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STARRING

JASON MOMOA

PLUS Alton Mason | Zendaya | Winston Duke | Baz Luhrmann | Jacob Elordi | Ash Barty

The Aviation Pioneers Squad Scott Kelly Rocio Gonzalez Torres Luke Bannister

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CONTENTS

P122

Jason Momoa

We pay tribute to the blockbuster actor, climate activist, father, husband, and undisputed GQ Man of the Year for 2019.

20

M E N O F T H E Y E A R 2 019 G Q.CO M . AU

THE WINNERS

122 SCOTT MARSH 130 TOMMY HILFIGER 134 CHRIS PANG 136 SONG FOR 142 THE MUTE MATT STONE 144 ZENDAYA 146 DAN SULTAN 150 JACOB ELORDI 156 ASH BARTY 166 TRUE HISTORY OF 170 THE KELLY GANG HoMiE 176 ALTON MASON 178 BAZ LUHRMANN 186 WINSTON DUKE 190 JASON MOMOA

CONTENTS

51

BRIEF

Taika Waititi’s boldest bigscreen project yet; Samsung’s new phone bends all the rules; Beck is back with album number 14; and more.

66

GQ&A

P84

We check in with Australian overachiever Tim Minchin on his path to hitting national treasure status.

72 TASTE & TRAVEL

The world’s best island resorts; how to give your bar kit an upgrade; the (meat-free) burger of the future; and more.

84

STYLIST

98

GROOMING

P176

“For all my privilege it really knocked me around. What happened to the film was corporate psychopathy.”

A guide on how to give your formalwear a fashionable twist; a visit to the world’s biggest sneaker fair; the brands shaping the future of menswear.

The best releases of the year for face, fragrance, body and hair; and why South Korean skincare is having a moment.

104WATCH

All this summer’s latest and greatest horological releases; we get the scoop on Chopard’s sporty new series.

110CARS

Welcome to the world of Formula-E, the sensational, sustainable future of motor sport; we look at the latest project from Lexus that you won’t find on land.

THE ROAD 51 196ONTO AREA

Ahead of a viral plan to storm the facility, we travelled to one of the most eerie, intriguing places on the planet.

204

EVIDENCE ON TRIAL

Much of the forensic science we see on TV might be far less reliable than once thought – and could be putting innocent people behind bars.

210

THE KINGPIN

Meet bowling champion Jason Belmonte, the greatest Australian sport star you’ve never heard of. Until now.

P156

GQ&A: TIM MINCHIN P66

WELCOME

THE

EDITOR’S LETTER

D

ecember is a great time to reflect on the year that’s been and at GQ we have the luxury of our Men of the Year awards, presented by Audi, to do exactly that. This year, we champion the men and women who have excelled in their fields, reaching dizzying new heights in everything they do. In their own unique way, they have all used their work and their platforms to raise greater awareness for what they’re passionate about, and together they’re the role models for today and tomorrow. I’m both proud and delighted to celebrate their achievements in this special Men of the Year issue.

Few have had a bigger 2019 than Jason Momoa, Zendaya, Winston Duke and Alton Mason. But for me the real privilege of hosting these awards lies in giving the likes of HoMie, Song for the Mute and Matt Stone the praise they so deserve; or the trust bestowed upon us by Dan Sultan to tell his story the right way. To crown Ash Barty Sportsperson of the Year is a huge highlight, so too is recognising the nuance and societal relevance in Scott Marsh’s artwork. It’s been a privilege to collaborate with the brightest Aussie stars of the future in Jacob Elordi, Chris Pang and the cast of True History of The Kelly Gang, but special mention is reserved for Baz Luhrmann, to whom we owe so much for Australia being the creative, expressive and forwardthinking country it is.

Thanks go to Audi, our presenting partner for the awards, and supporting partners Grey Goose, Paco Rabanne, Qantas, Coach and RM Williams. And I’d like to give a major shout out to the extended GQ squad for making all the magic happen.

MIKE CHRISTENSEN EDITOR 30

FOLLOW @CHRISTENSENMIKE

M E N O F T H E Y E A R 2 019 G Q.CO M . AU

JASON MOMOA ON THE COVER STARRING

JASON MOMOA

PLUS Alton Mason | Zendaya | Winston Duke | Baz Luhrmann | Jacob Elordi | Ash Barty

Photography Jesse Lizotte.

Styling Petta Chua.

Jason Momoa wears jacket, approx. $4490, and pants, approx. $2075, both by Tom Ford at Harrolds; singlet, approx. $230, by Rick Owens; boots, $1155, by Lucchese; necklace and rings, Momoa’s own; watch, POA, by Audemars Piguet.

Jacob Elordi wears sweater, $1640, and shirt, $1225, both by Saint Laurent; chain (top), $570,

by Gucci; and chain, $178, by Hardy Brothers; earring, Elordi’s own.

Winston Duke wears coat, $4200, and hoodie, $450, both by Coach.

Photography Levon Baird.

Styling Sarah Starkey.

Photography Jesse Lizotte.

Styling Keyla Marquez.

Alton Mason wears jacket, shirt and pants, all POA, all by Louis Vuitton.

Earl Cave (left) wears T-shirt, $855, and pants, $1700, both by Gucci; earrings, approx. $900, sold as a pair, by William Cheshire; rings, Cave’s own. George MacKay wears turtleneck, $1535, and pants, $1185, both

by Gucci.

Photography Nathaniel Goldberg.

Styling Jillian Davison.

Photography Duncan Killick.

Styling Petta Chua.

Photography Tom Sloan.

Styling Mark Vassallo.

Photography Jesse Lizotte.

Styling Keyla Marquez.

Dan Sultan wears jacket, $1400, and pants, $590, both by Emporio Armani; singlet, approx. $175, by Zimmerli; chains (top), $178, and, $65, both by Hardy Brothers; ‘Tank Solo’ watch, $5450, by Cartier; bracelet (left wrist), $1650, by Tiffany & Co.; bracelets (right wrist, from top), $875, by Hermès; $1320, by Four Winds Gallery; $250, by Brock Bangles; rings (left hand), $150, by Stash Jewellery; pinky ring, $3090, by Bulgari; (right hand), $150, by Stash Jewellery; and signet ring, $6999, by Hardy Brothers.

Chris Pang wears coat, jacket, top, pants, and shoes, all POA, all by Versace; watch and jewellery, Pang’s own.

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CONTRIBUTORS

NATHANIEL GOLDBERG

34

HARRIET CRAWFORD

MARK VASSALLO

PHOTOGRAPHER

GQ FASHION ASSISTANT

STYLIST

What was Alton Mason like to shoot? Alton was very inspiring – his body language and his sense of movement made the collaboration very smooth. The fact that he’s a dancer was key to our idea of using Malick Sidibé as our inspiration.

Do you remember when you first encountered the work of Malick Sidibé? I encountered his work more than a decade ago at a friend’s home.

He had a few prints on his walls and I was first struck by his sense of intimacy, what he was able to capture and how he documented his environment with such ease and honesty.

What are some of the challenges in having two models on set?

Having two models to shoot is usually more challenging but the reward is very gratifying because the interaction and emotion between two people can make a picture authentic and real.

What are some of your highlights of 2019? Spending time with my daughter is the highlight of my year.

You’ve had rather an impressive career so far – what’s still to be achieved?

There’s still so much I would love to explore, one life is not enough…

What’s your highlight from the Jason Momoa shoot? I can’t get enough of the whole Tom Ford + Rick Owens moment with the Lucchese boots. I mean, not only does the whole outfit look slick, but everything about the shot itself, from the background to the pose, is just phenomenal.

Who are some of your favourite Australian designers right now?

Chloe Motteu – her MBFWA2019 Next Gen show blew me away! Gina Snodgrass – ditto, lace in menswear can be tricky and she nails it. And I love everything by Melvin Tanaya and Lyna Ty for Song For The Mute – our fashion brand of the year (see p142).

If you could suggest one item men should invest in – what would it be? Is it too boring to say a nice suit?

Oh well – a well-fitted suit can be utterly striking.

What’s going to be the biggest thing in menswear this summer?

I feel like everything ‘cowboy’ is steadily gaining momentum, for both guys and gals. The boots, the belts and my absolute favourite, the bolo ties.

What’s the hardest part about your job? Where shall I start? Only kidding, I really do love it all.

What influences the way you style shoots? The person. I always research them, what they like and what they’re are into. I always try to bring a personality into styling film stars; they relate to that as they’re not models and they need a character to make a picture work.

Are you familiar with the Kelly Gang story? I’m Aussie – of course I am! I made many Ned Kelly helmets when I was a kid.

How were Earl Cave and George MacKay to style? There was a strong bond there, like brothers. It felt like they had become quite close while shooting. Giving each other styling and hair tips on set was cute.

Got any favourite looks from the day? One of my favourite looks has to be Earl in the Gucci suit. We all looked at the shot on set and saw baby Nick Cave.

What are some trends you foresee in menswear on 2020? Pearl earrings, tailored streetwear, Rick Owens, Bottega and Marni.

And some trends we’re better off leaving in 2019?

Streetwear in general.

M E N O F T H E Y E A R 2 019 G Q.CO M . AU

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MIKE CHRISTENSEN CREATIVE DIRECTOR JILLIAN DAVISON

DEPUTY EDITOR JAKE MILLAR

FASHION DIRECTOR PETTA CHUA

ART DIRECTOR DIJANA MADDISON

FASHION ASSISTANT HARRIET CRAWFORD

ACTING ART DIRECTOR RACHEL PINK

DIGITAL EDITORIAL DIRECTOR JULIA FRANK

SENIOR EDITOR CHRISTOPHER RILEY

DIGITAL EDITOR NIKOLINA ILIC

STYLE & CULTURE WRITER AMY CAMPBELL

ONLINE CONTENT PRODUCER BRAD NASH

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR DAVID SMIEDT

PRODUCERS EMMA PROUDFOOT, SAMANTHA TREYVAUD

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Levon Baird, Rebecca Burrell, Jess Campbell, Angus Fontaine, Nathaniel Goldberg, Elle Hardy, Ryan Koopmans, Kish Lal, Jesse Lizotte, Keyla Marquez, Thalea Michos Vellis, Jessica Mudditt, Dan Rookwood, Tom Sloan, Sarah Starkey, Lily Swan, Mark Vassallo, Edward Urrutia.

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Rosie Double, Tiffany Pilcher CREATIVE PRODUCERS Sarah Mury, Candice Shields, Kristie Walden PRODUCTION MANAGER Michelle O’Brien ADVERTISING PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Robynne Beavan GENERAL MANAGER RETAIL & CIRCULATION Brett Willis SUBSCRIPTIONS ACQUISITION MANAGER Grant Durie SUBSCRIPTIONS RETENTION MANAGER Crystal Ewins GENERAL MANAGER, DIGITAL Stuart Fagg DIGITAL ASSETS & RIGHTS COORDINATOR Katrina Trinh HEAD OF PRODUCT DESIGN Alex Fawdray DIGITAL DESIGNER Yeara Chaham MARKETING DIRECTOR Diana Kay MARKETING MANAGER, BRAND AND SUBSCRIPTIONS

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GQ AUSTRALIA magazine is published by NewsLifeMedia (ACN 088 923 906), Level 1, 2 Holt Street, Surry Hills, NSW 2010. NewsLifeMedia is a wholly owned subsidiary of News Limited (ACN 007 871 178). Copyright 2018 by NewsLifeMedia Pty Ltd. All rights reserved. Address: 2 Holt Street, Surry Hills, NSW 2010. Tel: (02) 9288 3000. Email: editorial@gq.com.au Advertising tel: (02) 9353 6666, fax: (02) 9353 6600. Creative Services fax: (02) 9353 6611. Melbourne Office: HWT Tower, Level 5, 40 City Rd, Southbank, Vic 3006. Tel: (03) 9292 3200, fax: (03) 9292 1695. Brisbane Office: 26 Chermside Street, Newstead, Qld 4006. Tel: (07) 3620 2000, fax: (07) 3620 2001.

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The summer of style

The weather is finally heating up, so if you’ve been waiting to hit refresh on your wardrobe, now is the time to strike. We break down the trends that you should be trying over the holidays, plus where you can cop them (at every budget).

FESTIVAL SEASON

If you thought your career as a rambunctious festivalgoer was over, it might be worth giving things another crack and trying something a little more boutique. To give you a kick-start, we’ve rounded up some of Australia’s best.

MEN OF THE YEAR

Catch up on all the action from our annual #GQMOTY awards. We’re talking unmissable on-stage moments (hello Jacob Elordi), the best in red-carpet style and a look inside our exclusive after party.

Follow us @GQAustralia Tag us #GQAustralia 44

M E N O F T H E Y E A R 2 019 G Q.CO M . AU

WORDS: NIKOLINA ILIC.

HAIR GODS

Summer is a time for being a much more relaxed version of yourself, so we’ve found all the guys who remind us that bad hair can be good hair and there is no need to sweat the perfection of your side part in the middle of December.

THE COLUMNIST

DAN ROOKWOOD

T

onight feels like the first time you’ve closed your eyes to sleep since you first opened them six weeks ago. And although I can barely prop mine open with espresso and matchsticks, I’ve got this column to deliver. I’ve also got that New Father impulse to write something profound and enduring to mark this life-changing event that I can read out at your 18th birthday party to embarrass you. Two birds, one stone? Fire up the coffee machine. Here goes.

“I plant the kind of kiss that wouldn’t wake a baby / On the self-same face that wouldn’t let me sleep.” No, not Wordsworth, but close. It’s a line from Elbow, a band I used to like before our Spotify algorithm got completely hijacked by the white noise compilations we play on loop to get you to drift off. Your mum says, “Elbow albums are just white noise compilations too.” I’m not rising to it.

I’m not.

I remember your birth in pretty graphic and sonic detail – some things cannot be unseen or unsaid. For many men, the toughest part of giving birth is seeing the love of their life in such excruciating pain.

But then your mum did make me sit through an entire episode of Sex and the City when we first got together, so I’d call it even-stevens.

The doctor who delivered you held you aloft like the Lion King. Not so much in triumph, more at arm’s length. Her first words were, “Ugh! Quick! He’s urinating!” Later, as I re-watched that tender moment on my iPhone, I thought: That’s my boy – a born piss-taker. Then, while they were cleaning you up, I was shocked by how gargantuan and livid-red your ball-bag was and I felt my first pang of paternal pride. Seriously,

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M E N O F T H E Y E A R 2 019 G Q.CO M . AU

by birth weight you must have been at least 30 per cent gonad.

Genitalia aside, your mum thinks you look like me. I think you look like a grumpy old man with wind. “My point exactly,” says your mum. You are the little lad we first dreamed about nine years ago when we started trying for kids while on holiday on Italy’s Amalfi coast. I’ll spare you further details but that was when and where we decided on your name.

But as the years of trying went by, we gradually made an uneasy peace with the possibility that parenthood might never happen for us. It took five years of struggle and fertility treatment culminating in IVF to produce your miracle twin sisters, so we thought there was no chance we could conceive naturally. And then… surprise! Thanks for reassuring us – via a little blue smiley emoticon upon a peesoaked plastic stick – that everything is in working order down there after all.

I remember your birth in pretty graphic and sonic detail – some things cannot be unseen or unsaid.

Although not for much longer in my case.

If three’s a crowd, four kids would be a lifetime of penury. “Time to tie a knot in it,” says your mum cavalierly. “Go get the snip, chop-chop.” (Watch this column space, reader.)

So anyway, now that you’re here, there are some things you should know. Firstly, and most importantly, try to be nice. Nail that and everything else should fit into place. Our job is to bring you up to be the kind of kid other kids want to play with so that you grow up to become the kind of person other people want to hang out with. Nice people make the world around them a better place.

Don’t be flaky. Commitment and dependability are family traits and I’m counting on you to carry this on.

Be generous. Always buy your round, but never order the magnum. No one likes a show off.

The importance of eye contact and fresh breath cannot be underestimated.

Whenever you’re stuck for something to say, ask questions. Be curious.

Tell people you love that you love them.

Learn how to say sorry and mean it.

You do you. Make your own choices in life – apart from which football team to support. You were born a Red. It’s on your birth certificate, just there, where it says ‘Alfred’. (Listen, if I’d had my way, your middle name would be Jurgen.)

I could go on but you get the idea and anyway, I’ve run out of space here, and no-one wants their dad at their 18th birthday party.

So I’ll sign off by saying I love you, Alfie, and I’m proud of you. Get used to hearing that, son, because I’m going to tell you every day.

PHOTOGR APHY: GET T Y IMAGES.

HELLO SON, IT’S ME, DAD.

AS SEEN IN

BRIEF

is c a ll

f e Th

e r u t u

PHOTOGR APHY: EDWARD URRUTIA .

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M E N O F T H E Y E A R 2 019 G Q.CO M . AU

51

BRIEF ART

Keith Haring | Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossing Lines is basically art’s equivalent of the Holy Grail.

ART OF COLLABORATION JEAN-MICHEL B KEITH HARING A OF THIS SUMM BLOCKBUSTERY

Collabs are everywhere right now – but it’s not just the big names in the fashion world that have been teaming up. Melbourne’s NGV has long been a leader in bringing together interesting artist combinations but its latest show might be the gallery’s biggest bragging right to date: interweaving the lives, art and sociopolitical commentary of two of the ’80s most iconic creators, Keith Haring | Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossing Lines is basically art’s equivalent of the Holy Grail.

Basquiat’s ‘Untitled (1982)’, one of the most expensive paintings by an American artist to be sold at auction, ever, will be on show, as will the tarp painting ‘Untitled (Australia)’ Haring created during his only trip to Australia in

’84 (clearly, titling artwork wasn’t a thing in the ’80s). But by guiding us through their respective careers, the story that emerges behind Basquiat and Haring’s muse-like companionship is perhaps the most compelling and unprecedented element of this show.

This can be felt, most spookily, in Haring’s ‘Pile of Crowns’, which he painted shortly after Basquiat’s untimely death due to heroin overdose and which features in the exhibition’s final section. But as politically charged as each artist’s work was, Crossing Lines isn’t all sombre and grave. Haring’s ‘Radiant Baby’, for one, adds a jolly note to the mix.

Crossing Lines will run until April 13 2020; ngv.vic.gov.au

FROM TOP LEFT

Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat at the opening reception for Julian Schnabel at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1987; 'Museum security (Broadway meltdown)' (1983); 'Pile of crowns for Jean-Michel Basquiat' (1988).

Also worth checking out

Masked Canadian crooner Orville Peck will be headlining this year. Enough said.

January 8–26 2020; sydneyfestival.org.au 52

M E N O F T H E Y E A R 2 019 G Q.CO M . AU

MONA FOMA

Any event with the tagline 'summer festival of hedonism and hot stuff' is worth attending, right?

January 11–20 2020; monafoma.net.au

SO FRENCHY SO CHIC

Lou Doillon, massages and more fromage than you can poke a baguette at. Melbourne January 12 and Sydney January 18 2020; sofrenchysochic.com

and The Keith Haring Foundation, New York.

SYDNEY FESTIVAL

ARTWORK IMAGERY: LICENSED BY ARTESTAR, NEW YORK

EVEN MORE CULTURE, FOR WHEN YOU JUST CAN’T FATHOM ANOTHER BEACH DAY.

BRIEF FILM

YOU’LL NEVER GUESS WHAT TAIKA DOES NEXT SOME BELIEVE ‘PC CULTURE’ IS RUINING COMEDY – TAIKA WAITITI IS NOT ONE OF THEM. THE LATEST FILM TO COME FROM THE MAN WHO MADE THOR FUNNY? A NAZI SATIRE, OF COURSE.

T

he biggest perk of being a director is that you can cast yourself.”

Taika Waititi lets out an amused hoot. We laugh too, but the longer we let his words hang in the air, the more we realise that firstly, he’s only half-kidding and secondly, the statement can definitely be applied to many of his most pivotal works. Flight of the Conchords, Boy, Thor: Ragnarok and the upcoming Jojo Rabbit are just a handful of projects in which Waititi has been on both sides of the camera.

“I love being in charge of every aspect of filmmaking and I’m not ashamed of that at all.

I love myself!” says the Kiwi with a chuckle.

“But I really do have fun doing all of this goofy shit on screen. I find it funny that people actually continue to watch and like it.”

Two weeks before our conversation, Waititi’s newest film, Jojo Rabbit, took out the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival’s coveted People’s Choice Award. Two weeks after that, Variety published a story claiming that Jojo could be a real Oscars contender. It pointed out that last year’s People’s Choice winner, Green Book, went on to snag the Oscar for Best Picture. This particular category at the Canadian festival has an even longer history of predicting Oscar nominees, if not winners – films like 2016’s La La Land and 2017’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri are also past recipients. But Waititi isn’t reading too much into it. “Of course, I want the film to be liked,” he says. “It’s just a big sense of relief, really.

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“I’m not an idiot. I know not to push it too far in terms of making Nazis likeable... or making light of one of the most tragic and embarrassing moments in human history,” You spend so long making the thing, so it’s always nice when people don’t hate it.”

Hate – or anti-hate – is really what Jojo Rabbit is all about. Based on the 2004 novel Caging Skies by NZ-Belgian author Christine Leunens, the film is PG-rated but not without a trove of witty references for the grown-ups. It tells the story of a Hitler-obsessed 10-yearold called Jojo (played by first-time actor Roman Griffin Davis) who, during the waning years of WWII, discovers his mother Rosie (Scarlett Johansson) is hiding a Jewish girl, Elsa, (Thomasin McKenzie) in his dead sister’s bedroom. After the initial shock passes, Jojo finds his loyalty for the Führer unravelling as he befriends and later falls in love with “this Jew”. Throughout this all, Jojo is encouraged and then taunted by his imaginary friend: a buffoonish, pot-bellied Hitler played by Waititi himself.

“I never had the intention of playing Hitler,” admits Waititi. “I mean, I don’t really meet the criteria on paper. I’m brown, I’ve got this big, boofy, sticky-uppy hair – I’m not the obvious choice.”

He says it was Fox Searchlight that were “adamant” he played the role, and that they were only interested in making the film if Waititi did so. “They said, ‘We don’t think anyone else will be able to do the role quite like you’ve imagined.’ And they were right, actually. I do feel a pretty strong ownership over the character, even though it’s based loosely on a horrible, terrible person.”

Waititi is Maori-Jewish, though he didn’t approach the film with his ethnicity too frontof-mind. One criticism Jojo Rabbit drew after hitting the festival circuit was that its treatment of Nazi Germany was too “innocuous” and “thinly etched,” to quote the more cantankerous critics. But this is not Inglourious Basterds. It’s a pastel-toned satire that transcends audience demographics to pluck laughs from unexpected places – delivered by the bright-eyed, buck-toothed Griffin Davis, a joke that implies rabbis use foreskins as earplugs is just one of many lols.

“I’m not an idiot. I know not to push it too far in terms of making Nazis likeable, or brushing over the Jewish experience or mak-

Taika’s transformations THE KIWI HAS CONTORTED HIMSELF INTO SOME TRULY WACKY CHARACTERS.

BOY (2010)

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT

His role as an aspiring bikie searching for bounty is bonkers yet beautiful, in this award-winning film about a Michael Jackson-obsessed teen.

Waititi behind the camera; directing the young Roman Griffin Davis on the streets of Prague; with co-stars Scarlett Johansson and Griffin Davis.

WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS (2014)

Waititi portrayed an eccentric and star-crossed vampire named Viago in the project that placed him on Hollywood’s radar.

ing light of one of the most tragic and embarrassing moments in human history,” explains Waititi. “It’s a shameful stain on the human record. And it’s not just a German thing – it’s a human thing. Just a group of humans who happened to be from an area of Europe that was going through a lot of changes.”

Asked whether he thinks it’s getting harder to produce brave and original comedy in the age of ‘wokeness’, Waititi replies with a hard no. “I think comedy has really evolved; it’s becoming really intelligent now. You look at [Phoebe Waller-Bridges’ Emmy-award winning] Fleabag – there are shows and films that are mixing real heartbreak and tragedy and emotionality with great jokes and hilarious writing. For me, it’s an exciting new arena for comedy to exist in.”

Time will tell whether Jojo Rabbit will make it to the Oscars (aside from Waititi, McKenzie and Johansson’s performances are also awardworthy – as is Sam Rockwell’s who plays a washed-up SS officer with aplomb). But the actor-director-writer has plenty to occupy himself with until then – mostly, the fourth

instalment of Thor, which was at risk of falling in the Bad Superhero Movie bin before Waititi got ahold of it.

When we ask Waititi what it was like encouraging Chris Hemsworth to be funny in a Marvel film, he insists it was easy. “Chris is a really funny guy; it becomes apparent as soon as you meet him. Not only is he jacked and cool, he’s also this lovable dork who has this smart sense of humour,” he says, adding, “for me, it was just about saying, ‘You have permission to be yourself.’”

Waititi speaks similarly of Natalie Portman, who’s slated to inherit Thor’s hammer in the upcoming Love and Thunder. “She’s got a wicked sense of humour, she’s very cool to hang out with.

“I’d probably say I encourage most people to bring a semblance of humour to the role, whatever that role might be,” he says. Glancing back at his catalogue of work – and indeed, at the cameos in Jojo (of which Stephen Merchant’s grinning Gestapo agent is a real highlight) – we have to admit, he’s got a knack for doing exactly that. n In cinemas December 26

HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE (2016)

A real Waititi specialty, his disheveled ‘minister’ brought humour to an otherwise morose funeral scene in this Sam Neill-starring film.

THOR: RAGNAROK (2017) & AVENGERS ENDGAME (2019)

A monster made of boulders has the potential to be terrifying – unless it’s voiced

by Waititi, as Korg is in these Marvel movies.

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THE UNSTOPPABLE KIM PETRAS THE GERMAN-BORN, LA-BASED ARTIST THINKS SHE CAN BECOME THE WORLD’S BIGGEST POP STAR. AND SHE MIGHT BE RIGHT.

S

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identity. But at 13, she made global headlines when she was dubbed the “world’s youngest transsexual” and later appeared on German TV to discuss her gender reassignment. So it’s little wonder that by the time she released her debut single four years later, Petras was ready for the attention to shift back to her music. “I want trans people to be known for what they do; that they’re talented and work hard,” she says. “To me, that’s fighting for trans rights.”

Her debut album, Clarity, was released in June and offered a new twist on her brand of bubblegum pop, but was also remarkably confessional. “I’m an open book so if you listen to my music you can get to know me,” says Petras. The album saw the singer tear down her beautifully manicured facade, revelling in what she calls “really emo, depressing songs”.

But it isn’t without reminding the world – and her cheating ex-boyfriend – that she’s doing just fine. “Hope you happy with your new bitch How you livin?’,” Petras sings on ‘Broken’. “I’m in Paris in Marc Jacobs, life’s amazing.”

Now in the midst of a major US tour – and with her most recent EP Turn Off The Light, Vol. 2 released in October – it’s clear Petras is not about to be held back.

“I’m always trying to evolve and make greater things,” she says. “I’m willing to do whatever I can to become the best pop star I can be.”

Turn Off The Light, Vol. 2 is out now.

LIZZO

The twerking, flute-playing, self-love-spreading queen of rap will wow the crowds at FOMO with her independence anthems.

Playing FOMO Festival in Brisbane (Jan 4), Adelaide (Jan 5), Sydney (Jan 11) & Melbourne (Jan 12).

BROCKHAMPTON

Given their proclivity for statement-making stage outfits and kinetic sets, the 14-strong hip-hop troupe’s FOMO performance is not to be missed.

Playing FOMO Festival in Brisbane (Jan 4), Adelaide (Jan 5), Sydney (Jan 11) & Melbourne (Jan 12)

TYLER, THE CREATOR

It’s a wonder LA’s most prolific rapper has time to sleep, let New Year’s music festivals. Alas, Tyler will play Brisbane’s

Day (Jan 1 2020).

WORDS: KISH L AL.

ix years ago, a YouTube video of Petras singing Chris Brown’s ‘Don’t Wake Me Up’ caught the attention of Los Angeles producer, Chris Abraham. He encouraged the Cologne native to visit the US, so she secured a three-month tourist visa, which she spent sleeping on couches to sustain her dream of becoming a songwriter.

Petras finally caught a break in 2014, when she wrote a song with Fergie. It was never released, but it landed her a publishing deal with BMG and her first single. “I’m a songwriter first,” she tells GQ between studio sessions, her German lilt barely noticeable through a newly minted LA vocal fry. “I would love to one day write for Ariana, Rihanna and Miley,” she adds.

“I love pop music and I love pop artists.”

She always has, and growing up, Petras couldn’t imagine becoming anything else. She recorded Britney Spears interviews and recited them to teach herself English, drowned out her childhood loneliness by dancing to Katy Perry’s ‘Teenage Dream’ in her bedroom and fantasised of one day meeting her idol, Madonna – which she did this year. Still, she was often told she would never make it.

“It was tough starting out,” she says, “because people told me I couldn’t be a lucrative pop artist because I’m transgender.” Petras was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for breaking barriers as Outstanding Music Artist this year, but when speaking about the honour, she reveals it all started before moving to Hollywood.

“People judged me without giving my music a chance,” she sighs. “I didn’t want to make being transgender a big thing. I didn’t even have my pictures on Spotify because I wanted to prove that my music was good enough on its own.”

Following her breakthrough, as Petras worried about her identity overshadowing her music, she began receiving criticism from the LGBTQI community for evading her trans

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CULTURE KINGS THE WORLD MAY BE FALLING TO PIECES, YET SOMEHOW POP CULTURE IS STILL GOING STRONG. TO HELP PICK THE GOOD FROM THE BAD, WE PRESENT ALL THE THINGS YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN, READ AND LISTENED TO IN 2019. DON’T WORRY, THERE’S STILL TIME.

ALSO WORTH CHECKING OUT Between Two Ferns: The Movie and Western Stars, Bruce Springsteen’s surprisingly good 19th studio album (no, really).

ALSO WORTH CHECKING OUT

The guilty pleasure

The sophomore season

Me by Elton John. Put away your pride and lean right into it, because this is about as tantalising and juicy (and actually wellwritten) as celebrity autobiographies get.

Succession Season 2. The first season was a slow burn. The second was a knife-sharp zeitgeist-tapping opus that should come with a treatwise warning because wow, it’s addictive.

ALSO WORTH CHECKING OUT Top Boy, the 2011 TV series Drake re-lit and ’90s icons Hootie & The Blowfish, who dropped an album and a reunion tour a decade after parting ways.

ALSO WORTH CHECKING OUT

The comeback

The kooky hit

The Beach Bum by Harmony Korine. Lyrical, charming and totally scuzzy, after a sevenyear hiatus, this Matthew McConaughey comedy couldn’t be more Korine if it tried.

This Is How You Smile by Helado Negro. A floaty, funky tapestry of introspective lyrics in Spanish and English, the EcuadorianAmerican artist’s sixth album is his best yet.

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Spanish comedy Los Espookys and Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest, author Hanif Abdurraqib’s tribute to the ’80s hip hip sensations.

ALSO WORTH CHECKING OUT

ALSO WORTH CHECKING OUT Joey Bada$$’s acting debut in Wu-Tang: An American Saga and Hangover director Todd Phillips’ foray into thriller territory with Joker.

It: Chapter Two and Lanny, the Bookerlonglisted second novel

by Grief Is The Thing With Feathers author Max Porter.

The crossover

The breakout star

Sterling Ruby. Paint-splattered and stamped with the insignia ‘S.R. Studio. LA. CA.’, the cult American artist’s debut fashion collection was one of the season’s most exciting.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge. From Killing Eve to Fleabag’s unprecedentedly successful second season, Waller-Bridge is a showrunner on fire. Next up? Bond 25.

M E N O F T H E Y E A R 2 019 G Q.CO M . AU

Netflix series Sex Education and British rapper Slowthai’s debut album, Nothing Great About Britain.

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common for people; these eck is a musician lenses we view and live our who needs no introlives through – whether it’s duction. But we’re music, work, alcohol, or going to write one anyway, maybe shopping. These are because it’s been an unexall ways we deal with our past pectedly formative year for and our future and our the artist, and he’s got trauma. And I think that, updates to share: a divorce, depending on what the past some extensive touring and trauma is, maybe it leads to album No.14, among them. where you end up? We’re all But the rocker – whose working it out in our own conversational manner flawed ways. could be described as GQ: Do you believe in the ‘meandering Delphic’ – tortured artist complex? insists that his new record Beck: I think I work best Hyperspace is a meditation when I feel rested and eneron “the broader picture,” gised – that leads to art that rather than his own life of has life to it. There’s certain late. The people who helped sorrow in every artist. make it a reality would sugThe beauty of art, music, gest this is true: Pharrell architecture, fashion… these co-wrote seven of the are all ways we can express album’s 11 songs, and Blood our longings.

Orange’s Dev Hynes In a 1997 Rolling GQ: directed the Tessa ThompStone interview, you said, son-starring video to ‘Une“I just always trusted that ventful Days.’ The resultI’d end up where I was suping sound (and imagery) is posed to go”. Twenty-two hypnotic, meticulously years later, do you feel like considered and sequentially that’s still true for you? enthralling. And among HAS SEVEN GRAMMYS AND 14 ALBUMS IN THE HE Beck: I think in life, there’s Beck’s best work yet.

BAG. BUT THE MULTI-INSTRUMENTALIST WON’T REST so much that’s out of your GQ: Lead single, ‘Saw control. Looking back on Lightning’ is particularly UNTIL HE’S WRITTEN THE 'PERFECT SONG'. WITH HIS the years since that quote, bluesy – it’s the only song on NEW ALBUM, HYPERSPACE, HE’S NOT FAR OFF. there are things that maybe the album that’s reminiscent I would’ve liked to do and I of your earlier work. Was dropping that first intended as a fun bait- rules in the way he approaches music, and that haven’t, but I’ve done other things I didn’t expect to. I have that experience every time I really resonates with me. and-switch?

Beck: You know, there were other blues songs GQ: Did you have to make peace after make an album. It’s like that quote… on the record that we ended up taking off, so beating him with Best Record at the [pauses]… actually, maybe it isn’t a quote [chuckles]. But it’s that way of thinking: life you’re right. ‘Saw Lightning’ had some sisters 2015 Grammys? and brothers before now but yes, it’s really the Beck: That night was very surreal and unbe- has other plans for you. lone blues track. But that wasn’t intentional lievably unexpected. Anyone could have won GQ: How many more Beck records do you from the outset. In an emotional way, there’s a that award. But Pharrell, like myself, we’re think you’ll make? blues element to the record, not literal blues about the music. In that moment, I was already Beck: I have ideas for a dozen of them. Ultiworking on a new record; he was probably mately, I still want to write a great song. but cosmic blues.

GQ: What made you want to work with working on five new projects, because that’s I was talking to Paul McCartney recently – I mean, he’s written a million great songs and the thing that pulls us forward.

Pharrell on this album?

Beck: I mean, I wanted to make something GQ: Do you feel like your divorce had a big done everything imaginable. But he was saying, that feeling of wanting to write a great like ‘Drop it like it’s Hot’ [laughs]. Pharrell has influence on the tone of the record? a life force that’s undeniable, and this enthusi- Beck: Not specifically. I was thinking more song never goes away. I still want to shock asm for whatever we’re working on. I relate to about how we gravitate towards certain modes myself and discover something new. I don’t the way he sees music, his open-mindedness of engaging with and navigating our lives and think that feeling will ever go away. and his disregard of genre. There’s not a lot of the world. These bigger things that are Hyperspace is out now via Capitol 62

M E N O F T H E Y E A R 2 01 9 G Q.CO M . AU

WORDS AMY CAMPBELL. PHOTOGR APHY: GET T Y IMAGES.

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Tim Minchin AN AWARD-WINNING MUSICAL, A HEALTHY FILM CAREER, THE PROMISE OF HITTING THE BIG TIME IN HOLLYWOOD – IT WAS ALL GOING SO WELL. UNTIL IT WASN’T. NOW BACK IN AUSTRALIA AFTER AN UNEXPECTED SETBACK IN THE US, THE 44-YEAR-OLD IS READY TO REDEFINE HIMSELF AS ONE OF THE COUNTRY’S MOST TALENTED AND SUCCESSFUL ARTISTS.

T

WORDS DAVID SMIEDT PHOTOGRAPHY DAMIEN BENNETT

he term ‘triple threat’ is thrown around like so much marketing twaddle, but threats of the quadruple variety are somewhat rarer to find. Especially with those who draft and perform their own material. We’re talking a handful entertainers at best. So let’s run through a few of this writer/actor/ comedian/musician’s stats.

Twelve: the amount of Tony and Olivier awards won by Minchin’s long-running Matilda musical. 3.5 million: the number of views his song ‘Come Home Cardinal Pell’, has racked up on YouTube. $150m: the amount grossed by 2018 blockbuster Robin Hood, in which he starred alongside Jamie Foxx, Taron Edgerton and Ben Mendelsohn.

All this is to say that at 44, Minchin has become one of this country’s most accomplished showbiz exports. He’s someone who, if he wanted, could easily count himself alongside the Jackmans and Humphries.

But that apparently doesn’t count for much in Hollywood. In 2017, after four painstaking

years of work, a budget of $150m and a cast featuring the aforementioned Jackman and a slew of other Aussie acting royalty, the planned Minchin-directed animation Larrikins was unceremoniously binned, a casualty of the acquisition of DreamWorks by Comcast. At the same time, his next Broadway venture, a musical version of Groundhog Day closed after five months.

He returned home to heal, but he hasn’t stayed hidden for long. He is next set to appear as the co-creator and star of Foxtel series Upright, and with a new tour, Back – his first since 2011 – currently underway, Minchin is poised to yet again prove that he has nothing left to prove.

He speaks with a lyricist’s precision but a twinkling charm, an easygoing font of profanity-laced profundity. Beyond a mere agitprop wokeness, he channels a sense of thought-through conviction underpinned by self-deprecation and doubt. He has no answers, he’ll just sing you his logic and watch with the smile of a mischievous kid as you try to fight the tide that is Tim Minchin.

GQ: Back in your early days, you had a song called ‘Dark Side’, in which you sang ‘I can develop my brooding potential if that’s what you want in a man’. How’s that going?

Tim Minchin: I reckon I might have actually nailed it. My character, Lucky, in Upright is my brooding potential. He is built on the hypothesis of, ‘What would I have turned out to be if I didn’t get lucky in my career’.

GQ: The premise of the show involves Lucky transporting a piano cross country to see an ill parent. It’s hard not to see the metaphor of your homecoming after carrying some literal and metaphorical baggage of your own.

TM: My burden, my scratched and battered heart.

GQ: You spent four years in LA before the project was cancelled. Did you enjoy that life?

TM: I was cruising down to DreamWorks every day in a Mustang which I’d bought like a wanker – because I thought, “If you’re going to do it...” I was loving the exactitude of co-directing. I was going down to Santa Monica to work with Hans Zimmer. Naomi Watts, Hugh Jackman, Ben Mendelsohn and Jacki Weaver had come in. And then I’d be going into a meeting because some animation nerd or group of nerds were trying to work out how to make a feather translucent.

And then I’d be like, ‘No, see, with eucalyptus leaves, they hang down, they don’t stick out’. It was like making matchsticks and then building something out of them.

GQ: What was it like living in Trump’s America?

TM: When Trump got voted in, I was fucking so angry and upset. I can’t imagine being an American. I was in London when Brexit came down. The whole thing feels like PTSD. I think half the planet is feeling like they’re just living a trauma that hasn’t even started to be able to heal. That trauma is just the victory of bullshit – of reductive base-level, anti-intellectual, dishonest bullshit – which was especially galling for me because I’d spent a whole career writing about what’s true and why it matters.

GQ: Then the movie got cancelled. You’ve said, “The Yanks had successfully milked me of my mojo and then just poured the bucket down the drain”. What toll did it take, creatively?

TM: For all my privilege, it really knocked me around. I knew that being able to exhale and rebalance was ahead of me and time was required. What happened to the film was corporate psychopathy. It’s just like, ‘Well, that’s a tax write off’. No, it’s 150 people and it’s four years of work. And so, I was very, very angry. It’s an interestM E N O F T H E Y E A R 2 01 9 G Q.CO M . AU

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ing feeling, because I’m desperately keen to make sure that people know that I’m absurdly privileged, and I’ve had very little true grief.

GQ: Still, you’re clearly grieving the project?

TM: Up until that point, I had run my career on the almost naive idea that if you care enough, you work hard enough, you’re respectful to everyone, and you put your fucking all into it, then you win. And then it’s like, ‘No, caring doesn’t matter. Being good doesn’t matter. And having a hundred people working on your film who all adore the process and feel respected – like my crew did – that didn’t matter at all’. Then I was just suddenly a 42-yearold man, feeling like someone had stolen four years off me. When you turn 40, losing a 10th of your life to some corporate cunt feels like vandalism.

GQ: In a speech you gave at the University of WA, you said, “I’ll try to give advice because I’m old now and giving unsolicited advice is what old white guys are supposed to do.” Any further career tips for aspiring performers?

TM: Beyond ‘bring everything you have to everything you do’, not really.

In that speech I also say, “I’m going to tell you some stuff because I’ve been corrupted by the fact that people listen to me, and I think I have something to say, now.” But really I’m in no position to dispense advice. My main engine in life is that I’m desperately keen to keep learning, it’s an ongoing apprenticeship. The only advice I have, and the only thing I am autodidactically reasonably knowledgeable about is how to apply a scientific worldview to the question of, ‘How are we to live?’ That’s my area.

That’s my mastermind.

GQ: Your song ‘Come Home Cardinal Pell’ crystallised the sentiments of many Australians. As did ‘I Still Call Australia Homophobic’ in the lead up to the same-sex marriage plebiscite.

How did the response to the former differ from what you expected?

TM: I knew it was going to bring me grief and I didn’t expect so many people to listen to it. I thought it would just disappear. Half the stuff you do does.

But it was very targeted in the end goal of raising funds for survivors to get to the Vatican to say their piece. The funds raised also ended up getting a specialist sexual abuse counsellor in 68

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Ballarat, who’s still there now because of that project. After the song, I got incredible letters that really changed my life in that I unfortunately was privy to hundreds of stories that would just make you weep. And then when it turned out he was an abuser himself, I’ve never said another word about it, because what’s that to do with me?

That’s a legal process, and he’s guilty.

GQ: There are those who say that media surrounding the case all but precluded a fair trial. What are your thoughts on the outrage cycle?

TM: I hate public shaming as a mechanism. I don’t see why that’s not bullying. I can only say that Pell is such a powerful man, and he was so clearly not telling the truth about his knowledge of child abuse, that at some point it’s not bullying, it’s activism. But everyone who publicly shames people thinks it’s activism, right? So it’s complicated.

GQ: It seems there’s a great deal of cyber yelling going on but not much listening. It’s all anger, anger, anger – both from the left and right.

TM: In the upcoming Back show I want to talk about how progressivism is failing. It’s really, really hard to talk about right now as a powerful straight white male, to lecture non-straight, nonwhite, non-male people about what I call curating tone. For example, I got into trouble about saying we should be careful not to give Andrew Bolt oxygen in the wake of the Pell verdict and instead posting the victim statements.

People were saying, ‘Who are you to ask people not to express their anger?’ And I agree. Who the fuck am I? But I want to ask this question: who’s going to do it?

Because you’ve all got to settle the fuck down. Not because you’re wrong, not because your anger is not justified, and not because your righteous fury is not righteous and validly furious. But because it’s not working, or at least it’s not always the best approach.

Waves of fury can’t always be the best strategy. And this conversation, it’s not mine to have, but I really want someone to be having it.

GQ: Moving onto something cheerier, your song ‘White Wine In The Sun’ is just the most beautiful, eloquent love letter home. Was that the intention?

TM: Totally. I wrote the song when my daughter, Violet, was weeks old. She was born in late November, and I wrote it ahead of Christmas. I was sobbing writing the song, which I’ve learned since is a good sign. Your armour is just stripped off in those first few weeks after becoming a parent. You’re just this raw, emotional being. And you’re tired and everything’s heightened. But what’s amazing about ‘White Wine In The Sun’, is it’s a six-minute long atheist Christmas song, that just has slowly crept into public consciousness. It makes me feel profoundly honoured that people play my song. Honestly. I mean fuck, I’d rather kill myself than listen to my voice any day, let alone on Christmas day.

GQ: Like so many art forms, comedy is being forced to reexamine itself in terms of subject matter, diversity and inclusion. Are we better off for it?

TM: I feel like this language – ‘check your privilege’, that you’re ‘virtue signalling’ – these phrases that have come out about online life have been really useful. If you have a bunch of people of colour or women and one of them is saying, ‘White men need to be more aware of the privilege of being a wealthy white man,’ you’re better off thinking about why that message has come up instead of reflexively saying ‘fuck off’. It’s defi-

“My main engine in life is that I’m desperately keen to keep learning, it’s an ongoing apprenticeship.” nitely made me stop and think in a positive way. However, the dissociation of context and intent from the message is not positive as far as I’m concerned. I don’t think anyone, regardless of who they are, can argue that it’s a good thing to take away context and intent from a message.

And comedy is a place where context and intent are everything.

GQ: Any examples of a joke you made back in the day but wouldn’t do now.

I keep thinking I might just become like Charlie Watts and be the three-piece suit guy – I feel like that’s in my future.

GQ: You must be deluged with commercial offers yet we’ve never seen you sell anything.

How come?

TM: My brand particularly – you’re a brand, whether you like it or not, when you’re a public figure – is a thing people buy into. I’m trying to bring soulfulness into what I do. And I’m trying to sell my art, and I think if I sell something else, it damages my brand. To put it another way, if someone’s willing to pay me $500,000 to sell their thing, that’s because they think I’m worth $500,000 in the market, therefore I should sell my thing and take that money. They are buying my audience off me. And fuck them. It’s mine.

GQ: Is there such a thing as an Australian sense of humour? Do we laugh at different things in a different way?

FROM LEFT

Minchin wears suit and shirt, POA, by Karl Lagerfeld; boots, $1550, by Bally; Minchin and Milly Alcock shooting Foxtel’s Upright.

TM: Plenty but I’m not going to say. I’m desperate that no one brings it up, because taken out of context and intent, I could get in fucking trouble now.

GQ: The song ‘You Grew On Me’ features the opening lines ‘you grew on me, like a tumour. And spread through me like malignant melanoma’. You know people use it at their weddings?

TM: I heard that so I decided to write a new one called ‘Fall Apart Together’ because when you get married, what you’re saying is, ‘Let’s decay together from here on in’. I’m trying to increase my penetration into the wedding market.

GQ: We need to ask you the obligatory style question. You’ve had your look – the long hair, maybe some eyeliner – for a while now.

How do you define style?

TM: I’m an interesting mix between someone who’s really interested in style and someone who pretty much gives up. I find fashion interesting, because I think culturally dressing ourselves up and the masks we wear in the uniforms we choose; I love the engagement in it. And then at some point it crosses over into superficial narcissism. I respect people who love clothes, but there’s definitely an area of fashion that’s just about body-shaming, money-spending bullshit.

TM: My short answer is not really. I think that the differences in humour are rural and urban and educational. My audience is pretty bookish with lots of teachers and scientists, because I’m a wanker. I assume my audience is really bright, which means you get a lot out of it if you are. But you don’t have to have a degree to be really bright. In fact, you don’t even have to be very well read to get a lot out of my show.

You might come out with a lot more questions. So I think socioeconomic, educational, and urban versus rural are the axes. You’re much more likely to have a reaction in New York, London, and Sydney that’s similar. And then in Newcastle or Idaho it’s its own thing.

GQ: It’s now almost 15 years since you performed your breakout show Darkside at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

You must be aware you’re slowly edging towards ‘national treasure’ status?

TM: That’s all I’ve ever aspired to. n Upright begins on Foxtel on December 1. For details of the Back tour, go to timminchin.com M E N O F T H E Y E A R 2 01 9 G Q.CO M . AU

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Island Time WORDS AMY

CAMPBELL

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or many years, island destinations have been associated with a particular kind of clientele. If you weren’t getting hitched, you were probably honeymooning – and beyond that, there was little appeal in splashing out big money for a stay in a pricey overwater villa, unless your name happens to be Leo. But things have changed. Thanks to the maniacal pace of our lives today, the appeal of being marooned on a tropical archipelago is more popular than ever, and resorts are adapting to cater for a cooler, younger crowd desperate to switch off, chill out, and worry about nothing more than which cocktail to order first.

We’ve picked five of the world’s most impressive boutique island resorts that will help you achieve all of the above, starting with the Maldives.

NIYAMA PRIVATE ISLANDS, MALDIVES

BEST FOR SURFING, SNORKELLING, JET-SKIING – OR JUST CHILLING

There’s a reason Owen Wright, Josh Kerr and Matt Wilkinson are repeat guests here, and it’s got nothing to do with the resort’s expansive ocean pool pavilions (though we’re sure they don’t hurt). Rather, Niyama is the only luxury surf resort in the Maldives with its very own wave – the rippable left-hander known as ‘Vodi’ breaks directly on the island’s southern tip.

But you don’t need to be surf-fluent to appreciate Niyama. For a relatively small chunk of sand, there are more extra-curricular activities on offer here than hours in the day. The resort is made up of conjoined islands – ‘Play,’ from which you can jet ski, parasail and swim with hammerheads should you wish, and ‘Chill,’ where most of the overwater and beachside villas are located.

And although we’d happily watch tomorrow’s dinner skid past the glass at underwater restaurant Subsix every night, Niyama is home to no fewer than seven eateries. Suspended among a canopy of coconut palms, the teppanyaki experience at open-air venue Nest is highly recommended – just be ready to play catch. If you’d like to try something a little more exclusive (when in the Maldives, right?) the resort’s attentive staff will erect a table, light candles and deliver dinner to a location of your desire as part of the destination dining experience. A bonfire and live band are optional extras, of course.

The Maldives aren’t exactly in short supply of private islands. But in addition to the onshore surf break, the outdoor bathrooms (you get used to it) and the personalised touches (the complimentary bicycles are made identifiable by hand-carved nametags), it’s Niyama’s balance of exclusivity and community that sets it apart from the competition. If you want to fraternise with other guests, the Surf Shack’s rum cocktails never fail to draw a crowd. But in the presence of your private plunge pool, as you listen to waves crumbling on the sand a mere coconut’s throw away, it’s just as easy to forget the rest of the world exists, too. niyama.com M E N O F T H E Y E A R 2 019 G Q.CO M . AU

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BEST FOR WHEN ONE ISLAND ISN’T ENOUGH

FROM TOP

Inside Nicaragua’s Calala Island resort; poolside at Le Res.

A constellation of six islands in Indonesia’s remote Anambas Archipelago, the perimeter of Bawah Reserve cradles three lagoons, 13 beaches and a flourishing reef – all of which were on the verge of being sullied by illegal dynamite fishing before being purchased by Australian entrepreneur Matt Chapman.

The lodgings – which consist of beach and garden suites, as well as the tall and gangly overwater bungalows – are mind-blowingly beautiful inside and out. But it’s Bawah’s range of experiences that we can’t get past. The only thing more spectacular than scaling the archipelago’s crest is snorkelling below its blue crema. Fortuitously, all activities and expeditions are included in the rate, so you really can have it all. bawahreserve.com

NORTH ISLAND, SEYCHELLES CALALA ISLAND, NICARAGUA BEST FOR GETTING AWAY FROM IT ALL

When the resort lists ‘Book the Island’ as an actual option, you know it’s not mucking around. A tiny speck of land off the coast of Nicaragua, Calala Island is exactly where you want to go when you’ve won the lottery and don’t want to be found by the taxman – without the island’s private boat, you’d have to bribe a local fisherman to get you here.

Calala is home to four suites, which can be jointly booked or rented separately. Either way, the villas are positioned so that at any point in time, you never quite know whether you and the guy shaking the cocktails are the island’s only occupants. And if you thought Caribbean cuisine was incapable of refinement, we challenge you to get two courses into the tasting menu before the island-caught lobster carpaccio changes your mind. We should mention, there’s no ‘restaurant’ here – everything is cooked and served fresh to your villa. calala-island.com

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BEST FOR MAKING YOUR EX JEALOUS

As you approach the island by helicopter, it’s almost impossible to make out any trace of civilisation below. But right as you begin to stress the pilot has taken a wrong turn, you see it: a colony of private villas, each with its own terraced patio that’s stacked right down to the island’s white sandy rim below.

If you expect nothing less than a personalised experience, you won’t leave North Island disappointed. Each day,

the resort’s menu is redesigned around the latest island harvest and the resident chef will discuss and tailor their offerings to satiate your desires. Failing that, each villa is appointed with a fully stocked, full-size pantry that makes a mockery of the conventional minibar. Self discipline is the only challenge here. north-island.com

BELMOND LA RESIDENCIA, SPAIN BEST FOR A-LIST SPOTTING

‘La Res’, as it’s called by those in the know, is the most imposing property in the medieval village of Deià – a UNESCO World Heritage site in the foothills of Mallorca’s Trumantana Mountains. Formerly owned by Sir Richard Branson, it’s now part of LVMH’s Belmond property portfolio so it’s only natural, then, that La Res attracts clientele with surnames like Paltrow, Moss and Johansson.

Everything seems to be draped in a patina of glamour here – from the Slim Aarons-style pools to the Joan Miróadorned veranda of Cafe Miró, the 500-year-old olive press turned phenomenal Mediterranean eatery we highly recommend indulging in a preprandial sundowner at. And while you could get quite comfortable holding court inside the resort’s confines, don’t forget to step outside: too higgledypiggledy for cars, Deià’s streets give it the look and feel of a film set – one you’ll want to wander aimlessly for hours. belmond.com/LaResidencia/ Mallorca

ADDITIONAL WORDS: DAN ROOKWOOD.

BAWAH RESERVE, INDONESIA

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Bar upgrade IT’S PARTY SEASON, BUT THAT COCKTAIL SHAKER YOU RECEIVED FOR YOUR 18TH BIRTHDAY WILL NO LONGER CUT IT. THE PERFECT TIME, THEN, TO GIVE YOUR DRINKING KIT A STYLE MAKEOVER.

1.Vodka Luxe vodka brand Grey Goose has teamed up with French fashion house Maison Labiche to create its third annual special-edition ‘Riviera’ bottle. Featuring the fashion label’s signature font, the Riviera bottle is all about celebration, etched with an invitation to ‘Live Victoriously’ this season. Say no more!

2.

1.

2.Vermouth There are plenty of options out there, but Noilly Prat is not only widely available but boasts more than 200 years of French heritage, which means you’re in very safe hands. Hint: a drier martini has less vermouth, a wetter one has more.

3.Glassware Best known for its varietal-specific wine glasses and decanters, earlier this year Riedel introduced a new purpose-built bar collection, featuring highball and rocks glasses, a mixing glass and these sleek, minimal ‘Nick & Nora’ cocktail numbers, perfect for martinis.

4.Martini time Add 50ml Grey Goose vodka and 10ml vermouth to a mixing glass or shaker and fill two-thirds of the way with ice. Stir or shake for at least 20 seconds and strain into a chilled glass. Garnish with a lemon twist or olives – and add a dash of olive brine to make yours dirty. Cheers!

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THE AUSSIE CONQUERING THE US

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT

Nick Mathers; Santa Monica’s Élephante; showcasing the menu at Kassi Club.

FOR TWO DECADES NICK MATHERS HAS BEEN BUILDING A BI-COASTAL RESTAURANT EMPIRE THAT’S REDEFINING THE AMERICAN FOOD SCENE.

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Nick Mathers’ LA Now practically an LA local, we asked Mathers to give us a few of his top spots worth checking out around the city of angels – besides his own, of course.

SHOP

MELROSE PLACE “Local street I love to explore because it’s a great mix of unique stores and well-known designers – some of my favourite stores are Opening Ceremony and Acne Studios.”

EAT

CROFT ALLEY “Great little breakfast and lunch spot near Melrose Place, reminds me a lot of Sydney – it’s like being in a laneway coffee shop in Paddington or Darling Point. I think It brings that familiarity of home.”

BESTIA “Amazing restaurant in Downtown LA, located in a unique building.

They have a great bone marrow pasta and really nice atmosphere.”

GREAT WHITE “Great spot in Venice to grab coffee and breakfast; has a really good vibe!”

OLIVER PEOPLES “I love this brand because the glasses are handcrafted, and they have incredible attention to detail.”

ROLLING GREENS “One of the best options in LA for outdoor design, the space is well curated and I like their selection of clay pots and succulents.”

MALIN + GOETZ “This is a really great skincare brand I love.

They have a good variety of scents and we use their soap in most of our restaurants. I like the products so much that I also use them at home and stop by their location in Santa Monica often.”

SEE

POINT DUME “I have a home in Point Dume, and love being able to wake up at the beach and go for a surf.

It’s the closest thing to being in Australia for me.”

FRANKLIN CANYON “A really peaceful hike in LA near Beverly Hills, it’s a close drive from home and makes you feel like you’re in the middle of the wilderness. The hike has an incredible view of the ocean, the valley, and Downtown LA. It’s a great juxtaposition of wilderness and city. ”

WORDS: JAKE MILL AR. PHOTOGR APHY: GET T Y IMAGES.

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or many years, Nick Mathers was the answer to the question Aussies have been long asking themselves in the US: who actually makes a decent coffee around here? When his Soho café Ruby’s opened in 2003, it introduced New Yorkers to an entirely new approach to brunch – Australian staples like smashed avo, breakfast bowls and yes, really good coffee.

But that was then. Now, Aussies and Aussie-inspired menus seem to be everywhere in the US – Ruby’s has just opened a fourth outpost – and you can even order a flat white in Starbucks, these days. Not that you would.

Having relocated from NYC to LA about a decade ago, Mathers’ group Wish You Were Here now has 10 properties across the US. Whether the relaxed vibe of Eveleigh in West Hollywood or celeb favourite Élephante in Santa Monica, which offers unparalleled sunset views, killer cocktails and truly delicious Southern Mediterranean fare.

If you can get a table.

“LA sets a lot of the world’s trends,” says Mathers of the city’s appeal. “There’s also a variety of landscapes – you can see the desert, the ocean, and the forest, all in one day. And of course, the weather is ideal.”

His latest west-coast project is the Kassi Club, a sleek, Greek-inspired “lounge oriented” restaurant which he opened in June in West Hollywood, with executive chef and partner Thomas Lim. “I always loved visiting Greece and wanted to try my hand at opening something of that calibre in LA,” explains Mathers . “The smaller venue gave me the ability to build something close to a true taverna, reminding me of the best trips of my life in the Mediterranean.”

But not surprisingly, Mathers still has a lot on his plate.

“We will also be going into a hotel in Las Vegas and Laguna Beach,” he says, “and are working on something brand new in Venice Beach.” Stay tuned. kassiclub.com

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POOL PARTY

Celebrating its 80th birthday this year, this Santa Monica landmark is the ideal mix of modern-day luxury and old-world charm. Rooms start from around $450; shangrila-hotel.com

More than just a hotel, the Shangri-La is an icon. Built in 1939, it is a gleaming seven-storey landmark that sits right on the Santa Monica coastline.

A NIGHT AT

WORDS: JAKE MILL AR.

A

HOTEL SHANGRI-LA

s locations go, it’s pretty hard to beat. Sitting right on Ocean Avenue, the Hotel Shangri-La not only overlooks Santa Monica beach but is also just a short walk from all the local shops, bars, restaurants and cafes you could possibly need, whether you’re staying a few days or a whole week. In other words, ideal.

But more than just a hotel, the Shangri-La is an icon. Built in 1939, it is a gleaming seven-storey landmark that sits right on the Santa Monica coastline and from the front, its streamline moderne design – a style of architecture popular at the time – gives it the appearance of a glistening white cruise ship. Fitting, then, that virtually every one of its 70 rooms offers stunning views of the Pacific.

Despite the name, the hotel is independently owned and is not part of the larger Shangri-La chain. It also underwent significant renovations around a decade ago, giving it a much-needed facelift (this is LA, after all), but it hasn’t lost any of its charm. Its signature art deco style remains intact – from the vintage Shangri-La sign above the entrance, through to the lobby, pool area and, of course, the rooms.

Each of them is spacious, especially by LA standards, and offers the right balance of modern amenities and Old Hollywood charm. Think marble bathrooms, a muted colour palette in black, white, blue and grey, art deco light fixtures, flat-screen TVs and complimentary WiFi. They range from the Shangri-La room, with partial ocean and city views, through to luxury suites with one or two bedrooms that offer a panorama of the Pacific and even access to a shared terrace.

Room service is available 24 hours a day and comes courtesy of The Dining Room, the hotel’s cosy in-house restaurant. Expect the usual breakfast fare (omelettes, eggs benedict, waffles), as well as everything from soups and steaks to pasta and fish and chips for the afternoon and evening. All very tasty. Or head al fresco to soak up some rays (and cocktails) in the hotel’s chic black-and-white themed pool area.

The hotel also boasts an in-house gym, on-site parking, same-day dry-cleaning and a round-the-clock concierge who will be happy to organise taxis to or from LAX. Though be warned – the trip can take anywhere from 15mins to an hour, depending on LA’s notorious traffic.

Santa Monica’s relatively new LA Metro stop is also handy if you want to head out in the direction of Downtown LA on the Expo Line.

Hotel Shangri-La is just a short walk from the Santa Monica Pier, with its theme park rides and food stalls, as well as Third Street Promenade, the pedestrian shopping mall (packed with the usual suspects – Apple, Sephora, Zara) that runs through the city’s downtown area.

Worth checking out is Little Ruby, run by Aussie restaurateur Nick Mathers (who you’ll see on the opposite page), as well as the Santa Monica Farmer’s market, which runs down Main Street on Sundays.

But the real jewel in Hotel Shangri-La’s crown is the Onyx rooftop lounge and terrace. As you’d expect, it offers views of the city, as well as a sweeping oceanic outlook that takes in the whole beachfront. It’s the perfect setting to sit with friends, order some drinks, watch the sun go down and forget real life even exists.

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The (meat-free) future of food There’s never any shortage of burger options these days, but the latest trend looks set to take over the planet – and might just help save it, too.

WORDS JESSICA

MUDDITT

One of the meat-free options at Soul Burger, Newtown.

T

o the casual observer, Soul Burger in Sydney’s Newtown seems like any other upmarket fast food outlet.

It has a sleek, dark décor and business is brisk on a Saturday afternoon. A burger arrives on our table with a steak knife thrust through the middle. Cheese oozes over the sides of the chunky, dark brown patty, which is crumbed and surprisingly moist. The waitress returns with a glistening hot dog and a bucket of fried drumsticks. Yum. But what’s more impressive than how good the food looks is that all of it was made entirely from plants. Taste-wise, it’s slightly less so. Tasty, for sure, but it’s hard to get your head around the fact you know it’s not meat.

Soul Burger started out in 2013 as a regular burger joint, though it did source its meat from farms that made animal welfare a priority. When owner Amit Tewari stopped eating meat in 2015, the menu had a plant-based makeover, making it the first wholly vegan burger joint in Australia. Tewari, a selfprofessed former meat lover swore off it after seeing footage of abattoirs. He tells GQ that it has turned out to be a sound business decision.

“Year-on-year sales have increased by 60 per cent,” he says.

“And food-sourcing costs have gone down significantly. We’ve also tapped into a passionate, grassroots consumer base. Some customers have tattoos of our logo.”

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THE GROWING PLANT-BASED FIELD Australia has one of the world’s fastest-growing vegan markets, with a current value close to $150m that is predicted to hit $3bn by 2030, according to a new report by Deloitte and think tank Food Frontier.

More than 12 per cent of the population, or 2.5 million Australians, now eat a vegetarian-based diet. That’s up from 2.2 million in 2014.

Then there are the pescatarians, flexitarians and those simply reducing their meat intake – which adds up to another 39 per cent, according to Colmar Brunton research. Along with animal welfare and health concerns, there is growing awareness about the environmental impact of meat production. As a result, consumption of meat in Australia is expected to fall 0.2 per cent to 111.4kg per person during 2019-20, according to IBISWorld.

“As demand for vegan products rises, food manufacturers are expected to increase the range and quality of their plant-based foods, driving further demand,” says IBISWorld senior industry analyst, James Caldwell.

Suzy Spoon opened her vegetarian butcher in 2012 because she was so disenchanted with what was on offer in supermarkets.

“The pre-made stuff was so rubbery and tasteless. It was out of necessity that I started creating recipes,” she tells GQ. But when Spoon opened the doors to Suzy Spoon’s Vegetarian Butcher in Sydney, she discovered she had some haters.

“Some vegans were offended that I’d used the word ‘butcher’ and some meat-eaters accused me of stealing their word. But it describes really well what I do: I make things like a butcher, but I do it all with no meat.”

Others simply thought her business idea was lousy.

“Some couldn’t see a future in vegan food, so they thought I’d go bust quickly.”

Happily for Spoon, who became a committed vegetarian 37 years ago after witnessing the horrors of a broiler farm, she has seen major growth.

She uses ingredients like mushroom stems, pea protein and soy protein to make “really meaty” products. Others, like her best-selling polenta sausage, are for customers who don’t want to be reminded of meat.

Unlike Soul Burger, Spoon hasn’t named her products after the type of meat they resemble. She calls her fake bacon ‘smokey rasher’ so that customers know what to do with it. But some names are completely new.

“My chickeney products are not called chicken – I don’t even use funny spelling like ‘chik’n’. I feel it’s misleading, so I call mine ‘seitan’ which means ‘made from protein’ in Japanese.”

THE BLEEDING BURGER Even major supermarkets have jumped on the meatless bandwagon, with Coles recently adding the Alternative Meat Co’s plant-based sausage, patty and mince to its meat selection. Confusing it may be, but the general manager of parent company Life Health Foods Australia, Dean Epps, says it reflects changing consumer preferences.

“People are looking for protein solutions. They’re quite open about where that protein comes from. In future, we may see the meat aisle renamed as the protein aisle.”

He believes it should take zero willpower to make the switch, so products need to be convincing. A breakthrough occurred in May, when his researchers made a plant-based burger ‘bleed’. Very few companies worldwide have achieved this feat – the other being Silicon Valley-based Impossible Foods, which is backed by the likes of Jay-Z and Will.i.am.

“It’s been the Holy Grail for the last five years to crack it,” says Epps.

“I lost count of how many different variables we’ve played with.

When it happened, there was almost a sense of disbelief.”

The idea of an anaemic vegan is outdated, says Epps, who considers his plant products nutritionally superior to meat.

“Our products have the equivalent protein as meat, with the added bonus of also having fibre.”

In fact, Epps considers eating meat inefficient: “The animals we eat get their protein from plants. We can cut out that middle man, so to speak, by getting protein directly from plants.”

ENTER CLEAN MEAT Entrepreneur Tim Noakesmith is a fan of plant-based meat – but worries that we are out of time.

“What’s happening in the plant-based space is incredible. But even as these better alternatives start to come out, the data shows that globally, the demand for animal-based meats isn’t slowing.

I fear the consumer shift will happen too late and that we’ll have already done irreversible damage to the environment.”

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that the demand for meat will increase by 70 per cent by 2050, and that current production methods are unsustainable. Furthermore, farting farm animals contribute significantly to global warming: methane is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a heat-trapping gas.

So after devouring the seminal book Clean Meat by Paul Shapiro,

“What’s happening in the plant-based space is incredible... the data shows that the demand for animal-based meats isn’t slowing.

Noakesmith decided to leave his design job at Cochlear to launch his Sydney-based start-up, Vow Food.

“I realised that there was possibly no single more important technology for the world at this time,” he recalls.

Clean meat involves taking a small sample of animal cells and replicating them outside of the animal. The cells are fed the same nutrients the animal would eat to grow. To describe the process as more efficient is something of an understatement, according to the operations co-ordinator at Mosa Meat in the Netherlands, Beckie Calder-Flynn.

“One cell sample can create up to 10,000kg of cultured meat. Our estimates suggest we would only need 150 cows to satisfy the world’s current meat demand.”

Professor Mark Post of Mosa Meat created the first cell-based hamburger in 2013. It cost a mouth-watering $400,000. No company has yet produced a commercially viable product, but the process will eventually leave the lab and take place in a facility that looks like a brewery M E N O F T H E Y E A R 2 01 9 G Q.CO M . AU

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with tall steel cultivators. Over the years, Mosa Meat has added fat tissue to boost taste and texture and developed a culture medium that is free of foetal bovine serum – as this was ironically taken from a foetus excised from a slaughtered, pregnant cow.

The term ‘clean meat’ was coined by US non-profit the Good Food Institute, which promotes plant-based alternative proteins.

“It’s a nod to clean energy, and it’s also literally cleaner from a food safety perspective, because faecal contamination can end up on a slaughtered animal,” explains the founder and CEO of Food Frontier, Thomas King.

“That’s why we have to cook the shit out of our meat to eat it,” he quips.

However, the term insinuates that traditional meat is dirty, which is why alternatives are popping up. Of those, ‘cell-based meat’ is currently the frontrunner in terms of global acceptance, says King.

It’s just not quite as catchy.

A WORLD OF MEATY POSSIBILITIES Vow Food is one of two cell-based meat companies in Australia, and, according to King, one of only 30 globally. It aims to release its first cellbased products in collaboration with high-profile chefs by the end of 2020. In August it was awarded a $25,000 grant from the New South Wales government and it has created a Tuscan pork ragu and a kangaroo dumpling.

“What we’ve done with kangaroo is a world-first – no one has ever used cellular agriculture to create the meat of an undomesticated animal,” says Noakesmith.

However, the first product Vow releases won’t be one single animal but a combination of several.

“Cellular agriculture gives us the opportunity to reinvent agriculture in a way we haven’t seen for hundreds of years,” says Noakesmith.

“Cellular agriculture gives us the opportunity to reinvent agriculture in a way we haven’t seen for hundreds of years,” Vow Food is currently creating a cell library dubbed ‘Noah’s Ark’ which will rank animals’ flavour and nutrition profiles.

“We might grab the muscle cells from kangaroo, which is a lean protein and high in iron, the liver cells from cattle and then the fat from lobster to introduce some interesting flavours.”

Frankenstein comes to mind but Noakesmith brushes the idea aside, saying, “Nature has already done all the hard work for us.”

Regardless of precisely what the new meat looks like, global consulting firm AT Kearney predicts that cell-based meat will make up over a third of global meat supplies by 2040.

“It’s likely that in the next year or so, a cell-based product will be served at a restaurant somewhere as an initial showcase,” predicts King, who sampled a cell-based prawn dumpling in Singapore.

“But it’s at least a decade until meat is cultivated on a commercial scale. In a hundred years, producing meat by carving it off a carcass that could be covered in faecal bacteria might be considered outdated.”

When he puts it like that, you wonder whether that day might come sooner. n 80

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FROM TOP Lord of the Fries is just one Aussie restaurant serving up plant-based concoctions; the loaded fires at Soul Burger.

HUNGRY JACKS, GRILL’D AND EVEN KFC IN THE US HAVE ADDED FAUX-MEATS TO THEIR MENUS – BELOW ARE SOME ALTERNATIVES FOR TRYING IT IN YOUR LOCAL AREA.

SYDNEY

SOUL BURGER outlets in Glebe, Newtown, Randwick and Parramatta. soulburger.com.au

MELBOURNE

VEGIE HUT 984 Whitehorse Rd, Box Hill, Vic 3128 vegiehut.com.au

BRISBANE

YAVANNA 9/2 Latrobe Terrace, Paddington Qld 4064 yavanna.com.au

PERTH

LORD OF THE FRIES 110 William St, Perth WA 6000 lordofthefries.com.au

ADELAIDE

HISPANIC MECHANIC 205 Glen Osmond Rd, Frewville SA 5063 hispanicmechanic.com.au

GOLD COAST

LORD OF THE FRIES (outlets also in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, plus New Zealand) SP018, Paradise Centre, Surfers Paradise QLD 4217 lordofthefries.com.au

CANBERRA

AU LAC 4/35-39 Woolley Street, Dickson ACT 2602 Shop G90, Corrina St, Phillip Act 2606 aulac-restaurant.com.au

GQ PROMOTION

HIT REFRESH

T

he Italians have gifted the world aperitivo hour – grazie. And the Japanese showed us how to sling a mean highball with zen-like precision – arigato. But it’s the Scots who know a thing or two about making the world’s best whisky, and it’s our highland compatriots who have combined the trends of our international friends to create the zesty, refreshing Glenmorangie ‘Highball’ – slàinte mhath!

The cocktail puts a new spin on the much-loved aperitif with a squeeze of fresh orange to match Glenmorangie’s citrusy flavour. It’s perfect for us Australians – blessed with long, hot summers and a love of refreshing drinks in excellent company.

Light, fresh and suave in looks and on the palate, it’s also a breeze to concoct.

Glenmorangie’s famously smooth and citrusy single malt whisky is simply mixed with soda and the juice of half an orange, and served with an orange twist.

It’s also an ideal choice for afternoon drinks that turn into evening drinks, because the Glenmorangie ‘Highball’ is on the lower side when it comes to kilojoules (around 550 per serve) and alcohol (6 per cent ABV). Beer o’clock? Meh. It’s Highball Hour. Cheers, ta!

For more cocktail recipes, go to glenmorangie.com.au/cocktails

UP YOUR APERITIVO THE GLENMORANGIE HIGHBALL INGREDIENTS

• 50ml Glenmorangie ‘The Original’ • Soda water • ½ orange • Orange twist, to garnish

METHOD

THE SPIRIT OF TRADITION

Above: Glenmorangie’s stills are the tallest in Scotland. Only the lightest, purest vapours make it to the top, creating a smooth, elegant whisky.

Pour Glenmorangie ‘The Original’ into a highball glass over ice. Top with soda water and squeeze in the juice of the orange. Garnish with the orange twist and serve with char-grilled pita and dips.

GQ PROMOTION

IT’S PERFECT FOR US AUSTRALIANS – BLESSED WITH LONG, HOT SUMMERS AND A LOVE OF REFRESHING DRINKS IN EXCELLENT COMPANY.

STYLIST

Plan your party look START HERE.

PLANNING AN ALL NIGHTER?

GREAT! WHAT ARE WE DRINKING?

SOME TV, THEN?

WHAT’S YOUR ACCESSORY OF CHOICE?

GO-TO DANCE MOVE?

THOUGHTS ON VELVET?

GO TO PAGE 86

GO TO PAGE 85 THE CLASSIC

THE ROMANTIC

GO TO PAGE 88

GO TO PAGE 87 THE PARTY ANIMAL

THE FASHION GUY

$535, by Ermenegildo Zegna.

Black pocket square, $69, by Hugo Boss; and $175,

by Dolce & Gabbana.

$270, by Giorgio Armani.

$32,300, by Chopard.

Bowties, $325 each, by Tom Ford at Harrolds.

Celine

$490, by Montblanc.

$349, by Hugo Boss.

$1450, by Bally.

James Bond is your style icon and you don’t quite feel comfortable unless your black tie dinners come with eight courses and paired wines.

But don’t let your love of a good monochromatic tux get in the way of trying something more directional. A gander through Bally, Hugo Boss and Giorgio Armani’s latest collections will show you how to nail the brief.

$411, by Chopard.

Ralph Lauren

THE CLASSIC

STYLIST

THE ROMANTIC

$169, by Calibre.

A tarot reader in training, you’re known to comment on the auras of fellow partygoers, unasked. You live in silk shirts and velvet, and although you don’t care much for dancing you do care about music – a bad playlist can really kill your vibe. Naturally, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana and New York brand Bode cater to your heightened tastes.

$215, by Ray-Ban.

$145, by Paul Smith. $69.95, by Declic.

$5720, by Chopard.

$120, by Paul Smith.

Jil Sander

Alexander McQueen

$25, by Buds and Bowers.

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$125, by Poppy Lissiman.

Ermenegildo Zegna

$16.95, by Van Heusen.

$445, by Gucci. $8900, by Tiffany & Co.

$1600, by Bottega Venetta.

Saint Laurent

$1180, by Prada.

Belt $75, b $190, by Paul Smith.

You’re the first one to hit the dance floor and usually the last to leave. You love a good statement piece and aren’t afraid to embellish a look with sequins, because who ever had the night of their life wearing a conventional suit? Exactly. Luckily, Tom Ford, Saint Laurent and Hedi Slimane’s Celine all agree.

Celine

THE PARTY ANIMAL

STYLIST $49.95, by The Daily Edited. $520, by Bally.

$1195, by Christian Lou . $40,600,

by Hublot.

$10,800,

by Cartier.

Louis Vuitton

$1300, by Givenchy.

Bracelet, (top) $15

by Cartier; an $

by Bulg

Supreme and Stßssy were your first loves, but now you’ve graduated to the still hip but more elevated tailoring of brands like Burberry and Louis Vuitton. Still, no matter the dress code, you seldom leave the house without a crossbody bag. Maybe this time, ditch your old faithful and let Givenchy sort you out?

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Dunhill

THE FASHION GUY

Helmut Lang

Ring $16,250, and $3310, all by Bulgari.

SNEAKER

F

smales.com.au

KALE IDOS CO PE CO L L ECT I O N | Diam o n d C rea ti o ns ma de fo r th o s e w h o a p p re ci a te t h e Ar t i s t r y o f N a t u re

THE

BRANDS WATCH TO

LOEWE

E In his six years as Loewe’s creative director Jonathan Anderson (above) has revitalised the Madrilenian brand.

Today, Loewe’s menswear exists somewhere between totally wearable and completely arcane.

ECKHAUS LATTA

Which is why, be it a technicolor poncho or simply a visit to your nearest Casa, we could all benefit from a little more Loewe in our lives.

So entwined are the identities of downtown New York and Eckhaus Latta that it’s hard to consider one without the other. That being said, the ‘so-fashion-it’s-anti-fashion’ spirit of Zoe Latta and Mike Eckhaus’ brand travels remarkably well; in eight years it’s accrued an international fan base of cool kids, many of whom have walked in the brand’s wonderfully provocative shows. Sure, the printed turtleneck and butt-hugging jeans are nice.

But it’s Eckhaus Latta’s tribe-vibe that gives it that elusive air of cool.

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STYLIST

BOTTEGA VENETA

D director seemed all but assured.

high-stakes option of establishing a design vocabulary that, despite the occasional Philo inflection (which is most welcome), is entirely his own. Sportier, highly streamlined and charged with a tide of desirability that’s almost electric, Lee’s first collection for the Italian atelier stood on its own two feet – as did his second and so will, we imagine, his third.

Bottega Veneta is a leather goods house at heart and Lee has effectively dipped into the brand’s archive, reviving heirlooms without losing sight of fashion’s current and future context. Bottega’s intrecciato method, which involves weaving delicate strips of leather in a criss-cross fashion, is just one sleeping signature that Lee has roused. Fashioning it into interesting tote bags, wallets, leather boots and even slides, intrecciato’s been reinstated as the mark of Bottega. And it’s selling like hot cakes, too. In the third quarter of 2019, the brand’s sales were reportedly up by almost 10 per cent.

But it’s for another reason that Bottega is a brand to watch. While Lee’s first two collections have been original and inspiring, they’ve also been packed full of promise. The few things that didn’t gel for AW19 were tweaked and perfected – not abandoned – for SS20.

There aren’t a lot of designers working today who have the guts and conviction to do this, nor are there companies with patience enough to support them. That Kering, Bottega’s parent company, is placing such faith in Lee can only mean there’s much more where the first two ‘new Bottega’ collections came from.

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Daniel Lee’s (above) first two collections at Bottega Veneta suggest a promising partnership between the Italian brand and the British designer.

Lee has effectively dipped into Bottega’s archive, reviving heirlooms without losing sight of fashion’s current and future context.

PYER MOSS At a time when fashion can’t afford not to be political, Pyer Moss’ Kerby Jean-Raymond might be the most outspoken designer there is. His collections have become both spectacles and statements, where boxy shoulders and sporty silhouettes tell the obscured histories of African American icons like Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the godmother of rock ’n’ roll. No surprise then that he’s just been appointed artistic director of Reebok’s newest division ‘Reebok Studies_’.

WALES BONNER

JACQUEMUS

S

STYLIST

CRAIG GREEN

O

Craig Green’s brain works in ways us mortals can only dream of.

SIES MARJAN Menswear began as a small accompaniment to the women’s collections for Sander Lak, the Brunei-born, New York-based visionary behind the silkiest suits in fashion. But since debuting its first men’s pieces in ‘17, Sies Marjan’s all-or-nothing approach to colour and love of eccentric flourishes found him so many male fans that, for SS20, he just had to stage his first standalone menswear show.

Naturally, it was a hit.

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ideas – and the drawcard of London Fashion Week Men’s.

The interesting thing about Craig Green, though, is the way he essentially runs two separate lines (the mainline and the commercial collection) but manages to operate them in a symbiotic way. Where his runway shows can feel more like wearable art than wearable fashion, the Craig Green workman’s jackets and printed T-shirts are the epitome of practical. But their relationship to the main line is discernible in the details. For example, the padded ribbing of a conservative black quilted jacket evokes the contoured panels on a two-piece suit that were designed to replicate the human muscular system, like those in Green’s Spring 2020 collection.

Another cool thing about Craig Green?

The brand’s most popular size is XL. In an industry still trying to work out how to flatter a taller, broader man, Green is light years ahead. The only real prerequisite to looking good in his clothes, then, is excellent taste.

CHUSETTE

Today, socks play a big part in completing your wholesome outfit. It’s about adding character and your personal style.

Chusette is a new Australian premium socks and hosiery brand specializing in creating a line of products with an emphasis on manufacturing technology. The Chusette product range differs from the current offerings in the Australian marketplace; it is unlike the multi-coloured, heavily patterned, funny or monochromatic black and white designs. All colours of Chusette hosiery are designed to align with the fashion trends we find on the catwalks of the world’s leading fashion houses.

www.chusette.com

MenÕs socks ,soft cotton $14.95

GROOMING

Best of the Year

HIGH-END

Penhaligon’s ‘Cairo’ EDP $329 (100ml) Damascan rose, saffron and Sri Lankan sandalwood from a brand more noted for restrained concoctions. agencedeparfum.com.au

NCE A R G FRA

PHOTOGR APHY: EDWARD URRUTIA .

Y BOD

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99

HAIR

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FACE MOISTURISER

Nivea ‘Men Deep Moisturiser’, $14.15 (50ml) A wallet-friendly moisturiser good for those with oily skin who suffer from blackheads. chemistwarehouse.com.au

FACE

GROOMING

SOUTH KOREAN SKINCARE We look to Paris, Milan or London for fashion, but for grooming, Seoul is the world leader in some of the most interesting, innovative new trends in skincare.

O

South Korean actor Lee Dong-Wook was named the face of Chanel’s new ‘Boy de Chanel’ beauty line earlier this year.

n Sydney’s bustling Pitt Street Mall – arguably the most visible retail strip in the country – there are naturally some multinational heavy hitters at ground level. Zara, Sephora, H&M, Microsoft. Joining them this year in a sparkling new fit-out was Innisfree, the Korean skincare juggernaut at the forefront of a grooming movement that exploded out of Seoul and is taking over the rest of the planet.

There are a few reasons for the rise. First up is the culture – Korean men don’t have the same hang-ups when it comes to personal grooming and are happy to invest in quality products. Second, as with tech, Korea is a country of rampant innovation. You know those sheet masks everyone is Instagramming? Guess where they were

Korean men don’t have the same hang-ups when it comes to personal grooming and are happy to invest in quality products. m ,

invented? The third factor is value. Even top-of-the li Korean brands are seriously affordable and deliver ingredients effectively with little fanfare. Remember just-outta-uni Hyundai that got you everywhere needed to go for years? This is that. For your face.

As an entry point into the burgeoning w Korean skincare, check out the etailer (which also has a quartet of bricks and around Sydney). To get you started, here are t ucts we rate right now.

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ldier tine.

Bakin

oy ul

oments

Making pizzas can be more important than just family fun time.

You can teach kids about technique, patience and the joy of making the perfect pizza base from scratch. They’ll teach you that sometimes the most unique topping combinations are the best!

Lighthouse Bread & Pizza Strong, High Protein Plain Flour is proof that there are no shortcuts to baking success. lighthousebaking.com.au

WATCH

SUMMER VIBES 1

Blancpain 'Fifty Fathoms Barakuda', $18,550; blancpain.com

2

Rolex white gold 'GMT-Master II', $48,850; rolex.com

4

IWC 'Aquatimer Chronograph Limited Edition “Laureus Sport for Good”', $16,400; iwc.com

5

3

Breitling 'Superocean Automatic', 46mm, $6490; breitling.com

Seiko 'Prospex LX SNR029J', $8500; seiko.com

Beach-ready

3. Dare to think big and bold and this hunk of a Breitling 'Superocean Automatic 46' will come calling.

4. A favourite of surfboard shaper Hayden Cox when he’s shredding waves, the vulcanised rubber-coating case on the IWC 'Aquatimer Chronograph' is so beachappropriate it’ll even get an approval from the in-laws.

5. With a gild-edged titanium case and Spring Drive movement, the Seiko 'Prospex LX' is a handsome partner in crime when going for a casual free dive.

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6

TAG Heuer 'Carrera 02T Tourbillon Nanograph', $35,150; tagheuer.com

7

Panerai 'Submersible Marina Militare Carbotech', $27,200; panerai.com

8

9

Piaget 'Polo S Chronograph Automatic', $21,700; piaget.com

Longines 'The Heritage Classic', $2900; longines.com

10

Omega 'Speedmaster Moonwatch 50 th Anniversary Limited Edition', $13,175; omega. com

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WATCH Three generations of the Chopard family.

‘Alpine Eagle’ 36mm in steel, $18,200, and in 18ct gold, $42,500; chopard.com

A FAMILY AFFAIR SPORTS WATCHES ARE A THING AGAIN, AND CHOPARD’S NEW ‘ALPINE EAGLE’ COLLECTION IS DRIVING THE WAY.

O

n a quest to find a Chopard watch, ‘Mille Miglia’ and ‘LUC’ would be the go-tos. That is, until October when the brand surprised the watch world by unveiling its new ‘Alpine Eagle’ collection. This duly took inspiration from a previous ‘St Moritz’ collection, the ’80s sporty number created by a then 22-year-old Karl-Friedrich Scheufele.

Fast forward to 2019, and Karl-Fritz – KarlFriedrich’s son, and grandson of chairman, Karl Scheufele – has done his best to repeat history with the next-generation ‘Alpine Eagle’. Available in 36mm and 41mm with inhouse movements, the gold iteration uses its ethically mined gold while the stainless-steel version boasts a new Lucent Steel A223 proprietary alloy. Made partially from recycled steel, it’s 50 per cent more abrasion-resistant than conventional steel and further proof of Chopard’s commitment to sustainability.

We spoke to Karl-Fritz about how three generations have come together to drive this famed luxury brand into a younger and even more sustainable future.

GQ: Congratulations on the ‘Alpine Eagle’ collection. What do you like the most about it?

Karl-Fritz: It’s been quite a long road, around four years of developments and being the younger of the three, I was the most impatient to see it come to life. I always liked the ‘St Moritz’ but what’s really interesting with the ‘Alpine Eagle’ is the very precise details that are in parts that you don’t really expect – that’s what I love about the spirit of this watch. For example, the screws are actually functional, 108

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they hold the whole watch together and when screwed to the max, they finish in a single line.

GQ: Where does it sit within a collector’s archive?

KF: If you like steel sports watches it’s a great way to get into these watches, but I’m not going to start comparing because every brand creates its own kind of universe. That’s what’s so cool about the watch world – when you get into a brand, there’s so much to discover than just the piece. There’s the story behind it too.

GQ: When we first set eyes on the ‘Alpine Eagle, it really struck a chord because it wasn’t a design we were expecting to see.

KF: Yeah, I know it was funny for me, my dad and my grandfather. As the project came along, we had different feedback from my sisters and my mother and my grandparents.

We would all discuss the piece and sometimes be very critical about the watch. But we agreed it’s important for a brand to do something really unexpected and a bit bold.

GQ: Caring for the environment has always been an important part of Chopard’s brand identity, so can you elaborate on the Eagle Wings foundation connection?

KF: It was kind of a coincidence but the Eagle Wings was founded by a photographer Nomi Baumgartl and its goal is to create awareness on how global warming is affecting the Alps mountain range, which is hugely important to my family.

GQ: How important is Chopard’s family heritage in bringing innovation to the brand?

KF: Family businesses are often seen as being a little, I’d say old school, patriarchic, in the sense that they wouldn’t take the time to listen to the grandson or the son. But I was very

lucky with my father and my grandfather, they were always asking me for new ideas, even at the dinner table when we were younger. That’s a great thing to do because by including the youngest generation from the start, it gets us interested in the company and the industry.

GQ: How are today’s consumers changing the shape of luxury watches?

KF: I’m still in uni so I get to talk a lot about watches with many different people. What a lot of people in my generation like is the quest for a unique watch, without going overboard in terms of price. This means trying to find something someone else doesn’t have. It’s more about having the watch go with your own style. All in all, I think the uniqueness, quality, rarity and personality of the piece are really key elements that watch consumers look for today.

GQ: What are the challenges that brands face in order to be sustainable?

KF: What makes the watch industry so exciting is that there are always new challenges. In terms of being more sustainable, supply is a key challenge because we employ a lot of raw materials sourced in many different parts of the world and it’s hard to control everything that goes on there. The thing we managed to do very well now with our ethical gold is have an eye over the whole supply. It’s a bit like food, you want to know exactly what’s going into it and other products you consume. And also social sustainability – investing in our associates as well as in our watchmakers’ knowledge and savoir-faire because these are crafts that are starting to fade so we’re trying to teach the next generation in order to keep up the artisanship of Swiss watchmaking.

LEADING THE CHARGE

Balancing clean and mean, Formula E is the electrified answer to F1 and getting greener and quicker with every race.

WORDS BRAD NASH

In 1987, a young Allan McNish found himself at a dinner in Edinburgh for the Scottish Motor Racing Club. The then-17-year-old, who would go on to race in Formula 1 and win the Le Mans 24 Hours three times, was sitting with Graham Gould, a prominent local racing journalist at the time. As McNish recalls, one thing Gould said stood out to him in particular: “Motorsport is a microcosm of the world”.

The more you think about it, the more this has proven to be the case over the decades. Motor racing hit its peak era of glamour as the flamboyancy of the ’70s and ’80s allowed playboy drivers like James Hunt to flourish. As globalisation and big business took hold in the ’90s, F1 became a sport of big money and high precision – a change led by the rise of clinically precise drivers like Michael Schumacher.

As conversations of race and diversity began to evolve in the 21st century, so too did the public face of motorsport. Formula 1’s first black driver, Lewis Hamilton, entered the sport in 2007 and would go on to become not only one of the greatest drivers in its history, but a global example of diversity in a sport renowned for a lack of racial and economic parity within its upper tiers.

In 2019, the world has new priorities. Sustainability sits at the heart of every conversation surrounding the world’s major industries. Motorsport has had to radically shift its approach to keep up and the series leading the charge is the FIA’s top-tier championship for all-electric single-seater cars: Formula E. McNish, now the Team Principal of Audi’s Formula E program, has been involved with the sport since its earliest days. He was present as hybrid technology took centre stage in the World Endurance Championship and so saw the potential that electric technology had in the resource-heavy world of elite racing. Even so, he admits that his first reaction towards Formula E was one of “immense scepticism”.

In its newborn phase at the end of 2014, Formula E immediately set out to dance to its own beat. McNish went to one of the series’ first outings in Monaco. “They had some different ideas,” he says, recalling that the sport’s first few races played out to the sound of blasting techno. It quickly sent the young series viral for all the wrong reasons. But Formula E was turning heads and, importantly, filling column inches in new markets. It brought organised car races to the streets of New York and Hong Kong for the first time in 30 years, and in the case of cities like Marrakech and Riyadh, the first time ever. Even Paris and London, cities that are increasingly proving unfriendly to cars in general, are welcoming the series to its streets.

By season two, McNish had already noticed big leaps for the sport. The series had rightly made the decision to focus viewers’ attention on the racing, while manufacturers were also given the 11 2

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option to develop their own drivetrains, increasing competitiveness.

But it still hadn’t quite won over old-school motorsport fans.

The main problem punters had with Formula E was the fact that drivers had to swap cars midway through each race – something that not only made hard racing a less appealing option for drivers but saw the sport become a bit of a joke to hardcore fans. What good is a racing car, after all, if it can’t actually finish a race?

With the second generation of Formula E came a host of changes that made sweeping corrections to many of the issues that were holding the sport back in the eyes of some viewers. Radical upgrades to the cars not only meant that they could complete a full race, but Formula E could take on an aesthetic that was far more fitting of the futuristic racing series it set out to be.

Despite being held up as beacons of cutting-edge tech, the first generation of Formula E cars proved frustratingly basic for drivers and fans. They had less power and, more importantly, far less grip.

“At the beginning, it was just an electric engine in the back of a standard racing car,” says McNish. Formula E’s second-gen cars are something else entirely, with a far more futuristic, aggressive look.

The series is faster, too. Each car now packs 250kW and an insane amount of torque, powering it 100km/h in 2.8 seconds and on to 280km/h if required. “For the first time it feels really like a quick racing car,” Mahindra driver Felix Rosenqvist told The Verge shortly after testing it. “I think [it’s] way more than enough to stop all these critics who say it’s just a radio-controlled car.”

The cars are still essentially limited to provide equal performance, keeping them constantly battling with one another, but they do so at much greater speeds on city streets that are almost entirely unique to the series.

Formula 1 has also made a dramatic shift towards street racing in its constant quest to expand into lucrative new markets. It almost exclusively puts new races on the calendar by asking countries like Azerbaijan, Russia and Vietnam to devise street tracks as a cheaper alternative to building dedicated circuits. There’s no doubt that it makes the prospect of hosting an F1 race a far more affordable one for a country looking to showcase itself to the world, but with the cars themselves both bigger and faster than they once were, the unspoken truth is that this is often at the expense of good racing.

Formula E – a street racing series by design – counters this by giving its drivers smaller cars and thereby more room to operate. The series has also introduced a number of unique format changes to drive tight racing and viewer engagement. Fan Boost, for instance, gives voting fans the opportunity to give a driver a five-second boost in power during the race. Attack Mode awards drivers a Mario Kartesque boost in power by driving over a certain part of the track off the racing line.

The end product is a heady cocktail of motorsport genres, with fastaccelerating cars battling at close quarters through tightly packed city streets. It’s a spectacle designed to tantalise a new breed of motorsport fans who may not be naturally inclined towards F1. “It’s right for the generation that we’re trying to appeal to,” says McNish.

Three decades on from that conversation in Edinburgh, he was on a bike ride with his teenage son Finlay, a fellow racing nut.

“Motorsport is changing very, very quickly, just in the same way the world is changing very quickly.

We’ve got to look to the future, here and now.”

“There was a Tesla accelerating up a hill,” Allan recalls to GQ. “He said, ‘Did you hear that dad?’ and I said, ‘Hear what?’ He went, ‘That car accelerated up the hill!’ For him, a car that accelerated without noise was cool. For me it was an old V10 or something in the past, but for him that isn’t cool, that’s just noise. It’s a generational point.”

McNish’s view is proven by the fact that Formula E is seeing an unprecedented influx of money and talent flowing into the series at a time where traditional motorsport is struggling to retain the interest of manufacturers. Audi has been competing in Formula E since its inception, ditching its incredibly successful Le Mans program in the process. Lucas Di Grassi brought the team its first championship in the 2016-17 season.

A host of manufacturers have also begun abandoning the longestablished top-tier championships in motorsport to pool their resources into Formula E. BMW, Jaguar and Nissan have entered

the series over the years, and in a massive credibility boost for the sport, next year will see the debut of both Porsche and current F1 champs Mercedes. “That will be a spectacle everyone will want to watch,” F1 stalwart Nico Rosberg told the Associated Press. “They need to showcase their electric technology in Formula E. None of them can afford to lose.”

With these manufacturers comes a significant amount of money and, as a result, a distinct absence of the politics that often mean ‘privateer’ teams (that rely on sponsorship money rather than a constant flow of cash from a parent manufacturer) in sports like Formula 1 are forced to field cash-rich drivers, however slow they may be. The series is now an entirely new destination for budding talent. Perhaps the sport’s most exciting acquisition has come this year in the form of Nyck De Vries who, despite running away with this year’s F2 championship, somehow couldn’t secure himself a drive in F1 for 2020.

Being involved in Formula E, from a manufacturer point of view, makes a lot of sense. It’s an unrivalled PR move for any company looking to establish itself as a major player as the car industry turns towards sustainability. The evolution of electric vehicles in the last decade means that the relatively short history of Formula E is one of extremely rapid advancement, and the two have developed a symbiotic relationship.

What’s more, the advancements made by teams in the pursuit of Formula E success have begun filtering their way down into said manufacturer’s road cars, from regenerative technology to the development of lighter, more efficient batteries and electric motors.

“Motorsport is changing very, very quickly,” says McNish, “just in the same way the world is changing very quickly. We’ve got to look to the future, here and now.” It’s a philosophy that’s taken hold in the sport and a collective sense of progress has followed. There’s competition, sure, but also a common feeling that all involved are working to build a better world.

Firmly established as the most forward-thinking series in racing, Formula E has evolved into a sport that’s not only winning the minds of the eco-conscious, but the hearts of petrol heads and purist racing fans alike. And going into its sixth season, it only looks to be going from strength to strength. n

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BY THE NUMBERS

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WHEN THE ROAD IS NOT ENOUGH A dive into the luxury ya sees Lexus double down to be anything but b

WORDS NOELLE FAULKN

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ugust 11, 2011, Monterey Car Week, California. A mild 18 degrees and sunny, it was the beginning of a week that would see Arnold Schwarzenegger gawk at a Bugatti ‘Veyron’, Jaguar celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the ‘E-Type’, a 1934 Voisin C-25 Aerodyne win Best of Show at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance and many a photo taken with a guy who had a Hyacinth Macaw on his arm, for some reason.

For many car lovers, it was just another show week. Except for one: Akio Toyoda, the charismatic and forward-thinking greatgrandson of inventor Sakichi Toyoda, considered to be the father of the Japanese industrial revolution; grandson of Kiichiro Toyoda, founder of what would be become the world’s largest automaker and parent company of Lexus, Toyota; and current president of the company. Toyoda is not only essentially Japanese royalty, but a revolutionary, not to mention automotive’s coolest and most-loved CEO. That week, Toyoda was there to reveal the Lexus ‘GS’ sedan, a car he initially didn’t even want. After being challenged by his exec-

FROM BOTTOM LEFT

The sleek interior of the ‘LY 650’; on the waters with Lexus’ newest creation; the ‘LC 500’ coupé.

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utives, “they told me, I was crazy,” he said at the time. Toyoda eventually became a champion of the car – but only after challenging them himself. “The ‘GS’ will be the first car to wear the new face of Lexus,” he said. Alas, the Lexus rebirth origin story was not to start with the new ‘GS’. Because when Toyoda, a racing driver and vintage car collector himself, took a stroll through the rows of magnificent show cars, he noticed Lexus was not part of this field. His brand of grace was desperate for a wake-up call. DING! “No more boring cars!” he famously proclaimed.

“Originally, when I became president and we launched a new Lexus model I was told the vehicle was boring,” he says today. “And that was the turning point for everything with Lexus.” Lexus’ boring bloodline ended in 2016, with the arrival of ‘LC 500’, a bold sports coupé partly inspired by the fabled Lexus ‘LFA’ supercar. “The ‘LC 500’ is what a more emotional Lexus looks like to me,” Toyoda said at its launch in Detroit. “It is anything but boring.” It was a car that was unlike any modern, mass-produced Lexus.

The ‘LC’ was mean and muscular, luxurious and futuristic. It heralded a new design language inspired by the textiles, architecture and culture of Japan that would soon appear in the models that followed.

When we meet Toyoda in sunny Boca Raton, Florida, we’re presented with a new incarnation of the Lexus ‘LC 500’, a convertible that, in looks, rivals many of its British and German competitors – but we’re not here for that. There’s something much bolder Toyoda has to share: the ‘LY 650’, an opulent 65-foot yacht fit for a Bond villain and the first production yacht of its size and lustre made by an automotive manufacturer.

Why? Because for Toyoda, the road is simply not enough.

“In order to make sure this ‘boring’ car could transform into a very, very attractive car brand,” he says, “I thought that doing it only through cars on the road was not sufficient.”

Toyota has had a marine division for over 20 years now but has never attempted anything of this magnitude. Furthermore, he notes, Toyota is transitioning itself from car company to ‘mobility’ company – AKA the biggest buzzword in the automotive world right now.

And with this vision, Toyota aims to provide a 360-degree offering of movement for all. The Japanese philosophy of Kaizen, or perpetual improvement, could not be more apt here.

What does this vision look like? It appears in the development of autonomous people movers, like the Toyota e-Pallette buses that will transport the athletes at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games; in alternate fuel or electrification technology options; in playful ideas, like the Lexus ‘Slide’ hoverboard

other yacht out there, the exterior styling is very unique, the colour scheme is unheard of… it’s a showstopper.” As expected, Lexus insignia is everywhere – from the lack of square corners to a carpeted ‘L’ flawlessly embedded in the wooden floor, metallic badging, architectural cues in the bedrooms that echo the winged shapes that feature in the marque’s flagship ‘LS’ luxury saloon cockpit, coupé-like roofline, superbly detailed leather craftsmanship and bright, open-air feel through innovative use of glass.

Like a grand tourer for the sea, the ‘LY 650’ is engineered for stability, manoeuvrability and grace. It’s powered by twin Volvo Penta IPS 3 engines integrated into handmoulded, carbon fibre-reinforced plastic underwater-hull that hits the sweet spot of rigidity and weightlessness. This means quiet capability meets bold dynamics at high speeds and in variable conditions. It also brags brilliant connectivity, including exceptional navigation tech and smartphone information sharing (it will even send you text messages when an abnormality is sensed), as well as lights, climate and other elements that can be controlled via a phone.

Like the ‘LC’ and the ‘LFA’ before it, the

“Everything is very unique. It has an interior unlike any other yacht out there, the exterior styling is very unique, and the colour scheme is unheard of… it’s a showstopper.” concept; or in robotic and humanoid technology that can help those needing a bit of extra assistance to move around or communicate.

And for those with a truly discerning taste, it translates to the freedom of kicking back on a three-bedroom, $6m (approx.) high-performance flybridge cruiser with Miele appliances, a walk-in-wardrobe, custom Mark Levinson surround-sound system and sumptuously stylish interiors by formidable Italian yacht design firm Nuvolari Lenard.

A joint-partnership with Wisconsinbased luxury marine company Marquis Yachts, which began after the American company debuted a smaller concept for Lexus over two years ago, the ‘LY 650’ is truly something to behold, pushing the boundaries of what is expected in marine design. “Everything is very unique,” says Marquis’ vice president of design, Josh Delforge. “It has an interior unlike any

‘LY 650’ is intended for emotion and experience – albeit a more intimate one. Toyoda himself admits his love of the water is the privacy it allows him. “There is no purely private space for me,” he says with a slight shrug, as his five or so minders that never leave his side nod.

“The yacht could be that purely private space.”

Curiously, this is something that is becoming more of a luxury in an increasingly connected world, particularly for the ‘lifestyle connoisseur’ Lexus has its eyes set on as it moves beyond cars.

“To enhance the value of the Lexus brand we need to cover land, sea and also air,” Toyoda beams with pride at his new toy. Wait.

Air? He smiles and peers through his thickframed glasses. “Well, watch what we do when it comes to that area.” Whatever that means, it certainly won’t be boring. n The Lexus ‘LY 650’ is available for order in Australia now.

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WE INVITE YOU TO JOIN US IN CELEBRATING THE MEN AND WOMEN CHOSEN FOR GQ’S TOP HONOURS. TOGETHER, THESE FIGURES HAVE DEFINED 2019 WITH THEIR ACTIONS, ACHIEVEMENTS, TALENTS, THOUGHTS AND VISION FOR A BETTER FUTURE. S U P P O RT I N G PA RT N E RS

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INTRODUCING THE UNDISPUTED MAN OF 2019.

PHOTOGRAPHY JESSE

LIZOTTE STYLING PETTA CHUA WORDS MIKE CHRISTENSEN

Coat, approx. $1500, by Acne Studios; turtleneck, approx. $690, by Boglioli; scrunchie, POA, by Fendi, worn throughout; ring, Momoa’s own.

Q Man of the Year, motherfuckers!”

Jason Momoa is not a man to hide his emotions. Being awarded GQ’s top honour has excited him.

A lot. “WOOOOOOHOOOOOO,” he roars deafeningly over the phone ahead of our shoot, extending his husky Hawaiian bellow for a good three seconds. “I’m so stoked, aloha brother.”

After a big year, Momoa is proud and in appreciative spirits. Though, break it down and is there really anyone else in the running? In a year he turned 40, Momoa didn’t so much as star in Aquaman – DC comic’s highest-grossing film ever at $1.6bn – as completely turnaround a franchise being ridiculed to the point of what was assumed no return. During a September address at the UN, he didn’t so much champion climate change as rally the human race while simultaneously shaming us for our part in destroying the planet – in a way that would leave even Greta Thunberg impressed. He’s also not only the star of Apple TV+’s new show – in See he puts in a powerful and complex display as Baba Voss – but rather the face of the new TV streaming service helmed by the biggest company on the planet.

All this while being a role-model husband to Lisa Bonet and father to 12-year-old daughter Lola and son Nakoa-Wolf, 10. All

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highlight I want to continue has been the activism I’ve been getting involved with environmentally, to spread awareness about climate change. Then obviously I’ve done some cool artistic pieces, like See, and the film Dune with two of my favourite directors Francis Lawrence and Denis Villeneuve. It’s been unbelievable.

GQ: Without wanting to make you blush, you are a man all men want to be like. Care to offer any tips on how to be more Momoa?

JM: Haha, how can I answer that? The biggest thing for me is I’m searching, and I’m honest with myself. I get really happy and stoked about stuff, I just go for it, and I’m not afraid to say that. Maybe that’s an attractive thing – the guys I love and follow are like that, they’re doers, everyone from a musical friend to someone who’s an outdoorsman. It’s important to be funny too and in touch with your feminine and masculine side. I just feel like it’s OK to be a man, it’s OK to be a sensitive man, it’s OK to be a strong man. That way, slowly you come into it all.

GQ: Is it OK not to have everything sorted out in life?

JM: I mean I just turned 40, so fuck, I’m trying to figure shit out too. I’m trying to be the best dad that I can, at the same time I wasn’t really raised by one myself. I was raised by a strong woman so I’m just trying to figure it all out too. But I think maybe

small town but now you have that support and infrastructure in your own home.

GQ: How is modern masculinity translating in 2019 for you?

JM: Oh god, I’m the worst to ask this shit, dude. I mean it’s just your own personal desires. It’s like, ‘What’s masculine? What’s not masculine?’ I like people that have an openness, who know how to talk to me, and pull the best out of me. That’s masculine.

They’re not afraid to embrace sensitivity, man. I got that from my mother.

GQ: Are men in touch with their sensitive side enough?

JM: Men often brag “I don’t cry, God dang”.

Whereas I’d say don’t cover it up. I’m like, “Goddamn, you’re a boy, you’re a little baby boy.” I didn’t have my mum going, “Toughen up,” so I don’t know another way but I’ve learnt with any issue, you need to get to the root of it. We’re all sensitive but tend to cover things up with humour and anger where if someone offends you, it’s like “fuck you,” and you want to fight.

GQ: Hemsworth, The Rock, you – has there ever been a cooler time to be a dad?

JM: I always thought being a dad was cool!

But I mean I always wanted to be a dad – that was my thing. Chris, The Rock, all those guys are awesome. But I look up to my uncles. They were idols to me. My cousins are so lucky – I was a little envious of not

“I was a little envious of not having a dad around so I always wanted to be one myself.” this while launching his own Mananalu water to tackle single-use plastics, while unveiling So iLL outdoor sportswear, so activities like climbing become even more appealing. All this while founding his own production company, On the Roam, in his words, to “make some cool shit”.

Like we said, it’s been a big year. And we haven’t even mentioned Momoa’s work to shift perceptions around two pressing issues for men in today’s society – body shaming and injecting more pink into your style game, be it sunnies, suits or sleeveless shirts.

On a rare day of rest, we snagged some quality time with the most in-demand man in our universe – not to mention all other parallel ones – and this is how he chose to spend it.

From the top.

GQ: So, Jason – talk us through your 2019.

Jason Momoa: It’s been awesome, man.

I had a couple of great things as an actor but also my own stuff. A really cool personal 1 24

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that’s why I have a lot of good guy friends, because I’m open and I’m always asking questions when we get together to talk about stuff. And I need that. I didn’t have a dad around so when you look up to someone, if they have something good going on, you can learn from that, and accept it, bring it into your own fold and pass it on.

GQ: How much have times changed since you were growing up?

JM: I just thought about this now to be honest, but we never really had the ability to look into everybody’s lives but with social media, things have changed. I don’t put out my most personal things but I do post things that are interesting. How I hold myself is always going to come out and I do feel like now, in this day and age, you want to have certain people you look up to and follow, and go, “What a great guy, he’s a fucking good dude”. That’s the cool thing about social media – you can live in a small place and

having a dad around so I always wanted to be one myself. My stunt double, Kim Fardy is an Aussie, he’s a big time surfer, so is his younger brother and his older brother has served in the armed forces, so there’s these three boys, and the dad and mum are so cool; I look up to them. There’s so many buddies I met down in Australia where their pops are just fucking rad, man.

GQ: Aquaman turned out to be a huge success earlier in the year, which must have been a confidence boost considering the character is basically you.

JM: Yeah, he was, but that was really challenging, to let people in, just have fun and do your thing, because normally you’re playing another character. I had lunch with a buddy right before I was starting the whole thing, and he was like, “You got to put yourself in there, Jay, you got to just make it fun. Do one for them and then do one for you.” And you know, on the cutting room floor, the ones I

Coat, $6354, by Sies Marjan; shirt, $265, by King and Tuckfield at Matches Fashion; pants, $1550,

by Giorgio Armani; boots, $1570, by Saint Laurent; glasses, $630, by Dior Men.

got to do like one take, they ended up using.

So it was cool to put a little life into that and thank god people liked it.

GQ: After 20 years of hard work, you’re now considered a bankable actor. How does hearing that sit with you?

JM: I’ve never even heard that – I think you just made that up! [Laughs] That’s happened after Aquaman did well. But look at it – I only did Conan the Barbarian because I knew I had Game of Thrones in my back pocket, and that thing didn’t do well. Then pretty much every other movie after that didn’t do well. I did Bullet to the Head with Sylvester Stallone and that thing ate shit.

I haven’t done anything until... Aquaman so I’m not the one that’s bankable.

GQ: You’re reaping the rewards, now though. How does that feel?

JM: It’s a massive ever-evolving circle, man.

I’m going to be up right now and it’s phenomenal and an honour to be accepted this way. And then shit will hit the fan and it’s just a roller-coaster. It’ll all go down again.

I’m just the hot dude this second, then I’ll go back to trying to make small little movies that matter to me. But money’s not what I’m going for, it’s movies that I care about. That said, when Zack Snyder sent me Aquaman and told me we’re going to take this lame character that everyone made fun of, I was like, “Well fuck yeah dude, I’ll make Aquaman

JM: I mean, I don’t want to speak on behalf of Steven Knight and his team but what turned me on so much about this is when I read this script, I stopped after page three and freaked out because I could see the set, I could smell the area, I could smell the cave. The way it was written, it brought me in so quickly and it was so sensory-heightened. [Our characters] couldn’t see, yet the script was so visual. You could feel that it was just going to be shot different because you didn’t have sight. And so each shot you had this sensory overload. Then we get into the fighting and how intimate it has to be, you could feel energies and you could echolocate and tell when something’s close to you or not. The whole thing was pretty impressive.

GQ: In the series, books are described as ‘sacred silence, and yet they speak directly to the imagination. You can burn them, but they’re more powerful than fire’. Apart from your scripts, do you get to read much?

JM: I wish I got to read more, man. I’ve been trying to read The Odyssey. I travel around with it but can’t finish the thing. But between extra footage on See, directing my next movie, producing and starring in another, if I’m reading anything it’s the scripts that we’re writing or I’m reading with my babies.

GQ: I was going to say, children’s books, what’s your go-to?

son has a purpose... Baba Voss, his character’s obviously the chieftain. He came in there and set that whole mould and then taught a bunch of those people. But everyone has their own rightful place, and it has to work as one, nothing can be spared and no one can be lazy.

GQ: Nature’s impressive surroundings are really celebrated in the show, though given all the characters are blind, is this a subliminal message that humanity isn’t appreciating the world we live in?

JM: Yeah, absolutely. That really struck me too, going back to two million people left on the earth, 600 years later the world’s going to heal itself and flourish without us around. And by eliminating one sense, you have to heighten all the other senses to become this ultimate warrior living truly within nature, which is something we’ve lost. We’re also dropped down the food chain where bears are way above us, and they can take us out.

GQ: In your speech to the United Nations about climate change, you said “This is for all of us”. You’re not Aquaman for no reason, you obviously have a real affinity with the oceans and the planet.

JM: That was probably the most nervous thing I’ve ever done in my life, because no one is hiring me to give speeches. So to be honoured to speak on behalf of Island nations, give my perspective but also bring

“The oceans need a voice... for all the kids and brown skin kids, to grow up with brown-skin superheroes is cool.” cool”. I thought it was awesome that it should be an Islander doing this as there’s so many things to speak about. The oceans need a voice, and being able to make a movie about that, for all the kids and brown skin kids, to grow up with brown-skin superheroes is cool.

I didn’t have that as a kid, so to be able to honour other islands and kids like that is cool.

GQ: Let’s talk about See, your most recent show for Apple TV+.

JM: Yeah, I’m stoked to support something that I love so much. I’ve never had an opportunity to play a role quite like this. To have that kind of creative freedom like with that whole fight scene in episode three, I went to Francis [Lawrence] and pitched that when we first started. That’s like 20 years of my career that I haven’t been able to pull off stuff like that so to be fully supported by Francis and by Apple is incredible.

GQ: Would you say there are parallels between See’s dystopian world and ours?

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JM: My daughter is so smart, she’s 12 and has read every Harry Potter. It’s absolutely gorgeous. We don’t have TV so they read a lot. The imagination is a beautiful thing and I’m trying to support that.

GQ: It would be remiss of us not to mention the young Aussie talent Mojean Aria who stars in See. JM: I love him. He’s turned into one of my top, top buddies. The world’s going to see how fucking talented that kid is. We have a great scene in episode two and it was so much fun because he just fuels that whole fucking scene. He’s going to be a force, man.

GQ: What can society learn from a more tribal mentality?

JM: I mean, it was interesting when you look at all the tribes that we have... what every person offers to that whole moving organism is beautiful. It’s a throwback to 5000BC with a bunch of leftovers from what was our past. I just feel like every per-

up a lot of stuff that isn’t happening, it was extremely surreal, and I’m extremely honoured to continue on doing it.

GQ: Being from Hawaii, is it something you’ve always been passionate about?

JM: I don’t want to say I’m a perfect voice but I grew up wanting to be a marine biologist. Being raised a Hawaiian, for you guys it’s like growing up in Byron, but then your dad lives in Alice Springs or Coober Pedy.

What goes on in these two places is completely different and neither one of those people are caring about the other, and what they’re going through. So I really think of the islands as the frontline for all of us and we’re trying to do our best to save the planet as it will save all of us. The single-use plastic shit has to stop and I’m trying to do everything I can to bring awareness because I love our nature and I love earth but God damn it we’re killing it. n See is now showing on Apple TV+

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THE SYDNEY VISUAL ARTIST HAS BECOME ONE OF AUSTRALIA’S PRE-EMINENT SATIRISTS, USING HIS WORK TO DEFINE THE EVENTS THAT HAVE SHAPED THE COUNTRY – FOR BETTER AND WORSE. WORDS

DAVID SMIEDT

riting about art, as the saying goes, is like dancing about architecture. Words, for all their wonder, lack the visual and the visceral of the image and few craft both better than Scott Marsh.

His galleries are streets, his canvases are walls and his targets are infamous. Following broadcaster Alan Jones’ comment earlier this year that Prime Minister Scott Morrisson should “shove a sock down her throat” – the ‘her’, of course, being New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern – Marsh unleashed a mural showing Jones in his trademark florid pink blazer along with a not-so-trademark leather face harness topped off by a ball gag. It was titled ‘Beats a Sock’.

The radio host is by no means alone in drawing Marsh’s attention. When Israel Folau launched a GoFundMe campaign to pay his legal fees after being dismissed by Rugby Australia for a homophobic slur – you’ll recall the gays were going to hell – Marsh pictured him camped beside a yellow Lamborghini soliciting donations along with the pleading cardboard sign favoured by so many of those who’ve fallen on hard times. Only in this case, it featured a faux biblical quote: “The righteous shall taketh from the punters for the divinity of ones property portfolio is most sacred in the eyes of the lord. Amen!”

The artist’s point about the proselytising footballer was as immediate as it was barbed, but look a little bit closer and Marsh rewards viewers with an eye for satire. Beside Folau’s Gucci slides was an Eftpos machine for those larger donations.

Marsh’s path to profile was as much about aerosol as art school. By 12, he was tagging streets in his Sydney neighbourhood and spent his teens turning train carriages into moving portfolios.

He supplemented these skills with a fine arts degree majoring in painting at the University of New South Wales College of Fine Arts and emerged in 2009 with an idiosyncratic hybrid at his fingertips. Traditional techniques in oils and acrylics are layered upon spray-canned surfaces resulting in both depth and detail.

His seven-metre-tall mural of Kanye West passionately embracing the love of his life – Kanye West – didn’t so much go viral as turn into a global pandemic. But the clarity of focus and gargantuan depiction of West’s ego was followed by some mischievous smoke and mirrors.

“I was contacted by someone claiming to be his management offering me a five-figure sum to paint over the mural,” says Marsh. “I asked for six figures and a lifetime supply of Yeezy Boosts. They are yet to respond.”

The mural did, however, disappear tout suite after which Marsh declared on Insta he could be found drinking at his local from the top shelf. Clearly, Marsh relishes his role as provocateur and media manipulator in equal measure.

Right now, the Australian political landscape is proving a goldmine. “There are no boundaries for political satire right now,” says the artist who has trained his lens on Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison (with the words, ‘Engadine Maccas’), Gladys Berejiklian and Clive Palmer among others.

Asked whether he leans towards more conservative subjects, Marsh says, “Not really, I just play it by ear. All these things kind of come around quite quickly. They are not really very planned, something will happen and then I can react to it straight away. With the murals it’s often something or someone I think needs to have the piss taken out of them.”

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Scott Marsh in his studio tending to some less controversial pieces.

He also embraces social media as a counterpoint to the often brief shelf life of street art. “They take on a whole life of their own online and it’s where a lot of them get spread around.

Ironically when people destroy my work because they don’t agree with it [his mural of George Michael as a saint was defaced by someone who claimed it “conflicted with his beliefs”], it usually amplifies its message and its reach lives on.”

Inspired by creators as diverse as 19th century French political artist Honoré Daumier and previous GQ Artist of the Year Ken Done, Marsh says of the latter, “I find it inspiring that he proved you can subvert the traditional gallery system and you don’t have to be on your knees begging for a show.”

Marsh describes himself as having competing personas – the vandal and the artist – constantly vying for his attention. That said, the heavily coded world of tagging has evolved into something more democratic.

As prolific as Marsh is, only a fraction of his ideas ever meet brickwork. He needs the trinity of an available wall, a free chunk in his schedule (the Jones mural took two and a half days) and, most crucially, inspiration. It’s the last of these that proves surprisingly collaborative with Marsh frequently taking requests for subjects from his almost 40k Insta followers.

Which is the equivalent of someone sliding into Leonardo’s DMs to say they know this woman with an interesting smile.

“I listen to them for sure,” he says, “especially, if it’s something I haven’t heard about. I’ll have a look at the issue and research it a bit. If I get some inspiration off something that pops into my mind, sometimes I paint it and sometimes I don’t.”

Another way Marsh engages with his audience is by inviting them to physically interact with certain works. His image of Fraser Anning, for example, featured as part of an Easter campaign where punters were encouraged to lob eggs at the politician’s rendered head.

But it’s not all sprayed snark, there is also wonder and grace on show. This is no one-trick thoroughbred. His works of native flowers – complete with hidden images of his previous trade tools: bolt cutters and spray cans – are simply beautiful bouquets. A reminder of our own spectacular fauna in traditional still-life form.

Similarly, his image of a milk crate was an eloquent tribute to those who subdued a knife-wielding man in Sydney’s CBD in August with nothing more than these dairy accessories before he could hurt more people. A statement of gratitude, no more, no less.

But for the overwhelming balance of subjects, there is always a glimmer of the comic to Marsh’s palette. “Humour is the most important tool I have,” he says. “Painting outside, you maybe have a few split seconds to get someone’s attention as they are walking to get the train or reading the news. Sometimes they’ll laugh because they agree with what you say.

Sometimes, they’ll have no idea what you’re actually painting about, but they’ll stop and think about it because they’re laughing. I guess for me it just cuts through all the bullshit.”

Marsh’s wit and whimsy, incisiveness and street-hewn elegance calls to mind another artist. More globally known and yet anonymous. Which begs the long shot yet inevitable question: is he secretly Banksy?

“No,” he says, bluntly. “I’m not.”

It was worth a crack. Paint on Scott, paint on. n

Israel Folau’s sacking by Rugby Australia caused a nationwide debate about religious freedom. Marsh was happier to focus on Folau’s greed and hypocrisy.

A masked Scott Marsh stands next to his mural depicting a gagged Alan Jones, following the controversial radio host’s comments on New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern.

Former NSW premier Mike Baird is targeted by Marsh for his role in introducing Sydney’s heavily criticised lockout laws in 2014 that, crucially, did not include casinos.

Abbott weds Abbott in Marsh’s pro-marriage equality mural.

Controverises collide in this mural of Cardinal Pell tampering with a cricket ball.

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ON THE EVE OF HIS BRAND’S 35TH ANNIVERSARY, YOU’D HALF EXPECT TO FIND TOMMY HILFIGER PAUSING TO SMELL THE ROSES. NOT SO. AS THE AMERICAN LEGEND REMINDS US, YOU DON’T BUILD ONE OF THE WORLD’S BIGGEST FASHION EMPIRES TO CALL IT QUITS ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU’RE AHEAD. WORDS AMY

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here are plenty of brands we associate with American style – Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and Michael Kors among them. But few fashion designers personify the American Dream quite like Tommy Hilfiger. His first company went bankrupt. His first financial backer did, too. Yet more than three decades on, his brand is still here, still growing – to the tune of $12bn in sales last year – still innovating, and is arguably cooler than ever before.

Thanks to clever partnerships with supermodel Gigi Hadid, actress Zendaya and F1 superstar Lewis Hamilton, Tommy Hilfiger has captured the imagination of millennials and Gen Z, just like it did Gen X before them. But although Hilfiger – the man – delights in seeing multiple generations wearing his brand’s iconic flag, he also knows that to slow down is to get left behind.

GQ: You cast Aaliyah in a ’96 TOMMY JEANS campaign before any designer was working with musicians. Now it’s everywhere.

Did you know something other brands didn’t?

Tommy Hilfiger: I thought a lot of advertising was really boring when I started out, because it all looked alike. So I thought, how can I change it up a bit? I love music, so I wanted to feature musicians. We reached out to people like Usher, Britney Spears, Lenny Kravitz and Aaliyah. It really was the beginning of celebrity marketing, but I think it worked because it was authentic.

Music was in my DNA before I launched the Tommy flag.

CAMPBELL PHOTOGRAPHY MAX PAPENDIECK

GQ: Celebrity is still such a huge part of the brand, but social media has surely shifted that dynamic. How have you adapted?

TH: We decided to not just do celebrity models, but to involve celebrities in co-designing with me. For example, Lewis [Hamilton] and

I became friends before we began collaborating, but I just noticed he was dressing really cool and so I said, ‘We should do something together. Come into my studio, I’ll show you how and my team will execute your ideas.’

GQ: A number of designers have tried and abandoned the ‘see-now, buy-now’ runway show model, but you’ve stuck with it. Why?

TH: I think young people see something on the runway and they want to wear it immediately. I understood the idea of immediate gratification, and I understood that our younger fans wanted to follow someone with a sense of style that resonates.

GQ: Tommy Hilfiger is a preppy brand, at heart. Where do you see preppiness sitting in the current fashion context?

TH: Well, if you go into a restaurant and look at the menu, preppiness might be the meat and potatoes. And runway fashion might be the dessert.

And street fashion is now becoming the, let’s call it… the burger and fries.

GQ: So preppy is still your staple?

TH: Without a doubt. I use it as the backbone of the business. And I surround it with other things at different times.

GQ: You’re still very involved in the day-to-day of the business. Why is this so important to you?

TH: I love it. But I think it’s like having a child – you want the best for it, you want to nurture it and help it grow, really educate it. For me, keeping the brand fresh and relevant is the most important thing. If you lose relevance, you lose everything.

GQ: How do you keep the drive alive?

TH: I surround myself with young people; I keep up to date with what’s going on in the world. I want to know who’s who and why they are who they are.

Because I think if you go blind to this, then you leave opportunity on the table.

GQ: In addition to the successes, Tommy Hilfiger has had to overcome a few hurdles. Did you ever think about throwing in the towel?

TH: You know, I might have had that feeling once. But never twice. n M E N O F T H E Y E A R 2 019 G Q.CO M . AU

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CHRIS PANG HE’S PROOF THAT OVERNIGHT SUCCESS IS OFTEN YEARS IN THE MAKING. BUT AFTER A BREAKOUT PERFORMANCE IN CRAZY RICH ASIANS AND A STARRING ROLE IN THE NEW CHARLIE’S ANGELS, CHRIS PANG IS PROVING HIMSELF ONE OF AUSTRALIA’S MOST EXCITING ACTING TALENTS.

PHOTOGRAPHY JESSE LIZOTTE

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f you lived in the Melbourne suburbs during the early to mid 2000s, there’s a chance you shut the door on Chris Pang. Back then, the star of Crazy Rich Asians was a university dropout focusing on a side hustle. Namely, selling Android phones door to door. The end goal was a new set of wheels, a 2002 Toyota ‘Celica’ as it turned out.

Things are moving somewhat faster for the 34-year-old these days.

For a start, his daily drive around his adopted city of LA is pure American muscle, in the form of a Mustang, and he has places to be.

The 2015 Fast & Furious spoof Superfast! – where he is credited merely as ‘cool Asian guy’ – is barely a blip in his rear-view mirror.

Aside from the aforementioned hit and the Charlie’s franchise reboot, he co-wrote the 2018 short film Kami Kasih and is both producing and starring in the upcoming release Empty by Design. Not to mention the sports flick Underdogs Rising and anime voice work on titles such as Naruto: Kakashi v Obito.

He is clearly a man in demand in Hollywood. Which, as we’ve seen so often, can in itself be a recipe for hubris and entitlement. Yet GQ’s chat with Pang starts with an apology for having to reschedule interview times around his shooting schedule.

Despite six years in Cali, his accent is still so Melbourne it could be talking shit about Collingwood Football Club between singleorigin macchiatos in Brunswick. Meanwhile his backstory has biopic written all over it.

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“I’M THRILLED THAT I GET THE OPPORTUNITY TO REPRESENT ASIANS IN A WAY THAT I NEVER FELT REPRESENTED WHEN I WAS A KID.”

“I GOT TO FILM A SCENE WITH PATRICK STEWART. IT WAS LIKE HAVING AN OUT-OF-BODY EXPERIENCE.”

Due to his maternal grandfather’s telecom networks skills – beyond “can I interest you in an Android handset” – his was the first Taiwanese family to migrate to Australia in the racially enlightened ’70s. His parents Anne and Barry then went on to open a thriving martial arts centre in Melbourne with Bazza proudly bearing the legend ‘the man who introduced Kung Fu to Australia’. And just quietly, his father’s grandfather was also grandad to a bloke named Bruce Lee. You may have heard of him.

Not that a young Pang knew this when the martial arts supremo offered one of the few on-screen Asian role models going. “As an adult you know that someone likening you to Bruce Lee approaches stereotyping but as an Asian kid I thought he was the best Super Asian that ever lived. So when my white friend in year two said, ‘I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this but you look like Bruce Lee’, it was the biggest compliment. I told my parents this when I got home and they just casually dropped the news that we were related.”

Thanks to international productions like Crazy Rich Asians, Netflix’s Always Be My Maybe, the sitcom Fresh Off The Boat, the ever-expanding behemoth that is Asian cinema plus local projects like The Family Law, Pang says there are now opportunities for both diverse representation and pay cheques that simply didn’t exist even half a decade ago.

“One of the biggest reasons I left Australia to come here was that the work didn’t exist back home,” he says. “That landscape has absolutely changed. I feel that being even a small part of that change is important because growing up in white society I – and many others – always felt a little bit out of place, a little bit like I didn’t belong. When you’re a kid trying to find your identity and every image you see around you, every ad, every show, there’s no one in that it looks like you, then it’s very difficult to feel accepted. I definitely grew up with On the subject of increased representation, the Charlie’s Angels project carries some complexes and image issues as a result and I’m a strong message of female empowerment. “When the last one came out in thrilled that I get the opportunity to represent 2000, I didn’t quite understand the feminism that underpinned it. It was just a Asians in a way that I never felt represented when I fun movie and there was the bonus of seeing an Asian on-screen in Lucy Liu. was a kid. I want to keep creating content to keep The 2019 version definitely has that DNA in it.” One need only look to the fact that conversation going and make sure it’s not just that the handler the protagonists work for is, for the first time, a woman, played the temporary push, that it becomes an actual

by Elizabeth Banks. She also wrote and directed it. change in the way we’re doing things.”

The film also gave Pang one of his best on-set moments to date – which proves he’s by no means blasé about where his finds himself right now. “I got to film a scene with Patrick Stewart,” he says. “Sir Patrick Stewart. It was like having an out-of-body experience until he put his hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eye after the director yelled ‘cut’ and said, ‘You nailed it’. Professor X and Captain Picard told me I nailed it.”

Despite hankering for “the beauty of Melbourne’s CBD” and hinting not too subtly that the only thing that keeps him in LA is the work, Pang admits that he also finds the FOMO of Hollywood exhausting. “There’s always an event going on where you feel you should be because it may lead to the next opportunity,” he says. “Which for an introvert like me is kind of a tough call. Because at the end of the day – especially a shooting day – I really just want to be at home playing Apex Legends on the Xbox by myself.”

Hollywood is, however, a town built on schmooze, and Pang – who finds inspiration in the work of Tom Hardy – looks back on his phone-flogging days as invaluable.

“I was quiet and very shy as a kid. I was the guy that sat around with a close group of friends and ate lunch in the same place every single day. I was in my shell, but selling phones really pulled me out of it. Every day I was suddenly having to force myself to go into places that obviously don’t want you there. There is nothing worse than being approached by a dude in a suit with a clipboard.”

Maybe. But these days, the doors just keep opening. n M E N O F T H E Y E A R 2 01 9 G Q.CO M . AU

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OVER THE DECADE, THIS BASED DESIGN BUILT NOT JU IMPOSSIBLY FASHION FAM ONE OF THE C MOST COVETED ON THE PLA WORDS AMY CAM STYLING PETTA PHOTOGRAPHY DUNCA

THE FASHION WORLD has no shortage of personalities who’re filled with self importance, which is why it’s even more shocking that Lyna Ty and Melvin Tanaya – the duo behind Sydney-based label Song for the Mute – don’t have more of an ego. Though we’d forgive them if they did. The pair won the National Designer Award despite being (technically) too young to enter, they’re stocked at the world’s coolest retailers (Dover Street Market, Opening Ceremony) and they refer to fashion luminary and VP of Condé Nast Asia Pacific Nancy Pilcher as their ‘godmother’, after all. But gloating wouldn’t be in-step with Song for the Mute’s ethos or aesthetic, which might be described as elevated textile-driven streetwear with a gothic edge. “Baby steps,” says Ty of the brand’s evolution. “We’re firm believers that everything happens for a reason,” echoes Tanaya.

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First-generation Australians (Tanaya was born in Indonesia, Ty in Paris of Cambodian descent), the pair met on their first day of primary school in Sydney’s north. They were 10 years old and spoke no English; the alphabetical nature of roll call brought them together.

Remaining friends throughout high school and university – Ty studied fashion, Tanaya graphic design – they first collaborated on a printed T-shirt. But it wasn’t until a Brisbane boutique placed a $10,000 order that Ty and Tanaya realised this was a “serious thing”.

“We didn’t have fabrics, we didn’t have manufacturers – Lyna made the samples in her laundry,” laughs Tanaya. “We literally started from Yellow Pages, we found whatever manufacturers we could and called them up.” Song for the Mute still works with these same manufacturers; all of their clothes are Australian-made. (This is such a rarity

FT

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muel, wn), Ty and tting), cis, oger Louie.

MUTE

today that we had to double-check we’d heard them correctly). “We call our manufacturers ‘auntie’ and ‘uncle’. We get invited to their barbeques, their kids’ weddings,” says Ty. “They’re like family to us.”

Family is a recurring theme of our conversation – Tanaya and Ty also use the term when referring to their buyers and fabric suppliers, the latter who they visit twice a year in Italy and Japan. But the brand’s most immediate family is its small but growing team of nine, who seem to approach working at Song for the Mute as if it’s a lifestyle rather than a job. Dressed in head-to-toe black with the odd flash of a silver chain or earring, they’re the most tastefully dressed team in fashion. “The two of us are just part of the puzzle,” says Tanaya. “I really think the brand has evolved into something more than clothing. Which is the core concept – speaking out for people who might not have the chance to.”

This year marked the start of a new chapter for Song for the Mute – they did a subtle rebrand and presented their “riskiest” collection yet to buyers in Paris. Titled ‘Le Bled’ – very loose French slang for ‘your roots’ – it all but sold through. There are also major collaborations on the horizon, including an exclusive women’s collection for London’s Selfridges, and a capsule produced in partnership with German DJ (and long time fan of the brand) Sven Väth.

“We say that we do things at our own pace, but for someone looking in it’s like, ‘How do you have the time to do so much?!’” laughs Tanaya. The design duo could lament just how busy and in-demand they are – aside from the men’s and women’s collections, their creative and collaborative output extends to scented oils, bags and interior installations. But like we said, that’s not their style. n M E N O F T H E Y E A R 2 01 9 G Q.CO M . AU

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WORKING QUIETLY OUT OF VICTORIA’S YARRA VALLEY, CHEF MATT STONE IS EMERGING AS AUSTRALIA’S LEADING VOICE FOR SUSTAINABLE COOKING. PHOTOGRAPHY GAVIN

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winery isn’t always a place you’d typically associate with sustainability. However picturesque they may be, however idyllic the settings, they’re often seen as venues in which nature’s bounty is consumed more indulgently than ethically. Australia’s wineries are routinely host to scores of cars and buses, packed with people who are frankly looking to eat and drink as much as humanly possible.

Within the excess, however, lies opportunity. Once the tourists depart, you’re left with an area replete with natural resources and a permanent population of artisanally minded people.

It’s within this environment that chef Matt Stone has flourished, and he’s steadily working to change Australia’s relationship with food for the better. Though, the end product Stone has become so renowned for couldn’t be further from his beginnings.

“I started cooking when I was 13 at Hungry Jack’s in Perth,” he says. “I remember asking questions like, ‘Where’s the food from, and why’re we using it?’ and there were never any answers.”

The concept of sustainability is one that’s taken on increasing prominence within the dining industry on almost every level. It doesn’t matter if you’re opening a burger joint or gunning for a Michelin Star – it’s no longer acceptable to rest on the laurels of making delicious food if you can’t tell people it arrived on the plate in an eco-friendly manner.

But the definition of eco-friendly dining has become increasingly muddied, and ‘free-range,’ ‘grass-fed’ and ‘organic’ labels don’t necessarily cut the mustard anymore. Realising this early on in his career while working out of restaurants like Perth’s Star Anise and Greenhouse, Stone picked an entirely unique front in the food industry’s attempt to get on a more sustainable path.

“The biggest thing I saw was the waste that comes with cooking,” he says. “I was guilty of it for a while. At the end of service at Greenhouse I’d look down and find a bin full of plastic bags from using the sous vide. What’s the point of using small suppliers if you’re pumping a bunch of plastic waste back into your ingredients?”

In 2015, Stone landed at Oakridge Wines, where alongside his partner Jo Barrett, he immediately set about using the surrounding Yarra Valley’s natural resources to create a menu that championed smaller-scale food production. Today, the restaurant serves everything from smoked quail and Angus beef rump, to saltbrush farfalle and kangaroo loin.

Stone is fighting to change the way Australians think about sourcing their food. This is reflected most in the supermarket, where he says the everyday shopper can make the biggest impact by eating seasonally. But an elephant remains in the dining room of the restaurant industry.

“There needs to be a broader conversation than just the ingredient,” says Stone. “A lot of people make a big deal of the ingredients they’re using while they’re using plastic bags to store or cook things. The art of cookery is being lost in a lot of modern methods of cooking.

“We started looking backwards at primitive cooking techniques, at cultures with deep culinary histories, and even the way our grandparents cooked.”

It’s an ethos that’s caught on and set Stone apart in the already forward-thinking wine hub.

Oakridge was awarded its first Chef’s Hat last year, serving dishes mostly made from ingredients grown on the estate or foraged from its surrounding area. “Sustainably sourcing ingredients is one thing,” says Stone, “the next step is thinking about how you’re storing it, how it’s getting to you, and the way that’s being generated around it.”

Oakridge is never going to be a gastronomic marvel in the realm of an Attica, but that’s not the point. Instead the man behind it is, much like his ingredients, cultivating and championing an approach that could go a long way towards changing the way food reaches your plate for the better. It’s about thinking not just about the future of food, but the future of the planet, too. n

“We started looking at primitive cooking techniques, at cultures with deep culinary histories, and even the way our grandparents cooked.”

Jacket, $699, by MJ Bale; shirt, $229, and tie, $149, both by Calibre; pants, $299, sold as part of a suit,

by Politix; shoes, Stone’s own.

Styling Thalea Michos Vellis.

Grooming Lily Swan.

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t’s tough to choose a highlight when your entire year has been full of them. But in between her movie making more than a billion dollars, launching her own fashion collection, being named the face of one of the world’s largest cosmetics brands and starring in what might just be 2019’s most talked about TV show, Zendaya’s defining moment actually arrived somewhat unexpectedly in May. It wasn’t on screen, either, but in New York, at the city’s famed Met Gala. She arrived in a silver gown and was joined on the pink carpet by her longtime stylist Law Roach, with whom she’s worked since she was 14 years old. As she stepped in front of the cameras, Roach waved a magic wand and the dress lit up – literally – in a shade of luminous, princess blue.

“The cool part about that was that the dress was basically a robot, so I had people with remote controls in the crowd,” she says. “It was fun, especially because you never really know if it was going to work, to be honest.”

Luckily it did. Zendaya’s look was the talk of the event, which was no mean feat when you consider Lady Gaga had four costume changes and Katy Perry came dressed as a chandelier. But the look was about more than just putting on a show.

Zendaya has been in the public eye for most of her life. She was a child star, who at 16 was already famous enough to become the youngest contestant to appear on the US version of Dancing With The Stars (she came second). Still, perhaps the greatest accomplishment of her career was that she managed to keep her shit together.

The same can’t be said for many of her Disney peers.

“I feel like everybody has their own career and their own path and I don’t think anybody should be too judged for their choices,” she says, carefully. “I have a wonderful family and supportive people around me who make me feel very safe and secure. I’m very lucky to have that. But my number-one goal is to just take my time and go slow, and pick projects that are special to me.

“I’m lucky enough to be in a position where I don’t have to say yes to things. I get to choose what makes me happy and what I really want to do. So I just try to be patient with myself and follow my intuition as much as I can.”

This intuition led her to become one of the most bankable stars on the planet. She’s starred in blockbusters such as The Greatest Showman, as well as Spider-Man: Homecoming and its sequel SpiderMan: Far From Home, which earned $1.3bn at the box office in July.

She has also designed her own clothing range with Tommy Hilfiger and was named the face of Lancôme – one of the youngest in the brand’s history. None of this, though, was as prescient as that dress.

“The idea was kind of like a sweet goodbye to my Disney days and so we did this very camp situation, where I was Cinderella,” she says. “Anything could go wrong, and when I was done and it did all the stuff it was supposed to do, it was so hot! The batteries and the metal inside was so hot I was like, ‘I need to take this off! It’s dangerous!’”

Luckily, Zendaya did not become a fashion victim at the industry’s biggest night. While she has earned a reputation for taking risks on the red carpet, this was an entirely different statement. The Met Gala dress announced a new phase of Zendaya’s life and career. And a month after the Gala, Zendaya would make headlines again, this time as the star of an HBO show called Euphoria.

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“I read the script faster than I think I’ve ever read anything in my life,” she says. “Reading is tough for me because my mind just zones out and if it’s not amazing, I’ll be thinking about a million other things and retaining nothing. But this was one of the first times I’ve read a script and just been so incredibly captivated from literally the first moment. I just knew I needed to be a part of it.”

Filmed in LA, Zendaya plays 17-year-old recovering drug addict Rue in what not only casts off any doubt that she has moved far beyond her Disney days, but has been her standout role. Variety described her performance as “breathtaking,” Vanity Fair said she “holds the entire production together”. Australian Jacob Elordi, who co-stars as the troubled jock Nate, called her, “the captain of the ship” on set. It is a gritty, revealing and diverse look at teen life in America and while the entire cast is undoubtedly talented, Zendaya is a revelation.

“It has been a long time coming,” she says. “I’ve been working in the industry for a while but never really had the chance to do something that stretched me and challenged me. I felt a little bit stagnant and I wanted to push myself. I wanted to see if I could do it. I felt like I could, but I’ve never actually done it. So it was an opportunity for me to finally stretch and be creative and be more fearless.”

Despite how busy this year has been for Zendaya – for the record, she insists it’s actually been “pretty chill” – 2020 will be even bigger.

She is set to appear in the sci-fi epic Dune, alongside Timothée Chalamet and Jason Momoa, and has a further two films in the pipeline. She is also due to star in the next season of Euphoria, which was renewed for a second season just a month after it first premiered.

“Yeah,” she says, laughing. “Next year is going to be nuts.”

Though you get the feeling she’s not alone. Next year, the world stares down the barrel of the 2020 presidential election during what is perhaps the most contentious political climate in recent memory. Zendaya, who has more than 63 million followers on Instagram alone, has not been shy in using her platform to talk about issues such as Black Lives Matter or to encourage her fans to get out and vote.

“I definitely try to be as vocal as I can, especially when it comes to election time,” she says. “It’s important for my younger fans to see that I’m engaged and trying to get the facts and learn and I hope that inspires them to do the same and make informed decisions and use their voice when they can. It’s just so important right now.”

As for how she feels things will go, she’s hopeful – but uncertain.

“I don’t really know,” she says. “You see a tweet or something and you feel very down and helpless and then some days I see my peers getting to work and moving the culture forward and then I feel very proud and inspired and I think maybe everything will be OK. “It’s a back and forth thing and I think a lot of people my age feel that,” she adds. “But I definitely think it’s important that we do not give into that fear and that we continue to push forward because we have the ability to completely change and shift where we are right now. But we’ll see.”

The future might be under a cloud right now, but what is certain is that Zendaya – not the former Disney princess, but the real, fully fledged woman and activist and artist – has finally arrived. And it’s safe to say she’s not going anywhere. n

“I definitely try to be as vocal as I can, especially when it comes to election time.”

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Blazer by Tommy x Zendaya; ring on right hand, by Chaumet; rings on left hand, by Chaumet,

by Aurélie Bidermann, and

by Gucci; shoes, Zendaya’s own. All items POA.

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OPPOSITE Shirt, $69.95, by Zara; singlet, $23.95, by Bonds; pants, $120,

by Van Heusen; chains (top), $178, and, $65, both by Hardy Brothers; ‘Tank Solo’ watch, $5450, by Cartier; bracelet (left wrist), $1650, by Tiffany & Co.; bracelets (right wrist, from top), $875, by Hermès; $1320, by Four Winds Gallery; $250, by Brock Bangles; ring, $150, by Stash Jewellery; and signet ring, $1699, by Hardy Brothers; all worn throughout.

THIS PAGE ‘Tank Solo’ watch, $5450,

by Cartier; bracelet, $1650,

by Tiffany & Co.; ring, $150,

by Stash Jewellery; and pinky ring, $3090, by Bulgari; all worn throughout.

SULTAN HE’S AN ARIA WINNING ARTIST WHO’S MADE A NAME AS ONE OF THE COUNTRY’S FINEST LIVE PERFORMERS. BUT THIS YEAR, HIS BIGGEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS HAVE BEEN PERSONAL. AND AFTER A ROLLERCOASTER RIDE OF THE HIGHEST HIGHS AND LOWEST LOWS, DAN SULTAN HAS ALSO PROVED HIMSELF ONE OF MUSIC’S GREAT SURVIVORS. NOW HE’S READY TO OPEN UP ABOUT IT ALL. PHOTOGRAPHY DUNCAN

KILLICK STYLING PETTA CHUA WORDS ANGUS FONTAINE

The road down to Dan Sultan is a long one. But the steep walk to his front door is nothing like the descent into the maelstrom the ARIA-winning soul man endured last year. Some of it he half remembers, the rest he’d rather forget. But the hell refreshes daily online: a ‘train-wreck’ gig, a media firestorm, a public apology, a painful admission of addiction, and pleas by friends and fans to get help – or else.

It brought the 35-year-old to his knees – and to his senses.

Thankfully for all, Sultan listened to the voices on the street and those between his ears. He called out his demons and vanquished them in rehab. He got sober, and shortly afterward, he and wife Bronnie got pregnant.

A year since the gig that derailed his career, Dan Sultan became a father to a daughter. This year he has dropped two albums, each nominated for an ARIA, including a kids’ release based on a documentary he narrated in Uganda and Kenya on Indigenous wildlife rangers.

It’s been a low road to higher ground for the sensitive son of an Irish-Australian lawyer for the Aboriginal legal service and the Arrernte-Gurindji woman who took her name from the Afghani camel drivers who slogged the lands around the Central Desert.

But the angst of his upbringing – his parents’ separation, moving between schools in Darwin, Cairns and Footscray, bullying and racial abuse – and his ongoing struggles with addiction, simmer in a voice like no other.

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True to his brown-snake totem, Sultan is a shapeshifter. Each of his seven albums finds him shedding one skin and inhabiting another – rockabilly hellcat on Get Out While You Can, loin-liquifying pop pugilist on Blackbird, Indigenous activist on Killer, soulsearching balladeer on Open Live – with instrumentation to match.

But it’s when he’s alone, with just his guitar or a piano, where Sultan truly soars. His latest record Aviary Takes, a spine-tingling reboot of old songs and covers recorded in single takes in the cold light of sobriety is powerful proof of it.

Now he’s invited GQ into his family’s nest on the banks of the Georges River in Sydney’s south.

As we descend the steep drive to a house named ‘Calm Waters’ wild music fills the air. Crows wheel overhead, moaning

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mournfully. Currawongs carol from the red gums. Magpies warble in the long grass. It’s a bush symphony Sultan wakes to every day – and then answers with his own plaintive song.

The Sultan who answers our knock and looms large in the doorway only vaguely resembles the ‘Black Elvis’ whose snake hips, inky quiff and crazy-beautiful voice burst from the grit of old Fitzroy in 2006. Thirteen years on, Sultan still stands tall but speaks softer. He’s wearing dark-framed specs, a loose black tee and old blue jeans. Already this morning he’s hit the gym and walked the dog. He’s fed the baby and brought tea to the missus. Now it’s time to talk.

Against a backdrop of Aboriginal art, family photos and old guitars, and soundtracked by the

birds in the trees and the brown river snake sliding past the window, Sultan settles in and opens up.

GQ: Congratulations on being GQ’s Musician of the Year – and also your ARIA nominations for Blues & Roots album… and, er, Kids Album of the Year?

Dan Sultan: I know, it sounds weird to be in such different categories but I’ve always been a genre-hopper, within records, and from album to album. Doing a kids’ album frees you up to play funk, rockabilly or ballads… all in the name of a song about a farting gorilla or a neurotic frillneck lizard. But performing for kids is terrifying. Children don’t humour or placate you. It’s much harder work than my usual 90 minutes of singing about addiction, depression and heartbreak to an audience of adults!

GQ: You welcomed a baby this year. How’s life as a dad?

DS: It’s brilliant. It feels like I’ve caught up to where my heart and spirit wanted to be. Fatherhood is a big change in my life but it’s also like coming home. I’ve taken to it like a duck to water.

We’re together, we love each other, and it’s awesome.

GQ: Now you’ve built this bubble, what does the outside world look like?

DS: I don’t care about it as much anymore. I used to ride these great waves of elation and disappointment and take things very seriously. But there’s not as much excess in my life these days. I’m not fucking Buddha but I certainly worry less.

GQ: You grew up on Johnny Cash and AC/DC around the

campfire and were given a guitar at the age of four, but did you always want to be famous?

DS: Yeah, I did. I wanted to perform and put on a show from the start. But Mum was smart. She got me the guitar but not the amp. That next step I had to earn myself. When I was about five I told her, ‘I want to be Buddy Holly’. Mum said: ‘No you don’t.

You want to be Dan Sultan.’

I never forgot that. It was a wonderful lesson. That guitar was everything to me growing up: a friend, a sanctuary and a stage.

GQ: Now you’re a father yourself do you see your own family with new eyes?

DS: Absolutely. They believed in me and taught me that honesty was everything – in music, in relationships, in understand-

ing yourself. My father is an incredible man, gentle and kind.

But my mother taught me just as much about being a man. My older brother copped it pretty bad as a kid. It taught me how to be a leader. Yet he led me to Hendrix, Hound Dog Taylor and Robert Johnson and took me down the big beautiful rabbit hole to discover country, punk and metal. Even my grandmother who I never met has taught me. A few years ago I sailed from Eagle Bay to One Arm Point and found her grave.

I wrote about it in ‘Kimberley Calling’. I felt such a strong connection to her and our land. It’s because of those people and places that I have the inner strength to carry on, even when the shit is flying.

GQ: Your songs draw deeply from what seems to have been a tough childhood.

DS: Both my mother and father had very difficult upbringings. It left them with scars. Mum was removed from her family when she was six and still struggles with the issues surrounding that.

Even then she worked her arse off for us. Some months we had to choose which bill to pay – electricity or gas – and it was candles with warm-Weetbix-andwater for dinner. But even when things were really bad, I always had an appreciation of how lucky I was. I never felt unloved, unheard or unsupported. And we always talked – good, big, deep discussions. We still do.

GQ: Was it those silver-lining survival instincts that helped you turn your dyslexia into an asset when it came to writing and telling your own stories?

DS: I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 17. They told me I was ‘slow’ but I knew I wasn’t. I’d explained to a grade-one teacher why ‘Aint no’ was a double negative!

I could read street signs and maps to get through the day but I never got lost in novels and reading anything aloud brought on major anxiety and some bullying issues. But I made up for it in other ways. It helped me find a different understanding. It fine-tuned my ear for storytelling and gave me a deeper capacity for empathy. So it was another challenge in a childhood full of them. But music was always there to restore a sense of security and belonging and remind me who I really was.

GQ: Did that resolute sense of self get warped when fame and celebrity arrived in your early twenties and people dubbed you ‘the Black Elvis’?

DS: I’ve always loved Elvis – and hey, I know [St Kilda AFL legend] Nicky Winmar is the real ‘Black Elvis!’ – so I took that tag as a compliment. But all my life I’ve felt misunderstood. My image, and how I look, has always been important to me.

I’ve battled with my weight and

it’s got me bullied and beaten up. I was 145kg at 19 years old and I’ve been up and down since, binging and purging and obsessing. Even when I was trim I wasn’t healthy. I was full of booze, speed and shit food.

GQ: Given your songs come from such a deep place, is upholding an image a curse?

DS: For a singer, getting photographed is extremely physical, both aesthetically and internally.

My body is my instrument and looking good in photos is part of that image. The problem with fame is the public projections of you can have a lot of people fooled. I remember moving into my first house. I was drinking hard, drinking alone, destroying the tools of my trade – my voice and my ability to perform – with alcohol and cocaine. But when I switched on the TV there was a clip of me on Rage looking great, sounding great, people cheering.

I was unwell, alone in an empty house, but to the outside world, the man on the TV was me.

GQ: Alas, the reverse also applies. The Dan Sultan before us today seems light years away from the Sultan who had such a public meltdown last year.

DS: I also wanted to do things on my terms and never liked being told what to do or how to do it.

I’ve always strived for a gung-ho level of control – the interviews I do, the photos I use, what I want to say in my songs, on stage and in public. So to go through something as embarrassing as that so publicly is utterly humiliating. I’ve never been comfortable with my partying or drinking being public or being discussed online. I mean, if someone wanted a photo after a show I’d always go to the trouble of putting down my drink so it wasn’t in frame. Yet I’m the same guy who fell off my piano stool on stage in front of 800 people.

GQ: Have you had a stormy relationship with alcohol your whole adult life?

DS: I really only started drinking in my mid-20s and I’ve always been able to put it down for peri-

ods. But what I’ve learned these past months is there’s no such thing as a cookie-cutter alcoholic or typical addict. For me, as much as I’d try to balance my addictions, I’d end up in some drama, every 18 months or two years. It’d blow over, I’d take a month off, then go again. But when I say ‘go’ I really go. That same instinct has been responsible for a lot of my success as an artist and it’s part of my success in sobriety now. I’m go-go-go or no-no-no. The difference is the direction I point that energy in. By the time this article hits I’ll hopefully be 18 months sober and pouring that energy into being a good partner and father.

GQ: So now you’ve got clarity, instead of chaos, coming from all directions?

DS: And it’s beautiful. I’ve always had that capacity for understanding and empathy. But it got to the point personally, a long time before that show in Cairns, where I’d stopped being able to counter the imbalance. I’d go from periods of sobriety and exercise and feeling great to months of teetering the other way. My version of balance was a seesaw of huge ups and downs, highs and lows, until I crashed. But it’s also important to acknowledge that it wasn’t all carnage and destruction. Those years of partying hold a lot of beautiful memories, too.

GQ: A steady rise and sudden fall, unchecked addiction and inevitable disaster, rehab and recovery… on paper it’s a story as old as A Star is Born isn’t it?

DS: That cliché hurts because there are a couple of stereotypes that still haunt me. The first is the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle. The truth is most musicians are healthy and don’t have issues with booze or cocaine, just like the majority of the world. The other bullshit stereotype ties into my heritage. But what rehab taught me was that regardless of the industry you’re in or the blood in your veins, some of us have physiological and neurological allergies. And I’m one of them.

GQ: So did you deserve all the hysteria that followed that gig?

DS: As embarrassing as that gig was, I still think it was a slow news day and didn’t deserve to go as mental as it did. But because of my heritage and background it got blown up and used as a certain narrative for some people.

That was unfair. I’d done thousands of shows without a hitch, and worked hard for 13 years. Yet people still talked about my drinking and drugging. Those double standards exist but I can see them now as a blessing in disguise. And fuel for a fightback.

So thank fuck for it all because if it hadn’t gone so crazy I’d have probably kept going.

GQ: What’s been the most valuable mistake you’ve made in life?

DS: There were many moments before that gig where I could’ve, should’ve stopped. I’m in a beautiful place because of that stupidity. I can see the bullets I dodged. Even at my worst I never got arrested, never got hospitalised, never hurt anyone.

My greatest mistake was not realising how serious it was, what danger I was in. Only the other day someone congratulated me on ‘turning my life around’ but I don’t feel I have turned my life around. I’ve accomplished amazing things. I’ve also done crazy things and taken myself to a point of no return. But I’m still here.

GQ: We talked about the ‘Man on TV’. How do you like the Man in the Mirror?’

DS: I’m happy with what I see.

Even this project for GQ is the result of 16 months of going to the gym, being healthy and happy, being a performer and provider. I can look back at my life knowing the things I’ve had to deal with and overcome have been massive. But I’m sober. I’m a husband and a father. I’m an author. I’ve won five ARIAs and I’m nominated for another two.

I’ve got a piano and a room full of guitars. The Georges River at my back. Make no mistake – I know how lucky I am. n

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MEN of the YEAR

Shirt, $1900, by Gucci; singlet, $23.95, by Bonds; belt, $159, by Calvin Klein Jeans; and jeans, $179, by Tommy Jeans; chains, $65, (top) and, $178, both by Hardy Brothers; rings (lefthand), $189, by Reliquia; and signet ring, $6999,

by Hardy Brothers; rings (right-hand), $360, and $370, both by Gucci; earrings, Elordi’s own. All jewellery worn throughout.

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THE 22-YEAR-OLD AUSSIE ACTOR WENT FROM MAINSTREAM TEEN HEARTTHROB TO STARRING IN ONE OF THIS YEAR’S MOST ACCLAIMED – AND CONTROVERSIAL – TV SERIES. AND HE’S ONLY JUST GETTING STARTED. PHOTOGRAPHY LEVON

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couple of years ago, Jacob Elordi was ready to come home. Like many young Aussie actors with dreams of Hollywood, the Brisbane native had arrived in LA to roll the dice, and found his luck and his bank balance were starting to run out. More to the point, so was his visa.

“I’d been in LA for about a year, I didn’t have any work and I had no money,” he says when we meet in Sydney for today’s shoot.

“I didn’t really have anywhere to live and I was in my car and on mates’ couches. My visa had like two weeks before it expired, so I was going to dip out and go back to Australia.”

Not that Elordi was entirely unknown. In fact, he had just appeared in a Netflix film called The Kissing Booth, a squeaky-clean teen romcom in which he plays heartthrob Noah Flynn alongside American actress Joey King. While it’s unlikely to have cost the Oscars judges much sleep, the film turned out to be a massive hit.

Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos told The New York Times it was “hugely popular” when it hit screens in May last year, adding that their internal data showed The Kissing Booth had been “one of the mostwatched movies in the country, and maybe the world”.

Elordi’s IMDB rating went from 25,000 to one, he gained six million followers on Instagram and he would soon be begged for selfies with strangers everywhere he went, including during this photo shoot. Still, that initial taste of fame wasn’t exactly all Champagne and private jets.

“It was one of my first movies and your money runs out pretty quickly in Los Angeles,” he says. “I had my mum and dad making sure I was eating and I had a lot of support from friends, so I was very lucky. I was never down and out. But in terms of America, I was done.”

Though he hadn’t entirely given up hope. Towards the end of his time spent on couches and in cars, Elordi auditioned for a role in a new HBO drama, created by American screenwriter and director Sam Levinson.

“I knew from the moment I auditioned that the content was going to be good because Sam’s writing is so impressive,” he says.

“I didn’t know if people would respond to it or not, but I knew it was something I wanted to play and the world was something I wanted to live in.”

The show was Euphoria, a gritty teen drama that centered on Rue (played by Zendaya), a 17-year-old recovering drug addict, and her

circle of diverse, divergent friends, family and fellow high-schoolers. Among them Nate Jacobs, the cool, handsome jock who Elordi ended up being cast to play. But this was no Kissing Booth.

On the surface, Nate seems to be the perfect all-American kid, but behind the scenes he struggles with his identity and anger, and has a volatile relationship with his dad (Eric Dane). Elordi delivers a powerful performance, all the more so because it feels like such a departure for him as an actor.

In person, he’s taller and skinnier than you might expect, with angular features and a strong jawline that makes him look classically handsome. It’s a face Calvin Klein enlisted for its most recent underwear campaign, alongside Bella Hadid, Naomi Campbell and Diplo.

So you can’t help but feel it would have been easier for Elordi to play it safe and stick to the clean-cut romcom path, rather than risk turning off any of the young fans he won with The Kissing Booth.

“I didn’t think about that at all,” he says of his decision to play Nate. “In fact I was kind of hoping that some people would start to dislike me – I was so excited to shed the skin of what everyone thought about me.

“I wanted to make things like Euphoria before I even came to Hollywood, when I was still in high school,” he adds. “So there was no change in my brain where I was like, ‘OK now I need to do serious work’. I knew the calibre of work that I wanted to do and I’m just lucky that I’ve been able to step up and do it so early on.”

Shot over about nine months in LA, the young cast spent more or less every day together and grew incredibly close on set. But Elordi is quick to clarify there is nothing to the idea that he and Zendaya are more than just castmates (“she’s like my sister”), rumours that had been doing the rounds online for a while.

“Zendaya is an amazing creative, you know? She’s super dope to work with. She’s an incredible artist and a very caring person to all of us,” he says. “But we’re all really close. There is not one weak link in that show. We’ve spent so much time together and everyone is just so cool to work with. Sam Levinson is just a genius and working with him, it was just like electricity all the time. I was in awe. Like a kid in a candy shop.”

“IT WAS ONE OF MY FIRST MOVIES AND YOUR MONEY RUNS OUT PRETTY QUICKLY IN LA. I WAS NEVER DOWN AND OUT. BUT IN TERMS OF AMERICA, I WAS DONE.”

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Jacket, $2395, by Song for the Mute; shirt, $240, by Venroy; belt, $179, by BOSS; pants, $455, by Ermenegildo Zegna; and shoes, $120, by Converse.

Sweater, $1640, and shirt, $1225, both by Saint Laurent; chain (top), $570, by Gucci; and chain, $178, by Hardy Brothers.

Shirt, $1610, by Prada; pants, $1570, and belt, $250, both by Paul Smith; socks, $4.90,

by Uniqlo; shoes, $169,

by Aquila x Fila.

Sweater, $169, by Calvin Klein Jeans; shirt, $200, by Venroy; tie, stylist’s own; and pants, $135, by COS. Hair Madison Voloshin at Vivien’s Creative using R+Co Haircare.

Skin Gillian Campbell at The Artist Group using Clarins Skincare and MAC Cosmetics.

After Elordi wrapped the final episode of Euphoria, he flew to Cape Town to start shooting the sequel to The Kissing Booth. And for the next few months he was out of the country, unaware of what the response had been when Euphoria premiered in June, or if there had been any response at all.

“I’ve been on the go since it came out,” he says. “I was in South Africa for the longest time, so I really had no connection with the world, in a way.”

But there had been a reaction. In fact, before Euphoria even hit screens, it had made an impact.

“HBO’s Euphoria flashes 30 dicks on screen,” screamed one headline.

“Euphoria wants to shock you with penis episode,” read another. “HBO had to edit out 80 dicks from one scene,” revealed yet another take.

Eighty dicks? Little wonder the conservative group Parents Television Council denounced the show for “overtly, intentionally, marketing extremely graphic adult content… to teens and preteens.”

“I know,” says Elordi, when we bring up the reviewers who’d been left clutching their pearls. “It was ridiculous. And even if you watch that scene, it’s not like you’re watching some aggressive porno. They want to have that clickbait title and everyone thinks it’s so crazy. I thought that was so silly but that’s the way it’s always going to go with this stuff.”

Euphoria is a raw, unvarnished look at teen life in America, tackling issues like sexuality, gender, substance abuse, depression, body image, sex, sexting and all the things that people struggle with when they’re young and just trying to figure it all out.

Yes, the series doesn’t shy away from nudity, but that’s kind of the point. The scene that caught everyone’s attention – the “30 dicks” – takes place as Nate walks through a crowded locker room. In other words, just another day for most high-schoolers.

And even if many reviews focused on its shock factor, titles such

as The Guardian and Variety also praised the show’s performances, plot and the fact it doesn’t shy away from its more confronting subject matter. “Parents are the ones who might need a trigger warning as opposed to teenagers,” quipped the Hollywood Reporter.

Another of Euphoria’s strengths is its diversity – across race, gender, sexuality and size – of the characters it depicts. Besides Zendaya and Elordi, another actor singled out for praise was Hunter Schafter, who plays trans girl Jules Vaughan and who is herself trans.

“It’s a no-brainer, right? If you want honesty and truth and you want to portray people properly,” says Elordi, of casting a trans actor in the role.

“And you have incredible actors out there – it’s the way that it should always be done.

“It is really nice that as a result of your work, maybe some kids can watch that show and feel like they’re a little bit more at home, that there’s people like them,” he adds. “That’s really important because I think that when I was a teenager I would have been looking for the same kind of thing, if I could relate to a character.”

Needless to say, Elordi didn’t end up coming home for good. He has a place in LA now and after The Kissing Booth 2 wraps he’ll be onto the second season of Euphoria, with plans to write and direct one day. He also has a few movies in the pipeline, though he’s quick to point out he’s just enjoying the ride.

“I don’t really feel like I’m building a career or trying to be this kind of actor or that kind of actor,” he says. “Every morning I want to wake up and be excited about what I’m going to do. I want it to be honest and fulfilling for me personally, and then maybe it can be fulfilling for the rest of the world, too.

“I still feel like I have a lot to prove, but I’m finally in a place where I can be proud of the work that I’ve done,” he says. “It’s been a blur and it’s definitely a version of living the dream. But it’s starting to feel a little more normal now.” n

“IT’S REALLY NICE THAT AS A RESULT OF YOUR WORK, MAYBE SOME KIDS CAN WATCH THAT SHOW AND FEEL LIKE THEY’RE A LITTLE BIT MORE AT HOME.”

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MEN of the YEAR

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THE BIGGEST SUCCESS STORY IN AUSTRALIA’S RECENT SPORTING HISTORY, SHE’S NOT JUST THE WORLD NUMBER ONE, SHE’S OURS TOO. WORDS BRAD

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t’s a quiet Monday afternoon in Sydney, and Ash Barty, who barely 12 months ago was just another Australian tennis hopeful slowly climbing the ranks of the sport, is proving impossible to get hold of.

Barty herself is, of course, nowhere near Sydney. She’s in Shenzhen, having just capped off perhaps the greatest individual season in Australian sport by winning the WTA Finals. With the win, she also collected a cash prize that, at the time of writing, is the biggest ever awarded to a tennis player for an individual win, male or female. The victory also cemented her year as one of the all-time greats in the sport of female tennis. Only Serena Williams has earned more prize money in a single season.

It’s nearly impossible to overstate just how badly Australian sport needed a presence like Ash Barty to come along this year. Coming into 2019, our greater sporting landscape was a relative shambles. The Socceroos had tumbled ungracefully out of yet another world cup. Our cricket team, still battered and bruised in the wake of Sandpapergate, was preparing for a series against India having just been whitewashed by Pakistan. Spirits were decidedly low.

Then, as the tennis season started its season Down Under, a 22-year-old from Ipswich, then ranked 15th in the world, got going. She had only returned to tennis two years prior, having taken a break from the sport for mental health reasons. And despite having risen to the sport’s top 20 in the space of a year in 2017, she was still very much an unknown quantity.

Amid the antics (and ultimate failure) of her compatriots in the men’s bracket, Ashleigh Barty quietly motored her way into the quarter finals of the Australian Open, before being stopped by eventual finalist Petra Kvitova. By the standards we set for her now, it was disappointing. For a country tired of being let down by its tennis talent, though, it was enough to turn heads.

Almost immediately, the increasing hope of a nation was placed on her shoulders. But you wouldn’t have guessed Barty was feeling it.

Galvanised by her loss in Melbourne, Barty, working with a sort of quiet tenacity you rarely see among Australia’s sporting elite, embarked on a season for the ages.

By the end of March, she’d claimed her first top-tier tournament win at the Miami Open, entering the world’s top 10 for the first time.

Then came the European summer, and with it the time that would establish Barty, as Jim Courier put it courtside, as a “certified star in the game.” Battling through an arm injury and a clay court season where she showed little promise on looser surfaces, she claimed an incredible first Grand Slam title in France. “Fuck,” was all she could muster to herself as she held her head in her hands, a picture of equal parts shock and triumph.

By then, the tennis world’s attention was solely on Barty. But, as we’ve now come to learn about the young Aussie, it’s not something she really dwells on. “There is

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certainly more attention on me than there was before the French Open, and I’m still adjusting to that,” she tells GQ on the day she’s due to represent Australia in the final of the Fed Cup. “The way I live my life hasn’t changed though, I’m a pretty simple person and still enjoy and value the same things as before. I have always been happiest at home surrounded by my family and friends, having a BBQ and a few drinks. I don’t think that will ever change.”

This same attitude has proven to be perhaps Barty’s greatest strength. While others on her level have used their talents as an avenue to build themselves a personal brand, it remains crystal clear that she’s simply there to play tennis, and be as good as she can at it, come what may. A true student of the sport, she possesses an intelligence about her game that makes her a truly ruthless player to face. The world most notably bore witness to this in her win at the Birmingham Classic in June, which earned her the world No.1 spot. She didn’t drop a single set on the way.

Outside of sport, though, her quiet demeanour has given her a reputation for astonishing humility, something that immediately becomes clear when you speak to her. “I’m not even sure I’m worthy of it!” she says when presented with the idea that she’ll probably go down in Australian sporting lore forever. “I am very proud to be in the No.1 position, but for me it’s just a number next to my name. The way my team and I go about our work doesn’t change. I do get a better locker in the change rooms now though.”

Barty’s personality is defined by a passion for her family and community, along with the Indigenous identity that she shares with the last Australian woman to claim the World No. 1 spot, Evonne Goolagong Cawley. The two share a bond in being two of the few Indigenous athletes to ever represent their people on a truly global sporting stage — something that no doubt comes with an added pressure. “I try and set the right example and live by the values my parents taught me in every situation,” she says. “Evonne and I recently went to Cairns to visit Indigenous school kids. It was one of the most rewarding and enjoyable days I have had this year.

There is nothing better than seeing the smiles on the faces of those kids.”

Now on top of the world at just 23, Barty’s story is one that helped rejuvenate an Australian tennis landscape that has seen so many hopefuls, particularly in players like Sam Stosur and Jelena Dokic, fall desperately short of true greatness.

As with everyone who reaches the very top of tennis’ echelons, Barty’s legacy will be defined by how long she’s able to keep her dominance at a time where women’s tennis is particularly flush with talent even younger than herself. But in rising as she did at a time when Australia’s sporting identity was in turmoil, she has also galvanised a nation. Long may she reign. n

PHOTOGR APHY: GE T T Y IMAGES.

“I am very proud to be in the No.1 position, but for me it’s just a number...

I do get a better locker in the change rooms now though.”

Barty in action against Elina Svitolina on her way to winning this year’s ATP Finals in Shenzhen.

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Cave wears T-shirt, $1450, and necklace (top), $1450, both by Dior Men; earrings, approx. $900, sold as a pair, worn throughout, left-hand signet ring, $900, left-hand pinky ring, $670, and right-hand black ring, $560, all by William Cheshire; all other jewellery, Cave’s own, worn throughout.

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MacKay wears knit, $1800, by Dior Men.

Cave wears T-shirt, $855, and pants, $1700, both by Gucci; earrings, approx. $900, sold as a pair, by William Cheshire; rings, Cave’s own.

MacKay wears turtleneck, $1535, and pants, $1185, both by Gucci.

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n July of 2018, patrons of Melbourne institution The Gasometer happened upon a performance by an unknown punk band called Fleshlight. Wearing long, tattered dresses and period-style makeup that was either days old or applied drunk (or both), the unruly four-piece rattled off a set of songs that, according to one man in the crowd, had been written in under a month. The scene wasn’t totally out of character for the ‘Gaso’, a pub that loves an experimental act. And the crowd of people who packed out the band room that night left thinking they’d witnessed just another ramshackle local band. Likely, they retreated home, tucked themselves into bed and never thought of Fleshlight again.

A few months later, Earl Cave and Louis Hewison are sitting inside a makeshift hut in the withered basin of Victoria’s Lake Mokoan, finishing each other’s sentences. “For our preproduction work, we were given the task of forming a band. George [MacKay] was on vocals, Louis was on drums,” starts Cave, “Sean [Keenan] did guitar and you were on the keys,” adds Hewison, nodding at Cave with a grin.

“The Kelly Gang are like this pack; these ambitious, angry, confused young men. And the idea of the band was for us to find that bond, so that we wouldn’t be strangers on set.” Cave draws a breath and Hewison takes over: “We wrote all of these songs, and after four weeks we played a gig.” The boys – dressed in costume that’s half-gothic western, half-Melbourne hipster – wink at each other with knowing, like two rock stars that have shared many a wild night. “We played at The Gasometer. Nobody knew we were preparing for a movie,” says Cave of Fleshlight’s debut, “but we were.”

Helmed by Justin Kurzel, the formidable Australian director behind The Snowtown Murders and Macbeth, True History of the Kelly Gang is ironic in the sense that it’s not necessarily true. The film is based on the Booker Prize-winning novel of the same name, by Australian author Peter Carey; a marvellously evocative yet jumbled tapestry of first-person soliloquy in which Ned Kelly – bushranger, outlaw, folk hero – attempts to reclaim his story, and write a history of his own. Both Carey’s novel and Kurzel’s film are painted and propelled by the unconditional but oftentimes toxic love between Ned and his mostly-single mother, Ellen.

Kurzel cast a wide net when searching for his Kelly Gang, their kin and foe. In came icons like Russell Crowe, Charlie Hunnam,

Essie Davis and Nicholas Hoult, as well as emerging stars Thomasin McKenzie, Sean Keenan, GQ favourite Marlon Williams, 12-year-old Orlando Schwerdt and Earl (son of Nick) Cave. Kurzel found non-actors, too, something the director believes lends “tension and texture” to the production. Louis Hewison was a Melbourne teen who’d never thought too seriously about acting before, Ben Corbett a musician whose haunting stage manner had caught Kurzel’s eye at a gig years ago. “The [actors’] experience reflects the different characters [they play],” Kurzel explains. “The boys were young and relatively new, which gave a recklessness and freshness to the gang. With other characters like Harry Power, who’s a mentor figure in the film, Russell was perfect.”

Then there’s George MacKay, the young English actor whose portrayal of the film’s titular character is visceral, magnetic and slightly crazed. “The process of working on Ned was unlike any process I’ve had before,” says MacKay. “I’ve never had such an immersive experience with a job. I mean, there were times when the line between my own thoughts and feelings became blurred with Ned’s.”

Having spoken to MacKay during production and then again months after filming had wrapped, we get the sense this truly was a transcendental experience for the actor.

On set, MacKay seemed brooding and somewhat hardened (to be fair, one of the story’s most pivotal and emotionallycharged scenes – where the Kelly gang’s fate as outlaws is essentially sealed – was filmed hours before we sat down to chat). But having shed the armour, burden and baggage of Ned Kelly post-production, MacKay is upbeat and chatty during our second conversation. He tells us he was surprised by how different he felt to the onscreen version of himself, when watching the film for the first time. “It was like seeing an ex… but in a strangely lovely way,” recalls the actor, who’s next big gig will be alongside Benedict Cumberbatch and Richard Madden in 1917.

Charlie Hunnam became just as engrossed in his own character, the entitled and slightly daft Sergeant O’Neill. (Photographs of the Sons of Anarchy actor strolling around Wangaratta, population 29,000, surfaced on the Internet almost daily when the cast was stationed there. The picture desk at the ‘Wang’ Chronicle had never received so many submissions from amateur paparazzi).

Hunnam’s character is barely traceable on the Internet – a line on Wikipedia suggests he was a guard at the Beechworth Gaol during the 1870s, where Kelly was thrown more than once – which gave himself and Kurzel the freedom to render O’Neill from scratch.

“I was in Hawaii at the time, and I got this email from my agent saying, ‘Kurzel just offered you a role, motherfucker,’” laughed Hunnam when we spoke on set. He’d finished filming most of his scenes, and allowed someone to talk him into giving us a private tour of the True History set. (Needless to say we obliged).

“I read the script and felt this sense of musicality to O’Neill’s dialogue. I had this idea to play him with a Geordie accent, which I haven’t used since I was a kid but it’s somewhere in my DNA.” To do this, Hunnam travelled to Newcastle – the English, not the Australian one – where he spent time in pubs befriending men he’d later record reading his lines. “It sounds like hyperbole me saying this, because I’m in the midst of the experience right now,” he mused, “but I’m objective enough to know that I’ve never had as much fun as I have on this film, working with Justin. He’s just so embracive of people bringing their own shit.”

At times the way the True History of the Kelly Gang cast speak about Kurzel takes on almost religious overtones. Not cult-y, exactly, but with the same sense of reverence, love and trust. “Justin placed a lot of faith in us,” Cave says when we chat for the second time, shortly after the film had made its premiere at the 2019 Toronto International

“THE PROCESS OF WORKING ON NED WAS UNLIKE ANY PROCESS I’VE HAD BEFORE...

THERE WERE TIMES WHEN THE LINE BETWEEN MY OWN THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS BECAME BLURRED WITH NED’S.” M E N O F T H E Y E A R 2 019 G Q.CO M . AU

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TO A N D T N LL E R T A E E V S T E OF I P E. R U R T N I I E Y E F G F F IT LO G TO U O O Q H O NT E D E S N ’ I R “IT E MY T E WA T’S K E AK F .”

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Film Festival. “Which was terrifying, delivering what he asked us to. But we also had so much faith in Justin.”

MacKay, who was tasked with chopping wood and riding horses to prepare, physically, for the role of Ned (watch wood chopping become the next workout fad – MacKay is Adonis-level ripped), shares an anecdote that’s telling of Kurzel’s ‘feelingnot-acting’ approach: “I remember him saying ages ago that a fuck and a fight aren’t that dissimilar in terms of the feelings they give, the chemical reactions that go with them. There’s a sense of that blurriness with Ned. The brutality of his life is entwined with his understanding of love, so much so that it kind of… comes out sideways.”

True History of the Kelly Gang’s treatment of Ned Kelly folklore, which looms with incredible palpability in North-East Victoria (from Euroa to Benalla to Beechworth, there’s hardly a local council without a Kelly claimto-fame) might draw mixed reactions from country folk for whom outlaws wearing dresses isn’t part of the age-old script. Those who continue to believe that Kelly was a heartless cop killer might also take issue with the spectacular depth and nuance Kurzel and MacKay afford the enigma. But the film is inspired by a book, not necessarily history itself. And truth is subjective, anyway. “We’re not trying to do a beige period drama,” Hal Vogel, one of the film’s producers, explained on set. “It’s quite irreverent to the mythology of it all and if people want to get upset about it, that’s kind of fine. We wanted to break free of that traditional view. It’s punkish and unbridled and it’s got a lot of attitude – that’s what we found interesting.”

There might also be those who ask, do we need another Ned Kelly film? After all, there was the Mick Jagger-starring 1970 version, which all but flopped, and Heath Ledger’s 2003 Ned iteration, which (oddly for Ledger) was a little beige. But the version Kurzel and his motley crew have conjured might just strike the chord the others have failed to hit.

“I know there’s been a lot of stuff made about Ned Kelly, but there seemed to be something missing,” says Cave, a qualified opinion, given his father grew up in Kelly country. “I think Justin’s found that thing. The rawness, the craziness of this pack of wolves.”

“It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” echoes MacKay, and we don’t disagree. A visceral tale of love and morality set in hauntingly beautiful landscape, it’s the long-awaited story the legend of the Kelly gang deserves. n True History of the Kelly Gang is in cinemas January 9 and on Stan from Australia Day

Shirt, $1310, pants, $1040, and brooch, $310, all by Prada; ring, approx. $350,

by William Cheshire.

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Jacket, $3830, shirt, $1010, pants, $1185, slides, $960, and necktie, $655, all

by Gucci; feather necklace, approx. $495, left-hand pinky ring, $670, left-hand signet ring, $900, and right-hand black ring, $560, all by William Cheshire.

Grooming Petra Sellge at The Wall Group.

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AT FIRST THEY JUST WANTED TO SHOW A COMMUNITY OF PEOPLE SOMEONE CARED. NOW, MELBOURNE’S COOLEST STREETWEAR BRAND IS ON A MISSION TO END HOMELESSNESS – AND IT WANTS THE WHOLE RETAIL INDUSTRY TO FOLLOW SUIT. WORDS CHRISTOPHER RILEY

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alk into the unassuming shop front on Brunswick St, in Melbourne’s buzzing Fitzroy, and everything appears as it should: a minimalist design that boasts a carefully curated selection of this season’s most-hyped items – bucket hats, tracksuits, logo Ts. Hoodies are emblazoned with the tagline, ‘A Label for the Streets’ and a young man, all beard and beanie, welcomes you with a smile. In other words, it looks like the quintessential streetwear store.

And it is. Dig a little deeper, though, and what you’ll find is a carefully considered social enterprise plotting to eradicate homelessness. Founded in 2015 by two Melbourne locals Nick Pearce and Marcus Crook on a loose notion of changing the stigma around homelessness, HoMie has morphed into a social movement offering vulnerable young people a means of employment and a way to get off the streets.

The pair first started throwing ideas around to start a community-based project back in 2013 when they took part in a bike ride around Vietnam and Cambodia raising funds for anti-child trafficking. While most of us would have been spending our evenings sinking a few too many Saigon Reds and allowing our self-satisfaction to ease us into a well-earned sleep, Pearce and Crook were making plans.

“When we got back to Melbourne, we knew we wanted to do something that was small scale but with great purpose and meaning and logic,” says Pearce. “Just like the experience we had in Vietnam.”

Like a lot of things in today’s world – good or bad – it all began with social media.

“We started this Facebook page called ‘Homelessness of Melbourne’,” continues Pearce, “which was kind of this Humans of New York style thing where we were shar-

ing the stories of people sleeping rough – with their consent and in their own words – to try and dispel some of those preconceived notions of homelessness.”

Buoyed by the support the page was receiving, Pearce and Crook staged a popup activation in September 2014 inside Melbourne Central Shopping Centre. The plan was simple: invite local brands and the public to donate items of clothing and blankets to support the local homeless community.

But it was a lot more than that, too; it was a way to show a group of people going through hardship that someone cared. “It was about a dignified shopping experience,” explains Crook. “And the day went really well, we had truck loads of clothing come down… From that day, we were thinking, Jesus, there’s a real need for this. And there’s a community desire to help out.”

The decision to move into designing and selling clothing came almost by accident.

“We put our logo on to some blank Ts and the stuff just flew off the shelves,” Pearce tells GQ. “We had other brands in there but it became by far and away our most popular item – people wanted to show their support not just through liking our page but wearing what it stood for.”

The pair then made what Pearce describes as a “pretty cavalier decision” to open a clothing store in mid-2015. Noticing that their most engaged supporters were young people, Pearce and Crook wanted to make it easy for them to support the cause. Rather than asking for financial donations, they decided to make and sell streetwear staples – the kind of clothing their customers were already wearing.

With Crook stepping into the role of creative director and Pearce managing the business side of things as the brand’s selfprofessed “pragmatic dad,” the pair set about growing HoMie into both a fully-

fledged streetwear store and a burgeoning social enterprise. The concept of the popup activation morphed into the store’s monthly VIP shopping events, wherein the store’s closed to the public and local people experiencing homelessness are invited in to choose five items of clothing free of charge, as well as a hot meal and a fresh haircut.

As with each stage in the HoMie journey, its most profound breakthrough came not by design but by reacting to the needs of the community. “We started to have lots of young people come through these VIP day services and their feedback was very clear to us: ‘We’ve had an amazing time today but I don’t have any work experience and I’m finding it really hard to get a job’.”

Pearce describes this as their “aha moment”. “VIP days aren’t going to solve the issue,” the 26-year-old says honestly. “But providing support through employment can start to solve a young person’s situation.”

This realisation gave way to ‘The HoMie Pathway Alliance’ – a program offering young people experiencing homelessness a paid part-time job at the flagship HoMie store in Fitzroy, along with housing and paid study leave. And they haven’t stopped there.

HoMie have united highstreet brands like Cotton On and Champion behind the cause.

For Pearce and Crook, this is now more than simply providing clothing to keep someone warm for the night. It’s more than shifting people’s perceptions of what it means to be homeless. And it’s certainly a lot more than equipping us with our latest streetwear flex.

“Our goal is to encourage people to be more empathetic,” says Crook.

Ever the businessman, Pearce ups the ante.

“Given that retail is the biggest employer of young people, our goal is to become the spark that lights the fire within the industry.” n

FROM LEFT Bonnie Gill wears hat, $35, T-shirt (left), $59, and right, $80; Crook wears, hat, $35, and upcycled top, $119; Pearce wears soccer jersey, $57; all by HoMie.

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by Balenciaga, worn throughout.

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MEN of the YEAR

THE 22 YEAR OLD DANCER TURNED MODEL HAS QUICKLY BECOME ONE OF THE FASHION WORLD’S MOST TALENTED, SUCCESSFUL FIGURES. AND HE’S PROVING HIMSELF A LOT MORE THAN JUST A PRETTY FACE. PHOTOGRAPHY NATHANIEL GOLDBERG

STYLING JILLIAN DAVISON

WORDS JAKE MILLAR

ALTON MASON HAS ALWAYS been a superstar, it just took a little while for the rest of the world to find out. The talent seems to burst out of him like sunshine. You can see it in the way he moves, launching into an impromptu moonwalk during his fitting for our shoot, the way he smiles with so much warmth you can hear it in his voice, even over the phone, and in the way he inspires his 250,000 Instagram followers with small bites of wisdom, encouraging them to be themselves and believe in themselves, just like he does.

“Whatever is meant for you is going to be for you,” he says in a video from earlier this year, “and no matter how many times you fail, nothing and nobody can stop you.”

It’s an attitude that anyone who knows Mason would recognise. While some young people might struggle to find something that drives them, as a child Mason was nothing but ambition.

“It was my goal to own my own chocolate factory because that was one of my favourite movies, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” he says. “I always played basketball as well, so I wanted to be in the NBA. And I wanted to perform. I wanted to do everything, really.”

Mason hasn’t done everything yet, but you get the feeling it’s only a matter of time. Before he became one of the world’s most successful, in-demand models, Mason was a dancer, living and working in LA. “I’m not a trained dancer, but I always loved to watch videos of artists who inspire me and their body language just kind of translated to me and I made it my own.

“Michael Jackson, James Brown, Prince, Stevie Wonder, Tupac, Biggie, Sade,” he says, rattling off his music idols, “Chaka Khan, Tina Turner, Andre 3000 – I could keep going – those are all people who have a big presence, when it comes to their soul and their performance. That’s what really inspires me.”

The highlight of his dance career was the 2015 BET Awards, where he performed on stage alongside P Diddy.

Then, after being scouted over Instagram, the fashion world came calling.

“I found myself in New York with no money, going to all these castings and not getting any callbacks,” he says, of his early days. “No one believed in me, except my family and myself. And that’s when I got the call for Kanye West’s show.”

Held at Madison Square Garden in front of 20,000 people, the show served to launch Yeezy season three, as well as West’s seventh album, The Life of Pablo. But as with most things, overnight success takes time.

“It was amazing. Such a huge moment,” says Mason. “But I woke up from that, still broke, still hungry, and I ended up having to go back to LA to try to earn some money. Then I got a call that Alessandro Michele wanted to meet me.”

You can see Mason’s Gucci pre-fall 2017 casting on YouTube.

Hat, $495, by Song for the Mute; T-shirt, POA, by Acne Studios; pants, $100, by Brixton; and watch, $7900,

by Cartier.

Top, $1900, and shorts $2000, both by Dior Men.

“Alton Mason, 19,” he says into the camera. He’s more softly spoken and looks much younger than he does now at 22, but that star quality is still there. “A black panther,” he replies, when asked to name his spirit animal.

“What does it mean to have soul?,” asks the casting director.

“It means to be you,” he says, locking eyes with the camera, “in the purest form.”

He landed the campaign and then walked in Gucci’s AW17 show, too. And in the two years since, he has worked with almost every luxury brand you can name – Tom Ford, Versace, Tommy Hilfiger, Paco Rabanne, Hugo Boss, Michael Kors, Fenty, Fendi, Jeremy Scott and Louis Vuitton, whose AW19 show he closed with a triple-backflip.

Then in 2018, he made history as the first black male model to walk for Chanel.

“I’ll never forget working with Karl Lagerfeld,” he says. “That was definitely a breathtaking moment when I came to realise how far I’ve come. Because in this industry, it’s really easy to feel left out and let down, or feel like you’re not good enough.

“This is an industry where mental illness is real and it’s hard to overcome the idea of having to compete with one another, especially as a black male model. But I’m just so proud of all the other models and all the other people who have been working so hard because it’s not easy.”

One of these is South Sudanese-Australian sensation Adut Akech, who has appeared on magazine covers around the world and worked with everyone from Saint Laurent and Prada to Loewe and Tom Ford. She’s also a close friend of Mason’s and joined him on his shoot.

“Yeah, that’s my girl,” he says, his voice lighting up when we mention her name.

“We’ve worked together a couple of times, but that was the first time on a solo shoot together. We were just having so much fun. I’m really proud of her, she’s someone who inspires me because she’s worked so hard. It was just such a blessed moment to be shooting with someone who you have so much love for.”

Another of Mason’s idols is the groundbreaking photographer Malick Sidibé. As one of Africa’s most famous photographers, he captured the spirit in his native Mali, as it gained independence from France in the 1960s. The sense of joy and the freedom seen in his images also served as an inspiration for the shoot.

“He’s my all-time favourite,” says Mason. “It was really nice to pay homage to him. I’m really inspired by his work and I love what he’s done for the culture and for black people, period. He was able to capture the expression and the feeling and the soul that we had, and it was really just a blessing to draw from that.”

For all the talk of diversity in the fashion world recently – and some of the industry’s premature back-slapping about how far things have come – there’s little doubt work still needs to be done.

“You know,” says Mason, when we ask if he’s seen attitudes evolve, “it’s changed a little bit. But there’s still a long way to go because if you talk about diversity of models and how it’s evolved that would be one conversation. But when it comes to casting directors, photographers, hair stylists, that’s an entire realm that we need to touch on.

“I am thankful, and it’s cool that things have been evolving,” he says, “but let’s not make diversity a trend. Because I don’t know how long we’re gonna have to talk about making it happen. Let’s just make it happen.”

It’s a fair point. There have been a number of high-profile blunders in the fashion world recently, from racially insensitive products, through to runway shows that still lack inclusivity. Fashion brands and magazines – including this one, it must be said – have to do more to help change attitudes.

Not just who’s on their covers and in their campaigns, but as Mason says, it’s also about who’s working behind the scenes. Mason is extraordinary. But much of his success has been in spite of – not because of – the fashion world’s attitude to diversity.

“I do feel responsible for being the blueprint for young boys and young girls in the future,” he says of his success so far. “When it comes to any type of oppression or any type of diversity – I’m not just talking about skin – I do feel completely responsible because this is bigger than me. It’s about the kids who feel like they are the minority, who feel like they have to work twice as hard, because this hasn’t been easy.”

Mason’s quick to credit the industry with all it’s given him. He’s travelled the globe and worked with some of fashion’s biggest names. But he also insists the best is yet to come.

“I’m just so thankful for this industry because of the platform that it provides,” he says. “I wouldn’t change a thing. But there’s still so much to do and I want you guys to stay tuned. This is just the beginning.” n 1 82

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Alton wears shirt, POA, by Acne Studios. Adut wears hat, $395,

by Zimmermann; top, $425, by Derek Lam; pants, $2010,

by Nina Ricci.

Yellow and blue shirt, $1500, blue and white necktie, $310, and pink shorts, $1040, all

by Prada.

Alton wears jacket, $4385, shirt, $1665, and pants, $1775, all by Saint Laurent.

Adut wears jacket, $14,490, top, $7910, skirt, $4130, and shoes, $3150, all by Chanel; headpiece, POA, by Africa Tissus Dramé.

Hair Marc Lopez.

Skin Lloyd Simmons.

Nails Brenda Abrial.

Set design Hervé Sauvage.

Choreography Paul Sadot.

Fragrance Mason wears ‘One Million’ EDT, $135 (100ml), byPaco Rabanne at Myer, worn throughout.

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APPROACHING HIS FOURTH DECADE OF DIRECTING – EVERYTHING FROM OPERA AND ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS TO TV SERIES AND SOME OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL AUSTRALIAN FILMS OF ALL TIME – LUHRMANN HAS CEMENTED HIS PLACE IN CINEMATIC HISTORY. AND HE’S NOT GOING ANYWHERE. WORDS DAVID

SMIEDT

ince he flickered then exploded onto the scene like a cinematic Catherine Wheel with 1992’s Strictly Ballroom, Baz Luhrmann has produced work filled with an undiluted sense of enthusiasm, joy and devotion to spectacle.

What your nan might call pizazz!

Working with longtime partner in work and life Catherine Martin, to whom he has been married since 1997, Luhrmann has delivered some of the big screen’s most memorable cinematic moments. Romeo + Juliet (1996) presented perhaps the most familiar love story of all time in a thoroughly novel way while Moulin Rouge! (2001) was one of the few films in history that warranted an exclamation mark in the title. His take on F Scott Fitzgerald’s most famous protagonist in The Great Gatsby (2013) shimmered like champagne on the harbour and proved one thing you can never fault with Luhrmann is his ambition. He continued this form – albeit in a grittier format – with Netflix series The Get Down, which was set in New York City of the late ’70s, when Studio 54’s death rattle had been replaced by the nascent beats of the genre that would become known as hip-hop.

Perhaps Luhrmann’s biggest project to date will be his first biopic, which is scheduled to start shooting in Queensland shortly.

The subject? No less than the King himself, Elvis Presley. Starring Austin Butler in the lead role, alongside Aussie Olivia DeJonge as Priscilla and Tom Hanks as the star’s formidable manager Colonel Tom Parker, the as-yet-untitled project is due in 2021. Name a current filmmaker better qualified, in terms of track record, aesthetic or aspiration, to call ‘action’ on a life that momentous. His invitations to two hours at the local cineplex are written in font of undiluted escapism, an ironyfree zone that calls to mind the heyday of mid-20th century Hollywood. So, as a great man once said, it’s one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready and go, cat, go!

GQ: How are you feeling in the lead-up to your film about the late great Elvis Presley?

Baz Luhrmann: Sound stages are generally vast empty spaces and we’re at that juncture where the elements of ‘Elvis World’ are starting to coalesce. It’s like the circus has just arrived in town and the tents are being set up. Graceland is being built right now, so it’s an exciting time in a long, long process.

GQ: Do you remember connecting with Elvis and his music as a kid?

BL: Very much so and on several different fronts. Firstly, during his white jumpsuit phase, my grandmother reckoned it would make a good ballroom dancing costume for me. Then, in terms of purely the music, I got into Elvis on my journey to discovering the likes of Bowie, Slade and Led Zeppelin. Finally because the old man who ran the local cinema in our small town [Heron’s Creek in NSW] died and my dad took over. Every Sunday was Elvis movie day.

GQ: Are you at all overawed at the prospect of trying to encompass such a huge life in one film?

BL: Not really because that’s not the intention. I don’t want to say too much but by using the viewpoint of his manager Colonel Tom Parker – who was not a colonel and not called Tom or Parker by the way – we establish a prism through which we can examine Presley’s impact on America and global popular culture.

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GQ: Music and musical performance are consistent elements in your work but a lot of musical biopics run the risk of feeling like an extended pop video of the subject’s greatest hits. How do you avoid the latter?

BL: By making music an engine of the narrative. It drives the story to the next place it needs to get. The best example I can give is the [1984] movie Amadeus, which uses the music and biographical elements of Mozart’s life to tell a story about the jealousy of his nemesis Salieri. It’s a tool you use to evoke the spirit and era of the musician rather than a didactic exercise of, ‘This happened and then that happened’.

GQ: You work with your wife, Catherine Martin, on every film – as well as parenting two kids and staying married. How is this possible?

BL: Well, the answer to that question is that it’s all we’ve ever known.

It’s just how we work.

GQ: Your children are now both in their teens. Has being a parent informed your filmmaking in any way?

BL: Absolutely. When you’re creating the visual language around a project like this, it’s so easy to become lost in its own bubble. The kids keep you tethered to the real world and remind you what’s going on here and now. Which in turn feeds back into the project because you’re creating for a contemporary audience across a wide variety of ages.

GQ: New York is home for now, but for many years it was Darlinghurst in Sydney. Do you miss it?

BL: Australia will always be home and for years we’ve been looking for a way to do a project back here. In many ways, we had the feeling that if we could create Gatsby in Australia, why couldn’t we do the same with Elvis? We have the facilities, we definitely have the talent and our core group of creative partners are here.

More importantly, Australia allows us to reconnect with our spirit. You have to nourish your roots or you can’t use your wings, and our roots will always be in Australia. I definitely miss the sights, the smells, the rhythms and even certain buildings, because that’s where many of our memories are embedded.

GQ: Aside from those elements, the Elvis film is set to deliver 900 jobs and $105m into the Queensland economy.

BL: That is profoundly important to us. A film is a small manufacturing industry and being able to showcase Australian talent to the world in so many applied arts across such a broad canvas is one of the most exciting aspects of this project.

GQ: Like many auteurs, you have a creative corps that you frequently work with but there’s also a lot of fresh blood coursing through this project, too.

BL: Honestly, that is one of the aspects that I find most thrilling. We are telling the story of a very well-documented life but with fresh new perspectives and talents.

GQ: You’ve been a filmmaker for almost 40 years – you’re in danger of becoming an elder statesman of Australian cinema now.

BL: Does that mean I can retire now? I wouldn’t mind that.

GQ: We can’t picture shouting ‘cut’ on your career any time soon.

What’s next on the horizon?

BL: I’d like to reduce the amount of time between my films for a start. I also have a bunch of ideas divided among each of the continents. So a Russian story, an Australian story and so on. But just let me get done with Elvis first. n

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PHOTOGR APHY: GET T Y IMAGES; AL AMY.

“Australia will always be home and for years we’ve been looking for ways to do a project back here.”

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT

Behind the scenes of Moulin Rouge!; with wife Catherine Martin at this year’s Met Gala; directing Australia; with Karl Lagerfeld celebrating the release of No.5 the Film; on the set of Romeo + Juliet; Luhrmann and Miuccia Prada attend the Prada Resort 2020 show; directing Strictly Ballroom; with the cast of The Great Gatsby.

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inston Duke is someone who measures the impact of his words with great care. The star of Black Panther and Jordan Peele’s Us receives questions with a balance of warmth and caution, as if holding each one up to the light for scrutiny. He weighs up his responses and delivers them with a sense of honest self-reflection. At 6’4”, to communicate clearly and effectively has become second nature for Duke – a means of survival against the weight of assumptions projected on him as a ‘big black man’ living in the States. To be articulate is something on which he prides himself – a “tool in my box,” he says. But, right now, he’s stumped.

Because when we ask Duke what it feels like to be involved in some of the biggest films of the decade, the 32-year-old is lost for words.

“Wow,” he says after a pause. “Thank you for saying that,” he manages to add before trailing off.

But, regardless of Duke’s unwillingness to take his fair share of the credit, the fact remains: the Trinidadian-American actor has been a central part of some of the most momentous films of not simply the decade, but the entire history of cinema.

First came Black Panther. The smash hit of 2018 in which Duke starred as the formidable Chief M’Baku netted over $2bn at the global box-office, on the way to becoming the ninth highest-grossing film of all time. Number one on that list was Avengers: End Game that saw Duke reprise his headline-stealing role as M’Baku. Then, as if to prove he’s no one-trick pony, Duke exited the

Marvel Universe and entered Jordan Peele’s spooky imagining of a world in which we’re confronted by our doppelgängers. Us grossed $103m on its debut weekend, making it the second best opening for a live-action original film after 2009’s Avatar. All this to say, Winston Duke is kind of a big deal – whether he’s ready to admit it or not.

But the thing about Duke is that his story is not one that can be told through box-office numbers alone – however impressive they may be. The true measure of his impact is seen beyond the screen, in the way he’s provoking hard conversations, encouraging us to look at ourselves with a fresh perspective, to challenge the assumptions that have long governed our society – for better or worse.

“Because media has established itself as this barometer,” he says, “telling us what cool is, what a successful man is and what successful masculinity looks like. It’s been completely unreal and it’s created very toxic symbols and archetypes.

“My job has been to try to shift those things. To try to create characters that are on one end of the spectrum, but so much so that it makes you question, is this right – is this ideal?”

With M’Baku, Duke flips on its head the notion of what a tribal leader looks like. Duke’s M’Baku is someone who beats his chest and fights with brutal aggression. But he’s also one who admits defeat and can accept it with magnanimity, knowing full well a defeat in battle does M E N O F T H E Y E A R 2 019 G Q.CO M . AU

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nothing to erode who he is. He’s a fearless leader but he’s got a sense of humour, too. When he threatens to feed an interloper to his children, he lets the threat linger for a menacing second before laughing. “I am kidding – we are vegetarian.”

In Us, the message appears even more urgent. Duke plays Gabe, an “average American dad… who is blindly comfortable and just wants to have a good vacation and a good summer no matter what.” As he and his family are attacked by doppelgängers and their world starts to descend into apocalyptic chaos, Gabe remains strangely unperturbed but helpful in his own bumbling, affable way. The comparisons to the willingness of so many Americans to withstand President Trump’s seemingly endless indiscretions are hard to ignore.

“It begs us to really consider how many of us walk through life with such blind optimism that everything is going to be OK,” says Duke. “It’s such a product of a privileged world.”

Duke is a leading man, make no mistake about it, but not as we’ve come to expect. “I really feel like creating a new space where masculinity isn’t that of a stoic, cowboy hero,” he offers. “But one that has a lot of colour, dimension, heart, playfulness and can be so many different things.”

However nuanced his characterisation of Gabe is, though, Duke is quick to point out the fact that Gabe’s wife Red, played by another Black Panther alumni, Lupita Nyong’o, is the real hero of the film. “For Lupita’s character to be as strong and impactful as we saw her, Gabe had to be the foil – to be the complete opposite to show her strength. It was a dichotomy.”

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Celebrating those around him seems to come naturally to Duke. Just look at his Instagram. Where it’s easy to get lost in a sea of endless selfies and cryptic captions, Duke uses social media as an opportunity to shine light on the achievements of his contemporaries as well as on pressing social matters.

In the same week he’s posting a photo of Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Wesley Snipes and Eddie Murphy, with a caption celebrating ‘The Golden Boys’, Duke is posting heartfelt pleas to end domestic violence.

“Although DV affects all genders,” he writes. “If we’re being honest, it disproportionately affects women.”

Just like in conversation, Duke swings between goofy and self-effacing one minute and intensely thoughtful the next. But most importantly there’s an authenticity to his message that suggests someone acutely aware of not only the world in which he lives but the role he can play in shaping it for the better.

“I would love to be considered a culture shifter,” he says with pride. “I would love to be remembered as someone who changed how we perceive masculinity and how we perceive leadership.

“I’m my ancestors’ dreams, you know what I mean?

Their wildest dreams. They would never have expected that a son of slavery, a son of the Caribbean… would be in this position.”

Even so, the scary thing is not what Duke has achieved so far. It’s the fact that at 32 years old, he’s really only just getting started. Because what we have in Winston Duke is not simply an actor capable of shaping what the future of what Hollywood looks like, we have a person capable of informing what the future looks like, full stop. n

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”

The sun sets over a desolate stretch of the Extraterrestrial Highway, State Route 375.

For decades, the secretive military base hidden in the Nevada desert had been a destination for alien enthusiasts the world over. And after a plan to storm the facility went viral on social media, we did what anyone would do – we went to visit.

PHOTOGRAPHY RYAN

KOOPMANS WORDS JAKE MILLAR

eptember 20 was going to be the day the whole world finally discovered the truth. As the date approached, more than two million people registered their interest in a plan to storm Area 51, the top-secret government compound, hidden away in the Nevada desert. The shady military operations, the secret weapons, the alien experiments. We were going to find out about it all.

That was the plan, anyway. The Facebook event, which had started as a joke by 21-year-old college student Matty Roberts and initially drew just 40 signatures, soon went viral. With tens and then hundreds of thousands of people involved, the idea was that, in numbers, the government surely couldn’t stop them all. “We can move faster than their bullets,” the post read. “Let’s see them aliens!” Even Pornhub got in on the action, so to speak, with the release of a special film that sought to find out if aliens really exist and, more pertinently: “If so, are they horny?”

The jury is still out on that one. But the US Air Force somehow didn’t see the funny side of it all, issuing a stern warning that Area 51 is still an open testing range, adding that “we would discourage anyone from trying to come into the area where we train American armed forces”. By the time the guest list passed two million, even Roberts was having second thoughts, cautioning attendees against doing anything stupid, in order to prevent a “humanitarian disaster”.

In the end, the invasion was less a storm than a trickle. About 150 people made it to the boundary of Area 51, a few were taken into custody for trespassing, and another handful were arrested for crimes related not to uncovering state secrets, but for public indecency and urination. The truth, it seems, is still out there.

But the obsession with Area 51 dates back well before this latest social media fiasco. The US Air Force established the Groom Lake testing facility in the ’50s to develop the U2 spy plane program, since the salt flat’s dry, even lake bed made for the ideal spot to land aircraft. Sitting 135km outside of Las Vegas in the Nevada desert, it was also isolated. In other words, perfect for conducting covert work on the military’s most secretive weapons programs, especially during the Cold War. But the emergence of these Area 51 programs – especially the silver U2 aircraft, which flew much higher and faster than civilian planes – coincided with an increase in UFO sightings. And as the sightings increased, so too did the intrigue about just what, exactly, was going on in this place.

US businessman turned self-proclaimed whistleblower Bob Lazar helped fuel many of these far-flung theories. He alleged he was hired in the ’80s to work on a secretive project reverse-engineering alien technology at a site near Area 51 and had actually examined an alien craft. The story quickly blew up, garnering huge media attention and Lazar, who last year was the subject of a major documentary, continues to make the claims to this day.

Earlier this year, photographer Ryan Koopmans decided to see what all the fuss was about and travelled to the region, ahead of the Storm Area 51 event.

“The place is literally in the middle of nowhere,” he says.

“When I asked one guy how many he thought were working in Area 51 his answer was: ‘Well, aliens or humans?’ He was dead serious.”

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“You feel like you’re heading out onto this isolated road, where fuel stations are few and far between, and you really get out into the desert.”

Though to say there’s nothing there is not quite true. In fact, there are two small towns in the area: Alamo, which has a population of about 1000, and Rachel, a tiny blip on the map that is a favourite of alien enthusiasts. “People said the population was between 56 and 57,” reports Koopmans, “depending on who’s in jail”.

Given the region’s isolation and landscape – vast, epic skies and highways that stretch to the horizon – it also lends itself to a camera lens. Its notoriety as the world’s alien conspiracy theory capital has become a mini industry for local businesses, such as the extraterrestrially themed Little A’Le’Inn restaurant and bar in Rachel.

“Some people had pretty strong theories about it all,” says Koopmans of the locals he met, most of whom were more than happy to welcome tourists with open arms. “One guy suggested that it’s this huge underground military complex and when I asked him how many he thought were working in Area 51 his answer was: ‘Well, aliens or humans?’ He thought there were 100,000 humans and an unknown number of aliens working there – and he was dead serious.”

While not everyone believes aliens and humans are mingling around the Area 51 watercooler, most of the people who Koopmans met had their suspicions that something extraterrestrial was going on.

A sign for Nevada’s State Route 375, the road was officially designated in 1996 by the state of Nevada as the ‘Extraterrestrial Highway’.

A light shines directly into the lens of the camera in the desert at night.

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Aerial view of the landscape around southern Nevada.

Wrecked cars piled up in Alamo, Nevada, a small town where many people stop when travelling to see Area 51.

The Alien Research Center, the self proclaimed 'Gateway to Area 51', sells souvenirs and offers information to passing tourists.

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A mural of an alien outside of the E-T- Fresh Jerky store at the entrance of the Extraterrestrial Highway, one of very few businesses in the area.

Signage at the back entrance of the Area 51 zone warning against unauthorised entry, drone use and photography. Sorry guys.

Starry night skies in the desert landscape of California on the way to Nevada’s Area 51.

Mural of alien cowboys painted on the exterior of the E-T- Fresh Jerky store, located at the entrance of the Extraterrestrial Highway.

you’re being surveilled,” he says. “There are these pick-up trucks that stand there and watch you and when I was photographing one of them with a long lens, it flashed its high-beams at me. But when I looked back through the images and really magnified them, it actually didn’t look like there’s anyone in the car. It was super weird.

“I don’t know what the official government description of its existence is, but clearly it’s an active military installation,” he adds. “It’s a highly protected area where I think they are definitely still able to test, experiment and develop technology away from prying eyes.

“We saw quite a lot of clearly military-type vehicles moving around. But if there was any kind of extraterrestrial technology, I highly doubt that it would be there still, just because of the level of attention that the place has. Their cover is kind of blown.”

As for whether Koopmans is a conspiracy-theory convert, well, not quite. But given the area’s isolation, the endless roads, the lack of phone reception, and the desert’s sheer sense of scale, you could be forgiven for looking up at the bare, starry night skies and questioning whether it’s really that crazy to wonder if there might just be someone else out there, gazing back.

“There have been all these unexplainable incidents and you can’t help but consider that it’s highly unlikely we’re the only living things in this universe,” says Koopmans. “But it’s all very inconclusive. You can’t really prove it either way.” n

“Most people seem to be strong believers in alien activity and have various stories about unexplainable things they’ve seen.”

“There was only one person who implied that it’s an airforce facility and it’s most likely just military stuff going on,” he says. “Most people seem to be strong believers in alien activity and have various stories about unexplainable things they’ve seen. Everybody had a different take but one thing that everybody said was that 90 per cent of the facility is underground.”

While it’s relatively easy to reach Alamo or Rachel, which both sit off long stretches of highway in the Nevada desert, the Area 51 site itself is less accessible. Koopmans says it required heading off the highway, down a pair of unmarked dirt roads.

“You go many miles along unmarked, unpaved road until you hit a military checkpoint, and there’s a bunch of military installations and signs warning you that you’re not allowed to cross and that they can use lethal force. There’s no actual gate on the road, but the periphery is lined with razor wire so you can’t just accidentally wander across.”

Koopmans didn’t have any run-ins with aliens, but his visit wasn’t entirely without spooky occurrences. “You definitely get the sense 2 02

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Interior of the Little A'Le'Inn bar in Rachel, Nevada, the closest settlement to the Area 51 airforce base.

A tow truck carries a flying saucer outside of the Little A'Le'Inn in Rachel, Nevada.

TALK TO THE AVERAGE CSI FAN AND PUTTING CRIMINALS AWAY IS AS SIMPLE AS SPOTTING THE TINIEST SPECK OF BLOOD OR STRAND OF HAIR LEFT AT A CRIME SCENE. BUT A SLEW OF RECENT CASES SUGGESTS THAT MUCH OF THE FORENSIC EVIDENCE WE’VE COME TO ACCEPT AS GOSPEL IN THE COURTROOM MAY ACTUALLY BE FAR LESS RELIABLE THAN WE THINK.

A

R “WHEN THEY READ THE GUILTY VERDICT, MY LAWYER CAME UP TO ME AND SAID, ‘BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE.’”

20,000 CASES WERE DISMISSED WHEN A DRUG LAB CHEMIST ADMITTED FALSIFYING TEST RESULTS AND SIMPLY NOT PERFORMING TESTS SHE HAD CLAIMED TO HAVE DONE.

T

T

“WE CANNOT CONTINUE TO ALLOW JUNK SCIENCE TO BE USED AS PART OF A POINTSCORING EXERCISE, WHICH MISLEADS THE UNINFORMED MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC WHO MAKE UP THE JURY IN A CRIMINAL TRIAL.”

T HK EI N G P I N

WE SIT DOWN WITH JASON BELMONTE, THE MOST SUCCESSFUL AUSSIE ATHLETE YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF – WHO’S BEATING THE AMERICANS AT THEIR OWN GAME. WORDS ANGUS FONTAINE

B

efore he became the ‘Bradman of bowling’, winner of a record 11 major championships and the greatest kingpin of all, Jason Belmonte was a wide-eyed Aussie kid in Queens, New York, looking for ‘action’ at a minute-past-midnight.

‘Action’ in the tenpin world means unsanctioned, totally illegal, money games. These illicit duels usually happen late at night in rundown bowling alleys closed and left totally dark lest for one lane lit up for two bowlers to duke it out.

Hundreds gather at these ‘fight clubs’, alerted on the sly and given passwords for entry, and many thousands of dollars are wagered by spectators, both one-on-one and in syndicates. The bowlers stake themselves – and their reputations.

It was 2006. Belmonte was 23 years old and making his way as an amateur in the major leagues. In the US, he had a fast-rising reputation that needed crushing. That’s why Rudy Revs had called him out and invited him downtown for ‘action’.

Rudy ‘Revs’ Kasimakis was the high roller of the day: big as a bear, strong as a bull, bad to the bone. The 125kg ‘cranker’ from Hicksville NYC had his own reputation, most of it forged on the lanes, but plenty too in the alleys outside.

“I was nervous as hell,” Belmonte recalls to GQ. “It was a tough end of town and the match was set at Rudy’s home centre over the road from the penitentiary. Rudy Revs

ing to $5000 then $7000. There’s only one rule in this action: if you’re winning you can’t stop. Only if you’re losing can you walk away.

Got it, Aussie?”

Belmonte knew he didn’t have that sort of money. But the crowd took his action. And so it began. The rookie won the first, then the second. Rudy took the third. The yelling got louder, the smoke thicker. Belmonte won the next three games. “And every time I won I got more frightened about the trip across the car park.”

Finally, around 4am, Rudy Revs called it quits. He looked Belmonte hard in the eye.

“I’ve bowled against everyone but there’s something special about you.” He turned to the crowd. “There’s no shame losing to this kid. He’s going to be great.”

Rudy handed over a fat $20k wad, more money than Belmonte had ever seen. The punters who’d taken his action and triumphed stuffed his pockets with ‘tips’ as he walked out. The Kid ran across the car park, jumped in a cab to his hotel and finally breathed. “It was the greatest night of my life,” Belmonte grins today.

Belmonte had passed through the ring of fire that separates rookie from kingpin.

Sure, ‘action’ dried up once word got around about his beating Rudy Revs but by then the Australian wonder-boy was on his way to becoming the greatest tenpin bowler of all time and the most anonymous world champion in Australia today.

“There’s only one rule in this action: if you’re winning you can’t stop.” was a king – a big guy who played big action for big money. I was a kid following a dream and funding it with a part-time job at Blockbuster Video back home. I knew if I had to run a line of credit with Rudy I was in serious trouble.”

Belmonte found a weathered door in the dark, knocked and gave the code word. The door opened and a wall of smoke and noise hit him in the face. The sledging of 300+ New Yorkers was instant. ‘We’re gonna bounce you home kangaroo boy!’

With his big arms and heavy accent, Rudy was all business. “$3000 a match to start, ris-

CLOCKWISE FROM FAR LEFT

Belmonte during the 2017 Oklahoma Open; and the 2019 PBA World Championship.

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Belmonte at the 2018 PBA Tour Finals.

Back home in Orange, Belmonte doesn’t carry the ego or aura of a world-beater.

With his five-day shadow, warm brown eyes and burbling laugh, he’s not much different to other amiable lads who roam this central -west NSW district of farms and vineyards.

Maybe that’s why the 36-year-old father of three is the perfect poster-boy for an oldschool cool sport whose charms are back on the rise.

For many, our first taste of tenpin bowling was a childhood birthday party: the lights and music, the weird rental shoes and racks of three-eyed 6lb cannonballs.

The big time was the ’50s and ’60s, when it burst onto the world scene. Bowlers were the first sportspeople to get million-dollar contracts and centres sprang up everywhere.

There was a TV-led renaissance in the ’80s, but by the ’90s most bowling centres were old, rundown places smelling of burger fat and stale beer.

Those retro meccas – celebrated vividly in films such as the Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski, the Farrelly brother’s Kingpin and The Simpsons – are where it began for ‘Belmo’.

“In 1982 some friends of my parents came to Orange but it poured rain. ‘Let’s go bowling!’ they said. But there was no centre. Neither of my parents had ever bowled before – my father Aldo ran the electrics for a department store, my mum Marisa worked in

Inside knowledge

“Bowling is where physics, geometry, chemistry and mystery come together,” Belmonte tells GQ. “But what really blows my mind are the sport’s invisibilities.”

The Oil “The first invisible element of bowling is the oil pattern that coats each lane. Every lane has 39 different wooden boards but each board is unique. More oil on outside boards creates more friction and speed and greater angles.”

The Ball “Like a golfer with a bag of clubs we have different balls of different weights that target different shots in different ways. A bowler has to read the slightest shift in oil patterns then reprogram his targeting with the appropriate ball from his arsenal.”

The Mind “I might bowl every two minutes for 10 hours a day for five days straight.

That requires mental fortitude way beyond the sport’s physical demands. I’ve bowled many ‘300 games’ (finishing a 10-frame game with all strikes) but I’ve never bowled a perfect tournament. That’s my quest. No silly mistakes. Perfect.”

her family’s orchards – but they saw an opportunity so borrowed a bit from my grandparents and took out a bank loan to start building.”

Orange Tenpin Bowl still stands 36 years on. It’s where the Belmonte legend – and his enduring riddle – begins. “I’ve had a ball in my hands since I was 18 months old but being so small I had to bowl the ball with two hands.

The style stuck. My parents were busy running the alley – they weren’t experts or coaches. To them their toddler was happy and preoccupied so who cared how he bowled.”

Plenty cared when that weird two-handed action started to get results, first locally then globally. Some cried ‘Cheat’, others sneered, ‘Bowl like a man!’ It hurt, but Belmonte rolled on. “Bowling my way I get more revolutions,” he explains. “That’s a big weapon. More revs means more speed and more power, giving me a higher strike percentage and sharper angles.

But greater speed, power and accuracy also means any error I make is magnified. High risk, high return.”

And the returns have been impressive.

Aside from the millions earned in prizemoney and endorsements, Belmonte is a fourtime PBA Player of the Year and a winner of 22 PBA titles. When he claimed his 11th major in March this year, it made Belmo the greatest majors winner in history. And despite missing out on victory at the US Open in October, Belmo was followed around by a film crew for a Netflix documentary in the works about the Australian’s life and career in the PBA.

PHOTOGR APHY FOR EDDIE WILLIAMS: SOL ABDO. ADDITIONAL PHOTOGR APHY: GET T Y IMAGES. ADDITIONAL WORDS: CHRISTOPHER RILEY.

Belmonte is a god in Orange and a big name in the US where tournaments are beamed live across cable networks like ESPN. In July he launched a range of merch bedecked in the Belmo two-hands logo (“I want to be the Jordan of bowling,” he grins) but what makes him happiest is the legacy he’s laying down.

According to Cara Honeychurch, CEO of Tenpin Bowling Australia, up to 30 per cent of kids starting out in the game are now aping Belmonte’s two-handed roll. “I can’t think of too many sportspeople who have revolutionised their sport as Jason has,” she says. “He’s changed bowling the way Dick Fosbury did high-jump with the ‘flop’. All Australians should know Jason’s name; it’s so disappointing they don’t.”

Belmonte shrugs at the lack of recognition just as humbly as he does the GOAT tags.

“I can’t think of too many sportspeople who have revolutionised their sport as Jason has.”

The first time we speak he’s spurned the opportunity to rub shoulders with Tiger Woods and LeBron James as a nominee at The ESPYs to attend Origin 3 with his mates. He’s leading a bowling renaissance – 40,000 Aussie league players and two million bowlers annually – but is content being a global legend… who’s local.

“Tonight I’ll be back where it all began, at Orange Tenpin Bowl, bowling with my kids and parents and my 80-year-old grandparents,” he smiles. “And I’ll fall back in love with the sport because everyone can bowl their own game within the same game. I’ll be having fun but working on what I need to win the next title. I’ll move in smooth and slow, a graceful drift toward the line. And then… wooshka!” n M E N O F T H E Y E A R 2 01 9 G Q.CO M . AU

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EXPOSURE

SINGAPORE GRAND PRIX But it didn’t stop on the track: the Singapore Formula One Grand Prix claims to be one of the biggest music events in the world, boasting over 130 hours of entertainment across 10 stages with 50 performances a day (from roving artists to stage artists) as well as some serious gourmet cred. Australia’s own Neil Perry even made an appearance, hosting a pop-up of his iconic Rockpool eatery in the prestigious Paddock Club. Not bad.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT

Sebastian Vettel celebrates victory; the Ferrari pit crew in action; Max Verstappen; drivers at the ready; the Red Hot Chilli Peppers performing live; Vettel salutes the crowd; Lewis Hamilton before the race.

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WORDS: NIKOLINA ILIC.

Attracting approximately 250,000 spectators every year, the Singapore F1 Grand Prix is fast emerging as one of the world’s great sporting spectacles.

Flying direct to Singapore with Qantas, GQ got to see the drivers take to the elaborate street circuit, and much like you’d expect, bring a weekend of electricity and heightened emotions, which ultimately saw Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel come out on top.

For knowing where you stand

EXPOSURE

LANDMARK BY LEXUS

On a (typically) drizzly Melbourne Saturday, GQ flew south to attend the ‘Landmark by Lexus’ Marquee at Derby Day. The impressive multi-storey event featured a fine-dining restaurant by our Chef of the Year Matt Stone while the Mumm champagne flowed freely.

Those in attendance took heed of the black and white theme, with model Montana Cox, actor Cameron Robbie and Wallabies star Kurtley Beale all stepping out in monochrome – even the Lexus ‘LC Convertible’ on display was tinted to theme. Suffice to say, it was an indulgent day.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT

Kate Waterhouse; Carmen Hamilton; Montana Cox and Jordan Barrett; the Lexus Design Pavilion; Cameron Robbie and Simon Fitzpatrick; Lindy Klim; Alyce Tran and Ben Mills; lunch curated by chef Matt Stone.

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1.12.19– 13.4.20

Basquiat Haring Crossing Lines

STOCKISTS

Stockists

ACNE STUDIOS acnestudios.com AMIRI amiri.com AMSTERDAM MODERN amsterdammodern.com AQUILA aquila.com.au AUDEMARS PIGUET audemarspiguet.com BALENCIAGA balenciaga.com BALLY bally.com.au BLUE SPINACH 02 9331 3904 BOGLIOLI bogliolimilano.com BONDS bonds.com.au BOSS boss.com BRIXTON brixton.com BROCK BANGLES brockbangles.com BUDS & BOWERS 02 9361 4015 BVLGARI bulgari.com.au CALIBRE calibre.com.au CALVIN KLEIN calvinklein.com.au CARTIER au.cartier.com CHOPARD chopard.com CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN 02 8355 5288 CONVERSE converse.com.au COS cosstores.com.au COURTOIS courtoisparis.fr/en/

DANIEL PATRICK farfetch.com/au DECLIC declic.com.au DIOR EYEWEAR 02 9540 0500 DIOR MEN 02 9229 4600 DOLCE & GABBANA 03 9662 4732 EMPORIO ARMANI Armani.com ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA zegna.com.au FARFETCH farfetch.com FOUR WINDS GALLERY fourwindsgallery.com.au GIORGIO ARMANI Armani.com HARDY BROTHERS hardybrothers.com.au HENRY BUCKS 02 9232 4255 HERMÈS hermes.com HERON PRESTON heronpreston.com HOORSENBUHS hoorsenbuhs.com LUCCHESE lucchese.com HUBLOT 03 8614 4300 HUGO BOSS hugoboss.com.au LOUIS VUITTON louisvuitton.com.au MATCHES FASHION matchesfashion.com MJ BALE mjbale.com MONTBLANC montblanc.com NIKE nike.com

PAUL SMITH paulsmith.com POLITIX politix.com.au PRADA 02 9223 1688 RAY-BAN 1300 655 612 RELIQUIA reliquiajewellery.com RM WILLIAMS rmwilliams.com.au ROUTE 66 02 9331 6686 SAINT LAURENT ysl.com/au SIES MARJAN siesmarjan.com STASH stashjewellery.com THE DAILY EDITED thedailyedited.com THE HUNDREDS thehundreds.com THE ICONIC theiconic.com.au TIFFANY & CO. tiffany.com TOMMY au.tommy.com VALENTINO 02 8404 0888 VAN HEUSEN vanheusen.com.au VENROY venroy.com WARDROBE NYC matchesfashion.com WILLIAM CHESHIRE williamcheshire.com RICK OWENS rickowens.eu ZIMMERLI zimmerli.com

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PHOTOGR APHY: NATHANIEL GOLDBERG. ST YLING: JILLIAN DAVISON.

Alton wears blazer, shirt and skirt, all POA, all by Louis Vuitton. Adut wears dress, $4490, by Thom Browne; watch, $15,800,

by Cartier.

DIRECTORY

THE MODERN MAN’S DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO ESSENTIAL SHOPPING AND SOPHISTICATED STYLE. TH E CHAI N GANG If you have a four-legged best friend, you’ll want him or her to look as stylish as you do when you head out to the park, pub and beyond. From leather collars to highly polished, marine-grade stainless-steel chains, Australian-based brand The Bully House offers accessories with an edge for your pet. the-bully-house.com.au

STR I PE IT LUCKY Want to stand out from the crowd while looking your sophisticated best? It could be time to invest in a Henry Sartorial Multistripe suit from Henry Bucks. The suit comes in navy or charcoal and features subtle stripe detailing, a double vent and breast pocket. henrybucks.com.au

SU ITS YOU A super-stylish suit will take you from a day at the desk to an evening function. Baumler, a leading European brand, is known for its high-quality designs, fine Italian fabrics and traditional tailoring techniques. Available from David Jones. baumler.com.au

FOR A L AR K Straight out of Tasmania comes this superb single malt whisky from Lark Distillery. It’s double distilled and aged in small casks to create a whisky with hints of butterscotch citrus and Tassie peat. larkdistillery.com

I N TH E FOLD Samsung’s ‘Galaxy Fold’ is a shape-shifter.

Folded, it’s a slimline phone that slips into your pocket, but unfold the ‘Infinity Flex Display’ and you have a tablet. It comes in sleek colours and features a multi-app experience and six cameras. samsung.com

PAY AN D PL AY Listen up… Australian brand Nura launched its self-learning headphones that adjust based on your listening preferences, and with the new NuraNow monthly subscription service, you get to experience the Nuraphone headphones, plus a range of other benefits. nuraphone.com

ON A M ISSION Designed for adventurers, the Breitling ‘Super Avenger Chronograph 48 Night Mission’ has bold good looks and a rugged design. The Night Mission interpretation of the ‘Super Avenger Chronograph 48’ features a sturdy, oversized case, blue dial and leather strap. breitling.com

THE LAST WORD

IAN SOMERHALDER The Vampire Diaries star talks climate change, crazy fan experiences and new Netflix series V-Wars.

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“I didn’t love how murderous Damon Salvatore was, but he had some redeeming qualities.

What aspect of Salvatore do you most identify with?

I didn’t love how murderous he was, but he had some redeeming qualities. Salvatore truly enjoyed everything he was doing. I love that about people.

What is people’s biggest misunderstanding when it comes to vampires? They shouldn’t sparkle in the sun!

If you had to pick one: Nobel Peace Prize or best actor at the Oscars? The Nobel Prize would benefit society from public knowledge. The Oscar would give me a much larger platform. It’s pretty wild to think that these amazing Nobel laureates are trailblazing with a life’s work in something so special for the world but a person with an Oscar has more access than a Nobel prize winner could ever have. Crazy, huh?

How did you prepare for your role as a doctor in Netflx’s V-Wars? I did do a ton of research into infectious disease and what the threats of rapidly melting glaciers means to not only the scientific community but ultimately to us. I had never prepared a role as a parent. Having a baby is the best thing you’ll ever do in life but the entire structure of your life changes.

What was the best part of shooting V-Wars? Creating all day with a huge team of people. Every shot, every light, every camera angle, every set and every word that is spoken from the page must be imagined and then captured. It’s a great deal of fun.

Who do you most want to work with? Robert Downey Jr, Meryl Streep, Willem Dafoe, Morgan Freeman and Samuel L Jackson. As far as directors go, there’re a great many doing incredible things. I think Alejandro Iñárritu is one the most dynamic storytellers on this planet. Also Quentin Tarantino... he’s a hero of mine.

V-Wars is out December 5 on Netflix

INTERVIEW: CHRISTOPHER RILEY.

What’s the first thing you do when you wake up?

I’m up every morning just as the sun is barely up.

In that faint and wonderful light, I smile and set my intention for the day.

What’s the best thing about having 15m Instagram followers? Sharing the experience of life with millions of people directly.

And the worst? Seeing how mean people can be to each other. It’s inspiring and daunting to see how much unhappiness and fear comes out of people on social channels when a screen separates us.

Who’s on the workout playlist? A volley between Bo Diddley, Bright Eyes, My Morning Jacket and Tool.

Strange combo but, man, it works!

What’s one thing you hope to teach your daughter?

To appreciate all living things and to be kind and compassionate.

What do you hope to see following the recent climate marches? Real action. Not just by governments but consumers and corporations. Once one starts to move, they all do.

In 50 years I hope … I can look back and think, ‘Wow, we did it. We pulled together and stopped what would have been the sixth mass extinction the world has seen. My grandchildren have clean air, clean water and food with no major wars over these resources.’

Describe Louisiana in three words.

Home. Warmth. Family.

What’s the most bizarre fan interaction you’ve had?

A six-foot, three-inch Wonder Woman pinned me by my neck against a wall at our first Comic Con in San Diego for Vampire Diaries. I was about two inches off the ground for what felt like five minutes. All she wanted to do was tell me that she loved me.

Out of all the characters you’ve played, who would fare best in an apocalypse? Damon Salvatore (The Vampire Diaries) for sure. Boone (Lost) was learning but got killed.

Dr Luther Swann (V-Wars) will have his work cut out for him but he’s up for the task. You’ll have to watch!

And what about in a debate? Salvatore is the most persuasive person I have ever met. He could literally sell sand to a beach.