Peter O’Toole deserves that drink.
He’s ridden camels. Tilted at windmills. Been king. Tutored an unruly child-emperor. Played an elderly Casanova. The list goes on and on.
All while maintaining a haphazardly dapper visage.
The star of Lawrence of Arabia (and about 70 other movies in the exactly 50 years since), O’Toole’s has had a career that most actors would kill for. And he’s won some awards along the way. But infuriatingly, despite his best efforts, never an Oscar.
Baseball is finally back.
As you might recall, we spent last week counting down to MLB’s opening day with a how-to on catching a foul ball, an homage to Satchel Paige, considering the meaning of baseball caps and reminiscing over The Sandlot…
And now we’d like to celebrate our favorite baseball tradition of them all: throwing out the first pitch. Naturally, over the years, more than a few style icons—from JFK to Eddie Vedder—have taken the mound for the inaugural heave, and we’ve rounded up some of the most stylish non-belly-itchers of all time. So, without further ado:
We couldn’t help ourselves. With the Oscars only days away and awards season coming to a head, we felt honor-bound to weigh in on the subject of style, cinema and the intersection of the two.
So we collected our memories of the past year’s worth of handsomeness on film and tried to nail down exactly what made each film stylish—much like the actual Oscars, we’re breaking down the movie by individual garment performance, not just handing out awards willy-nilly.
So without further ado, the Oscar for Best Cardigan in a Supporting Role goes to…»
Valentine’s Day isn’t till tomorrow, but you can already feel it in the air: the unmistakable tingling of a bone-chilling winter frost.
But also: romance.
And since you’re more than likely on the hook for dinner, or at least a starry-eyed stroll, we thought you could use some inspiration for tomorrow’s festivities—with some style cues from history’s most fashionable gents on dates. Just don’t forget the flowers (or in the case of Mick Jagger: cotton candy).
Without further ado: 10 ridiculously good-looking dates and the style icons who love them.»
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2012 has been one helluva ride here on Kempt. And we’d like to take a moment to thank you all for taking that ride with us. (We hope some of that handsomeness rubbed off.)
Now, we’re off to find the nearest bow tie, pair of lips and bottle of champagne, and get started on the year-end revelry. We suggest you do the same, but since we’d never leave you empty-handed, here’s a little bubbly-swashing inspiration. We’ll see you next year, folks.
You’re probably familiar with the Impossible Cool—a site dedicated to black-and-white photos starring everyone from Alain Delon to Kurt Vonnegut looking, well, impossibly cool. And you might even be familiar with the ongoing collaboration with Sonic Editions—who are in the business of archival-quality prints of iconic photos of mostly rock stars.
For their latest limited-run batch, they’ve come up with a new twist: color. It’s a revolutionary idea, we know. Almost blasphemous if you’re a longtime Impossible Cool fan, but something you’ll quickly get over once you see how ravishing Marilyn Monroe’s bright red dress looks or the way David Bowie’s strawberry blond coif adds intrigue to the mostly gray palette of a 1976 photo. It’s a whole new world of impossibilities in coolness.
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via NitroliciousMadder Than Mel: The Mad Max franchise reboot is finally back on track with Tom Hardy as Max and at least one supermodel in a cage. [IndieWire]
In Theater: Add this to our ongoing praise of the aesthetic glory of the bookshelf. A spectacular historic theater that’s been converted into a book shop in Argentina. [Design Taxi]
Professional Hippies: The definitive roundup of the free-spirit celebs who descended upon Coachella. [The Cut]
You Read It for the Bikes: Here’s a slideshow of really attractive road bikes… being ridden by an even more attractive model. [Sharp]
via Fashion CopiousGhostface for the Block: The NY Times reports that a Hollywood Squares remake is in the works—trading over-the-hill celebrities for aging rappers. This is going to be amazing. [The NY Times]
Statesman of Style: Winston Churchill was rocking embroidered slippers since before you were born, young man. [The Paris Review]
A Call from Cooperstown: The Baseball Hall of Fame offers 49-year-old pitcher Jamie Moyer an internship. Hilarity ensues. [MLB.com]
Come, Come, Mr. Bond: The Telegraph rounds up the most iconic hotels that 007 has stayed in. Start packing your bags. [The Telegraph]
The eyebrow. A curious body part.
Its primary evolutionary purpose is threefold: 1) To prevent moisture from entering the eye. 2) To strengthen expressions of emotion, particularly with regard to confusion and disdain. 3) To assist in the process of facial recognition.
Expounding on #3, a recent MIT study revealed that 50% of participants were unable to identify celebrities whose eyebrows had been digitally removed. As we’re prone to do here at Kempt, we’ve turned MIT’s study on its ass and, below, have provided you with only celebrities’ eyebrows.
While we’re offering neither a prize nor penalty nor compelling reason to participate in our study, we hope you will…»
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The decline of the celebrity interview has been fairly well-documented, but just when you think the whole enterprise is too hopelessly compromised to convey an honest human moment, Esquire comes along and drops something like this.
The piece is the Christopher Walken edition of their ongoing “What I’ve Learned” series, and it might be the best thing ever to grace their pages. (That’s right, we’re looking at you, Talese.) Walken’s screwball banality cuts right through all the false modesty, PR calculation and good-natured cant that usually makes this kind of writing such a minefield. Ponder this gem, for instance:
Sometimes I look at this watch and I think, There’s some guy that puts these little screws in there? There is something about it.
Or better yet:
I used to love Danish. My father used to make a Boston cream pie. You never see that anymore. Very good.
Truer words were never spoken.
The animated gif is just a few great works away from being a legitimate art form—in fact, they’ve already got their own museum—but this is the first time we’ve seen it turned on the celebrity class.
We just ran across this gif of one Scarlett Johansson in a variety of charming poses. As PR, it does more than a dozen Esquire spreads—and we’re quite partial to those. Think of it as one more step towards flacks becoming surrogate blogmasters.
And, needless to say, it’s better than The Nanny Diaries.
As many have noted, the internet’s a pretty rough place. Celebrity tends to attract more abuse than glamour, especially when there’s a hint of success alongside it. And now, if this startup has its way, all that abuse will have a home.
PersonRatings is billing itself as “Yelp for people”—it’s the first site to offer quantitative approach to web celebrity—but giving people an open forum to say things about Julia Allison is a dangerous game, and the nastier it gets, the higher their traffic numbers will go.
On some level, it’s brilliant…we just hope we never see our name on their list.
If you’ve walked past a newsstand this past week, you might have seen an uncharacteristically craggy Brad Pitt staring back at you. And, for once, it isn’t CGI.
The special effects come from the photographer and photorealist painter Chuck Close, apparently at the request of Mr. Pitt himself. We don’t doubt that Pitt can get whoever he wants to take his picture, but Close isn’t a glamour artist like Annie Liebowitz, and the result ends up looking positively Eastwood-esque.
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There have been a lot of different representations of Kate Moss over the years—most of the photographic, non-clothed kind—but this is one of the more ambitious ones.
Found at the Arts Gallery in London, it’s part of a larger series of portraits of gossip mag staples, done by painter Yuko Nasu without any knowledge of who the faces are. We can’t say much for the likeness, but we think they captured Ms. Moss’s essence pretty well.
Especially the swirling around the eyes…
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Style: some people have it, and some neighborhoods really have it. To show you what we mean, we’ve partnered with Cadillac to present Style Shifters—a five-part, in-depth look at what the hippest gents in some of the country’s coolest neighborhoods are wearing now. Our intrepid photographers have roamed the streets in search of the most stylish guys around. Herewith, a few photos of what they found...
Williamsburg, Brooklyn is home to some of the country’s best bars, coolest restaurants and, of course, some of the best menswear shops in the world. Naturally, you’ll find more than a few stylish individuals perched outside those locations (and no, not all of them are Billyburg hipsters). See what we mean below...
Oh, and up next: we take a peak at another handsome-as-hell neighborhood, the Mission District in San Francisco. Stay tuned...
