Unbuttoned: my new podcast with Bruce Boyer

Things have been quiet for a while on The Hogtown Rake as I’ve been working on a very special project…

One day last summer, while I was chatting on the phone with Bruce Boyer about clothes, Italy, and our dogs, he said something that floored me: he wanted to work on a project together. “Hells yes,” I said.

Bruce has long been my inspiration, in how I dress and how I write. When I first picked up his book Elegance, I dreamed of writing with such ease, comfort and personality while also expressing profound expertise. Of course, you can also describe Bruce’s approach to dress in similar terms. In fact, I remember one of the first times I saw him interviewed, in a Put This On video where Bruce says he knew, from an early age, that he was never going to be able to dress “perfectly” and so he should embrace being rumpled. “Play to your strengths,” he says in the video.

All that to say, I jumped at the chance to work on a project with Bruce. Without much deliberation, I had the idea: a storytelling podcast. Through our friendship, Bruce has told me many stories about his time in the menswear industry and I realised he’d rarely if ever published them. As his first editor at Town & Country told him, “The only word I don’t want to see in your articles is ‘I’. No one cares what you think.” But the early 21st century is all about personal storytelling. And there’s no one who’s stories I want to hear more than Bruce’s.

Unbuttoned – G. Bruce Boyer’s Life in Clothes” will be six episodes, each about thirty minutes, focusing on a different part of Bruce’s life, just not chronologically. You’ll hear about his introduction to Ivy League style and life in college in the 50s and 60s in episode one, coming May 15. His first trips to Savile Row in episode two, May 29. And all about Italy in episode three, June 12. The remaining episodes will focus on… well, you’ll have to listen to find out.

The podcast is available in iTunes (Apple Podcasts), Spotify, Stitcher, Google and most other podcast apps.

So please subscribe, rate, comment and stay tuned. And a special thanks to our sponsors, who help to make this podcast possible:

Special thanks to Rose Callahan for the podcast cover image.