Tee Faircloth took a year off from his finance job after 9/11 to hole up in Scotland and fish the North Sea. In between casts, he found a girlfriend who asked not for diamonds or shoes, but a zebra skin rug.  As all good boyfriends would do, "I went to Africa to get a rug," he said. On that hunt in the name of love, Faircloth fell in love with Africa.

Faircloth's Africa is the Africa of Karen Blixen and Hemingway and Land Rover Defenders. "Italy has Gucci.  France has Chanel.  China even has Shanghai Tang. But there wasn't a brand that captured the Africa I found wonderful: the amazing animals, the beauty unlike any place on earth," he said. There also wasn't a brand out there making hot-weather clothes that fit this aesthetic.

Tee Faircloth with Ant Barber

So, on his next trip to the continent, he went hunting for a brand that would embody what he loved about this land.  He discovered F.M. Allen, the defunct safari company founded in the '40s by gentleman hunter Frank Murray "Bunny" Allen.  He bought it from the family and imbued it with a history of steamer trunks, Roorkee chairs, field boots, silver flasks and $17,000 tents -- and gave it a future filled with decidedly modern textile technology.

He'd helped restructure Burlington Industries in the mid '90s, so he understood high-tech fabrics. Cold weather adventurers had North Face and Patagonia and countless others dedicated to their cause, but no one was paying attention to the heat.

Faircloth was.  He's designed F.M. Allen's bush jackets to hang like the pocketed khaki classics, but the fabric blocks the Serengeti sun (SPF 50), wicks away the sweat, dries in a flash (six times faster than cotton) and keeps away the stink (antimicrobial).

The clothes may be high tech, but the rest of the company's wares are straight out of Happy Valley. The company not only will dress you for safari, they'll plan your whole adventure -- or help you decorate your home as if you'd gone on one or nine.  The Madison Ave. shop is filled with colonial relics (the kind Ralph Lauren seems to enjoy) and 1920s stage lights, luggage and authentic and reproduction campaign furniture.

Growing up in Macon, Georgia, young Faircloth was no stranger to antiques.  His mom dragged him all over the South on vintage-buying trips.  Unexcited by the prospect, he made her a bargain: for every three antique stores, he got to pop into one specializing in sports.  But he picked up a thing or two about those old things along the way.  "I actually started liking antiques," he said. "I learned to ID fakes and repairs. I spent a lot of time crawling under desks."

These days he and his team travel Europe, the U.S. and "the continent" in search of these finds and he travels to all corners of Africa and the world for adventures. In Africa, his favorite destinations include the Grumeti Reserves in Tanzania, Serra Cafema Camp in Namibia and the Okavango Delta in Botswana, Africa's largest wetland.

When he goes he travels light: Two shirts, jeans a couple pairs of shorts and his sweat-wicking, sun-blocking bush jacket -- a decidedly necessary accessory if traveling par deux in Africa, hoping to hold on to your love. --HOLLISTER HOVEY

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