*Price does not include shipping. Don’t want to pay shipping? Why not subscribe? Valet Issue 1 started in a bar in St Petersburg. Our founders worked for another prominent print magazine that took a subject and used it to explore the Big Themes of life. We wanted to do the same with menswear and classic style. In Issue 1, you will find a veritable banquet of original content, from history, philosophy, and literary criticism, to interviews, guides to cloth, and original fiction. In the first of two chapters, we have articles ranging from the history of the umbrella in life and literature, a guide to corduroy by Bernhard Roetzel, an ode to menswear for foul weather by Andrew Yamato of New & Lingwood, a breakdown of three suiting traditions, a conversation between a man and his valet about what best to wear in a downpour, an interview with Sean Crowley of Crowley Vintage in New York, several obscure photograph essays exploring such things as cloth in motion, the abstract notion of ‘Ruin’ coupled with extracts from the famous essayist Owen Barfield on the poetic soul of the word, stills from the film noir Une si jolie petite plage (1949), and more. The second chapter houses essays that take a number of esoteric approaches to menswear, exploring it through the lens of various fields of expertise, from history, philosophy, memoir, fiction, and academia from other disciplines. We have essays about menswear in the novels of Jane Austen, a literary analysis of a particular overcoat in a poem by Philip Larkin, a philosophical essay on how dressing well when it’s wet can foster social connection and even a transcendence from the confines of solitary consciousness, a hilarious and stentorian essay about what it’s like not to care about clothes, and even original fiction, all inspired by menswear in one way or another. It's been a long labour of love; we can't wait to hear what you think.
