing that you never got to explore. You look up and see that it’s 6 stories high, mostly unseen. It reminds you of just how ridiculously massive this house is.

The last room that I explored was fascinating. The Smoking and Gun Rooms sit near the exit toward the horse and carriage stables, where the men would gather before heading out to hunt the grounds of the estate. What a beauty. English, American, and Italian shotguns and rifles lined the cabinets alongside taxidermied trophies taken on the estate years ago.

But this was more than simply a place to store guns. It was part of the ritual of life at Biltmore. Men could return from a day in the field, put away their guns, and later settle in with a cigar or pipe, a glass of whisky, and the company of friends.

It is perhaps the most bad-ass, masculine thing that a house could have, and I wished I could have spent another hour or two simply sitting there, inspecting the guns and imagining the conversations that once took place around them.

George clearly enjoyed hunting and fishing, and these were regular parts of life at Biltmore. He and his friends would disappear into the surrounding mountains for days at a time to camp, fish, and shoot.

Biltmore records even describe an 1893 expedition where the party traveled by mule into the forest with fly-fishing equipment, firearms, tents, cots, and, because this was still a Vanderbilt expedition, a cook.

Much of this sporting life eventually centered around Buck Spring Lodge, which George built high on Mount Pisgah in 1896 as a summer hunting retreat. It was no rough cabin. Built of American chestnut and inspired by the great Adirondack camps, it included a two-story main lodge, cottages, separate dining and kitchen buildings, and quarters for the staff. By 1912 it had electricity, indoor plumbing, hot water, telephone service, tennis and croquet courts, and even an ice house.

George stocked the surrounding forest with deer, bear, pheasant, and wild turkey and the streams with fish. Guests could ride roughly sixteen miles through the mountains to the lodge along the Shut-In Trail, spend the day hunting, fishing or hiking, and then return in the evening to wash, change into formal clothes and sit down to dinner.

Standing in the Gun Room, I could suddenly picture that life beyond the walls of Biltmore a little more clearly. The guns were not simply another collection. They were tools for a life George had deliberately built around the house: books and conversation indoors, and forests, horses, fishing and hunting beyond it.

The Gardens

This is unfortunately where we spent the least amount of our time, as there was so much to explore, but a highlight of that exploration was the Victorian-style greenhouse, just off to the left of the house past the main gardens.

The plants seem to be collected from around the world, some of which are in some cases hundreds of years old. It reminds you of the ancient greenhouses of Paris that hold palms collected from the 1700s.

The Winery

This is where the tour becomes somewhat personal for my family. Phil, the head vintner at the Biltmore Estate Winery, has been a lifelong friend of both my father and mother, having known my father since childhood. He has worked at Biltmore for nearly 30 years.

The Biltmore vineyards stretch across the estate on both sides of the French Broad River, where several different varieties of grapes are grown. After touring the winery and tasting some of the wines, I asked Phil which varieties grew best in the climate.

Having toured several wineries in France, I know this is not an easy craft. It takes decades, and sometimes centuries, to understand exactly how to get the most out of a particular soil in a particular region.

So I was surprised when, after nearly 30 years working with the same land, Phil answered my question with:

“Well, we don’t really know yet.”

I loved that answer.

Thirty years of growing grapes, making wine, watching the seasons and learning the land, and they are still figuring it out. It tells you something about the kind of long-term thinking required to make wine well. In the old wine regions of France, generations have had centuries to learn what the land wants to grow. At Biltmore, they are still writing the first chapters of that story.

So far, four varieties have proven particularly successful on the estate: Chardonnay, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. But experimentation continues. Biltmore still maintains a test vineyard where other varieties are planted and studied to see how they respond to the peculiarities of the Blue Ridge Mountain climate.

From those grapes, and others sourced from growers elsewhere in North Carolina and across the country, Biltmore now produces a surprisingly broad range of wines: Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc, rosés, Rieslings, Pinot Grigio, sparkling wines and various smaller-production blends and limited releases. The finest vintages from the estate’s own vineyards are bottled under the Biltmore Reserve label.

It is an impressive operation, but what interested me most was that sense of experimentation. Wine has been made in Burgundy and Bordeaux for the better part of two thousand years. Biltmore’s first experimental vines went into the ground only in 1971. They are still learning what this land can do.

The End of A Day, Fit For a Millionaire

What is it about the country estate that holds so much mystery and intrigue? As we drove the massive Ford Expedition across the lowlands of the estate and past Bass Lake, I contemplated this question.

It’s not that it is impressive and imposing to all the guests who cower in front of it as they arrive, scared to make some kind of faux pas in front of the owners and elites. It is not to put on airs and show power. To me, this is not at all the appeal.

I believe, at its core, it is the pinnacle of luxury. The luxury of actually owning history. The excitement and intrigue that comes with all of the forgotten stories that took place in the woods and in that house that now sits quiet, waiting for the next generation to take root inside. Like owning a relic that an archaeologist can pull out of the sand in a ruin. An ancient place that transports you.

It is the fact that you could make it entirely yours, of its time, yet timeless at the same time. It is a world away from the one that constantly moves forward, while you remain in the comfort of a constant presence, an unchanging world that you can return to.

It’s a comforting feeling, having a place separated from the rest of the world that becomes your own world.

While I may not own a house as impressive as the Biltmore in my lifetime, it is the principles behind Biltmore that inspire me.

Had I missed the parade already? The train ride from Vincennes couldn't have been more than 25 or 30 minutes. Walking down the avenue between the Grand and Petit Palais, I looked up at their elegant glass domes built at the turn of the century for the Universal Exposition, the 1900 World Fair in Paris.

Those same minds, or at least minds of the same spirit and sense of life, driven by that same love of beauty, design, and innovation, gave birth to a new era of freedom. One that set men upon the roads, tearing across the countryside in gleaming machines of steel, rubber, and glass.

The age of the automobile had begun, and the world was never the same.

With the turn of the century came optimism and innovation. The men of the mind— engineers, designers, architects, inventors, and industrialists—believed that each new invention could make life richer, faster, and more beautiful.

Men like Louis Renault, Armand Peugeot, Ettore Bugatti, W.O. Bentley, and Henry Royce would come to define the age, transforming the automobile from an extraordinary invention into one of Europe’s greatest achievements of engineering, craftsmanship, and design.

France, more than almost anywhere else, embraced the idea that driving was about more than reaching a destination. It was a thing of pleasure. Fittingly, in 1900, the same year the Grand Palais opened its doors for the Universal Exposition, where the newly unveiled Renault Type C was among the automobiles heralding a new age of transportation, André and Édouard Michelin published the first Michelin Guide.

At the time, a journey across France by motorcar was a genuine adventure. Roads were often little more than dirt tracks, petrol stations were few and far between, and reliable maps were scarce. Motorists needed to know where they could find fuel, a mechanic, a hotel for the night, or a good meal after a long day’s drive.

The Michelin Guide answered those questions. What began as a free practical handbook for adventurous motorists would, in time, become the most respected restaurant guide in the world. Its original purpose was simple: to give people a reason to drive farther, see more, and discover what lay beyond the next bend.

Keeping all this automotive history and romance in mind as I made my way down the avenue, I still couldn’t see a single car in sight. Not even a modern one. The city had yet to wake up this Sunday morning, and for once Paris seemed quiet and majestic, without the noise and ugliness of tourists and T-shirts and backpacks running around.

Pont Alexandre III lay silent, and the hard shadows of the morning cast across the bridge and toward the Eiffel Tower just off to the left. Walking further down, I waited for about 20 minutes trying to figure out where I went wrong. Surely it didn't take an hour to cross Paris by car with early Sunday morning traffic. So where were they?

Then I saw it. The first car of the day that I had seen early at Vincennes. The early 911 in blue, followed by the beautiful British Racing Green E-type Jag.

But this is where the real confusion started. Cars started to come from every direction, not along the planned route that was to take a left off the Quai D’Orsay, across the bridge and left on the Cours La Reine.

Part of me wondered if some of these were just car enthusiasts unrelated to today’s rally out for a Sunday morning drive. A gleaming silver Buick LeSabre came from the west and stopped right on the Eiffel Tower for this beautiful shot.

I believe this is the same model that Don Draper drove in the first two seasons of Mad Men, except his was gold. The driver was smiling ear to ear in his massive American boat of a car that reminded me of home. Of those summer days just like this one, when my father would take us out on the town in his 65 Plymouth Fury. A white convertible with a blue top.

A few more minutes and the stream of cars became steadier as if the kinks in the hoses had been found and straightened out. A neat line of Little C2Vs, a few beautiful Triumphs, and one Porsche after another, some of them waving at me as I got down far beyond the bike lane and into the street, risking life and limb for the shot.

Thoroughly happy with the shot I had taken, I found myself without any cars to shoot. Maybe it was time to head to the final destination where 700 cars were to be displayed. So, I started to make my way back to the Grand Palais, and stopped dead in my tracks when I heard a sound only an Italian car seems to be able to make.

Yes, absolutely stunning Maserati in navy blue. It was time to risk it. Time to go sit directly in the middle of the street and take a picture of a complete stranger in one of the most beautiful cars I had seen all day.

A group of Asian tourists stood on the side of the road, puzzled at what I could possibly be doing, taking pictures of the crazy Westerner with their massive Nikons.

The French-style yellow headlight glinted in the sunlight as I ran up to the car and got down low. The driver seemed to be unalarmed by my slightly aggressive camera work, and somehow that didn’t surprise me. A car that beautiful must have admirers everywhere it goes. It’s the kind of car built to cross the continent in style and with a symphonic explosion of the exhaust bubbling in your wake. A true GT car of the late 60s.

In my opinion, it turned out to be the best shot of the day, but not the most interesting car. As I moved further back to the turn onto the Cours La Reine, right next to the Grand Palais, I saw the most incredible and rare machine of the day.

Now, I said I went out into trafic to the the other shots, but this one was the trickiest of all. Paris was now fully awake, and cars buzzed inches away, but I risked it by running out to what I thought was a median. But, in all likelihood was the middle of one of the busiest intersections in Paris.

It was worth it.

Walking up to the car to compliment the owner on his incredible 1930 4½-Litre Bentley, I detected the faint trace of an English accent. As I would later discover, the owner was entirely French, but had most likely been educated in England.

My mind went immediately to the most famous 4½-Litre Bentleys ever built. The legendary racing cars that carried the Bentley Boys to five victories at Le Mans between 1924 and 1930, driven by men like Woolf Barnato, Tim Birkin, Glen Kidston, Sammy Davis, and Frank Clement. Today, they are worth millions of dollars.

But no. My mind was firmly on James Bond. The one from the books.

As a James Bond literary nut, I’m qualified to tell you that this is not a James Bond car. This is the Bond car. From Casino Royale in 1953, where Bond first appears behind its enormous four-spoke steering wheel, to its resurrection after one spectacular crash, and its final demise in Moonraker in 1955, where Fleming destroys it once and for all.

No, this wasn’t Bond’s battleship-grey Bentley fitted with its Amherst Villiers supercharger, but it was the closest I’ve ever seen in person, and that was enough for me.

The owner’s name was Frédéric, as I would find out later, and he takes this car to Goodwood every year. But more on that in Chasing Cars in Paris: Part 3, where we actually sat down with him and talked about the lovely motorcar.

This turned out to be an excellent spot where I no longer had to chase cars down, but could let them just come to me. The stream came on, and I snapped away, gratified in a much safer position this time.

It was time to make my way to Meudon, where the final gathering would take place.

As I walked back past the Grand Palais one last time on my way to the station, I couldn’t help but wonder what extraordinary machines had once passed beneath its great glass roof, and how on earth they had even managed to get them inside.

What masterpieces had been displayed here? What great men had designed them? Could I ever hope to see a motor show as magnificent as those of the Belle Époque?

Perhaps I was on my way to the closest thing that still exists. It might not have been held beneath one of the world’s great exhibition halls, but it overlooked all of Paris from the hills of Meudon, where hundreds of remarkable machines had gathered for one final celebration.

Part of me wanted to wander around the Grand Palais in search of the enormous doors that surely must exist, through which those early automobiles must have entered more than a century ago.

But that, I decided, could wait for another day.

Written by Ben Jackson, founder and Editor-in-Chief of Jackson & Co

Thank you for reading Part 2 of a 3 Part series called Chasing Cars in Paris.

If you haven't read Part 1 check it out here: Chasing Cars In Paris: Part 1

Keep a lookout for next week when Chasing Cars in Paris: Part 3 is released, where interviews with the drivers take place on a hilltop overlooking the entirety of Paris.

700 cars, 126 years of automotive design.

Yet, when my eyes opened and I felt the cool summer air from the night before stream in through the window, through the waving sheer curtains, and across my face, I wished I were already walking out the door, camera in hand, ready to hear the roar of engines and the burble of exhaust.

I got out of bed, showered, dressed in gray trousers, a blue Brooks Brothers shirt, a navy silk knit tie, and a green suede jacket. Making my way out onto the empty streets, the sound of my loafers echoed off the Haussmann façades draped in the orange glow of morning.

I was in search of the train that would take me across the whole of Paris, to the massive Château de Vincennes and to an event I had only heard about the day before. One that completely altered my weekend plans in an instant.

Twice a year, the Vincennes en Anciennes (VEA) hosts the Traversée de Paris, a classic car show and rally across the city in a celebration of beautiful design, architecture, history, and love for all things automotive.

With more than 1,200 members, the Vincennes en Anciennes is the largest multi-marque historic vehicle club in France. They are not an exclusive or pretentious bunch, only connoisseurs of classic motoring. Old Peugeot 504s and Citroen DSs are just as welcome as Corvettes, Alfa Romeos, and Jaguars. I had seen all of this online, but nothing could have prepared me for the sheer variety I was to see later.

As I stepped off the metro 1 train at Vincennes, I saw not a single car. For a minute I wondered if the translation feature on the French website I used had failed me, but walking down the road I saw the first good sign.

An early 911 coming across the gravel parking lot and onto the tree-lined street toward the château with its massive stone walls. Then a MGT up on a flatbed about to be unloaded.

After another minute of walking, I saw it.

Roughly fifty cars were lined up in three separate lines in the large forecourt of the chateau. The area had been roped off to guide the cars into their proper place, and neon-vested men were guiding them into each line for the first launch at 7:45.

Watching the cars shuffle around, there didn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to the ordering. But still, there was an efficiency to the operation. The energy was eager and excitement was visible on the faces of the drivers and their passengers.

Turning off the road onto the gravel, it was one elegant machine after another. I felt that exciting shock of electricity you get when you unexpectedly see an incredible vintage car tearing down the street, only to leave you with that sense of longing for a day where you could be behind that wheel, wishing for just another glimpse and contemplating running after it in the hope of catching one more glimpse at the next light.

The dust-filled air carried the scent of warm oil, petrol, aged leather, and that faint metallic burn that only old carbureted engines seem capable of producing.

After a few minutes of scoping out the scene, I couldn’t help myself. The single plastic tape at knee level could hold me back no longer.

Camera in hand, and trying to look as official as possible, I hopped the barrier, dodging a slow-moving Simca Around. I got down low, snapping a picture of a Jag Mark II owned by a man named Pascal, another Jag, an E-Type, a 190 SL Mercedes, and a pre-war Peugeot.

The sound of these cars at idle only built the anticipation as the first group set out for the rally track.

Previously, two days before the event when I first heard about it, I sent an email to the organizers asking if they were allowing writers and journalists to hitch a ride. Their website did say something about this, but all the way up to the morning of the event, I had heard nothing.

So I decided it was up to me to start making friends. Perhaps one of the older gentlemen would be intrigued by a young writer like myself, and offer me a ride which would probably consist of 3 hours of ear-to-ear smiles, and back-and-forth conversation in broken French and English about the specifications, how long he had the car, and other things that might make for a good story.

Inspired by this possibility, I began to do my best to make friends. The first incredibly friendly gentleman I spoke to was Guy and his wife in a beautiful 1958 Austin Healey. Guy spoke about his little Austin with the kind of affection usually reserved for lifelong friends.

He reminded me of the stories my grandfather used to tell about the two wrecked Austin Healeys he bought and had a mechanic in North Carolina cut in half before stitching them back together into a kind of British Frankenstein. Against all odds, it worked. I still wish I could have ridden in that car with him, but he sold it years before I was born, when my father was still just a baby.

Then I met Marc with a beautiful 1966 Sunbeam Alpine. I thought I detected the faint trace of an English accent in his voice, which was fitting to the car. He and his wife were impeccably dressed in that kind of summer garden party Parisian elegance with a touch of the English gentleman motorist.

Then another beautiful Austin with a racing look to it, minus the bumpers and tape on the headlights. A number 6 on the side. This was a Goodwood car.

The owner mentioned it was for sale for €85,000. It struck me as an ambitious price when an XK120 can still be found for similar money, though I assumed its racing history at Goodwood had something to do with it. I didn't have time to ask. More cars were arriving by the minute.

Without warning, as if some silent signal had sounded across the city, 100 cars showed up from all different directions. Even motorcycles and tractors made an appearance, though, I didn't see any tractors in the center of Paris later in the day.

The French are notorious, perhaps only next to the Italians, for being late to everything. But it is true that when it comes to beauty, the French always show up.

At 7:55 a.m., it was time to hop back on the train and try to catch the parade of cars as they streamed through the 12th arrondissement before crossing to the Left Bank through the 13th, 5th, 6th, and 7th. From there, they would continue west toward their final destination in Meudon, where more than 700 historic vehicles would eventually gather for what turned out to be one of the most extraordinary automotive spectacles I have ever witnessed.

Chasing them through Paris, however, seemed like a fool's errand. Instead, I decided to outsmart the rally and wait where I knew the city would be at its most beautiful: Pont Alexandre III, with the Eiffel Tower rising behind it and Les Invalides watching over the Seine.

As I walked back toward the train along the cobblestone avenue beside the Château, one final mystery rolled past. A beautiful machine that, despite hours of searching afterward, I still haven't managed to identify. Perhaps one of you can.

If not, join me for Part Two of Chasing Cars in Paris, where the quiet morning gives way to the chaos of central Paris. We’ll dodge traffic, weave through crowds, photograph everything from pre-war Bentleys to Bugattis beneath the Eiffel Tower, and see whether the gamble of waiting at Pont Alexandre III was worth it after all.

Part Two arrives Wednesday.

There are a few places in the world where simply walking down the street makes you feel like a millionaire through osmosis. The pavement outside the Ritz, running along the edge of Place Vendôme, is one of them.

Behind the pale stone façades sit Cartier, Boucheron, Van Cleef & Arpels and Charvet, their windows filled with diamonds, watches and beautifully made clothes, all displayed with the confidence that the right customer will understand what he is looking at.

As I passed the dark brass revolving doors of the Ritz, where a line of immaculately dressed valets waited beneath the awning, a late-1950s Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud came slowly around the square and settled beside the curb.

A gentleman in a perfectly cut double-breasted suit stepped from the back, followed by his wife in what looked like Chanel, while two white-gloved attendants went to work on a set of Goyard trunks. The entire performance took less than a minute, and no one involved appeared to be in a hurry.

The scene could have come straight from a Bond film. Not Bond himself, perhaps, but one of the men he had been sent to investigate. In Thunderball, the suave Count Lippe is a SPECTRE operative involved in the plot to steal two nuclear bombs and hold the West to ransom.

When Bond searches Lippe’s room, he discovers almost nothing beyond the contents of his wardrobe: shirts from Charvet, ties from Tripler, shoes from Peel, and raw-silk pyjamas from Hong Kong. It was enough. Fleming understood that a man’s wardrobe could reveal what he would never say himself. This was the kind of gentleman who was particular about everything in his life, right down to the razor he used.

Watching the gentleman, his hair not yet grey but no longer entirely black, disappear through the brass doors, I decided that he, too, must have been wearing Charvet. It is the kind of shirt a man of the world would wear, one who lives not in one place but lives well everywhere he goes.

Or perhaps I was biased, because I was not there merely to watch people walking in and out of a hotel. I was on my way to visit the oldest shirtmaker in the world, one whose future was now uncertain.

Today, at 28 Place Vendôme, Charvet occupies seven floors, where customers can choose from around 6,000 shirting fabrics, including approximately 100 separate shades of white, and 400 different textures and weaves. Ready-to-wear shirts range from roughly €500 to €700, while a bespoke shirt begins at around €900, before the more imaginative decisions begin.

The windows at 28 Place Vendôme held the sort of clothing that rewards a second look. A shirt that first appeared blue revealed a more complicated stripe. A tie that looked just navy, has n irodecent pattern that only a certain light can reveal.

Charvet has never relied on large logos or recognisable hardware. Its clothes identify themselves through colour, proportion and the small decisions that only become visible once you know where to look.

Standing there, I began to imagine the full ceremony: taking the little lift upstairs, sitting among thousands of bolts of cotton, deciding between the 100 shades of white that any reasonable person would consider identical, then being measured for a shirt made not for a theoretical man of my size but for my shoulders, my posture, my watch and the precise length of my arms. Several weeks later I would return to the shop, put it on, and emerge onto Place Vendôme as the absolute Parisian gentleman.

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It is a powerful fantasy. But would it still be a possibility when I’m ready? I stepped inside to make sure.

On July 2, 2026, Chanel announced that it had acquired Charvet, bringing 188 years of independent ownership to an end. Financial terms of the transaction were never disclosed, but the deal included both the company and its historic home at 28 Place Vendôme.

Chanel has stated that Charvet will continue operating as a stand-alone house, while Jean-Claude and Anne-Marie Colban, the brother and sister who have guided the company for decades, will remain during the transition.

The word independent, however, deserves a moment’s thought.

Charvet may continue to look exactly the same tomorrow as it did yesterday, but after nearly two centuries of family ownership, one of the last truly independent names in luxury now belongs to one of the largest luxury companies in the world.

For those unfamiliar with the company, it is difficult to overstate what Chanel has actually acquired. Charvet is not simply the oldest shirtmaker in the world. In many ways, it invented the modern shirtmaker.

Founded in 1838 by Joseph-Christophe Charvet, the house transformed buying a shirt from a household necessity into an experience. A gentleman could choose his cloth, discuss every detail, be measured and commission a garment made specifically for him, all under one roof. Nearly two centuries later, remarkably little has changed.

Walk upstairs today and you’ll still find shelves lined with thousands of shirting fabrics. Customers’ measurements are still carefully preserved, appointments can last an entire afternoon, and shirts are still made one at a time for people who care about details that most of us would never notice.

Luxury brands often speak about craftsmanship. Charvet simply gets on with it.

Unlike almost every major luxury house, it also resisted the temptation to become a global empire. There is still only one Charvet. Its universe continues to revolve around a single address on Place Vendôme.Which naturally raises the question. Why sell now?

Whenever a historic house changes hands, the first assumption is usually that something has gone wrong. The customers disappeared. Standards slipped. The business declined. None of that appears to have happened here.

By every indication, Charvet remained a healthy and profitable business. The problem was not demand. It was succession.

This is not the first time the future of Charvet has been uncertain. In 1965, the Charvet family also wanted to sell the business. Charles de Gaulle, himself a loyal customer, reportedly feared that one of France’s great maisons would fall into foreign hands and encouraged Denis Colban, Charvet’s principal fabric supplier, to find a French solution. Colban ultimately bought the company himself.

Together with his children, Jean-Claude and Anne-Marie, the family spent the next sixty years preserving everything that made Charvet exceptional while resisting many of the temptations that transformed so much of the luxury industry around them.

Eventually, however, the same question returned.Who should inherit a house built not around factories or patents, but around judgement? There was no obvious answer.

Interestingly, the conversation that eventually led to Chanel’s acquisition began not with bankers, but with shirts.

While researching his first Chanel collection, Matthieu Blazy discovered that Gabrielle Chanel had once bought Charvet shirts for Arthur “Boy” Capel and had borrowed freely from his wardrobe herself. Fascinated by the connection, he asked Charvet to produce shirts for Chanel’s Spring-Summer 2026 collection.

The collaboration proved to be an immediate success. One of the shirts, a white evening shirt priced at €3,900, quickly sold out. More importantly, it allowed both houses to work together long before anyone discussed an acquisition.

It is difficult to imagine a more natural fit. If there were ever a luxury house you would trust with Charvet’s future, Chanel would be near the top of the list.

Unlike many of its competitors, Chanel has generally shown remarkable restraint when acquiring heritage brands. Rather than reinventing them, it has tended to preserve the qualities that made them exceptional in the first place. Its stewardship of Orlebar Brown is a good example. The company expanded internationally while maintaining the quality, character and understated style that attracted loyal customers to begin with.

If I had to guess, very little will change at Charvet. And that is precisely the point.

Chanel did not acquire the oldest shirtmaker in the world to reinvent it. The value of Charvet lies in the fact that it still feels almost untouched by modern luxury. I suspect we will eventually see greater international exposure, perhaps an e-commerce platform, and thoughtful collaborations similar to those already seen with Matthieu Blazy’s first collection.

What I would not expect, or hope for, is a different Charvet. The greatest mistake would be trying to modernise something that never needed modernising in the first place.

As I stepped back onto Place Vendôme, nothing appeared to have changed.

Customers still wandered upstairs to choose fabrics. Orders were still being recorded by hand. Somewhere inside, another gentleman was probably deciding between two shades of white that most people would struggle to distinguish.

Perhaps that is what Chanel has really acquired.

Not simply the oldest shirtmaker in the world, but one of the last places where luxury still feels entirely unconcerned with proving itself.

If, ten years from now, someone walks through those same brass doors and has no idea the company was ever sold, Chanel will have done exactly what it set out to do.

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Curiosity is one of the highest expressions of a life well lived.

When we are children, we discover the world anew. We understand little, and so we ask the ultimate question.

Why?

Somewhere along the way, we stop asking this fundamental question of the world. School often teaches us what to think before it teaches us how to think. Then we grow older, and hyper-specialization narrows the lens of our curiosity to a single domain.

As adults, we continue asking why, but only when someone pays us to. Our minds remain engaged within the boundaries of our profession, yet we gradually stop exploring the countless subjects that lie beyond it—the ones that broaden our perspective, deepen our understanding of the world, and occasionally inspire our work in ways we could never have predicted.

We neglect one of our greatest capacities: the desire to understand the world simply because it is there to be understood. And that is perhaps one of the greatest tragedies of adulthood.

Thankfully, there has never been a better time to rediscover it.

The internet has placed more knowledge at our fingertips than at any other point in human history. Within minutes, we can learn exactly how the Empire State Building was built, the fundamentals of French wine, or listen to a lecture from one of the world’s leading historians. It is one of the greatest educational tools ever created.

Yet it is also one of the greatest engines of distraction ever devised.

The same device that can teach us about the Roman Empire, Greek philosophy, Art Deco design of the 1920s, or the engineering of an F1 car can, moments later, pull us into an endless stream of notifications, headlines, and entertainment. Information competes with distraction, and distraction usually wins.

Curiosity needs a physical home.

That home is the library.

A place where every fascination you’ve pursued can live alongside every one you have yet to discover. A place where curiosity is not simply remembered, but renewed.

What Makes a Great Library?

A great library is defined as much by what it refuses to become as by what it contains.

It is not a place where books are collected to impress visitors or cultivate the appearance of intelligence. It is not a trophy cabinet of unread classics, nor a room filled with leather-bound encyclopedias and beautiful editions that have never been opened.

There is a difference between a decorative library and a working library.

A decorative library exists to be admired. A working library exists to be used.

There is nothing wrong with a beautiful edition of a great book. In fact, some of the finest books ever published are as inspiring to look at as they are to read.

Perhaps you become fascinated by the Italian Riviera, the streets of Rome, or the quiet grandeur of Venetian palazzos. A Taschen book on Italy earns its place on your shelf. You find yourself standing beneath one of Norman Foster’s buildings and can’t stop wondering how steel and glass can feel impossibly light.

Then perhaps it’s yacht design. You want to understand the elegance of a perfectly drawn hull, the drama of its proportions, and the engineering that allows such a massive vessel to float. Through the photographs, you imagine yourself at the helm, navigating the Mediterranean, the afternoon sun overhead, the sails unfurled and full, with a bottle of Ruinart Blanc de Blancs resting on ice nearby.

Beauty is one of the great invitations to curiosity. It should never be a substitute for it.

This is why motivation matters. There is a world of difference between buying a book because it awakens in you a genuine fascination and buying it because it projects a certain image. The Tom Ford coffee-table book is perhaps the most obvious example. It is a beautifully designed book, its pages filled with remarkable designs.

Yet many copies spend their entire lives sealed inside their slipcase, never opened, because the object itself has become more important than the ideas inside it. The name on the cover signals taste. The contents are almost incidental.

A great library has no place for symbols of curiosity. Only curiosity itself.

The question, then, is not how many books you should own. It is which ones deserve a place on your shelf, ready to become lifelong companions.

Every Great Library Should:

Challenge the Way You Think

When I think of the most important books in my library, my mind goes not to the rarest editions or the most beautiful bindings, but to the books that changed the course of my life. The ones that reached inside my mind and permanently changed the way I see the world. Most of them are, in fact, novels.

The transformative power of a great novel is so little appreciated in a world dominated by films and television. There is a reason people always say the book was better than the film. A novel has the time to build a world. To develop ideas. To immerse you so completely in its characters that, before you realise it, their convictions begin to shape your own.

When I first read Atlas Shrugged, it was as though someone had finally given words to ideas I had been reaching for my entire life. What had once existed only as instinct suddenly became clear and impossible to ignore. It was the first time I encountered a philosophy that celebrated reason, productive achievement, individualism, ambition, romance, and the limitless potential of the human mind as virtues rather than exceptions. Through Dagny Taggart, Hank Rearden, Francisco d’Anconia, and John Galt, I discovered not simply a story, but an entirely new way of understanding the world.

Then came The Fountainhead.

As someone driven by Architecture, and good writing, no novel has influenced me more deeply. Howard Roark became an ideal unlike any I had encountered before. His uncompromising commitment to his work, his refusal to subordinate his values to the opinions of others, and his belief that creative work is one of the highest expressions of human life left a permanent mark on me. It gave me guiding principles to live by. Ideals to strive towards. It remains the most important book I have ever read.

Every great library deserves at least one book that permanently changes the way its owner thinks. Find yours.

Transport You

Adventure is essential to a well-lived life, but we cannot always be gallivanting across the globe. This is where a good globetrotting thriller comes in. When I first read Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, I realised that almost every James Bond film ever made was a cheap parody of the character found in the books.

The Bond of the novels is immeasurably more interesting, intelligent, and believable than Roger Moore driving a submarine car with a cigar in his mouth. From Casino Royale, published in 1953, to The Man with the Golden Gun in 1965, the novels are intoxicating thrillers that you simply cannot put down.

Naturally, being products of the 1950s and 1960s, they offer an even more exotic and fascinating setting. Whether in Jamaica, Italy, Switzerland, Japan, or simply England in Moonraker, Fleming’s extraordinary descriptive power and rhythmic prose make you feel as though you are James Bond.

Naturally, spy thrillers are my favourite form of entertainment. I love Mark Greaney’s The Gray Man almost as much as Bond. Seventeen books in, I still cannot wait to read the next one. These stories take you out of your own world for a while and remind you that the world is an extraordinary place waiting to be discovered. Whether it is a casino on the French Riviera or a dive bar in Southeast Asia, Bond and The Gray Man take me there.

Introduce You to Remarkable People

If you want to understand how and why the great men and women of the world did what they did, what better way than to read their own words? Or, at the very least, the words of someone who knew them better than most. This is where biographies come in. Whether it’s the work of biographers like Walter Isaacson on Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk, or autobiographies written by the individuals themselves, there is no better way to learn how to live an interesting life than through those who have already done it.

Another fascinating category is collections of writing and correspondence. My hero Ian Fleming is a perfect example. His journalism and essays have recently been collected in Talk of the Devil, while The Man with the Golden Typewriter, a collection of his correspondence, offers an intimate window into the man behind James Bond. Reading someone’s private letters often reveals far more about their character, ambitions, and way of thinking than any biography ever could.

I encourage you to seek out these kinds of books about the people you admire most. You may discover a new interest, a forgotten story, or an idea that sends you down an entirely new path. After all, that is one of the great joys of building a library. You never quite know where the next book will lead.

Teach You About Beauty

Beauty deserves to be studied just as much as history or philosophy. Some of the most inspiring books in my library contain almost no continuous prose at all.

Whether they are about architecture, design, travel, cars, or watches, beautiful books should do more than showcase beautiful images. They should teach you why those things are beautiful. On my shelves, Renzo Piano, Zaha Hadid, John Lautner, and Frank Lloyd Wright sit alongside books on style, cars, photography, and industrial design.

One of my favourites is Hugo Jacomet’s The Italian Gentleman. Beyond its stunning photography, it explores the history of Neapolitan tailoring, the philosophy behind its relaxed elegance, and the remarkable craftsmen responsible for some of the world’s finest clothing.

It’s a love letter to the spalla camicia shoulder, the deep voice and timeless style of Antonio Panico, and the other men of Naples who contribute to the tradition of handmade tailoring. From tie and shoemakers to family-run fabric Mills in the mountains, by the time you close the book, you don’t simply appreciate Italian style more. You understand it. And now you have the inspiration to get dressed tomorrow.

Help You Grow

Curiosity naturally leads to competence. The more fascinated you become by something, the more you want to learn how to do it yourself. This is where practical books earn their place on the shelf. Whether it is drawing, diving, photography, or becoming a better writer, I find it almost impossible to resist buying books whenever a new skill captures my imagination. At the moment, I am on the lookout for a guide to learning how to fly gliders.

Another shelf should be devoted to books that help you grow. Not the kind of self-help that offers empty motivation, but books that genuinely improve the way you think, work, and live. Business, psychology, productivity, finance, philosophy... anything that helps you better understand yourself and the world around you.

Robert Greene is one author I return to repeatedly. The 48 Laws of Power and Mastery have taught me as much about human nature as they have about success. Books like these don’t simply teach you new ideas. They teach you to observe the world differently.

Keep You Curious

Not every worthwhile addition to a library comes as a book. Magazines deserve a place on the shelf as well. They combine exceptional writing with beautiful photography and, perhaps most importantly, expose you to subjects you may never have thought to explore.

My shelves are filled with copies of The Rake, Robb Report, Monocle, Nobleman, AD, National Geographic, and vintage copies of Life, Playboy, and other gentleman’s magazines from decades past.

Every issue offers a little of everything: travel, architecture, interviews, photography, politics, style, and culture. In many ways, magazines planted the seed for this very publication. They remind me that curiosity rarely travels in a straight line.

Give Curiosity a Home

A library is more than the books it contains. It is also the space that invites you to return to them.

You do not need a grand room lined with thousands of volumes. You do not need built-in shelves or wood-panelled walls. In fact, you do not even need a dedicated room. All you really need is a comfortable chair beside a bookshelf with enough room to grow over the years.

Choose a corner of your home that feels separated from distraction. Somewhere that doesn’t face a television. Keep a coffee table nearby for the books currently occupying your attention, the ones you find yourself returning to before they quietly make way for the next fascination.

Most importantly, make it comfortable. If curiosity is going to flourish there, the space should invite you to stay.

If you’ve read my essays How to Design Your Own Study and Objects That Make a Study Inspiring, you’ll know I believe the spaces we inhabit shape the lives we lead. A library is no different. Whether it occupies an entire room or simply one corner of a study, it should quietly encourage you to sit down, pick up a book, and remain curious.

Continuing a Life of Curiosity

There is something deeply satisfying about walking over to a shelf, running your hand along the spines, and rediscovering a book you had forgotten you owned. The next fascination is often waiting only a few inches away.

As your library grows, so too will your curiosity.

New interests will appear unexpectedly. Some will last a month. Others will stay with you for decades. Do not worry about balance. A library is not a museum. It is a living record of the questions that have mattered to you.

Every volume represents a question you once asked of the world. Every shelf a fascination that became important enough to explore. Every worn spine is evidence that you chose understanding over distraction.

One day, someone will walk into your library and know exactly who you are without you saying a word. They will see the architects you admired, the countries you dreamed of visiting, the people who shaped your thinking, the novels that taught you courage, and the hobbies that became lifelong passions.

That is what a library really is.

It is the autobiography of your curiosity.

It is the physical home of a curious life.

Every year near St. Moritz in the Swiss Alps, one of the most intoxicating displays of Italian motoring takes place. For three days, vintage Alfa Romeos, Ferraris, and other hand-built instruments of speed and elegance wind through the alpine roads of Switzerland’s Engadin valley during the Passione Engadina, gathering collectors, enthusiasts, and drivers from across Europe.

Only three years after taking a chance on an idea, Alessandro Coltro found himself in the passenger seat of one of these cars as co-driver to former Formula One driver and commentator Ivan Capelli, an experience many automotive enthusiasts could only dream of. For those three glorious days, Alessandro and Ivan moved through the Alps in vintage Italian motor cars, albeit not always in comfort, stopping along the way with collectors, drivers, and enthusiasts who shared the same appreciation for beautifully made things.

At one point during the rally, their original car broke down entirely and had to be replaced with a Fiat 124. But when Alessandro spoke to me about this experience back at his home base in Milan, what interested him most was not simply the scenery, or even the machinery itself. In fact, he admitted he could barely remember what kind of car they had originally been driving, only that it was beautiful.

What stayed with him were the people. A community of like-minded individuals brought together through a shared appreciation for craftsmanship, engineering, style, and a slower, more intentional way of life. In many ways, it felt like a physical manifestation of the very thing Alessandro had spent those previous three years building.

In 2017, he founded Gents Cafe, a Milan-based men’s lifestyle publication and community centered around style, culture, and what it means to be a modern gentleman. At first, it existed only as an Instagram page, a creative outlet where Alessandro could explore and share his growing interest in classic menswear and design. But over time, it evolved into something much larger: an international community of men connected less by the products themselves, and more by the values and lifestyle surrounding them.

Growing up in Milan, Alessandro was always fascinated by building things. Even as a young kid, with an eye for art and design and a knack for entrepreneurship, he spent his time making intricate trees out of copper wire and selling them as a hobby. Though he jokes that most of his customers were family members, it gave him a first taste of creating something people wanted, a feeling that never left him.

The next passion was born the moment Alessandro’s father brought home the family’s first computer. Enthralled by everything the machine could do, he began imagining all the things he could build with it. It was a whole new world waiting to be built.

At school, he majored in computer engineering at Politecnico di Milano, Italy’s largest technical university. It was there that his interest in business returned as he discovered startup culture, which was starting to take off in Milan at the time. But as he entered his master’s program, the idea of spending every day writing code started to give him second thoughts.

For Alessandro, learning to code had become a means to an end. That end: obtaining the skills he needed to build out his ideas in a new digital world. And, with his first idea for a startup, he left school, and gave himself six months to make his idea work. He found a technical co-founder, though it’s hard to believe he needed one, as he sees himself as the idea/business guy, and within four months they had investors.

Though ultimately the idea—an app built to help people find a dish they are craving in whatever city they happen to be in—failed after they discovered it didn’t really have a market fit. It taught him a great deal. He explained to me, “I didn’t see failure as a taboo. For me it was just part of the learning process.” Months later, after closing the business, a journalist writing about hot new startups in Milan contacted Alessandro, asking him for an interview.

After telling the journalist they unfortunately had to shut down the startup, the writer changed tactics, asking if he could talk about why he thought the business had failed and what he had learned from the experience. The interview was given, and the article was released to a great deal of interest and feedback from readers who related to his story.

This one article led to a six-month speaking tour, where he stood before crowds of fellow startup founders tackling the subject of failure.

Around this time, Alessandro’s interest in classic menswear began to move to the forefront of his mind. He started the Gents Cafe Instagram page as a creative outlet to explore and express his growing sense of style, while also using it as a kind of business card to establish himself within Milan’s menswear world. For his next major venture, the business itself would follow that passion.

His second startup idea was an influencer marketing platform built specifically for the menswear industry, connecting brands with creators and publications in the space. He had a new co-founder, investors, and interested clients ready to work with him. Everything was set to launch alongside the biggest menswear event in the world: Pitti Uomo.

Every year, twice a year, stylish men from around the world descend upon Florence for the legendary trade show. Tailors, shirt makers, shoemakers, brands, publications, photographers, and buyers flood into the Renaissance city dressed in soft tailoring, suede loafers, silk ties, and sunglasses under the Tuscan sun. For a few days, Florence becomes the center of the menswear world, and finally, Alessandro was positioned perfectly to take advantage of it.

There was just one problem. It was March 2020, and the entire world shut down. Pitti Uomo was canceled, and with it Alessandro’s business. Another idea, another startup, gone. Not because it wasn’t a good idea, but for reasons out of his control.

Again, back at square one, he moved on and didn’t look back.

Building The Community

As the Gents Cafe Instagram continued to grow, Alessandro began to realize something important. Menswear itself was never really the point.

“The products you buy was a very superficial approach,” he explained. “People like to connect with people who have the same passion… but they see these topics as a conversation starter.”

What interested him was what existed underneath the clothing itself: the conversations, friendships, ideas, rituals, and sense of belonging that formed around shared interests.

So Alessandro launched the Gents Cafe newsletter. Unlike social media, which he feels often encourages shallow interactions and endless scrolling, the newsletter allowed for something more personal and intimate. “You are allowing someone else to get into your inbox... which somehow is a private space.”

At first, the newsletter mostly consisted of Alessandro curating and sharing interesting articles, brands, and ideas with his fast-growing audience. But after some time, something unexpected started to happen. Readers began reaching out to him directly, asking if they could contribute pieces of their own.

The first was a Danish man who simply admired what Alessandro was building and wanted to write about cocktails and men’s lifestyle topics he was passionate about. He wasn’t asking to be paid. He simply wanted to contribute.

“It sounds to me weird that someone would be willing to write basically for free,” Alessandro admitted. “I perceived truly that he was passionate and probably we were aligned in terms of values.”

More contributors followed, and now, more than thirty writers from around the world have contributed to Gents Cafe, drawn not by the prestige of writing for a major magazine with a celebrity on the cover, but by a shared passion for the subjects themselves.

Normally, the direction of a publication is shaped by the tastes and interests of the people behind it. The best magazines feel like a direct reflection of their founders. Early Playboy, for example, was unmistakably Hugh Hefner.

But over time, many publications broaden themselves in pursuit of larger audiences and market share, often alienating the readers who were drawn to them in the first place. In the case of magazines like GQ and Esquire, the transformation has been so dramatic that they almost cease to feel recognizable as men’s magazines at all.

Gents Cafe has taken a different approach. Because of its community-driven nature, the audience itself helps shape the topics and conversations the publication explores.

“It’s about being open-minded. When someone reached out to me to write on a topic that at the time seemed a little far away from what we normally cover, I realized that was the power of Gents Cafe.”

One such example came when a contributor pitched an article about male infertility, a subject many men’s lifestyle publications likely wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. Alessandro wasn’t initially sure the piece belonged in Gents Cafe, but because the idea came directly from the community, he decided to publish it.

The response was overwhelming. The article became one of the publication’s most praised pieces, connecting with far more men than Alessandro had expected.

One article I first read after finding out about the publication was entitled “A Postcard From Lake Como,” which details a weekend road trip Alessandro took with three friends around the famous Italian lake, while drinking Americanos and Negronis and driving a 1973 1.3-liter Alfa Romeo Duetto Spider. A two-seater, although as he explains in the article, “The Alfa Duetto is in fact a four-seater. We’re just not sure where the rear ones are…”

To me, it was a weekend out of a dream. I could hear the engine racing around the curves, feel the cool breeze coming off the lake, and imagine the taste of the well-made cocktail. From then, I was hooked.

When I asked Alessandro about his life in Milan, he described a city that has transformed over the last decade from a traditional Italian business capital into something far more international and interconnected.

“You can connect with many different people from different parts of the world. You have a lot of events. There’s also a lot of FOMO here.”

But despite the constant opportunities and energy surrounding the city, he says he has gradually learned to take a more intentional approach to his time.

That intentionality comes into everything he does. He spoke about style less as a strict set of rules and more as something personal. A well-worn watch, an unusual jacket, a specific pair of shoes — the kinds of details that make you curious enough to ask someone about someone’s choices. For Alessandro, the most stylish people are often the ones who look comfortable in what they wear because it genuinely reflects who they are. And more often than not, those details become the beginning of a conversation.

His own style reflects that same philosophy. Relaxed but intentional, elegant without feeling overly studied. The sort of style that seems to come naturally to many Italians, what they would call sprezzatura. He told me about his obviously stylish parents, who clearly believed it was never too early to introduce a child to good tailoring, dressing him in a three-piece suit one Christmas, and how growing up around stylish friends in Milan naturally sharpened his eye over time.

When meeting people at events in Milan and at Pitti Uomo, he explains, “I truly appreciate people that are wearing something that’s unique, and how that becomes an opportunity to ask a question and then you get a story about why they wear it.”

That world of style, conversation, cafés, and fashion events in Milan helps explain why, despite his deep roots in the startup world, Alessandro never ultimately felt the need to move somewhere like San Francisco.

At one point in our conversation, I asked him whether he had ever seriously considered leaving Italy to immerse himself fully in the American startup scene. On paper, it almost seems like the obvious path for someone with his entrepreneurial mindset.

“I think Milan has a very good balance between opportunities and quality of life. I never wanted to go anywhere else,” he says.

“Especially in the startup world, there’s this hustle culture where you always need to do more, achieve more… and I think at some point you risk forgetting to enjoy what you already built.”

After commenting on and asking about my own experiences with hustle culture in the United States, which he admitted he does admire in certain ways, I found myself agreeing that the European ability to appreciate the present moment can be a refreshing change of pace for people who still work hard.

Alessandro certainly appreciates his coffee. As we spoke about our mutual obsession with grinding and brewing our own beans, I showed him the Chemex sitting on my desk. In return, he told me about his own morning coffee ritual and what those slow fifteen or twenty minutes of preparation mean to him.

“Maybe it takes 20 minutes to make yourself a coffee, which may sound crazy, but I think the act of doing that and being focused on what you’re doing… I see it as a form of meditation.”

It’s hard not to see that same philosophy reflected throughout Gents Cafe itself. A publication centered around slowing down long enough to appreciate craftsmanship, conversation, ritual, and the richness that can still exist in everyday life.

As Alessandro put it, “Sometimes you are so focused on the next step that you don’t appreciate the stage you are currently living.” For him, this hit home. I am one to always live in the future, dreaming of what it can be, continuously ambitious, but never in the now. Perhaps he is right.

As for the future of Gents Cafe, Alessandro wants to create some kind of physical media. As a collector of indie magazines and coffee table books, he loves the printed word. I could see a beautifully made coffee table book featuring Gents Cafe’s best articles and images. A little like those special print editions of Monocle, designed to be enjoyed with a coffee on a Saturday.

Alessandro also wants to grow the events that Gents Cafe hosts. The kind where the digital café he created can become a physical space for readers to create actual, in-person connections.

Overall, he wants to keep building, because that’s what he loves to do. Not for the attention, but the connection. Whether through his newsletter or in the passenger seat of a vintage Italian motor car in the Swiss Alps next to a former Formula One driver, meeting exactly the kind of men who should, and probably all will be, readers of Gents Cafe.

Subscribe for more articles like this on style, travel, and living intentionally.

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What is the nature of ambition?

It can drive men to pursue skill, competence, and excellence. It can be the fuel that keeps you working late into the night, long after everyone else has gone home. It pushes the best of us to become everything we are capable of being.

Yet ambition is not always directed by a proper guiding principle.

For the second-hand men of the world, ambition is aimed at something very different. They seek neither competence nor achievement, but authority and status. Their measure of success is not what they have created, but how many others stand beneath them, or approve of them. It is the ambition of power and admiration, and it is born not from confidence, but from dependence.

Ambition can also draw men toward a life of beauty. Through art, clothes, cars, houses, watches, travel, technology, and an interesting lifestyle, you can find a lot of excitement. These are worth while pursuits, but for a gentleman of pure and proper ambition, they are simply the rewards of his efforts. The result that comes from the core pursuit of a man’s life:

His work.

Ambition, in its purest form, is the motive power that keeps you reaching higher. The work you choose to do is the vehicle.

Perhaps the most important decision a man can make in his life is what that work is, because if you choose poorly, happiness will be forever out of reach until you change that work.

Becoming a Fraud

I often think back to a scene from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, one that perfectly illustrates what happens when a man chooses the wrong work. Lawrence Jamieson, played by Michael Caine, is an elegant con man living on the French Riviera. As he walks with a younger protégé, explaining how he came to his profession, he says:

“Freddy, as a younger man, I was a sculptor, a painter, and a musician. There was just one problem: I wasn’t very good. As a matter of fact, I was dreadful. I finally came to the frustrating conclusion that I had taste and style, but not talent. I knew my limitations. We all have our limitations, Freddy. Fortunately, I discovered that taste and style were commodities that people desired. Freddy, what I am saying is: know your limitations. You are a moron.”

While it is one of the funniest films I’ve seen, I have always found that line to be deeply tragic.

Instead of blowing past his limiting beliefs and committing himself fully to becoming, Lawrence accepts them as permanent. He mistakes temporary incompetence for permanent limitation, concluding that because he is not yet exceptional, he never will be. Instead of becoming, he cheats. Instead of building, he steals.

He spends the rest of his life relying on charm, manipulation, and deception to acquire the life he believes he could never earn through his own ability. But the greatest fraud Lawrence ever committed was not against the wealthy women he conned. It was against himself.

He robbed himself of the opportunity to discover who he might have become had he devoted his entire soul to mastery instead of surrendering to mediocrity. Possessing great taste does not inherently mean you deserve the thing you desire. And often when you obtain them through tough trickery, the reward is emptier.

Lawrence’s mistake reminded me of another character who chose the wrong path for an entirely different reason.

On The Importance Of Choosing the Right Work

My favourite book ever written is Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. On the surface, it is the story of an uncompromising young architect, Howard Roark, possessed of great talent and determined to build on his own terms. At its heart, it is a novel about integrity, independence, ambition, and the role that work should play in a man’s life.

But the character of Peter Keating is perhaps the most tragic.

Keating chooses architecture not because he loves it, but because he believes it is a respectable profession. Every major decision he makes is filtered through the judgment of others. He is driven not by what he wants to build, but by what will earn him approval, prestige, and importance. He spends his entire life asking everyone else what he should become, until one day he wakes up and discovers he has become exactly that: everyone else’s idea of success.

Howard Roark could not be more different.

He chooses architecture for one reason alone. It is the work he wants to do. Not because it is respected. Not because it pays well. Not because it will make him important. He wants to build because building is one of his highest values. His work is an end in itself.

Early in the novel, the dean of the architecture school tries to persuade Roark to abandon his ambitions and pursue something more sensible.

“But you see," said Roark quietly, "I have, let's say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I've chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I'm only condemning myself to sixty years of torture.”

This sentence changed the way I think about work, not as a thing we have to do as a means of survival, but as an obligation to ourselves.

If we are fortunate, we will spend the greater part of our lives working. It is difficult to imagine a more important decision than choosing what that work will be.

This does not mean you have to discover your life’s work at twenty-two, nor that it can never change. Careers evolve. Interests deepen. New opportunities present themselves. But whatever form your work eventually takes, it should be chosen because it is yours, not because it belongs to someone else’s idea of success.

The Curse of Ambition, And Becoming A Man Of Action

One of the problems with being an ambitious man with a vivid vision of your future is that you are constantly living in the dream. You picture the life you want so clearly that it begins to feel inevitable. You forget to appreciate the present, or worse, you start believing that simply thinking about it long enough will somehow make it happen.

I know because I spent years doing exactly that.

From a young age, I knew I wanted to live a life that was out of the ordinary. I didn’t know exactly what it looked like, but I knew how it felt. Over time, that vision took shape. I developed a love for timeless style, travel, 1950s European sports cars, well-tailored suits, beautiful architecture, and the pursuit of excellence. Characters like James Bond planted the idea in my head that a man could build a life of taste, adventure, and purpose.

The problem was, I had no idea how to get there. So I did what many ambitious people do. I planned.

I spent years trying to think my way into the life I wanted. If I could just devise the perfect strategy, make the right decision, or discover the missing piece, surely everything else would fall into place.

Then, slowly, I discovered the work.

I found a love for writing. A fascination with filmmaking. An obsession with design. A growing interest in philosophy and the world of ideas. Eventually, those interests led me into advertising, where I found a profession that allowed me to bring many of them together.

To this day, I still have a tendency to live in the future. My mind is always thinking about the next goal, the next project, the next life I want to build.

But I’ve learned that no amount of dreaming will get me there without action.

The next step is learning to devote yourself to that action completely and take it to the next level.

On Becoming Limitless

In the film Limitless, Bradley Cooper’s character, Eddie Mora, is a talented writer living in New York City. Despite this, he has wasted the last few years of his life drinking, procrastinating, and living off the generosity of his girlfriend, who leaves him in the first act of the film.

Eddie even has a book deal from a major publisher but can’t write a single word. He spends his days planning, procrastinating, and going to the bar at noon to “take a break.” Then, by chance, he stumbles across his ex-brother-in-law, a high-level drug dealer with powerful and shady connections. Feeling sorry for Eddie, he hands him an experimental drug called NZT-48.

The pill changes Eddie’s life in a matter of weeks. It unlocks parts of his brain he never knew existed. He can think faster than anyone else, remember everything he has ever seen, and learn new skills in a matter of hours.

The premise of the film is summed up perfectly in the first line Eddie says after taking the pill:

“I wasn’t high. I wasn’t wired. Just clear. I knew what I needed to do and how to do it.”

Then he sits down at his computer and begins to write. That is the essence of what it means to lock in.

No, I’m not suggesting you need a magic pill like Eddie, although I think we’ve all wished one existed at some point.

Figure out what needs to be done. Figure out how to do it. Then do it.

Don’t mistake planning for progress. Finish something, then use that momentum to finish the next thing.

The film exaggerates the process, of course. Eddie starts by cleaning his apartment. Then he writes his book. Then he learns new skills. He uses those skills to become a successful trader, then a deal broker involved in major corporate mergers, and eventually runs for Congress.

The scale is fiction. The principle is not.

Each action makes the next one possible. Every completed piece of work builds confidence for the one that follows. One win becomes another, and another, until the life you once imagined slowly begins to take shape. This is how great men are made.

The Dreaded “Work-Life Balance”

I have never liked the term work-life balance. Perhaps because it implies that work is somehow separate from life. The premise seems to be that work is the thing you have to endure, while life is what happens before nine o’clock, after five, and on weekends.

What a sad way to look at it.

This does not mean one area of life should consume all the others.

If you devote yourself entirely to your career while neglecting love, friendship, health, family, or adventure, you will still have lived only half a life. Jackson & Co. has always been about living intentionally, not becoming one-dimensional.

The mistake is thinking balance means every area of life deserves an equal share of your time, every day of every week.

It doesn’t.

Life moves in seasons. There are weeks that demand twelve-hour days and complete focus. There are others that call for long lunches, weekends away, and slow mornings with the woman you love.

Real balance is not achieved by dividing your attention equally. It comes from knowing what deserves your attention today, and giving it your full attention while it has it.

Never Let Your Spark Go Out

When people ask, “What is your biggest fear?”, many people say drowning, tight spaces, or spiders.

I say “not reaching my potential”.

I think this is a fear many ambitious men quietly share. It means you understand something fundamental: your future is your responsibility. And that can be a heavy burden to carry. Especially when the world seems to be actively trying to make the life you want impossible.

When I feel this, I think back to my favorite quote of all time.

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it’s yours.”
- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

This thought has given me the courage to face a lifetime. I hope it will for you too.

If there is one thing I hope you take away from this essay, it is this. Choose your work carefully. Choose it for your own reasons. Then devote yourself to it completely.

The world does not need another man living someone else’s life.

It needs the fullest version of yours.

Today I was walking through two of my favorite neighborhoods in Paris, the Sixth and the Seventh Arrondissements. The sun was out, and people were truly enjoying themselves in the streets.

This was not one of the touristy streets where hundreds of Americans in shorts and sneakers roam. This was Paris for the locals. A Saturday where people walk, drink, and live. I was enjoying my leisurely stroll around one corner when I saw it. The Swatch store. Something that only a few weeks ago had 400 people standing outside.

I still expected to see 20 or 30 people trying to get their hands on the AP Royal Pop. But, to my surprise, I saw no one. I stepped inside, and I was the only one there. I don’t really know why I went in when I had no intention of buying anything, but honestly, I was curious.

To no surprise to you and me, the sales associate informed me that they were sold out of the new AP watch. As I stood there looking at the display, I found myself genuinely puzzled. The original AP Royal Oak and Omega Speedmaster are very handsome sports watches. The Royal Pop, in the flesh, looked like something I might have gotten in my Mickey D’s Happy Meal. Its plastic case and bright blue screws stared up at me. This particular one was 400 euros and won’t be back in stock any time soon. Now what the hell, I thought! This is what people want?

For roughly the same money, I could think of dozens of old watches from the 40s, 50s, and 60s that I would rather have. In fact, they even had exact plastic replicas of old 50s watches. Some of which were in the Swatch portfolio. Honestly, they looked very good. A Wittnauer, an Omega, and a Rolex with just an “X” on the dial. All chronographs. When I asked about those, “Oh no, sir,” the guy said with surprising pretentiousness in a plastic watch store. “We don’t sell those. They are just for display.”

After leaving, glad I hadn’t fallen for the plastic couture rouge, I wondered what drove so many people to buy such an obviously tacky keychain like the Royal Pop.

The longer I thought about it, the more I realized the question had very little to do with watches.

It had to do with desire. More specifically, it had to do with where our desires come from.

Taste is a tricky thing. People believe either you have it or you don’t. Personally, I don’t believe anyone “has it” from birth; it’s developed. For many, it’s hard to point out where it comes from. For others, with just one look, you can tell exactly where their taste comes from, and it’s not from the people they come into contact with, the heroes they look up to, their dad, their grandpa, or even the stores in the place where they grew up. No, when you see these particular people, you can tell their personality, aesthetic, and lifestyle were chosen for them by the algorithm.

They did not see an old film once and fall in love with a look, intentionally going for it even when it wasn’t cool. They have outsourced their entire look, the car they drive, the place they live, and the things they put in their home to a few “influencers” who do the thinking for them.

I don’t want to give the impression that I hate social media. I don’t. In fact, if you choose the right people to listen to, they can spark your imagination. What I do dislike is an unthinking mob of people who want a Rolex GMT because Nico Leonard thinks it will turn heads and get “respect” from the watch community.

Who in their right mind develops their taste based on how much “respect” they will get from other people in a particular niche? That is the opposite of developing your own taste. It is, in fact, living second-hand for the approval of other strangers for your own personal items.

This, you probably realize already, but have you really considered how much of your taste is fed by what the people you follow think is cool, and what you see and say, “Yes, that is so me”?

How To Develop Your Own Taste

When I see the silhouette of a Jaguar XK120 coupe, I don’t think, “Wow, that’s the car that Richard Hammond has.” I see art. I feel something welling up inside of me, ready to explode with excitement. The color, the lines, the sound, the timelessness of it, and how it is exactly of its time at the same time. To me, it screams, this is my future car.

But the truth is, I only recently discovered my love for this particular model. I spent years looking at thousands of pictures of cars and the cars themselves in person, figuring out which one I liked the look and feel of the most.

You must do the same with all things in life you love as well. It should come naturally, but it doesn’t for some. You have to walk into a hundred clothing stores to know what it is you like. My first time stepping into a real flagship Ralph Lauren store, the one on the Upper East Side of New York, I knew I found my aesthetic home. This was at the age of 28, but when I was 12, I still loved the brand. I just hadn’t walked into a store that showed me the entire world like the store in New York and Paris do every time I go.

This brings me to one of my favorite stories about Ralph Lauren.

A few years ago, Lauren was being interviewed while wearing an old faded plaid shirt. The interviewer complimented it, assuming it was some rare vintage piece or perhaps an unreleased design from one of his collections.

It wasn’t.

“This shirt? I bought it at Kmart.”

That one sentence contains the entire lesson.

Ralph Lauren was not wearing the shirt because it was fashionable. He was not wearing it because it would impress anyone. He was not wearing it ironically, either.

He simply liked it. That may sound obvious, but it is remarkably rare.

Most people spend their lives looking for things that have already been approved by someone else. Ralph Lauren spent his life developing the ability to decide for himself.

That is why a shirt from Kmart could sit comfortably alongside vintage Ferraris, English tailoring, ranches in Colorado, and some of the most beautiful homes in America. The value was never in the label. It was in his judgment.

People often think Ralph Lauren built a fashion empire. I think he built something far more interesting. He built a world. A world of things he genuinely admired. Vintage sports cars. Ivy League campuses. The American West. English country houses. Sailboats. Tweed jackets. Leather-bound books.

For decades, he collected the things he loved and assembled them into something uniquely his own. So successfully, in fact, that people now look at ordinary objects and places and describe them as “very Ralph Lauren.”

That is what happens when a person develops taste instead of borrowing it.

Perhaps that is what taste really is. Not the ability to buy expensive things. Not the ability to recognize trends. Not even the ability to identify quality.

Taste is knowing what genuinely moves you and having the confidence to build a life around it.

So the next time you buy a watch, a jacket, a car, a painting, or a plane ticket, ask yourself a simple question:

Do I admire this? Or have I simply been taught to admire it?

Ambitious and successful men often share a few similarities that, if you look closely, you can pick up on.

They dream big and have visions of the future. They spend large amounts of time in deep thought while also possessing the discipline to take action and turn those thoughts into reality. They work hard when the time calls for it and pursue their thirst for life through obsessions that excite them. Through art, culture, travel, romance, the acquisition of skills, and creative pursuits.

But there is one similarity over all the others that is often overlooked or even discounted.

They choose their environment very carefully.

Back in the early days of the United States, the battle cry of the young and ambitious man was, “Go West, young man, go West.” At the time, opportunity lived on the frontier. It existed in the unknown. In land, resources, railroads, industry, and the building of a nation.

Men like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller built their empires during this period of extraordinary American industrialization. Carnegie, a poor Scottish immigrant, found opportunity in the rapidly growing steel industry that would build America’s bridges, railways, and cities. Rockefeller saw a similar future in oil, transforming a young industry into one of the foundations of the modern world.

These men understood something fundamental: opportunity appears in very specific places. The men of action do not simply wait for the world to come to them. They go where the future is being built.

But that frontier has changed. The economy has changed, and while opportunity no longer always appears as untouched land or a new natural resource waiting to be discovered, the principle remains the same. Ambitious people still go where the action is.

In his famous essay “Cities and Ambition,” entrepreneur and writer Paul Graham argues that great cities subtly send a message to everyone living there, telling people what is important in that environment.

Walking through the streets of New York, looking up at the towering skyscrapers, you feel the pursuit of financial success. In Silicon Valley, you feel the obsession with building the future at every coffee shop and networking event. There, the currency is less about “how much do you have?” and more “what are you working on?” Living in such a place rubs off on you after a while, and that energy shifts your focus.

Walking through the historic streets of Paris, past the cafés full of Parisians having their after-work apéritif, you feel the importance of art, beauty, taste, international living, and lifestyle design. That’s why you hear people say Europe has a “better work-life balance.” For the man who chooses his work well, there is no need for such things. It’s not that the French don’t work hard, the best of them do, but it’s that they also value the other areas. They pursue a full existence where no aspect of life is ignored.

There is no denying the fact that your environment shapes you, but the great thing about this fact is that we have the freedom to change our environment at will. To one that better reflects who we are.

And throughout history, there has been one environment that has consistently attracted men of action who wanted to live a little closer to the source: the great cities of the world.

Not because they are always easier. It’s way harder. A “good apartment” is small, the prices of everyday items make your head spin, it’s noisy, and life moves faster. But for the right person, that concentration of people, ideas, culture, and opportunity creates an advantage unlike almost anywhere else.

The city acts as a force multiplier across nearly every area of a gentleman’s life.

Let me explain.

Why Life In A City Is A Force Multiplier

In the life of a gentleman, there are five areas in which the city amplifies through sheer abundance, energy, and opportunity.

The first is career.

Depending on your industry and area of expertise, your growth can be radically accelerated when you place yourself among people operating at the highest level.

For myself, as an ambitious young advertising copywriter, I moved to New York City to pursue a career on Madison Avenue. For over a century, it has been the beating heart of the advertising world. The place where legendary agencies, creatives, and campaigns were born. Where Don Draper penned revolutionary ad concepts, whiskey and cigarettes in hand.

To me, being there mattered. Not because opportunity couldn’t exist elsewhere, but because I wanted to surround myself with the standards of the people who had mastered my chosen craft. There, I realized something.

The city does something remarkable: it normalizes excellence. What once seemed impossible, a deadline, a cinematic film, a kick-ass idea, slowly becomes the expectation.

The second area of a gentleman’s life that can be massively accelerated by the city is dating and romance.

Few things are shaped more by the environment. The person who spends every day surrounded by the same small circle naturally limits the number of people, personalities, and experiences entering his life. There is nothing wrong with this life. It’s just that not every man finds what he is looking for in that small environment.

A great city changes this equation completely. Every café, dinner party, museum, bookstore, tennis club, nightclub, jazz lounge, and evening out becomes an opportunity to meet someone interesting. In the city, you are constantly surrounded by beautiful, intelligent women who have also chosen to place themselves where life is happening. I should know, it's where I met my wife.

But the real advantage of this abundance is not simply more dating options. It’s what those options do to you.

When meeting new people becomes a normal part of life, you become more comfortable, more confident, and more socially capable. You learn how to hold conversations with people from different countries, backgrounds, and perspectives. You learn what attracts you, what excites you, and what kind of people bring out the best in you.

The city turns social ability from a skill you practice into a natural part of everyday life. And that is a force multiplier that feeds the other areas.

The third area is a more practical one, but a life changer if acted upon, and it’s access to affordable global travel near a major airport.

In my home city of Paris, near CDG, I can fly to any major European city for under 200 euros. This is a game-changer for those who value adventure and travel highly, especially those who are early in their careers and thirst to explore, but without the means for first-class long-haul travel.

Even in New York, you can fly to the Caribbean and Europe for far cheaper than almost anywhere else in the United States. No connections, just direct flights to Jamaica, Rome, Paris, London, Lisbon, you name it. Adventure becomes as easy as booking a ticket and hopping on the train to the airport.

The fourth area is culture, art, and style.

Living in NYC and Paris, I have had access to some of the greatest works of art ever produced, short of visiting Italy. The Met, the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, the list goes on.

These are famous and everyone knows them, but what people often don’t realize is the art of the city itself. The monuments, the architecture, the way a street feels when you walk down it. The scale, the drama, the shock of energy that sends a jolt through the spine when you step out onto the platform at the Top of the Rock at Rockefeller Center and see one of the greatest skylines man has ever produced.

Nothing can compare to the romance of everyday life in a place that inspires you with every step. From streets lined with luxury storefronts to old wooden café frontages in Paris.

The art of the everyday becomes part of you. When you wake up to grab a pain au chocolat at the corner boulangerie, walking beneath the great Haussmann façades hanging over you, you can’t help but be filled with the same feeling that a great sculpture or painting fills you with. This, when done right, is your sense of life reflected in your environment.

In the city there are also cultural events, like your favorite band performing, jazz bars, and authentic experiences that feel more like the movies than real life.

When I moved to NYC for the first time, I lived above an old jazz bar two blocks from Times Square. When I wanted, I could step out my door, walk down the brownstone steps, and walk inside to what looked to me like a movie set from 1953.

Any other place in the world and this would feel like some kind of fake recreation trying to be an old jazz club. This was authentic. The old mahogany bar, the red velvet curtains, the low lights, the worn-in booths, and the music. The glorious music that pumped through the brass instruments and ivory keys on the stage off to the right.

Sitting there, I often thought: This is New York. The one that Sinatra sang about, smoking in the corner waiting to take the stage. Where else can you get this much authenticity?

One of my favorite aspects of living in the city is access to clothes and better style. The great cities have all the best brands, tailoring, casual wear, and everything in between. Getting what you want is not hard, but the great thing about the city is that formality still exists.

In many other smaller cities, the casualization of culture has reached everyone. People wear sneakers to the office, and while, of course, they do in the city too, you never look out of place walking down Park Avenue in a beautifully cut dark suit. For those who like to dress elegantly, there is no better place to fit in. From cigar bars, black-tie events, offices, private clubs, and dining rooms, people still dress.

Even if you don’t need to buy anything, walking down Madison Avenue or through the 6th arrondissement in Paris, peering into the windows of Rolex, John Lobb, and Ralph Lauren will fill you with so much desire to start making more money that it will drive you to be more productive.

Would I be so driven to do these things if I didn’t have this monthly walk through some of the most expensive ZIP codes in the world? Maybe not.

The fifth and last area of city life is health, fitness, and skill acquisition.

It is simply a fact that people in the city are healthier. Frankly, I don’t know exactly why this is, but I have a few ideas. They walk more because they most often cannot drive easily. They are more conscientious about health in general, which is why you see so many salad restaurants in major cities like NYC. And I think people generally want to get out of their smaller apartments and spend their afternoons in the fresh air and sunshine.

For the gentleman who wants to learn interesting and sometimes exotic skills, the city is where you will find instruction and a community around that niche.

To give you an example, I myself am interested in getting my diving license so I can dive in the Mediterranean and Caribbean one day. I also want to learn fencing and how to fly glider planes. This, I admit, is much more difficult than taking my monthly tennis lesson. But the idea of learning these things fills me with a sense of adventure and excitement as little else does.

All of these skills can be learned in NYC or Paris from multiple sources to choose from. Where else is it possible to learn such things all at once? In the city, you are not limited by what you can learn, only by your willingness to do so.

How to Choose Your City

In a past piece, How I Quit My Job in NYC And Moved To Paris To Live Intentionally, I went into this in more detail, but I think two good rules of thumb exist.

Figure out what signal a city gives off and match that signal with your highest values. And here is the trick: your priorities may change, so pick one with the idea that you may still leave one day.

The second rule of thumb is the most practical if the first one has been well thought out and researched. And that is: Will the city you love benefit your career, or slow it down?

If you’re in finance and you have to choose between NYC and Milan, don’t just choose Milan because you like Milanese tailoring. Wall Street, or Midtown for that matter, is calling you. Go try to work with the best, especially in the early years.

You Don’t Have To Live In the City Forever

This is a concept that many understand but forget to use as their rationale for living in a city. You shouldn’t see living in the city as some kind of trade-off between a good life and good money. This is a recipe for disaster. You have to want to be there regardless of your career.

That being said, you don’t need to live there your entire life. Of course, there is a balance you can strike with suburban and even rural life as time goes on. I personally think that the best midlife setup is, if you can afford it, to have a place in the city and in the country and exist in both.

Personally, I dream of the day when I can have a two-bedroom apartment in Paris and a house an hour away, or in the south of France. This dream is a long way off, but it’s the kind of vision that should be pursued by the gentleman who wants the best this world has to offer.

A typewriter is an odd thing to bring on a trip to the south of France.

But as I opened the leather case with the two loud snaps of the latches, I was glad I brought my trusted Hermes Baby along. For the last 3 months, I had pictured just this moment. Me next to the pool, the hum of the cicadas, and the clack of the keys. Taking it out of its case, I wondered what security would’ve thought of this ancient machine passing through the X-ray scanner.

Luckily, I didn’t have to test out this curious vision at Charles de Gaulle, because my wife and I had just driven a thousand glorious kilometers across France, from Normandy to Provence. Through the interestingly named Swiss Normandy, around the congested belt of Paris, down the Loire Valley, stopping in Sancerre—perhaps the greatest white wine country in the world—then past Lyon, the Burgundy region, and the Rhône Valley to what is my favorite place in France. Perhaps the world: Provence.

As I sat next to the pool at a white wrought-iron table in the midday sunlight, I tapped an unfiltered Camel out of the pack, lit it, and looked off to my wife swimming in the pool. We were staying at the same place we always stay, the place we have returned to every year since first coming here three years ago. A beautiful property just outside the provincial village of Lambesc, about a thirty-minute drive north of Aix-en-Provence.

The terracotta roof tiles of the house on the small hill cast hard shadows across the fountain spilling water into a pool of koi fish. The dryness of the air, the sun on my back, and the coolness of the breeze drifting off the pool were life-giving.

Now, what to write, I thought. Surely our week-long stay here had to have some productive activity besides my tan. The sound of the cicadas in the surrounding pine trees and dry grasses around the property broke in on my thoughts. It was then that the idea became obvious. I slid a piece of paper into the old Hermes and began to type.

Provence is a land that remains largely untouched, pure and rugged, with its dry Mediterranean scrubland, cypress trees, and vineyards culminating in a luxurious rolling landscape that stretches from mountains to chalk cliffs diving into the sea. It is, of course, known for products like lavender and rosé, but that is far from what makes this place so intoxicating.

When you come here, one of your first thoughts is: where are all the people? Surely the garrigue would attract endless development and urban sprawl, with thousands of homes dotted across the hills. There definitely are homes, many of which are exceedingly beautiful, but the local inhabitants have found a way to work with the landscape instead of beating it into submission. This building style comes from its origins.

Provincia Romana, as the Romans named it, was the first true province of the Roman Republic beyond the Italian peninsula. The Romans first arrived in the region in the late 2nd century BC, and by 121 BC their influence had spread across southern Gaul, linking Italy to Spain through roads, settlements, and trade routes.

More than two thousand years later, aqueducts, arenas, temples, and broken stretches of Roman roads can still be found. An especially high concentration of these ruins can be found in the city of Arles.

There, you will find a Roman amphitheater remarkably similar to the Colosseum in Rome, along with ancient baths, forums, and stone streets that still carry the unmistakable imprint of Roman innovation.

If there is one thing that can be said about Provence in the spring and summer, it’s that it is hot. Damn hot. And if the Romans had invented window air conditioners, I am not entirely convinced they would have made their way into the windows of Provence. In all my time coming here, I have yet to enter a single house with air conditioning.

During the hottest hours of the day, the Provençals shut the wooden shutters of their homes and plunge the rooms into a cool midday darkness. In a land so defined by sunlight, it feels almost sacrilegious, but this is simply how life has always been lived here.

One evening, while sitting in the living room watching the local television station, I saw a reporter interviewing a home renovation company about what he described as a major new innovation spreading across the south of France. The innovation? Sliding window screens that allowed homeowners to open their windows in the evening without letting in the cicadas and clouds of buzzing insects.

My American brain struggled to comprehend this supposed breakthrough. I’m fairly certain my grandmother had window screens on the hundred-year-old farmhouse she grew up in back in North Carolina. But in Provence, change comes slowly.

You feel it most when driving through the countryside. Provence is best experienced from behind the wheel of a car with the top or the windows down, driving through the backroads to villages like Lourmarin and Salon-de-Provence, and the cities of Aix-en-Provence and Arles.

The drive into Lourmarin is one of the most beautiful I’ve ever experienced. The road curves through dry hills, cypress trees, and pale stone landscapes before finally opening into the village itself, where shaded cafés, aged family-owned restaurants, markets, and elegant Provençal villas sit tucked behind old stone walls. It feels like a luxury travel destination without the normal restaurant chains and familiar retail names that take over every vacation destination. It is strictly a local affair.

It was sitting in one of the cafés beneath the plane trees, with a man playing saxophone in the street, that I first seriously began to wonder if this was the kind of place I wanted to settle down in. Far enough from the chaos of the city to breathe, yet still close enough to the culture and energy of the Riviera.

Forty-five minutes south of Lourmarin sits Aix-en-Provence, the cultural heart of Provence. Unlike the villages, Aix hums with café terraces, fountains, local university students, and late-night dinners on the Cours Mirabeau. It has all the energy of a proper city, though softened by the slower rhythms of the south.

On my trips to the city, I’ve spent most of my time walking the streets, sometimes with a cigar and always with my unlined suede loafers, white pants, and linen shirt. During market days, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, you can buy local specialties.

Savon de Marseille, a traditional soap made in the region, which I am not particularly fond of, and little pouches of fresh cut lavender that I buy up and put into my closets and suitcases. With one squeeze every few months, the oils are released and the scent renewed, or at least that’s what the market seller told me on Le Place Richelme.

After the market, my wife and I usually find a seat at one of the cafés in the square, order a drink, and watch the people pass by. The natural choice is an Aperol Spritz, but on my most recent trip, our wonderful neighbor, an older French woman named Marie-Christine who lives there full-time, taught me how to make an Americano.

One evening, I was tasked with bartending back at the house, and Marie-Christine pulled out her dog-eared recipe book and pointed to the list of ingredients: Equal parts Campari, sweet vermouth, and champagne. After making three or four, I started to get the hang of it.

It has since become my favorite drink in the region, alongside another discovery from that same evening: the St-Germain Spritz, something lighter, more floral, and less bitter than the classic Aperol version.

Traveling even farther south from Aix-en-Provence for about forty-five minutes brings you to Cassis, a town on the Mediterranean flanked on all sides by massive limestone cliffs jetting into the sea. The town itself has a harbor full of sailing and motor yachts with colorful small wooden fishing boats lining the walk along the edge of the village.

It has all the beauty and romance that remind you of the Cinque Terre or the Amalfi Coast without the musical comedy of massive tourism, though it does definitely exist there, but to a lesser extent.

Up the steep hills as you move farther into the residential neighborhoods, you find sleek modern villas that feel more Côte d’Azur Riviera than Provence. Sheets of glass, wood, and marble shaped in elegant boxes and sensual curves, next to pools of deep blue. Bentleys, Ferraris, and Porsches parked in the drive.

Seeing the beautiful cars, my mind always drifts to dreams of that day in the hopefully not too distant future where I’ll be shifting my 1950s British machine into 3rd around the corner of the Hôtel Les Roches Blanches, which overlooks the sea. A property without equal in the area.

Between the town of Cassis and Marseille, which lies twenty miles to the west, sits the site of the most stunning hike of my life. The calanques, long fingers of white limestone cliffs separated by deep blue coves, are a protected natural park where almost no homes exist, save for a handful of old fishing shacks grandfathered in by time, and a few ancient dwellings carved into the cliffs.

Hiking along the edges of the cliffs, the sense of scale and height hits you as distant islands appear against the color of the sea. The landscape feels almost austere, were it not for the green pine trees lining the tops of the calanques.

The sight always brings me back to Ian Fleming’s writing about diving on a Roman wreck with Jacques Cousteau and his crew somewhere off this very same coast, near one of those very same islands.

Along one of these hikes, we stopped at several small pebble beaches tucked between the cliffs and dove into the sea from one of the lower rocks jutting out over the water. Off to the left, across the narrow cove, I could see boys who could not have been older than fifteen jumping from dizzying heights that looked to me to be five or six stories tall. While I was nowhere near as brave as these young lads, I had to admire the precision of their dives, each entering the water with barely a splash.

On another visit, we explored the calanques by boat, slowly weaving between the cliffs with Mediterranean spray blowing across the deck. From the water, the limestone walls feel enormous, rising almost vertically out of the sea as the boat slips into narrow coves filled with swimmers and anchored sailboats.

It is in places like the calanques that you begin to understand how much of Provence is lived outside, probably because it’s too damn hot to sit around indoors all day with the window shutters closed.

To really understand and appreciate an area as large as Provence, you have to take it in pieces. You can’t see it all in one weekend. I’ve been three times now, and I still come across videos online showing me places I didn’t know existed. But many regions in France are like this. So why is Provence so special? Why does it always appear in my visions of future adventures?

The definitive answer, I don’t think I will ever fully have, even after my next three or even ten visits. What I can tell you is that Provence is entirely itself. Not trying to be any other place, changing for no one, and timeless in the truest sense.

Back at the little white wrought-iron table beside the pool, another cigarette burned quietly in the ashtray while the old Hermes waited beneath the late afternoon sun. Inside, my wife was cooking some kind of fish, the scent drifting out across the water while the cicadas screamed in the pine trees beyond the garden wall.

I stood up from the typewriter and dove into the deep end.

Picture this. It’s May, and you’re standing behind the chrome railing of a yacht in the Mediterranean, looking toward the chalk cliffs that make up the coastline of the south of France.

The little town of Cassis sits off to your right, glistening in the midday sun. Off to your left, the calanques, long fingers of white sea cliffs with crystal-blue valleys of water between them. The contrast of the deep blue and white invites you to sail in and take a look around.

On the boat is a collection of five of your closest friends and their wives or girlfriends. A bottle of Ruinart Blanc de Blancs Champagne is being popped, oysters sit on ice on a silver platter, and everyone is having an elegantly good time.

You’re dressed like you own the place. Not for the beach, but like the owner of an impressive sailing yacht should be, even if the boat might only be rented for the week. Or at least in the eyes of Ralph Lauren, Rubinacci, or the Parisian tailoring house Cifonelli.

For many, this is one of those pinnacle cinematic moments of one’s life. The kind of moment that makes one feel like a film star. The question I have for you is this: What were you wearing when I painted this aspirational picture in your mind? Was it something comfortable? Something elegant? Something from a movie you saw once?

I hope to God you weren’t wearing a captain’s hat. In my mind, I was wearing a navy linen blazer, a navy knit polo, and most importantly, white trousers, which to me are perhaps the most elegant trousers a man can wear in such an environment.

Now that I come to think of it, aren’t they the most elegant trousers to wear, period, full stop?

Like black tie atire, they seem to only be brought out for special occasions. Like on boats, at resorts, and sitting poolside at a party. But walking through any Ralph Lauren store in a major city like Paris or New York City will have you realizing one fact.

White trousers literally go with everything, and they arnt’t just for the boat.

That’s something the versatility of blue jeans can’t even claim.

In a recent piece I wrote, Inside Paris's Greatest Menswear Store, we walked through Ralph Lauren’s incredible store on the Left Bank of Paris, and it was only after looking back through the photographs that I realized nearly 40 percent of all the mannequins were wearing some form of white trousers. High-waisted trousers with side adjusters, pleated and belted trousers, white jeans, and more.

I thought back to my visits to the New York store and even looked at the photographs I had taken there. Again, the same thing was true. Besides the pictures I took in the dead of winter, almost half, if not more, featured a white bottom half.

And that fact had me wondering why.

Were the stylists in the store trying to tell me something?

I think the message was clear.

I need more white trousers, and I need to stop being afraid to wear them.

The thought brought me back to the Ralph Lauren documentary, where he talks about the company almost going out of business in the late 1970s. He thinks back to the day when he had to make the decision to either close the company down or keep going despite the financial problems.

To mull these thoughts over, he put on a pair of white trousers and went for a walk on New York’s Upper East Side, in the rain. Yes, white trousers in the rain.

He remembers that day vividly.

The man is not afraid of anything, not even ruining his white trousers.

It is that attitude that I think more of us should have. To wear things that most people consider too delicate, as if they were your hardest-wearing pair of blue jeans. Not to baby them and only wear them on that one day a year you get on a boat, or at the one pool party you happen to be invited to.

When you realize this, you will discover that every day, no matter the color of the blazer, no matter the color of the shirt, no matter the color of the shoes, the pants will go with it.

No white after Labor Day, be danmed. It’s rules like this that are meant to be broken.

Parings That Work Every Time

White & White

Here we see perhaps the most striking combination with white trousers, and that's simply with white. Even here, you can see them trying to pull in a little of that navy Tone with the neckerchief and black in the knitwear. That contrast is just enough to keep it from being monotonous.

In this example, they are also mixing textures, which has to be done in order to draw the eye properly. The open knit of the polo contrasts the clean, slick look of the trousers perfectly.

Navy & White

This is my favorite combo, which you have seen in several pictures throughout this article. Nothing pairs more beautifully, just like the sea and those white chalk cliffs of the south of France. Again, the mix of textures will always help.

It will always have a naval, nautical connotation, and even if your no where near the sea, it works with casual wear, formal wear, or any other shade of blue for that matter.

Green & White or Beige/khaki/Tan & White

Reminiscent of army uniforms and Safari excursions, the combination will always have that expedition adventure aesthetic. The only aspect to watch out for is light green, as this does not often have the same masculine elegance.

Brown, Gray, Black & White

Ralph truly is an expert at showing you how literally every color can work with white. In denim, in linen, in wool, cotton, seersucker, in silk blends, and in every season, with thick puffy jackets and long coats.

Now you can open up every single jacket in your wardrobe at any time of year. The only thing that stands between you and that look is your courage to not worry about spaghetti sauce and dirty benches.

Be like Ralph, except when it's raining, maybe wear something else so people don’t see through your pants.

“I was what those in the intelligence community call a case officer,” he said.

The man stood behind a podium in one of those grand Paris rooms built for the diplomatic aristocracy of another era. The ceiling was high, the gilt moldings of the Louis XVI style framing the room. Out the large open window, the Eiffel Tower shone in the midday sun of April. The room was hot, and I was beginning to sweat.

Around the man sat a crowd of American expatriates. Men in dark suits, polished shoes, and well-knotted ties. And women whose clothes hinted of Chanel and Dior without making it obvious. The room had the polite stillness of people who knew they had been admitted somewhere difficult to enter.

Most people, the man said, still think of James Bond and Jason Bourne. A chalk mark on a pavement. A meeting arranged in a street. A source handled carefully in some unfriendly quarter of the world. But the old romance of espionage had been overtaken by something colder. An entity that can think faster than any human, manipulate you like a spy, and learn the inner workings of your mind.

Anthony Vinci, co-founder and CEO of Vico, an AI company built to forecast geopolitical events, spoke without hesitation. He looked to be in his mid-40s, though he had the guarded look of a man who all too often must keep secrets.

Over the course of his career, Vinci conducted intelligence work in Iraq, Africa, and Asia. During that time, he developed an interest in the emerging field of artificial intelligence—and how it might reshape the way intelligence itself is produced.

In 2018, he became the Chief Technology Officer of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the arm of U.S. intelligence that turns satellite images into strategic advantage. There, he was tasked with something more ambitious than oversight. He helped push artificial intelligence into the core of the system, reshaping how intelligence is gathered, interpreted, and delivered in a world moving faster than human analysis alone could keep up.

In the intelligence community, he represents a shift from old espionage to predictive intelligence. Not trench coats and dead drops, but satellites, AI models, data streams, forecasting systems, and citizens becoming targets in the intelligence battlefield.

He believes that in the past, only case officers (code word for field agent) needed to know spycraft and counterintelligence tactics to protect themselves from threats, and that time is long gone. We all need to know this now, for our own protection.

Now, authoritarian governments like Russia and China are developing their own AI systems, some of which are targeted at slowly changing the political opinions of those in the West. Russia is now using AI to pump out hundreds of thousands of fake articles, not to be read by you and me, but by ChatGPT. These articles, as he explained, are put right where chatbots go to look for the information they tell you.

“Everyone says they wouldn’t fall for propaganda like that, but I don’t know… Over the course of years, it subtly pushes in one direction without you even noticing. All of a sudden, over the course of 3 or 4 years, China has ever so subtly convinced you that Taiwan isn’t really worth defending, were China to invade.”

As I sat at my table, suit and tie, staring at my chicken, I suddenly wasn’t as hungry. As a power user of ChatGPT, I found myself wondering if I had been influenced by anything it had said politically. I don’t think I have, but now I will keep an even closer watch, I thought.

The room was one of the most elegant dining rooms I have had the pleasure of eating in since I moved to Paris one year prior. The 18th-century hôtel particulier, adorned in Louis XVI and Neoclassical detail, communicated power and refinement effortlessly.

The house itself, where this meeting—hosted by the American Club of Paris—was taking place, became the Cercle de l’Union Interalliée in 1917, at the height of the First World War, when it served as a meeting place for Allied officers and diplomats.

L’Interalliée, as it is called, is one of the most exclusive and private clubs in Paris. Touting a membership of the city’s elite, it sits in the heart of the 8th arrondissement.

Today I sat, jet-lagged, fighting the lingering effects of a cold, and a 7-hour flight from the U.S. the day prior, straining to listen to Anthony talk, with plugged-up ears that refused to pop after the plane descended from 35,000 feet over the English Channel.

Alas, the microphone prevailed as Anthony began in on how to protect yourself against the coming threat of AI, this incredible tool we all will benefit from, in the wrong hands.

He explains you have to take what you see with a healthy dose of skepticism, and his life in the intelligence community taught him the practice of verifying information from multiple sources.

The meal finished up, and after having a word or two with the impressive and obviously intelligent CEO and congratulating him on his book, The Fourth Intelligence Revolution: The Future of Espionage and the Battle to Save America, which I am reading now, I made my way to the window and ordered a glass of champagne.

I may not be a spy myself, but I do feel like James Bond in a place like this, overlooking a massive garden in the heart of Paris, blooming with spring. The waiters below began setting up for an event in the same garden that had hosted such gatherings for over 200 years.

To the right, the Eiffel Tower showed just above the trees, and it brought me back to something the president of the American Club of Paris said before the talk.

We are brought here, to France, as Americans, by our shared values of liberty and freedom. Those values are now under threat.

My thoughts on what ChatGPT may have unknowingly convinced me of returned.

I quietly finished my drink and kept my thoughts to myself.

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Most men don’t hate their work. They are uninspired by a bland workspace, devoid of character, excitement, visual intrigue, and aesthetic beauty. These are spaces that lack personality, because the things in them have none.

They are boring, and that is why you feel bored working in them.

The ultimate environment to get your work done is a room that is entirely yours. You need a space filled with things that excite you and keep you coming back day after day.

In my previous piece, How to Design Your Own Study, we talked about how the core purpose of a study is to serve the work you do. We discussed how the core action you perform every day shouldn’t be pushed into a corner, but featured as the star of the room. A study should feel like your command center, where you are in control.

But while your work is the focus, the rest of the room should support it through the beautiful and interesting things you bring into it. Objects that give the room character, personality, function, and a sense of life. These are the things that give you ownership of the space and make it enjoyable to return to.

And this is where most people get it wrong.

They treat everything around their work as an afterthought. Cheap desks. Disposable objects. Nothing worth looking at, nothing worth keeping.

So what are these things? And how does one go about finding them?

That is the focus of this more in-depth follow-up piece.

So let’s take a look, and consider what the next addition to your study should be.

Your Desk - The Command Center

It may seem obvious, but for most, the desk will be the hero piece of the room. Its style, size, and functionality are so important, in fact, that it will inform how the rest of the room is styled and shaped.

There are multiple factors to consider here, but let us first start with style. I am currently in the process of looking for what is called an antique writing desk. After years of flimsy Ikea desks, I was torn between a standing desk and something more aesthetic in my new apartment in Paris.

I couldn’t simply put some corporate-looking techno desk in a space with crown molding and views of Haussmann facades out the window, so naturally I drifted towards something that fit the bill. A dark mahogany desk with a leather top and thin legs. As I write this, I must admit I have not found it yet, but I hope to do so at the Paris antique market Saint-Ouen (perhaps the biggest antique market in all of Europe).

You don’t have to go for something like this, but I would suggest that you look at the style you want to go for: hyper-modern, clean, sharp lines of a desk that an architect of skyscrapers might have, or an antique like an Art Deco piece that makes you feel like a CEO of the 30s. The style will set the tone. Consider this more than anything.

Get this wrong, and nothing else in the room will feel right. Get it right, and the rest of the space almost builds itself.

Then we come to its function and size. Will you be using a laptop only, or a multiple-monitor setup? I, for one, see the best setup being a desk that faces just off from the center, like you might find in an office for greeting guests or meetings.

This is the first desk, and you can use this for laptop work and writing. But ideally, behind that, you would have another desk between ceiling-length shelves that has your multiple monitor setup. This creates a two-desk system in which two types of setups can be utilized with just the spin of a chair.

Now that the command center is set, what goes on it?

Desk Accessories and Tools

The things that adorn most people’s desks are disposable, cheap, and boring. But there are things out there that carry weight. That make a workspace feel like a luxury and not just a cold place of discipline. They can be functional or just decoration, but they must serve a purpose. To inspire, to remind, or to improve the flow of your work.

If an object has no purpose, it has no place here.

A Luxury Writing Instrument

A fountain pen is perhaps the most beautiful thing one can use to get your thoughts down on the page. You can go for a classic Montblanc Meisterstück with its black and gold or silver, or you can go for something more streamlined and modern, but the act of writing becomes a pleasure with a tool like this, and you will find yourself wanting to write more. Wanting to get to the bottom of a thought or idea.

Real Stationery and Quality Paper

With this inspiring writing instrument, you need the proper paper to do that writing, and printer paper just isn’t going to cut it. Notebooks that are easy to grab and open are a must. My favorite brand for this is Leuchtturm 1917. They are bound in beautiful shades of dark green, black, and navy with paper made for fountain pens that don’t bleed through.

Personalized Stationery

This is the next level that almost no one gets to. Having your own custom letterhead with your initials, seal, or logo on thick cardstock paper is a luxury in itself. Something forgotten from the 20s or 30s. Most people think something like this costs an arm and a leg, but at the right shops, it’s affordable and easy. Most quality print shops will even help you design your stationery and possibly even a custom logo or seal for you using your name.

Desk Light

To me, the drafter’s desk light has always been a sort of romantic thing. I imagine long hours spent under its glow creating designs or writing. But this type of light is not necessary. Truthfully, you do need a nice desk light. One that feels permanent, elegant, and functional. This is what lighting experts call a task light. One that sits on your desk and illuminates your work.

You can have a normal lamp, but you must make sure that it is illuminating the desk surface properly for those late working sessions. The bulb must be soft and not too bright white to be easy on the eyes, and for God’s sake don’t forgo it and use the overhead light in your room. See the lighting section in my piece, How to Design Your Own Study, for more on lighting.

Tools in Fine Materials

This is where you find brass paperweights and beautiful staplers, gold or silver plated. These are the items that are often mundane that are elevated by an interesting use of fine materials. Perhaps you have always used a mug to hold your pens. It works, yes, but what if you had a silver-plated pen cup that complemented the chrome of your desk light and aluminum MacBook.

This integrity of materials, meaning something that is the material it appears to be, makes a space feel authentic and full of character.

Now you have an idea of things to put on your desk to make it feel more luxurious, let’s focus on the rest of the room.

Decor of an Interesting Man

This is the part that should take the longest to achieve, and that’s a good thing. An interesting office space should, of course, consist of a desk, a chair, and a machine for working, but the rest of the room is just as, if not more, important.

The reason it should take the longest is that nothing in it should come from a matching set at a big box furniture store. These should be the artifacts of a life well lived. Items collected by a man with taste and a thirst for travel.

If someone should walk into your office and say, “Oh, where did you get this beautiful rug?” “I found this in a market in Marrakech last year on a trip. I had only been haggling with the seller for 2 minutes before we were drinking Atay (Moroccan mint tea) together.”

While this does skew towards the extreme end of exoticism, not everything should have such an exciting story, but that should be the goal. Maybe it is something as simple as a painting that used to hang in your grandfather’s house. Or a valet chair that you found at a local antique market.

Most of all, these things should show off your true personality. They should remind you of the man you are and want to become. So, now let’s hop into some ideas.

A Car, Building, or Boat Model

A car, architecture, and sailboat nut like me has to have some kind of physical manifestation of that passion in my workspace. And that model could be a dream car, a Ferrari F1 car, a J-Class sailing yacht, or a skyscraper.

Walking through a Ralph Lauren store in a major city will give you ideas of what to get. As a James Bond book lover, I was intrigued by this 1930s Blower Bentley in the Paris and NYC stores.

One of the most beautiful models I’ve seen in recent years is my friend’s Ferrari hydroplane model. It’s large and handmade, and oozes elegance. Another I loved that I saw last year was a model of the Chrysler Building in its Art Deco glory. My dream is to one day have one of the skyscrapers I’ve designed built by a model maker and displayed in my office.

If you are a designer of physical things, it is an absolute must that you display them. In an acrylic box on a shelf, or just sitting there for you to admire.

Art - Fuel for the Soul

This is where the walls and shelves will get their color and detail. Paintings, sculpture, photographs, posters, and more. Taste very widely, but I would, as you often hear me say here on Jackson & Co, go for a timeless piece that fills you with inspiration for your work, adventure, and excitement.

But choose carefully. This is not decoration. This is fuel.

For me, that is a photograph of skyscrapers alongside images of the French Riviera or Italian coastlines. Classical paintings by Hubert Robert, and sculptures by Da Vinci and Bernini. Vintage travel posters of France, and illustrations of classic men’s style from Austin Reed ads. Framed French francs from the 1940s and 50s. Lithographs and etchings of Paris during the days of Napoleon.

These things will line the walls and shelves of my office and fill me with excitement. Just the thought of having all of these things in one room makes me long for when it will all be completed. But as any attempt at creation and perfection of a space is concerned, it takes time. It takes multiple hours looking online and walking through antique markets.

But this should be a pleasure, not a curse. These things should also be obtained on your travels. Whether it be a rug from a dusty market in Marrakech, or a village brocante in Provence. These should speak to you in that first moment you see them. You should say, “Wow, that is me”.

Other Furniture and a Second Space

This is where you can create a second space in your office, other than just your desk, like a place to sit and read next to a large bookshelf. Or an area for extra clothing, suits, and shoes. Or you could have a bar cabinet or drink tray ready to pour one out when the mood strikes. Possibly you want a place to sit and smoke a cigar next to a humidor. Or just a space to take a break from sitting straight up, and collect your thoughts.

A Bar Cabinet or Bar Cart

This is perhaps the most counterproductive and insanely cool element one could add to a study. Being a man of discipline, I assume that you have the willpower not to have a drink first thing in the morning, so this is an addition for those early afternoon drinks that a wind-down and deep session of thought might require.

A place to store bottles, glasses, and cocktail tools in style is where this becomes interesting. And if a humidor full of cigars is added, it is all the better.

Wardrobe and Valet Chairs

As someone obsessed with tailoring and men’s style, it makes sense to add this to the aesthetics of my space, and if you share this passion with me, then yours too. Of course, you have a closet in your bedroom, but a place dedicated to the overflow of beautiful bespoke shoes, other suits, and blazers.

Storing your special clothing and even displaying recently worn pieces that need to air out. A valet chair is a special, classic, and timeless addition. They can be had brand new online and in antique markets for cheap, or for hundreds if you want to go for extremely fine woods and build.

Reading Chair

I have always been partial to the Herman Miller Eames chair for reading, but something of a similar function can suffice. Especially if set next to a coffee table filled with interesting reading.

The Big Picture

At the end of considering all these things, you will have a more thought-out space than almost anyone.

No one puts in the time to actually create something this beautiful and custom for their work. They reserve that effort for a living room, a place to entertain others. But why, if most of your time is spent working?

This is where your days are shaped. This is where your ideas are formed. This is where your life moves forward.

So the space should rise to meet that.

Not something temporary. Not something thrown together. Something built with intention.

So take your time.

Find the right objects.

And build a space that you actually want to return to, day after day.

The tie didn’t just disappear from the necks of men over the past decade.

In most offices, a tie is no longer required, and if that trend had continued, it looked as if ties would only appear, often begrudgingly, in courtrooms, at weddings, and at events.

But this didn’t happen by accident.

The tie was singled out as a sign of conformity by a generation that sought to destroy what came before. They wanted to rebel, not fit in. They wanted to be seen as creative, unpretentious, and approachable. They didn’t want to wear their father’s suit.

The Silicon Valley tech rebels started the trend, with innovative heroes like Steve Jobs giving presentations in jeans and a black turtleneck. It became “the creative look,” and everyone wanted to be cool and rebellious.

Casual dress, what used to be a sign of rebellion against corporate culture or “the man,” has become the new conformity. The unspoken dictum being: “Dress casual like everyone else or be singled out as a try-hard.”

And like all things pushed too far, it spread beyond its original purpose.

The casualization of culture has reached its peak. It has permeated every level of culture, from the way we dress to the way we carry ourselves, even to the way we treat one another in public. What once felt like a welcome break from the more repressive culture of the mid-20th century now often feels careless, even indifferent.

But the pendulum can only swing so far. After two or three generations of men growing up seeing even their fathers wear a T-shirt or golf polo to work, there is almost nowhere left to go. You can only dress so casually to the point where pajamas and bathing suits at work become the norm.

If the next generation is to inevitably rebel, there is only one direction to go.

Surprisingly to many, young men everywhere are now dressing with elegance, embracing the timeless, and finding a renewed respect for the classic golden age of men’s wear.

Structure that complements a man’s physique. Colors that please the eye. And an attitude that belongs to another era of civility and class. Interestingly, when they dress this way, they behave differently.

And at the center of that shift sits the necktie.

The new flag of rebellion that young men are flying from their collars.

But with that desire comes a problem. Most young men want to dress with timeless class, but have little knowledge of how to do so.

So YouTube and Instagram have filled that gap, and the niche has become explosively popular.

Out of the top 30 men’s style YouTubers in 2025, the majority are focused on classic men’s style consisting of tailoring, workwear, and yes, ties.

And it’s not just visible on the streets and on social media. It is showing up in the numbers.

The global resale market is projected to exceed $350 billion by 2028, and it is being driven by younger buyers returning to classic menswear, including the very pieces they were told to abandon, like the tie.

On platforms like eBay, searches for vintage menswear have climbed in the double digits, with classic accessories like silk ties and heritage brands quietly gaining traction again. Some sites are seeing around a 45% increase year over year in tie searches.

Grailed, a marketplace built almost entirely around men aged 18 to 35, has seen growing demand for heritage tailoring and traditional pieces, a clear move away from purely casual, streetwear-driven style.

At the same time, formalwear has begun to recover. Suit and occasionwear sales have risen as much as 20 to 40 percent in the years following the pandemic, signaling a broader return to dressing with intention.

Suitsupply, perhaps one of the fastest-growing retailers in the men’s space right now, now operates over 100 stores worldwide, a signal that even at the height of casualization, the appetite for tailoring hasn’t gone away. In 2026, they can’t open stores fast enough.

At the same time, Ralph Lauren has been quietly climbing, passing $6.6 billion in revenue in 2023 with steady year-over-year growth and a strong rebound in Europe. Much of that growth is being driven by younger consumers, who are buying into the brand for the first time. Not bad for a company built on tailored jackets, oxford shirts, and ties.

All of this comes as no surprise when you look at social media. The “Old Money” trend (a modern synonym for American Ivy League style, traditional British and Italian style, and timeless class) has refused to die, and the tie is the last piece of that puzzle.

Perhaps because, by its nature, even in its most casual form, it’s unnecessary.

The tie serves no utility or function other than aesthetics, and maybe keeping your neck warm in the colder months. Yet it endures because of aesthetic science.

When you wear a tie, it creates a clean vertical line down the center of the body, lengthening the frame and sharpening the silhouette. It brings symmetry and a clear sense of balance across the chest.

It draws the eye upward, toward the face, exactly where it should be. Without it, the shirt opens, the structure softens, and the eye wanders. This visual interest gives your look some color and contrast, and if paired right, ties other aspects of your clothing together.

And this is where it gets interesting.

Because right now, you can buy into this world for almost nothing.

So how can you get in on the new rebellion without spending hundreds just to have one or even three high-quality ties?

How to Build a Tie Collection for Almost Nothing

The greatest tie brands of the last century, steeped in traditional craftsmanship, are now almost all available for under €50, or $60. What was €100 or €300 is now available sometimes even for €10, handmade in Italy.

E. Marinella, Drake’s, Charvet, Ralph Lauren Purple Label and Polo, Turnbull & Asser, Hermès, and more, handmade in England, France, and Italy, using some of the finest silks in the world, often from mills near Lake Como.

But where can you find these incredible deals? Not in stores, but on the secondhand market. In Europe, where the best deals exist, you’ll find sellers listing unworn or lightly used E. Marinella ties, often sold by sellers in Italy. Sometimes they are even still in the original box.

This brand is a personal favorite of mine. The Naples-based, 110-year-old tie maker has been worn by heads of state, European royalty, and generations of Italian businessmen. Their original store still sits in the same place over a century later, and everything they sell is handmade in the basement of the shop.

Originally starting as an English-styled brand, they slowly incorporated their Italian flair for color and a love of stitching each piece by hand, with just enough imperfection to reinforce that handmade feel.

So the first step you need to take is to create an account on a resale site like Vinted, filter for the brand, and start making offers on what you like. I’ve got most of my Marinella ties for €25 or less.

Here comes the part that most people overlook. Of course, pattern and color are important, but width and length are even more so. A tie can look great, but if the proportions are off, you’ll regret it. Too short and it’s basically unwearable.

Most ties will come in 160 mm or 170 mm. For me, standing at 6’5” (195 cm), I need a long tie. Anything under 160, and I pass.

Types of Ties, Fabrics, and Construction

This is where a little knowledge goes a long way. There are countless patterns made over the years, but there are a few classic types.

Fabrics

Start with silk. Real silk. Almost every great tie you’ll come across is made from it.

The most common is silk twill. It has a slight sheen, holds a knot well, and works in almost any setting. This is your foundation.

Then there’s grenadine. A more open weave, with texture and depth. Less shine, more character. If you only buy one tie to start, this is a strong place to go.

You’ll also come across shantung, which has a slightly irregular texture and feels more relaxed. And occasionally madder silk, with a softer, more matte finish, rooted in traditional English style.

Most of these fabrics come from the same place. Northern Italy, near Lake Como, is where some of the best silk mills in the world have been operating for generations.

Once you know what you’re looking at, you start to see the difference immediately.

Other fabrics you may find are wool, specifically cashmere, and linen. Great for seasonal use.

Patterns

Printed medallions, often called foulards, are one of the most classic tie patterns. Small, repeating motifs set on a clean ground, rooted in traditional English design and easy to wear in almost any setting.

Regimental stripes come out of British military and university traditions, where each pattern originally signified a specific unit or club. The structure is consistent: diagonal stripes, precise spacing, and strong color contrast.

Traditional British regimental ties run from the wearer’s left shoulder down to the right, following the line of a salute across the body. American Ivy League brands adopted the look in the 1920s and 1930s, but reversed the direction.

It’s a small detail, but once you see it, you can tell at a glance where a tie comes from.

Then, of course, there are simpler options. Plain ties and a range of other repeating patterns, but most of what you’ll see falls into these foundations.

Construction

Under the normal triangular tie category, you have variables like how many folds are in your tie, i.e., how much fabric is being used. Common ties are 3-fold (the most common) and 7-fold (the most sartorial and refined). This means that the tie is folded over itself multiple times, like origami, to give it a certain weight and drape.

Then we come to the tipping style and lining. Self-tipped is a sign of high quality, as the expensive fabric, silk, is used to cover the seams, as opposed to cheaper ties using polyester fabric.

Although not all high-end ties have tips or lining, a 7-fold, untipped tie with no interlining, where the extra fold of silk gives it its structure, is top of the line. You will also see hand-rolled tips for an extremely elegant look.

The Most Underrated: Knit Ties

If wearing a tie makes you nervous, if you want to ease into this without everyone pointing at you and asking “Got a big meeting?” or “Are you going to work?” then you need to give knit ties a try.

These are my favorite category of tie. Almost always made from silk, and always more casual and laid-back.
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Here is my most recent attempt at trying to casualize my knit ties with suede and trousers.
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Most are squared off and on the thinner side. To the uninitiated, they look like a long sock, but many are made with the classic triangular tip as well. They most often come plain, and, in my opinion, the first colors to go for are black and navy.

One massive sign of quality is what many call “the crunch.” When you bring the knit tie to your ear and squeeze it between your fingers, if it makes a crunching sound, you’ve got a good one. Probably pure silk.

When to Wear Your New Ties

I have to admit, this is where I struggled at first. You have all these nice ties, but it feels like everyone around you insists on staying in the casual matrix we live in. If you stand out too much, you can come off as uncalibrated.

Forget all that. The truth is most people don’t really care. Unless you’re wearing a very corporate-looking suit and a very formal tie to your kids’ T-ball game, you’re probably fine.

But since we are easing into this, let’s discuss how to wear a tie in a way that softens it, so the transition feels natural.

Instead of putting on a two-piece suit, try a navy or tweed blazer with jeans. You can even opt for a suede jacket instead.

I suggest keeping one more formal garment in the mix. If you wear the suede jacket, go with proper trousers in worsted wool, hopsack, or flannel. Otherwise, the tie feels like an afterthought.

The master of dressing down a tie is, without a doubt, Ralph Lauren. Walking through his stores in cities like New York or Paris, the mannequins are always dressed elegantly. Often, there is no suit at all. Just pleated trousers, knitwear, and a Polo tie. Anyone can pull this off without looking out of place.

The Rebellion and What It Means

It really is nice to see a return to men dressing in a way that flatters their shape. The structure of tailoring outlines their shoulders and waist, and the tie serves as the grounding mechanism for the entire look.

The real question is, how long will this last? It is my opinion that it is not a trend, but a cultural shift that will gradually move menswear back to what it should be. Not changing with the seasons, but staying constant.

Men will buy less but of higher quality. They will have more variety to choose from, from casual streetwear to a formal two-piece suit. And once you discover this variety, you can’t go back, because everything else seems boring.

So, long live the rebellion, and don’t be afraid to wear that tie.

On Boulevard Saint-Germain, in the famous Left Bank neighborhood of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris, sits perhaps one of the greatest menswear stores in the world.

A celebration of Americana and European elegance combined to create an atmosphere that can only be described as the most civilized international shopping experience in Paris.

This is Ralph Lauren Paris. A bridge between two continents, and a vision of how an international life should be lived.

Built inside of a 17th-century hôtel particulier, a private mansion originally built for an aristocrat of the French ancien régime, the front of the store does not seek to stand out. It respects the Haussmann style it now inhabits and improves upon it with timeless design.

Stepping under the massive arch to your left, you have the entrance to the main shopping floors going up several levels. In front of you, a courtyard dining area simply called Ralph’s. On your right, you have Ralph’s Coffee, which has become a smash hit in New York, Milan, and Paris.

Sometimes, it has a line out the door. In the back, past the courtyard, you have a bar adorned with paintings and mahogany-lined walls, welcoming you with the sound of cocktails being made and quiet conversation.

Today, there was almost no one except me and the plentiful employees who speak excellent English and French.

As I walked into the first floor of shopping, greeted by the friendly doorman, I walked past the sophisticated and casual clothing of the women’s section, making my way up the stairs.

In the Paris location, the first two floors (rez-de-chaussée and premier étage, or ground and first floor) are for women.

You have to choose your way up, the classic caged ascenseur (elevator/lift) made of black iron and dark wood.

The brass accents and gold hand lettering are as authentic as it gets for what is probably a reproduction of the original elevator, perhaps even more beautiful than the original.

The second option is the marble stairs that are lined with paintings that look like illustrious ancestors and men and women of the past, horses, and more, depicting Belle Époque Paris.

When you get to the third (French second), you find the menswear department. Four entire floors of it. Black tie, impeccable tailoring, casual wear, knitwear, and everything else imaginable.

As I walked through the first section, I noticed the floors, like in the Rhinelander store in New York, were separated by Ralph Lauren’s different lines.

The first you will see, somewhat collected together but also scattered throughout the store, is Purple Label. The crème de la crème. The top of the line. Most of it, made in Italy from the finest fabric mills of England and northern Italy.

This is what the flagship RL stores in major cities are dedicated to. You won’t find it anywhere else. Not in your neighborhood mall. Not at the outlet store.

Walking through the beautifully staged rooms, I couldn’t help but realize that there is no one else who can make clothes look this good on a mannequin than in the best RL stores. The pants drape flawlessly. The jacket always fits. And they never look boring.

There is always a pop of color, an interesting use of textures, or an odd way to style something. Like tucking in a suede overshirt into side tab-adjusted trousers. This may sound odd, but when you see it here, you can’t imagine wearing it any other way.

The white linen trousers and sport coats, the silk ties and dinner jackets with cummerbunds channel the best decades of men’s wear from the 1930s to the modern day.

The effect of the ’30s and mid-century feel is accentuated by the use of décor like models of Blower Bentleys, Le Mans Ferraris (of which Ralph has all of them), and old leather suitcases.

I even saw an old wooden steering wheel that looks like it came off an MG, but with the initials RL in the middle.

This is a place for the man who wants to live in an entirely different world from what is given to us today. A man who chooses the timeless. The elegance of another era. Where the men were men, and the women were glad of it.

Ralph Lauren literally invented the lifestyle brand. You feel it with every step. This store is a world, not a shop. You simply don’t want to leave once you step in. But alas, I needed to explore the other floors. So let’s keep moving.

Past that, on the next floor, you find Polo. The most iconic and recognizable line from suiting, polo shirts, tennis sweaters, and more Ivy League style attire.

To beachwear that you could easily imagine buying, grabbing a quick flight down to the Mediterranean, and fitting into the best of the beach crowd at Cannes or Saint-Tropez.

This is where the clothes become slightly more affordable, more casual, and easier to walk out of the store with. It’s no surprise that you will find the largest number of people on this floor. But today it was mostly empty.

I walked through a section with large windows facing the Ralph’s courtyard, and felt the warmth of the sun shining in.

An employee asked me if I needed anything as he opened a window and placed a few neckties over a jacket, as if this were someone’s stylish bedroom.

I had to snap a picture of the scene. I loved it so much, I made it my new screensaver on my phone.

Moving to the next floor was more Polo and I stopped to check out some beautiful silk rep ties. Most of them had no back tag, were self-tipped, and thin to the touch with a great hand.

All a sign of superior quality, these are the high-end Polo variety that is also made in Italy or Switzerland, close in price to the cheaper quality Polo you find in malls, but far better.

Making my way up to the very top floor, I am met with the most American part of the store, the western wear RRL line (pronounced Double RL).

Leaving behind the world of European elegance, we have the feeling of being out west on Ralph’s ranch.

While I did see several interesting pieces here, I do have to give the trophy to the RRL dedicated store in SoHo in New York, which somehow makes suiting western and cool at the same time, something no one else has ever been able to pull off, in my opinion.

Sensing that my wallet was in danger if I stayed any longer, I made my way back down to the ground floor and out onto the street. One thing is for certain about a store like this. You don’t feel pressured to buy anything.

It’s almost like a museum to dressing well that anyone brave enough to enter can enjoy without the pretentiousness that taints the experience of so much high-end shopping in Paris.

Here you can dive into Ralph’s world and slowly fall in love. And today, with Spring on its way, the sun shining down on the zinc rooftops of Paris, it was easy.

Written by Ben H. Jackson
Editor-in-Chief of Jackson & Co

The sunlight was fighting for its freedom on Rue de Médicis. The nearly constant gray blanket that covers the Paris sky in March was beginning to lose the battle as beams of spring sunshine broke through and spilled onto the grounds of the Luxembourg Gardens.

Buds of green were bursting from the tips of the plane trees that line the street. After a long gray winter, it felt like a small victory. The promise of new life.

In the famous neighborhood of Saint-Germain, mornings start slowly. After crossing the Seine among the high-pitched whine of Vespas and the chaos of little French cars zipping to work, the Haussmann buildings, boulangeries, and quiet walkers in the gardens welcome you with the calm confidence of a neighborhood that rushes for no one.

The chairs were still being placed on the pavement when I arrived at Café Rostand. The waiters, dressed in the classic black and white, moved with quiet efficiency, wasting no movement. As if every day had followed the same routine for years.

Out front, under the glass frontage of the café, a man sat reading Le Figaro, an espresso on the old wooden table in front of him. He turned the page slowly, pausing to sip from the small cup.

Saint-Germain is not slow because Parisians have nothing to do. It is slow because the pace of life allows for a routine that, in most cities, has disappeared entirely.

A morning spent in a café.

Stepping inside, the hiss and gurgle of a chrome espresso machine permeated the largely empty room. A few patrons were scattered at different tables, none of them tourists. The clientele was well dressed, most sitting alone with a book or laptop.

Work was most definitely being done on those laptops, but compared to life just across the river, the pace felt civilized.

Rostand is a writer’s café. Named after a 19th-century playwright, Edmond Rostand, it has served the intellectuals of le rive gauche for generations. It is not as famous as Les Deux Magots or Café de Flore, the old haunts of the “Lost Generation,” now crowded by the Instagram tourism machine.

If Hemingway and Fitzgerald were alive today, they would almost certainly choose this unassuming spot to get their writing done.

Long lost is that generation of the 20s, but its spirit still lives on. Two tables away from me, near the large window overlooking the garden, a man sat reading what looked like a printed manuscript. Is he a writer, I wondered. Perhaps a journalist, editing his most recent article.

The man reached down into a black nylon bag at his feet and pulled out a thick textbook filled with annotations and highlighted passages.

A college professor, I decided, and brought my attention back to my Americano. The coffee was very black and very strong, but bitter, as most Americanos are in Paris.

It’s no accident that writers choose cafés. There is something about the world passing by, the background atmosphere of the city coming to life as you sharpen your focus.

Just as I was trying to do so, I made a new friend. The gray and white tabby cat was curled up next to the old cast-iron radiator, lazily licking his paw. The spoiled little thing, I thought. This cat is living the life.

He must have decided that I was one of the more friendly patrons, as he hopped up on the top of the booth, walked behind me, and ploped down next to me. “What’s his name?” I asked the waiter in French, half knowing the answer.

“Rostand”, the waiter replied, smiling. He must have been thirsty as the confident little creature hopped up on my table and began to reach his little head into my water glass.

Yep, spoiled. Just as I thought.

The coziness of the scene began to uncoil my coffee-fueled tensions, and the words began to flow. I did another hour of writing, Rostand’s pur vibrating the wine red leather booth like a little motorcar at idle.

The beginnings of the lunch crowd started to shuffle in, and the café started to come to life. This was a place to channel your creative juices, I thought. Not sitting at home or in some office building. It was here, at the source. A rare type of place that is, on the one hand, productive, and on the other, relaxing.

Writer’s block? What of it? Impossible in such a clean, well-lit place filled with the charm of centuries worth of age. I looked out the window at the Luxembourg Gardens. The sun had finally won the battle. The city of light was finally coming back to life.

For the average modern man, there are very few places left to focus deeply. For the ambitious, this is a tragedy. Our environments are no longer built for depth, but for comfort, entertainment, and collaboration. These things aren’t evil, but they are the antithesis of deep work.

The laptop has made it possible to carry what once required an entire room. File cabinets, reams of paper, books and research materials, typewriters, calendars, and so on. All of it now lives inside one elegant device. The freedom that comes with carrying your office cannot be overstated.

You can run a business or write a novel from an Airbnb on the Amalfi Coast, a café in Paris, a Caribbean beach, or a coffee shop in Tokyo. But mobility is not structure, and structure is what produces meaningful output.

Most men now work in open offices lined with monitors on endless tables in a sea of noise. This is defended in the name of collaboration, yet work worth doing rarely thrives in constant interruption. It requires quiet, control, and intention. When the pandemic forced us home, we made our domestic environments work as best we could.

Kitchen tables became desks, and couches became offices. Many people still say it was the best working style they’ve experienced. In terms of quiet and freedom from constant oversight, they are right. But the drop in productivity tells a different story.

The issue is not remote work itself. The issue is that neither the open office nor the living room was designed around serious output. Rooms built for relaxation encourage relaxation. Rooms built for conversation encourage conversation. Environment shapes behavior. For creative people especially, the problem is not a lack of supervision, but a lack of a space built around the act of producing.

Which brings us back to the study, the studio or the home office.

Since the mid-20th century, the private study slowly disappeared. Suburban homes favored open plans over enclosed rooms, and corporate culture normalized five days a week in centralized offices. By the 80s and 90s, a dedicated study was no longer standard in middle-class homes. In 2020, that shifted almost overnight.

Remote work surged, and for a moment, the home office returned. Now in 2026, most of us are back in the office three or so days a week, forced to listen to your co-workers blabber about meaningless, noisy things while you try to work. But for those precious days you spend at home, you have control over that environment. This is an opportunity previous generations did not have. We now have the chance to create an environment that fuels our ambition rather than drains it.

The question becomes: what makes a good study?

How to Design a Study Around Your Work

A good study is not defined by leather-bound books, a fireplace, or a large 19th-century desk. Those things can be beautiful, but they are not the point. A study should first reflect what you actually do. What is the central act of your life? Writing? Designing? Planning? Drawing? Building? That act should sit at the center of the room.

This is something I admire in the architect Norman Foster. His drafting table is not pushed into a corner. It commands the space. Light falls on it. When he looks up, he sees something that inspires him. His books and references are close at hand, not decorative but functional. The room serves the work.

For me, as a writer who also loves to design architecture, that principle becomes practical. I have one space for my computer where I do most of my writing, but I also keep another space where the distraction of the screen is behind me, and I can write on my typewriter. It is my small hack, discovered after an obsession with vintage machinery in my younger years.

For the writer who needs to get thoughts out of my head and onto the page without obsessing and over-editing, the typewriter is a great tool.

When I want to draw, I bring in a drafting board. Perhaps one day I will invest in a full drafting table. The tool may change, but the hierarchy does not. The room must revolve around the work.

The same clarity can be seen in Ian Fleming at Goldeneye. His workspace was simple and spartan. A desk, a typewriter, a chair. He wrote three hours in the morning and one at night. Same desk. Same view. Same ritual. The space reinforced the discipline.

The Checklist

Start with the core object. Your desk, your table, your drafting board, whatever physically holds the work. Place it intentionally. Consider the light. Consider what you see when you lift your head. Consider what is within arm’s reach. Once the bones of the room are built around purpose, then you can consider aesthetics.

But before you begin decorating, decide what tone the room carries. It should carry seriousness. A study is not the place for ironic posters, novelty décor, or objects that signal detachment. Irony is a refusal to commit. It keeps everything at a distance, including your own ambition.

If you expect serious output, your environment must reflect that expectation. The room should not wink at you. It should demand something from you. For the same reason, I reject the childish notion of the “man cave.” A study is not an escape from responsibility. It is a room built to confront it.

Now that the structure is intentional and the tone is clear, you can bring in character. The art you hang, the objects that sharpen you, the colors that give the room depth and presence.

For me, that means shades of navy and dark green. On the walls, I am drawn to classical paintings and sculpture, mixed with models of 1930s Bentleys, architectural forms like the Chrysler Building, or even a model of something I have designed myself. I enjoy the tension between history and ambition, between what has endured and what I intend to build.

Because classic men’s style fuels me, clothing becomes part of the room. A wooden valet stand with a watch resting on top. A sports coat or suit draped neatly over a chair. A well-polished pair of leather shoes placed deliberately below. These are not decorative gestures. They are extensions of identity. They reflect my standards of quality and discipline.

I don’t adhere to a solely vintage aesthetic or a bland, soulless Ikea feel. I find more energy in the mix of classic and modern, the same way Norman Foster brought modern glass and steel into dialogue with historic stone when he redesigned the Reichstag in Germany. Old and new, working together, serving something larger. I use the terms classic and modern because more people understand, but to me they are simply timeless.

Your study should feel the same. When you walk in, you should say, “yes, this is me,” not just something out of a Pinterest post or catalogue. But the sad reality is no one will hand you such a space. You have to design it yourself.

You have to travel to the south of France, walk through a small village, and pick out an old 18th-century etching of an old wine estate, or haggle for a Persian rug in a bazaar in Istanbul, or simply buy an old banker’s chair from the antique store down your street.

Find things that are functional or beautiful that have a story, and make them part of your home. Like trophies of taste.

Now that your study is set up for your work, filled with design and art that fuels you, consider upgrading your tools. A better computer, a sharper monitor, a mechanical keyboard that has that satisfying click. Things that make the work itself more satisfying to the eye and the touch.

If you like to write, have good stationery and pens on hand. You can even have stationery with your name up top made out for correspondence, even enhanced with the typewriter’s touch or the clean stroke of a fountain pen.

Light is Everything

Now we come to the aspect that almost everyone gets wrong. Lighting can make or break any workspace, so listen carefully. All overhead lighting, with some small exceptions, takes it all and trashes it. Bright white overhead down lighting is what makes most offices unbearable, yet they even keep it on in the day. It simply isn’t pleasant to the eye.

Ideally, you will have a lot of light coming in through your windows during the day. But if not, you’ll want to have multiple sources of light, mixing ambient and accent lighting in softer, more orange tones, especially for work that goes into the evening.

Smart lighting now allows you to change your light throughout the day from brighter, more white light during daylight hours to softer, more tungsten-type light in the evening.

How to Use Your Study

Ok, you have a stylish, functional study filled with art and objects that remind you of your travels, interests, and tastes. Throughout the day, it changes with the light to set the mood for work. Now you have something that 90% of people don’t. But now what?

How do you use this space to your advantage? How do you not default to old, distracted behaviors? The key is not to use it as your hangout room. You can, of course, put in a comfortable chair for thinking and reading between work, but don’t make it an entertainment room as well with an Xbox and a TV. It is purpose-built, not a multi-purpose entertainment hub.

Wake up, sit down at your command center, get the first thing done, and go from there. Ian Fleming would, without fail, wake up in the same room he wrote in, but instead of sitting down at his desk immediately, he would walk down a small, tree-lined path at his house in Jamaica, go down the rocky trail to his private beach, and dive into the sea, and look at all the sea life with a burning curiosity. He did this at 7am every day. Talk about waking up to beauty.

But by 9am, no matter how he felt, he was at the desk, shooting James Bond like a projectile out of his fingertips and onto the page through his typewriter, which he used with six fingers at a breakneck speed. This is where his adventures were born, through routine, not in a dark, dank room as a shrine to painful discipline, but in a colorful, vibrant world. They fed him creatively, which still every day served as his vessel for discipline.

Now it’s up to you to find your own version of that private beach before your work, but try to, without fail, make it to that desk at 9am every morning you can, and create. There are no excuses left.

I have always admired men who build a world around themselves. One so stylish and rich with character that people want to be a part of it. They don’t follow trends, and they don’t attempt to fit in.

Their tastes are specific and extend into every area of life. They intentionally choose every stitch of clothing, every piece of art or furniture in their home, and curate the world around them to reflect their standards.

Nigel Cleaver is one of those rare gentlemen who has not only built a world around himself, but who, every day without fail, attempts to share a little piece of that stylish, friendly, and entirely English world with his fellow menswear enthusiasts.

While recently scrolling my feed, something I’ll admit I do a little too often, I was led completely by accident to discover Nigel (IG: @ignoreatyourperil).

He is entirely different from the usual menswear influencer. Thanks to an algorithm shaped almost entirely by my obsessions with tailoring, travel, and classic cars, I came across a true English gentleman whose impeccable style seems effortless. His iconic spectacles, patinated Barbour jackets, and warm Derbyshire accent immediately intrigued me.

Many online personalities in this space are knowledgeable, stylish, and possess massive followings. Too often, however, that knowledge is paired with a certain level of pretentiousness, which can scare off curious sneaker- and T-shirt-wearing lads. I find this to be a tragedy, one that prevents young men from discovering a genuine passion for all things timeless.

Nigel does not have this problem. Simply by being who he is.

He is not putting on airs. He wears the clothes for himself. He loves classic menswear of any vintage and is happy to talk about it. In fact, he enjoys it so much that he takes to social media two or three times a day just to discuss an idea he’s had or share a thought on colour theory.

His mindset and inner confidence, of knowing exactly who he is and what he stands for, did not arrive overnight. When I spoke with Nigel, it became clear that his approach to style is rooted far deeper than clothes or trends. It is something inherited.

Growing up, Nigel’s mindset was shaped by his grandfather, Fred, and his father, Arthur, who worked for Rolls-Royce. Their mantra, particularly his grandfather’s, was built around attention to detail and the highest standards. “Not for anyone else, just for yourself,” he says.

They carried themselves with an ease that came from a strong work ethic and quiet confidence, much of which is reflected in how they chose to present themselves to the world. “I came to learn that walking out of the door in the morning feeling my best, before the world could throw anything against me, stood me in good stead.”

After dreaming of becoming a footballer, though as he says ability and attitude got in the way of that, his horizons were broadened again by his family. This led to a passion for well-made shoes, which he calls his “first black hole to shovel money down,” and things took off from there. As he developed his personal style, friends began asking where he found such interesting vintage pieces and whether he could help them source specific items.

This is when the idea of having his own store began to form. “The vicarious pleasure was enormous and that built to seeking out bricks and mortar. After all, you can’t keep moving house for wardrobe space.”

In 2022, Nigel founded IGNOREATYOURPERIL, first as an Instagram page where he shared his developing style, and then as a full-blown store in the English countryside near Wollaston, Northamptonshire.

I myself have not yet visited his beautiful shop, filled with art, vintage travel trunks, and one of the most thoughtfully curated collections of clothing available in England, but I plan to remedy that this year on a road trip through England and up into Scotland.

Most people book appointments to visit the shop, where Nigel personally guides them and helps determine what their wardrobe needs most. He does, however, welcome walk-ins on weekends, whether curious passers-by or those who have sought him out deliberately.

Either way, people aren’t just buying clothes. They’re buying into a world.

Being an Englishman, you might expect Nigel’s collection to reflect that fact. I asked him why English style continues to resonate around the world. What does it get right? He believes that all the masters, the Italians, the French, the English, and even the “good ol’ USA”, have their place.

Like the great Ralph Lauren, he takes elements from each and incorporates what reflects himself, something he believes everyone should do. “When you dive deeper into what you like and how you can mix and match different styles, then building your own classic wardrobe becomes much easier, to say the least.”

As he says, “I’m on record as saying, in different contexts, ‘know thyself’ first.” Nigel certainly does. And while he’s open to the best of Italian or English style, he does have personal rules. If you walk into his shop with a full-Windsor, or even half-Windsor knot in your tie, you will be politely convinced, rightly so, that the four-in-hand is the only knot one should use.

Other mistaken style choices, like bright red socks, will also be called out, and for good reason. Nigel cares that you look your best. That’s why his discerning eye is so sought after. When deciding what to put in the shop, he considers bespoke, made-to-measure, and vintage as equally valid tools in his tailoring arsenal.

He believes buying once and buying well being key. As he puts it, “I’m not one for the phrase ‘capsule wardrobe,’ though I like the notion. It’s simple really: classic pieces holding sway, with subtle changes to make a daily difference.”

When I asked Nigel about his openness, he was quick to downplay it. There are no paid endorsements, no obligation to push one brand over another, just an enthusiasm for things made well and worn properly. If something is right, he’ll say so. If it isn’t, he won’t pretend otherwise. That clarity is what makes the space feel welcoming. You’re not being sold to. You’re being invited in.

Perhaps the most inspiring thing about Nigel is that he found what he loved, built a business around it, and made it a success. Many young gentlemen who visit him aspire to do the same. Not simply to take a job that feels safe and comfortable, but to do meaningful work and, as he has said in other interviews, “not die wondering.”

That, to me, is the definition of living intentionally. Taking risks and making decisions that align with who you are, and building a life and business that reflect it.

So if you find yourself in London or anywhere in England this year, consider a slight detour to visit IGNOREATYOURPERIL. As he says at the end of every video, in that iconic accent, he’s “Hoping to speak with you soon” and sharing his ideas on the next additions to your wardrobe.

All Photos are taken from Nigel’s Instagram: @ignoreatyourperil
Nigel is also on Substack at:

By Ben Jackson

Cars today are safer, faster, and more reliable than ever before. Yet they could not be less compelling. Instead of the living, breathing machines that car enthusiasts have tenderly loved for the better part of a century, they are more in line with appliances today—devoid of character, personality, or the skin-tingling sounds that are music to a petrolhead’s ears.

Why is this? What, as buyers, can we do about it? And are the internal combustion engine days numbered?

Since as early as I can remember, I’ve been obsessed with cars. Hundreds of Hot Wheels filling multiple large plastic bins under my bed, posters of Corvettes and Cobras on my wall, and racing video games on my GameCube and PSP. All of it added up to the beginnings of a love that would, unlike so many kids, not fade away with time.

When I was around seven or eight, my dad brought home a 1965 Plymouth Fury. A long, off-white convertible with an iridescent mid-blue interior, a gleaming chrome grille, and seats as comfortable as a couch. My dad loved that car, and we took it on many glorious drives, top down, blues music piping in through the aged speakers. For me, this set a high standard for how much personality a car should have.

Growing up in America, you have a certain sense of freedom associated with cars. Turning sixteen is one of the most important moments of many young men’s lives, as you gain the ability to move freely in a world entirely ruled by the automobile. Living abroad has often made me realize that many other cultures do not share this love for the open road. They see the car as a means to get from point A to point B. They take little pride in their machines and sometimes never even wash them.

I was ignorant of these European ways as a young man growing up in coastal North Carolina with a metallic gold 1999 Ford Explorer. This was not, by any means, a sexy or even classic machine. It was what many would call a soccer-mom car or a grocery getter. But for me, with a V8 engine, speakers that had no business being that good, and a window that rolled down so I could hang my elbow out and feel the wind, following the back roads that stretch along the coast of the Intracoastal Waterway, this was my heaven. Sometimes even with a surfboard in the back.

Here I was in control, in my own world with my thoughts, moving in a direction under my own motive power.

Pure, unadulterated freedom.

I can still hear the sound of the exhaust as I took that one long curve on Masonboro Loop Road, echoing off the wooden fences of suburban houses passing by. Then me respectfully dialing the physical volume knob of the radio, my phone plugged into a wired electronic cassette tape designed to play music from your phone in cars made before the days of Bluetooth.

Then the sound of gravel under my tires down the road to my grandfather’s house on the waterway, the slow ticking of the engine as it cooled, and me taking one last prideful look as I dashed up the stairs to see the open expanse of sea grass, scrub oaks, and ocean that make up the marshlands of North Carolina. My grandparents waiting on the front porch, a bourbon and cigar in the hand of my grandfather, and a Michelob Ultra in Nana’s.

Now I think of what experience my son will have.

Electric cars make no sound, lack any semblance of charm or character, have no physical buttons, and feel like you’re driving your iPhone. The one thing I want to do when I drive is get away from my phone, the thing that always seems to be trying to get my attention.

He will be safe, and for that I’m happy. But will he feel that sense of freedom when the car drives him instead of the other way around? Will he know the sound of a V8, feel the bumps on his skin, and the hair on his arms standing on end when something of beauty drives by? That sense of excitement fathers and sons have shared since Henry Ford. Will he take pride in the machine he worked summer jobs to help buy, like I did? Or will it be the equivalent of falling in love with a Samsung washing machine?

All of these things are possible, and even probable. But I will not let this be taken away from him. He will know what the inside of a ’50s Jag, an air-cooled 911, or an Italian Alfa Romeo smells like. He will know how it feels to drive without a destination because he feels like it. He will know this sense of freedom.

But how?

Because we will not buy for speed, for specs, or for the “environment,” but for feel and personality. For the love of all things mechanical.

Even today, when you look at the cars that litter our roads, what do we see? Virtually the same designs with different badges. A mix of plastic and aluminum panels, flat gray, tan, or black seats and dashboards. A big digital screen that, for some infuriating reason, has taken the place of the volume knob. And electric cars that are, by every standard, less comfortable.

Just see for yourself. Get into the back seat of any Tesla and let yourself be driven around. Your stomach will be doing flips. The abrupt start and stop would have been unthinkable just twenty years ago, but for some reason has been made normal.

Every car, no matter the model, is set up with some kind of hard, sport-style suspension that makes you feel every bump on the road. Is this really necessary in a family car? Gone are the floating, boat-like Lincoln Town Car suspensions that went over bumps as if they didn’t exist.

And don’t get me started on how they have managed to make cars bigger on the outside and smaller on the inside. For someone as tall as myself, 6’5” (195 cm for my European friends), I find a compact “SUV” like a Honda CR-V to have less space than any four-door sedan I’ve ever been in.

Now that I’ve gotten that rant out of the way, let’s seriously think about where the enthusiast market can really go. The manual transmission is almost extinct, and electric cars are faster than anything. We really have to ask ourselves what we like about cars.

If I’m allowed to speak for a lot of us, I’d say we love three things: the way a car looks, the way it feels when you drive it, and the things you can do to it to express yourself.

What can you do to a modern car besides glue more plastic or carbon fiber crap to the sides, or update some computer software to make it play fart sounds? This is not compelling.

If you love running your machine through the gears, there might be hope. I’ve recently seen videos of a major Japanese manufacturer that has created an electric engine that can be operated by a normal gear shifter and actually makes impressive noise. Like what we thought electric cars would be like—space-age sounds and massive amounts of raw power.

But what about the way they look?

Some cars look good today. Aston Martins, Range Rovers, and some other European manufacturers. But these cars are, admittedly, extremely expensive. This year’s Corvette looks like a Hot Wheels car, and Jaguar has decided to delete everything that made them good and replace it with ugly cars, after several years of not making any cars at all, despite the quite beautiful design of the F-Type.

So I say, where does that leave you?

There is one easy answer. Wait until car designers wake up, or buy vintage and take care of it. Luckily, we live in a time where you can choose from one hundred years of carmaking. You can be obsessed with Porsche, the only manufacturer that seems to care about drivers, or you can go all in on Alfa Romeo and be, as Jeremy Clarkson calls it, a real petrolhead. It’s up to you.

There has been a resurgence in classic car prices over the last five years, but some of those prices are starting to soften. Especially for beautiful pre-war cars, where the enthusiasts are slowly, and unfortunately, dying off. These, over the next ten years, will be exceptional buys.

For many years, I lusted after a Mercedes 560 SL. One of the longest-running model designs in carmaking history, from 1971 all the way until 1989, the body was virtually unchanged. A timeless design with massive power, a hardtop and a soft top, and a floaty, comfortable suspension that crosses continents like a locomotive. These cars are plentiful and can be had for as low as $15k.

Now, after moving to Europe, I lust after anything that feels like Ian Fleming’s James Bond. Pre-war Bentleys, Jaguars of the ’50s, and even little MGAs. The vision of me in a few years, changing into third on a windy back road of Provence in the south of France, my wife by my side in a machine that I can be proud of.

A British beauty that I command, not some computer. A car that transports me to another time. To a time when things were beautiful. When cars made intoxicating sounds. And when Plymouth Furys still had ashtrays, even if I only remember putting candy wrappers in them,

I don’t know what the future designers will decide. I only know what I choose. I choose machines that respond. I choose sensation over convenience. And I choose a machine that leaves marks, even as the world is works hard to polish them away.

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In a world obsessed with the perfectly reliable, we often forget that the most beautiful experiences aren’t the ones that never go wrong; they’re the ones so extraordinary that a little imperfection is unimportant.

Last year, I decided that my 2026 goal was to search for, buy, and ride my very own 1930s Velocette motorbike through the streets of Paris every day. The thump of the single 350cc cylinder, the fishtail exhaust grumbling in my wake on a fall afternoon. Riding up the steep streets to Montmartre in the 18th arrondissement. An expansive view of the entire city slipping by, then stopping for a coffee with my wife at a café, the bike sitting out front where we can see it, quietly ticking as the metal cools. It was such an exciting vision that I decided I needed to make it a reality. A Velocette MAC of this era is British motoring in its purest form. A true gentleman’s machine, hand-built in Birmingham.

In 2026, that machine is getting closer to being 100 years old every day. Riding an almost century-old motorbike, of course, comes with a few quirks. Like if you forget to turn on the oil tap, after a few miles down the road, you will have a seized, very permanently dead motor.

So why would I choose such a machine instead of a clean, fresh Royal Enfield with the same power that quietly echoes Britishness from afar? In fact, the bikes are almost the same price, so why not? Because it’s just not as cool. It doesn’t feel the same. And I know it’s not the bike I want. When bikes of this era have good mags, have the carbs and various other quirks taken well care of, they kick-start every time. Or at least every second time.

This one question always comes into my mind whenever I see a modern car or modern clothes: Why are we consistently sacrificing beauty for practicality? Cars today feel more like appliances than living, breathing machines like they used to. Yes, cars are safer by miles, but do they also have to be so lame? In clothing these days, comfort takes precedence over style at all costs. Sweatpants are practical, but if someone were to discover tropical wool trousers or high-quality flannel, they would never wear such ugly things.

What are we giving up on when we consistently make the safe and easy choice?

A life so filled with excitement and beauty that if one day your bike doesn’t start, you don’t care. After all, in a city like Paris, the train is always running.

Choosing something remarkable over something merely dependable and comfortable isn’t about romanticizing flaws. It’s about refusing to trade feeling, character, and excitement for the dull comfort of things that work but never move you.

This, at its core, is living with intention. It’s why moving to a new country, despite it being massively inconvenient, might just be one of the most rewarding things you’ve ever done. It’s why so many wear a mechanical wristwatch despite having a clock on the supercomputer in their pocket, or why young men all over the world are turning to tailoring even when the workplace doesn’t call for it. And it’s why you don’t need an excuse to do what speaks to you on the deepest level.

Because a life lived without the pursuit of excitement in the things you interact with every day or the decisions you make is no life at all.