A Spirited Vindication of the Rights of Medallion Man, by Nick Foulkes

I believe in the power of words – but then, as I make my living from stringing them together, I am unlikely to say otherwise. However, there are times when a picture can be just as eloquent, and one particular image I cherish for its expressiveness is a picture of a sunglassed Alfonso von Hohenlohe at the helm of a powerboat.

Alfonso, or – to give him his full name (at least, according to Wikipedia) – Prince Alfonso Maximiliano Victorio Eugenio Alexandro Maria Pablo de la Santisima Trinidad y todos los Santos zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg, founded the Marbella Club.  In my personal pantheon – indeed, in the FQR pantheon – of magical, mythical, legendary places the Marbella Club is right up there with the Garden of Eden, only with better chocolate mousse and no snakes hanging around apple trees to spoil things. And if there is one image that captures the magic of the Marbella Club, it is this slightly grainy picture of its founder waving from a boat that might be a Chris-Craft but is probably a Riva; above him a cloudless Andalusian sky, a backdrop of umbrella pines rolling down to the water’s edge, punctuated by the thatched conical roof of the beach club. How wonderful it must have been to be him, at that time, in that place.

It looks like Saturday afternoon some time in the late Sixties, but powerful though the imagery is, it is a detail at its heart that continues to fascinate me. It is not his sunglasses – I leave analysis of the princely eyewear to my colleague Mr Tom Stubbs – rather, it is his chest that attracts my attention. Open to just above his navel, Alfonso’s shirt reveals a fine ribcage and, winking at one from his sternum, a tiny gold medallion. If there were ever, to borrow from Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, a Vindication of the Rights of Medallion Man, then this is it.

For me the medallion speaks of the good times of the early jet set; the time after the introduction of passenger jets such as the 707, but before the hijacking epidemic of the early Seventies – a time when international travel was as much about the glamour of the journey as the destination. Of course, everything was simpler then, not so nuanced. There were only a few places to go on holiday and many of them tended to be run by princes, whether Rainier in Monaco, Alfonso in Marbella or the Aga Khan on the Costa Smeralda. It was the world eulogised by Harold Robbins in his thumping, brick-sized romans à clef that anatomised the foibles and peccadillos of what, with charming naïveté, we called the “in crowd”. This was a time when celebrities were not manufactured by reality TV shows, but when the complex alchemy of talent, timing and the elusive quality of charisma created something really rather wonderful.

I know this is an impossibly subjective analysis of what might, mistakenly in my opinion, be viewed as a bit of precious metal on a fine gold chain, but I cannot get it out of my head that, back then in that carefree time when not every hotel had to be a seven-star luxury spa resort and when even quite famous people managed without security guards, medallion men really knew how to have a better time than everyone else. Naturally, it all went wrong, as it always does, with the medallion descending into disco pastiche, the farcical garlanding of Mr T’s neck in The A-Team and, of course, the recent efflorescence of the bling phenomenon.

But bling has little to do with the medallion as I understand it. The medallion is about elegance, whereas bling is about ostentation; the medallion is worn for personal pleasure, while bling is about an outward demonstration of power. The medallion man is confident about who he is, while the bling merchant needs to bolster his self-worth with an array of Christmas-tree decorations, establishing what I imagine Thorstein Veblen would have called his pecuniary reputability.

I am happy to say that Charles Finch is a medallion man, as is our esteemed advertising director, Jonathan Sanders. I would like to count myself a medallion man but, to be honest, I wear too much jewellery to qualify. Nevertheless, I can lay down what I see as the rules of the medallion and while you lie on the beach or the boat this summer you might just care to peer through your Persols at the stuff that bounces and jangles against the ribcages of other men.

Let’s start with the chain. The metal is, of course gold, preferably yellow, as it goes best with a tan. It should be fine – not so fine that it looks cheap, but certainly not too heavy. As a rule of thumb, links greater than 5 millimetres in diameter should be avoided: about 3.25mm is optimum.

Next there is length. Crucially, the medallion should only become visible after the third button is unfastened, not before. With the top and second button undone it is permissible to glimpse the chain en passant, but if the medallion itself can be seen you need a longer chain. The exact ratio of chain to shirt-button configuration is a matter of involved personal discussion with your shirtmaker, preferably someone like Anne-Marie Colban of Charvet on the Place Vendôme who has an architect’s eye for proportion. However, an excessively long chain will bring with it unwelcome overtones of the manbag – when it goes below the sternum to the diaphragm it is too long. I suggest, and it is only a suggestion, a chain of 61.45cm, but you may want to adjust it a centimetre or two either way. If in doubt, use the Golden Section; this ratio has been employed by everyone from Da Vinci to Palladio, and a simple calculation will help you ascertain the right distance between the belt and the collar.

As to the number of chains, trust me: one is enough. I did once flirt with three chains and it was a disaster; my family winced when, clanging like a peal of church bells, I would heave myself into the pool and then sink beneath the weight of ironmongery around my neck.

However, the chain is the easy part compared to the minefield of the medallion. De gustibus non est disputandum… except when it is wrong. As in life, the best advice – even though I adhere to it only infrequently – is to keep it simple. Ideally, at least to start off with, one should wear a single medallion, which should have some personal significance, and it should never exceed 3.5cm in diameter.

However, I wear a minimum of four medallions – all the better to express my range of interests. Reading my medallions right to left, they are a 35-year-old Van Cleef & Arpels Sagittarius pendant (star signs were huge in the Sixties and Seventies), something from Cartier (my wife used to work there), a bit of coral from Capri (a little carpe diem memento to remind me of the odd consoling moments that can be snatched from life) and then, most importantly, an old Roman coin. Medallion man is fundamentally a philosophical type, so something old is usually a good idea as it reminds us of our place in the cosmos – in the case of my coin it was here before me and will be there after I am gone. Or to borrow from the wisdom of my friend, FQR contributor and noted medallion man Tim Jefferies, “You’re a long time dead.”

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