RAFFLES HOTEL LE ROYAL: Dressing to impress in Southeast Asia
Top: Fancy Pants, Boise, Idaho
Jeans: Hudson
Shoes: Topshop (from their tiny store in Bangkok)
Black beaded rope necklace: Grandma’s
Phnom Penh’s Raffles Hotel has seen war and resurrection and still throws a hell of a cocktail party for the living.
In this season of ghosts, here are a few of mine: This photo was snapped back in the day when the Phnom Penh Post still had come one, come all bacchanalian networking parties, and these dashing, sartorial hotties were three of my most beloved men about the Penh.
And I am doubly-haunted: every time I look at this pic I hear the four first bravura lines of Frederick Seidel’s “Kill Poem”:
Huntsman indeed is gone from Savile Row,
And Mr. Hall, the head cutter.
The red hunt coat Hall cut for me was utter
Red melton cloth thick as a carpet, cut just so.
Tonight I am missing the Elephant Bar at the Raffles and my inscribed copy of Seidel’s book OOGA-BOOGA like I would miss my own severed arm. This photo represents more than a few of my favorite things. And yes—there was a height requirement.
