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Paul Croughton - Tyler, The Creator and Vintage Barware with Robb Report Editor In Chief
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Joining me today is Editor in Chief of Robb Report, Paul Croughton. Paul reached out to me as a fan of the podcast, which was truly humbling as I’ve been a fan of Robb Report for quite some time. Without knowing him too well, I figured he had to be a collector. In fact, Paul’s been collecting his whole life. His father was a collector and he subsequently caught the bug early on. From action figures and magazines, to vinyls and record decks, Paul’s collecting has since evolved into vintage barware and watches. We chat about what it means to collect and curate for himself, but also as Editor in Chief of one of the largest luxury publications around. His vintage barware collection is as extensive as a jigger that plays music as you pour, which you’ll all get to hear mid show. Needless to say, Paul’s life revolves around luxury things and he’s found a way to hone that in on his own collecting. I’m grateful to present, Paul Croughton, for Collectors Gene Radio.
Tyler, The Creator Robb Report Article - https://robbreport.com/shelter/art-collectibles/tyler-the-creator-prized-possessions-1234758594/
Editors Letter - https://robbreport.com/lifestyle/news/editors-letter-2023-march-1234808624/
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Yeah, it was great. And he really wanted to show this stuff. And I asked him why now, why us? And he just kind of said, well, I think Robert Paul's cool and I think you guys have got a good taste and I want to be a part of that. But then he said, you know, I might shave all my hair off and become a vegan or something like that in 10 years and not care about any of this. So I want to kind of showcase it now while that's the mood I'm in is loving all this stuff. And I thought that was a great
00:00:30
Speaker
a great reason to do something like that. So he really opened his doors for us, which we're grateful for. What's going on, everybody? And welcome to Collector's Gene Radio. This is all about diving into the nuances of collecting and ultimately finding out whether or not our guests have what we like to call the collector's gene. If you have the time, please subscribe and leave a review. It truly helps. Thanks a bunch for listening. And please enjoy today's guest on Collector's Gene Radio.
Introduction to Paul Croughton
00:01:01
Speaker
Joining me today is editor in chief of Robert Port, Paul Croughton. Paul reached out to me as a fan of the podcast, which was truly humbling as I've been a fan of Robert Port for quite some time. Without knowing him too well, I figured he had to be a collector. In fact, Paul's been collecting his whole life. His father was a collector and he subsequently caught the bug pretty early on. From action figures and magazines to vinyls and record decks, Paul's collecting has since evolved into vintage barware and watches.
00:01:31
Speaker
We chat about what it means to collect and curate for himself, but also as an editor-in-chief of one of the largest publications around.
Luxury Collecting Lifestyle
00:01:39
Speaker
His vintage barware collection is as extensive as a jigger that plays music as you pour, which you'll get to hear mid-show. Needless to say, Paul's life revolves around luxury things, and he's found a way to hone that in on his own collecting. So today, I'm grateful to present to you Paul Croudon for Collectors Gene Radio.
00:01:59
Speaker
Paul, an honor to welcome you to Collectors Gene Radio. Thanks very much for having me. It's great to be here. I truly appreciate you listening to the podcast, and I now know that you're a fan, and that really means a lot.
00:02:14
Speaker
I like hearing the people you've got on and it's always fascinating. I've always been interested in people who collect and how they collect and what they collect and often the reasoning behind it because sometimes there's a sense of convincing oneself or there's a sense of allowing oneself the pleasure of collecting. So it's always fascinating to hear the reasons behind why people get into these kind of things. No doubt.
00:02:44
Speaker
a little anecdote for you. It's pretty funny because when I was a kid and my brothers loved to give me a hard time about this, I used to take Robert Port magazines from the hotels we would stay at abroad and bring them home. And my family was so confused how my bag was so heavy at the end of every trip as a kid. I had a little suitcase that's
00:03:06
Speaker
a quarter of the size as a normal adult suitcase. Then one day they found an absurd stash of Robert Bort magazines in my room. But I just love looking through them as a kid. Maybe one day I'll have my own spread in there, but who knows? That's great. I love hearing things like that. Actually, this is something we hear an awful lot is that people often start reading their parents' Robert Bort,
00:03:34
Speaker
And that's what gets them into cars or to find wine or travel or watches or whatever it may be. It's this kind of insight into the good things in life, which can be very addictive. I couldn't agree more.
Career Journey to Robb Report
00:03:52
Speaker
So you're editor in chief over at Rob Report, but you didn't necessarily start there. How did you ultimately land at Rob Report and then subsequently become editor in chief?
00:04:04
Speaker
So I've been a journalist for about 25 years. I'm English, as observant listeners will probably have figured out by now, and I spent the first 10 years of my journalistic career
00:04:20
Speaker
In consumer magazines, mostly men's magazines, a much-missed British style magazine called Arena, which was the UK's first style magazine for men before British editions of GQ and Esquire launched here. There was this magazine called Arena.
00:04:38
Speaker
I was there for about seven years. It was my second job in journalism. I was at an entertainment magazine for two years before that. And I left Arena as acting editor. But that was very much all about style and art and design and food and drink and kind of
00:05:02
Speaker
Fun clothes, a lot of stuff about clothes. So it was kind of, it was very much a lifestyle magazine and I've always, always, always been interested in lifestyle. I've never really wanted to be a news reporter. I wanted to be a journalist since I was about 14 and it was always magazines. I was magazines, bonkers, collected comics and then magazines from a very, very young age.
00:05:27
Speaker
So after 10 years in mags, I ended up at the Sunday Times in London on the travel desk. I was a deputy travel editor for a long time and then went into the Sunday Times magazine, which was a great
00:05:43
Speaker
literary magazine that was you know has been going 50 odd years and is rightly famous in the UK for breaking wonderful stories and and just been a fantastic magazine and then worked much more in digital as a special projects editor of the Sunday time for a period and then left there and became a partner at a creative agency which I loved for a number of years
00:06:10
Speaker
And that's where my association with Robert Porte really began. When I was at Arena, we used to go to America a fair bit for shoots or stories or whatever. And I was always stuck up on American magazines long before the internet. So you can just read American versions of magazines online. And I used to come back, a bit like you really, with a bag heaving with American Esquire and GQ and various others. And occasionally I would pick up Robert Porte
00:06:38
Speaker
It wasn't terribly relevant to me, but I was interested in how they put it together and what images they had and all this kind of stuff. So I was aware of it then. But at this creative agency, and this was kind of 2016, they had won the franchise to create a British edition of Robert Port and I'd been working with them for a period as a freelancer and came on board as the launch editor
00:07:08
Speaker
for that, and we were very fortunate in that we were able to completely rewrite the rules of what a contemporary Rob report would be. Between myself and the two founding partners of this creative agency, at the time we had probably 70 years experience as journalists, so we didn't want to just
00:07:33
Speaker
repackage the American content. For those of your listeners who aren't in the media, if you do a new edition of an existing magazine, what often happens is that it's a franchise. In the case of Robert Port, you would be expected to take
00:07:50
Speaker
from 50 to 70 percent of the of the mothership so the american content and you put kind of local content so in our case british content at the front and the back and kind of call it a day but we didn't really want to do that we didn't feel that rob report particularly spoke to the the hind network british media savvy contemporary collector uh so we said that we would wanted to do a completely new magazine start again redesign it do everything from scratch and
00:08:18
Speaker
what's ever reason the company agreed and i'm happy that that was the case i was a bit weird at the time but anyway they agreed so we just completely created a new report and when pmc bought. Rob report in america in twenty seventeen i think they quite liked what we created because it was very very different from
00:08:39
Speaker
the original Rob Report, had much more tone of voice, it had a bit of humor in it, it had a bit more of an edge to it. And so Jay Penske is the owner of PMC, came over and I met with him and we got on and some months later there was an email in my inbox asking whether I wanted to relocate to the US and take over the American. Amazing. And that's how it all happened.
Influence of Paul's Father
00:09:06
Speaker
And so from the past conversations that you and I have had, which have been fairly recent, you've really been collecting your whole life. Smurfs, Star Wars figures, soccer stickers, sneakers, vinyls, magazines, record decks, which are turntables in the US. But where did your collecting start? And at what point in your career or before you joined the professional world did it start?
00:09:33
Speaker
It's funny to hear you list them like that and start with Smurfs. My father used to collect stuff. He's 86 now.
00:09:45
Speaker
anything other than illnesses, but he collected signatures. He was very musical and sung in various choruses and things. And he would collect manuscripts and he would get all the artists, the soloists to sign them, Plasto Domingo, Curita Canoa, Pavarotti, who he'd sung with and all that kind of stuff. So he's got this great big bunch of signed musical scripts and he collected banknotes and
00:10:15
Speaker
books and all of that kind of stuff. So I guess I grew up with the idea that you could collect certain things that you were interested in and passionate about. But yeah, the one that I kind of remember most early on was Smurfs, which is kind of weird and daft. But yeah, I ended up with about 50 or 60 of these funny little blue and white figurines and kind of liked them. And they look like my son collects Pokemon cards there. You know, they're just something to save your pocket money up for.
00:10:45
Speaker
and you can kind of find the ones you like and swap the ones you don't and do all this kind of stuff but certainly magazines were really important and then football stickers were a big part of school life so this is this is soccer for American listeners I grew up absolutely obsessed with soccer
00:11:06
Speaker
You put them on your locker, you put them on your notebooks. Well, you would get sticker albums. So you would buy the stickers and you'd buy the album and you would try to fill the album. And this was a big thing around World Cups. And I can remember España 82, so Spain 82, World Cup and then Mexico 86. And I would have been 12 and going into my
00:11:29
Speaker
teens around this kind of time. And yeah, that was a big deal at school when you were swapping these stickers with your friends. And if anyone finished the sticker album, then they were kind of paraded around the playroom as some kind of hero. But yeah, that was just kind of a feeling of real satisfaction when you completed a team. So you'd have all these different teams, England and Scotland and Spain and France, Brazil and Argentina, whatever.
00:11:58
Speaker
And quite often you would end up with desperately trying to find one sticker so you could complete a team on the page. And then you found one and you were able to complete it and then you would try and find all the others and complete them. But it's funny, the older you get, the more you realise you can't really complete collection. Unless you collect something very specific and you're trying to get the
00:12:17
Speaker
you know, the six particular references of a particular watch or something that were only released in a certain time and then you get them and then you're like, right now. But quite often collections can be open-ended and that's when you get into trouble. It must be difficult to store some of these collections in a place like New York.
00:12:39
Speaker
Yeah, yes, it is. I mean, some of them, I mean, I don't, I don't have Smurfs anymore, for example. A lot of the magazines I brought with me when I moved to New York in 2018. But before that, I have my son and the room that I kept all my magazines and a lot of my vinyl in turned into his
00:13:01
Speaker
bedroom. It's nursery. So I got rid of a lot of magazines because I was a bit of a hoarder and probably had about 2000 mags, maybe two and a half thousand magazines. I had about 3000 records. And you don't really need that. Certainly you don't need that many magazines because you can't remember what's in what and all the rest of it. I think music is slightly different because you can remember a song and you can remember the front of the
00:13:26
Speaker
the album sleeve or the record sleeve. And so you can kind of find it if you put your records in a certain order. Yeah, vinyls are a little bit easier to, I guess, personally archive. Yeah, and you can't really remember where that article that you remember reading 10 years ago, which had that interesting photo shoot was kind of like you spent the hours looking through old magazines, and a lot of it was stuff that
00:13:48
Speaker
I might have either been into in my early 20s or whatever or stuff that I'd written for and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, a lot of it went to the recycling or was sold. And I sold a lot of records, which was kind of heartbreaking because at that point it was pretty much before the vinyl revival. And so people were just expecting to pick up 100 records for 10 quid or whatever. And I did a bit better than that.
00:14:19
Speaker
But I started getting into, because I used to DJ a wee bit, not in any kind of professional capacity, but my friends and I used to play a bit. We used to play the hip-hop and house music and play parties and a few bars and that kind of stuff. But I remember going to a friend's house who was a very good DJ, professional DJ.
00:14:40
Speaker
And he wanted to get rid of a lot of his vinyl because it was taking up too much space. And a friend of mine started at one end of his huge great row of records and I started the other and we kind of an hour later met in the middle and we both sort of siphoned off about three or four hundred records.
00:14:56
Speaker
which were all kind of white labels and records that you couldn't get elsewhere because he was a DJ so artists had sent him promos and all this kind of stuff. And I was lucky enough to be writing about music a lot in my early part of my career so I would get records sent to me and again white labels or dubs and things like that. So I used to enjoy having these records that perhaps weren't that common. And I think actually that's been
00:15:22
Speaker
something that if you're trying to draw a line through a lot of my collecting might have something to do with it. I've never really been desperate to have the same stuff that everyone else has got. So, you know, it's certainly when you're when you're playing music, you want to have the record that no one else has heard or no one knows or they've heard it once and they're really excited to hear it again kind of thing rather than just play the same thing that everyone else plays in every other bar or whatever. Absolutely. And I think that's the same now with with watches or
00:15:50
Speaker
some of the other stuff that I'm kind of into in, you know, vintage barware or something like that, you know, you want to find something that either you've not seen before or you have seen, but only in online or in books and you know, it's rare and you're excited to hold onto it and have it in the flesh or metal or whatever. But yeah, I've never been the sort of person who wants
00:16:16
Speaker
He wants to have the same thing that everybody else has got so that I can say that I've got it too. Would you say it felt good to do a little bit of a collection cleanse when you came to New York or was it a little bit tough? It was a lot bit tough. It was really hard at the time.
00:16:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think I struggled with it a wee bit, but certainly looking back on it, it's very good to do that kind of thing. My wife is very much a kind of one-in-one-out mindset. And while I don't adhere to that, I have to say an element of refining possessions is never a bad thing. I think you can get very caught up in
00:16:58
Speaker
having stuff and that's not always helpful and healthy and certainly I think there was a lot of during the last few three four years of you know covid and the pandemic and everything else there's quite rightly been this impetus about buying fewer things but better things or you know refining things to the to you have
00:17:22
Speaker
smaller collections or things that bring you joy rather than just a huge, great drawer full of stuff. And I've certainly started doing that to varying degrees of success, depending on what we're talking about. But I find it more satisfying just narrowing things down and saying, right, I'm going to just focus on
00:17:42
Speaker
mid-century, time-only, Vacheron, Konstantin watches, for example, or Cartier, or whatever that is. Because you can't collect everything, you can't have everything, and you can't, you know, you have to put boundaries on certain things, otherwise you run around and are never happy. You did an amazing piece on Tyler the Creator on a few of his collections.
00:18:06
Speaker
Besides it being one of my favorite articles of the year, I've read it a million times. I've watched the video a million times. It's really special because he's such a private individual, but he let you in and his reason for doing so to me is the epitome of a collector. Can you tell me more about that and his reasoning for letting you in and how this all came about? Sure.
Memorable Interview with Tyler the Creator
00:18:30
Speaker
And thank you for saying that. It was certainly in 25 years, it's one of my favorite stories I've done.
00:18:37
Speaker
And it was great fun because of exactly what you say, how you describe him. He's a fascinating guy, he's a very private guy, which is always, I find always interesting with these very public people, you know, people in the public eye who have this public persona are very often very different behind closed doors.
00:19:01
Speaker
And he had shown bits of things before, so he'd been photographed with wearing a Cartier crash, and he'd been seen at the Monaco Cartier auction. I think one of your previous guests, Orin Montanaro, had taken a photo of him wearing the crash, and he'd bought an Obus Cartier watch there. And he'd shown us a few of his cars and things like that in videos, and he'd used a few of his trunks
00:19:27
Speaker
as part of his stage shows but he'd never shown everything together and he'd not shown by any means the extent of his collections. But that came about because I wrote his agent a letter and explained what we wanted to do but explained how intrigued I was with his collections and that I was fascinated by his taste and that he had eclectic
00:19:55
Speaker
an unusual taste but a very defined sense of aesthetic that I found fascinating and that my team found fascinating and that we were just incredibly curious to find out more and hoped that we could do it justice. But also we were very keen, you know, we've always been very keen in the last five years to change Rob report slightly. We want to make it a more diverse community. We want to bring
00:20:23
Speaker
different voices into the pages and online. And he really liked that idea. And I said to him that perhaps Rob report historically had been read by middle aged white guys. And there might be a few middle aged white guys who would see the feature that we wanted to do with him and kind of say, what the hell's this? And and he thought that was hilarious. And he kind of ran around using slightly stronger language and kind of doing impressions of certain people.
00:20:53
Speaker
being indignant about this, and we're not indignant, but just kind of like surprised. He got a kick out of that, I think, and I really love him for that. I love him for really embracing what we wanted to do.
00:21:07
Speaker
And to be honest, he was so into what we were doing. We kind of gave him creative control, which never happens in magazines. And I think that was one of the things he really loved about it was that, you know, we worked with him. We didn't just say, you know, see you in three weeks and come back with a bunch of stuff. We would come up with some ideas and he was like, yeah, like that, but yeah, not keen on that. Or how about we did this? And we'd be like, yeah, but tell us more about that. And we came into,
00:21:33
Speaker
a really good understanding. And he really ran with a couple of ideas. And I think that was all speaks to what a kind of creative and brilliant kind of guy he is. I mean, he was he was all in and he art directed to shoot. He was doing the Photoshop on the photos with the photographer who was a complete dude as well. Yeah, it was great. And he really wanted to to show this stuff. And I asked him why, why now? Why us? And he just kind of said, well,
00:22:02
Speaker
I think Robert Paul's cool and I think you guys have got a good taste and I want to be a part of that. But then he said, you know, I might shave all my hair off and become a vegan or something like that in 10 years and not care about any of this. So I want to kind of showcase it now while that's the mood I'm in is loving all this stuff. And I thought that was a great reason.
00:22:23
Speaker
to do something like that. So he really opened his doors for us, which we're grateful for. Yeah, it was everyone's favorite piece of the year, no doubt. I think I could confidently say that. And I mean, I'll be sure to link it up because everyone needs to go in at least just even if you don't watch the video and you just close your eyes and hear him speak about all the things that he collects.
00:22:43
Speaker
in that short video, you'll get a good sense. But I'm curious to know from you, after working with him on this project, what's something that you feel all collectors could learn from Tyler? Well, I mean, it's often been said, buy what you love and buy what you care about rather than buy what everybody else is collecting or buy what's hot in the market. But he is a brilliant example of that. He buys and wears
00:23:11
Speaker
small vintage tank, Cartier tanks, and wears them to perform. He wears them on his bikes. He sweats in them. He doesn't really care. He's not precious about these things. I get if you've got half a million dollar protect, then you're probably not going to wear it to the gym or whatever else. It makes me a wee bit sad when all these amazing things are kept locked up and no one ever sees them.
00:23:39
Speaker
But I think just having faith in your own taste level and aesthetic and your taste level doesn't have to be the same as anyone else's taste. That's the great thing about taste. If you're into it, you dig it and then great, go and celebrate it and find things that bring you joy. That's really the only point in doing this. There's no point in building up a collection of stuff that you don't really care about.
00:24:02
Speaker
And the interesting thing is that collections don't have to be expensive. Rob report, we rarely talk about a price tag, apart from the occasional kind of online headline. But for me, the price tag is often the least interesting thing about pretty much anything we cover. I'm always fascinated about the craft, about the people behind it who made it. How did they make it? How long ago? How long did it take? All of these kind of things. But the fact that it costs X or 10 X or whatever it might be,
00:24:32
Speaker
That's often the last thing we write about. So collections don't have to be wildly expensive. Just if they bring you joy and make you happy every time you see them, then that's worth pursuing. A lot of people say to collect is to curate. And curating is a huge part of your job, right? When it comes to curating from an editor in chief standpoint, how is that maybe different how you would approach that from a collector standpoint?
00:25:02
Speaker
That's an interesting question. I mean, I think my job on the brand, on the magazine, the website, and the channels that we have is to present a rounded view of the Robert Paul universe. So lots of people have said that a magazine or a good site or something should be a bit like a dinner party. You want different voices. You want different topics and subjects represented. You don't really want to know what's coming next.
00:25:32
Speaker
The great thing about looking through print is that you never really know what's gonna happen when you turn the page. And that's often the criticism level that social media can become a bit of an echo chamber and you suddenly find your Instagram feed is only the people you like and the things you collect or the things you're interested in or your sports team or whatever it is. And you're never really surprised by something that pops up. Whereas I think
00:26:00
Speaker
with books and newspapers and magazines, that's not the case. You are always surprised by the good ones. You're always surprised by something that follows after. So you want to keep that level of discovery.
00:26:18
Speaker
And I think discovery is the most exciting thing, one of the most exciting things on the planet. Depending on whatever it is, I'm super into music and I love discovering new tracks, new artists, new albums, whatever it might be. But that's the same when it comes to watches or barware or whatever. You go deep into a subject and you try and learn as much as you can, but there's always something extra you can discover and you can find out and you can suddenly
00:26:48
Speaker
see something which you've never seen before and be blown away by it. And I guess that's similar to what we do at Rob Report. So yeah, there are certainly similarities, but the scope of what we do in my work is a lot broader than the particular things that I choose to, or that I'm passionate about and choose to collect.
00:27:12
Speaker
Speaking of what you're passionate about, something that you collect, that you have in common with a previous guest of ours, Paul Feig, is vintage barware. When did you start collecting vintage barware? I mean, was this before you could actually enjoy it or? No, the first things I picked up were two old seltzer bottles. Oh, those are so cool.
00:27:40
Speaker
Yeah, in a market in Buenos Aires, on holiday with a mate of mine, and we just saw them in a kind of flea market, and I had no idea how much or where this is kind of 20, 25 years ago.
00:27:54
Speaker
but they obviously weren't expensive, but they're big and heavy and they've got metal base and a metal kind of top and you squeeze the top and the water would have, the seltzer would have shut out. And they're colored glass and they've got these cool prints on them of the companies that they were from or whatever or the advertising slogans of the day or whatever they were. And I just thought they were unusual and fun and I'd never seen them before and I put them in my backpack and brought them back with me.
00:28:20
Speaker
And every now and then I would see something similar or whatever, but they were kind of always a slight outlier. And then I remember I bought, I used to go to, my soccer team is Tottenham, Tottenham Hospital, and on the way to a game once we parked up in North London and were on the way to lunch before the game, and we walked past this antique shop and there in the window was this mid-century cocktail trolley.
00:28:46
Speaker
And so I went in with my friends and walked out with this cocktail trolley and you were able to fold it up and it was just really cool. I loved it and stuck that in the boot of my car and went off to lunch. So is that like a foldable bar cart, if you will? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the bar cart. But it really kind of gained momentum just before I moved to New York and then in New York because, uh,
00:29:14
Speaker
I don't know, I guess there's something about New York that makes you want to drink cocktails. But I started, I've always liked cocktail shakers. I like the shape. I've always been really into art deco. And cocktail shakers have been around since like the early 1800s. But it was really in the start of the 20s or so in the 1920s when they really became popular and
00:29:42
Speaker
in the form that we recognize them today. The two cups together was from the Boston Shaker. They've been around for a long time. But it was really kind of the jazz age, the Roaring Twenties, when mixed drinks became much more popular, that these kind of things started to become available. And then I think stainless steel was kind of created around at this time. So that
00:30:05
Speaker
that became much easier to use. And so you started to find a lot of these kind of figurative shapes, which I just think are beautiful. You know, one of the most famous is the Penguin by Napier. So I collect a lot of barware by Napier, a company, an American company that's been around since, I don't know, when it started, 1860 or something or other, something like that. But it turned into a company called Napier
00:30:34
Speaker
20 or so. And they created this penguin cocktail shaker, which is about 12, 13, 14 inches high, designed by a guy called Emil Schulker in 1936. And it's just the coolest thing. And I absolutely love them. They're not common. I think they're only made for about five or six years, but they're fun. The thing I love about barware is that it's
00:31:02
Speaker
It's useful. It has a utility. And you can think of some of these pieces I have are 100 years old. And you think, how many people have made a drink in this cocktail show? How many people have preferred a martini with this 100-year-old Christoffel Parisian cocktail spoon that I have? I love that sense of continuing on the job that this was created for. But they're also beautiful.
00:31:29
Speaker
items in their own right and stylish and fun. I think that's super cool. I don't know how many pieces I have. I've got a lot of jiggers, which are the measuring cups of one ounce or two ounce. There was a lot of humor around this kind of time, the 20s and obviously the Great Depression in the 30s and late 30s and prohibition in the 30s.
00:31:54
Speaker
they were able to kind of add a lot of humor into some of these things so that the art of, or the act of making a drink turned into an art and turned into something to be celebrated. And you know, you get, you get things here. So I've got one here, which is, it's got, I don't know if you can hear me turning them. This is a six or an eight, an eight ounce
00:32:16
Speaker
Jigo you can pour it and it's like a music box and when you put it on the table It stops so by you pour the liquid in and then when you're pouring it into your drinks or into your cocktail shaker It plays this song that's incredible, which is from 1930 or something But you just think how fun is that? You know, it's and they have like figurative cats with the who are which are cocktail shakers and eat that cocktail jiggers and you turn them upside down and
00:32:44
Speaker
You know, they've got little bells in which you can imagine cats running around and playing with them. It's just fun. And I think there's a lot of history there. They are antiques, but they're things that you use, we use every week. And I love cocktails. I make lots of cocktails and we have people over and we use them. And, you know, these aren't something to be hidden away. They're something to be used and celebrated and for them to bring
00:33:12
Speaker
You and your guests joy, just like they did for the first person who bought them department store in 1936 or something in America. So I think they're wonderful. And the more martinis, the more joy. Well, that tends to happen.
00:33:27
Speaker
Our listeners always love to know where our collectors hunt.
Robb Report Event Highlights
00:33:30
Speaker
So, if you're willing to share, I mean, are you still antique shopping for this stuff, eBay, auctions? I know Robert Port just did an event at South by Southwest where you had a bunch of vintage barware and vintage watches and whatnot.
00:33:43
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we had a guy called Alan Bedwell from a company called Foundwell, who's a very good friend of mine. Very familiar. Yeah, we brought him along with some great, great watches and bits of barware. He's somebody that I've bought pieces from over the past five or six years.
00:34:04
Speaker
and is a great source of information. Obviously, you can find all sorts of things online. Etsy is a good place to find vintage barware, particularly some of the lower price things. You can get wonderful little jiggers, 60, 70 year old things for less than 100 bucks. You can start a little collection or you could have just something that feels unique and unusual and is a bit different than just getting something from
00:34:33
Speaker
know, restoration hardware or somewhere else. Not there's anything wrong with modern versions, but it's just got a bit more of a story about that. But yeah, I mean, the trouble with eBay is you're never 100% certain what you're buying. So you have to do a lot of your homework and try and work that out. But I found Etsy, I found the buyers on Etsy, sorry, the sellers on Etsy are more willing to have a conversation. And so I would often be texting
00:34:57
Speaker
a buyer that I'm interested in something there and you have quite an in-depth conversation. They'd send you pictures and I'd ask if like a cocktail shaker was watertight and they would go and test it and do all this kind of stuff. And so I found that that was a good spot. But then there are there are lots of places where you can buy this stuff. But then if you buy it from an antique store or a gallery, you pay a significant premium for that. And you know, that's their kind of finders fee.
00:35:26
Speaker
but then they're probably in absolutely mint and immaculate condition. But the beauty of something like barware is you can find a really old, what looks very tatty, dirty piece of steel or silver barware and you buy a polishing cloth and give it some elbow grease and 10 minutes later, you've got a beautiful shining thing that might have cost you two, three, 400 bucks more had it looked like it does now. So, you know, you can,
00:35:54
Speaker
you can get around the price tag sometimes. I can't get over that jigger that plays music. I'll send you a picture of it. Yeah, I'd love to see a video of how that works because it's just like a massive smile on my face as soon as I knew exactly what was happening. It just makes people smile. I've got things from England,
00:36:24
Speaker
America, Japan, even I've got Japanese lacquer, cocktail shaker, that stuff's incredible, grants, you know, all over and they all they're all slightly different, but they all a lot of them are up their coast. So they all have a kind of providing pervading aesthetic or theme. But they're all different. They're all cool. And but they're all fascinating. And when you show people them, people are just like, wow, how you know,
00:36:48
Speaker
How does that fit inside there? Who came up with this? How does this all come together? I'm sure you're already linked up with Paul Feig, but you got to send him also a video or a photo of that jigger because he'd freak out. I will do, yeah. So another passion of yours is watches. And while this seems like a direct extension, I'm curious to know what it is that you love so much about them and what maybe your first watch was.
Evolution of Watch Collecting
00:37:16
Speaker
So it's funny, I was never into vintage stuff as a kid. And when in my twenties, I was at Arena, we were very kind of actively almost against vintage because the big trope of menswear and men's magazines were with people like Steve McQueen and Paul Newman and Robert Redford. It was just so boring that every single
00:37:41
Speaker
magazine had the same black and white picture of Steve McQueen and you know it was that idea that you could only be cool if you if you thought somebody in the 60s was cool or the things that were from the 60s were cool just didn't feel was just deeply boring for us at the time.
00:37:57
Speaker
And, you know, not to mention Steve McQueen is a, or wasn't, alcoholic wife, Peter. I didn't think that was something really to be celebrated, but still. But it's funny, the older I've gotten, the more I come to appreciate these kind of things, the more I do find a real beauty in something with a story and provenance and an age of it. And that's, you know, what we've just been talking about with the bow. And so it is with the watches that I have now, but my first watch,
00:38:26
Speaker
was a swatch long time ago. And actually that was a very boring swatch. When you think back to the kind of 80s and the crazy colors of everything there, it was a black, had a black case, black strap, kind of a cream dial, was more or less time only. So it was not dissimilar to some of the watches I've got now. I then had a quartz tag
00:38:51
Speaker
Heuer one that I love, the kind of Formula One, the F1 watches that were really rinky dink, but I had that for a long time. That means small in English. And what did I get then? I then had an Oris, which I still got, and chronographs I used to have a lot of in my 21. I only had kind of one watch at a time in my 20s and early 30s.
00:39:15
Speaker
But as my kind of taste evolved and I discovered new things, I got much more into, I guess, ostensibly more simple-looking time-only pieces, but I love guilloche dials.
00:39:32
Speaker
dial work. I'm not a massive movement geek. I'm more interested in the aesthetic of something. Obviously, I care greatly about how it functions and that it functions, but I can't list the... I can tell you the reference of most of my watches, but I can't tell you the movement numbers and all that kind of history and who put them together and all the rest of it. But I really love
00:39:56
Speaker
a brand called Vacheron Constantin, which is the oldest watch brand in continue manufacture. And I just think some of the dial work and some of the designs that they put out in the kind of forties to the sixties were mesmerizing. And I know you're into Cartier as well. The same goes to Cartier, you know, from the twenties onwards, but particularly kind of the thirties to the kind of Cartier London period in the sixties and early seventies.
00:40:25
Speaker
some of the designs that they put out were just brilliant and elegant. And I think, as I've got older, that elegance is far more important to me than having lots of bells and whistles on the dial or lots of different chronographs and all this kind of stuff. I still have a Speedmaster, which I like very much. Kind of have it. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's the kind of platonic ideal of a
00:40:53
Speaker
of a chronograph, you know, Daytona aside, although I'm not a huge Daytona fan. But no, almost exclusively the watches I wear are dress watches from the late 40s, 50s and 60s Cartier and Vacheron. And again, they're not expensive. The quality of Vacheron watches around that period was
00:41:20
Speaker
more or less on a par with Patek, and if they were, some of these dials were with the Patek nameplate on them, they would be four or five times as expensive as they are now. But Vacheron I think is hugely undervalued at the moment, and I shouldn't keep saying this because it won't be for long. But I think you can find some magical pieces that kind of fly under the radar and people don't really notice them on your wrist until they do, and they start asking questions about it.
00:41:48
Speaker
love to look at them and the rest of it. And they're one of the three. They are one of the holy trinity for whatever that's worth, sure. There is a kind of inherent quality to a brand that's been making a single product like that for quite so long. Absolutely. But yeah, they're beautiful things.
00:42:12
Speaker
So, collecting for me, and I often say this, it's a great place to focus on something specific, to take my mind off everything else, to learn, but there's not always time for that.
Collecting as an Escape
00:42:23
Speaker
So, I'm curious how someone in your position finds the time to collect, and if you also feel like it's a place to kind of get lost for a bit. Oh, for sure. Yeah.
00:42:35
Speaker
I feel myself incredibly fortunate because I, as I said earlier on, I never wanted to be a war reporter or a hard news reporter. I've always wanted to write about stuff that I liked. So I've always been in lifestyle and I've been fortunate enough to write for publications and to be a part of publications where I felt that I was the reader.
00:42:57
Speaker
So a lot of my research is actually stuff that I enjoy doing. And whether that's reading books or magazines or going on a deep dive online or going to galleries or talking to collectors or owners or whoever it is, that stuff that I would happily do if I wasn't being paid for it anyway. So, I mean, there's obviously stuff that I have to do for work and I can't just spend my time running around trying to learn more about certain things. But I think one of the great joys of being a journalist
00:43:27
Speaker
is the ability and the permission to do a deep dive into something and go from being not really that knowledgeable about something to becoming an expert in 24, 48 hours if you've got to write a story on it or if you've got to do an interview on it.
00:43:42
Speaker
I'm a generalist. I specialize in luxury and lifestyle, but I'm not a pure car journalist. I'm certainly not a car journalist, but I'm not a watch journalist or whatever. I employ experts in all of these fields. We have 16 different categories that we cover at Robert Paul, and I've got brilliant people in all of them.
00:44:01
Speaker
But I'm a generalist. And that allows me the opportunity and gives me the ability, I think, to be interested in everything. And I can be as interested in philanthropy and jewelry as I am in the latest trends in organic wine or design trends in sustainable-fueled yachts or electric cars or the latest travel breakthrough,
00:44:30
Speaker
what's happening in Zimbabwe or Safari or something like that. I don't really care what it is. I can get incredibly excited and go deep into almost anything in that world. But the other thing is I think there's something in, it's often a male trait, although I know a great many women who also have this, but I think guys have a real, or certain types of guys have a real ability to get lost down a rabbit hole.
00:44:56
Speaker
You look up and you suddenly realize it's two in the morning and you've just been searching for something or reading about something and learning about something and taking notes about something. I forgot to have dinner tonight. It happens so often. Right. You can get excited about a watch reference you've never discovered before and then you realize that five hours have gone past and you think, wow, that was awesome.
00:45:17
Speaker
a waste of five hours, and you think, well, maybe it wasn't, maybe it's, you know, it's all useful somewhere. So yeah, I think it's definitely there's everyone has so much stuff going on. But sometimes this kind of
00:45:31
Speaker
Learning is all learning and I abide by that the adage that every day is a school day I love learning stuff and reading stuff and but you're exposed to so much right at Rob report Like you are constantly having to dive into this stuff So I'm curious to know like if you ever lose interest in any of the things that you do love because you're you're constantly having to To look at it all day. I Think there's you certainly go you you go from one to another
00:46:00
Speaker
and you have to be able to put one down and pick up something else. It's funny, I mean, I felt like about a year ago that I was kind of done with barware, not in terms of using it or anything else, but I didn't feel the urge to look for something else. I had a nice collection that I was able to display to some extent or whatever.
00:46:22
Speaker
It didn't take over the room or anything, and I certainly didn't want to be that kind of person. And I was content. It was all good. And then a year later, something happens, and you're just like, oh, actually, that's kind of interesting again. And something fires up somewhere in your brain, and you're like, oh, well, I'd like to learn a bit more about that before you know it five hours ago.
00:46:45
Speaker
I think there is things coming in and out of significance and importance. And obviously, in the scheme of things, none of this stuff is important. None of it is as important as your health and your family and your loved ones and all the rest of it. And over the last few years, I've had some other things have been far more important than whether you've got a cocktail shaker on hand or
00:47:08
Speaker
more color your watch strap is. Sometimes these are distractions as well when you're going through some stuff. They can perform different things for you at different points of your life. Paul, let's wrap it up here with the collector's sheen rundown, all right? Sure. Hit me. What's the one that got away? You know what? I feel quite content.
00:47:31
Speaker
that I'm not kind of kicking myself about anything. There's not that one thing that I wake up in the night banging my head against the wall thinking, if only I pulled the trigger quicker. You know, we talked about earlier the penguin by Napier. There was a point where I didn't have one and I really wanted one. And I remember telling somebody that there was one available and it was too expensive. I wasn't going to be able to do it. And I told them and they bought it and they were into this kind of stuff as well.
00:47:57
Speaker
And that kind of, I was like, oh wow. And I was kind of expecting them to buy it, but they bought it immediately. And I was like, that kind of crystallized actually in my head. Well, actually I do want one of those. And was able to find a very good quality one a while later and very happy with it. But I think unless you're cheating out of something, I think you can always use these things as learning experiences. And that crystallized for me that actually I felt like
00:48:27
Speaker
that was an important thing in my collection. So yeah, I don't really have one that I'm berating myself about. What a good feeling. How about the on deck circle? So what's next for you in collecting?
00:48:43
Speaker
So there are, you know, as I said, there are certain things in the kind of bar well world that I've just got back into and certainly having this event at South by Southworks, South by Southwest that we did and being around all of that kind of stuff and speaking to some collectors there and seeing some of the stuff that Alan brought has got me back into bits and bobs around that. And there's a few things that I'm after.
00:49:06
Speaker
maybe i did a couple of really beautiful cocktail pics you know that the silver sticks you put your eyes and put them on the martini glasses and i don't have any of those kind of things and they're often quite figurative some with cherries on and
00:49:23
Speaker
various other things like that and some fun things with menus that you turn and the kind of bar menu pops up and does things like that. So yeah, I think there's some fun things, but I don't think I will just kind of suddenly randomly see something and go, oh wow, that's amazing. I think I know what I want and I'll see if I can find it. How about the unobtainable? So maybe one that's too expensive or in a museum or another private collection.
00:49:51
Speaker
Yeah, unfortunately, there's lots more of these. And often they're around art. I mean, I don't have the resources to collect the art that I want. And I kind of actually I consider vintage Cartier watches really. There's a dealer here in London called Harry Fain, who has an extraordinary collection of Cartier paintings.
00:50:13
Speaker
Yeah, and I go in there and just kind of stare at them for some time to time. And he has, he laughs because the ones that I really love are the rarest and the, you know, the most unobtainable, but there are some fabulous, fabulous pieces there that I've never seen anywhere else. I've never seen any books or whatever in there. They are some serious, serious money that I won't be putting down. But yeah, so there's some there, but there's two or three contemporary artists that I really love.
00:50:42
Speaker
I guess maybe this is an answer to the one that got away. They were still expensive when I first saw them, but they've now quadrupled and in value. You think, if only I'd done that then, but actually, there were a lot of money back then, and they were high-pricedly back then, but there's a
00:51:04
Speaker
An artist called Idris Khan who uses musical scores and I, as I said, my father's very musical. I used to play the French horn for many years, bizarrely enough, and obviously DJing, whatever. So music is a big part of my life. And he overlays musical notation and then uses this extraordinary blue pigment over the top to create these
00:51:25
Speaker
fascinating works. And they're on large scale, so I just think they're brilliant. And another is a guy called Chi Tung Wu, whose pieces I've seen at fairs a number of times over the years. And I think he's going to be enormous. He's already getting a lot more acclaim. But he uses cyanotype paper, which he kind of screws up
00:51:51
Speaker
And this cyanotype paper responds to the light so he screws all this stuff up and then opens it out and then puts it in the sun and it takes on depth and color and they look like at first glance kind of mountain ranges or waves or whatever. And then you get up closer and you can see that it is paper and shape and they're just brilliant. And again, they can be huge.
00:52:14
Speaker
So they, you know, I think they have become significant. But one of my favorite authors is P.G. Woodhouse, and I have a few first edition books of his, and I would love more of those. And I like the photographer called Carl Hugo Schmaltz, who's a German post-war photographer who takes architectural photography. He's often black and white photography, a kind of post-war Germany.
00:52:40
Speaker
things like staircases and movie theaters and opera theaters and car showrooms when they're empty, all this kind of very empty structures. And there's a real haunting kind of melancholy to his works. And I have some prints of his, but I would love some original works of his. I think that would be wonderful.
00:53:04
Speaker
So yeah, there's always there's always stuff you can't you can't have but as I said You can't you have to make your peace with you can't have it all otherwise you would have no money at all, right? How about the page one rewrite? So if you could collect one thing besides, you know vintage bar wearing and watches, what would it be and why I? Think it might be arts actually. I think art is deeply powerful and is broad and you can go down your rabbit holes and
00:53:34
Speaker
find things that speak to you that again just speak to you personally and it can become an incredibly personal mission. But I also like the thought of supporting younger artists, people at the start of their careers and you know getting to know artists, gallerists, agents, these kind of things and progressing a collection along with an artist as they grow. I think something like that would be very rewarding for both you and
00:54:03
Speaker
and the artist, so that would have been nice in another life. But yeah, maybe not. How about the goat? So who do you look up to in the collecting world? So I think the people that I admire in that way are people who, again, really follow their own aesthetic, and people whose style I really admire.
00:54:30
Speaker
not necessarily style in terms of I like that, sure, but I like people who are, who have their own personal style, who are confident enough in their own look and how they want to look that they will dress a certain way, style themselves a certain way, wear things, whether it's or collect things or just be confident in an aesthetic that they have developed. So you could certainly say that of Oro Montanari and he's obviously got an extraordinary collection of
00:54:59
Speaker
of pieces, but we had him in the magazine and we shot him at his home and looked to Harry where he had his clothes and he's got this great collection of vintage clothes in kind of bookcases rather than in a traditional wardrobe and I thought that was just the coolest thing. And another person who's been on your show who's also been in the pages of
00:55:25
Speaker
Rob is Rony Madhavi, he's aesthetic in terms of watches. He's fabulous and I love his asymmetric cases and he has a similar, well, I'm not saying he has a similar taste to me, perhaps I have a similar taste to some of him. But somebody else is Mark Cho, who I don't think has been on your program. Mark is the
00:55:51
Speaker
co-founder of the Armory in New York and Hong Kong. He was a prodigious watch collector, but he has exquisite taste. He's a great, great guy, very intelligent, smart, entertaining, generous guy. And again, he's someone who is not
00:56:12
Speaker
really concerned about what's on Vogue or in fashion and just, you know, he's been at the front of the small watch movement, perhaps, if you want to call it that, but has always championed 31, 32, 33 mil watches and, you know, has been a significant influence on me in terms of me being prepared to look at those kind of sizes, although my watches tend to be between 33 and 37, I guess.
00:56:41
Speaker
But, you know, when you are used to wearing the Speedmaster 42 and watches around that size to appreciate smaller watches and how they look on the wrist and the general aesthetic, you know, that can be transformative. So I think, you know, I think a lot of people have learned from Marc in terms of style and watches and whatever else. So those three are pretty good names. Love it. Do you enjoy the hunt or the ownership more? The hunt is always fun.
00:57:10
Speaker
The ownership I think should always be better, but sometimes I've been a bit disappointed, particularly when you're buying kind of sight unseen in the last five years, you haven't always been able to travel to places and so maybe you bought something online and you get it and you're just a bit like.
00:57:24
Speaker
Oh, okay. Quite what I thought, or maybe it's a bit smaller, a bit bigger, or it's got a dent in it, or it's got, you know, whatever. I remember buying some Scandinavian mid-century candlestick, which is random, but they were just beautiful. I was so excited by them, and I got them, and they were just smashed to smithereens, and, you know, whoever sold them to me was an idiot, and just not patterned very well. And I was devastated about that. But, but no, I,
00:57:52
Speaker
There's something magical when the two collide. I think when you've been looking for something, you find something, you find the right quality of example of it, you agree on it, agree the price, you get it either you've been there and you see it in the flash or...
00:58:06
Speaker
it arrives and you're able to, you know, the relief when you've realised that it is good and particularly with watches when you get it authenticated perhaps because sometimes you can't always be sure that the case numbers are going to match or that the movement numbers will match with the archives or the records or whatever. So, you know, I've been lucky enough to take a few of my watches to Vacheron and they've authenticated them for me and, you know, that's obviously a great relief.
00:58:30
Speaker
But I think with all of these things, as I've said, it's the using of them that I love. So whether it's the watch that's on your wrist or what's pouring into your cocktail glass or whatever it might be, the art that's on the wall, I love being surrounded by things that I love. And that's the thing for me. So I guess the ownership rather than the hunt.
00:58:55
Speaker
Yeah, that's great because as long as you're using the bar where the ownership should always be better. Yeah, exactly. Paul, most importantly, do you feel that you were born with the collector's gene?
Reflection on Collector's Gene
00:59:08
Speaker
I don't know whether I was born with it. I think I've developed it, certainly.
00:59:16
Speaker
I think, as I said, seeing my dad pick up various bits and bobs influenced me, but over the years, I've definitely become in my own small way something of a collector, so yeah, I'm afraid so. Love it. Paul, thank you so much for coming on. Truly honored and grateful to have you here on Collector's Dream Radio.
00:59:38
Speaker
It's a pleasure. Thanks very much for having me. It's been great fun. All right. Now I need to go put some magazines in a suitcase and see how crazy I was. Go ahead. Cheers. Take care. Take care. All right. That does it for this episode. Thank you all for listening to Collector's Gene Radio.