Style: Mr Peter Beard, the icon of the week

We'd like to open a new section on the blog, called Style. Here we'll choose every week one style icon and talk about him. We believe that having style is the result of how do you combine clothes and accessories and the attitude you adopt while wearing them. No matter what you wear, no matter where you are, no matter what you are doing... you must always feel comfortable, confident and great. If you manage to do so, the image you'll project will be the image of elegance and style. An authentic gentleman.

We'd like to inaugurate this section talking about the style of Mr. Peter Beard. His photographs of Africa, African animals, and the journals that often integrate his photographs have been widely shown and published since the 1970s.

Beard is famous not only for his photographs of endangered African elephants but also of supermodels and rock stars like Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Iman and Veruschka. Beard channels most of his creative energy into his collage-work and diaries, which he began to compile in 1949 at the age of eleven. In these works, he documents the history of his relationships with (among other things): Africa, Karen Blixen, the New York art scene, the fashion world, Hollywood, and the Kennedy administration.

We like how Beard looks like, no matter the type of clothes he's wearing. Military style or typical African clothes. He always looks just great. That's why we chose him to be our first style icon. If you like his style, what do you think about the combination below?

The Sam Browne leather belt matches perfectly with this Maffeis safari style jacket! 

Billboard 21: releases of the week

Austenland

Austenland is a romantic comedy about 30-something, single Jane Hayes, a seemingly normal young woman with a secret: her obsession with Mr. Darcy-as played by Colin Firth in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice-is ruining her love life; no real man can compare. But when she decides to spend her life savings on a trip to an English resort catering to Austen-crazed women, Jane's fantasies of meeting the perfect Regency-era gentleman suddenly become more real than she ever could have imagined.

Blue Jasmine

A life crisis causes a socialite to head to San Francisco, where she reconnects with her sister.

Greedy Lying Bastards

What happens when an industry has too much power? Greedy Lying Bastards presents a searing indictment of the influence, deceit and corruption that defines the fossil fuel industry. From the Gulf Coast to the tiny nation of Tuvalu, from Nigeria and Uganda to Peru and Alaska, filmmaker and political activist Craig Rosebraugh documents the impact of an industry that has continually put profits before people, waged a campaign of lies designed to thwart measures to combat climate change, used its clout to minimize infringing regulations and undermined the political process in the U.S. and abroad. This in-depth investigation into the industry spanned five continents and nine countries. Greedy Lying Bastards is the disturbing and revealing portrait of what was uncovered on this journey, a tale of devastating consequences. By interweaving the stories of the victims of the Gulf oil spill and the global climate crisis with a look at the practices of fossil fuel companies and the climate change deniers they support, the film lays bare the industry's deliberate pattern of irresponsibility.

Musicwood

Musicwood is a modern twist on a classic story; an urgent battle between the white man and Native Americans, where age-old land disputes upend our simplistic view of the past. The Musicwood documentary follows Bob Taylor (Taylor Guitars), Chris Martin (Martin Guitars), and Dave Berryman of Gibson Guitars - as they unite as a group, drop their competitive differences and travel together into the heart of the largest coastal temperate rain forest in the world. They have to negotiate with Native American loggers to save the centuries old Sitka Spruce trees, before it's too late. The film documents the guitar-makers' struggle to build a relationship with the Native Americans that acknowledges the injustices of their past but fights to preserve the forest for our future. Featuring The Antlers, Steve Earle, Kaki King, Lambchop, Turin Brakes, and Yo La Tengo.

Hanna Arendt

A look at the life of philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt, who reported for The New Yorker on the war crimes trial of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann.

Prisoners

A Boston man kidnaps the person he suspects is behind the disappearance of his young daughter and her best friend.

Welcome Autumn!

Autumn is here and although some of you might feel summertime sadness there is no reason to be low! Watching movies on the couch, drinking a cup of hot chocolate in good company and enjoying a walk in a park full of tree leaves are some of the most typical things that we like to do when the weather becomes colder and the days shorter.

The countryside is full of beautiful places to walk around and we'd like to share with you some of the best to make sure that you take advantage of your free time this autumn.

Hurst Green to Oxted (Surrey-Kent)

Length: 4.7 miles 

Duration: Three hours

Start: Hurst Green Station

Finish: Oxted Station

Getting there: Two trains per hour (one on Sunday) run from London Victoria to Hurst Green (journey time: 39 minutes – 49 minutes on Sunday). Trains from Oxted also run to Victoria. Drivers should park at Hurst Green and get the train back there from Oxted, one stop down the line.

Walk notes: This is the short version of a satisfying and reasonably gentle walk along the hills of north Kent and Surrey, much of it passing through woodland along the Greensand Way. This walk is especially attractive in autumn, offering a beautiful show of russets, browns and yellows when the leaves turn.

Saunderton via West Wycombe circular (Buckinghamshire)

Length: 10 miles

Duration: Five hours

Start and finish: Saunderton Station

Getting there: Trains run hourly between Marylebone and Saunderton (journey time: 42-51 minutes). For those driving, Saunderton Station car park is free.

Walk notes: This walk combines an easy stroll in the Chilterns through a mixture of woodland and sloping meadows.

Alton circular (Hampshire)

Length: 13.1 miles

Duration: Six hours 30 minutes

Start and finish: Alton Station

Getting there: Two trains per hour run between London Waterloo and Alton (one hourly on Sundays; journey time: about one hour 10 minutes). Alton Station has a pay car park, which costs £3.60 a day. There is also a free car park near Kings Pond or you can park anywhere in the centre of Alton and walk to the station to start.

Walk notes: The quiet corner of Hampshire through which this walk passes seems like the kind of countryside in which nothing much has ever happened. Yet in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century it inspired two famous writers – the naturalist Gilbert White and Jane Austen. 

Don't forget to take with you the Conical Flask! The best way to bring water with you during the walk!

Billboard 20: releases of the week

Mademoiselle C

A documentary focused on former Vogue Paris editor-in-chief and fashion stylist Carine Roitfeld.

Diana

The last two years of Princess Diana's life: her campaign against land mines and her relationship with surgeon Dr Hasnat Khan.

The Last Fall

The Last Fall tells the story of Kyle Bishop, a journeyman professional football player who retires broke at age twenty-five with no idea what to do next with his life. Forced to move back home and reconnect with his loved ones, Bishop struggles to deal with life's complexities after his professional career is over.

Special products: Conical Flask

Apart from the Tantalus, there is another special product within the Drinks Cabinet section. It is the Conical Flask.

Handmade in England in bridle butt leather, the conical flask consists of a leather case lined in suede and a conical drinking glass flask which fits inside it. 

Designed to be attached to the saddle, it can be opened easily with one hand using a thumb whilst still holding on to the reins with the other. 

Don't you think it's a perfect idea for a perfect product?

Billboard 19: Releases of the week

How to Become a Criminal Mastermind

Freddie, a desperate, naive young man, hires Bainbridge, a ruthless crime coach, to mould him into the perfect criminal.

42

In 1946, Jackie Robinson is a Negro League baseball player who never takes racism lying down. Branch Rickey is a Major League team executive with a bold idea. To that end, Rickey recruits Robinson to break the unspoken color line as the first modern African American Major League player. As both anticipate, this proves a major challenge for Robinson and his family as they endure unrelenting racist hostility on and off the field, from player and fan alike. As Jackie struggles against his nature to endure such abuse without complaint, he finds allies and hope where he least expects it.

In a World...

An underachieving vocal coach is motivated by her father, the king of movie-trailer voice-overs, to pursue her aspirations of becoming a voiceover star. Amidst pride, sexism and family dysfunction, she sets out to change the voice of a generation.

Rush

Set against the sexy, glamorous golden age of Formula 1 racing in the 1970s. Based on the true story of a great sporting rivalry between handsome English playboy James Hunt, and his methodical, brilliant opponent Niki Lauda. The story follows their distinctly different personal styles on and off the track, their loves and the astonishing 1976 season in which both drivers were willing to risk everything to become world champion in a sport with no margin for error: if you make a mistake, you die.

Borrowed Time

The story of two totally contrasting figures who come together in the most hostile of circumstances, only to form an unlikely bond that will help them both find a way out of their respective troubles. It is a bittersweet comedy about growing up and rediscovering youth in parallel, united by the subconscious desire to seek out the missing elements in their lives.

 

The Cosmonaut

What if you got back home... and there was nobody there? In 1975, the first Russian cosmonaut on the Moon is unable to make his way back and is declared missing in Space. However, through ghostly radio messages, he claims to have come back to Earth and found it empty, not a living soul. His unrealistic presence and his voice will little by little destroy the world of his beloved ones.

The Artist and The Model

The Artist and the Model is a meditation on mortality and artistic inspiration. It focuses on the encounter between Merc, a young woman who has left behind a war-torn Spain, and an old French sculptor when she starts to model for him.