Seoul Music
Owned and operated by Alex Moon (the woman behind the counter), Electric Shoes is one of countless LP Bars in Seoul. She makes the drinks and selects the music. We go several times during our visit to Seoul without seeing another member of staff. Bong Joon-ho, the Oscar-winning director of Parasite, is a regular. At the bar two young men with long hair and baggy trousers nurse bottles of Samuel Adams and nod their heads to the music.
You write down a song request on a piece of paper and hand it to Moon. She works out where it fits in the order, which version might work best, or whether she wants to play that song at all… ratifying or silently dismissing your taste. Mortifying. If you’re a regular regular, Moon will let you take beer out of a special fridge and pay what you owe at the end of the night.
Spring Style with Taeil Park
Wearing a selection of our favourite Drake’s pieces for spring, including Italian seersucker Games tailoring in classic blue and white stripes, linen shirts made in our own Somerset factory, the signature waxed Coverall jacket in a warm-weather-ready 8.7oz cotton, suede Crosby boots, Goodyear Charles loafers, and unstructured tweed blazers in our house style.
Below is a beautifully-captured selection of some of our favourite Drake’s spring looks, as worn by Taeil out and about in Seoul.
A Long Lunch at St. JOHN
As the clock strikes 12 noon across the capital, many Londoners start to consider lunch. Some might be rustling up a toastie on their Breville. Others will be wandering from offices toward a Pret or Itsu. Most of these lunches will be prudent, sober and quick. Some lunching will be missed entirely, or “replaced” with supplements. We live in a curious time some would argue, a chaste, timid time, when even in the City of London, the art of the long lunch is all-but lost.
Thankfully, over in Smithfield, at St. JOHN, betwixt the whitewashed walls of an old smokery, an altogether different ritual is starting to unfold. The aroma of baking sourdough is a pleasing first note, and as our group gathers at the bar, suggestions of conviviality are everywhere: champagne is being poured, while a barman expertly spins ice in glass to prepare what looks like a Hanky Panky cocktail for man in a fedora, and rarebits are everywhere.
Editors Picks
Radio
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author and The New Yorker staff writer lists some of his favourite tracks to walk around to as winter turns to spring in NYC. author and The New Yorker staff writer lists some of his favourite tracks to walk around to as winter turns to spring in NYC.
