Finale: Everything we’ve learned in three years of HandCut Radio

HandCut Radio

In this final episode of HandCut Radio, host Alex Svetkovic is interviewed by Paul Croughton of Robb Report to reflect on his three-year jou

Key takeaways

• Alex transitioned from a strict 'fashion is the enemy' mindset to accepting that fashion and style can coexist.
• The definition of a 'gentleman' should be rooted in internal values and behavior rather than expensive clothing or possessions.

Main topics

• Evolution of personal style
• Fashion vs. Style

Notable quotes

You're not a gentleman because you wear a suit and tie. You're a gentleman because you behave in a certain way.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a poignant reflection on how both individuals an

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:17) Hello lovely people and welcome to what is the last ever episode of Handcut Radio. Yes, after three years and more than 50 episodes, we're hanging up our microphones to pursue projects anew. But before we go, we wanted to respond to one frequent request that's come up while we've made this podcast. A surprising number of you have been in touch to ask whether someone could possibly interview me and now they have. For this special sign-off episode, we asked Paul Croughton, Editor-in-Chief of The Rob Report, to quiz me on what we've learned in speaking with so many fascinating and successful people. A huge thank you to Paul from the whole team here for taking some time out to record this finale episode. We very much hope you enjoy. Speaker 1 (1:09) So, Alex. Hello. How are you? I'm all right. I'm feeling marginally uncomfortable. So this Speaker 2 (1:15) is a new Speaker 1 (1:15) experience for you. It is. It is. It's exciting, though. Thank you for doing this, I should say, first of all. Speaker 2 (1:21) Great pleasure. So today we've flipped the script and turned the tables and other boring metaphors. And you very kindly asked me to ask you a few questions. Speaker 1 (1:33) Yes. Speaker 2 (1:34) So that's what I shall try and do over the next... next little while um and we both put out a request for questions on our instagram and we got got a few and fortunately quite a few of those were very similar to my line of travel a few weren't um i think we'll leave the one about underpants alone but um let's let's tick in and let's see where we get to exciting um because i'm i'm intrigued about where over the course of the last six series Your opinions might have changed or evolved or radically altered from where you began. And I'm also obviously curious what you've learned Speaker 1 (2:19) over the last three Speaker 2 (2:21) years, I think it is, since you've been doing this. Speaker 1 (2:23) Yeah, I think it's four. I might be wrong. I know it is three. I keep doing that with my own. I keep thinking I've been freelancing for four years. It's actually only been three. 2019, I believe the first one was. You're right, you're right. Speaker 1 (2:38) The joy of this project is I have learned so much from every, almost every conversation you pick something up and it informs your kind of world view on style. I've learned a huge amount. Speaker 1 (2:54) And I think it's made me much more open and much more kind of mature in how I think about these things just generally. I think something that comes up every now and then on the podcast is when I started this with James, I don't know how old I was, but I was significantly younger. I had just gone freelance, so I didn't have a clue what I was doing. And I was so sort of set on, I only do style. I don't do fashion. Fashion is the enemy. You know, if it's not well made, there's no place for it. Quality, quality, quality. We almost wear ties all the time. I was still, I think, really in peak hashtag menswear Alex mode. And actually having conversations with a lot of influential individuals who are much further down the path of kind of self-development and self-discovery in terms of clothes has really... allowed me to see that there is a place for both fashion and style, that you don't have to play by the rules. In fact, you know, I went into the podcast thinking the rules are gospel. And I've come out of the podcast thinking I couldn't give a monkey's about any rules whatsoever. And I don't think any kind of rule should apply. So I've done a complete 180 there. Speaker 2 (4:11) That's interesting. Well, let's so let's start off with some of the good things. I mean, the changing of your opinions around the rules. Some people will think that's wonderful. I'm sure there'll be some people listening to this and saying, you cannot deny the rules. The rules are important. So talk to me about some of the good things Speaker 1 (4:29) that you've gained from the last three years. It is an understanding that there's a place for both fashion and style and understanding that there's nothing less cool than trying to be cool. That was quite an important lesson. Speaker 1 (4:47) And actually, we've spoken about this before, but actually I remember feeling, I only really feel that I've figured out that in the last maybe 18 months or so. And actually, probably for the majority of the podcast's lifetime, I've still had a part of my brain that's trying, quote unquote, trying to be cool or trying to align myself with a certain... a way of approaching clothes or trying to understand different parts of menswear that actually probably I'm not, if I'm being completely honest with myself, totally interested in. Like, I've accepted I'm not a workwear guy. For the last couple of years, I've played around with workwear, but I'm not a workwear guy. I'm a tweed jacket and jeans guy, and I think I always will be. I think that's where I've landed. But Speaker 2 (5:29) that's okay to play around and discover that, though. That's not a... negative is it no Speaker 1 (5:33) it's not a negative but but it's almost like in producing the podcast i've given myself permission to figure out who i am does that make sense absolutely and i hope it's Speaker 2 (5:41) a Speaker 1 (5:41) process that a lot of listeners have gone through or are going through as well because the vast majority of our guests if you think about guys like goatee abel sorello or ethan newton they figured out who they were a long time ago and they've just got comfortable with it and then into it um And some, you know, for example, you know, I think when Ethan wears Western wear, it's completely authentic to him. But I've tried a bit of Western wear, tried it, didn't really feel like me as an Englishman and as quite a tweedy Englishman. And then sort of came back out of it and went, all right, I can dip into that every now and then. So learning to dip in and out of things is a real positive and understanding that you can dip in and out of things. Another big learning that I think has been super important is the value of context. And I think we might come on to this at some point as well. But... The Alex of three and a bit years ago, well, maybe not of three and a bit years ago, but really over the last five years since I left the Rake magazine and I left a comfort zone of sort of suit and tie wearing, I've been slowly learning that while clothes are there for you to feel totally comfortable and to express yourself, I personally think now... You can only be truly comfortable if you also have some kind of understanding of the context that you're moving through. So if we talk about 23-year-old Alex, he was dressing like Al Capone. And there were some contexts where that was kind of acceptable. But the vast majority of contexts, you stick out like a sore thumb. And on some level, I think you know you stick out like a sore thumb. I certainly did. Speaker 1 (7:24) I've learned over the years that actually to be truly comfortable with your sense of style, you should keep one eye on what the room's doing. And actually I had a catch up with Andre Lanyo last week and he said something that was brilliant. He said something like, the best way to dress for me is to have a little bit of uniqueness while also fitting in. And that's much more where I hope my sense of style has gone, actually, and that I'm a much more comfortable figure within my peers. And when I'm presented to other journalists at a dinner or a press day or something, I don't want to stick out. I don't want to be seen as the weird freelancer over there. So that's been another positive for me. That's Speaker 2 (8:09) interesting because I've realised I've known you for six years or so. Yeah. And when I met you, you were certainly in what you call your full... Speaker 2 (8:21) regalia but I think you need to give yourself a wee bit of a break in that you were without sounding condescending you were in your early 20s and I think it takes all of us to varying degrees a good chunk of time to figure out what you've figured out pretty quickly actually so and I get the sense that you're where you are now with how you dress and how you feel about how you dress you're probably pretty comfortable and pretty stable and you may stay that way for 20 years you may not but I think that's you've probably got there quicker than an awful lot of them other people maybe Speaker 1 (8:58) but again I wouldn't have got there if it hadn't been for the podcast no way I probably would still be searching for some direction as opposed to settling into where I've got to and actually sort of realizing someone said in fact it was Lee Lee Reckert of Taylor said to me a couple of weeks ago well tweed jackets are just your thing aren't they and I hadn't actually realized they're my thing but I think they have sort of accidentally become my thing. But it actually took, even just, you know, all these years later, it took Lee, it just took a friend saying that for me to actually realise, oh yeah, actually maybe tweed jackets are just my thing and I'm okay with that. Speaker 2 (9:34) There's that nice thing about judge someone not by what they say, but by what they do. Speaker 1 (9:40) And you keep commissioning tweed jackets, my friend. So Speaker 2 (9:43) tweed jackets are indeed your thing. So it would seem. Okay, well, that's interesting. And in looking and doing a bit of research for this conversation, I listened to a few of the podcasts and you mentioned Mr. Bolsarello. And I noted one line that he said, which I thought was rather nice, which was that, and I'm slightly paraphrasing, but he said, people look for style their whole lives. And when they stop looking for it. Speaker 1 (10:10) They find it, but what they find is elegance. God, isn't that brilliant? Isn't that clever? That's so great. Speaker 2 (10:16) And I think that struck me quite a lot because I think it's quite common for people to look for something, whether it's a look or whether it's something that defines them. Speaker 2 (10:31) And people get to a different point or they get to the point where they don't care so much at very different points in their Speaker 1 (10:37) lives. Speaker 2 (10:38) And Speaker 1 (10:38) perhaps that's what you're saying. Yeah, maybe. Maybe I am approaching that point. I'm certainly second guessing myself a lot less, which I think is healthy. And I have just, literally in the last like three weeks, I've reached a place where I have gone. I need to stop trying to be into things that I'm not really into. It's funny how we're recording this at a time when all these cogs are wearing in my brain. Maybe it's because the podcast is wrapping up now. Maybe that's a part of why I'm sort of reprocessing a lot of this stuff. But just in the last three weeks, I've kind of gone, do you know what? I'm into this, this and this. And actually, that's okay. And that's my own personal definition of cool. And that's all I need. I don't need to conform to some external idea of cool that, you know... I don't know what would give me a good example, but, you know, that we all have to wear, I don't know, fatigues for the next three months or three years because fatigues have just become a big thing. You know, I'm just learning actually to just tread my own path a bit more. But that line from Gauthier is incredible. I need to go back and listen to that on the basis of that line. Speaker 2 (11:41) I just thought as we were talking of something that you said to me a number of years ago, which we were talking about pity and the faff of... getting dressed every morning for pity or for Milan fashion shows or whatever. And you said that you had made a note of every outfit you had worn of the last like four years and you had it in your notes. And so that you always had this backup. And I remember at the time thinking, I can't tell whether that's genius or bonkers. I'm not able to do that. And I'm not, I'm, you know, I don't put my. close together with the elan that you do but at the same time i still don't know if that's genius or bonkers do Speaker 1 (12:22) you still do that well that that's triggered a really interesting thought for me which is that i still haven't so i until maybe 18 months ago really pandemic times i every monday to friday i have monday to friday i have this week's outfits as a note in my phone and it has monday tuesday wednesday thursday friday i don't do the weekends and it will have i'm going to see so-and-so here, or I'm going for lunch here, so I'm going to wear this. And I used to plan the whole week, and I would do the same thing for fashion shows or fashion weeks, and I'd know what I was wearing on a given day. I don't do that anymore. And actually, that note, there may be, for example, if I've got a new business pitch for James, that day I'll make a note and I'll say, right, I need to hit this tonally. this is the context I'm going to be in. I'm going to be pitching a smart brand. I need to wear a suit and a crew neck or a suit and a roll neck. And I'll make a note and I'll decide what I'm going to wear in advance so that I don't stress on the day. But actually, I don't do that anymore. And maybe... Speaker 1 (13:24) That suggests to your earlier point that actually I am getting more comfortable, that I don't need to embark on this ritual of dressing up or sort of dressing in a performative way Monday through to Friday. That's really interesting. I feel like I'm being psychoanalyzed as we do this, but that is really interesting. Speaker 2 (13:50) I just remember talking about that. My mother used to keep a note of all the recipes that she cooked for dinner parties so that she wouldn't cook the same thing for the same people when they came. Speaker 1 (14:02) That's great. Speaker 2 (14:03) And then she also, I think, made a note of what she wore. So she wouldn't, you know, the next time six months later, when something turns up, she wouldn't wear the red dress and serve apple pie. Did you ever use your list like that? Did you ever think, right, I'm going to see Edward Sexton? I need to make sure I don't wear the same suit for the last two times. No, but the Speaker 1 (14:22) way I would use it would be, okay, I've got a meeting with Turnbull and Asser today, or on Wednesday, I must wear a Turnbull and Asser shirt. Or if I'm going to see Edward, I better not turn up wearing someone else's gear. So I sort of would do the reverse of that. So Speaker 2 (14:36) we've done the good, and we've kind of scuttled around some of the bad while we do it, but let's focus on the more negative things about the men's style community that you might have observed in the last three years. Where does that... thought taking oh Speaker 1 (14:49) really interesting I mean the performative nature of getting dressed I think is problematic and I have to this point, I've really realised that it's not it's not getting dressed should not be performative. And I've said at various points in over the podcast, the clothes are just for the man who wears the clothes. And actually, as we really wrap this project up, I'm not sure I entirely believe that anymore. But we'll put a pin in that for a minute, because when my brain was going was. The thing that's doing my head in at the moment, and it really did my head in, and I think a lot of other people's heads in, all the way through lockdowns, because it was so obvious, was this idea