I first came across Jago Rackham when I stumbled across a piece of his writing extolling, in fantastic minutiae, the joys of the martini. It was the kind of exhilarating writing about epicureanism that makes you want to immediately pull a bottle each of gin and vermouth out of the cupboard and put a glass in the freezer to cool and make yourself something to drink.

I paid twenty bucks for my first houndstooth jacket. It was 1990. I had moved to New York City the year before with only one suitcase, after being forced to take the train from Chicago when my car broke down by the side of the road in Indiana, and now, in the Fall of ’90, I found myself in need of a coat in order to attend the anniversary party of SPY, the magazine I was working at as a writer.