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G SEPTEMBER 2021

THE WEEKND

I R S T- E V F R

I N T RODUC I NG

BAL ISSU

A CELEBRATION OF THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE OF MUSIC

S TA R R I NG

I NC LU DI NG

P LUS

A rare audience with Giorgio Armani Who is Bellingcat and why should Putin fear him? The origin story of Tony Soprano

BR I T ISH E DI T ION

THE VOICES OF THE FUTURE

21 emerging artists from around the world, chosen by each of our 21 editions

dior.com – 020 7172 0172

Elegance is an attitude Simon Baker

The Longines Master Collection

80 Politics

Editor’s letter

As the culture war rages on, dogged absolutism ensures armies of hypocrites line up on both fronts.

Details How Nettie Wakefield’s art is drawing in collectors; the return of Hublot x Berluti; out goes the short short, in comes the men’s skirt; the Style Shrink on how to avoid trans-seasonal no-man’s land.

GQ Preview This month’s events, products and garms.

89 Taste Rising star Lorna McNee puts Glasgow dining on the map; B&B and a whole lot more at The Forest Side; put down roots at Kimpton’s La Chambre Vert.

Style Designer Romeo Hunte gives fashion master and mentor Tommy Hilfiger a streetwear spin.

54 Tony Parsons Anarchic, vicious and rotten: the Sex Pistols’ short life and long legacy, retold. 61

Grooming From no-nick shavers to high-tech lasers, here are six self-care hero products to revolutionise your daily routine. 64

GQ Food & Drink Awards 2021

Cars Aston Martin’s debut SUV, the DBX, is put through its paces on Scotland’s NC500; Rimac, the Croatian auto start-up, takes EV power to lightning-fast new levels.

Zoom? No thanks! Join our annual celebration as we get back out there and raise a glass to our winners.

Watches

Swapping a perpetual calendar for a quartz? You’re not alone... GQ’s Luxury Editor spotlights the revival of the iconic Cartier Tank.

SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ.CO .UK 27

Jacket by Gucci. gucci.com. Turtleneck by Ralph Lauren, £690. ralphlauren.co.uk. Vintage jeans by Levi’s. At Stock Vintage. @stockvintagenyc. Sunglasses by Jacques Marie Mage, £595. jacquesmariemage.com. Vintage necklace, £17,012. At FD Gallery. fd-gallery.com

100

Having shed his dark, bandage-and-blazer-adorned After Hours alter-ego, The Weeknd now seeks to raise the roof with his best album to date. Story by

Mark Anthony Green Photographs by Daniel Jackson Styling by George Cortina SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ.CO .UK 29

Features and fashion 136

Bellingcat How Eliot Higgins’ hobby-turned-open-source investigation hub unmasked Russian assassins and revealed war crimes in Syria. By Oliver Bullough

142

Giorgio Armani Ahead of a show marking Emporio Armani’s 40th year, fashion’s Italian master of elegance talks timeless tailoring, rispetto and legacy. By Alexander Fury

150

The Many Saints Of Newark

As The Sopranos returns in a feature film prequel, GQ meets the cast and creators tasked with the setup for TV’s greatest ever ending. By Thomas Barrie

118

156

Q: How to celebrate GQ’s inaugural global issue? A: With a celebration of the universal language. Music. From Griff in the UK to South Africa’s Focalistic, via Japan, Mexico, the US and our 16 other international bureaus, ready your radar for 21 artists set to stream supreme.

160

Alessandro Nivola Playing the role of Tony Soprano’s previously unseen mentor, Dickie Moltisanti, The Many Saints Of Newark’s leading man steps up.

Voices of the future: a global music special

By Thomas Barrie

The GQ AW21 collections Behold the hot new-season threads modelled by six British actors with lit IMDBs to match. Photographs by Danny Kasirye

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160

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SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ.C O.UK 31

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Paul Solomons MANAGING EDITOR George Chesterton

CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER Jonathan Heaf

FASHION DIRECTOR Luke Day

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The New Maserati Levante Hybrid. Performance Charged

Fuel economy and CO2 results for the Maserati Levante Hybrid range in mpg (l/100km) combined: 26.4 (10.7) to 28.8 (9.8). CO2 emissions: 243 - 223 g/km. Figures shown are for comparability purposes; only compare fuel consumption and CO2 figures with other cars tested to the same technical procedures. These figures may not reflect real life driving results, which will depend upon a number of factors including the accessories fitted (post-registration), variations in weather, driving styles and vehicle load.

A NOTE ABOUT THIS ISSUE

Welcome to the worldwide era of GQ

Photograph Daniel Jackson Styling George Cortina

his issue marks a new beginning for the global GQ brand. You may not know that there are 21 unique editions of GQ around the world. The original was established in the US in 1957. Some three decades later, the spawning commenced, first with British GQ in 1988, continuing through a period of rapid expansion in the 2000s (including GQ Japan, GQ France, GQ China and more) and leading up to the 2018 launch of our newest title, GQ Middle East. The only thing that was strange about this ever growing network of GQ editions is that we didn’t really speak to one another. And we certainly didn’t collaborate. Which – in an increasingly globalised world – was a little like having access to an incredible superpower and choosing not to use it. Well, that changes for good with this issue. Like that scene in Spider-Man in which Tobey Maguire figures out how to fire cobwebs from his wrists, GQ has entered the phase of its hero’s journey where it is testing out its superpowers and seeing what they can do. To me, the coolest aspect of GQ’s superpower is that it only activates when we all work together. For this issue, my international colleagues and I chose to unite at the intersection of two universal languages: music and fashion. So 17 of our international editions simultaneously published a cover featuring the most mysterious and compelling artist in global pop, The Weeknd. And all 21 of us co-produced and co-published a portfolio called “Voices Of The Future”, which spotlights 21 emerging musicians, each of whom was nominated, photographed and profiled by one of our editions. So what does this newly unified approach mean for you and our 64 million other monthly readers around the world? Well, it means that across our digital platforms, and with each new print issue,

Jacket, £1,595. Turtleneck, £690. Trousers, £495. All by Ralph Lauren. ralphlauren. co.uk. Sunglasses by Jacques Marie Mage, £595. jacquesmariemage.com. Ring (on ring finger) by The Great Frog, £340. thegreatfroglondon.com. Ring (on little finger) by Sarah-Jane Wilde, £7,133. sarahjanewilde.com. Hat by Janessa Leone, £192. janessaleone.com.

you will see not just your country through the GQ lens but the whole globe. Which could mean an international megastar on the cover – or a hyperlocal story that originates in Paris, Milan, Taipei, Cape Town, Seoul or Mexico City. In an era that will continue to be defined by the glorious borderlessness of the internet, this shift represents a great leap forward for GQ. Especially because our fashionmusic-and-art-obsessed audience comprises a continent-crossing network of young people who share a world view and are all connected via social media. And anyway, the GQ reader has always been broad-minded and voracious. We don’t want to hunker down at home – we want to get out and experience the world

in all its sublime, complex fullness. We want provocative ideas from diverse perspectives, bold new fashion that eschews tired rules and vivid reporting that challenges our assumptions and pries open our minds. For years now, our 21 international editions have proved that the stylish and cutting-edge spirit of GQ is ﬂourishing across borders, time zones and languages. I like to think of GQ as a campfire around which like-minded people from across the planet gather. With this issue, we strike the match.

Will Welch

Global Editorial Director, GQ SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ. CO.UK 39

EDITORÕS LETTER

Long live this community

ho or what makes up your personal community? What does that word, “community”, even mean to you? I’ll be honest, I hadn’t given it much thought until a few months ago. Until we began curating this first global issue of GQ – the British edition of which you’re holding between your perfectly shiny, shellac-dipped nails – the word community, for me, conjured up images of warm, slippery plastic cups of home brew at local fêtes, tart damson jam and bad bunting. Digitally speaking, the word “community” feels like a bit of a swizz too, a word used by marketing managers to pigeonhole a too-easily definable group of people (who probably don’t exist) a brand can sell against or suck data out of. The truth is, overall, that word, community, is caught somewhere between a Morris dancing convention in North Wales and an energy drink brand meeting about assigning TikTok influencers, and nothing that felt locked in reality – well, not mine at least, and nor, potentially, yours. But that was then and this is now. So what should GQ’s global community feel like and what does it have to do with redefining masculinity? British men have long been poked at and recategorised by the national media – including, hands up, by this very magazine. First, in swaggered The Lad, wearing a sky-blue bucket hat, a pair of Reebok Instapump Furys and backed by a soundtrack of REM’s “What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?” Next came New Lad – basically a Lad who had weaponsied selfdeprecation, or “bants” – and then, thanks mainly to David Beckham’s love of a good facial, came the idea of the Metrosexual. The Metrosexual was, apparently, a city-dwelling man who liked fake tan and tailored shirts with big French cuffs, preferably together. But men, and GQ, have had enough of such cartoonish definitions. I’ve worked as a journalist through all these iterations and eras and, although it’s always somewhat fun to assign, hold up and then ultimately pick apart such style tribes, I couldn’t say I’ve

This new era of GQ is all about erasing the old traits, the labels and ‘the rules’

40 GQ.CO.UK SEPTEMBER 2021

On the cover: Jacket, £2,910. Shirt, £455. Tie, £165. Trousers, £795. All by Louis Vuitton. louisvuitton.com. Boots by Celine Homme By Hedi Slimane. celine.com. Sunglasses by Jacques Marie Mage, £595. jacquesmariemage.com Photographed by Daniel Jackson Styled by George Cortina Follow us

@britishgq

met any man who fell into any of these categories snugly. Masculinity, in the real world, doesn’t work like that, especially in this day and age. That, in a way, is precisely what this new era of GQ is all about: it’s about erasing the old traits, the labels and “the rules” – whatever the hell they were – and asking, on a global scale, what makes up each and every one of you. Masculinity is no longer a stick with which to beat one’s personal choices, it no longer feels like an exclusive club you’re always defined entry to; it’s a world within which to stop, talk, share, learn, fuel, excite, exchange, inspire, collaborate and understand. And, sure, it’s a community. In this issue you’ll find stories that have inspired our first draft for building this new community. The award-winning author and journalist Oliver Bullough tracks down and talks datadriven crime-fighting with British journalist Eliot Higgins, the man behind Bellingcat, a website that specialises in fact-checking and open-source intelligence. Higgins, if anyone, knows the true power of a collaborative global community: his own has been able to help solve some of the worst crimes against humanity of recent years. Now imagine such a collective force, a community, that’s able to help you pick the right pair of sustainable hype trainers or the next K-pop star bubbling up in Seoul? Hey, it’s a start, right? Enjoy the issue and welcome to the community. G

Jonathan Heaf

Chief Content Officer, British GQ

Photograph Daniel Jackson Styling George Cortina

Men’s magazines are dead*

Coat by Saint Laurent By Anthony Vaccarello, £1,725. ysl.com. Turtleneck by Ralph Lauren, £690. ralphlauren.co.uk. Hat by Janessa Leone, £192. janessaleone.com. Sunglasses by Jacques Marie Mage, £595. jacquesmariemage.com. Necklace by Sarah-Jane Wilde, £10,007. sarahjanewilde.com

Anti-magnetic. 5-day power reserve. 10-year warranty. The new Aquis Date is powered by Oris Calibre 400. A new movement. The new standard

Photographs Richard Dowker; Paul Musso

Contributors

Daniel Jackson

Poppy Malby

Alexander Fury

Photographer Daniel Jackson shot this month’s cover star, The Weeknd, AKA Abel Tesfaye, as the artist marks a decade since dropping his first three mixtapes. Four albums later – including the triple-platinum Starboy in 2016 and last year’s UK and US No1 After Hours – Tesfaye has the world at his feet with his unique brand of falsetto, synth-infused hip-hop.

Junior Digital Designer Poppy Malby brought this issue of GQ not only to print, but also to readers’ tablets and smartphones, via the interactive edition. “This marks our first issue made in full collaboration with GQ teams around the world,” says Malby, “and I am so excited to see where things go from here, as we grow as a global community.”

As Giorgio Armani forges ahead into another decade at the pinnacle of luxury, GQ contributor Alexander Fury spoke to the designer about his dizzying success. “I always find Mr Armani insightful, somewhat stern, but with a warmth,” say Fury. “And every time I interview him, I pledge to learn Italian before our next meeting. Maybe this time...”

Thomas Barrie

Annie Jones

Oliver Bullough

Fourteen years after The Sopranos ended, the hallowed show is returning in the form of The Many Saints Of Newark; GQ Features Assistant Thomas Barrie spoke to those involved in its production. “To do the show justice within the limited confines of a feature film seems like an impossible ask,” says Barrie. “That said, creator David Chase and the rest of the cast might just have pulled it off.”

GQ Junior Photographic Editor Annie Jones took the opportunity to stage shoots in public again this month, including a fashion story that took GQ to the heart of the capital. “This month, we had a lot of fun with a Details shoot championing oversized tote bags in London,” says Jones. “We shot on Regent Street and in the surrounding area, making the most of being able to get back out into the city.”

For this issue, GQ contributor Oliver Bullough profiled online investigator Eliot Higgins and the website he founded, Bellingcat. “I’ve listened to a lot of journalists’ stories in and around warzones over the years,” says Bullough, “and told a few myself, but I’ve never heard anything that comes close to matching what Higgins has achieved. He takes journalism in directions it’s never gone in before.” G SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ. CO.UK 45

Edited by

Charlie Burton

Would you wear a skirt? Why men like Harry Styles say the answer should be yes – p.71

This month: Business tips from the richest man on (and off) the planet, Jeff Bezos p.63 TV’s post-#MeToo peak p.77 OK, Joe Biden is not Trump – but that’s no longer enough p.85 SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ. CO.UK 49

It’s Hilfiger... but not as we know it The most valuable mentor scheme in fashion continues, as the American design king lets bright young designer Romeo Hunte loose on his archive Story by

Teo van den Broeke Photography by Kosmas Pavlos Styling by Luke Day

f the recent colreimagined in the colours of the New York subway, which is one of the undislaborative efforts puted highlights of the collection. from the world’s “The capsule is a celebration of the biggest brands are creative intersection between Tommy’s anything to go by, established design legacy and my sigwe’ve entered a supernova moment nature deconstruction techniques,” in high-fashion explains Hunte. “Reinvention is part of partnerships. my design DNA, so it’s been an exciting First Miuccia challenge to be able to take iconic pieces from the Tommy Hilfiger archives and Prada took on reconstruct and reimagine them in a Raf Simons as her way that’s both familiar but totally new. co-creative director at her brand We got really creative, deconstructing (and the sartorial universe shooketh, silhouettes, playing with proportions and clashing fabrics to create styles that let us tell you), then Gucci teamed up are simultaneously statement-making with Kering stablemate Balenciaga in and wearable.” a unique “hacking”, which saw both “The collaboration is truly about brands share their house codes in a mad mash-up collection (think classic bringing together our two worlds – Balenciaga tailored hourglass jackets my signature Manhattan prep and emblazoned with the Gucci monogram Romeo’s Brooklyn street style,” agrees and iconic Gucci bags furnished with Hilfiger. “We explored the archives the Balenciaga insignia), and, most together to find iconic pieces that the recently, Kim Jones, artistic director brand is best known for, remixing and of Dior menswear, announced that reimagining them in bold new ways his next collection would consist of a for today. Romeo and I share a passion for detail, so the collection also partnership with Japanese design deity Chitose Abe of Sacai. showcases elevated craftsmanship, Coat, £855. Sunglasses, £230. Both by Tommy X Romeo. tommy.com At the other end of the spectrum, exceptional fabrics and bold elements. brings these projects to life is hidden behind the I’m really proud of our capsule – it’s both edgy however, a handful of major labels have been scenes, so we wanted to take a moment to spotand sophisticated.” using their industrial heft to assist young, uplight and celebrate that too. and-coming designers in the process of breaking The campaign for this inaugural Fall 2021 “As a young, upcoming designer, I was lucky into the mainstream. Mulberry has just capsule was shot in London and features breakto be guided by incredible leaders who made a announced a partnership with GQ/BFC Designer through models Ikram Abdi Omar, Aaliyah huge impact on my career,” continues Hilfiger. “I Menswear Fund winner Priya Ahluwalia, Converse Hydes, Hidetatsu Takeuchi and Babacar N’Doye, am passionate about passing that on by mentorregularly collaborates with bright British designer while the collection itself will be available to buy ing the next generation of design talent. Romeo Samuel Ross, and Tommy Hilfiger – the man who from 12 August on Tommy Hilfiger and Romeo Hunte is one of those truly exceptional newHunte’s websites. Selfridges will be the exclusive took true-blue Americana and made it cool when comers, someone you know is going to make an stockist for the collection in the UK. But the big he founded his label in 1985 – is launching a oneimpact as soon as you see his work. I wanted to of-a-kind partnership with burgeoning stateside question is can we expect a Spring 2022 capsule support him in his incredible jourcreative Romeo Hunte. from the pair too. We can if Hunte’s ney in the fashion industry.” For “Tommy X Romeo”, the all-American got anything to do with it. “The only way to go from here duo have collaborated on a capsule collection he resulting collection is is up!” he tells GQ excitedly. “I’m of remixed pieces from the Hilfiger archive. A an ultramodern celebrastarting to witness the growth and product of the veteran designer’s People’s Place tion of Hilfiger’s preppy expansion of my company on a initiative, which sees him mentor and partner global scale and I feel like an offistyle, run through with with a range of young designers and creatives from nonwhite backgrounds, the capsule brings cial ‘boss’. a unique streetwear-infused aesthetic all Hunte’s own. There’s an excellent a bold, contemporary twist to the most iconic gar“I know I am the future of fashion right now,” ments from his extraordinary 36-year-long career. he continues, “and I’m very excited about all of trench coat finished with block colour panels “Our People’s Place Programme is about genthe anticipated releases. I’m looking forward to in primary, sailing-inspired hues. There’s a erating opportunity for creative talent from building my own atelier to better connect with canary-yellow take on a cropped puffer jacket complete with modular hood and sleeves. There my community and provide a more immersive underrepresented BIPOC communities, both is a tee and a hoodie printed with Tommy X experience. I want to see everyone expressing in front of and behind the camera,” Hilfiger Romeo’s joint red, white and blue insignia (a their personal style and dressing in Tommy X tells GQ. “That was top of our minds from the Romeo all around the world!” take on Hilfiger’s classic flag logo, combined moment Romeo and I started to collaborate – from the design process to choosing our talented with Hunte’s six-block brand logo) and there’s OUT ON 12 AUGUST. TOMMY.COM; ROMEOHUNTE.COM an excellent heritage Ithaca stripe Oxford shirt cast and crew. A lot of the incredible work that

50 GQ.CO.UK SEPTEMBER 2021

‘We remixed iconic pieces in bold new ways for today’

D E TA I L S Ð S T Y L E Jacket, £425. Top, £115. Trousers, £595. Hat, £125. Bag, £210. All by Tommy X Romeo. tommy.com

SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ. CO.UK 51

D E TA I L S Ð S T Y L E

‘The preppy button-down is my favourite piece. I love the unexpected, playful proportions and how our heritage Ithaca stripe is reimagined in the colours of the NYC subway’

Coat, £495. Shirt, £225. Bag, £235. Boots, £235. All by Tommy X Romeo. tommy.com

52 GQ.CO.UK SEPTEMBER 2021

‘My favourite piece in the collection is definitely the classic bonded trench coat remixed with sailing jacket colour blocking. It’s a joyful take on a classic’ ROMEO HUNTE

Grooming Liz Taw at The Wall Group using Typology Model Manolo at Wiener Models

TOMMY HILFIGER

D E TA I L S Ð M A N T H I N G S

God save the Sex Pistols As a Danny Boyle biopic aims to unload the band’s legacy of annihilation, Tony Parsons explains why they mattered – and why they self-destructed band away from music to notoriety. It’s true that after Matlock the music didn’t matter very much: the new songs didn’t get written; the shows became shambolic. But the Pistols’ destiny was out of their hands from the moment they laughingly unleashed a stream of profanity on early evening ITV after being goaded by presenter Bill Grundy. The next morning they were on the front page of every tabloid, an infamy that clings to the band to this very day. It was notoriety that turned them from a group into a novelty act, pantomime bad guys who would end up making records with “Great Train Robber” Ronnie Biggs. “Everything prior to Grundy was good, in my book,” Jones writes in his memoir. “It was like the normal progression you’d expect of a band – we’d just made a great record, people were showing up to see us and getting converted. There was a real scene.” It was, it must be conceded, funny to see the Sex Pistols become front-page news overnight. But they never recovered. “I guess it was just never our destiny to be a normal band who make a few albums and then fade away,” Jones reflects. Jones and Cook would have liked a good few years of sex and drugs and rock’n’roll, but it was not their hands on the tiller that steered the Sex Pistols. It was not even Johnny Rotten or that bubble-haired Svengali of

The Pistols carried the seeds of their own destruction

54 GQ.CO.UK SEPTEMBER 2021

Sid Vicious, 8 January 1978; (below) Johnny Rotten, 9 December 1976

a manager. The tragic truth is that the Sex Pistols were beyond anyone’s control.

anny Boyle is right: in their punky pomp, the Sex Pistols were glorious, a cry of dissent that inspired a generation. In the summer of 1977, to align yourself with the Sex Pistols was to put yourself directly in harm’s way, as right-minded people of every hue formed queues to give you a good kicking. But most of the wounds the Pistols endured were self-inflicted. Their cry of youthful rage became a howl of nihilism. The reaction to all those garish headlines and the fallout from Vicious’ heroin addiction left them ravaged, riven and totally exhausted. The Sex Pistols always carried the seeds of their own destruction. In the dying days of the 1970s, Vicious was accused of stabbing his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, to death in Manhattan’s Chelsea Hotel and less than four months later overdosed on heroin. He was 21. A stench of obscene waste surrounds the Sex Pistols. They were the first of the truly modern celebrities – ludicrously famous for all the wrong, corrosive reasons. The last time I saw the late Malcolm McLaren was at the British embassy in Stockholm. We drank tea under a giant portrait of the Queen and spoke of the old days. We didn’t talk much about the music. But, then, the Pistols were never really about the music. PISTOL IS OUT NEXT YEAR

Photographs Getty Images; Nils Stevenson and Helen Wellington-Lloyd

hen I recall the rise and fall of the Sex Pistols, there is one defining image that always comes to mind: Sid Vicious on stage at The Screen On The Green in Islington, North London, having his Fender Precision Bass tuned by guitarist Steve Jones. At the time, the Sex Pistols were, without question, the most talked about band on the planet. And here was their lead guitarist tuning the new bass player’s instrument because he did not know how to do it himself. Can you imagine Mick Jones of The Clash having to put Paul Simonon’s bass in tune? Or Paul Weller getting Bruce Foxton in key? No, you can’t, because the leading lights of punk rock were all brilliant musicians. It was musical technique that didn’t matter a damn to the boys in these bands. But they could play. Apart from Vicious. Vicious looked deeply embarrassed, like a five-year-old who still needs his laces tied, while Jones wore a look of almost maternal patience. And that moment of social awkwardness sums up the raving insanity that always surrounded the Sex Pistols. They were truly ground-breaking – in the early days, people saw this band and their lives were changed – but they had a genius for digging their own graves. At that gig, Vicious had just recently replaced Glen Matlock, the band’s principal songwriter. Malcolm McLaren, the manager, installed Vicious because he looked the part. Johnny Rotten, the singer, preferred Vicious to Matlock because he was his chum. Who cared that the hottest band in the world were getting shot of their songwriter and replacing him with a musical moron? Not those wacky Sex Pistols! Getting rid of Matlock was like The Beatles kicking out Lennon. And McCartney. It made no sense. No other group would have done it. No band ever threw it all away quite like the Pistols. Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle is making a sixpart series called Pistol for the Disney-owned network FX, based on Jones’ 2016 memoir Lonely Boy: Tales From A Sex Pistol. Boyle is a fan and, speaking of his new biopic project, likens the Sex Pistols moment to “breaking into the world of The Crown and Downtown Abbey with your mates and screaming your songs and your fury at all they represent”. Mates? No. Most bands hate each other by the end, but there was hate among the Pistols from the start. Rotten always loathed Matlock. Jones and drummer Paul Cook were not close to Rotten, who preferred the company of his sycophantic entourage. Then there were differences with manager McLaren, the hippy mastermind who gets blamed for steering the

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D E TA I L S Ð G R O O M I N G

Regime change! As the battle for better face and hair care rages, we asked our grooming gang of six how to revolutionise your routine Story by

Teo van den Broeke

The body trimmer Manscaped Lawn Mower

The laser treatment The Lyma Laser

£60. uk.manscaped.com

Illustrations Oriana Fenwick

“I absolutely love sunbathing, but lots of sun exposure for people with darker skin can cause hyperpigmentation. As it’s difficult to find SPF products that aren’t tinted white, it’s really refreshing that Fenty has launched this SPF moisturiser that helps myself and others with darker skin protect ourselves without looking like ghosts. Thank you, Rihanna!” £32 for 50ml. At Harvey Nichols. harveynichols.com

Dr Costas Papageorgiou, UK medical director, New York Dermatology Group

“If you’re vain enough to spend 15 minutes a day massaging your face with a laser in the hope it will tighten your skin and even out pigmentation, this might be for you. The Lyma is the first athome laser treatment that is both safe and effective; the 500 milliwatts infrared beam is powerful enough to rejuvenate your skin at a cellular level. It’s not a bargain but gets good reviews.” From £1,999. lyma.life

“My grooming product of choice is Manscaped’s Lawn Mower, which is a trimmer to be used on one’s balls. I have tried many trimmers to tidy up my nether regions – and my body – over the years, but I’ve always ended up with cuts in sensitive areas, which is never a good thing. But those days are past thanks to this bad boy.”

Eric Underwood, model and dancer

The sunscreen Heliocare 360 Water Gel SPF50

Jeremy Langmead, author and editor

Tariq Howes, master barber

The moisturiser Fenty Skin Hydra Vizor Invisible Moisturizer SPF30

en’s grooming is absolutely booming. The market expanded from £48.2 billion in 2020 to £50.6bn this year, according to Statista, and it’s set to reach a whopping £58.5bn by 2024. It’s a state of affairs that means new products and brands are launching each and every day, which is great news for grooming nuts like us, but not so helpful if you’re trying to find the perfect treatment in a sea of lotions, potions and indiscriminate newness. Fortunately, for you, we’re here to help source the boss from the dross, so we assembled a crack team of ultra-qualified grooming experts to select the best products they’re using right now.

The hair wax Oliver J Woods Blackseed Wax Joe Mills, master barber and founder, Joe And Co “Oliver J Woods’ Blackseed Wax is one of the most versatile products in my kit bag. It’s a really well-made and formulated hair product that works on all hair lengths. You can use it on dry and damp hair and it adds enough hold and shine to make it the perfect summer product for your hair. Fragrance-wise, it’s not too much, but adds another layer with your aftershave. Loaded up with vitamin E and blackseed, coconut and sativa oils, it’s about as good as it gets.” £28 for 50g. oliverjwoods.com

“The one key product I recommend for regular daily use is an SPF50 sunscreen. My favourite is Heliocare 360, as it offers sophisticated technology in a light texture. I apply it daily over ZO Skin Health’s 10% Vitamin C SelfActivating, which has good synergy with sunscreen.” £31 for 50ml. heliocare.co.uk

The skin peel Decree Weekly Airbrushing Acid + Replenishing Paste Alexander Johnston, head of brand, John Bell & Croyden “Decree’s Weekly peel is my favourite product right now. I have always struggled with combination skin that is prone to breakouts and enlarged pores that I couldn’t control. When I discovered this two-step skin peel, it changed everything. No more breakouts, my skin is smoother and my pores so much less visible. I cannot – and, frankly, will not – live without it.” £120. thedecree.com SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ. CO.UK 57

D E TA I L S Ð H U M O U R

Adam Hess hears your unsettling feelings And the comedian has prescribed faux words to define them Charlie Burton

he comedian Adam Hess is best known for his TV appearances, sell-out live shows and award-winning tweets (yes, really). But recently he has been receiving plaudits for work in a less orthodox format: dictionary definitions for made-up words, which he posts to his Instagram account, @adamhess100. “I was thinking about the word ‘schadenfreude’ and how, without it, I probably wouldn’t have realised I sometimes felt this rather odd feeling, let alone known it was so common,” Hess says. “So I thought I’d try to write a dictionary filled with words for as many emotions and experiences as I can think of, largely in the hope that people realise they aren’t actually a weirdo for having ‘an unsettled feeling upon seeing their password written down’, for example, but in fact we’re all that weird. I also started doing it because I was just very, very bored.” We asked him for his favourites...

Romupism /rəʊmjuːpiz(ə)m/ noun The humiliation felt after pressing “rotate 90 degrees clockwise” but it then rotates a different direction than you thought it would, so instead of clicking “anticlockwise” you just keep clicking on clockwise and take the long way round. Amdumn /ˈamdʌm/ noun The phenomenon of being asked for film recommendations and then being unable to recall a single film you’ve ever seen. Cartychambulate /kɑːtʌɪkambjʊleɪt/ verb The walk you do after you get off the bus and pull up Google Maps to see what direction to walk in, but you know not to trust what direction your phone says you’re facing so you have to walk in a random direction for a few metres to see what the dot does.

Antibapem /antɪ’beɪpum/ noun The act of trying to look like you’re completely fine with the bit of news you were just told, when you actually are fine and just want everyone to be fully aware that you are, but the act of trying now makes you look like you aren’t. Caromirum /ˈkarəmɪrɪəm/ noun The repeated shock at the cheapness of carrots. Chassense /tʃas(ə)ns/ noun The desire for a particular person to push in front of you in a queue because you want to say, “Sorry, there’s actually a queue,” to the point where you start practising saying it in your head, even though in the end they don’t actually push in. Fope /fəʊp/ noun The feeling, when in the middle of a serious conversation, that you are an actor playing the part of “real human”. Consemalum /ˈkɒnsɪmaləm/ noun The brief relief that you are about to be taken off hold, simply because the song they are playing to you has come to an end. Metapopsia /ˈmɛtəpɒpˈsiːə,sɪə/ noun The suspicious feeling when you’re in your friend’s car and they then call their partner on speakerphone and say, “I’m in the car with Adam, you’re on speaker,” as if they would otherwise slag you off. Nerallagism /nʌɪˈralɪgiz(ə)m/ noun The phenomenon whereby water tastes different when drunk out of a wine glass. Burrigance /bʌəɡ(ə)ns/ noun The humiliation when your mum told you to stop showing off in front of your friends, knowing that if you now “calm down” you’ll be admitting that the previous way you were behaving was all an act. Hernk /həːŋk/ noun The crushing humiliation upon being told “You’ve already told me this” during an anecdote, often to the point that you decide to add/change a detail to make it sound like a different story. Enthrelinquism /ɪnˈθrrɪˈlɪŋkwɪz(ə)m/ noun The fleeting excitement of finding a baby pepper inside a normal pepper before realising it, once again, doesn’t matter. Sloke /sləʊk/ noun The compulsion to look at the house of someone you know as you drive past it even though they no longer live there. Adention /əˈdɛnʃ(ə)n/ noun The inexplicable ignorance as to how many teeth you have. Denkoddery /deŋkɒd(ə)ri/ noun The overly confident assumption that it is possible to count your teeth with your tongue.

‘The hope is that people realise we’re all that weird’

British comedian and writer Adam Hess

58 GQ.CO.UK SEPTEMBER 2021

The unlikely high-tech Van Gogh smackdown Digital Van Gogh ‘experiences’ that let you step into his art are proliferating at a bizarre rate Story by

Charlie Burton

Official: we are living in a simulation. We’ve known it for a while, of course – Brexit, Trump, the year-long lockdown (thanks a lot, overlords). The latest piece of evidence? A serious glitch in the matrix: this summer London is staging not one but two vast immersive experiences about Vincent Van Gogh. The first is the newly opened Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience (pictured), which uses 15,000 square foot screens, VR and 360-degree projections to let you step into the paintings, and then there’s Van Gogh Alive, in which you “transcend time and space as you accompany Van Gogh on a journey through the Netherlands, Arles, Saint Rémy and Auvers-Sur-Oise”. It has toured 65 cities, been seen by more than seven million people and has now opened in Kensington Gardens. But here’s the twist: in the US, there are even more of the darn things, including Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience, Imagine Van Gogh: The Immersive Exhibition and Immersive Van Gogh. Now, do we take the blue pill or the red? VANGOGHEXPO.COM; VANGOGHALIVEUK.COM

Photograph Matt Crockett

Story by

D E TA I L S Ð T R E N D S

Are you ready for some flexitime? Louis Vuitton’s ultra-bendy new footwear line is just the thing for our bold new world of work Story by

Teo van den Broeke Photograph by Josh David Payne

ybrid is a bit of a buzzword in the world of menswear right now. We’ve all been working from home more, which means suit makers have been forced to make crossbreed garments that wear like tracksuits but look smart enough for judgier Zoom meetings. Likewise, hybrid shoes – furnished with both classic leather uppers and comfort-focused trainer-style soles – are currently lining the shelves of the world’s footwear boutiques. The truth is, however, that after long months of wearing nothing but slippers we’re really craving a shoe that sticks to its guns and has its soles set firmly in one camp rather than two. The good news is that those clever so-and-sos at Louis Vuitton have been working hard during the successive lockdowns to develop a series of classic shoes that look the business but don’t skimp on comfort. Titled the Vendome Flex, the three-piece collection consists of a Derby, a loafer and a Chelsea boot. Hand-developed by LV’s dedicated footwear factory in Fiesso d’Artico, just outside Venice, each piece features a classic Goodyear-welted sole – so far so traditional – but has also been finished with a totally flexible sneaker-style insole, so you can spend your few days per week in the office safe in the knowledge that your feet aren’t missing out on any of the comfort they’ve become so very accustomed to. Shoes by Louis Vuitton, £1,080. louisvuitton.com 60 GQ.CO.UK SEPTEMBER 2021

D E TA I L S – A R T reversed portraits were shown at Banksy’s “Dismaland” project, they have been auctioned by Christie’s alongside pieces by Tracey Emin and the Chapman brothers and her work appears this month in Beyond The Streets at Southampton Arts Center in New York. And it’s not only hair. Wakefield has turned her attention to drawing everything from cigarette packets to Lego figures. “The consistent theme is they’re things you wouldn’t normally pay attention to, but it’s kind of beautifying them,” she says. “I steer clear of flowers and landscapes and stuff like that – they don’t really interest me.” The hyperrealistic style means that producing these pieces is time-consuming – a reversed portrait will often take an entire week, working until ten o’clock every night. “My days are super, super long and it’s super intense,” she says, noting that she gets blisters on her fingers. “But it just makes me truly happy when I’m doing it.”

akefield didn’t choose that style; the style chose her. Her ability to closely re-create whatever she’s looking at was recognised at a young age. “At school I used to try to copy paintings and make interpretations. My history of art teacher, who was a bit bonkers, decided to commission me to do all these replicas. So I did Pablo Picasso’s

This art is turning heads From the breakthrough ‘reversed portraits’ to her beautified everyday ephemera, Nettie Wakefield’s work is already a collectors’ favourite

Photographs Michaela Peker; Courtesy of Nettie Wakefield

Story by

Charlie Burton

he idea that would change Nettie Wakefield’s life came to her in a lecture hall. “There was a girl in front of me and she had a Victorian, platted, super-complicated hairstyle,” recalls the 34-year-old, who at the time was studying for an MA in drawing at Wimbledon College Of Arts. “I wasn’t hugely interested in the lecture, even though I’m sure it was very interesting, and I just started drawing her hair. Then I was like, ‘Who is that?’ I tried to manoeuvre and I literally could not, from any angle, see her face. Then I realised the mystery and intrigue was quite interesting – all of the ideas that I was projecting onto her without seeing her face.” That was 2013 and from that moment sprang Wakefield’s best-known – and ongoing – project, Reversed Portrait Pencil Series. Depicting the backs of heads, the drawings have a photorealistic attention to detail that has captured imaginations and won Wakefield a notable following. Wakefield’s work is now in the private collections of everyone from Robert Pattinson and Liv Tyler to Nick Candy and Damien Hirst. Her

Wakefield’s work is now in the private collections of everyone from Robert Pattinson and Liv Tyler to Nick Candy and Damien Hirst

Clockwise, from top left: ‘Benedict’; ‘Red Stripe’; ‘Banana’; ‘Camel’; artist Nettie Wakefield; ‘Coke’

‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’ – a massive one for her house – and Édouard Manet’s ‘A Bar At The Folies-Bergère’,” she says. It was the first time she realised she might have real talent. “I was like, ‘Oh, this person is paying me £200 to do a painting. I never get £200 to do anything!’” Today, Wakefield’s pieces command larger sums, but, for her, creating art isn’t merely about earning a living. In spending so much time poring over the nuances of how light plays on individual strands of hair or how a playing card casts a shadow on itself when it’s crumpled, she derives a therapeutic benefit – it allows her to enter into a kind of mindful meditation. “I find it extremely relaxing. Time just sort of goes away. And once I start, I find it extremely difficult to stop.” NETTIEWAKEFIELD.NET

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D E TA I L S Ð E N T R E P R E N E U R

In 27 years, Amazon has not only become a global business but a cultural touchstone too. Now, in a new book, Amazon Unbound (out now), author Brad Stone charts the rise of Jeff Bezos as well as the insights he learned along the way... Randomise some elements of meetings At Bezos’ cloud computing division, Amazon Web Services (AWS), a twohour weekly meeting on Wednesday mornings would see 200 managers discuss the technical performance of various web services the company offered. These would be selected randomly by a multicoloured roulette wheel with each service marked on it. If a manager’s particular purview was chosen, he or she would have to present, in detail and on the spot, to the rest of the division. The idea was to make sure, according to then AWS head Andy Jassy, that managers were “on top of the key metrics of their service all week long, because they know there’s a chance they may have to speak to it in detail”.

The

SECRETS of MY SUCCESS Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon Story by

Thomas Barrie

During the development of Alexa, the dedicated division behind it struggled to hire fast enough to fill all the engineering and development roles required. In response, Bezos and his company instituted a company-wide “draft”, offering every qualified new hire in certain other parts of Amazon – including Amazon Web Services and retail division – an alternate job offer to join Alexa instead, hugely speeding up the recruiting process.

Bezos has consistently had a “technical advisor”, a coveted role given to a promising executive hand-picked to shadow the CEO at all times. This “TA” would take notes in all of Bezos’ meetings, write the first draft of the yearly letter to shareholders and learn by closely following and interacting with Bezos for more than a year. Among the beneficiaries of this mentoring system have been some of Amazon’s most senior figures, including new CEO Andy Jassy, who was the first, after joining Amazon in 1997, and who replaced Bezos in July.

Learn when to aim and when to shoot

During the design process of Amazon’s Kindle e-reader, engineers were surprised to find Bezos had included a microphone in the device in a draft sketch, even though there weren’t any voice-activated features yet available or planned for the Kindle. The engineers weren’t keen on the redundant feature, but Bezos insisted it stay. “It felt a bit more like Star Trek than reality,” says one employee who was a Kindle hardware director at the time. And yet, eventually, the kernel of this feature would become the basis of Amazon’s voice-activated assistant, Alexa.

to begin any conversation about a new product by considering the benefit it will create for customers further down the line.

Write ‘PR FAQs’

Photograph Getty Images

‘Draft’ employees between divisions

Mentor through high-level ‘shadowing’

Design your future products now

It might seem normal to write a press release after an initiative is wrapped up or just when it’s being brought to market, but at Amazon executives write documents known as “PR FAQs” before they begin work on a new project. These are six-page reports that take the form of a press release outlining the proposed new product’s market impact – the idea is to describe what you ultimately want to produce and then work backwards from that end goal to make it. Writing the paper is an essential and deep-rooted part of Amazon’s company culture of innovation and forces the executives

that customers don’t know to ask for. We must invent on their behalf.”

Profile Age 57 Born Albuquerque, New Mexico Relationship status Divorced Net worth £146 billion

During a trip to the subcontinent in 2014 to celebrate an infusion of $2 billion (£1.4bn) of capital to Amazon India, Bezos addressed local executives. He said he wanted them to act and think like cowboys and that India was the e-commerce equivalent of the Wild West. “There are two ways of building a business,” he told his audience. “Many times, you aim, aim, aim and then shoot. Or you shoot, shoot, shoot and then aim a little bit. That is what you want to do here. Don’t spend a lot of time on analysis and precision. Keep trying stuff.”

Act on customer feedback selectively

Hit two of the world’s three key markets – at least

During the development of Amazon’s smart Fire Phone from around 2010 to 2014, Bezos became obsessed with incorporating new technology into the handset, such as 3-D cameras that could track a user’s gaze. Despite placing a hugely strong emphasis on customer feedback in all other parts of Amazon’s business, these were not features that Amazon customers had requested. In a later letter to shareholders, Bezos would write, “The biggest needle movers will be things

Returning to India in autumn 2015, Bezos became convinced that there were three major national markets that mattered in the world and that Amazon needed to dominate at least two of them. “The future is going to be the US, China and India,” he told colleagues. “For Amazon to be a truly world-class global company, we have to be relevant in two out of the three markets.” In this case, Bezos focused on India and the US, after Amazon’s attempts to penetrate China had struggled. SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ. CO.UK 63

D E TA I L S Ð E V E N T

Agostino Perrone, Ben Jones and Gabriela Moncada

Santiago Lastra

Newsflash! We’re back out there! After almost a year-and-a-half of digital ceremonies, Zoom acceptance speeches and online announcements, we finally had our first awards evening IRL since “that which must not be named” spoiled all the parties. The seventh annual GQ Food & Drink Awards might have been a more intimate affair than usual, but host Claudia Winkleman, the winners, the judges and our partners, Veuve Clicquot and Belvedere, did their best to raise the roof at a private event at the Nobu Hotel London Portman Square. Sushi and black cod were enjoyed, glasses of champagne (and one or two Martinis) lifted spirits and Waterford Crystal ice buckets were raised in celebration. In other words, everyone had a good time. It’s official: going out is now the new staying in. Photographs by James Mason SEE MORE PHOTOS FROM THE GQ FOOD & DRINK AWARDS 2021 AT BIT.LY/GQFD2021 Charlie Mellor; (above) Ravneet Gill; (right) Jason Atherton

Claudia Winkleman and Paul Henderson

64 GQ.CO.UK SEPTEMBER 2021

Francesca Bianchi and Mike Foster

Alexei Rosin

Aushi Meewella and Annie Harrison

Charlotte Jukes and Amelia Morley

Dmitri Magi and Anneka Brooks

Mateo Notsuke and Poppy Malby; (right) Honey Spencer

Sabrina Manolio and Stevie Parle

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D E TA I L S Ð T R E N D S

Paul Smith Bag, £250. Top, £300. Trousers, £410. All by Paul Smith. paulsmith. com. Vest, stylist’s own. Necklaces by Katie Mullally, from £140 each. katiemullally.co.uk. Bracelet by Tilly Sveaas, £360. tillysveaas.co.uk. Ring by Pawnshop, £220. pawnlondon.com.

Styling Angelo Mitakos Grooming Aga Dobosz at Carol Hayes Management Model Nasser M at Supa Model Management

Totes amazebags Capacious open-top tote bags are just the thing to carry your life around in as you, well, return to life Story by

Teo van den Broeke Photographs by Rosaline Shahnavaz

Bennett Winch Bag by Bennett Winch, £325. bennettwinch.com. Sweatshirt by Barbour International, £75. barbourinternational.com. Trousers by Barbour, £70. barbour. com. T-shirt by Armor Lux, £45. armorlux.com. Trainers by Adidas, £79. At Schuh. schuh.co.uk. Socks by Falke, £13. falke.com. Necklace by Tilly Sveaas, £290. tillysveaas.co.uk. Rings by LMJ, from £230 each. luvmyjewelry.com

Gyms are open! As are spas and hotels! It’s a leisurely trifecta that means you’re probably going to be carrying far more kit and caboodle around with you in the coming months than you have for the past year-and-a-half. The good news is that the world’s menswear designers have been working hard to come up with a host of smart luggage options that are fit for the job. Enter, the new breed of absolutely massive tote bag. These capacious bad boys are just as suitable for fun excursions as they are for weekly trips to the supermarket, so you can relive those early days of lockdown all over again. Ah...

Tiger Of Sweden Bag, £199. Blazer, £489. Shirt, £179. Trousers, £229. All by Tiger Of Sweden. tigerofsweden.com. Necklaces by Katie Mullally, from £140 each. katiemullally.co.uk. Bracelet by Tilly Sveaas, £360. tillysveaas.co.uk. Rings by LMJ, from £230 each. luvmyjewelry.com

Moschino Bag, £890. Cardigan, £760. Trousers, £550. All by Moschino. moschino.com. Rings by Pawnshop, from £220 each. pawnlondon.com

SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ. CO.UK 67

40330 RIPSTOP GORE-TEX WITH PACLITE® PRODUCT TECHNOLOGY DOWN DOWN PARKA MADE IN GORE-TEX WITH PACLITE® PRODUCT TECHNOLOGY. THE PACLITE® PRODUCT TECHNOLOGY IS USED FOR LIGHTWEIGHT, BREATHABLE AND EASILY PACKABLE GARMENTS. IT IS A GORE-TEX PRODUCT THAT LIVES UP TO THE GUARANTEED TO KEEP YOU DRY PROMISE. THE OUTER FACE OF THIS HIGH-PERFORMANCE TWO-LAYER FABRIC IS MADE OF AN ULTRA-LIGHT POLYESTER FABRIC MADE WITH 50 MICRO DENIER YARNS, TREATED WITH ANTI-DROP TECHNOLOGY. IT IS BONDED TO A FINE MEMBRANE, WHICH IS EXTREMELY BREATHABLE, DURABLE, WATERPROOF AND TOTALLY WINDPROOF. THE GARMENT IS FULLY SEAM-TAPED. THE PIECE IS FILLED WITH PREMIUM FEATHERS. TWO WAYS WATERPROOF ZIP FASTENING, HIDDEN BY PLACKET WITH HIDDEN BUTTONS FASTENING.

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D E TA I L S Ð H O R O L O G Y

Like a leather strap? Try a leather dial...

Case The titanium case is 44mm in diameter, 15.45mm thick and water-resistant to 100 metres.

In fact, even the bezel is leather on this grand Hublot x Berluti mashup that hides in plain sight Story by

Charlie Burton Photograph by Matthew Beedle

Movement The Hublot MHUB1280 Unico self-winding chronograph flyback movement with column wheel is made in-house and offers a 72-hour power reserve.

Strap

Accessories

The strap is made from black rubber and Berluti-patinated Venezia leather; it has a titanium deployant buckle clasp.

hen Carlo Crocco launched Hublot in 1980, he made waves with a watch that teamed gold with rubber. Back then the juxtaposition was groundbreaking and Hublot’s appetite for using unorthodox materials continues to define the brand today. But for all its experiments with ceramic, sapphire and precious metal alloys, one of the most surprising materials in its repertoire is paradoxically traditional: leather. Since 2016, Hublot has collaborated with the shoemaker Berluti on a series of timepieces with leather dials. Initially, the base watch was Hublot’s most traditional product, the Classic Fusion. Berluti was founded in 1895, so this seemed an apposite choice. But following Berluti

70 GQ.CO.UK SEPTEMBER 2021

The watch comes with a Berluti travel pouch, keychain and shoehorn.

appointing creative director Kris Van Assche in 2018 to take the brand in a more contemporary direction, the base watch switched to the forward-looking Big Bang Unico – for which Berluti supplied not only a leather dial, but a leather bezel too. There’s a reason leather isn’t typically used for watch dials. Apart from the obvious fact that it’s delicate and risks deteriorating as it ages, it also sheds “dust” – the very thing watchmakers strive to remove before sealing a case. “Leather is a living material,” says Hublot’s marketing director Philippe Tardivel. “So we had to encapsulate the dial in a very thin glass ‘bubble’.” Of course, the leather on the bezel insert is even more vulnerable so has to be treated to make it robust. “Berluti

knows how to do it because they do the same thing with the leather sole on the shoe.” The new fruit of this collaboration arrives this month, the 100-piece limited-edition Big Bang Unico Berluti Aluminio, which teams polished and satin-finished titanium with Berluti’s Venezia leather. Used for the dial, bezel and strap, it has been finished in Berluti’s Aluminio patina. “This watch will fly,” says Tardivel, “because [Berluti] has told us this colour is really in demand.” So where will the partnership go next? “I think there’s still room to have other patinas,” says Tardivel. “After that, we don’t know what the future holds. We always try to reinvent ourselves.” £20,800. HUBLOT.COM

D E TA I L S Ð T R E N D S (a cashmere muumuu for winter and something in silk for summer, perhaps), I absolutely would. But thanks to those long-lingering Victorian prejudices that permeate our trousers and shorts-dominated wardrobes, I just don’t feel like I can.

he good news is that a Having delved deep into wide array of influenthe annals (minds out of the tial men in the fields gutter, please) of sartorial of music, fashion, film and beyond have started flying the history over the many years I’ve worked in menswear, one flag for men wearing skirts in a issue I’ve long grappled with is meaningful way. Kid Cudi wore just where the Western avera party frock in the style of the late, great Kurt Cobain for his sion to modern men wearing skirts, dresses and tunics really turn on SNL earlier this year comes from. and Harry Styles was pictured It’s important to note from wearing a Gucci dress on last December’s cover of American the outset that I’m not tarring all cultures with the “men Vogue. More recently, A$AP scared to wear open-bottomed Rocky sported a tartan kilt garments” brush. Arabic by Vivienne Westwood for his shoot with American GQ, while men have worn breezy white a host of nonbinary trailblazkameez tunics as an antidote to the heat for centuries, while ers, including Harris Reed, airy dhotis and lungis are Tommy Dorfman and Ezra worn by men across the subMiller, have been flying the continent to this day. skirt-wearing flag for years. I’ve come to the conclusion A nd the even better news that the reason men in the is the aforementioned style West (in Britain specifically) mavens aren’t just stealing their garments from the Harry Styles + Vivienne Westwood x feeling the breeze = masculinity on legs don’t wear skirts and kilts as a matter of course is really down women’s section of the store to the Victorians. An age of puritanical pedants (though there’s nothing wrong with that; buy with a penchant for all things sad and sober, yourself a pair of women’s carpenter jeans from Arket and you can thank me later). A whole the Victorian era saw a distinct diminishment host of totally legitimate designers have started in the use of colour in masculine clothing and plain trouser suits in black, grey, brown and blue producing breezy skirts and dresses designed became order of the, well, centuries now. specifically with men in mind. From Gucci’s crimp-topped party frocks, which come imbued The truth is, however, that there is absolutely no legitimate reason – practical, social or othwith a grungy appeal, to Westwood and Thom Browne’s classic kilts and the forthcoming erwise – why men should not wear skirts on a mini-skorts shown as part of Raf Simons and regular, if not daily, basis. It’s a point that the Now is the moment to bare Miuccia’s second outing for Prada, there’s quite great Scots knew well before the boring old more leg than ever before, says English came along and ruined things. Indeed, to literally something for every leg type. this day even the most masculine men who live Listen, I’m not saying that it’ll be easy or that Teo van den Broeke, and he above Hadrian’s Wall revel in the act of throwing you won’t get some troglodyte commenting doesn’t mean short shorts... on a kilt and it’s important to remember that it’s that you should have done a better job of shaving considerably colder up there than it is down here your legs if you do decide to go full skirt down in balmy old Sasann. the pub, but the benefits have got to be worth Personally speaking, I’m slightly irritated that it. Just think of the freedom – and the breeze. If I don’t feel entirely free to wear a skirt. I’ve long you do it, I’ll do it. G’wan! It’s exactly what those envied my female friends who are able to sport pesky Victorians wouldn’t have wanted. And floaty maxi dresses on hot holidays and don’t if you can’t take my word for it, then listen to global style deity Harry Styles instead. Because even get me started on muumuus – if I could if not him, then who? wear a muumuu every day for the rest of my “When you take away ‘There’s clothes for men life, in seasonal-appropriate fabrics, of course and there’s clothes for women’, once you remove any barriers, obviously you open up the arena in which you can play,” Styles told Vogue in his cover interview last year. “It’s like anything – any time you’re putting barriers up in your own life, you’re just limiting yourself. There’s so much joy to be had in playing with clothes.”

Photographs Getty Images; Tyler Mitchell

It’s time to stop skirting the issue

If I could wear a muumuu every day for the rest of my life I absolutely would

SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ.C O.UK 71

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D E TA I L S – L I T E R AT U R E

hen I was a young thing, all I ever dreamt of was seeing my name printed on the spine of a hardback book. That ambition, now, looks rather old-fashioned. These days, to really make it, you need to have your name nowhere near your book. First there was the “Secret Barrister”, whose mysterious social media avatar of a robed bunny rabbit propelled him/her first to the heights of legal Twitter and then to a multi-book deal. Hot on his/her heels came lid-lifting memoirs from the “Secret Doctor”, “Secret Civil Servant”, “Secret Magistrate” et al; now the genre welcomes a volume from the “Secret Head Teacher” (out on 19 August). Why so shy? There are a couple of things going on here, I think. One being the herd behaviour of trade publishers. The moment you have a secret barrister doing good numbers at WH Smith, everybody wants a slice of that action and they go about signing up secret scaffolders, baristas and chiropodists left, right and centre. The more interesting phenomenon, though, is the fact that “secret” members of professions have proven such a hit with the public in the first place. It’s not an obvious thing to happen. Through history, signing your name to your testimony was what

gave it credibility. Enthusiasts of rhetoric call this the “ethos” appeal: your audience knows who you are and can trust you – or not – based on your public standing. Now, the opposite seems to hold. We are in an environment where anonymity is not the token of the fink, the weasel, the confidential informer and the nark, but of the brave speaker of truth to power. We are more likely, in the age of WikiLeaks and whistle-blowers, to trust the information that comes to us anonymously than we are to discount it. Here is a 21st-century equivalent of the enduring romance of Watergate’s Deep Throat. Everyone likes to feel that they’re close to a secret. The suggestion is there are some truths that can only be spoken under a cloak of anonymity. “Anonymous” is even a political movement these days. The Guy Fawkes mask of V For Vendetta is as recognisable a brand as the red rose of the Labour Party or the elephant of the GOP – and rather more exciting a one, at that. By being Anonymous – in the sense of the hacktivist collective – you mark yourself out as egoless, austere in your political virtue and (by implication, at least) the member of a numberless group of the like-minded. You are, so to speak, a digital Spartacus.

From faceless GPs to discreet public servants, anonymous authors make a name for themselves in print

Anonymity is no longer the token of the fink or the nark

Why are there so many ‘secret’ books? Going undercover between the covers has become an unlikely publishing hit Story by

Sam Leith

This is catnip to conspiratorial minds – and, in its extreme form, this attitude leads us down the rabbit hole of QAnon, where the Delphic Q, posting a breadcrumb trail of riddles on message boards, is seen by adherents as the sole voice of truth in a world where nothing is as it seems.

n reality, of course, when it comes to the Secret Barrister and co, there are more mundane reasons for anonymity: reluctance to compromise client confidentiality or muddy their professional standing and, perhaps, a fear of getting pointed at in the staffroom or the Inns Of Court canteen. The Secret Barrister joked that the secret to his/her success is having an “aggressively average” legal practice. Yet to their readers, the glamour of anonymity rubs off. Were the same book to have been published as the work of “Dave Scroggs, aggressively average barrister”, were the Secret Head Teacher revealed to be just any other elbow-patched toiler in a bog-standard state secondary, were the Secret Doctor prescribing nit treatment to jam-faced tots in a suburb of Birmingham... well, we can doubt these books would be quite the draw that they are. As it is, their authors become archetypes. They are spies and oracles. I’m tempted to try it out in my own line of work, styling myself as the “Secret Critic”. Then I remember that, for much of its history, the Times Literary Supplement’s reviews were all anonymous. And when Derwent May published his 2001 history of the publication, it became clear that the critics had taken full advantage. Scores had been settled and pals puffed; in his reviews, George Steiner had a habit of comparing books unfavourably to his own. And though he didn’t manage to review himself for the TLS, Anthony Burgess was fired from the Yorkshire Post for writing, under his own name, a review of one of his own pseudonymous books. Thank goodness lawyers, teachers and doctors are a more trustworthy bunch than literary journalists, eh? SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ.C O.UK 73

D E TA I L S Ð A D V I C E the squidgiest were paired with blazers at Jil Sander’s and Hermès’ shows, while at Prada’s the best were teamed with long johns. If you’re feeling brave, Sebastian – though I get the sense that you’re not – why not try a skirt or kilt? One of this season’s examples will keep your legs cool if we have an Indian summer and they’re really quite liberating. If A$AP Rocky and Kid Cudi can do it, so can you.

Dear Style Shrink,

Style Shrink By

Dear Style Shrink,

Teo van den Broeke

the AW21 collections can be found at Hermès New season, new me... Or something like that. and Wales Bonner, where they are furnished What are the most wearable trends to be getting with horizontal stripes; at A-Cold-Wall* and in line with for autumn? Nothing stupid, please. Etro, where neon is the thing; and at Fendi and Sebastian, Crewkerne MSGM, where it is all about a cropped shape Roger that, Sebastian. Message and intarsia embroidery. Wear yours with received loud and clear. Given an oversized shirt until winter and that we’re still in the early then throw on an oversized trench throes of August and not quite (which is the next big trend, FYI) knee deep in coats and scarfs just when things get chilly. The best of this yet, I’ll give you the lowdown on new breed of raincoat can be found what I think will be the three most at Louis Vuitton, Fendi and Zegna, important trans-seasonal trends to where the billowing styles wear less like Sweater vest get in on as the weather starts to outerwear and more like ballgowns. by Fendi, £690. cool. The first is the return of The final big thing to get in on as the At farfetch.com the sweater vest. More Chandler mercury drops is the spongy knitted Bing than Wallace of Gromit polo shirt. Designed to be worn more fame, the best sweater vests in like sweaters than collared shirts,

74 GQ.CO.UK SEPTEMBER 2021

Dear Style Shrink, I’m desperately on the hunt for a good high SPF that won’t leave a nasty greyish lavender hue on black or brown skin. Can you help? Sanjay, via Instagram Dear Sanjay, I’m hearing from increasing numbers of men on this subject every week and it’s an issue that many sun Face cream by cream manufacturers have Rituals, £15.50. rituals.com done woefully little to tackle. Fortunately, there are a few star brands out there fighting the good fight and the quality is up there with the best. At the lower end of the SPF spectrum, The Body Shop’s Vitamin C Glow-Protect Lotion SPF30 (£15 for 50ml) leaves no white cast and is both brightening and hydrating at the same time, not to mention affordable. At the higher end of the SPF pool, on the other hand, Rituals’ The Ritual Of Karma Sun Protection Face Cream 50 (£15.50 for 50ml) offers top-end protection with absolutely no ashy finish. Happy sun worshipping, Sanjay. SEND YOUR MENSWEAR-RELATED STYLE QUESTIONS TO STYLESHRINK@CONDENAST.CO.UK

Illustration Joe McKendry

GQ’s Style Shrink reports from the trenches

Is it acceptable to wear driving shoes to the office? Asking for a friend. Christian, London In my humble opinion, Christian, after everything we’ve gone through, you should be allowed to turn up to the office wearing a Shoes by Dior, mankini and flip-flops if £710. dior.com you so wish. The truth is that the pandemic and, with it, the collective casualisation of our wardrobes has put the final nail in the coffin of aggressive workaday dress codes. A chichi pair of driving shoes worn with smart white jeans and a blue blazer, therefore, is nothing short of elegant in the extreme. You must use common sense, of course. If you’re having a meeting with clients who expect you to wear a suit with Oxfords, then do just that, but if you’re spending a day at your desk, minding your own business, then go for your life, I say. If anyone tries to stop you, send them my way. Though not if you’ve actually worn flip-flops – they really are totally unacceptable.

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GQ Ð PREVIEW Backpack by Celine By Hedi Slimane. £1,677. celine.com

Bag it up Forget preppy back-to-school bags and invest in Celine’s update of the classic rucksack Story by

Sophie Clark Photograph by Colin Ross

or decades, the backpack has reigned supreme as the go-to choice for carting your bits and bobs from A to B. A fail-safe, hands-free bag for your laptop, trainers, book and anything else needed for daily survival, something to be chucked into and carried safely as you go about your business. It’s a no-brainer bag option. However, recent years have seen designers recognise the humble rucksack as a challenge for reinvention, a welcome opportunity to

76 GQ.CO.UK SEPTEMBER 2021

think outside the box when it comes to functional accessories. So now is the time to treat your shoulders to a rucksack that goes beyond the realms of utilitarian practicality. Show them some style with Celine this season. A brand-new shape for the French house, this rucksack is crafted from a black and red tartan sourced in Scotland and also seen throughout its runway collection in the form of a bomber jacket and shirt. In pure Hedi Slimane fashion, the rucksack gives good grunge. Inspired by

the traditional trekking backpack, it features a drawstring closing system, engraved metal fastenings and pockets aplenty – not to mention elastic lacing across the front to hug all your prized possessions. From country hikes and overnight stays to gym kits and office essentials, there is no adventure this bag can’t help you pack for. As useful as it is style conscious, it’s proof you can trust Celine to upgrade your accessories game this season. G

D E TA I L S Ð T E L E V I S I O N Hack stars Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder; (right) Steve Carell and Jennifer Aniston in The Morning Show

these problems head-on, what they really mean is they’ll also provide the solution. Take the scene in the third episode of series one, when Jennifer Aniston, resplendent in bright red in a boardroom of male grey, takes the network suits to task. “I don’t need to justify anything,” she roars. “You all are so convinced that you are the rightful owner of all of the power that it doesn’t even occur to you that someone else could be in the driver’s seat. So we have to just gingerly step around your male egos in order to not burst this precious little bubble. Well, surprise! I’m bursting it!”

Hacks is the best take on Me Too that you’ve H never heard of Story by

Stuart McGurk

From I May Destroy You to I Hate Suzie, plenty of TV shows today are examining issues around sex and consent. But it took a drama about an ageing stand-up and her underling to get to the heart of the matter

here’s a moment in the fifth episode of Hacks – the smartest, most genre-defying comedy on TV right now – in which you realise that, like the best comedies, it’s not really a comedy at all. More like a drama with wit or a Beckett play with zingers. Our antiheroine is Ava (Hannah Einbinder), a redhead gen Zer with a frown she has never attempted to turn upside down. She’s an LA comedy writer whose star was on the rise until an ill-judged joke on Twitter saw her come plummeting back down to earth: cue a public shaming, the loss of her job and, worst of all, having to decamp to Las Vegas in order to work for an ageing Joan Rivers-esque stand-up called Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) in the hope of freshening up her calcified set. Yet by the fifth episode something has switched. She’s met a good-looking young man, seemingly in Vegas on his own. They connect, do molly, kiss. She tearfully confesses something the audience already suspected: it wasn’t just that tweet; she was kind of an asshole generally. That’s why she couldn’t find work. It just gave everyone the excuse. Cue a night of passion, her getting coffee for them both the next morning and returning to discover he’d decided to throw himself out of the hotel room window while she was gone. Bad

break-up. Any other show would weave its whole series around this incident, except in Hacks it’s almost by the by – a random horrific event in a world that doesn’t play fair, because, hey, that’s life. Put another way, it’s a TV show that refuses to play by the rules of TV shows. Until this point, you could have been forgiven for thinking you had Hacks’ number: entitled navel-gazing young comic meets battle-hardened old-school gag queen. It’s zoomer vs boomer! They’re united by their self-obsession but divided by their outlook: Deborah is a teller of punchline jokes for the masses and an arch pragmatist forced to shrug off backstage gropes; Ava is a post-Me Too feminist who sees women like Deborah as part of the problem, for putting up with it, and prefers one-line dips into post-millennial melancholy (“I had a horrible nightmare I got a voicemail”). Of course, you’ll think, what better way to explore hot-button issues of feminism, cancel culture and comedy these days than two women who are essentially the same, only separated by generation and wealth? But here’s the thing: any other show would have a message it was trying to push. You only need to look at something such as The Morning Show – Apple’s take on Me Too-era breakfast TV, set to return for its second series – to see how when most dramas attempt to tackle

It’s a TV show that refuses to play by TV show rules

acks does no such grandstanding. Rather, the conflicts about the right way to do both feminism and comedy come naturally from character. And when they do go toeto-toe, you also find yourself going back and forth between them. It’s an argument not a lecture. It also makes you realise how rare it is to have a show about two generations facing off like this. At the heart of Me Too is a conversation about power and age and what happens in the imbalance. But look at the dramas that cover issues around sex and consent and they’re singularly mono-generational: Euphoria is about teens and sex; You is about toxic dates and stalking in your early twenties; I May Destroy You is about sexual assault in your late twenties; I Hate Suzie is about the assault of having sexual pictures hacked in your thirties. It’s only Hacks that truly zooms out. For a comedy, Hacks only gets more melancholic and serious as it goes on, and it becomes more heartfelt and warmer too. But just when you think the series will have a typical arc – it seems to be leading to Deborah finally throwing out her shop-worn set to say some things both personal and true – it undercuts expectations once again. In a low-down comedy club, a world away from the Vegas venue she now calls home, Deborah steps up to the stage to test the new material out, only to have the douchebag compère make a crack about her tits. Her revenge? She bargains with the man and offers him $1.69 million if he’ll sign a contract saying he’ll never set foot in a comedy club again. He agrees; the crowd cheers. It’s a victory of sorts. She’s used her power to shut him up. But you see it on her face as she leaves: there’s not enough money in the world to silence them all. HACKS IS OUT THIS AUTUMN ON SKY ATLANTIC. THE MORNING SHOW SERIES TWO IS OUT ON 17 SEPTEMBER ON APPLE TV+.

SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ. CO.UK 77

British GQ. Winner of 79 major awards. The world’s leading men’s magazine.

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D E TA I L S Ð H O R O L O G Y

On the wrist:

SUPER ICONS A personal safari through the big beasts of horology

No1 As a solar-powered Tank comes to market, Nick Foulkes asks why this jazz age timepiece has become such an enduring hit

Photograph Getty Images Illustration Oriana Fenwick

recently dined at Harry’s Bar in London with a friend who also happens to be a world-renowned and highly influential collector of contemporary timepieces. So, in theory, I should have been surprised to see him wearing a steel quartz watch. My friend is courted by auction houses, retailers and brand CEOs alike, all anxious for him to give the imprimatur of his approval by having one of their watches enter his collection. I imagine there were watch bosses across Switzerland with fiendishly clever, correspondingly priced grand complications to shift who were grinding their teeth in fury that a batterypowered, time-only watch was taking up prime wrist real estate that could otherwise have been occupied by a minute repeater double tourbillon equation of time perpetual calendar moonphase. But bruxism be damned. There he was, pleased as punch, with the new, greendialled Cartier Tank Must on his wrist; he had received it in the post that morning with a burgundy one for his wife. Overhearing our conversation, a friend at another table dashed over, also brandishing a new Must. He was wearing the blue iteration but had taken the wise precaution of purchasing every colour. Suddenly my mind’s eye swam with images of postmen heaving sacks of Cartier watches around Mayfair and Belgravia and sorting offices piled high with horology. Such is the power of Cartier these days that a (relatively) cheap and (extremely) cheerful retread of a great 1970s classic, first introduced by Alain Dominique Perrin in 1977, has become a hit with serious collectors and civilians alike. Five years ago, it was a very different story. Cartier watch sales were shrinking, as the brand chased the market for complications and chunky sports models. There was absolutely nothing wrong with these watches, but to me they brought to mind Paul Newman’s observation about

The Cartier Tank

going out for a hamburger when you have steak at home. Cartier has one of the best back catalogues in the industry, yet it was largely ignoring it and trying to move into spaces that were already occupied. If I want a complication, I visit Patek Philippe; if I take up diving, Rolex has been in the Submariner business for almost 70 years.

t seems that I was not the only person thinking that way. Cyrille Vigneron shared my views and happily, as the incoming CEO of Cartier, he was able to do something about it. He realised that real men did not always need to display their virility with a hamburger watch and that, when the situation demanded, they could tap into the Cartier chic. Having taken the helm in 2016, he reissued some of the great classics: the Santos, the Panthère, the Pasha and now the Tank Must. Simultaneously he released limitededition runs of the stuff that gets Cartier nuts excited: the Tonneau, the Cloche, the Crash, the Cintrée and the Asymétrique. I always saw a Cartier timepiece as a vital component of a certain, slightly decadent Parisian elegance – a sort of horological distillation of a multigenerational journey through the Paris of Boni de Castellane, Bernard Boutet de Monvel, Yves Montand, Yves Saint Laurent and Alain Delon. And king among Cartier watches is, of course, the Tank, which made its debut just before the 1920s started to roar and the watch became the choice of the jazz age elite. It has been modern since it was launched more than 100 years ago. Whereas the pocket watch it replaced had been circular, the Tank, the best known of the early purpose-designed wrist-worn timepieces of the new century, was rectilinear. In many ways it can be seen as one of the earliest icons of the art deco period, inasmuch as the quality of linearity extended beyond the case design: the numerals were Roman and the minute track took the shape of a railway track that ran around the edge of the dial.

Strap

Three colours are available (black, blue and green), all made from non-animal leather.

Case

The watch comes in two sizes: 29.5 x 22mm and 33.7 x 25.5mm.

Indexes

Hidden in the classic Roman numerals you’ll spot Cartier’s “secret signature” at seven o’clock.

One of the great proofs of the Tank’s design genius is its versatility. During the 1920s and 1930s, it was joined by many variations: the Tank Cintrée (1921), the Tank Chinoise (1922), the Tank Savonette (1926), the Tank À Guichets (1928), the Tank Basculante (1932) and the Tank Asymétrique (1936). Prices for the originals have soared after the wave of interest in Cartier. Thus, the relaunch of Must is such a smart move: it is the people’s Tank. In referencing the 1970s original, it demonstrates the playful side of the Tank. But, showing its versatility, it is also a watch that addresses the more serious aspects of life today. There is even a Must for the modern environmental activist: a solar-powered version on an upcycled strap. The watch’s “Solarbeat” photovoltaic charging system is fed by light that filters through the numerals on the dial and Cartier claims a 16-year battery life – so it will be 2037 before it needs a service. By which time, for the good of the planet, I hope solar energy is powering a lot more than watches. TANK MUST DE CARTIER WITH SOLARBEAT PHOTOVOLTAIC MOVEMENT, FROM £2,140. CARTIER.COM

Muhammad Ali sporting a Tank in London in 1976

Prices for the original Tanks have soared after the wave of interest in Cartier SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ. CO.UK 79

eligions are big on hypocrites. The eighth circle of Dante’s Inferno is full of them, weighed down by decorous cloaks that symbolise their disguised duplicity. Islam has a word (munafiqun) for these suspect individuals. But the religions of woke and anti-woke make hypocrites of us all. The culture war risks dragging everyone to hell. Oh, for the days when culture war just meant the competition for TV ratings between Melvyn Bragg and Mark Lawson. For many outside the woke coalition (even those who share some of its reported values) the contention is often not the issues themselves, but the relentless puritanism of their exponents – the commissars “choking on sanctimony and lacking in compassion”, as the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote after being denounced by former students for gender-critical views. We can’t all be saints, but surely we aren’t all terrible sinners either? The attritional moralising of some wokeness asserts that we are. That’s what makes it such a cold, unappealing mindset. It is a 21stcentury Calvinism complete with double predestination. Saved or damned and nothing in between. Those who subscribe to some form of sex-based rights, for example, are on a spectrum from unreconstructed transphobes to individuals who have spent their lives fighting inequality and aren’t enamoured with abandoning the definition of the female they have worked so hard to protect. For those who distrust wokeness (forgive the use of the w-word, but we all need frames of reference), it’s the tarring and feathering of anyone who raises even a question against the orthodoxy that often creates pushback in the first place. By trying to make a complex business a yesor-no absolute, the fundamentalists make enemies of potential allies. They have also made hypocrites of themselves, since absolutism is honoured more in the breach than in the observance. This hypocrisy is something people instinctively react against, on the correct assumption that those dishing out the moral lectures are no purer of heart than they are. This is not about the need to fight racism across personal and public lines. That is a given. Much of the current discourse is over how to do the fighting and who does what.

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Woke or not, the CULTURE war makes hypocrites of us all Why moral absolutism blockades its own agenda Story by

George Chesterton

Clockwise from top left: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; Boris Johnson; JK Rowling; Ollie Robinson

When the bien pensant dogma is that anyone not a vocal ally of BLM is by default inescapably racist, it reinforces the idea that racism is an original sin. But if racism can be fought and defeated it cannot also be an original sin. If racism can be overcome it must, by definition, be highly contextualised and subject to the mutability of history and culture. If the idea of historical original sin was valid, no one would ever speak to a German again. The most significant achievement of the abused England football team is to legitimise the idea that antiracism is a national concern and not the province of any particular ideology. Amid all the ignorance and bigotry, there must also be space to concede that there are many different ways to fight for a cause and that diversity applies to belief and opinion as much as to race and culture. Nothing should be an auto-da-fé.

If the idea of historical original sin was valid, no one would speak to a German ever again

n the conduct of the culture war, the woke can’t possibly live up to their own standards, while the anti-woke take stands on issues they don’t really believe in. It’s poisonous and pointless. We all live in a whirl of compromises and micro-hypocrisies. Deep down, most people understand life is so complex and demanding that the argument that there can be no argument, or that every moral debate must be “settled”, is too boneheaded to accept. This is nicely encapsulated in the shibboleth question, “Is JK Rowling pure evil or someone you strongly disagree with?” How many of those who espouse the hardline political thrust of BLM (defunding the police, let’s say) also take a stand against the Chinese sweatshop (or worse) their phones came from? How many newbie historians who tell people to “educate themselves” buy goods and services from the innumerable companies with links to the slave trade or consider that the football team they support or the college they attend is backed by funds from a country in which homosexuality is illegal? Let

he who is without sin... Physician, heal thyself. We only need to listen to the testimony of the great West Indies fast bowler Michael Holding to know what a blight racism has been in sport. So what to do about the offensive tweets of the (then teenage) England cricketer Ollie Robinson? There is a distinction between those tweets (a symptom) and structural racism (the cause). Yes, they are part of the same problem, but the punishment must fit the crime. Nobody can know if an apology is genuine or not, so we can only judge on words and deeds. Let Robinson serve his ban, but the punitive idea his career should be over (as even a former England player suggested) is just the thing to alienate would-be progressives. On cue, cabinet ministers waded in on the opposing side for a cheap political hit, showing what a tawdry thing a culture war can be. The symbiotic relationship between left and right is seen in the phoney hysteria over the removal of a picture of the Queen in a students’ common room, some textbook pearl clutching that makes the right as hypocritical as their supposed enemies. This cynicism is the mirror image of the mean zeal of cancel culture. Who in their right mind would want to pick a side? This is not to propose a moral relativism that excuses hatred or violence. We draw the lines with laws that evolve with the times, laws that should be applied to the racist trolls of footballers, for example. Those laws are there to police the boundaries, not the everyday and there is sometimes a difference between not liking being told what to think and being an actual racist or transphobe. Not recognising this possibility means many good messages fall on stony ground. Puritanism and hypocrisy always lurk together. Can I support trans rights and the fight against racism without presupposing that anyone with a slightly different approach is morally bankrupt and beyond the pale? Certain members of the government push that question to its limits. Boris Johnson’s hypocrisy is seemingly so unburdened by conscience that he barely registers as a hypocrite at all, which may in part explain his popularity. Puritanism always fails because it contains the seeds of its own destruction. That’s a real lesson from history. But, like all lessons from history, it will be ignored.

Photographs Getty Images; Shutterstock

D E TA I L S Ð P O L I T I C S

D E TA I L S Ð T R E N D S

No, Mr Bond. We expect you to buy Just in time for the much-delayed release of No Time To Die, you can get your hands on 007’s favourite summer polo shirt Story by

Teo van den Broeke

here’s a scene in 2006’s 007 smash Casino Royale – Daniel Craig’s first turn in the uber-spy hot seat – in which Bond is seen wearing a midnight-blue polo shirt for an afternoon chat in the Bahamas with Judi Dench’s M. According to the film’s Academy Award-winning costume designer, Lindy Hemming, Craig’s shortsleeved Sunspel confection was a bid to “show off his physique”. She succeeded. Perfectly cut and supremely flattering, the shirt was crafted from ultra-lightweight warp-knit cotton and inspired by Sunspel’s first ever polo – originally invented by the 161-year-old company’s then owner, Peter Hill, in the 1950s for the heat of the Italian Riviera. Now, ahead of Bond’s 25th outing on the big screen and Daniel Craig’s last, the heritage

British brand is releasing three takes on the shirt in “Spectral Grey”, “Sky Diver Blue” and (our favourite) “Grey Melange”. Worn with low-key trunks on holiday this summer (pandemic willing) or caramel chinos (à la Mr Craig) through spring, whichever you choose will fast prove the most adaptable garment in your warm-weather wardrobe. “There are so many characters in film and theatre that I have dressed in Sunspel vests, T-shirts and underwear, because they are classic, timeless and beautifully made,” says Hemming. “[For Casino Royale], I thought it would be a perfect collaboration of quality and Britishness to ask Sunspel to create all [Bond’s] T-shirts, polo shirts and underwear, which they duly did, excellently. He looks very sexy and happy in their clothing.”

‘Bond looks very sexy and happy in Sunspel clothing’

Daniel Craig in a Sunspel ‘Riviera’ polo shirt in Casino Royale (2006)

How to wear it Alongside the Casino Royale original in midnight blue, Sunspel has launched three new colours for No Time To Die When it comes to rocking a Bond polo shirt this summer, we recommend investing in one of each colour and alternating with the same pair of jeans, or chino shorts if the mercury starts to rise. That’s four easy summer outfits, with absolutely no fuss. Just as 007 would like it. POLO SHIRT BY SUNSPEL, £90. SUNSPEL.COM

SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ.C O.UK 81

Still wearing a suit and tie? Level up! Boss reworks formalwear for a post-pandemic world Story by

Teo van den Broeke

t’s no secret that the pandemic has had a seismic impact on the way in which we dress. Not only did the repeated lockdowns force us all to embrace the slovenliest versions of ourselves – with track pants, hoodies and slippers becoming the sartorial order of at least half a year – but it was also a seismic shift that seems to have become more deeply ingrained into our collective psyches than many, us at GQ included, would have first predicted. The shift toward comfort had been happening long before the pandemic first hit, of course. Ever since the dawn of the Silicon Valley tech giants in the early 2010s – and with them the rise of wearing flip-flops and hoodies to the office – sales of suits, as we traditionally know them, have been on a steady decline. According to research firm Euromonitor US, revenue for men’s suits declined from $2.2 billion (£1.6bn) in 2013 to $1.9bn (£1.4bn) in 2018. It’s a state of affairs that has not only changed our spending and dressing habits forever, but it’s one that has also forced the world’s biggest fashion brands to entirely reconsider their menswear proposals, with hybrid-style suits and separates becoming a preferred alternative to traditional canvassed two- and three-pieces. Boss, the German fashion giant that has made its name producing immaculately cut suits for the world’s most spiffily dressed men (Ryan Reynolds, Eddie Redmayne and the Hemsworths are all notable fans of the brand’s tailoring), has not found itself exempt from the need to pivot toward producing an easier style of garment. For AW21 the brand has released a brand-new Performance Wear line, designed expressly with our new lower-key mode of living in mind. Suits are cut from crease-free fabrics and are machine

82 GQ.CO.UK SEPTEMBER 2021

Left: Watch, £299. Main: Coat, £369. Trousers, £179. Trainers, £239. Socks, £12. Below: Coat, £369. Jacket, £389. Shirt, £89. Trousers, £179. Trainers, £239. All by Boss. boss.com

‘This meeting of function and style creates a wardrobe with more freedom’

BOSS

Above: Coat, £545. Right: Coat, £489. Shirt, £189. Trousers, £169. Below: Coat, £645. Jacket, £139. Trousers, £189. Shoes, £279. Bag, £239. All by Boss. boss.com

Practical outerwear with style in spades From left: £389. £349. £545. All by Boss. boss.com Whether it’s the unpredictable British climate you’re worried about or looking the part during your commute again, Boss has you covered.

washable, trousers are built to look as though they belong to a suit when they’re in fact cut from ultra-comfortable jersey, bombers are made from fabrics that match the suit trousers in the collection – as part of the brand’s smart new modular tailoring system – and raincoats are ultra lightweight, waterproof and packable. Occupying a not dissimilar space to Paul Smith’s inordinately successful A Suit To Travel In range – which features a number of washable, crease-free tailoring options – and the kind of soft-edged sports-infused suiting found at Brunello Cucinelli and Canali, the new collection is a smart move in a rapidly changing world and one that will no doubt prove successful as we begin slowly returning to our offices this autumn (not without a day WFH here and there; we’re not savages). “The world has changed quickly and so has the way we live our lives,” says Ingo Wilts, Boss’ chief brand officer. “For AW21 I looked at new ways to dress for work by combining utility and technology to create a modern wardrobe. Work is not just in the office any more, it is everywhere. It is local and global. People will be looking to buy smarter in this new world, ensuring purpose in their purchases against their other lifestyle choices. This meeting of function and style creates a wardrobe with more freedom and that is exciting to me.” BOSS.COM

SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ.C O.UK 83

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D E TA I L S Ð U S P O L I T I C S banish the Trump presidency from the collective memory and so treated the new commanderin-chief with a kind of affection that surpassed even the fondness demonstrated towards Barack Obama. But it soon became clear to anyone looking closely enough that not all was well with the Biden presidency. Biden has avoided press conferences and stuck mostly to soft-cringe photo ops. He is rarely asked a more difficult question than what flavour ice cream he’s eating.

Photographs Getty Images

Thanks to the horror of Donald Trump, President Joe Biden has enjoyed the most generous of political honeymoons. But goodwill never lasts in politics and now Biden’s job-approval ratings are starting to wobble as Americans wonder if the man they hired to lead them has any idea what he is doing. Was everybody so desperate to see the back of The Donald that they overlooked Biden’s glaring flaws? Here’s the ugly truth. Almost nobody voted for Biden because he inspired them. His manifesto seemed almost apologetic: “You’d be surprised at how radical I can be,” he effectively kept telling America. Nobody bought that. Voters just liked that Biden was not Trump. As an elder statesman, Biden exuded a sort of silent generation decency that made him seem antithetical to the spoilt boomer-in-chief. In January, in his inauguration speech, Biden promised unity after four years of social-media pyrotechnics and division. He spoke of “an American story of decency and dignity. Of love and of healing. Of greatness and of goodness.” Coming 14 days after a small army of demented Trump supporters had stormed the US Capitol, these words gave comfort to a worried nation. Trumpy cranks could call Biden senile and a “Trojan horse for the radical left” all they liked. Most Americans saw just a welcome change in tone. Biden’s first 100 days seemed to defy the critics too. Sleepy Joe’s administration looked wide awake. The vaccination rollout was greatly accelerated and expanded. Various ambitious and gargantuan spending plans were announced: the American Rescue Plan Act ($1.9 trillion); the American Jobs Plan ($2tn); the American Families Plan ($1.5tn). Biden-FDR comparisons sprouted from the opinion pages of the mainstream press. Tumescent centrist pundits talked about how Biden is able to be radical precisely because he was a moderate. They said something similar about Bill Clinton 30 years ago. It all felt desperate, though, because it was. Journalists were even more eager than voters to

Biden’s benevolent rhetoric rings increasingly hollow as it becomes clear how muddled his priorities are

t first, voters were happy to go along with the charade; nobody minded receiving large stimulus cheques in the post. But who will pay for all the money swilling around the American financial system? Biden’s Treasury Department threatened to raise money by increasing taxes on the superrich, then went quiet when the policy caused the markets to dip. And a deeper question looms: does Biden have any serious answers to the structural problems that had made Americans turn, in that gonzo democratic moment in 2016, to Donald Trump? Maybe not. “America is back,” Biden keeps telling the world and, certainly, international leadership summits have a more convivial atmosphere than in the barmy Trump years. Yet Biden’s benevolent rhetoric rings increasingly hollow as it becomes clear how muddled his administration is on its priorities. He wants to tackle China’s disturbing ascent as well as climate change, but he won’t talk about China’s absurdly large carbon emissions. He talks about unity, yet his administration has shown its intent to pursue policies, such as the teaching of critical race theory in schools, that seem likely to stir up acrimony and worsen

Climate activists protest in Washington, DC, 28 June

the culture wars. Most voters can forgive a bit of woke grandstanding but don’t take kindly to the state telling their children they are racist. Biden keeps blaming “the mess we inherited” when it comes to America’s Covid response, yet any fair-minded observer should acknowledge that Trump’s “Warp Speed” vaccination programme has greatly helped the fight against the pandemic. Team Biden keeps stressing “decency” and saying that all immigrants are welcome in his America, but that may have triggered an unprecedented wave of illegal immigration and an even bigger humanitarian problem at the southern border. Nobody voted for that. When Biden does brave the press, he sounds increasingly lost and irritable, which jars with his heavily PR’d image as a genial old boy. In his underwhelming tour of Europe in June, the president was asked a slightly technical question about the continuation of Trump-era sanctions on steel and aluminium. “One hundred and twenty days,” he snapped. “Give me a break. Need time.” Sorry, Joe, your time is now.

Time to step up, Biden ‘Not being Trump’ is no longer enough Story by Freddy Gray

Joe Biden boards Air Force One, 29 June

SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ. CO.UK 85

Autumnal accents From checked shirting and must-have denim to the latest scent and watch of the season, here’s how to master your autumn/winter wardrobe. Add straight to basket... Edited by Sophie

Clark

1. Bag by Dior, £2,300. dior.com 2. Shirt by Gucci, £500. At matchesfashion.com 3. Belts by Tod’s, £450 each. tods.com 4. Watch by Breguet, £14,500. breguet.com 5. Imagination eau de parfum by Louis Vuitton, £200 for 100ml. louisvuitton.com 6. Hat by Alpha Tauri, £79.95. alphatauri.com 7. Jeans by Dolce & Gabbana, £475. At matchesfashion.com 8. Boots by Camper, £410. camperlab.com 9. Swiss army knife by Victorinox, £19. victorinox.com

86 GQ.CO.UK SEPTEMBER 2021

GQ Ð PREVIEW Boots by Bottega Veneta, £850. bottegaveneta.com

Take a hike! This autumn, stomp your way through whatever the season throws at you with Bottega Veneta’s Puddle Bomber boots Story by

utumn is just around the corner and with it comes a few seasonal changes: layers of knitwear and floor-sweeping coats, golden, leaf-lined streets and evenings of fireside cosiness. But most importantly cooler climes sound the siren for boot season. Sure, boots are a practical, reliable choice to see you through autumn and winter, but they also have the superpower to amp up any outfit in one fell swoop. But before you dust off your old faithfuls of the last five winters, why not consider an upgrade? Look no further than the Puddle Bomber

Sophie Clark Photograph by Colin Ross

boots. Much like other boots of Bottega Veneta’s recent past, these bad boys will not disappoint. For the last few seasons, Bottega Veneta creative director Daniel Lee has created finetuned incarnations of classic boots, from calf-high buffed-leather Chelsea boots with super-sized threaded rubber soles to souped up Wellington styles, ankle-high and made from biodegradable rubber. Next up in the outdoor function vs high-fashion trend, it’s time for the hiking boot to receive a Bottega Veneta remix. A hiking boot with a modern attitude, the Puddle Bomber features an upper crafted

from slightly padded technical fabric, which mirrors the bomber jackets from the Italian fashion house’s current season. Lined along the front are metal eyelets woven with tubular technical laces in contrasting colourways for a secure yet eye-catching closure. With a chunky and voluminous last, the Puddle Bomber boots are definitely not shy. Available in black, bright green, inky blue and pure white with yolk-coloured laces, these boots promise to turn some heads. So this autumn, call in the reinforcements from Bottega Veneta. It’s boot season, baby! Start walkin’! G SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ. CO.UK 87

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Edited by

Paul Henderson

+ Roe deer, braised chicory, roast onion and preserved cherry at Cail Bruich, Glasgow – p.90

This month: Catch le vibe at Le Bar, London p.91 The Forest Side joins the Lake District’s max-luxe hotel club p.92 Turn over a new leaf in Scotland’s ‘biophiliac’ bedroom p.93 SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ.CO .UK 89

TA S T E

has? What lockdown has done is allow us the time to get the menu right. And I’m pretty happy with it.” Not as happy as her guests are. From the first three bite-sized snacks and bread with a positively indecent chicken fat and crispy skin butter, each course is clever, complementary and always surprising. A rich and light smoked eel mousse with mackerel, for example, is offset with a sweet and zingy Granny Smith sauce and indulgently topped with Exmoor caviar. Wye Valley asparagus is served with morels, food and more religious experience. The a mushroom duxelles, black garlic and a truffle Madeira sauce (pictured below) that claws and tails of the hand-picked crusGreat British manages to be earthy and intense but also taceans are meticulously prepared, the Menu ‘Champion fresh, with the bold and delicate flavours heads and bones used to boost the bisque, Of Champions’ Lorna McNee never in conflict. Stuffed Scrabster turbot but throw in a Japanese ponzu dressis meaty and intensified with ing with yuzu and lemon and ‘ It’s not katsuobushi (tuna flakes) but topped with a sliver of lardo been easy, and choirs of heavenly angels backed up with umami-packed kombu and perfect garden but we got sing. “As soon as I came up with that recipe, I knew it was right,” pea puree. And honey-glazed the menu McNee says with understated Sladesdown duck comes with right in baby beets, potato emulsion lockdown’ pride. “Every component works and with those incredible lanand Perthshire blackberries. All goustines from the coldest lochs in the credit to Scotland’s larder, but in McNee’s country, it’s hard to go wrong.” hands magic happens. The last restaurant to hold a star in However, one dish stands out... a desertGlasgow was Gordon Ramsay’s Amaryllis, island dish, if that particular atoll was in so McNee is in pretty good company as far the Hebrides. Roast West Coast langousas Michelin goes, but she isn’t done with tine with citrus, bisque and ponzu is less one. Her talent and her ability mean she is The Restaurant gunning for that second star and no chef has ever achieved that in this city. If this meal, the impeccable service, the produce and cooking is anything to go by, when the inspectors return they might have to promote Cail Bruich to the Premier League. And if that happens, getting a table at 4.15pm on a Saturday afternoon with no Forget haggis, tatties and deep-fried anything, the superstar chef ’s masterly wine will be a very small price to pay. hen GQ visited Cail Bruich, shortlisted for this year’s GQ Food & Drink Awards and the first restaurant in Glasgow to land a Michelin star in the last 18 years, the city was still trapped in “level three” lockdown. Consequently, it was not able to serve any alcohol and the reservation restrictions meant the only table it could offer was at 4.15pm. Not quite lunch, definitely not dinner; perfect timing for a chocolate digestive, not an eight-course chef ’s tasting menu. I should have (im) politely declined in classic East-End style, but I didn’t for one very good reason... Lorna McNee. The former Scottish Chef Of The Year and Great British Menu “Champion Of Champions” learned her craft with the legendary Andrew Fairlie at Gleneagles and what a talented cook she is. Having taken over the kitchen reins at Cail Bruich from co-owner Chris Charalambous last year, her timing may have been a little off (you know, what with Covid), but her ambition and ability are not in question. “We haven’t had an easy time of it,” she tells me from behind the pass, “but who

Lorna McNee’s heavenly Cail Bruich shoots for the stars

curated menu is redefining Scottish fare. And, as GQ can attest, Glasgow is all the better for it – even through lockdown Story by Paul Henderson

90 GQ.CO.UK SEPTEMBER 2021

725 GREAT WESTERN ROAD, GLASGOW G12 8QX. 01413 346265. CAILBRUICH.CO.UK

The Bar

Le Bar at Louie, London

The Roundup

Call of the wild: Three restaurants showcasing foraged ingredients

Transport yourself to a bougie Bourbon Street-style taproom

When Louie opened late last year, it was obvious the Covent Garden Creole restaurant and bar would be the hottest new ticket in town. It is, after all, the brainchild of Chiltern Firehouse’s Guillaume Glipa. To compare, let alone compete, with Firehouse’s reputation was never going to be an easy feat, but, somehow, Glipa has pulled it off. Stepping into Le Bar on the second floor is like living a luxurious New Orleans fever dream, complete with whitejacketed staff, glitzy gold detailing and a leafy outdoor terrace. The clientele are as sexy as the surroundings, with the beautifully dressed crowd offering ample opportunity for people watching, particularly after dark. That’s when the DJ gets going, the vibe goes from buzzy to full-blown party and the drinks flow until 2am. And those cocktails are second to none. From the refreshing Crocopolitan (Bulleit Bourbon and hibiscus) to the vodka-spiked Kiki De Montparnasse, the drinks list is a refined exercise in alchemy, encapsulating Louie’s self-described spirit by “celebrating the soul of New Orleans, the suaveness of Paris and the sass of a New Yorker”. Our top tip? Visit for lunch and park up under the canopy outside for what we promise will be the most spectacular bar experience you’ll have in 2021. Kathleen Johnston 13-15 WEST STREET, LONDON WC2. 020 8057 6500. LOUIE-LONDON.COM

Turnips

Smoke & Salt

Wilding

43 Borough Market, London SE1

115 Tooting High Street, London SW17

11-12 Little Clarendon Street, Oxford OX1 2HP

turnipsboroughmarket.com

smokeandsalt.com

wilding.wine

A much-loved fruit and veg stall for more than 20 years, Turnips teamed up with chef Tomas Lidakevicius (City Social) last summer to introduce a pop-up restaurant with a focus on foraged ingredients and fermentation. It’s now a permanent fixture.

Once a Pop Brixton supper club, Smoke & Salt went permanent in Tooting last autumn. Championing unusual and foraged ingredients, chefs Aaron Webster (Dinner By Heston Blumenthal) and Remi Williams (Deuxave, Boston) use ancient techniques such as smoking, curing and preserving to create an exciting modern menu.

A low-impact restaurant, wine bar and wine shop all under one roof, Wilding was launched in Oxford’s Jericho neighbourhood early this summer by wine expert Kent Barker.

Eat: Casual small plates include wild Dorset venison with apple slaw (£14) or go all in with the ever-changing six-course tasting menu (£72). Drink: Sip on seasonal serves such as the Wild Foraged Samphire Martini (£13.50) with Beluga vodka, fresh samphire and, intriguingly, oyster shell.

Eat: Expect experimental seasonal dishes such as fish and nettle crackers (£6) and grilled quail legs with preserved lime (£6) or go wild with the sharing menu (£35). Drink: Classic cocktails get a Smoke & Salt twist too. A Smoked Banana Manhattan (£9)? And why not?

Eat: Chef Dominique Goltinger works with a Somerset forager to bring biodiverse ingredients to the table, so there’s a sturdy plant-based offering, plus local dairy, shellfish and meat. Look out for dishes such as handdived scallops with pickled wild garlic flowers (£9). Drink: A bold cocktail selection sits alongside the 400-strong wine list. Into The Wild (£9.50) stars a fruity poppy liqueur and Black Cow vodka. Jennifer Bradly

The Bottle

Moët’s Grand celebratory cork-popper deserves a more dignified pour Salut! Moët & Chandon’s Grand Vintage 2013 Moët & Chandon stake a decent claim to the title of the party champagne. From the days of Napoleon cracking open a bottle with a handy sabre to mark his victories, it’s been at the heart of the celebration, via Formula One champions’ effervescent explosions on the podium to Swarovski crystal-adorned bottles bringing the bling to an evening out. But the vintage expressions tell a very different story. The Grand Vintage is only ever made in exceptional years, when the vineyard conditions are perfect. The 2013 vintage came quite late, the team waiting until the grapes were at their absolute zenith before picking, fermenting and seven years of ageing. The result is spectacular, with an enticing ripeness. Rich notes of nuts and honey are given a shot of lively citrus for balance. Probably not the bottle for living out your Lewis Hamilton fantasy, this is best enjoyed in a wine glass to enhance the stunning flavours. Natasha Britton £55. AT CLOS19.COM

SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ. CO.UK 91

TA S T E The Hotel

Don’t flake on a Lakes break! Gothic grandeur and star food make The Forest Side a must Story by

Paul Henderson

icking a hotel in the Lake District used to be straightforward. My Auntie Pam and Uncle Ron, for instance, ran a typical guest house there in the 1970s and 1980s and it was very nice and homely. That would have done you. Today, though, there are so many luxury options that visitors are spoiled for choice: Gilpin Hotel & Lake House, The Samling, Another Place, Brimstone... Honestly, you can’t move in the Lakes for top-tier lodgings these days. The Forest Side, however, is a little different. A Victorian villa set on the outskirts of Grasmere not far from Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage, it has the gothic grandeur of a small country house hotel but reimagined with interior designer James Mackie’s modern eye and immaculate decoration (Zoffany fabrics, Farrow & Ball paintwork and Harrison Spinks beds). What it doesn’t have is pretentiousness or faux airs and graces – a warm Cumbrian welcome is guaranteed for those on two legs or four (pet-friendly rooms are available). You won’t want to take doggo to dinner, though. The Michelin-star restaurant is where chef Paul “Lenno” Leonard (ex-Marcus Wareing and Andrew Fairlie) makes

The Double Red Duke’s prawn cocktail, sea scallops, devilled eggs and steak

Clockwise from main: The Forest Side’s Victorian villa setting; grounds-inspired cocktails; chef Paul Leonard; cured Cumbrian saddleback and cultured yoghurt

the most of locally sourced ingredients and sensational produce from the hotel’s impressive kitchen garden. His creative eight-course menu is as good as anything you’ll find up here (and that is saying a lot when Simon Rogan’s L’Enclume isn’t too far away). The ideal retreat for a romantic weekend away, Kendal Mint Cake-munching ramblers or GQ Taste-inspired travellers, The Forest Side just made your Lake District hotel choice that much harder. It’s not a bad problem to have, though... ROOMS FROM £299. KESWICK ROAD, GRASMERE, CUMBRIA LA22 9RN. 01539 435250. THEFORESTSIDE.COM

The Pub

The Double Red Duke, Cotswolds The Double Red Duke is the latest addition to the Country Creatures’ Cotswolds collection. Tucked away in Clanfield, the 16th-century wisteria-clad building is all honeyhued stone, candy-striped parasols and equally sweet bedrooms. In warm weather, the terrace rewards hungry visitors with the sort of bar snacks you feel guilty categorising as “snacks” at all. Think oysters grilled with smoked bone marrow and devilled eggs with black truffle. So, yes, not exactly pork scratchings and a warm pint. Now we’re on the subject, five local pumps, including Bobby Beer and Rookwood Pale Ale, prop up the bar, while on the wine list established varietals join more avant-garde options such as a wild ferment chardonnay from Bethnal Green’s Renegade Urban Winery. In the main restaurant, starters err on the side of nostalgia, with a zhuzhed-up prawn cocktail and asparagus topped with Cacklebean salad cream. The kitchen team comes cherry-picked from Hawksmoor and Pitt Cue, so the steaks were high, but GQ’s porterhouse, paired with salt and vinegar-dripping chips, butter lettuce and Tewkesbury hollandaise, delivered beyond expectation. And if all that doesn’t put you out to pasture, then retire to the snug for pudding, books, board games or another bottle. Millicia West BOURTON ROAD, CLANFIELD, BAMPTON OX18 2RB. COUNTRYCREATURES.COM

92 GQ.CO.UK SEPTEMBER 2021

Small Bites

Where GQ has been eating this month Presenting three London outposts to add to your culinary checklist

Kerridge’s Fish & Chips, Harrods First there was Gordon Ramsay’s Burger, then Jason Atherton’s new Social. Now, King Tom Kerridge has landed in Harrods with a tiny, ultra-luxe chippy. Standout dish: Lobster Thermidor and triple-cooked chips (with a Sat Bains samosa on the side).

87-135 Brompton Road, London SW1. 020 7225 6800. harrods.com

The Experience

Eat, sleep, ‘forest bath’, repeat Beat burnout in biophilic bliss with a night in Glasgow’s La Chambre Vert Story by Paul Henderson

I Davies And Brook Daniel Humm’s all-conquering return to Claridge’s more than lives up to the hype, the accolades and its billing as Best Restaurant at the GQ Food & Drink Awards 2021. Standout dish: Don’t miss either the black cod or the dry-aged duck.

Claridge’s, Brook Street, London W1. 020 7107 8848. daviesandbrook.co.uk

Nobu Portman Square Open to great fanfare, the new restaurant hits all the Nobu Matsuhisa high notes you’d expect in the swankiest of Marylebone settings. Standout dish: Whitefish sashimi dry miso.

22 Portman Square, London W1. 020 3988 5888. london-portman.nobuhotels.com

t might sound like a cross between a gimmick and a garden centre, but the Kimpton Blythswood Square Hotel in Glasgow has created a unique “forest bathing” suite for guests looking to get back to nature without sacrificing any of their five-star comfort. An experimental concept to boost relaxation, guests are invited to check in to their room where biophilic design principles have been applied. But guess what? It actually might work. Having collaborated with plant experts at Benholm Group, the room is filled with trailing ivy, cheese plants, umbrella grass, golden pothos, even aloe vera to bring the calming qualities of the natural environment inside. To increase the wellness experience, CBD skincare brand La Rue Verte has developed a natural sleep formula and DJ Brian d’Souza has put together a meditative playlist to finish the job. Throw in a massage at the hotel’s awardwinning spa and a light supper at the Bo & Birdy restaurant and you might just get the best night’s sleep of your life. All you have to do is check in, turn on and drop off. Welcome to the jungle. G FROM £579 PER NIGHT. 11 BLYTHSWOOD SQUARE, GLASGOW G2 4AD. 0141 248 8888. KIMPTONBLYTHSWOODSQUARE.COM

From top: Kimpton Blythswood Square Hotel’s Bo & Birdy restaurant; spa director Finlay Anderson; La Chambre Vert

SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ. CO.UK 93

Three days of live, in-person interaction, conversation and entertainment with the world’s biggest names in business, fashion, technology, sport and culture

First speakers announced...

Matt Haig Journalist and bestselling author of Reasons To Stay Alive and The Midnight Library.

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II American actor and star of The Trial Of The Chicago 7 and the highly anticipated Matrix sequel.

Ben Francis Entrepreneur and founder of fitness brand Gymshark, which in 2020 was valued at £1 billion.

Riz Ahmed Actor, producer, director, musician and Oscar-nominated star of Sound Of Metal.

Griff Pop singer-songwriter and this year’s winner of the Brits Rising Star award.

Olly Alexander Singer-songwriter, LGBTQ+ advocate and lead of critically acclaimed drama It’s A Sin.

To register interest for tickets and accommodation, sign up now at

gqheroes.com

3 - 5 November 2021, Soho Farmhouse, Oxfordshire

Edited by

Paul Henderson

There might be more SUVs in the sea, but Aston Martin’s first offering is a do-everything, go-anywhere family GT

This month: GQ drives 500 miles in the latest addition to the luxury 4x4 brigade; how a small Croatian marque is tearing up the track and the EV rule book SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ.C O.UK 95

No, the sky hasn’t fallen... ...But Aston Martin has finally launched an SUV. We took the high road to Scotland to test it Story by

Paul Henderson

And he’s right, you can’t. Only now you don’t need to because they are no longer competing for the Scot top spot. Thanks to another 100-year-old company with a celebrated history, a strong link to Scotland (thanks to a local lad and his famous Q-Branch company car) and the ability to leave children and adults staring in slackjawed awe, not even Tunnock’s tastiest treats can compete with GQ’s “number one reason to visit Scotland” discovery. It might have a slightly different price point and, granted, it isn’t quite so readily accessible, but driving the Aston Martin DBX in the Highlands is so incredible you might even forget your own name, let alone what your favourite Scottish sweet is. And that is just as well, because, as everyone knows, there is an awful lot riding on the success of the DBX. Despite all the company’s critical success producing two-seater sports cars over the years, this fourth model in Aston Martin’s second-century production cycle (after the DB11, Vantage and the DBS) is the one they need to sell in big numbers or they will lose their licence to thrill. Diamonds may be forever, but lossmaking auto manufacturers are not. The DBX has also arrived unfashionably late to the SUV party. Listen to the naysayers and they will tell you that despite the number of luxe 4x4s currently competing for your big bucks (Bentley Bentayga, Lamborghini Urus, Porsche Cayenne), the world has moved on. Where once

GQ’s Paul Henderson (inset) drove the North Coast 500 in the DBX

NEED TO KNOW Engine 4.0-litre 542bhp twin-turbo V8 Performance 0-62mph in 4.5 secs; top speed, 181mph Price £158,000 Contact astonmartin.com

Photograph Marilyn Henderson

o one should need an excuse to visit Scotland. The people, the place, the romance of it all, sure, all valid, but the real reason to discover your inner Celt is for the sweets. Forget your “water of life” distilleries, dramatic landscapes and historic monuments, anyone venturing north of the border knows, whatever they might claim, they are really there for two locally produced confections. Both are made by the legendary 130-year-old Lanarkshire company Tunnock’s and, in their unique and sugary way, are chocolate-coated perfection in their own right. Yes, you can buy them almost anywhere in the world, but – like Guinness – they taste even better in the motherland. The first is the Caramel Wafer. A modern classic, it features five layers of light, waffled cookie glued together with a caramel cement and encased in a thin choco jacket. The other is the remarkable Teacake. Unleashed upon the world in 1956, this fiendishly delicious “cake” starts with a circular shortbread biscuit base that supports a dome of light and airy mallow, before once again becoming encased in chocolate. It is a feat of irresistible artisanal alchemy and the confectionery equivalent of crack cocaine. As Coldplay’s Chris Martin once lamented: “You can’t choose between the Caramel Wafer and the Teacake. They’re like Lennon and McCartney: you can’t separate them.”

CARS

Aston Martin’s first SUV is powered by a twin-turbo V8

The DBX’s design is small and sporty, powerful and pretty every man, his 2.4 children and his dog wanted a high-riding, road-commanding, petrol-powered machine, now the drivers of Greta Britain want EVs and hybrids and low-emission motors made from recycled plastic bottles. So in order to find an audience, the bottom line is that the DBX doesn’t have to be as good as the other “Satan charabancs”, it has to be so much better. And after the best part of a week driving the North Coast 500, GQ can confirm it most definitely is.

s test tracks go, there probably isn’t a more spectacular route in the world than the NC500. Officially starting (and ending) at Inverness Castle, this 516-mile road along the coast and around the Highlands is a driving nirvana that smells less of teen spirit and much more of heather, pinewood and salty ocean spray. And the views are just as breathtaking as the breaths you are taking. From Munros and cliffs to lochs and bays, every corner brings a new panorama seemingly more incredible than the one before. To borrow a suitably culturally appropriated phrase from The Grand Tour’s James May: “Och aye, the view!” And yet the DBX somehow manages to match each moment. For a start, it handles how you would expect an Aston to handle. The all-new aluminium platform delivers a rigidity coupled with lightness that is clearly best in class and the spookily smart four-wheel drive system provides a 53/47 power split between front and rear wheels. In fact, of the five drive modes on offer – GT, Sport,

Sport+, Terrain and Terrain+ – Grand Tour is undoubtedly your best choice. It brings out the best in the Mercedes-Benz-supplied 4.0-litre twin-turbo and that burbling, brave-hearted V8 is as sonorously splendid as the vistas. It also looks the part. Although it has all the SUV practicality customers expect, the design proportions mean this is a car that looks far smaller and more sporty than it has any right to. But, as you can see, it is clearly no shrinking violet (especially in the “Golden Saffron” colour spec) and, from the iconic and imposing DB grille down to the Vantage-esque ducktail spoiler, it is a powerful and, from some angles, very pretty car. A pretty SUV? Only Aston’s chief creative officer, Marek Reichman, could have managed that. Inside, luxurious leather, sensual suede and cool carbon fibre all elegantly coexist to create a sumptuous and comfortable cockpit. If you get lost, you’ll find there is actually plenty of room in the back, plus there’s 623 litres of boot space. But if you aren’t sitting in the chair with a wheel

in front you are most definitely in the wrong seat. The internal tech interface is another piece of Mercedes stock and works well enough, but the 12.3-inch infotainment monitor does lack a touchscreen, so for more millennially minded (and fingered) drivers it takes a wee bit of dumbing down to. However, as a place to spend the best part of a week and after covering nearly 2,000 miles, it is hard to fault. From London to Glasgow, via the Lake District, it cruises effortlessly and comfortably, but on mountain passes, fast curves, tight bends and along stop-and-start single tracks it is as vibrant and exciting as anything on four wheels. It may be a far too analogue driving experience for some 21st-century EV-obsessed snowflakes, but for pure entertainment with an old-school soundtrack, this car, on this road, in this country is simply impossible to beat. In fact, not even the discovery of a slightly melted Caramel Wafer or Teacake in the glove box could improve the experience. Or could it?

+ Where to stay... Swap roadside B&Bs for five-star Scottish hospitality

Ness Walk Hotel

12 Ness Walk, Inverness IV3 5SQ. 01463 215215. nesswalk.com

Period features meet all mod cons at this five-star luxury retreat beside the River Ness.

Dornoch Castle Hotel Castle Street, Dornoch, Sutherland IV25 3SD. 01862 810216. dornochcastlehotel.com

This 500-year-old converted castle offers period features, an on-site distillery and an award-winning whisky bar.

+ Don’t leave home without... North Coast 500 app

Everything you ever wanted to know about the North Coast 500 but were afraid to ask the locals. Ideal for forward planning, essential stops, towns, tours and top tips.

SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ.C O.UK 97

CARS

Brace yourselves: a storm is brewing More Apple than Audi, the Croatian marque pushes EV power to new frontiers Story by Jason Barlow

onestly, the rate at which the Rimac Nevera accelerates isn’t the most interesting thing about it. And that’s saying something, because should you find the space to do a full-bore standing start in one – and, really, you need a runway for that – many unusual things will happen. The process itself is easy enough: engage “Track” mode, press and hold the brake pedal for three seconds, then release it

The Croatian-made Rimac Nevera has a carbon-fibre body over its 1,888bhp powertrain

98 GQ.CO.UK SEPTEMBER 2021

and bury the accelerator. What happens next is difficult to process, but here’s the gist: the Nevera warps forward so quickly it outpaces your brain’s ability to keep up. It doesn’t just mess with your synapses, but it also forces the air violently from your lungs, presses your entire body back in the seat and does something odd to your internal organs. It’s like horizontal bungee jumping while strapped to two tonnes of car. If that all sounds vaguely unpleasant, you might have a point. But I was too busy laughing to notice. And swearing. This is a new kind of fast. So what is this thing? The Nevera hails from Croatia, a country with little history in car manufacture. Its name references a storm that can whip up out of nowhere on the country’s beautiful Adriatic coast, usually accompanied by angry shards of lightning. Electric energy is Rimac’s thing: this is among the first in a coming wave of pure-electric hypercars, a car whose bald stats challenge everything you thought you knew about high performance. The Nevera uses a 6,960-cell 120kWh lithium/

NEED TO KNOW Engine Four e-motors, generating 1,888bhp, 1,740 lb ft of torque Performance 0-60mph in 1.85 secs; top speed, 258mph Price £1.7 million Economy 2.8 miles per kWh Contact rimac-automobili.com

manganese/nickel battery pack in an H shape along the spine and behind the cockpit. There are four surface-mounted permanent magnet motors driving each wheel individually, the most advanced torque vectoring ever achieved, a power output equivalent to 1,888bhp and 1,740 lb ft of torque. A pair of single-speed gearboxes are connected to the front and rear wheels. The Nevera has a certified range of 340 miles and hooked up to a 500kW charger takes 19 minutes to go from zero to an 80 per cent state of charge. It sounds too good to be true, but it’s for real. More stats: only 150 will be made, costing £1.7 million each. Its top speed is 258mph and it accelerates to 60mph in 1.85 seconds, 100mph in 4.3, demolishes the quarter mile in 8.6 and blitzes 186mph in 9.3 seconds. This makes the Nevera marginally faster than a contemporary F1 car. Consider that it weighs 2,150kg – 700kg of which is the battery pack – and you get some idea how impossible the physics are here.

Both the Nevera’s hard and software were developed in-house

ut this is also a story about the man who made it happen. Mate Rimac, still only 33, finds himself part of a continuum that includes the likes of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, with maybe some Enzo Ferrari in the mix somewhere. Truly formidable company, but let’s be clear: it’s not Rimac who’s making those comparisons, it’s everyone else who comes away scratching their heads in disbelief having met the guy. A high-school electronics prodigy, he electrified an old BMW 3 Series because he figured it was a surefire way to make it go faster. That was in 2008. He started Rimac Automobili a year later as employee number one and the only employee for a while. His first car, the Concept One, appeared in 2011 (Richard Hammond famously crashed one on The Grand Tour in 2017). Porsche took a ten per cent stake in 2018 – increasing to 15.5 per cent the following year – and when I interviewed him in 2019 the company had 500 employees. Now, they number 1,000 and Rimac’s vast tech campus on the outskirts of Zagreb County is under construction. It’s a very Jobsian trajectory and there’s much more to come. This is because Rimac isn’t just building its own electric hypercar; it also makes all its own hardware – the batteries, the motor, the power inverters, the list goes on. The company’s software guys are all wizards too. Rimac is a model of vertical integration and he is now taking calls from some very heavy hitters. “We have so many decisions to make. We have to move very fast,” he told me. “Internally we say, ‘We’re doing too much. Let’s focus.’ Apple isn’t known for doing a hundred things – it does five things really well. So let’s be Apple. But then I always want to do everything because I feel we can do it better. We decide not to do something and end up doing it anyway.”

Many have tried and failed to do their own supercar and the easiest way to make a small fortune in the car business is to start with a large one. But Rimac insists the Nevera isn’t a dramatic-looking distraction or a vanity project. The depth of engineering and quality is startling for a still-young company, including the interior and its various systems. The chassis and body are made of carbon fibre, so the car has the structural integrity of a Le Mans prototype racer, but its software is equally impressive: Rimac’s All-Wheel Torque Vectoring 2 effectively replaces regular ESP and traction control, working predictively and responsively to make 100 calculations per second. This opens up a world of possibility. There are seven different drive modes, each revealing and amplifying a different element of the Nevera’s personality. “Sport” sharpens the throttle response, brakes and steering, “Range” lets you go further, “Track” maxes out on everything, “Custom” allows you to mix and match, while “Drift” basically sends all the torque to the rear axle. It also demonstrates that the Nevera has something not all EVs have: genuine personality. You sense that whether you’re doing 20mph or 200. This is a highly significant car from a company destined for great things. Remember the name.

The Rimac Nevera is marginally faster than an F1 car

SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ.C O.UK 99

THE WEEKND

VS ABEL TESFAYE

With an instantly recognisable voice and songs that have been streamed several billion times, he’s one of the most ubiquitous pop stars in the world. But where does the real artist end and his dark, grimy public persona begin? Mark Anthony Green finally gets the artist to explain Photographed by

Daniel Jackson Styling by George Cortina

THE WEEKND Coat by Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello, £1,725. ysl.com. Turtleneck by Ralph Lauren, £690. ralphlauren.co.uk. Trousers by Wrangler, £25. wrangler.com. Boots by Celine Homme By Hedi Slimane. celine.com. Sunglasses by Jacques Marie Mage, £595. jacquesmariemage.com. Necklace by Sarah-Jane Wilde, £10,007. sarahjanewilde.com

‘Abel would love to divide himself from The Weeknd. He just doesn’t know how’ SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ.C O.UK 101

THE WEEKND

Adult movies. Colour TV. Waterbed. These are three amenities that Harvard House, an hourly motel tucked away on Hollywood Boulevard, still proudly advertises in 2021. When a Yelp user wrote a one-star review that concluded with the line “Definitely avoid this shithole,” I doubt they foresaw it being the temporary lair for one of the biggest global pop stars of our time. He’s leaning against a wall, wearing a pinstripe Louis Vuitton suit and Celine Cuban heels that are so tall they look like you need a safety permit to wear them. Styling assistants and groomers buzz around him, primping and tweaking. Today his hair, a celebrity in its own right, consists of tiny curls perfectly cascading out of an Afro. Each rogue coil attracts light from the sun, creating something like a halo. Despite the current heat advisory in LA, there isn’t a single bead of sweat on his brow. No sheen. Nothing. Everyone crowding around the monitor looking at the incoming photos is thinking the same thing: it’s him. The Starboy. The architect of the sexiest music to ever chart. Sole winner of Super Bowl LV. Lover to some of the most desired women on earth. The son of Ethiopian migrants to Canada who changed R&B with three twisted, druggy mixtapes and never showed his face. The one with the falsetto rivalled only by the GOAT. The pop star who was infamously nominated for an award at a kids’ show for singing about face numbing off a bag of blow. Sure, Harvard House has seen some shit. But so has Abel Tesfaye – AKA The Weeknd. The day before the photo shoot, I met that same guy at a recording studio in Century City in Los Angeles’ Westside. He was wearing a black Online Ceramics hoodie and sweatpants that were more function than fashion. I don’t remember his shoes, but they weren’t Cuban heels. A backpack weighed down his right shoulder. It was stuffed as if he had packed for a day of bouncing around in Ubers. There were no disco aviators. His ’fro wasn’t illuminated. We were supposed to meet at 6pm. He apologised, repeatedly, for being late. He arrived at 6.07pm. It’s clear that the rumours are true: Abel and The Weeknd are two very different beings. The Weeknd has the longest-charting song by a solo artist in history and billions of worldwide streams. The Weeknd spent his pandemic in a red blazer licking frogs dipped in LSD. Abel, meanwhile, was bingeing The X-Files. (“Everyone copied them, bro,” he told me. “Everyone.”) Abel talks about getting a good night’s sleep the way someone might talk about good MDMA. He has been rediscovering LA: last year, when the streets emptied out, he started taking long walks. He exudes a type of politeness only found in the world capital of politeness (Ontario, where he was born and raised). The Weeknd is the guy who destroys the suite at Caesars Palace like in The Hangover. Abel is the sweet guy whom they lose in the first 30 minutes and spend the rest of the movie trying to find. 102 GQ.CO.UK SEPTEMBER 2021

time. It wasn’t until I met La Mar, my best friend. He heard me sing and was like, “You should sing for Canadian Idol.” Did you try to go on Canadian Idol?

No! [Laughs.] But then I started singing to girls and I was getting great feedback. The second instance was when “What You Need” came out. It was the first song that came out from The Weeknd. Nobody knew what I looked like. I was not popping. I was struggling at the time. A good friend of mine hooked me up with a job at American Apparel and I was folding clothes there when somebody at the store played the song. Mind you, nobody knew who The Weeknd was. Did you freak out?

Well, no. I started listening, seeing what people thought of it. That’s what I mean by the unbiased reaction. When I saw that everybody was like, “This is fire,” I was like, “Oh!”

What is the difference between Abel and The Weeknd?

So where does the name of The Weeknd come from?

The lines were blurry at the beginning. And as my career developed – as I developed as a man – it’s become very clear that Abel is someone I go home to every night. And The Weeknd is someone I go to work as.

That’s what the album House Of Balloons used to be called, The Weekend. I was still Abel. I didn’t love my name. So I called myself The Weeknd.

So am I interviewing The Weeknd or Abel?

I think you’re getting a Jekyll and Hyde situation right now. [Laughs.]

Do you still like the name The Weeknd as much as you did then?

As much as I did then? Yeah.

Which one’s Jekyll and which one’s Hyde?

I don’t know. Abel can be badass sometimes, man. But I guess The Weeknd is Hyde. Abel is Dr Jekyll.

No, not as much as I did then. I still like it, but I think now it’s easy to take off that coat. I like that I have that as an option to escape Abel a little bit. I definitely loved it more back then than I do now. I love my name now, though. Abel.

How do you feel about people thinking you’re a dark person?

Would you ever make music as Abel?

I am not dark. My art is dark and I’ve gone through dark times. I’ve used those dark times as inspiration for my art. But I feel like because I’m not dark, I was able to channel it and put it into my music and into my art.

I feel like I already do. My fans don’t call me The Weeknd. They just call me Abel. It’s a tricky thing, but I think the name The Weeknd holds such a legacy right now. The story of that name isn’t done yet.

What was the original reason you chose to be anonymous?

In most of your videos, The Weeknd is murdered, beaten up, et cetera. What is your fascination with killing The Weeknd?

I don’t know. Maybe there is a deeper issue with that, but I feel like with me it’s never been about the artist and the image of the artist. With House Of Balloons, nobody knew what I looked like. And I felt like it was the most unbiased reaction you can get to the music, because you couldn’t put a face to it. Especially R&B, which is a genre that is heavily influenced by how the artist looks.

It’s crazy, right? I think it’s me removing The Weeknd from Abel. I think a lot of people are like, “Oh, he’s suicidal.” It’s not that. I think it’s me removing The Weeknd from the world, but he still finds his way back. He keeps coming out. “Blinding Lights” is obviously not going to have him disappear anytime soon.

When did you first hear your voice and know that it was special?

Do you ever feel guilty, when you date someone who isn’t famous, for bringing so much attention into their life?

I used to get penalised for singing when I was younger, because I always wanted to sing. I didn’t know if it was good or bad. I just always wanted to sing. I would sing in class. I would sing at the dinner table. And I would get in trouble for it because it was inappropriate at the

Yes. I do feel guilty. For sure. That’s why I try not to do too much. I just try not to bring attention to myself. And I just love being in normal situations, man. It’s such a great feeling. To be able to just like go on a walk and not be in a fucking SUV. >>

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‘I am not dark. My art is dark and I’ve gone through dark times’

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THE WEEKND There’s chatter on the internet that you’re sober, or sober-lite.

I like sober-lite. Do you drink?

I do. Occasionally. I’m not a heavy drinker, as much as I used to be. The romance of drinking isn’t there. Weed?

Yes. Other drugs?

No. Drugs were a crutch. It was me thinking that I needed it. And not doing the work to figure out how not to need it. And I’ve spent the last few years realising that and thanking God that I don’t need it. Because for a lot of people, it’s hard to shake it. But I knew I didn’t want it. It’s tough to play the long game with drugs in the picture.

Right. And I eventually want a family. I know I say I don’t, but I know I do. I want children. Why do you say you don’t want children?

Why do I say I don’t? Yeah. Would you consider it a defence mechanism or something?

Probably. I guess I say it because I like the trajectory of my career. But also I feel like having children would influence me and inspire me more. That makes me think of the lyric from the “Hawái” remix with Maluma: “I’d rather go half on a baby / ’Cause at least I know that it’s not temporary / And at least we’ll share something that’s real.”

Toxic! [Laughs.] Did I lie, though? Doesn’t get more real than that. You know? Do you ever think about having to explain some of your more sexual lyrics to your future children?

Absolutely. And I’m prepared for it. At the end of the day, it’s my art. And that’s who Daddy was.

The one and only moment when The Weeknd appeared in the studio was right before Abel played me a few new songs from his upcoming album. He turned around, grinned, and asked, “Ready?” It wasn’t prompted by genuine concern that maybe I needed to grab a notebook or a bottle of water. Concern is Abel stuff. This “Ready?” was condescending. Knowing. It had a certain arrogance someone could only conjure with 100 per cent certainty that I was indeed not ready. And he was right. The music hit the studio like a freight train. The new project is packed with party records. Like real-deal, illuminatedwhite-tiles-on-the-floor party records. Quincy Jones meets Giorgio Moroder meets >> SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ. CO.UK 105

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‘I like reviews, man. I like critics. Even the biased ones that are against me’

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THE WEEKND >> the-best-night-of-your-fucking-life party records. Not anachronistic disco stuff. (Not “cosplay”, as Abel put it.) That sort of retro thing is having a moment right now in pop music, but these records are new. Sweaty. Hard. Drenched-suit, grinding-on-the-girl/boy-ofyour-dreams party records. “It’s the album I’ve always wanted to make,” Abel said. That statement would linger in my brain for days. As did the music. It became nearly impossible to find something else to listen to. Everything else sounded soft. Or didn’t groove enough. Or felt too happy. Or too sad. It was clear to me that this isn’t just the album The Weeknd has always wanted to make; it’s the album we’ve always wanted him to make. The project wasn’t quite finished yet, but if he stays the course it’ll be the best he’s ever put out. This, whatever it’ll be called – following After Hours following Starboy following Beauty Behind The Madness – will cement one of the most impressive chokeholds on the radio we’ve ever seen. Which is why Kiss Land, which came after the three mixtapes and is considered his first “studio” album, is so curious. It doesn’t hit the high standards of his other work – sonically, lyrically, visually. It has a few truly great songs on it – “Adaptation” and “Wanderlust”, for example. But it’s a jumble of what feels like an endless number of warring ideas. Kiss Land is an odd fit in his catalogue, considering that ever since he was a teenager, The Weeknd has had such a clear vision for his music.

Why did Kiss Land fall short? Was it the label people pushing and pulling you in different directions or what?

Oh, no. The exact opposite. Kiss Land is not a label’s type of record. Especially since it’s the debut album. As a debut record, there was an expectation for it. I guess for me, it was the fourth album. I feel like I said everything I needed to say on Trilogy – and that sound and whatever I wanted to put out into the universe. It created a genre and I made 30 of those fucking songs. I think by the time I got to Kiss Land, I was definitely emotionally tapped out. I did three albums in one year, plus I was working on Take Care too. And that was all in 2011. That’s an insane run.

plane trip before that – to Costa Rica as a vacation. Going on tour, seeing the world – I went to Tokyo, America – there’s all this new information. And then on top of that, I wanted to continue making music. And me not fully transitioning into full-on pop star yet, I was kind of in a middle ground. And I feel like Kiss Land was that. It was a very honest album. It was a lot of me being stubborn, of not letting a lot of input in. I had hit writer’s block and my friend Belly helped me out of that. It was a lot of overcompensation to really say, “I don’t know. This is what I have, but I don’t know what this is.” And it became Kiss Land. What did you learn from it?

It reminded me that I’ll never stop taking chances. If it wasn’t for Kiss Land, I wouldn’t have been able to make this new album. That song that you just heard? That’s Kiss Land, man. It’s just me understanding how to use Kiss Land now, in my craft. But it’s definitely my most honest record. I was the most naked. Most vulnerable. And it is what it is. Were you disappointed in the response and the reviews?

Oh, yeah. I think people were confused. It wasn’t that it was bad music. I think people were just confused. As much as I was confused. And I kind of like that. Did it discourage you?

No, no. If anything, it encouraged me. I read every single review. I read every comment. Everything. And I like reviews, man. I like critics. Even the biased ones that are against me, I like reading it. I think it’s interesting. I think it’s humbling, which is always great. I can now understand when you’re reading stuff. Like I can see through the lines now. Between the lines.

When does the therapeutic healing begin – when you make the song or when people hear it?

I think when other people hear it. Feels like it would be the other way around, don’t you think?

I don’t know. It just feels better sharing. Because now it’s real. It’s real. You’re immortalising it. When someone is talking in therapy, they’re giving it to somebody. You’re not getting it off your chest alone.

In November 2020, The Weeknd called the Grammys “corrupt” when After Hours – which hit No1 on the Billboard charts and went platinum multiple times over – wasn’t nominated in a single category. The snub felt like an odd deviation from the organisation’s usual formula, in which critical acclaim plus commercial success equals a ton of nominations, and he vowed to boycott the Grammys altogether going forward. A tweet from Kid Cudi possibly summed up the entire situation best: “Abel was robbed, man. This shit’s weak.”

In some ways, we still don’t know the full story about you and the Grammys. So what happened?

I guess I just wasn’t good enough.

Did it hurt your feelings?

You don’t actually believe that, though, right?

Of course. Yeah.

I don’t believe that, but to their standards, that’s what it is. I wasn’t good enough and that’s the reality of it.

So why read them? It feels like most people in your position never read the comments and reviews.

Heartbreak isn’t a good experience, but it still inspires great music. Could you have made a fourth mixtape in the same vibe as the trilogy?

Then I went on tour. Jimmy Iovine told me this and I’ll never forget it. He goes, “You never want to finish an album, let alone make an album, on tour.” That album, I made on tour. Kiss Land was a very tour-driven album. And you have to understand, I’d never left Toronto up to that point. I’d been in Toronto my entire life. I’d never been on a plane until I was 21 years old.

Honestly, I don’t think so. I was tapped out, man. It just didn’t feel authentic. Like, Kiss Land felt way more authentic. At least Kiss Land was a genuine thing. It might not have been what people expected. It might not have been great at the time. But that was who I was. And that’s what all these albums are: that’s who I am at that time. Melancholy. Six songs. That’s all I got. How come it’s not nine songs? Because I got nothing else to say.

You did Coachella when you were around 21, right?

What was the inspiration for your 2018 EP, My Dear Melancholy?

Yeah! The second time I ever got on a plane was the Coachella performance. I went on one

I used it as therapy. I made it in, like, three weeks. I knew exactly what I wanted to say. I

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knew how I wanted it to sound – and that was it. And then I performed it at Coachella and, boy, was that therapeutic, because I was hearing people scream and sing along to “Call Out My Name”. Just me and a guitar. Then I went to Brazil and those festivals and hearing literally, like, 80,000, 90,000 people screaming every word to “Call Out My Name”... it felt good.

But do you think a group of people objectively and fairly considered your album along with other albums and didn’t choose to nominate your art? Do you think that’s actually what happened?

When it happened, I had all these ideas and thoughts. I was angry and I was confused and I was sad. But now, looking back at it, I never want to know what really happened. Really?

I just don’t care. Because that will never be the reason why I do what I do. It never really was before. And I’m glad that I can make music and not have to think about that. I’ll never be in that conversation ever again. You’ll never submit your music to the Grammys?

No. I mean, I have no interest. Everyone’s like, “No, just do better next time.” I will do better, but not for you. I’m going to do better for me. >>

THE WEEKND

‘Drugs were a crutch. It was me not doing the work to figure out how not to need it’

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‘Heartbreak isn’t a good experience, but it still inspires great music’

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THE WEEKND How will you define success for the next project?

What makes any of my albums a successful album, especially this one, is me putting it out and getting excited to make the next one. So the excitement to make the next project means that this one was successful to me. I want to do this forever. And even if I start getting into different mediums and different types of expressions, music will be right there. I’m not going to step away from it.

One admirable thing about Abel Tesfaye is that he has no problem making fun of The Weeknd. Like all the other great pop stars, he never takes himself too seriously. In 2020, he cowrote and starred in an episode of American Dad, in which The Weeknd was actually a closeted virgin and a light emanates from his underutilised crotch. Despite the fact that he’s never done an interview on a late-night talk show (The Weeknd, apparently, doesn’t speak much on camera), he did a very goofy – and very long – bit with James Corden in preparation for the Super Bowl. There’s dancing and an obstacle course and other James Corden-y gags. Even his part in Uncut Gems, where The Weeknd tries to hook up with Adam Sandler’s girlfriend in the bathroom of 1 Oak, was a parody of The Weeknd. He wore a wig of his old unruly hair. For the entire year-plus promotional jag for After Hours, The Weeknd appeared in character as an unnamed man in a red blazer and black tie, with a face full of bandages and clotting blood.

How many of the red blazers from After Hours do you own?

A lot. More than ten? Fifteen?

I would say 20... yeah. And there was the Super Bowl blazer. So 21. Yeah. RIP to the blazers. Are you happy to be done with that character?

I am. I’m happy also because I’m just really excited to get started on the new project. But it was emotional, man, ending it on the Super Bowl. I think it was the best way to say goodbye to it. There was so much detail in executing the character. What was the meaning behind it?

like the Venom thing, man. [In the Spider-Man comics, Venom is an alien symbiote that grafts its consciousness onto a human host.] He just doesn’t know how to yet. You know? And that is the journey, I feel, for me. And he doesn’t know how to yet. Are you both into the same type of women?

Yes. [Laughs.] Congratulations on the upcoming HBO show, by the way. Do you plan on writing and directing films one day?

Absolutely. When the time is right. Cinema has always been my first passion. When you were 19, first starting out, what was your favourite movie?

So 2009... Audition probably, by Takashi Miike. That’s a dark film! If you could play any role from a past film, what would it be?

Honestly, I’m just going to be honest with it. Fucking Neo from The Matrix. I mean, who didn’t want to be fucking Neo? That movie literally changed my life. So if you’re playing Neo, who would you have play Trinity?

Carrie-Anne Moss. It would still be her. She was fire. Who would you like to work with soon?

I’d love to work with Arca. Arca’s great. I’d love to work with Kanye again, especially production. I got mad love for Tyler, The Creator and what he’s doing right now. Tyler is funny, man. I remember he came to one of my performances. I think it was a festival performance. And he was very vocal about how “Starboy” was his favourite song at the time. You can tell he’s waiting for the song. I could see him. As soon as the song happened, he’s like, “All right. Cool. Thanks.” And he just peaced out. It was pretty funny. But he’s somebody that I really admire, because he wears his feelings on his sleeve. What’s the craziest moment you’ve had when someone fanned out to a song?

Tom Cruise singing to “Can’t Feel My Face” on late-night TV. That was like, “What the fuck is happening to my life?” When he did that, that moment was crazy, just because he’s not a real person. He’s a figment of my childhood.

I guess I was just trying to symbolise how dark this town can get. And how the result of that darkness is very, I guess, self-harming. And that’s what the album was about. And I guess I wanted to create something that was haunting. My depiction of Hollywood was what The Weeknd’s depiction of Hollywood was. Not Abel’s, but The Weeknd’s.

What’s missing?

But from the outside looking in, it would appear that The Weeknd thrives on the toxicity of Hollywood.

My birthday was right before. The party wasn’t big. It was a little venue. Super grungy. Really good. It’s a place on the Eastside, lit-up floors. I was DJing with friends. There were, like, a hundred people. We had fun and we were sloppy.

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I think I hugged every single person in that building. It was a great moment. And I met Jim Carrey. He came to the party?

No. We’d been texting prior to that. And then on my 30th birthday he surprised me. He just pulled up to my crib and took me out to breakfast. How did he get your address?

He lived literally, like, two buildings down from me. He had a telescope and I had a telescope. He was like, “Where do you live? What floor do you live on?” I was like, “Blah, blah, blah.” And we looked out the windows on our telescopes and we could see each other. Telescope bros!

That was like the beginning of my thirties. It was just like, “What is going on?” Last few questions: are you better at making music when you’re happy or sad?

I believe that when anybody is sad, they make better music. They make more emotional music, more honest music, cathartic, therapeutic music. And I’ve definitely been a victim of wanting to be sad for that, because I’m very aware. I definitely put myself in situations where it’s psychologically self-harming. Because making great music is a drug. It’s an addiction and you want to always have that. Fortunately, I’ve been through that and I’ve learned how to channel it. And I’ve experienced enough darkness in my life for a lifetime. I feel lucky that I have music and that’s probably why I haven’t dabbled into too much therapy, because I feel like music has been my therapy. How do you feel about being compared to Michael Jackson?

It’s a roller-coaster, because Michael is somebody that I admire. He’s not like a real person, you know? When I started making music, that’s all I wanted to aspire to, just like every other musician. So then when I started getting those types of comparisons, I invited them, because it’s like, “Who wouldn’t want that?” But I guess the older I got and the more I started understanding who I was, it was very important for me to realise: how do I become that for someone else? Because I know James Brown was that for Michael. And I’m not trying to say I’m Michael’s successor or whatnot. But I’m excited to be the first Weeknd.

In my life? Nothing at all. MARK ANTHONY GREEN IS GQ’S SPECIAL PROJECTS EDITOR.

Nothing at all?

Nothing that I could think of. Not at 31 years old, no. Were you able to celebrate your 30th or did the pandemic ruin that?

+ More from GQ For these related stories visit GQ.co.uk/magazine

SANTAN DAVE: ‘THIS NEW ALBUM IS SELF-AWARE. THERE’S A MAGIC TO IT. LESS CONCEPT, MORE CANON. IT’S A WHOLE JOURNEY’ (Ciaran Thapar, July 2021) THE GRAMMYS STILL ISN’T PAYING BLACK ARTISTS THEIR DUES (Ben Allen, March 2021) SIX TIMES THE WEEKND DEMONSTRATED STARBOY STYLE (Zak Maoui, February 2021)

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‘Everyone’s like, “No, just do better next time.” I will do better, but not for you’

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‘The Weeknd holds such a legacy right now. The story of that name isn’t done yet’

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VOICES OF THE FUTURE

Griff photographed for British GQ in London, 18 June

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VO I C E S of the

FUTURE

In search of music’s next megastars, each of GQ’s 21 global editions nominated a local artist across a world of genres – from J-pop to flamenco, rap to reggaeton – to show us who’s shaping the zeitgeist and defining the sounds of tomorrow

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UNITED KINGDOM

N O M I N AT E S

Griff

The fearless reboot of bedroom pop

When GQ meets Griff, who’s clad in a pearly Richard Quinn dress worthy of a Tudor queen, she’s overjoyed: it’s the drizzly June morning her debut mixtape, One Foot In Front Of The Other, drops and Taylor Swift, no less, has just recommended the project to her 166 million Instagram followers. “It’s really, really surreal,” admits Griff, born Sarah Griffiths in Hertfordshire, just north of London, and of Chinese-Jamaican heritage. Yet it’s easy to see why Swift would be impressed. Totally authentic on social media and fearless when layering vocals to produce her unique, confessional synth pop, Griff is the consummate modern “bedroom pop” star gone boom. Growing up, she felt that “pop was always associated with a lot of fake, music-industry, churned-out stuff”. Griff, on the other hand, taught herself to use Apple’s Logic Pro software on her brother’s laptop via YouTube tutorials. That DIY ethic even extended to the dress she wore to perform at the Brit Awards in May: she stayed up the night before to hand-stitch the fabric into an asymmetric gown. “There’s a lot of kids now taking things into their own hands,” she explains. “There’s a credibility attached to pop again.” Thomas Barrie Age 20 Hometown Kings Langley Key track ‘Black Hole’

Photographed by Nick Thompson in Shoreditch, London Styled by Luke Day Hair by Tomi Roppongi Make-up by Michelle Dacillo

S PA I N

N O M I N AT E S

Israel Fernández

The man sparking flamenco’s new energy

Age 29 Hometown Toledo Key track ‘La Inocencia’

You notice that Israel Fernández is pure flamenco from the moment he walks through the door. He embodies the art, twisting the rich lyrics in his throat and unleashing them as a wholly fresh sound. “It’s a gift God gave me,” he says, “and it also comes from my family. I have Roma origins. We grew up singing and dancing from a very young age. This is my way of life.” Fernández’s talent has already caught the attention of the new wave of Spanish artists, like Rosalía, C Tangana and El Guincho, who produced Fernández’s recent single “La Inocencia”. “For this song I didn’t want percussion, clapping or an acoustic finish,” he says. “I was looking for something more electronic and he was the one to do it.” Thanks to his authentic approach to traditional flamenco – and his ability to link up with collaborators – Fernández is already considered the most important cantaor of his era. And he’s regularly likened to the master, Camarón de la Isla. “I’m not going to say that I don’t like that comparison, but Camarón is unrepeatable,” he says. “My only goal in life is to bring flamenco to the younger generations without the need to deceive them with something else.” F Javier Girela Photographed by Jor Martínez on Gran Vía, Madrid Styled by Juan Luis Ascanio Grooming by Sandra Garcia Heras for The Artist Management Produced by Natalia Torres

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VOICES OF THE FUTURE U N I T E D S TAT E S

N O M I N AT E S

Polo G

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The melodic prince of American hip-hop

Age 22 Hometown Chicago Key track ‘Rapstar’ This summer, as heavyweight rappers like J Cole and Migos returned from hiatus, they found a new face dominating the charts. A shy 22-year-old named Taurus Tremani Bartlett, he calls himself Polo G, after his favourite fashion label and a friend named Gucci, who died at 16. “I’ve had a passion for rapping since I was 19,” he says, “but I only recently found a deeper passion for it.” He’s reflecting on his new project, Hall Of Fame, which topped the Billboard 200 and feels like one of those pivotal third albums that announce a generational talent (think Kanye’s Graduation or J Cole’s 2014 Forest Hills Drive). On Fame, Polo has transformed from melodic street rapper to megastar, proving he can hang with his idols (Lil Wayne), make big pop songs (“For The Love Of New York”) and notch a chart-topping hit while retaining his core sound (“Rapstar”). The title, he says, is a road map. It’s about “knowing the legacy I want to leave”, he explains. But first, he’s taking a rest – at least for a minute. “I’m treating it as an off-season, just trying to get better.” Championships await. Frazier Tharpe

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SOUTH AFRICA

N O M I N AT E S

Focalistic

The Pied Piper of Pretoria’s Amapiano movement

Age 25 Hometown Ga-Rankuwa Key track ‘Ke Star (Remix)’

“In 2016, before my career took off, I wrote on Twitter that I would have a No1 hit in 2020,” says Lethabo Sebetso, AKA Pitori Maradona, AKA Focalistic. “That happened.” Postmanifesting, Focalistic broke out on the South African Amapiano scene with a string of tracks that blend deep house, rap and jazz. But he struck a nerve on the continent by holding up a mirror to the youth. “My music is about what’s happening in South Africa and Africa right now,” he says. “It showcases the growth in our culture and how dope African music continues to be. That’s why

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the people who listen to my music and love it can relate to it – it represents them.” Right now, Focalistic has hit a stride that’s quickly becoming a victory lap. In February, he linked up with Nigerian-American Afrobeat overlord Davido to drop a remix of “Ke Star”, which clocked millions of streams and got co-signs from Diddy and Alicia Keys. Amid all this, he’s doubling down on manifesting his future: “I am definitely on my way to being one of the greatest African artists in the world.” GQ South Africa

JA PA N

N O M I N AT E S

Fujii Kaze A genre-melding force in J-pop

“The music comes first,” says Fujii Kaze, one of Japan’s new breed of YouTubenative pop stars. “Let me share my favourite Michelangelo quote: ‘I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.’ This is the way I like to follow.” In the noisy J-pop space, Kaze has distinguished himself by his ability to find marble worth carving. Early on, he won fans and subscribers through a smorgasbord of uploaded covers – everything from The Carpenters to Ariana Grande to, yes, the 19th-century romanticist Frédéric Chopin. That borderless curiosity paid dividends on Kaze’s 2020 debut, Help Ever Hurt Never, a kind of stylised disarray of genres that felt thrilling and fresh. The album changes seasons from verse to chorus and track to track, whirring from jazz to classical to R&B in a way that’s neither jarring nor forced. Reflecting on his brand of chaotic harmony, Kaze is serene. “I don’t want to lie to myself or others,” he says. “I just want to be myself – but a better version, always.” GQ Japan Age 24 Hometown Satoshō Key track ‘Nan-Nan’

Photographed by Obakeng Molepe in Ga-Rankuwa, Pretoria Styled by Mira Leibowitz Grooming by Baby Choma

VOICES OF THE FUTURE

Photographed by Takay in Tokyo Bay Styled by Shohei Kashima for W Hair by Asashi for Ota Office

Jacket. Shirt. Both by Bed JW Ford. bedjudewillford.com

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L AT I N A M E R I C A

N O M I N AT E S

Ozuna

The island’s heir to the reggaeton throne

What place will Puerto Rico occupy in music history 20 years from now? Reggaeton singer Juan Carlos Ozuna Rosado, winner of two Latin Grammys, listens to the question and smiles, Boricua pride between his teeth. “This is an island that sets the pace for many feet in the world,” he says, “but I think several years from now we will see the legacy more clearly.” It’s a legacy Ozuna wants to be a part of. Last year, he released his fourth album, ENOC, which saw him return to the roots of old-school reggaeton. It also continued the Ozuna tradition of high-wattage collabs, with Sia and Doja Cat dropping in for features. “I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with many talents from the island and abroad,” he says, “and the truth is there is an artist that I have pending who would love to do something new: Rihanna.” If he’s setting a high bar, it’s only because he wants the island to have its chapter in music history. “Decades ago, a seed was sown with [reggaeton pioneers] Daddy Yankee and Wisin & Yandel, from which many of us are reaping the fruits,” he says. “And many of us want to sow other seeds.” GQ Latin America Age 29 Hometown San Juan, Puerto Rico Key track ‘No Se Da Cuenta’

Photographed by Manuel Velez in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico Styled by Omar Rivera Grooming by Omar Rivera Produced by Brandon Vega Special thanks to Edgar Andino

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VOICES OF THE FUTURE TURKEY

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N O M I N AT E S

Emir Taha

R&B’s link from East to West

Age 24 Hometown Antalya Key track ‘Kendine Gel’

One of the best nights Emir Taha had during the turbulent past year was spent cooped up in an Airbnb, putting the finishing touches on a track he’d titled “Kendine Gel”. The song – an R&B number layered with synths and Eastern melismas – reckoned with a universal challenge: getting ahold of yourself in difficult times. It dropped last year as one of the standouts of Taha’s EP Hoppa Pt1. “Just like everyone else,” he says, “I’ve accumulated a lot in my head,

which shows through the way I think, live and create music.” Taha’s Hoppa project continued this year with a second instalment, this one an even moodier take on R&B. The pair of EPs epitomise the borderless nature of Taha’s sound: you can hear shades of Kid Cudi, Noah “40” Shebib’s collaborations with Drake and Majid Jordan, and Turkish pop crooners from decades past. Born in Antalya, on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, and now based in London, Taha has spent his career accumulating disparate influences that he stitches together in the studio. The productions don’t show any seams, just a deft combination of tradition and modernity that brings to mind the work of an artist like Rosalía. “From Ahmet Kaya to Kid Cudi, Duman to Slowthai, everything I listen to is a collection,” says Taha. “You never know where inspiration will come from.” Alara Kap

Photographed by Burçin Ergünt in Shoreditch, London Styled by Lewis Munro

AUSTRALIA

N O M I N AT E S

Ziggy Ramo An urgent voice for indigenous Australia

Age 26 Hometown Sydney Key track ‘Black Thoughts’

“My dad talks about the feather and the sledgehammer,” says Ziggy Ramo. “You need to know when to hit someone over the head, but also when to be as gentle as possible. And for me, my art is my sledgehammer.” Born in Bellingen to a Wik and Solomon Islander father and a mother of Scottish descent, Ramo began making music in his teens. But when his first album, Black Thoughts, arrived last year at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, it hit the Australian music scene not just like a sledgehammer, but like a meteor. “Black Lives Matter, that’s the subject matter,” he raps on the album’s title track. “Tell you to climb, then they burn down your ladder.” The album is both a passionate attack on the systemic racism faced by generations of indigenous Australians and a celebration of the oldest civilisation on earth. It won an International Indigenous Hip Hop award and found fresh acclaim when he performed it at the Sydney Opera House. But Ramo knows this is just the start. “One single performance is not going to change the world,” says the artist, whose next album will drop this year. “But it can be a catalyst for something bigger.” Jake Millar

Photographed by James J Robinson in Little Bay, Sydney Styled by Harriet Crawford Grooming by Gillian Campbell

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N O M I N AT E S

Divine

The rapper who bridged Mumbai and Crown Heights

Age 29 Hometown Mumbai Key track ‘Mere Gully Mein’

Just behind Mumbai’s glittering international terminal stretches a teeming borough called Andheri East. A patchwork of tin, tarpaulin and glass, it’s a blend of shantytowns and working-class neighbourhoods – and home to millions who have arrived, over decades, in India’s city of dreams. It’s also where a young boy named Vivian Fernandes discovered hip-hop. He first encountered the culture on a friend’s T-shirt emblazoned with 50 Cent’s face and on a borrowed CD stuffed with dozens of songs by Tupac, Biggie and Wu-Tang Clan. In 2015, “Mere Gully Mein” – a track he built online with Naezy, another young rapper on the rise – went viral on YouTube, spawning the gully rap subgenre. Divine’s seminal verse, delivered in his local Bambaiya Hindi dialect, was brash and rebellious yet honest and clean. In 2019, Nas signed him to the label he co-owns, Mass Appeal, giving Divine international distribution. In December, his face flickered on a mammoth Spotify billboard in Times Square. And earlier this year, he scored features from Pusha T and Vince Staples. “When sounds merge,” he says, “magic is created.” But Divine remains tied to the streets, launching a venture called Gully Gang Entertainment that helps elevate talent from underrepresented groups. “The people made me. I can never forget that,” he says from his home studio in ’59, still his postal code. “I’m just a guy with a mic. To stay grounded, be rooted in your culture. That’s the only way to go.” Nidhi Gupta Photograph by Mohit Mukhi/Gltch at Ballard Estate, Mumbai Styled by Neha Bajaj

MEXICO

N O M I N AT E S

Natalia Lafourcade Mexico’s link from past to future

Age 37 Hometown Coatepec Key track ‘Mi Tierra Veracruzana’

In addition to her career as a singer, Natalia Lafourcade also takes another job very seriously: that of recovering Mexican folk’s bygone traditions. The winner of two Grammys, Lafourcade has worked to revive elements of historical genres such as nueva canción and ranchera, prying their old codes out of oblivion and then running them through her signature hazy folk soundscapes. “The path I have walked led me to get closer to the past and reinterpret it with the help of many musicians who walk the same path,” she says. “It has been a passionate journey to discover so many types of Mexicans that exist – their different ways of

loving and suffering throughout our musical history.” Though Lafourcade has orbited the Mexican pop scene for more than two decades, this phase of her career has been a pivot. Now she’s a bridge between past and present for a country that seems to have left many of its roots – and its songs – behind. In May, she dropped the second volume of her album Un Canto Por México, recorded to support the Son Jarocho Documentation Center, destroyed in the 2017 Puebla earthquake. “I’m on a journey to understand where I come from,” she says, “and how we sing here.” GQ Mexico

Photographed by Karla Lisker in Miguel Hidalgo, Mexico City Styled by Fernando Carrillo Hair by Gerardo Maldonado Make-up by Gustavo Bortolotti

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BRAZIL

N O M I N AT E S

Gloria Groove The chameleonic queen of São Paulo

Age 26 Hometown São Paulo Key track ‘Bonekinha’ In Brazil, a new generation of pop stars is on the rise: artists like drag singer Pabllo Vittar, trans rapper Urias and Gloria Groove, a drag performer whose music blurs the lines between funk, rap and soul. “We are leading a major revolution in Brazilian pop music,” Groove says emphatically. Born in São Paulo as Daniel Garcia, the 26-year-old singer undergoes a Superman-like transformation inside the glam wardrobe of Gloria Groove. As a drag queen, her choreography – brash and powerful – is in total opposition to Garcia’s shy demeanour. And really, these are more than dance steps. For Gloria Groove, they’re a call to war. “The dolly doesn’t fool around,” goes the refrain in “Bonekinha”, a thumping track from Groove’s recent project Lady Leste. She plans to continue teasing songs through the year, all through a kaleidoscopic set of sounds that swerve from rap to pop to funk carioca. “I am the descendant of an era in pop music where the artist is in a constant process of reinvention,” she says. And no kryptonite’s stopping that. GQ Brazil

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CHINA

N O M I N AT E S

Akini Jing

A cyborg making pop human again

Age 33 Hometown Yunnan Province Key track ‘Shadow’

Years after breaking into the Chinese music scene, Akini Jing has rebooted her image – though she calls it a “firmware update”. Her newly revealed cyborg persona is replete with ’fits worthy of a Y2K renaissance, lonely pop tracks heavy on cyberpunk synths, and an earnest exploration of humanity through the eyes of an outsider. But that futuristic makeover perhaps masks a more timeless sensibility. “The truth is,” she says, “I’m just dearly in love with what I’m doing and get quite a kick out of it.” GQ China

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FRANCE

N O M I N AT E S

Eddy de Pretto

France’s flyest chanteur is a weirdo for all

Age 27 Hometown Créteil Key Track ‘Kid’

Three years ago, Eddy de Pretto became a national pop idol within a few weeks. With a sound somewhere between chanson, rap and spoken word, he grew up in a project a few miles outside Paris, listening to a steady diet of hip-hop and Jacques Brel. “I was considered a weirdo at school and now I put this weirdo and his feelings at the centre of my songs, of my interviews,” says de Pretto. “I turned him into a sun.” Coming up, he caught eyes in industry circles with his striking stage presence and when he released his debut album, Cure, in 2018, the people concurred: a week after it dropped, Cure hit the top of the French charts. Openly gay, de Pretto ruminates on toxic masculinity (he cites Frank Ocean as a role model) but has no desire to be a poster boy for the French LGBTQ+ movement. Instead, he’s singing “for every freak, every weirdo and every bastard”. And that’s the very title of his sophomore album, released last spring: À Tous Les Bâtards. “It’s cool to be in love with one’s own imperfections, with one’s differences,” he says. “That’s the only way to find strength in them.” GQ France

Photographed by Romain Laprade in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris Styled by Vanessa Pinto Grooming by Cidji Humbert

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Photographed by Jinlong Yang in Chaoyang District, Beijing Styled by Ting Young

VOICES OF THE FUTURE

GERMANY

N O M I N AT E S

Zoe Wees An honest voice out of lockdown

Age 19 Hometown Hamburg Key Track ‘Control’

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Zoe Wees is eyeing the stage of Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie and asking questions about her future: “When will I start? When will I stand there?” Opened in 2017, the concert hall on the Elbe River is becoming one of the most important in the world; shows have just resumed as GQ photographs Wees on the rooftop. Playing at such a major venue is a new experience for the teenager, whose rapid rise has been contoured by the pandemic. It was during lockdown that “Control”, her debut single – a gutsy pop hit marked by her raspy tones – broke out to millions of listeners outside Germany. Slots on Corden and Kimmel followed and Wees was crowned a legit

force in pop, all without having ever played a concert. In May, she released Golden Wings, an EP drenched in power ballads – songs about inclusion, visibility, anxiety and self-love. That ethos is especially apparent on “Control”, a track rooted in her experience with benign rolandic epilepsy. “I’ve always been writing about my story,” she says, “and I’m happy when I can help people by sharing it.” What’s most remarkable about Wees’ light speed ascension is that her songs don’t wear themselves out. She doesn’t feel like hype, but a new classic. The stage is calling. Ulf Pape

Photographed by Theresa Kaindl in HafenCity, Hamburg Styled by Saskia Jung Hair by Awa Kaloga Make-up by Bastian Springer Produced by Verena Aichinger Special thanks to Elbphilharmonie and The Westin Hamburg Hotel

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I T A LY

N O M I N AT E S

Fedez The social conscience of the Italian glitterati

Age 31 Hometown Milan Key track ‘Vorrei Ma Non Posto’

It took all of five minutes for Fedez to ignite a national debate on discrimination, inclusivity and the future of Italian society. In a speech at a concert in May, he accused a cabal of far-right politicians of stalling an anti-homophobia bill in the Italian parliament. And he did it live on national television. That the comments came from one of Italy’s most glittering rappers – and the husband of uber-influencer Chiara Ferragni – triggered both shock waves and praise, including a shoutout from Donatella Versace. “I think young people are ahead of the sensibilities of our politicians,” Fedez says. “I get very angry when people who are supposed to represent everyone say serious things against certain types of people living in our society.” For Fedez, the speech was an exclamation point on his transition from tastemaker to change agent. And a pair of platinum-certified No1 tracks in 2021 prove that, whether he’s rapping or speaking out, the people are listening. GQ Italy

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TA I WA N

N O M I N AT E S

E.so A stalwart of Mandarin rap breaking new ground

Age 33 Hometown Taipei Key track ‘Change’

E.so – one of Taiwan’s reigning rap monoliths – has been lying low in lockdown: staying home, playing video games, even banking a little coin from crypto. He’s also tinkering away on the follow-up to his first solo album, Outta Body, which saw him zigzag away from the hip-hop sound associated with his Taiwanese rap group, MJ116. But E.so is in no hurry to wrap an LP – he takes the long view on inspiration. “You need to accumulate enough feelings in your everyday life,” he says. “Those thoughts might not trigger anything in the moment. But after a while, they’ll suddenly come back again – that’s inspiration.” His methods are proving effective: Outta Body – a melding of hip-hop, neo-soul and Afrobeat – was a huge hit. Now, more than a decade after entering the public eye, he’s got a new mission: “Taking Mandarin music to new places is a mindset as well as a social responsibility.” GQ Taiwan

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Photographed by Daniel Riera in Prehistoric Park, Cremona Styled by Nik Piras Hair by Brian Cantarosso for Encadrer Studio Grooming by Anna Maria Negri for Julian Watson Agency

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Photographed by Mr Triangle in Xizhi District, New Taipei City Styled by Kevin Wang Hair by Johnson for Motivate Hair Salon Grooming by Lyra for So Easy Studio

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THAILAND

N O M I N AT E S

Milli

From student council president to daring rap sensation

Age 18 Hometown Bangkok Key track ‘Pakkorn’

Photographed by Koon Phattchakhun on the bank of the Chao Phraya River, Bangkok Styled by Anakwee Eiam-Ong Hair by Thanupol Phoothepamornkul Make-up by Sukhon Srimarattanakul

It was a Friday evening last August when Milli dropped “Sudpang!” – a raucous march of a trap tune that capped a wild year for the recent high school graduate otherwise known as Danupha Kanateerakul. She had jumped from student council president to a national star known for vibey beats with a swirl of local slang – and hits that get the whole club singing along and re-creating the dances from her videos. It was soon clear that we were witnessing the birth of a new generation of Thai hip-hop. With “Pakkorn”, her viral debut, Milli signalled a fresh kind of ambition: laced through the lyrics were different Thai dialects, including Lu, an encrypted set of words used by the LGBTQ+ community in the early 1990s. “Someone told me the sooner you get attention, the more you have to improve,” she says. “When all eyes are on Milli, people want to know who she is. I have to jump as high as I can. Otherwise, it was just this Milli they saw. There’s more for me to offer.” Ak Suttiyangyuen SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ.C O.UK 131

RUSSIA

N O M I N AT E S

Slava Marlow Russia’s very online prince of rap

Age 21 Hometown Novosibirsk Key track ‘I’m Getting Drunk Again’

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“Production is 50 per cent knowledge about how to make music, 50 per cent the moment and mood,” explains Slava Marlow, the 21-year-old wunderkind from Siberia. “There is a lot of magic in making music.” His own process involves a bit of magic too. Combining old-school music education – he took piano and sax lessons – with a childhood love for EDM, Marlow has crafted his own strain of rap that’s become a new soundtrack for millions of Russians. After finding his voice as a YouTube creator, Marlow shot to fame via a 2019 collaboration with Morgenshtern, a fellow vlogger-turnedrapper. In his ensuing solo career, he’s dropped a string of releases, including the deeply autobiographical EP Apt‘m. He’s also released the very meta track “Tik Tok Challenge”, which predictably exploded on the platform. (It has some 800,000 videos and counting.) Despite his soaring profile, Marlow retains a sense of humility. “I appreciate that I have the opportunity to earn more than most people in Russia,” he says. “I understand that my work is incomparable with the work of a teacher or a miner. I am very lucky that I do my own thing and get paid for it.” GQ Russia

Photographed by Vanya Berezkin in Chertanovo Severnoye, Moscow Styled by Elena Dudina Grooming by Ksenia Yarmak Produced by Julia Zauzolkova

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PORTUGAL

N O M I N AT E S

Cláudia Pascoal Porto’s sunny pop multi-hyphenate

Age 27 Hometown Gondomar Key track ‘Quase Dança’

Photographed by Gonçalo F Santos on Avenida da Liberdade, Lisbon Styled by Maria Falé Hair by Edgar Venâncio Make-up by Elodie Fiuza Special thanks to Tivoli Avenida Liberdade Lisboa Hotel

By the time Eurovision introduced her to the world stage, Portugal had already fallen for Cláudia Pascoal’s whimsical take on pop. But her talent doesn’t end with breezy ballads and charming wordplay. To paraphrase José Saramago, Pascoal is an artistic tsunami: she’s experimented with painting, standup, directing video clips and tattooing. Of these side hustles, she says nobody should “confuse diversified tastes with the inability to dedicate themselves to just one thing”. But Pascoal acknowledges that her artistry has evolved with her. “If, at the beginning, music was just something funny, and a way I had of communicating with people, along the years it became something way more serious,” she says. “It became like taking something out of my chest, having an almost therapeutic effect.” Last year, she shored up her place in the Portuguese pop sphere with ! (she sometimes calls it Blah), a playful, sunny debut album. Now almost 28, Pascoal says that her teenage self couldn’t dream of the spot she’s landed in. “I want to show myself to the world as an artist in a way that no one knows me – not even myself.” GQ Portugal SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ. CO.UK 133

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MIDDLE EAST

N O M I N AT E S

Wegz

North Africa’s wavy new sound

Age 23 Hometown Alexandria, Egypt Key track ‘Bel Salama (Lorry Pt2 Remix)’ Born and raised in Alexandria, Wegz blends trap and mahraganat – Egypt’s answer to EDM – as an ode to his home turf. “Life in Egypt can be chaotic at times and moves at an insane pace,” he says. “There’s always something happening. It’s full of stories, and that makes for some serious inspiration.” He grew up no stranger to the party and it only made sense to mix global influences with local tradition to create something new. “Life is life, Egypt or anywhere else,” he says. “It has its ups and downs, the good days and the bad. I write music about all of it.” Four years into his career, the young musician is challenging Egypt’s old guard and the gatekeepers of the music industry. Last year, he was Egypt’s most streamed artist on Spotify. “I didn’t plan for any of this,” he says with a shrug. “I write music that means something to me and I never think about it beyond that. However, it is very fulfilling to realise that people can relate and that they want to listen. It serves as motivation to push my culture forward and take it to the global stage.” Rusty Beukes

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Photographed by Prod Antzoulis in Al Wardiyan, Alexandria, Egypt Styled by Ahmed Serour Hair by Abboud for Al Sagheer Salons Grooming by Kareem Fawzy Produced by Amira Elraghy

VOICES OF THE FUTURE KOREA

N O M I N AT E S

Colde

K-pop’s very mellow counterpoint

Age 27 Hometown Seoul Key track ‘When Dawn Comes Again’

“I read what the listeners wrote,” Colde proclaims. “My music reminds them of the dawn. I think they are right.” Through his R&B-infused solo act and his work in the indie duo Offonoff, the singer has introduced a whole new vibe to the wild and hyperactive scene dominated by K-pop: chill. Earlier this year, he dropped his third LP, Idealism, completing a trifecta of richly serene releases. After an energetic opener, the album is warm, wire-to-wire mellowness. Even Colde’s reflections on his own tracks feel more like rumination than hype. Take, for example, “Light”, which was released in April: “It’s a

song that has energy that gives a lot of strength to me,” he says. “I wrote it the moment when I took my first step towards my dream in the dark.” Colde’s next act: turning this mood into an empire. He runs his own record label, the aptly titled Wavy, and has flirted with the worlds of fashion, art and design. “It’s creative to steadily expand the movement into various fields,” says Colde, who increasingly sees the moniker as a brand. “I always want to try new things – just keep moving forward.” Kim Young Jae

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Photographed by Yoon Ji Yong in Yongsan-gu, Seoul Styled by Shin Hye Jee Grooming by Koo Hyun Mi

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C ENCY

LIGEN

PEOPLE’

TEL

The People’s Intelligence Agency

Meet the man who could bring down Putin... from his laptop From the Salisbury Novichok attack and the downing of MH17 over Ukraine to nuclear secrets and a reconstruction of the US Capitol invasion in January... oh, and a foiled dog-snatcher, nothing is out of reach for Bellingcat’s web-based investigative journalists. Here, amid a fog of conspiracy theories, fake news and toxic algorithms, founder Eliot Higgins reveals how his co-operative journalism hub began its global mission to reclaim reality from the internet

Story by

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Oliver Bullough Illustrations by Mike McQuade

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THE DOGNAPPING

On 1 October last year, Eliot Higgins’ Bellingcat – the world’s most potent journalistic team and website – had just published a new investigation: “Could Coalition Airstrikes Have Hit Medical Facilities In Syria?” It was packed with Bellingcat’s trademark techniques: minute analysis of airstrikes in Syria; multiple photographs, many of them adorned with coloured boxes identifying points of interest; clear-eyed discussion of the perpetrators; open-ended questions for future work. In all, it stretched to 5,000 words of dense text. That done, Higgins was arguing on Twitter about chemical weapons with a proRussian blogger. Roz Pearce cared nothing for that, however. Her dog had just been stolen and she was frantic. She had dropped her children off at school and gone for a walk at a nature reserve outside Birmingham, but had been unable to park in her usual place: it was occupied by a grey Ford Focus, in which a fair-haired man in his twenties was sitting, apparently not doing much. Her spaniel, a brown 16-month-old sprocker called Coco with extravagant ears, jumped out of the car and dashed around the Ford Focus to investigate her favourite bush. That’s when it happened: the fair-haired man opened his car door, scooped Coco up and had driven off before Roz realised what had happened. Coco was gone. Since the pandemic began, dog prices have more than doubled and thieves have spotted an opportunity. A dog like Coco can be sold for £1,000 or more, with almost no chance of being recovered – there are nine million dogs in Britain, one spaniel looks much like another and police officers lack the time or ability to comb through them all. As a result, dognappings have become near-daily occurrences, a perfect crime for opportunistic crooks, but that was no comfort at all to Roz, rather the reverse. For the Pearce family, Coco’s loss was a tragedy, but for an overstretched chief constable trying to investigate thousands of thefts a year, she was just a few hundred pounds’ worth of property. “With the police, you do get dogorientated police officers who are desperate to help, but when you look at their priorities it’s so far down the list,” said Emma Sparkes, who volunteers at DogLost, a dog rescue community that reunites canines with their owners. She sought to help the Pearces, but she handles distraught families every day and is resigned to the fact she can rarely offer anything but words of comfort. Roz, her husband, Chris, and their two children did everything they could – they put up posters, they talked to the local press, they flooded social media with appeals – but if they were going to see Coco again they were going to need a miracle. As it turned out, that is what they got, thanks to Higgins, a local man who has gone, in a decade, from being an unknown office worker in Leicester to one of the most respected journalists in the

world, but who still found time to reply to a random email from a dog enthusiast he’d never met. Sparkes is cagey about what she does for a living (ie, when she’s not seeking lost dogs), but said that she’d always had an interest in world affairs. As such, she is aware of the grotesque acts Russian agents have been accused of in recent years – poisoning the Skripals in Salisbury, shooting down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine, assassinating a Chechen dissident in Berlin – and she was aware that many of these operations have been exposed all thanks to investigations run by Higgins. He specialises in what he calls open-source investigations (OSINT), which combine multiple information sources in the service of uncovering secrets. Working from home, initially while on his own babysitting, more recently as part of a team while his children are at school, he has exposed the facts behind murders in Cameroon, financial skulduggery in Britain, chemical weapons in Syria and nuclear weapons in Europe using online skills that, even to the initiated, appear as close to magic as makes no difference. Radio host James O’Brien has called him “probably the most important journalist you’ve never heard of ”; veteran broadcaster Jeremy Paxman considers him as one of his heroes. As for me, if Higgins isn’t the most innovative journalist anywhere, then I don’t know who is.

sking Higgins to find a lost dog seems a little like asking Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to cover a local planning meeting, but Sparkes was desperate, so she sent him an email, laying out the facts of the dognapping, begging him for assistance and ending with the under-punctuated but heartfelt sign-off, “Appreciate that you guys are busy doing far bigger more important jobs but appreciate any help.” At the time, having finished off its report on coalition airstrikes, Higgins’ team was investigating the activities of Russian mercenaries in Armenia and the sale of British-made sniper rifles to the Middle East, but he replied within hours, asking her to email over what she had. Roz Pearce had spent hours going from door to door in the hunt for CCTV footage showing Coco’s abductor and Sparkes passed on what little she’d obtained: two seconds of a Ford Focus driving from left to right on a suburban street. Police officers had already examined it and declared the number plate illegible, but Higgins wasn’t going to let that put him off. When investigating a murder in Ukraine, a German colleague had taught a computer to analyse every separate frame of CCTV footage, then to combine them. Within a country, all number plates follow the same pattern and the computer is able to use that knowledge to examine the many shades of blur presented to it and combine them into a composite image that is somehow pin-sharp (Higgins insisted this was quite straightforward; Sparkes referred to the technique as “unicorn dust”; to me it felt like

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something from the movie Enemy Of The State). He ran the programme, cracked the plate and emailed the image back to Sparkes, all in the space of an hour. On 13 October, armed with the information, officers raided a house in Pershore, rescued Coco and returned her to Roz, Chris and their children. “Our little lad has his best friend back,” Chris tweeted, along with a picture of Coco lying, grinning goofily, on his son’s chest. West Mercia Police sent out a self-congratulatory press release, but Higgins asked to be kept out of it. “We didn’t want our name involved: we’d have got lots of emails afterwards and I was trying to avoid that,” he told me. “The thing with working on Syria and Russia, any impact is many years down the line, if at all. It was nice to spend an hour doing something and then, within 24 hours, they’re reunited. It gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling, which is rare in this kind of work.” Coco found, Higgins was back to the day job, unmasking the world’s secrets.

WHERE DID HE COME FROM?

Higgins is tall, with bushy, dark hair, a neatly trimmed beard and the slightly stooped stance of a man who spends a lot of time at his computer. We chatted in his office, which is in a brick house in an otherwise unremarkable cul-de-sac. He talks carefully, in long and thoughtful paragraphs, and was remarkably undistracted by the barrage of Signal notifications beeping from his laptop. By the time we stopped talking, he must have had a thousand messages to read through. Hours before, the government of Belarus had sent a fighter jet to force down a Ryanair flight over its territory and detained – essentially kidnapped – an opposition activist and Higgins’ team was trying to discover details of the operatives involved. “This thing with Belarus, this is insane. There is now no way I’m flying anywhere near Russia,” he said. It might sound grandiloquent for a journalist to worry that a nuclear power could force down a plane to detain him, but Higgins and his allies have been attacked by name so many times by Russian officials that the threat seems entirely real, which is extraordinary when you realise the obscurity Higgins emerged from. He was born in 1979 and has always been, by his own account, an extremely online person. He was using dial-up modems to access discussion forums back in the mid-1990s, long before most of us had even seen a website, let alone held a discussion on one. Offline, however, life was not so easy. He suffered from social anxiety, failed to complete a university degree and spent much of his time – when he wasn’t arguing with people on the internet – playing large-scale online games, in which he specialised in leading groups of players in complex operations. Those were the optimistic days before Cambridge Analytica, #FakeNews and QAnon, when the internet was going to democratise society, allow citizens to communicate directly

B E L L I N G C AT

with each other and spread knowledge everywhere, when it never occurred to anyone that there might be a downside to sharing personal information on the newly created Facebook. Higgins said he got a first sense that the internet was going to be more than just a benign repository of images and information in 2008, when Barack Obama was running for the presidency and had selected Joe Biden as his running mate. TV channels were camped outside the then senator’s house, broadcasting live footage of his front door to a waiting world, and it proved an irresistible target for a pioneering prankster. “Someone ordered a massive amount of pizzas for delivery to the house. We were all watching it live and this poor pizza guy comes up with 12 boxes of pizzas. There’s this secret service guy and everyone’s confused, but everyone on the forum thought it was hilarious,” he remembered. “It was the first example I saw when an online community felt that it could project outside the confines of the online world.”

having seized the coastal town of Brega. Higgins posted a video selfie purportedly taken by a rebel fighter walking through the town, but another commenter snapped back – it could have been filmed anywhere; it proved nothing. This was the problem with the new world of citizen journalism. In the old days, you could generally be sure that what the BBC was showing was what it said it was. Social media, however, was not like that. It was flooded with propagandists, imposters and tricksters, all of who could be misleading you, perhaps for nefarious purposes, maybe for the money, possibly just for the lulz. Higgins had to concede the point: he had never been to Brega, he didn’t know the insurgent taking the video, he could not be sure that the video truly showed what its YouTube caption said it did. This is when he had his idea. He watched the video again, noticed how the insurgent walked down the street, around a corner, turned left, walked onwards, turned left again and he sketched out a map of the path the man took. He then opened Google Maps, found Brega and searched for roads that matched his sketch. It took a while, and he had to keep rotating his piece of paper, but eventually he found them: in the eastern residential district they fitted exactly. He played the video again, comparing details of the streetscape he could see behind the insurgent with the buildings he could see on the satellite picture. It was perfect. He had a match and could definitively prove that what the insurgents were saying was true: they had indeed entered Brega – or the eastern part of it anyway. It was the first time he had used OSINT to prove something and it was his first scoop. He uploaded his findings to the Guardian live blog and sent out his sketch maps to his handful of followers on Twitter. “I’m 100 per cent sure they are right. I compared the wall angles to the videos and it all matches,” he tweeted, to complete indifference. He received precisely no likes or retweets. That was his seventh tweet. He now has almost 140,000 followers and has tweeted more than 260,000 times. Not long afterwards, his employer lost its government contract and, although Higgins was employed for a while winding down its affairs, there wasn’t much for him to do. As a result, he spent still more time online, pursuing opportunities for more scoops, honing his new technique, which he dubbed “geolocation”. The Arab Spring turned into a sour autumn, particularly in Syria, which became far too dangerous for most news organisations to report on directly. This meant the world was dependent on the kind of online videos Higgins was specialising in and journalists increasingly turned to him as a source for reliable information. He founded a blog called Brown Moses to aggregate his work, which addressed an ever wider range of topics. As he became more confident in his methods, he didn’t just verify where videos were filmed, but he also started identifying weapons, which often revealed far more than their owners intended. >>

‘There is no way I’m flying anywhere near Russia after the Ryanair incident’

iggins was working as an administrator for an organisation in Leicester that housed asylum seekers, but was finding it so unsatisfying that his favourite part of the workday was arriving early to scour the message boards. By 2011, that meant he was reading a lot about the “Arab Spring”, the series of uprisings that began in Tunisia and spread all across the Middle East. Since the revolutionaries coordinated much of their actions via Twitter and other social media, there was a lot of information to find online. Higgins became competitive about digging up nuggets before anyone else, then posting them as “Brown Moses” (this was the name of a Frank Zappa song he was listening to when asked to choose a username) on the Guardian’s Middle East live blog. In August 2011, Libya’s revolution had become a civil war and insurgents were boasting about

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>> In February 2013, the New York Times picked up on his discovery that rebels in southern Syria had somehow received a large quantity of Croatian guns. After checking with sources in Washington, the paper’s reporters revealed that the weapons were the fruit of a clandestine Saudi effort to arm the resistance. That was a major scoop, but the world’s media was more interested in marvelling at its source. Who was “Brown Moses”? How did a solitary – and, now, unemployed – blogger in the East Midlands, who spoke neither Arabic nor Farsi, who spent much of his time caring for his young daughter, come to beat the world’s media to a major Middle Eastern weapons deal that laid bare the rivalry between Tehran and Riyadh? “There’s a lot of nonsense posted on Twitter. People have their own agendas and you have to sort out what’s real and what’s not,” a freshfaced, earnest and then unbearded Higgins told a Dutch television crew. “I’d like to try and do this full time. It’s something that really interests me and I’m very fastidious about what I do. If it were possible, I’d like to turn this into some kind of career.”

BELLING THE CAT

That year, dozens of reporters travelled to Leicester to meet Higgins, a surge of interest that culminated in a profile in the New Yorker, headlined “Rocket Man”, after he proved the Syrian regime fired makeshift rockets packed with sarin at rebel-held parts of Ghouta, killing hundreds of people. Journalists were fascinated by the autodidact who had somehow vaulted into the heart of their profession and exposed a war crime, but, reading their pieces now, it’s clear they were letting the improbability of his discoveries cloud their vision of how he was making them. Online wizardry only explained half of his success, the other half came from a decidedly un-journalist-like willingness to cooperate. This was true even with that first sketch map, which he tweeted to other users to let them add his findings to their accounts of what was happening, and it remained true as his discoveries became ever more consequential. “Everything I do, even from the Brown Moses blog days, it was always about collaborating with people, talking to other people and knowing that I didn’t know everything, that I wasn’t an expert on any of this,” he said. “Having to be transparent about sources, but also giving credit where it’s due, because I wanted to encourage people to share their knowledge and be part of that, because then I would learn more about the thing I was interested in.” Critics who disliked his findings – and there are many people suspicious that someone accusing a Middle Eastern government of using chemical weapons is a hawkish neocon plotting to unleash war in the region – often mocked him for his lack of training or qualifications. But he never claimed to be an expert; all he was doing was describing what he could see and providing a forum for other people to do the same. Inevitably, considering their insistence on revealing secrets 140 GQ.CO.UK SEPTEMBER 2021

and their mastery of the internet, he has frequently been compared to Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. But they have almost nothing in common: Assange believes governments know the truth, are hiding it from us and that his job is to reveal it; Higgins believes the truth is discoverable through patient investigation and that his job is to coordinate that activity. In 2014, concerned that he was getting too much of the credit for work that collaborators published on his blog, he launched a new organisation, which he named after Aesop’s fable when mice band together to stop their predator being able to creep up on them: Bellingcat. The “i” is an inverted question mark. (Characteristically, Higgins is always careful to point out that this witty name was not his idea, but came from Peter Jukes, a fellow citizen journalist who has since cofounded Byline Times.) “It’s not about one person and one personality, it’s about building a community and collaboration. I think if you start making it about one person only, that completely undermines those efforts,” he said. “I’m not the king of Bellingcat.”

flight MH17, including 80 children, were killed. Their bodies fell into the maize fields of eastern Ukraine, to be met by a campaign of Kremlin obfuscation more sustained than anything we’d yet seen. In a press conference, Russian officials presented a series of claims that were all, as it turned out, completely false. Higgins took to Twitter to share what he was finding, becoming the hub around which a crew of online sleuths interrogated the Russian claims. “We basically broke down everything they said and proved it was completely untrue. It took us several months,” he said. In dozens of reports, Bellingcat laid out the path that the rocket launcher took from Russia to Ukraine, uncovered the people who commanded it and systematically dismantled the fabricated evidence presented by the Kremlin to deny its responsibility. Higgins no more speaks Russian than he does Farsi, but his collaborators do and they took advantage of a peculiarity of Russia that makes it unusually suited to Bellingcat’s style of research. Although the Kremlin is centralised and authoritarian, its decisions taken by a tiny clique around Vladimir Putin, the country’s epidemic corruption means almost any information is readily available if you’re willing to pay for it. Russia is simultaneously an extremely closed and an extremely open society. When I lived in Moscow, this meant that touts would sell CD-ROMs of passport data or telephone numbers to drivers waiting at traffic lights. Now, those same databases can be found online and accessed from anywhere. Bellingcat collaborator Christo Grozev, a Bulgarian who made a fortune setting up media outlets in the 1990s and who now spends his days researching Russian operations, has come to specialise in the mismatches in official Russian databases that emerge when its spy agencies create cover identities for their agents. Once identified, those agents’ tradecraft is sloppy – they often register their cars at

‘There’s a lot of nonsense on Twitter. You have to sort out what’s real and what’s not’

couple of months before Bellingcat was launched, Russia sent unmarked troops into Crimea, imposed a new administration, legitimised it via a hastily organised referendum, then annexed the peninsula. Then it sent special forces into eastern Ukraine to establish breakaway statelets. For those of us who were there, Russia’s involvement was clear and obvious, but officials in Moscow denied any connection in a blizzard of lies so dense that us traditional journalists, who listen to officials and are accustomed to presenting their side of the story, struggled to respond. Three days after Bellingcat’s foundation, Russian troops, armed with a Buk missile launcher, shot down a Malaysian Airlines passenger jet, apparently under the impression it was a military aircraft. All 298 people on board

Coco the stolen spaniel was returned to her owners thanks to software developed to solve a murder in Ukraine

headquarters, for example – which provides a constellation of matching data points, exposing what they’ve done, where they’ve been and with whom they’ve travelled. By combining these many sources, Bellingcat exposed the true identities of the two agent suspects in the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal with the nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury, as well as the identities of those believed to be behind an explosion at an arms dump in the Czech Republic, a poisoning in Bulgaria and a murder in Berlin. Russian officials consistently deny involvement and have become increasingly infuriated that the rest of the world takes Higgins’ word over theirs, throwing out ever-wilder explanations as to how he gains access to such granular evidence. In one particularly excruciating incident, the two suspects whom Bellingcat has identified as having tried to kill the Skripals in Salisbury were put on a state television channel to insist they were sports supplement vendors with a passion for ecclesiastical architecture, who only visited Salisbury to see the ancient clock in its cathedral. It was such an unconvincing story that they have become a meme on Twitter – the embodiment of a shifty excuse – and the Kremlin has not tried that trick again. A Russian media organisation has theorised that Higgins doesn’t actually exist, while officials regularly accuse Bellingcat of being a cutout used by British, American or Israeli spies to leak their allegations. A theory currently popular online even holds that Bellingcat is funded by one Russian intelligence agency, so as to undermine another. One diplomat routinely refers to it on Twitter as #Bellingcrap, much to Higgins’ indifference. He’s been having arguments online for decades, against people with far wittier retorts than that. Bellingcat’s biggest Russian scoop came after opposition activist Alexey Navalny was poisoned in 2020 while on an internal Russian flight – again, with Novichok. By using flight records, passport databases, phone records and other information, the team were able to trace the specific FSB agents who had tailed him and detail their movements for months before the operation. When Navalny was sufficiently recovered, he telephoned one of his alleged poisoners, pretending to be a superior officer, and enticed him into revealing the facts of the case, including that the poison had been administered via his underpants. Bellingcat waited until after Putin held a press conference, in which he admitted agents had followed the anticorruption activist but denied they’d tried to kill him, before releasing the recording of the telephone conversation, so as to gain maximum impact from the contradiction between the operative’s admissions and Putin’s denial. “That was a dream come true for us. Apart from a confession, he couldn’t have said anything better,” said Higgins. “I think when you’re dealing with an offline audience, you need to recognise what those moments are. It’s not just getting the information out there, but engaging with people.”

WHAT NEXT?

As I write this, Higgins is closely following a court case in the Netherlands, in which three Russians and a Ukrainian are on trial (in absentia; they haven’t had the courage to turn up) for the murder of the passengers and crew of MH17. I know this because he’s live-tweeting along with the hearing, pointing out where evidence presented in court supplements Bellingcat’s reports, highlighting new information produced by the prosecution and mocking the attempts by Russia’s UK embassy to blame the disaster on the Americans. In the early days, when he was dependent on crowdfunding (and his wife’s job at the Post Office) to pay the bills, he might have struggled to find time to do this, but Bellingcat is on firmer financial ground these days. It is organised as a charitable foundation in the Netherlands and funded by European and American grant-giving organisations. The fact that its funders include the National Endowment For Democracy, which is in turn supported by the US Congress, is often presented as evidence for the fact it’s really a CIA front, although that argument took a dent earlier this year when Bellingcat used information posted online by US servicemen to show where in Europe Washington keeps its nuclear weapons. “Years ago, the internet was advertised as a cyberutopia around the corner. Lately, public opinion has swung in the opposite direction. The digital era is viewed as a wrecking ball, smashing journalism, civility and politics,” he writes in his thoughtful and concise memoir-cum-manifesto We Are Bellingcat: An Intelligence Agency For The People, which was published earlier this year. “At Bellingcat, we do not accept this cyber-miserabilism. The marvels of the internet can still have an impact for the better.” In service of this philosophy, Bellingcat has shared its findings with the team investigating the shooting down of MH17, as well as with the German investigators seeking to discover the true identity of the murderer of Chechen exile Zelimkhan Khangoshvili. It has collated all the videos available online of the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January, putting them in sequential order and listing them by location. Higgins is trying to create a standard technique for archiving online information, so it can be used as evidence in future legal proceedings, even in places such as Yemen, where justice seems an impossibly remote possibility. Bellingcat also organises workshops for journalists and schoolchildren, teaching them how to use its methods to verify information. Underpinning this is a philosophy that is curiously hopeful, considering the overwhelmingly bleak nature of the material Higgins addresses every day. The early optimism of the internet dissipated long ago and people’s online experience is now shaped by the algorithms of Silicon Valley giants, which automatically

‘We do not accept cybermiserabilism. The internet can still be for the better’

B E L L I N G C AT prioritise content that stokes rage and division as the surest ways to retain the attention of their audiences. Higgins simply refuses to accept that this has to be the future and sees Bellingcat’s techniques as a way for ordinary people to reclaim power from the tech titans and to bend the arc of the internet back towards justice. For a nerd with a moral compass, this is how to make a difference online. “The internet has become a great way to radicalise people and part of that is driven by the fact that, as people have lost trust in traditional sources of authority, they seek alternative answers online,” Higgins explained. “So if you’re looking for an alternative source of authority, you’re going to seek it from other people. With Bellingcat, what we’re saying is you can be your own source of authority, by doing this fact-based investigation.” He is, of course, aware that, via his discoveries, he has enraged many powerful people who, as shown by Bellingcat’s own investigations, are terrifyingly ready to kill those who displease them (“I think we’ve got five or six assassinations we’ve got to write up. We’ve got a backlog of assassinations, along with all these other investigations,” he said, matterof-factly) and that has changed how he lives. He now won’t touch complimentary food in hotels, just in case Russia’s poison squad comes after him as it has come after the people he’s written about. But he has also made large numbers of allies, who have become part of the broader Bellingcat network, a proactive community of people working together to reclaim the internet from trolls, shills and provocateurs. “It’s one thing to have your cape on and be fighting the world’s bad guys, but to have enough time to get a dog reunited with someone in a little village... Some of these owners, when I say distraught, they are destroyed by the theft. It makes such a huge difference to the individual and it’s humbling that he still finds time to make a difference to the individual as well as, you know, world peace,” said Emma Sparkes of DogLost at the end of our conversation, laughing. “People don’t come up and hug him in the street as a result of what he’s doing and he does have to employ a food taster, but I’ll tell you what: all of the dog owners in the United Kingdom will be between him and the secret services and there are some seriously scary spaniels out there.” G WE ARE BELLINGCAT: AN INTELLIGENCE AGENCY FOR THE PEOPLE BY ELIOT HIGGINS (BLOOMSBURY, £20) IS OUT NOW.

+ More from GQ For these related stories visit GQ.co.uk/magazine

RETRACING THE STEPS OF SERGEI SKRIPAL’S WOULD-BE KILLERS (Luke Harding, July 2020) MEMES, LOLZ AND INTEL INCELS: BEHIND THE SCENES IN THE NSA (Barton Gellman, June 2020) HOW FORENSIC ARCHITECTURE IS USING TECH TO UNCOVER INJUSTICE (Edwin Heathcote, April 2018)

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In this intimate interview to mark 40 years of his Emporio line, Giorgio Armani opens up. From personal stories, including his childhood in war-torn Italy and the protection of his late partner’s memory, to an incisive critique of his industry, Italy’s sartorial father figure is living proof that the maelstrom of 21st-century fashion is navigated best with a cool hand on the tiller

‘I AM

ANTIF A S H I O N’ Story by

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Alexander Fury Photograph by German Larkin

ARMANI

Giorgio Armani photographed for British GQ, 21 July

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even voluptuous. By 1978, the New York Times stated that he was already generally considered to be the world’s number one menswear designer; what Armani did for menswear is what Gabrielle Chanel, whose work he “adores”, did for women. Simplifying, streamlining, lightening, freeing. Two years later, Richard Gere’s role as Julian Kaye in American Gigolo brought the Armani style to global name. It also heavily publicised his name, Gere wrenching open a drawer of Armani shirts, perfectly folded, labels exposed, before composing four entirely Armani outfits in what ultimately amounted to cinema’s best advertising campaign for a fashion brand ever. It projected Armani’s name and style to an audience far broader than any fashion magazine could reach. The film made Gere a star, and Armani too. Today, Giorgio Armani is, probably, the most famous living fashion designer in the world.

ispettosi” is a word Mr Armani uses often – it means respect. Armani demands that and it is also a value he wants to embed in everything he creates: respect for the body, respect for the fabric, respect for the wearer and respect for the world. “Rispettosi.” Armani looks at me, impenetrably, as he states that word. I think he understands questions posed in English but, given the precision that is a hallmark of his style, he chooses not to answer in case he cannot express himself correctly and our interview is conducted through a translator. My Italian is execrable, but I can understand a few snippets direct, “rispettosi” being one of them. He also says “folle”, which means crazy. He’s speaking of the fashion system when talking about that, about the pace of shows, the rate of production, the surfeit of product, especially it continuing apace despite the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns. “I’m quite amazed, seeing what we went through, that there have been declarations of people saying, ‘We’re going to go ahead full – full speed, but more,’” Armani says. “And that these happen even though, at the time, everybody said, ‘Yes, we need to change,’ but I don’t think that everybody is necessarily doing that. People want to go even quicker than before and make more money than before. I’m amazed by that.” The Italian word for amazed is “stupito”, which I thought meant stupid. Mr Armani thinks it is that too, so much so that last April he wrote an open letter to the trade industry bible Women’s Wear Daily. “The decline of the fashion system as we know it began when the luxury segment adopted the operating methods of fast fashion, mimicking the latter’s endless delivery cycle in the hope of selling more, yet forgetting that luxury takes time,” he wrote. “Luxury cannot and must not be fast.” Giorgio Armani himself can never be accused of rushing. He was 41 before he launched his own label, alongside his late partner, Sergio Galeotti, an architect by training. Armani had already worked in fashion for 18 years by then, first as a window dresser at the Milanese department >>

‘I’m amazed that, despite Covid, people want to go even quicker than before’

Photograph Shutterstock

Giorgio Armani is waiting, talking Italian. Mr Armani – as he is always referred to, across multiple languages – doesn’t wait very often. He isn’t able to, given his empire complex, with brand revenues totalling €4.2 billion (£3.5bn) in 2019, which spans such esoteric delights as Armani homewares and hotels, floristry and chocolates. Of course, what Mr Armani is best known for is fashion: his eponymous label, Giorgio Armani, founded in 1975; Armani Privé, his range of made-to-measure haute couture clothing for women, shown in Paris since 2005; and Emporio Armani. If Giorgio Armani is the purest distillation of Armani’s aesthetic ideology and Privé is his extravagant, exuberant and indulgent side – as clothes costing upwards of £30,000 have a tendency to be – Emporio represents a youthful esprit, despite the fact it turns 40 this year. The line will be celebrated, come autumn, with a show at Silos, Armani’s minimalist Milanese exhibition space, Emporio outfits framed by photography that helps cement Armani’s vision, his universe. It is rare to get him to pause. When he does so, for GQ, it is in Paris. He has just met privately with the Italian president, Sergio Mattarella – fitting given that Armani is Italian fashion’s elder statesman. They discussed the state of the economy, of the industry. Mattarella’s daughter, Laura, attended Armani’s haute couture presentation held at the Italian embassy in Paris. Two weeks earlier, in Milan, Armani had staged his first catwalk show since the Covid-19 pandemic hit, showcasing his Spring/Summer 2022 menswear line. Sixteen months earlier, in February 2020, Armani – presciently – was the first Italian designer to cancel a physical show over concerns for health. And a week after we meet he turns 87. Both Armani’s energy and his appearance – tanned, slender, intense eyes, decisive movements – knock a good quarter-century off any estimate one may give, which, perhaps, connects him more intimately to Emporio than one might consider. “The idea of ‘youthful’ hasn’t changed,” Armani says. “It’s still as valid today. It’s the attitude that needs to be youthful.” He first began to show the Emporio Armani line in 1986, leading the way for other designers to launch lower-priced lines that

have been alternately dubbed secondary, diffusion or bridge. Emporio Armani was always about way more than just affordability – although that taps, inherently, into a democracy that Armani admires. And he does not shy away from discussing it. “Emporio is for people that have a youthful attitude, that also, though, maybe don’t have the exact same means as Giorgio Armani,” he pauses. “Because, you know, the price is relatively lower – a little bit more accessible – but they still want those values of Armani.” The Armani “look” is easy to define. As Bret Easton Ellis wrote in American Psycho, muted greys, taupes and navies, subtle plaids, polka dots and stripes are Armani. He weirdly missed out greige – the colour Armani invented that looks like the faded facades of Milanese buildings, a kind of sandstone smoked with smog – and didn’t mention tailoring, which also underscores the designer’s look. But, value-wise, Armani is all about easy elegance, egalitarianism, blurring the lines between the sexes – back in the mid-1980s Armani was already proposing for Emporio pieces to be worn by men and women alike, long before the modern notion of gender fluidity had ever been conceived. His clothes are elegant, timeless, unobtrusive. They find parallels in Le Corbusier’s buildings, so-called “machines for living”, where form follows function, where ornament is crime. Emporio Armani is older than I am – just. When it was established, in 1981, it was an echo of an aesthetic that had, even at that nascent point just six years into Armani’s solo career, already shifted the axis of fashion fundamentally, reshaping the dress of the late 20th century and defining that of the 21st. Here’s what Armani did that is so important: he reinvented the way clothes were made, therefore how they felt, therefore how we live. He ripped the stuffing out of jackets, literally and metaphorically lightening centuries-old construction methods with an innately modern sensibility, crossbreeding casual and formal, day and night. Interlinings were loosened, layered rather than sewn down inside jackets, shoulders cut to intentionally slope, a tour de force of tailoring. The root of modern streetwear actually lies in Armani’s fundamental deformalisation of wardrobe staples and its influence was felt immediately. He deconstructed fashion before fashion invented deconstruction and finished it so perfectly that you didn’t realise how revolutionary his concept was. Martin Margiela is credited with that, because he left the hems raw so you could see his workings. Armani’s raw was rarefied. It still is. His work is akin to Italian rationalism, whose practitioners set out to create logical buildings – elegant in an understated way – that found an equilibrium between florid neoclassicism and the cold, antiseptic style of futurism. In a similar way, Armani’s breed of Italian rationalism found – and still finds – a hinterland between grandeur and simplicity, minimal and barocco. Armani’s lines may be modernist, but his materials are often sumptuously sensual,

ARMANI Richard Gere as the Armani-clad Julian Kaye in American Gigolo

American Gigolo made Richard Gere a star. It made Armani a global name too SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ.C O.UK 145

‘The decline of the fashion system began when people forgot luxury cannot be fast’

From left: Roberta Armani, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tina Turner and Giorgio Armani, 2015; (above) the Armani hanger at Milano Linate airport

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ARMANI

Giorgio Armani with his head of menswear, Leo Dell’Orco; (right) with his partner, Sergio Galeotti, in 1978

Photographs Giorgio Armani personal archive; Vantage News

>> store La Rinascente, then as a menswear designer for Nino Cerruti. In his job interview, Cerruti threw a selection of textiles to Armani and asked him to choose his favourites. Luckily, his selection matched with Cerruti’s own and Armani learned the menswear business and an innate respect and love for fabrics at his right hand. He has profound rispettosi for Cerruti. And Galeotti he loved. I have always wanted to talk to Armani about this relationship, which shaped his character and career – having met in 1966, it was at Galeotti’s urging that Armani, then a freelance designer working across multiple companies, decided to break out alone in the early 1970s. The couple sold their car for the money to establish Giorgio Armani SpA and Galeotti served as chairman. Galeotti died of Aids-related causes – a heart attack while suffering with leukaemia – in 1985, when he and Armani had been together for almost 20 years. Armani continued to build his empire. I wonder if, in a way, it’s as a testament to Galeotti, the love of his life. “I learned quite quickly – and the hard way – that in public life you have to wear a sort of shield in order to protect yourself,” Armani says. “Social life is a theatre; private life is an entirely different matter.” The roots of the Armani style are in his childhood. He was born in Piacenza, about 40 miles from Milan, in the mid-1930s. Armani loves art deco: in his womenswear you’ll find its designs whirling in embroideries and he even, at one point, sold original art deco jewellery alongside his clothes. In menswear, when asked for his avatars of elegance, he goes straight back to that era, to cinema, to Clark Gable and Cary Grant, “that masculine way to be nonchalantly elegant that was completely effortless”. But more than the style of the time, the everyday experiences indelibly marked Armani. He was five when war broke out. “We were stuck in our homes. Some people were lucky, they were protected by them, but some others weren’t. They were bombed. It was tough. But I was quite young, so it was hard for me to really perceive it. I was scared. Obviously, hearing the planes come over, going down into the cellar, to be covered and protected. I remember. I have memories of it.”

He pauses, breathes deeply. “The hardest thing and the most important thing was to try to eat – and not those things that you had to eat, or be forced to eat, during war, which were really terrible. Or the pleasure of seeing a film... Those were the things I remember. Walking outside in the evening and being able to see the lights of the sky, without having a curfew. Those were things that were very important – not necessarily having money, making things, but being able to simply go outside into the countryside. Before, it was impossible. Having that freedom to venture out of the city, which was being bombed, it was an incredible pleasure. Small things.” His description, intentionally, I’m sure, throws back to the past year and the shared experiences of billions. Armani originally trained in medicine before following his fashion path and when discussing the experience of the past year – the Italian lockdown, which Armani mostly spent at his home in Tuscany, rather than in Milan, but with movement nevertheless heavily restricted – he focuses not on fashion’s lost markets and profits, but on human loss and experience. He turned his factories over to the production of PPE and donated around £1.7 million to Italian hospitals. “Obviously, you can always do more and you obviously do feel frustrated, but, in a way, I think I did try to do the very best I could with the means I have,” Armani says. “But I also had to think about my work. It had to carry on. I think that it was important for me to be able to continue working, also for the people that work for me – to protect them, to give them certainties in a moment of uncertainties.” There seems to have been a recent shift in Armani’s mentality, as subtle as a tweak to his tailoring. There’s a new intimacy, a relaxation – dare I say humanity? I don’t mean that pejoratively, but Armani is a giant, for many not a man but a name on a label – or, indeed, a name embalmed across an aircraft hanger, the one at Milano Linate airport stamped with the Emporio Armani typeface and its eagle logo. He meets with heads of

countries and is a figurehead himself, which can sometimes shift perceptions of the person behind. But in June Armani didn’t show his first live physical fashion show in more than a year in his monumental, minimalist, Tadao Ando-designed Teatro in the south of the city, where he has presented them for more than 20 years. Instead, he showed in the courtyard of Via Borgonuovo 21, his company’s historic headquarters but also his home; his private apartment is above. At the end of his first show – two were held, each for just 80 guests – Armani clustered the press together in a small garden. He had something to tell us. He wrenched up his sleeve, revealing a fresh scar, and explained how he had fallen just 20 days prior, after having ventured out for the first time to see a film at the cinema. “It wasn’t very good,” he deadpanned. The accident necessitated 17 stitches and two weeks in hospital. “I won’t tell you how painful it was.” Oddly, Armani seemed in good spirits, maybe on the rush of endorphins all fashion designers talk about, or at least acknowledge, when they’ve just staged a show. He seemed defiant, not vulnerable, at ease. “I love it here,” he said of Via Borgonuovo. “This is where I started. You know, there’s a theatre underneath our feet and we used to do the shows there. The bigger I became, it wasn’t enough space.” For the first time, he also took his bow alongside a colleague, Leo Dell’Orco, head of menswear across Armani, who joined the company in 1977. “I am preparing my future with the people who are around me in my home,” he said.

‘I learned that in public life you have to wear a shield to protect yourself’

ere’s a story: I once wrote a feature about Armani’s make-up line and hence was permitted backstage access at one of his womenswear shows. I wasn’t supposed to be there, really, after I’d seen the make-up applied, but I stood in a corner, anonymous in black, and watched as Armani conducted his fashion orchestra. As opposed to the multifaceted, buzzing hive usually behind the scenes at a catwalk show, of many people working in splendid isolation, >> SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ.C O.UK 147

tweaked a belt, adjusted a hem, calling to a wave of assistants that ebbed and swelled nearby. That ocean of bodies was next to another, the models; in the middle, Armani only – like Moses, parting that sea. He was the only person that touched any model. “Basta fotografi,” he called out, clearing the room of cameras. He styled every outfit himself, sometimes placing accessories, more often removing. “Sometimes I’m scared I’m too safe and you won’t be able to write about anything,” he says of his work, those shows. “But at the end I see it all together and anything I have added I subtract and it goes back.” He styles his menswear presentations too; indeed, he does every fashion show executed with “Armani” as part of the name. As the show commences, he stands a metre or so away from the exit to the catwalk. His are the last set of eyes to see every model. How can a fashion company continue without that kind of figure? It’s a tricky question, but one that must be asked. In the past, Armani has pointedly refused to speak of the future. No succession plans, no prospects for sales of the company, which Armani still not only heads creatively but also fiscally and is the sole shareholder. Presently, he has begun to open up... a little. He suggested a sale to an Italian company, one perhaps outside of fashion that could afford the multibillion-pound price his label would demand. Ferrari has been floated. I wonder if the pandemic reset the way Armani saw himself and his world – the fragility of life is something, after all, that has been re-emphasised to us all. “I must say, it’s not really been the pandemic, but it’s the years that passed and my age that have made me become more vocal about certain situations and needing to assess,” Armani says. “And, most importantly, it’s also that I want to reassure the people that work with me that they’re in the same position, that we’re a strong company.” He’s also, oddly, effusive about other designers, something he has avoided discussing before, presumably to avoid rumours of takeovers or design succession plans. He admires an unexpected contemporary, Jean Paul Gaultier: “Technically, he is great,” Armani states. “He often didn’t get the credit for it.” He also cites the Belgian designer Dries Van Noten. “He has a very elegant mind,” Armani nods. “This is the first time I’m hearing this!” murmurs a staff member. You would, ostensibly, connect neither the colourful pattern of Van Noten nor the provocation of Gaultier to Armani’s oeuvre. Later in the interview Armani states, “I want somebody to be able to walk on the street in clothes that don’t make people turn around and say, ‘What are they wearing?’,” which seems the very antithesis of Gaultier’s look-at-me approach. But shared notions of faultless elegance and excellence in construction across the three can certainly unite them. Armani does examine his own back catalogue “and it annoys me when sometimes I look and wonder why something didn’t have the success it deserved at the time”. He pauses. “I must say,

Looks from Emporio Armani’s Autumn/Winter 2021 and (below) Spring/Summer 2021 collections

‘I’m always remembered for the 1980s, but I did lots of things that others took’

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I don’t feel I got the credit for women’s fashion in certain ways, for what I really did. I’m always remembered for the 1980s and, you know, that suit, but I did lots of things, if you look back, that, really, I think somebody else took after.” He shrugs. “But, you know, being copied is something prestigious too.” Talking of that past, it’s only natural to consider legacy. I wonder what Armani wishes his to be. “Well, I don’t want to be as presumptuous as to say that what I do is art,” Armani begins. “I don’t do art; I do clothes. I would find it nice if my name would be remembered for something in 50 years that was associated to a certain type of style, a certain way of seeing life. My legacy, I would like it to be beyond just clothes.” Respect comes up again. “We have to be respectful. That

is important. I’d like to be remembered for that. Respecting people, with my clothes.” Respect, duty, rigour. These are all synonymous with Armani. The clothes are soft, but the man can come across as hard, tough. “With men you can’t have too much fun, you need to have an allure that you’re able to wear,” Armani says. “We can invent, but not have fun.” He’s talking about fashion specifically, but his severity sometimes makes you think deeper. How does Armani relax? How does he have fun? “For me the idea of pleasure is time spent on the beach or on a boat, looking at the sky, doing nothing,” he says. “I felt guilty about it in the past, but not any more. Now, at my age, I think I can afford to relax. I also enjoy time on my own, because my work is constantly in the presence of others, but I don’t mind time by myself with my cats. That is my idea of pleasure.” Family is also important. “Not only important, it is everything,” Armani says. “Don’t forget that I’m Italian and family for us is fundamental.” I wonder if Armani ever wanted children. “I come from another generation and I never thought I would have children of my own,” he allows. He connects with his extended family – he adores his infant goddaughter, Bianca. “I give her dolls, but as soon as she sees a phone or anything technical she jumps on it,” Armani says, looking perturbed. “She’s better than me at one-and-a-half years old! It’s scary, because it comes so soon, so early for the attention. And, in that, you must say, companies have been good at creating technology that is so easy. I think most people of my age don’t know how to handle a phone.” FYI, don’t get your phone out at dinner chez Armani. “It’s horrendous when they pull out their phone and they can’t speak. That’s why I like to watch old films from the past – they didn’t even talk at dinner.” He’s smiling, a little, with exasperation. Oh, he also doesn’t like TikTok. “I think it makes you go stupid.” He’s laughing now. I get the feeling Armani doesn’t really like fashion that much. At least, not the way the industry seems now – its vagaries, its foibles and transience, its ceaselessly TikToked shows. “I am anti-fashion,” he says, forcefully. He’s perched on a golden salon chair as he says this, in a gilded Parisian ballroom, and it seems a paradox, like much of Armani’s work: simple clothes that are complex to make, minimalism achieved through maximal effort, hardness of appearance that is actually soft (meaning both the fashion and actually the man... well, sometimes). What does he hate about fashion? “I hate to be considered one of the flock of sheep,” he asserts. Basta. Armani nods, efficiently. Now, back to work, for the most famous fashion designer of our time. G

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GIORGIO ARMANI’S 17 COMMANDMENTS FOR STYLISH LIVING (Teo van den Broeke, December 2019)

Photograph Giorgio Armani personal archive

>> here Mr Armani was the apex of activity. He

ARMANI At 87, Giorgio Armani is still the sole shareholder of the company he founded in 1975

‘I would like my legacy to be beyond clothes, to be a certain type of style and life’

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T H E M A N Y S A I N T S O F N E WA R K

The Many Saints Of Newark’s Michael Gandolfini as a young Tony Soprano and Jon Bernthal as his father, ‘Johnny Boy’

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THE

Many Saints Newark

SPECIAL

The beginning of that ending: Inside The Sopranos’ prequel Fourteen years after Tony and co’s famous and ambiguously final farewell, a new film by show creator David Chase explores the formative years of TV’s most notorious New Jersey mobsters. GQ met the writer, director and stars – including Michael Gandolfini, reprising his father’s role – to break the code of omertà behind The Many Saints Of Newark Story by

Thomas Barrie Barry Wetcher

Photographs by

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Ray Liotta doesn’t remember which character he was supposed to play on The Sopranos, the American mafia drama that, almost overnight, changed TV forever. Trawl through fan forums, subreddits and gossip sites today and they’ll give you various names: mob captain Ralph Cifaretto or the lead, Tony Soprano himself, played by the late James Gandolfini. But to Liotta, it’s all in the distant past. Yes, he might have met with the series’ creator, David Chase, to discuss the show and, yes, his stock had never been higher after his lead role in Martin Scorsese’s acclaimed Goodfellas, released a few years previously, but even then Liotta knew he couldn’t commit to The Sopranos. He didn’t have the time and, anyway, after playing Goodfellas lead and mafioso Henry Hill, he’d have risked being typecast as a wiseguy. So he carried on with his life. He watched the first series of Chase’s operatic series and then let the rest of it slip by on HBO. Occasionally, he’d bump into Gandolfini at events, including a screening of neo-noir crime movie Killing Them Softly, in which they both appeared but shared no scenes. “We talked a little, but there was no real conversation,” recalls Liotta. “He was with his crew and I was with the people I was with.” For years, that was the extent of Liotta’s association with the series. Then, in 2019, he heard the news: The Sopranos was back. Well, sort of. A longrumoured spinoff feature film named The Many Saints Of Newark had entered production and this time Liotta’s schedule was totally free. He picked up the phone. “I wanted to be a part of it,” says Liotta, “and they hadn’t come my way. So I told my agent, ‘See if they’ll sit down with me.’” Things worked out and Liotta flew to New York to meet Chase and the film’s director, Alan Taylor. “We had lunch and discussed things and by the end of lunch they asked me if I wanted to play Dickie Moltisanti.” Liotta’s casting was just one piece in a huge puzzle laid out in front of Chase, Taylor and the film’s other producers as they tried to bring the show’s central DiMeo crime family to life. Over the past four years, that puzzle has been gradually and meticulously assembled, although the specifics of the hugely anticipated film have been subject to a mafia-style omertà, including its plot and its implications for the original series, which wrapped up in dramatic fashion in 2007 only to be debated by fans – did that beloved character survive that final scene? – forevermore. The story of the production of The Many Saints Of Newark is one of escaping the past; of avoiding the dangers of producing fan fiction or lightweight nostalgia; of a shoot and edit hampered by Covid-19; of the late James Gandolfini’s own son stepping up, under immense pressure, to fill his father’s shoes in the lead role. It was a monumental, multifaceted undertaking and when it arrives in cinemas at long last this October, it will change the Sopranos franchise forever. But how could it possibly live up to the hype of the original show, which itself shaped the very medium of television and established TV as a serious art form? Like its close cousin The Godfather, could a hypothetical “part two” of The Sopranos delve into family secrets to deliver a satisfying, multigenerational saga? Just as the second instalment of Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece doubled back on itself, peering into a bloodstained past to learn what shaped Vito Corleone as a young man, so would The Many Saints Of Newark pose the same questions of big boss Tony Soprano. “We circled back to see what made Tony,” says Taylor, “and, with that, raised the question of what is your destiny? Can you shape it? Are you consigned to it?” 152 GQ.CO.UK SEPTEMBER 2021

he Sopranos was always about endings. There was, of course, that famous cliffhanger where Tony Soprano becomes a sort of Schrödinger’s capo: both alive and gunned down at once, his fate obscured by an abrupt cut to black in the final scene of the final episode of the show’s sixth series, “Made In America”, as it appeared that someone came to kill him. Any number of other characters met their ends along the way, in darkened parking lots, alleyways, motel rooms and (possibly) the frozen backwoods of south Jersey’s Pine Barrens. But even more broadly, the show was about the psychological death of the mob, the passing of the glamour of the pre-Rico (Racketeer Influenced And Corrupt Organizations) Act years and the suburban malaise of Italian-American organised crime. Racketeering was dreary, Chase told rapt viewers of late-1990s HBO. The mafia was suffering from a crisis of confidence. Tony said it himself in his therapist’s office, in

From left: Vera Farmiga as Tony’s mother, Livia, alongside Gandolfini; Leslie Odom Jr as Harold McBrayer; Farmiga with onscreen husband Bernthal

the show’s pilot: “I’m getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.” Dr Jennifer Melfi’s response? “Many Americans, I think, feel that way.” And so, in a way, the story of any Sopranos spinoff was always going to be the story of a battle not to make a sequel, no matter how much a film studio might want to cash in on a return to Tony’s world after that astounding finale. To do so would have ruined the whole point of the most finely balanced and carefully written series ever. “I kept thinking of it as a sequel,” Chase explains, “whenever I talked about a Sopranos movie.” He did have one other idea: to write a show about “a totally corrupt police department” in Hoboken, New York, where “all the characters would be policemen, but they’d be played by the same actors – Jim [Gandolfini], Tony Sirico [who played mob captain Paulie Walnuts]...” Gandolfini’s untimely death in 2013, Chase says, “put the kibosh” on that idea, as well as any sequel. (It’s worth noting that the famously wilful Chase would have been vanishingly unlikely to agree to a sequel anyway, with or without Gandolfini; he speaks his mind and doesn’t suffer fools, at one point in our conversation

T H E M A N Y S A I N T S O F N E WA R K responding to a question by asking, acidly, “Have you seen the movie?”) “Because of the way The Sopranos ended, there was almost no way to continue onward,” agrees Taylor. And yet, after “a lot of conversations” with Toby Emmerich, the then head of New Line Cinema, Chase gradually warmed to the idea not of a Sopranos sequel, but a prequel – an origin story set in Newark, New Jersey, in the 1960s and 1970s that would follow the older generation from the original series as youngsters. “I was still interested in those characters and felt like I knew them all. And, if they were my friends, I would have said [to them], ‘Gee, so where did you come from?’ or ‘What did your dad do for a living?’” By 2018, Chase and his cowriter, Lawrence Konner, had penned a script, sold it to New Line and asked veteran Sopranos director Taylor to come on board, taking advantage of the trust Emmerich had placed in him to

Tony’s mother, Livia Soprano. Billy Magnussen plays Paulie Walnuts, Jon Magaro is the consigliere Silvio Dante and Jon Bernthal is Tony’s father, Giovanni “Johnny Boy” Soprano. Plus, there were new names thrown into the mix. Italian newcomer Michela De Rossi was cast out of Rome, travelling outside Europe for the first time ever to audition and shoot in New York. Leslie Odom Jr of Hamilton and One Night In Miami... fame joined the cast as mob enforcer Harold McBrayer, too, and in late 2018 Alessandro Nivola had been confirmed in the lead role of Dickie Moltisanti (Ray Liotta plays his father, who has the same name). Dickie is the long-dead father of Sopranos greenhorn Christopher Moltisanti and a mentor to Tony, referred to in passing in the series but never seen on screen outside photographs. Taylor describes him as “a ghostly presence” in The Sopranos. Then there was the big news: Michael

we’re told, Dickie swears in front of his beautiful new stepmother. “I like that word,” she says, repeating it: “Motherfucker.” Well, quite. Dickie relies on a young black man to help him collect on debts, an ambitious street enforcer – Odom Jr’s Harold McBrayer. Initially, Harold is happy enough earning money as a mob associate, but with the Vietnam draft hanging over Jersey and racial tensions escalating, protests and looting break out. Harold sees young black looters gunned down, shot in the back by white police and he hears the offensive names the made men call him. Even Dickie, ostensibly a friend and mentor to Harold, is openly racist, sneering at black protesters agitating against police brutality. Later, an encounter with a spoken-word artist, a Gil Scott-Heron type who exhorts his audience to “wake up”, persuades Harold to move past being the errand boy – his girlfriend calls him a “house n*****” – for the Italians and challenge

shape the project. “I think Toby really seems to love the show,” adds Taylor, “and loves the world that David created, so he deferred to David throughout.” From the off, the production was shrouded in secrecy to avoid spoilers. Multiple cast members report auditioning by reading scenes featuring characters with extremely generic Italian names and trying to work out who they would be playing. In the coded scripts, Tony Soprano was known as “Carmine”; Tony’s longtime friend and fellow mafioso Big Pussy Bonpensiero, appropriately enough for a thickset man, was called “Butter”. “We knew we couldn’t hide who we were casting, but we could withhold who they were playing for a while,” says Taylor, who dealt with similar media and fan interest while directing episodes of Game Of Thrones. “It was funny seeing people try and guess who was who.” Not least that’s because the cast is vast and stacked with talent. Corey Stoll plays Tony’s uncle, Junior Soprano. Vera Farmiga is

Gandolfini, James Gandolfini’s only son, had been cast in the film. The Many Saints Of Newark had found its Tony Soprano.

Dickie’s hold on organised crime in the neighbourhood. Soon, as Odom Jr puts it, Harold has become “a revolutionary”, albeit one whose revolution is going to enrich him substantially. If The Sopranos taught us that there was no such thing as a truly selfless act, that everyone has an (often murderous) agenda, then here the moral dial has hardly moved. It is still set firmly to “grey”. The city is filthy, hot and seething. Soon, downtown Newark is burning, the sky glows red and the ensemble cast, made men and black street gangs alike, watch the neighbourhood disappear under a thin layer of grey ash. There’s violence and chaos everywhere, yes, but also opportunity. Taylor emphasises that The Many Saints Of Newark is “a stand-alone story” that examines “all the same themes and tones” as The Sopranos. Dickie Moltisanti, that “ghostly presence” that Taylor described, is finally made flesh and blood. And how much blood. By all accounts, Dickie is a man who could explode at any moment, who would smile at you and then blind you for smiling back. He’s both charismatic but brutal, like Tony in The Sopranos. Taylor says that Dickie “has a beast in him, but he’s struggling to understand why”, and, like >>

o hear the cast and creators tell it, The Many Saints Of Newark quickly sets up the sort of brutal familial infighting that made The Sopranos so compelling. In 1967, Dickie “Hollywood Dick” Moltisanti, played by the wonderfully gammony (should that be gabagoolish?) Liotta, comes home from a trip to Italy with a beautiful young wife, Giuseppina, whose family was killed by the fascists and who speaks little English, but whose looks wouldn’t be out of place among Caravaggio’s saints. Dickie’s son, also named Dickie Moltisanti, is a captain in the DiMeo crime family and he runs the various criminal enterprises of Newark, New Jersey. The younger Dickie is wolfishly charming, according to Taylor, with that menace and kindness in equal parts that’s so typical of Sopranos men. His father is heavier on the menace than the kindness and his new marriage soon becomes fraught. Things get Oedipal, sharpish. Early on,

Gandolfini tilts his head and mutters a menacing ‘What d’you just say?’ and it’s deeply, deeply unnerving

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>> Tony again, Dickie has a type of therapy available to him, although his involves visiting an associate in prison to discuss his problems in coded, dishonest terms rather than sitting in Dr Melfi’s office and speaking in justlegal euphemisms. Nivola was one of the first actors to be cast in the film and he jokes that it’s one of the few roles for which he could be reasonably confident he was the first choice for the part. (Taylor confirms this and describes Nivola’s audition as “a thing of beauty”.) Early in the casting process, Nivola, Taylor and Chase had lunch in Tribeca, New York, at which the actor spoke about his Italian roots. The grandson of a Second World War refugee from Sardinia on this father’s side, his grandfather, an artist, even had a sculpture that appeared in the background of a scene in “Commendatori”, the series two episode in which Tony and his crew visit Naples. It was divine intervention, Chase remarked. With time to prepare before shooting began, Nivola sought out and spoke to wiseguys – or guys close to wiseguys, at least. He was introduced by the archbishop of Newark, Joseph Tobin, who married him and his wife, the actress Emily Mortimer, to the archbishop’s secretary, who was “a huge Sopranos fan” and who, in turn, took Nivola on a tour around historically Italian Newark. The man showed Nivola into a church with a huge stained-glass window, which, a dedication explained, had been paid for by Ruggiero Boiardo, also known as “Richie The Boot”, whom Nivola describes as “the godfather of the New Jersey mob”. In the basement of the church, a priest served him an espresso with a drop of grappa in it. “I was off and running.” Nivola also had a friend from Brooklyn who “knew guys who knew guys who knew guys” and ended up at dinner with people associated with small-time stock fraud and the construction business. There was just one problem: on the advice of his friend, Nivola didn’t tell the men that he was starring in the upcoming Sopranos movie, for fear they would start imitating the characters to impress him. “It’s impossible to figure out who’s imitating who,” he grins. “The whole thing made The Sopranos almost [seem] underplayed.” In real life, Nivola is happy to confirm, mobsters adore mob movies and lionise their antiheroes, a fact that was not lost on Chase in the original series by any means. Remember Silvio Dante doing his best impression of Al Pacino in The Godfather: Part III? Or how often Tony Soprano liked to watch 1930s gangster classics Little Caesar and The Public Enemy? The result of all this research is that Nivola’s performance in The Many Saints Of Newark is totally original and fresh. But then, he was never burdened with the requirement to play a character that had already been introduced to The Sopranos viewers. For most of the cast, there were already established blueprints from which to work – and this was none more true, of course, than for the role of Tony Soprano himself. 154 GQ.CO.UK SEPTEMBER 2021

or The Sopranos fans, the overarching effect of watching The Many Saints Of Newark will probably be like seeing your parents in photos before you were born, back when they were young, weirdly good looking and full of hope for the future. Imagine a sort of Back To The Future situation, but in which people torture each other with drills and you’re probably halfway there. It’s not hard to imagine the opening scene. Picture Silvio, smooth as Brylcreem (“Madon’!” he exclaims, cocking his pompadour and shrugging dramatically), and the ever-fastidious Paulie Walnuts fussing over his nails, plus Big Pussy, already stout 30 years before Tony will eventually weigh him down and throw him off a yacht for being a rat. There’s Corey Stoll’s Junior, cantankerous and prickly as ever, shouting

his favourite curse (“Oh, your sister’s c***!”). Here’s future restaurateur Artie Bucco sneaking smokes outside school and a young Carmela in a varsity jacket, years before she will marry Tony. Even Tony’s sister Janice Soprano is knocking about, pushing the lower end of teenagehood and already listening to Sonny & Cher, dressing like a hippy and rolling her eyes at her family’s drama. And then, of course, there’s Tony. Despite the fact they were casting all over the world looking for the actor to play the teenage Tony Soprano, there was always an idea in the back of Taylor and Chase’s minds that Michael Gandolfini might suit the role. “We were thrilled by [the idea],” Taylor says, “but also wary: would Michael want to do it?” Gandolfini was never explicitly going to be an

From top: Gabriella Piazza as Joanne Moltisanti, Alessandro Nivola as Dickie Moltisanti, Ray Liotta as ‘Hollywood Dick’ Moltisanti and Michela De Rossi as Giuseppina Moltisanti; The Many Saints Of Newark director Alan Taylor with creator of The Sopranos and prequel film cowriter David Chase

T H E M A N Y S A I N T S O F N E WA R K actor. Before his father died of a heart attack in 2013, Michael says, he was always slightly more enthusiastic about his son’s athletic prowess and preferred to champion that. But Michael was only a teenager when his father passed away – hardly an age when anyone can make an informed judgment about the rest of their child’s life – and so he went into acting nonetheless. After a series on HBO’s porn-industry drama The Deuce, he was breaking through in his career and his agent was keen on him auditioning, despite his initial hesitation. To prepare, Gandolfini watched the first series of The Sopranos, which he had never seen before, explaining that he was too young to watch it when it first aired and then later he was keen not to adulterate his memories of his dad after his death. “I said, ‘Let’s just watch the first series and not overwhelm myself.’ It was emotional. It’s a very complicated thing.” But he auditioned for Chase and Taylor, got the part and dove back into the show, watching all six series twice – first with a friend and then alone, to prepare more carefully. “I was so proud of my dad,” says Gandolfini. “I was upset I couldn’t talk to him about it.” And, he adds, “I was pissed about how much I liked it. I wanted it to be not that good!” “It was almost karmically right,” says Taylor. “The minute we worked with him, it became so obviously the right choice.” Chase recalls watching a table read with Michael playing Tony and realising how “He was moving his shoulders, and his head, just in the way Jim did”. Michael Gandolfini looks a lot like his father, certainly. But there’s far more depth to his performance than that. Gandolfini took to listening to his father’s monologues through headphones, on the train, to prepare. He talks at length about spotting physical mannerisms in his Sopranos performance: Tony wipes his nose in a very particular way with the back of his hand, for example. He breathes and moves his shoulders distinctively. Then, to illustrate his point, Gandolfini half winces, tilts his head and halfmutters a menacing “What d’you just say?” and it’s deeply, deeply unnerving, and also thrilling, to realise how similar it is to watching a scene from the show starring his father. Tousle-haired and sweet, like a huge labrador, the Tony of The Many Saints Of Newark gets into trouble as a kind of neighbourhood Robin Hood. He hijacks an ice cream truck and teachers fret over his lack of application. Dickie, whom Nivola describes as “really the only person in Tony’s life who loved him and was invested in his future” becomes a father figure to Tony, giving him a pair of hot speakers for him to blast psychedelic rock records through. The young Tony is carefree, far from the impossibly compulsive man we see later, with the panic attacks and the crocodilian smile. It’s Dickie’s story, but Tony’s the heart of it. For Gandolfini, it was a matter of inverting Tony’s Sopranos character. “What I really saw through the show was that [Tony] has this

beautiful, rich sensitivity on the inside and this hard external outside. What I wanted to do was flip it and show you that you he was curious, kind, a leader, a nice kid whittled down to the anger being at the forefront.” Some of the other actors who played younger versions of established roles have similar stories to Gandolfini’s. Billy Magnussen originally auditioned to play Dickie, but was offered the part of Paulie Walnuts instead. “It was a fun uphill battle,” he says. “What Tony [Sirico, who played Paulie in the series] created? It’s him. How do you play a character that was created by someone else?” In the end, Magnussen asked Chase to ask Sirico to record all of Paulie’s lines in The Many Saints Of Newark so he could memorise Sirico’s cadence. “I still have some hilarious recordings on my phone.” It was a similar story for Jon Bernthal, who plays Tony’s father, “Johnny Boy” Soprano. Bernthal says that in acting school he set himself the targeted goal of a role on The Sopranos; years later he’s achieved his aim. As Johnny Boy, Bernthal envisioned a character who provided a physical role model for Tony, down to “the way they eat meat, the way they breathe, the way they carried themselves – these things that Tony aspires to”. On set, though, Bernthal and Gandolfini had a far closer relationship than Tony and Johnny Boy ever did. Gandolfini recounts how the first thing he did after he was cast was ask his agent for Bernthal and Vera Farmiga’s email addresses and got in touch to ask them for guidance. When shooting wrapped, Gandolfini gave Bernthal a watch that had belonged to his father. “I keep it with me always,” says Bernthal. “It’s one of my most treasured possessions.”

‘David [Chase] had a desire to look at an arc that didn’t get explored the first time’

hooting wrapped in June 2019, but the film’s release – originally slated for September 2020 – was pushed back a year (and then further still, to October) thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic. And as time went on, the film’s preoccupation with racial conflict became more and more pertinent to real-world events. “It’s uncanny,” says Taylor. “We started shooting so early, but it got more and more relevant.” As the protests sparked by the death of George Floyd spread around the world, the parallels with the Newark protests in 1967 became, Taylor adds, “almost intimidating, at times”. As for Chase, he remembers the events of July 1967 first-hand. His father owned a hardware store on a street called Bloomfield Avenue, which ran from the suburbs into downtown Newark, and he had a girlfriend at the time whom he would drive to work in town every day. When the conflict exploded, Chase admits, he was excited, like many young people watching on, and says that the general feeling was: “‘I hope they burn that place to the ground.’” Later, he realised “how stupid and how easy it is to make that statement, when you’re not involved personally”. If the fraught political context of The Sopranos was very Clinton-era, typified by

Carmela worrying about affirmative action robbing her daughter, Meadow, of a place at college, or Tony exploding when son AJ expresses an anti-colonial rejection of the idea Christopher Columbus was an Italian hero, here the driving social conflict promises to be white flight. By the 1990s, the mob was operating out of detached villas with swimming pools in upstate New Jersey, but if you want to learn precisely why the adult Tony Soprano lives in a gilded McMansion rather than a clapboard house with a stoop in Newark like his mother’s, The Many Saints Of Newark has the answer. As Harold’s fortunes rise, black families move onto the same streets as Italians, causing much angst to the latter, including Tony’s parents, Johnny Boy and Livia Soprano. It makes Tony’s racism that much more obvious when, 30 years later, his daughter, Meadow, brings home her mixed-race college boyfriend. “I think there was talk, back in the day, about ‘Were black people getting short shrift on The Sopranos?’” says Odom Jr. “Was our story being told? I think David had a desire this time to look at an arc that really didn’t get explored the first time, at how the two communities intertwined and where they butted up against each other.” As was the case with The Sopranos, extremely modern and contemporary stories are hidden here, Trojan horse style, inside the shell of a genre movie. Visually, the trailers make clear that The Many Saints Of Newark is a period feast, all pink Cadillac coupés and beehive updos; these are the good old days that the guys from The Sopranos like to reminisce about, though Chase quickly pooh-poohs the idea the era was somehow more romantic or honour-bound. “They didn’t curse as much. They dressed better. But their hearts and their attitudes were the same.” We don’t, of course, know how The Many Saints Of Newark ends. But we can be sure of one thing: when the credits do roll, Tony will surely know what path his life will follow. Has his destiny been preordained by those around him? By the actions of Dickie Moltisanti and his parents? Perhaps. In a sense, though, it’s not important. This time, the anticipated gut-punch Sopranos ending will also be the beginning of a story, one that will culminate in Tony’s rise to the top of the family and his own destruction. You can almost hear the throbbing bass of a familiar mid-1990s funk song in the distance (“Woke up this morning...”). Just when you thought you were done with The Sopranos, they pull you back in. G THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK IS OUT ON 24 OCTOBER.

+ More from GQ For these related stories visit GQ.co.uk/magazine

DAVID CHASE AND THE SOPRANOS WRITERS BREAK DOWN PINE BARRENS (Ben Allen, May 2021) MICHAEL IMPERIOLI, STEVE SCHIRRIPA AND PODCAST TALKING SOPRANOS (Gabriella Paiella, April 2020) THE SOPRANOS, 20 YEARS ON (Stuart McGurk, January 2019)

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THE

Many Saints Newark

SPECIAL

Alessandro Nivola is Hollywood’s new made man From Tuscany, the perennial support act reveals how he finally took the lead as Tony Soprano’s phantom father figure in The Many Saints Of Newark Story by

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Thomas Barrie Photographs by Valentin Hennequin Styling by Aline De Beauclaire

T H E M A N Y S A I N T S O F N E WA R K Coat by Saint Laurent By Anthony Vaccarello, £2,650. ysl.com. Jacket by Ardusse, £1,033. ardusse.com. Shirt, £590. Tie, £165. Both by Louis Vuitton. louisvuitton.com Opposite: Coat by Prada, £3,700. prada. com. Rollneck by Loro Piana, £1,070. loropiana.com. Trousers by Giorgio Armani, £690. armani.com. Shoes by Church’s, £670. church-footwear.com

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Alessandro Nivola has just been served a plate of prosciutto that even the famously voracious Tony Soprano might have trouble polishing off. Sequestered in a café on a tiny piazza in Lucca, Italy, across from a glittering, mosaic-encrusted church, Nivola is back in the ancestral homeland of The Sopranos’ famous mobster antihero, ahead of the release of the upcoming prequel film, The Many Saints Of Newark. He plays Tony’s mentor and father figure, Dickie Moltisanti, a man only a generation or two removed from life in the old country; as he chats with the waiter in Italian, it’s not hard to see why Nivola was cast. “È molto grande,” he jokes, pointing to the ham. Since his breakout playing Nicolas Cage’s creepy brother, Pollux Troy, in Face/Off in 1997, Nivola has established himself as one of Hollywood’s most in-demand supporting actors. He has had roles in Selma and You Were Never Really Here and a brilliant turn as Dovid, a devout orthodox Jew caught in a love triangle alongside Rachel McAdams and Rachel Weisz, in 2017’s Disobedience. In 2019, he played a psychopathic karate sensei in pitch-black comedy The Art Of Self-Defence opposite Jesse Eisenberg and starred in Channel 4 series Chimerica as an imagined version of the photographer who took the “Tank Man” image near Tiananmen Square in 1989. But The Many Saints Of Newark promises a gear change for Nivola: the lead in a blockbuster film, the massively anticipated cinematic follow-up, no less, to a TV show widely regarded as the greatest of all time. Dickie, who is the closest The Many Saints Of Newark really has to a protagonist, is the father of Christopher Moltisanti, Tony Soprano’s errant “nephew” from the original series. Never seen on screen during the show, other than in photographs, the longdead Dickie is only alluded to in passing by the older generation of made men. Even his son’s stories might not be wholly true. “Christopher is a liar,” says Nivola, “and has created his own mythology about his father that may or may not be accurate.” As such, Nivola says he felt like he had “carte blanche” to invent Dickie from the ground up, based on his own imagination. The result is a brutally compelling character. Dickie, who glides around Newark in a Cadillac as if he owns the place (because, in a way, he does), is a mafioso worthy of a place in the pantheon of ice-cold mob killers, alongside Goodfellas’ Jimmy Conway and The Irishman’s Frank Sheeran. And the fact both these men were played by Robert De Niro is perhaps less of a coincidence than it seems, as the Nivola and De Niro families have a long history together. Nivola’s Sardinian-born grandfather, a sculptor, and De Niro’s father, the painter Robert De Niro Sr, knew one another as part of Long Island’s 1960s art scene. Later, Nivola would play De Niro’s character’s son in HBO’s The Wizard Of Lies. “De Niro’s experience was similar to my dad’s,” says Nivola. The Many Saints Of Newark isn’t the only Italian job Nivola has in the pipeline. Cured meats notwithstanding, he’s really in Tuscany to shoot a comedy alongside Alison Brie and Aubrey Plaza called Spin Me Round, which he describes as a satire of “those movies such as Under The Tuscan Sun and Eat Pray Love”. He can’t say any more, but one thing’s for certain: there will be more plates of prosciutto in between filming and more afternoons in the Luccan sunshine. “It’s appropriate that it’s a comedy,” Nivola agrees, “because it’s just laughably beautiful.” G 158 GQ.CO.UK SEPTEMBER 2021

T H E M A N Y S A I N T S O F N E WA R K

Coat, £1,717. Shirt, £342. Both by Dries Van Noten. driesvannoten.com. Hat by Borsalino, £285. borsalino.com Opposite, from top: Jacket, £2,045. Trousers, £595. Both by Loro Piana. loropiana.com. Shirt by Etro, £295. etro.com

‘De Niro’s experience was similar to my dad’s’

Coat by Bally, £1,650. bally.co.uk. Tank top by Prada, £650. prada. com. Polo shirt by Loro Piana, £560. loropiana. com. Trousers by Etro, £400. etro.com. Hat by Borsalino, £285. borsalino.com Grooming Luigi Morino Style assistant Giorgia Toscani Photography assistant Alessandra Padovani

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From left: John McCrea wears shirt, £3,395. Trousers, £670. Scarf, £895. Trainers, £625. All by Loro Piana. loropiana.com. Anson Boon wears gilet, £1,195. Coat, £1,295. Shirt, £595. Trousers, £795. Trainers, £625. Hat, £250. All by Dunhill. dunhill.com Opposite: Earl Cave wears jumper by Salvatore Ferragamo, £530. ferragamo.com

160 GQ.CO.UK SEPTEMBER 2021

COLLECTIONS

The

Autumn/ Winter 2021 collections Photographs by

Danny Kasirye Styling by Luke Day Story by Ben Allen

To model fashion’s freshest new cuts, we assembled six generational talents who prove young British actors can tread the catwalks just as well as the boards

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Sleeveless jacket, £3,200. Jacket, £1,150. Jumper, £1,100. All by Celine Homme By Hedi Slimane. celine.com Opposite: Jacket, £2,400. Shirt, £975. Tie, £145. Trousers, £725. Boots, £995. All by Dolce & Gabbana. dolcegabbana.com

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COLLECTIONS

Anson Boon

In his nascent career, 21-year-old Anson Boon has already worked with some of the biggest names in the world, from Kate Winslet and Susan Sarandon (in family drama Blackbird) to Colin Firth and Benedict Cumberbatch (in Sam Mendes’ 1917). He’ll have had some decent guidance, then, ahead of his potentially life-changing role as Sex Pistols frontman Johnny Rotten in a high-profile and somewhat controversial miniseries about the band (Rotten has objected to the series being made without his participation and threatened legal action). To take on such an iconic, real-life character in itself must be daunting, but with director Danny Boyle at the helm this bright young star should have his work cut out for him. SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ. CO.UK 163

Jumper, £1,900. Trousers, £1,350. Both by Dior. dior.com Opposite: Jacket, £3,500. Shirt, £865. Trousers, £775. Shoes, £610. All by Gucci. gucci.com

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COLLECTIONS

Earl Cave

The 21-year-old Earl Cave is beginning to emerge from the shadow of his father, Nick – yep, that Nick – and fashion designer mother, Susie Bick, and carve out his own space in the world. He has already impressed in last year’s underrated Ned Kelly biopic True History Of The Kelly Gang and bittersweet British indie Days Of The Bagnold Summer, but he’s set to join the big leagues in 2022 with a starring role in Paul Feig’s fantasy epic The School For Good And Evil alongside Charlize Theron, Laurence Fishburne and Kerry Washington. It’s got Netflix mega-hit written all over it.

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Nikesh Patel

The 36-year-old Londoner has had a more fruitful 2021 than most. After plying his trade on British TV for the best part of a decade (his breakout role was in Channel 4’s Indian Summers in 2015), the release of Starstruck, the hit BBC/HBO Max romcom from Kiwi comic Rose Matafeo, has catapulted Nikesh Patel into the stratosphere. He played the male lead, Tom, a handsome and ridiculously charming actor from London (can’t have been too much of a stretch, then). Next year looks promising too: he’ll feature in The Devil’s Hour, an Amazon thriller from the producers of Sherlock, alongside Peter Capaldi and Jessica Raine.

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COLLECTIONS

Jumper by Hermès, £2,700. hermes.com Opposite: Coat by Armani, £4,500. armani.com

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Coat, £2,290. Hoodie, £650. Both by Burberry. burberry.com Opposite: Shirt, £2,900. Trousers, £695. Boots, £890. All by Louis Vuitton. louisvuitton.com

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COLLECTIONS

Toheeb Jimoh

Toheeb Jimoh’s 2020 breakout roles couldn’t have been more different. As Nigerian footballer Sam in Apple TV+’s delightful sitcom Ted Lasso, Jimoh, 24, embodied the show’s message of positivity and optimism. He was funny and endearing at once, a duality that only the best comedic actors possess. Elsewhere, he proved his dramatic credentials as the lead in Jimmy McGovern’s heartbreaking drama Anthony, the true story of the 2005 murder of black teenager Anthony Walker after a racist attack in Liverpool. The Londoner, it is clear, can quite capably do it all. And his range is being put to the test yet again later this year, with roles in Wes Anderson’s long-awaited The French Dispatch and new Amazon sci-fi The Power. Oh, and Lasso is back for its anticipated second outing too. SEPTEMBER 2021 GQ. CO.UK 169

Coat, £7,220. Jacket, £3,560. Trousers, £740. All by Brunello Cucinelli. brunellocucinelli.com. Vest by Uniqlo, £6. uniqlo.com Opposite: Coat, £1,040. Jacket, £560. Jumper, £1,550. Trousers, £260. All by Canali. canali.com

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COLLECTIONS

Sebastian Croft

Oxford-raised Sebastian Croft kicked off his career in style in 2016, playing a younger version of Sean Bean’s Ned Stark in Game Of Thrones, back when it was the biggest show on television. Five years later, he’s got a few more impressive credits to his name (Penny Dreadful, Netflix’s Love, Death & Robots) and this year is due to appear in what could well be Netflix’s first teen LGBTQ+ hit, Heartstopper, a coming-of-age drama based on the graphic novel series by Alice Oseman. Not bad for someone just shy of 20 years old...

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Jacket, £2,300. Jumper, £720. Bodysuit, £1,800. Trousers, £890. All by Prada. prada.com Opposite: Jacket, £480. Shirt, £230. Both by Boss. hugoboss.com Grooming Liz Taw at The Wall Group using UpCircle Beauty Set design Michael Sturgeon at ADB Agency Set build Nick Collins Digital technician Sebastian Petrovski Photography assistants Madison Blair; Maria Monfort Plana Grooming assistants Laura Bell; Rachael Thomas Style assistant Poppy Norton Set assistant Ryan Schaefer Intern Mariya Bhad

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COLLECTIONS

John McCrea

John McCrea, 28, is best known for originating the title role – as the enigmatic teenage drag queen – in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, the wildly successful musical that went from Sheffield to the West End in the space of nine months in 2017. But he’s graduated to the silver screen in recent years, with turns in indie hit God’s Own Country and, more recently, the Emma Stone-led Disney flick Cruella. This year is still to bear fruit, with him popping up in a supporting role in the film adaptation of Jamie. He’s also got another movie in the works – Charlotte Colbert’s thriller She Will, with Malcolm McDowell and Rupert Everett – and will appear alongside Anson Boon in Danny Boyle’s Sex Pistols miniseries. G

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B R I TA I N | P R O P E R T Y

FILM STAR LOOKS Packed with charm and brimming with character, here’s why properties used as filming locations make the best homes

STON EASTON PARK, SOMERSET

hings always look better in the movies – especially the gorgeous houses. Location scouts have a talent for picking out the best properties, from chocolate-box cottages to breathtakingly beautiful stately homes. Some houses make occasional appearances on television or the big screen; others are veteran players, with more credits to their name than many actors. It’s rare that such special properties come up for sale, but this month sees a collection of cinematic abodes on the market. Pictured above is the postcard-perfect Gardener’s Cottage, which forms part of the Ston Easton estate near Bath, and

This bucolic Gardener’s Cottage forms part of the historic Ston Easton estate near Bath. Formerly run as a hotel, the main house is an impressive Georgian residence on 28.4 acres, with gardens laid out by Humphry Repton. Offers over £7 million. Strutt & Parker: 07769 270699

featured in the recent BBC television series The Pursuit of Love, based on the classic Nancy Mitford novel. This cottage certainly occupies a suitably romantic setting – sitting in the middle of parkland beside a walled garden, it looks out across a river and is bordered by a wonderfully gothic stone bridge. The cottage provides a small glimpse into the immense charm of the Ston Easton estate – the entirety of which is up for sale. The main house is a neoclassical treasure – Georgian, Grade I listed and spectacularly spacious at 22,097

square feet. Palatial reception rooms are garlanded with elaborate plasterwork and the former hotel has 20 bedroom suites. The extensive gardens were designed by the famous 18th-century landscape architect Humphry Repton, and there are a number of additional buildings dotted about the grounds. Meanwhile, over in Surrey, there’s a modernist masterpiece available to buy through Knight Frank, which has appeared in several episodes of Agatha Christie’s Poirot. Designed in 1936 by the architect Sir Raymond McGrath, it has a striking circular shape, with light-filled interiors that are notable for their sinuous curving

KNIGHTONS LANE, SURREY

This Grade II-listed, sixbedroom Regency property looks like it belongs in a period drama. Surrounded by 55.35 acres of woods and fields, it comes with several additional dwellings, outbuildings, a walled garden and even a Victorian peach house. £5.5 million. Knight Frank: 01483 617916

RIPPLING WATERS, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE

This Victorian boat house near Marlow was used as a film setting for The Wind in the Willows and True Blue, thanks to its captivating location right on the River Thames. It’s offered for sale for the first time in generations, and includes a mooring. £2 million. River Homes: 020 8995 0500

TELEVISION CENTRE, W12

A perfect London pad for cinephiles, Television Centre is still home to three television studios that host live audience recordings every day. Residents have a wide variety of amenities on their doorstep, including an outpost of Soho House. Remaining apartments from £3 million. Television Centre: 020 8811 8720

ST KATHARINE DOCKS, E1

This 3,000-square-foot lateral apartment on the water’s edge is currently the home of the Poirot star David Suchet. The converted warehouse is steeped in atmosphere and could easily be used as a film location. Rose & Partners: 020 3838 8366

KIRTLINGTON PARK, OXFORDSHIRE

With its magnificent interior and Capability Brown parkland, it’s no wonder that Kirtlington Park has been regularly used as a film location. This grandly proportioned historic estate is now being offered as a short-term let at £28,000 per week. Hamptons: 01865 575267

lines. Unsurprisingly, it’s been a sought-after location for photo shoots and films, thanks to its pared-back, modern aesthetic. Set on eight acres of landscaped grounds, it also comes with a substantial 19th-century coach house, which has been converted to provide additional accommodation and a recording studio. Of course, it’s not just country homes that are in demand as locations. London has plenty of unique properties to choose from – Chestertons is currently marketing a one-bedroom apartment in a Mayfair townhouse that appeared in the 2004 film Wimbledon, which featured Kirsten Dunst and James McAvoy. The spacious apartment is in a central spot, on a quiet street that’s just around the corner from the Dorchester. Although it’s likely that most people will only ever see these properties on the silver screen, a lucky few will get to call them home.

CHARLES STREET, W1

ST PANCRAS CHAMBERS, NW1

Close to Hyde Park and Mayfair Village, this south-facing apartment spans 634 square feet. Its period façade, high ceilings and tall windows make it a perfect piedà-terre – as seen in the 2004 film Wimbledon. £2 million. Chestertons: 020 3040 8240

The spectacular gothic façade of St Pancras station has made it a firm favourite for filming. Retaining plenty of original features, this twobedroom apartment on the second floor is particularly magical, with an elaborate painted ceiling. £4.6 million. Sotheby’s International Realty: 020 7495 9580

ST ANN’S COURT, SURREY

Just 12 miles from central London, this Grade II*-listed modernist house has seven bedrooms and spans 6,500 square feet, with a separate coach house currently home to a world-class recording studio. The building’s eyecatching architecture is emphasised by the extensive, mature gardens. £5.95 million. Knight Frank: 020 7861 5101

A splendid residence of historic signiﬁcance and architectural importance in the heart of Richmond-Upon-Thames is seeking a new custodian with artistic and historic sensibilities.

WALKING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE QUEENS

AND KINGS OF ENGLAND

A HOME OF UNPARALLELED TASTE AND REASSURING WARMTH

Maids of Honour Row was built in 1719 for the ‘Ladies in Waiting’ of Queen Caroline, wife of King George II. The house stands directly upon the foundations of Richmond Palace, built by Henry VII and later home to Elizabeth I. The Tudor ﬂoor remains in evidence today. This is an enviable property of rare beauty. Sympathetically curated by its present owners, it is lovingly decorated throughout with a lightness of touch. An abundance of graciously proportioned rooms effortlessly lend themselves to modern-day living, whilst retaining every ounce of their former charm. Superb light ﬂoods throughout the house at all times of the day. Photography by Jonathan A Stewart

jonathanastewart.com

This remarkable Grade I Listed property of 5,000 square feet has commanding views over Richmond Green, which has been an important open space since the Middle Ages and the site of jousting in the 15th and 16th centuries. Nikolaus Pevsner, the art & architecture historian described it as “One of the most beautiful urban greens surviving anywhere in England”. Located 20 minutes from central London by train or just a little over two hours by horse & carriage. TENURE: FREEHOLD GUIDE PRICE: UPON APPLICATION

SOLE SELLING AGENTS: N&N RICHMOND

T: 07745 639463 E: hello@nnrichmond.co.uk W: www.nnrichmond.co.uk

B R I TA I N | P R O P E R T Y

NOTEBOOK A look at the latest property news, and names to know

THEATRICAL FLAIR IN THE HEART OF THE WEST END

With a vibrant mix of old and new, Covent Garden is one of London’s most famous neighbourhoods, home to dozens of theatres, and hundreds of cafes and restaurants. Its busy nightlife and central location make it a desirable address for urbanites, and a new scheme by the property developers Londonewcastle sees a historic Victorian building transformed into 40 brand-new apartments. The interiors

chain-mail curtains. The apartments, meanwhile, are fitted out with the latest technology, with touchscreen home automation for heating and lighting, and integrated sound systems. Most of the properties have their own outdoor space – something that’s a rare find in the West End. The terraces were created by award-winning company Andy Sturgeon Garden Design, which has cleverly created private

combine contemporary design with a nod to Covent Garden’s rich theatrical heritage – the lobby makes a bold, playful statement, with its sumptuous jewel-toned fabrics, textured walls and shimmering

and tranquil green spots for residents to enjoy. A perfect pied-à-terre in the bustling heart of the capital. www.londonewcastle.com

PHOTO: Neptune

ESCAPE TO THE SEA

Spread across 90 acres of North Yorkshire’s wild and picturesque coastline, Raithwaite Village is a new development of holiday homes close to Sandsend Beach and the seaside town of Whitby. It has been built with the environment in mind, with sustainably sourced materials, green roofs, and the use of renewable energy. ‘Our vision is to create properties in which to relax, surrounded by nature,’ says Toby Hunter of Maritime Capital, the company behind the project. ‘Our designs are made to last, so that properties can be passed down through the generations.’ From £350,000. www.raithwaitevillage.com

AN EXPERT EYE TO HELP WITH YOUR LETTING

Letting out a residential property can be a minefield – especially since there are now over 100 pieces of legislation to consider. A specialist advisor can help negotiate even the most complicated of rentals, and focus on getting the maximum income with the minimum risk. Zoë Rose, of property specialists Rose & Partners, has over 25 years’ experience, and was formerly head of lettings for both Hamptons and Strutt & Parker. As part of a boutique agency, she’s able to take a tailored, hands-on approach to make sure you’re getting the best possible deal. www.roseandpartners.co.uk

CONDENASTJOHANSENS.COM WHATLEY MANOR HOTEL & SPA , ENGLAND