Dundas London and Harry Jarman, Editor-In-Chief of the Gentleman’s Journal, talk magazines, racing and effortless style

Harry Jarman founded the Gentleman’s Journal in 2012 with the aim of creating an omni channel platform for male consumers. Today the Gentleman’s Journal is fast becoming a leading resource for men’s luxury lifestyle. It provides a plethora of educational and witty advice for gentleman; from style and culture to food and travel, not forgetting intriguing interviews with popular public figures. Dundas London had breakfast with Harry to chat all things men’s lifestyle.

With the Gentleman’s Journal going from strength to strength as a print magazine, Harry tells us he wants to develop it into something more than a magazine, into something that people are going to associate it with. With this in mind, he is launching a Gentleman’s Club as part of the magazine subscription, offering a lifestyle service to all members. As a trial run this year they hosted a Gentleman’s Journal bar at Newmarket racecourse during the QIPCO Guineas Festival and invited all their members. He is now rolling this out at racecourses around the country.

“We are trying to make it into an all-encompassing thing that people want to be part of. We are going to make our events really stand out, less is more. Creating big events and making them spectacular. Our print magazine is our shop window, a looking-glass for the world we’re creating within it.”

A subject close to our hearts is effortless style, Harry has an eye for it and is proficient in his knowledge that men’s fashion is changing and men are now more stylish than ever before. Stylish not in a fashion sense, more about what people wear and how they wear it. Being cool and dapper, not catwalk. Casual is becoming smarter, as we’ve seen with the emergence of ultra expensive trainers and the current trend of wearing them with a suit. Everyone has their own style, everything has to be wearable.

“As an industry men’s fashion is growing faster than women’s. Men are spending more money than ever before. Style is not about fashion, it’s about how you wear it. Gianni Agnelli who owned Fiat Ferrari is in my mind the most stylish man in the world. 80% of everything that came out of Italy was owned by him, he was known as the Emperor of Italy. He would do little things such as wear his watch over his cuff purely to save time. He also had the classic car lifestyle to go with it. That’s style.”

At heart Harry is an entrepreneur. He has carved out a successful niche in a gentleman’s world by being creative and not afraid of taking risks. However, he is the first to admit it wasn’t all smooth sailing. Fresh out of university he set up a clothing brand, which didn’t work out as planned and he had to move home, undeterred he went back to the drawing board and started again.

“You have to laugh at failure sometimes. Admitting an element of failure is instrumental in business. I still take risks that could fail, but I suppose they are more calculated risks now.”