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Why your
wardrobe
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Editor’s Letter 133
Taste
57 Gordon Ramsay’s fit food
Foreword with flavour; make it a
Haven’t you heard? Rock is dead. So why table for four at London’s
can’t we find a single record we don’t like?
BY DYLAN JONES
most exclusive cocktail
lounge; snacks in the
City; Liverpool’s Titanic
156
hotel raises the bar.

128
141
Travel
110

GQ Preview From peaks to valleys to coastlines,

This month’s Oregon is America’s new Wild West;
products, events follow Simon Mills to Italy’s players’
and offers. piste in the Dolomites.
67 109

67
Details
This month’s complete
cultural digest: glitch-graphic
T-shirts; Cartier’s new watch
takes off; Lightning lead
headphones; stealth-styled 133 141
CEOs; backstage at London
Fashion Week Men’s.
81 147
The GQ Drop
Dropping disgraced actors is not the
answer to #MeToo; futurist morality;
Brett Anderson on life before Suede;
music’s new power players; Corbyn’s
Brexit; Tony Parsons’ fear of medicals.

109
New House Rules
Belt off, braces up; open your
mind and hang up your hats;
LA’s psychedelic mushroom
parties; watches go green;
cash in your ISA and invest 90 147
in hotline bling.

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 23

 178
Civil rights in America has a new young voice. Michael B Jordan, star of Marvel’s
Black Panther, reveals the debt he owes to those who stood before him.
INTERVIEW BY Kevin Powell

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 25

.C OM
 159
202
For your consideration
176

We profile the outstanding talent

who made British theatre in 2017.
159
GQ Car Awards
BY JONATHAN HEAF
PHOTOGRAPHED BY CHARLIE GRAY

From Audi’s
self-driving limo
Features
to the private jet 188 Donald Trump
on wheels, we What goes on behind closed doors? GQ
present another presents the definitive account from the
mighty year most confounding White House in history.
BY MICHAEL WOLFF, MATT KELLY, MATTHEW D’ANCONA,
in motoring – 202 ALASTAIR CAMPBELL, CONRAD QUILTY-HARPER,

including GQ’s GEORGE CHESTERTON AND GARRETT M GRAFF

very special 220 The rise of the influencer

custom two- Like. Follow. Report? Have we let new
wheeler. media’s one-man bands go too far?
BY ELEANOR HALLS

228
The collections SS18
Want to know what you’ll be
wearing this season? GQ
Fashion Director Luke Day
curates the only wardrobe
you need to know about. 188
PHOTOGRAPHED BY MARIANO VIVANCO

260

260
Out To Lunch
Illusionist
Derren Brown
228 works his magic on 220
Jonathan Heaf at Blixen.

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 27

 Editor
DYLAN JONES
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This issue is dedicated to the memory of Harry Uzoka, 1992-2018
When controversy calls
or the past ten years, six
F
times a year, at a corner table
in The Wolseley or in a hotel
bar in New York, I have sat
down with Michael Wolff
for two or three hours and
gossiped. Relentlessly. About
media, politics, Hollywood, Silicon Valley
and money. Never lost for an opinion, Wolff
will hold forth and get whatever it is that is
currently vexing him off his chest. And then
do it again for good measure. While these
breakfasts, lunches and dinners are always
enormous fun, they are never aimless and are
fundamentally R&D sessions for Wolff’s pieces
in GQ. In his time, he has investigated every-
one from Barack Obama and Jann Wenner to
Tina Brown and Alan Rusbridger (the former
editor of the Guardian), and written reams
about the New York Times, Boris Johnson,
David Cameron, Vice and Rupert Murdoch
(before Donald Trump replaced him as Wolff’s
favourite bête noire).
One of his favourite tricks is to gesticulate
with his face rather than actually speak, giving
what he isn’t saying an extra shade of tension,
and giving you the feeling that everything he
says is somehow being listened to by those
who want to bring him down. He is never
less than fascinating company and especially
so when he is regaling you with stories about
prominent boldface names – much of which
is wholly unrepeatable.
That’s saying something when you consider
how much he is willing to share in his bracingly
well-informed columns. His access to the inside
track is precisely why, despite taking for his
purview such seemingly well-trodden ground,
he always kicks up a stir. When Wolff turned
Wolff’s access to the inside track is why he always kicks up a stir
his gimlet eye on Alan Rusbridger for his 2014
piece “The Guardian At The Gate”, about the
paper’s attempt to break the United States, he
got under the skin of the story as only he can.
His knowledge of the paper’s internal politics,
his ability to coolly appraise the characters
involved (the American website’s editor is “a
dishevelled figure always in need of a cigarette
in nonsmoking Manhattan”) and his wither-
ingly unequivocal analysis made it an instant
must-read.
For that matter, I still encounter people
who bring up a piece he wrote five years
Cover: Coat by Burberry, £2,950.
burberry.com. Rollneck by John Smedley,
£150. johnsmedley.com. Beret by Lock & Co,
£95. lockhatters.co.uk
Subscribers’ cover: Coat by Burberry, £2,950.
burberry.com. Rollneck by John Smedley, £150.
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lockhatters.co.uk. Sunglasses by Ray-Ban,
£127. ray-ban.com
ago, “The Damnation Of St Christopher”,
about Christopher Hitchens’ transformation
from socialist showman to moral sage. It out-
raged Hitchens’ devotees (obviously). One
website decried “Michael Wolff’s shameful
hatchet job on Christopher Hitchens” – but
was, predictably, unable to dispute his thesis.
It’s rare for a columnist to make news, but
make news he does. Take, for example, his
2012 piece on the Murdoch television empire,
which sets out lucidly the family’s feelings
about its controversial news channel. Cue
the inevitable follow-ups elsewhere in the
EDITOR’S LETTER
media: “Murdoch family thinks Fox News is
‘an embarrassment’.”
He has been called – disparagingly – a
“media provocateur” and yet he has also
been one of the most astute commentators
not just on new media, but also on the old
newspaper and TV behemoths, those dino-
saurs who Wolff comes to bury. When media
organisations queue up to call you “pathetic”,
“disgusting” and “twisted”, and say your arti-
cles are based on “zero evidence”, then you
know you must be doing something right.
He has fallen out with many of the people
he has written about. After Wolff’s piece about
former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor
Tina Brown, for instance, she refused to ever
speak to him again – which, considering that
they both stay at Claridge’s when they visit
London, has resulted in some rather embar-
rassing encounters in the lobby (however,
the last time they bumped into each other
at the hotel, he was incredibly flattering about
her recently published memoirs).
As the pendulum swings, so shall it fall.
Donald Trump’s bizarre ascension to the White
House was initially benchmarked as a vote
against the apparent liberalism of the Obama
administration, and for a while everything that
surrounded Trump was framed in this way, as
an understandable, if unacceptable, reaction to
what had gone before. Even those who were
appalled by his electoral success – basically
everyone you’ve ever met – begrudgingly
understood why it had happened.
A year in, however, and the conversation
is a very different one. If truth be told –
something of a rarity in the White House these
days, it seems – Trump’s presidency started to
be defined by his behaviour almost as soon
as he took office, as any misplaced idealism
we may have expected from him was swiftly
clouded by a swirl of feverish tweets, angry
TV appearances and the start of what would
be a never-ending fusillade of denials. Here
was the petulant president. The ultimate nar-
cissist, Trump wasn’t so much in office as in
abeyance, unable to do anything other than
respond angrily to the fury and profound
disbelief that surrounded him and immedi-
ately started to define his presidency.
In Wolff’s latest piece for GQ, he reveals
what’s actually been happening in the White »
MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 43
 EDITOR’S LETTER
» House during the past year. Wolff tells
the inside story of the most controver-
sial presidency of our time, unravelling a
period that was fraught with tension, fear
and speculation. Wolff’s material reveals an
administration already in meltdown, telling a
tale that is by turns stormy, outrageous and
never less than mesmerising.
When leaked passages of Wolff’s extraor-
dinary book Fire And Fury: Inside The Trump
White House appeared in the Guardian, which
had obtained an early copy from a bookseller
in New England, and an extract ran in New
York Magazine, it set social media ablaze.
Every news outlet ran the story and seemingly
everyone was delighting in the gory details.
Well, everyone apart from President Trump.
His press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders,
immediately brushed it off as “trashy tabloid
fiction” and Trump declared that his former
chief strategist Steve Bannon – one of Wolff’s
interviewees – had “lost his mind”. The White
House wanted to block its release, so Trump’s
lawyers wrote a stern letter to the publisher,
Henry Holt, demanding that it “immediately
cease and desist from any further publication,
release or dissemination”, citing “numerous
false and/or baseless statements”. Wolff,
however, was steadfast. He responded that
he had recordings, that he had notes and,
contrary to what Trump was claiming, he had
had access to the president.
Who could have wished for better marketing?
The publisher moved the publication date
forward “due to unprecedented demand”. The
BBC ran a video of Washingtonians queuing
up at midnight to read it first, as if it were
the release of a new Harry Potter. The author
posted a message on Twitter: “Here we go.
You can buy it (and read it) tomorrow. Thank
you, Mr President.”
At various points during the past 12 months,
I would meet Wolff for breakfast, lunch or
dinner – both here in London and New York
– and each time he would regale me with ever
more outlandish stories about Trump’s behav-
iour. Remarkably, Wolff was initially one of
the few journalists who Trump trusted. The
process exactly mirrors the one Wolff went
through when he spent a year writing a book
on Rupert Murdoch, The Man Who Owns
The News, based on more than 50 hours of
conversations with Murdoch and exten-
sive access to his business associates and his
family. When the book was published in 2008,
Follow us
@britishgq
@dylanjonesgq
44 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018
Murdoch hated it and went on the offensive,
turning Wolff into even more of a media celeb-
rity than he had been before.
lsewhere in this issue you’ll find
E
  Kevin Powell’s extraordinary
interview with Michael B Jordan,
who stars in the new Marvel
superhero flick Black Panther,
which cost an estimated $200 million, is set in
Africa and stars a predominantly black cast.
“Black Panther was created, coincidentally,
by comic book innovators Stan Lee and Jack
Kirby just months before Huey Newton and David Beckham’s favourite hairstyles
Bobby Seale founded the political organisation On GQ’s YouTube channel, David Beckham
is grilled by Junior Fashion Editor Carlotta
of the same name,” writes Powell. “He was the
Constant about his history of hairstyles as
first superhero of African descent in main- he launches new grooming range House 99.
stream US comics, and his cinematic avatar
could turn out to be one of the most influen- To be or not to be?
tial in Hollywood history.” In Powell’s piece Ahead of the
(p178), one of Hollywood’s most dynamic Olivier Awards,
young actors speaks out about race, diversity, that is one of many
must-watch questions
#MeToo and black power. a dozen of the
“There has never been an otherworldly world’s best theatre
actors answer in films
warrior treatment like Black Panther,” says
for GQ at youtube.
Powell. “Indeed, it comes at a time of great com/britishgq
change and turmoil in the United States, from
the wildly unpredictable presidency of Donald
Trump to endless racial violence and divisions
to nervous conversations about diversity and
inclusion. Directed by Ryan Coogler, the film
marks the third time, after Fruitvale Station and
Creed, that he and Jordan have collaborated,
very much in the tradition of the classic part-
nership between Martin Scorsese and Robert
De Niro. All of this is unprecedented, especially
the fact that it is two young black men staking The world’s best private jets reviewed
claim to a Hollywood that would not have been Ever wonder which private jet to pick? Join
us on our YouTube channel as we review the
open to them in this way when Spike Lee first Bombardier Learjet 75, bookable via Stratajet,
hit the scene in the late Eighties.” and the Ferragamo stiletto-inspired HondaJet.
In complete collaboration with Jordan and
his team, we decided it wasn’t time for polite- Tune into GQ on Vero
ness. For quiet. For traditional fashion images Download Vero for
and interview. We wanted to address the issues daily posts on the
engulfing not just the film industry, but all music we’re listening
to, recommendations
industries – issues that are being discussed, from artists such as
regurgitated and recalibrated on an hourly Goldie and Rita Ora
and exclusive videos
basis, referencing Trump, Black Lives Matter featuring Bastille,
and the likes of NFL player/protester Colin Miguel and many more.
Kaepernick. The issue of empowerment is
pivoting right now and it’s a subject that is no
longer being treated with the abject tokenism
that Hollywood has always excelled at. They
know those days have gone, as do Michael B
Jordan, Ryan Coogler and Kevin Powell. G
Michael B Jordan on fixing Hollywood
How do you restore Hollywood after Weinstein,
#MeToo and decades of discrimination? Cover
star Michael B Jordan shares his thoughts with
Dylan Jones, Editor Kevin Powell on GQ’s YouTube channel.
Elegance is an attitude
Simon Baker

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 Contributors

Kevin POWELL Tom STUBBS

This month sees the release
of Black Panther, Marvel’s
first predominantly black-
led superhero film, which
includes cover star Michael
B Jordan. African American
writer and activist Kevin
Luke DAY Powell engaged Jordan in an
Shot by fashion photographer Mariano Vivanco, our biannual intimate conversation about
“Collections” feature on p228 showcases SS18’s most important being black today. “I see
trends and pieces. Collated by GQ Style Editor and GQ’s new Michael as a younger version
Fashion Director Luke Day, the edit focuses on soft neutral of myself,” says Powell,
shades and relaxed tailoring. Day says, “I think the key message “someone trying to find their
is in the diversity of casting, showing that the season’s key way with the opportunities
trends are relevant for every man.” they’ve been given.”
Menswear stylist, fashion
writer and Londinium
boulevardier Tom Stubbs
has previously considered
important matters such as
the beret and wide-legged
denim (although rarely
together) for GQ’s New
House Rules. He will now
be writing regularly as
a Contributing Fashion
Editor. “I am thrilled to
be contributing to the
dynamic organ that is GQ,”
says Stubbs.

is now the winner of

72 major awards, with
Editor Dylan Jones
scooping the BSME
Editor Of The Year
for 2017.
Nick CARVELL
Previously GQ’s Associate Style Editor,
Nick Carvell has taken up a wide-ranging
brief as one of our Contributing Fashion
Editors. “After five superb years in the
office, I’m excited to head out on
manoeuvres as a roving reporter,” says
Carvell. “See you all on the style pages
very soon.” Teo van den
BROEKE
This month also welcomes
British Esquire’s former style
Jack GUINNESS director, Teo van den Broeke,
Should you wear “fugly trainers”?
into the fold as GQ’s Style
Turn to p124 to read guest Style Shrink
And Grooming Director.
Jack Guinness on this season’s talking-
“I am very excited to begin
point trends. “I approach people in the
contributing bleeding-edge
Photograph Kosmas Pavlos

street and offer unsolicited style advice,”

style content and strong-
says Guinness, “so to be formally asked
meets-useful grooming
my opinion feels great.”
content,” says van den Broeke.
“GQ is the foremost men’s
media brand in the world.
I am honoured to join the
brilliant British team.”

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 53

 Contributors
Nick SARGENT
This month we welcome Economist alumnus Nick Sargent as the
Publishing Director of GQ and GQ Style. He is now looking after both
titles alongside Wired and Ars Technica. “The GQ team is recognised as
leading the field in men’s luxury lifestyle,” says Sargent, “and 2018
will bring exciting new opportunities for our partners.”
Guto HARRI
Former BBC chief political correspondent
and Boris Johnson aide Guto Harri joins
GQ as a Contributing Political Editor. “I
cannot think of a more critical time in
recent British politics,” says Harri. “GQ
covers the scene with great intellect,
integrity, profundity and playfulness
and I’m honoured to join its ranks.”
Tanya GOLD
Journalist Tanya Gold, who writes for
the Guardian, the Spectator and GQ.co.uk
about everything from Jeremy Corbyn
to Meghan Markle, is another new
Contributing Political Editor. “GQ is a
glorious magazine and I am excited to
join,” says Gold, “particularly at such
a thrilling time in British politics.”
54 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018
Eleanor HALLS
The influencer is a new,
almost inconceivable, breed of
social media monster and it’s
taken Instagram hostage. But
how does it live and what is
its game? On p180, GQ Staff
Writer Eleanor Halls aims
to make sense of this new
species, dissecting how it talks,
walks, poses and posts. “It’s
fascinating that ‘influencing’
is now a viable, and lucrative,
career path,” says Halls. “First
you build a personality cult,
then you sell, sell, sell.”
Michael WOLFF
Since Donald Trump was
inaugurated, GQ Contributing
Editor Michael Wolff has had
unprecedented access to the
White House. The result?
His new book, the incendiary
Fire And Fury: Inside The
Trump White House. An
excerpt appears in our major
feature about the president
on p206. “While Trump was
in most ways a conventional
misogynist,” says Wolff, “in
the workplace he was closer
to women than to men.”
Matt KELLY
A new Contributing Editor,
writing mainly about politics,
Matt Kelly is also the editor
of the New European. “I
grew up loving the work
of Anthony Bevins, the
late political editor of the
Independent known for his
killer question to Margaret
Photograph Andrew Testa
Thatcher, ‘If you admire the
NHS so much, why don’t
you use it?’” says Kelly. “If
I can bring 20 per cent of
Bevins’ angry curiosity to
the pages of GQ, it will be
a good thing.” G
E S TA B L I S H E D 1 9 0 3 TIGEROFSWEDEN.COM

F L A G S H I P S T O R E , 2 1 0 P I C C A D I L LY, L O N D O N W 1 J 9 H L
 FOREWORD

‘I dig everything’
Like jazz before it, the age of rock has joined the choir invisible. So why did an
attempt to codify 60 years of hits reveal new life in records we’d left on the shelf?
STORY BY Dylan Jones

’m sitting on a plane, reading one that completists such as me really Above: Records switch on BBC Radio 6 Music at

I 
a book about Lou Reed. I don’t
even like Lou Reed, not much,
but the reviews had been good
Photograph Getty Images
that never made it
ought to finish. You see I’ve started to your collection pretty much any time of the day I’m
to subscribe to David Hepworth’s are still worth a bound to hear something I like, if you
theory that the narrative arc of pop is fair hearing look at the genre objectively, it’s over.

– the book is by the award-
winning Anthony DeCurtis and is
actually completely captivating –
and like many people the reason
I was reading it is because I’ve
started to look at the 60-year
history of the rock era as a jigsaw,
slowly but surely drawing to a close.*
Like the jazz era, I’ve got a sneaking
suspicion that the age of rock is going
to be finite and, while there will
continue to be breakout stars who
will fill stadiums from here to Buenos
Aires and while I know that if I
Which means that if you believe
that the golden age of pop lasted from
around 1955 to right about now, the
logical thing to do is to start working
your way through it all, discovering
lots of things that you didn’t know
you liked along the way. Which »
MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 57
 GQ FOREWORD
» also means that you’ll soon start
seeing the good in everything and
everyone. Even Phil Collins. Even
Kula Shaker. Perhaps even London
Grammar. Because if you’re like me,
you’ll end up liking everything.
Now, obviously that wasn’t
always the case. When I was young,
I was resolutely judgemental in my
opinions, as all teenagers ought to
be. I loved David Bowie, T Rex, The
Rolling Stones, The Who and I hated
Led Zeppelin, Yes and Queen. Then,
when punk came along I was pushed
further into my proscriptive ways,
denying I’d ever bought a Genesis
record and telling everyone that the
ELO album in my collection (ie the
cardboard box at the bottom of my
bed) belonged to my brother. You
soon learned what was good and
what wasn’t and you’d have to have
been a dummkopf not to have known
that The Velvet Underground, The
Stooges and the somnolent strains of
Nick Drake and Brian Protheroe were
cool. Big deal.
hen, as maturity set in, I
T
  readily admitted I actually
rather liked Donald Fagen
and couldn’t see why
everyone was always
beating up on Fleetwood Mac.
Then I fell in love with Queen at
Live Aid, spent so much time in the
US that I finally began to understand
the appeal of Bruce Springsteen and
when I learned to drive I cottoned on
PDQ that few things sounded better
blasting out of the car speakers than
“Kashmir” by Led Zeppelin.
And so it has carried on. In
much the same way that Bowie
said to himself in the mid-Seventies,
“You know what? I think I’m going
to become a cocaine addict for a
while and I’m going to do it better
than anyone else,” so I’ve gone
through periods when I’ve said to
myself, “Right, Dylan, you know
largely nothing about the later
works of The Kinks and even
though their Seventies albums are
much derided they can’t all be bad,
so why don’t you dive in and see
what you can find?”
Which is what I’ve done for the
last 25 years of my life, just like
you might if you had never read
any books by Saul Bellow or Philip K
Dick or never watched a film by Pier
Paolo Pasolini or Robert Rodriguez.
60 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018
I used Now, obviously this doesn’t always
work – I once spent a month doing
to deny due diligence on the recorded output
I’d ever of Leonard Cohen and, apart from
half a dozen solid-gold classics,
bought couldn’t and still can’t see what all
a Genesis the fuss is about – but I certainly like
a lot more than I used to, so much
record so that my study (basically a large
cardboard box at the bottom of my
house) has started to resemble HMV
in its Nineties pomp, when the
megastores on Oxford Street were
larger than most NCP car parks. I
once did a similar thing with jazz (all
of it, mind, or at least as much as I
could listen to in a year), ploughing
my way through everything from
Ornette Coleman to Wayne Shorter,
and from Clifford Brown to Eric
Dolphy. This, I’m fairly convinced,
is how generations will consume
“catalogue” or “legacy” rock in the
future, whether it’s rock or R&B or
rap or techno or the kind of docile
chill-out sounds you hear whenever
you walk into the lobby of any hotel
built after 1995. Ah, you think to
yourself, now what was all the
fuss about Spooky Tooth or LCD
Soundsystem? What was it that chap
in the bar was saying about Lou
Rawls? And why did my older sister
have all those Kasabian albums?
Of course, in a world where Spotify
rules supreme and where songs are
decontextualised to such an extent
that we don’t know when they were
released, why they were written or
what the people who recorded them
actually look like, it’s easy to imagine
the great 60-year canon of rock as
a flat surface, a level playing field
where nothing foreshadows anything
else, where nothing takes precedence
or plays second fiddle and where
jigsaw puzzles become constantly
changing algorithms, both purposeful
and purposeless at the same time.
The accessibility and randomness of
culture these days means that people
create their own stories, their own
narratives, carrying them around like
an Amazon warehouse squeezed into
a smartphone.
The accessibility of
culture means people
create their own stories
But while alternative delivery
systems successfully manage to
fracture the narrative of everything,
you can’t alter history, just like you
can’t, for instance, change the
extraordinary effect The Beastie
Boys had on the marketplace
when they released their first
album, Licensed To Ill, in 1986.
They came up with a template
that could never be reinvented.
Sure, it could be copied, but no
one could ever again claim to have
stumbled upon frat-boy rap, because
The Beastie Boys had got there first.
owever, I come not to
H
  bury, but to praise,
to resurrect. After
all, we’re not so
much talking about
connoisseurship here. We’re talking
about those future generations of
completists who might just want
it all because it’s there. Seriously,
who’s to say that in 50 years’ time
there won’t be hordes of curious
young men and women keen to hear
hours and hours of unedited tapes
*In his book Uncommon People: The Rise And Fall Of The Rock Stars, Hepworth dares to announce the end of rock as we know it
of The Libertines rehearsing for a
soon-to-be-cancelled gig at The
Tabernacle? Was this of great cultural
significance or will it be collected
simply because it happened?
Come on. Who knew I would one
day own everything ever recorded
by Father John Misty? How could I
have known back in my teens that
I would one day own over three feet
of yacht-rock CDs? How could I have
foreseen that I’d have more than
100 Bob Dylan songs on my laptop?
(Sorry. Bob was another one I could
never really buy into, and to say I
came late to the Dylan party is a bit
like saying I turned up the following
morning after the police had left
and after everyone else had gone
home, but just in time to see the
faces of the horrified parents who
had just returned in time to see their
pathetically hung over offspring
desperately trying to sponge an
absinthe stain out of the sofa.)
Honestly, it seems as though I’m
going to end up liking everything
that’s ever been recorded.
Just like you. The great rock’n’roll
library, pop’s ultimate box set, is very
nearly full and it’s probably time you
stared making withdrawals. Who
knows? You might even start to like
Lou Reed. I nearly did. G
 YOUR BRAIN IS
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 this month: glitch-defect t-shirts p.83 destination food halls p.85 skin savers p.89 up-dress your desk p.91
Grooming Maarit Niemela at Bryant Artists

P O R T R A I T BY

DAVID BAILEY
THE

RISING
S TA R

Bert Seymour
It’s like we’ve always said: good grooming makes the man. Meet the young British actor
whose rapid ascent to stage and screen began with a moustache

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 67

 SHARE YOUR STORY
An always-on Bluetooth link lets the FUJIFILM X-E3 stay connected to
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 DETAILS

» Do not underesti- A sense of occasion pervades

at ‘occasionwear’ destination
mate the power of a Favourbrook, St James’s
moustache. Just ask
rapidly ascending
25-year-old actor Bert
Seymour, son of English
fashion designer Anya
Hindmarch. “My very
first audition, for a
role in Endeavour’s
series five on ITV, was
the morning after my
final Lamda show,
for which I’d grown a
Thirties-style mous-
tache,” says Seymour.
While he graced the
audition last June with
said ’tache, he hadn’t
had time to learn a
single line so had to
read from a script. “I
THE
thought I’d bombed.”
Three weeks later, STYLE
CIRCUIT
astride a “Boris Bike”,
he received a call
from his agent. “But
it was so windy I
Favourbrook fever
couldn’t hear her,” he Jacket by
Favourbrook, £990.
Oliver Spencer’s new boutique
says. Eventually she favourbrook.com is committed to the party
managed to tell him the
news: he had got the
part as army lieuten-
W hile most of the
planet wonders
what Meghan Markle will
creative and cultivated; and
to the south, gentleman’s
clubs full with members
ant Rupert Carmichael be wearing on the big day, eager to pick up a shawl-
in Endeavour – and had Oliver Spencer is preparing collared smoking jacket in
been asked to keep for an onslaught on his readiness for an evening’s
his lip tickler. “When 25-year-old British occa- socialising or for loung-
filming wrapped, the sionwear brand – and ing around at home. But
director, Robert Quinn, wedding guest favourite – Spencer isn’t settling merely
said, ‘You walked into Favourbrook. A statutory for the locale. “I wanted to
the room, had the stop-off for any self- create something between
moustache and there respecting flâneur on his a museum and [private
was Rupert Carmichael. perambulations around members’ club] Loulou’s,” he
Done,’” says Seymour, London’s St James’s, it says of the shopping space.
who is now on to his has now opened what “I want it to be a magnet
second job: a role in Spencer believes is the only for people who go out and
Second World War store dedicated to “night have fun. The funny thing
play Pressure, along- and occasion”. is, even with all the turmoil
From a “destination retail” in the world, people are
side its writer, David
point of view, Favourbrook’s still getting dressed up.”
Haig. Central to the
latest move is a smart one. Besides six cuts of velvet
part? You guessed
To the west sits Christie’s, jacket, eleven varieties of
it. “It’s funny,” says
with its deep-pocketed col- waistcoat (available in 750
Seymour, who’s keen lectors; to the east is the designs) and thousands
to audition for a role in London Library, perch of the of bow-ties, Favourbrook
Netflix’s The Crown. “I remains the spiritual home
owe the moustache a
lot.” Eleanor Halls ‘I wanted to create of the morning suit. Expect
Harry’s friends to be
Pressure is at Park
Theatre until 28 April.
something part heading down there shortly.
16-17 Pall Mall, London
parktheatre.co.uk museum, part Loulou’s’ SW1. favourbrook.com

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 69

 Augment your life:
Three substitutions to make this month

Forget: The Premier League Watch: The Champions League

The vinyl revival remains in rude health.
Dylan Jones selects an overlooked classic to hunt
out next time you’re flicking through the crates…
Like the designer decade
with which it would soon
become synonymous,
the CD was an emblem
of burnished success – a
smarter, more upmarket
version of all that had
gone before it. The CD
was a designer accessory
like no other and heralded
an era when music
became codified. Almost
overnight, music became a
lifestyle accessory, a muted
background fizz to be played
at designer dinner parties
in designer lofts in designer
postcodes. To critics – the
sweaty guys at the back
with the bad teeth, the bad
shoes and more opinions
than they would ever have
money – “CD music” became
pejorative, as did the likes
of Sade, Anita Baker and
Luther Vandross. They said
this was just music with
the edges rubbed off, with
the soul extracted. “Sade?”
they said, almost as one.
“Those guys are so boring
their dreams have muzak.
With Manchester City essentially playing a different game from everyone else, the
Premier League was over almost as soon as it began. Far more exciting to focus on the
return of the Champions League this month and the record five English sides in the
knockout stage alongside vulnerable-looking favourites Real Madrid and Barcelona.
And barely audible muzak,
at that.” If you didn’t
have the wherewithal to
surround yourself with the
occupational hazards of
yuppiedom, then a few
CDs left casually on the
sub-Matthew Hilton coffee
Turn off: TED Talks Turn on: Heavyweight
table would suffice.
What the critics didn’t Hosted by former This American Life-r Jonathan Goldstein, Heavyweight is the best
understand was that the
Eighties generation wanted
podcast you’ve never heard of. Each episode involves resolving painful moments in
designer dreams just as people’s lives, from the decades-long rift between his father and his uncle to the guy
much as their predecessors who leant Moby the CDs he sampled to become a star. It’s also very funny indeed.
did – and what the market
wants the market tends to
get. Or at least it did in the
Eighties. Which is probably
why Sade became one of
the biggest bands of the
decade, “designer” or not.
Their first album (sorry, CD),
Diamond Life (“Smooth
Operator”, “Your Love Is
King”, “Hang On To Your
Love” etc) sold six million
copies in the UK and in the Ditch: The Cinnamon Club Dine at: Indian Accent
neighbourhood of 17 million
in the US. Which, as Robert
Adding to the capital’s roster of Indian fine dining, Indian Accent opens its third
De Niro says at the end branch worldwide, after its first in New Delhi and the second in New York, in Mayfair.
of Midnight Run, is a very The original has been a stalwart of the World’s Best 50 list and the London dishes,
respectable neighbourhood. including makhan malai and ghee roast lamb, certainly look promising. Stuart McGurk

2 Clear a path 4 Saber away

B R I N G YO U R Find the seam where Run the blade up the

‘A’ the glass joins together.

Expose a strip in the
seam. The impact of
the metal against the
GAME neck foil so you can lip will cause the cork
see the full line. “The and the glass around
No.38 seam is where the foil it to fly off. “Go
Saber a finishes, so you can straight through and
champagne bottle just turn the foil back don’t stop. It should
Time was, French on both sides.” be an elegant sweep.”
1 Lower the 3 Present arms 5 After notes...
soldiers celebrated
Illustrations Dave Hopkins

temperature Put your thumb in the The blade should never

victories by opening Chill your champagne. base of the bottle and lose contact with the
bottles this way. “A fridge is cold cradle it at 45 degrees glass. “If you ‘chop
Today, the art is enough, but for a really with your fingers. down’ onto the glass at
kept alive by the clean cut, chill the Position a blunt sabre the end of the bottle,
Confrérie Du Sabre bottle in the freezer (or blunt kitchen knife) it will explode.” Also,
d’Or. Here’s a guide for ten minutes.” Next, two inches from the avoid sabraging clear
from ambassador remove the wire and base. Hold the blade bottles as the glass can
Julian White... foil around the cork. flat against the seam. be too weak. Now pour...

70 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

 DETAILS

Above: Presenter Nicki

Shields hosts the FIA
Formula E Championship
She’s electric
As the 2018 season gets into gear, Formula E host and pit-lane reporter NICKI SHIELDS
tells us why the buzz continues to build around the world’s most futuristic sport
As electric cars roar into view, it’s unsurprising that Formula One
THE is feeling the heat. Coming up on the inside lane? Electric racing
WOMAN championship Formula E, backed by heavy hitters such as Audi,
T O W AT C H
BMW and Porsche – and Nicki Shields. The 32-year-old host and
pit-lane reporter for the FIA Formula E Championship is fast
becoming the new face of motorsport. “Formula E is doing so
well because it’s competitive, whereas F1 only has two or three
teams at the top,” says Shields, whose ambitions are not limited
to the racetrack. In fact, she wants to become the first presenter
in space. “I’d love to go up there,” says Shields. “I had a discussion
PHOTOGRAPH BY
with Virgin Galactic. It’s not unrealistic.” Well, when you have the
Charlie Gray need for speed... EH The Mexico City ePrix takes place on 3 March.
TOPMAN.COM
 DETAILS

Back in the spotlight

Tales From The Turntable with Wilko Johnson at 229 The Venue, London
The former Dr Feelgood and Blockheads guitarist wants to have a word. On 22 February.

For the nightstand

Enlightenment Now GQ
by Steven Pinker
Troubled by Trump and all he stands
NAVIGATOR
for? Fear not. The end, says Pinker, is
far from nigh. Out on 27 February.

Feel Free: Essays

by Zadie Smith
What is Facebook really about? Smith
brings smart thinking to this and
other questions of the age. Out now.
Diarise these!
From books to breakout art shows via your next In cinemas
Netflix binge, get ahead of the water-cooler chat and Black Panther
Read about Marvel’s latest (and
set your cultural compass to this month’s pole stars... then some) in our Michael B Jordan
interview on p178. Out on 13 February.

The Only Story

by Julian Barnes
The Man Booker Prize winner is back
with this tale of a young man and his
first, unconventional love. Out now.
Skin In The Game
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Black Swan author on why
everything you thought you knew
about risk is (you guessed it) wrong.
Out on 27 February.
Listen to
Man Of The Woods
by Justin Timberlake
Pop’s smooth operator calls this a
“personal” and “earthy” engagement
with his Tennessee roots. Out now.
Everything
Is Recorded
by Everything Is Recorded
Tactile 21st-century soul featuring
the likes of Sampha and Kamasi
Washington. Out on 16 February.
Always Ascending
by Franz Ferdinand
Far from depleted by the exit of
guitarist Nick McCarthy, Franz have
a new spring in their step. Out now.
Book now
Flight Of The
Conchords
“New Zealand’s fourth most
popular folk-parody duo”
are touring the UK for the
first time in seven years.
From 6 March to 3 April.
Stream it
Altered Carbon
Based on books by Richard Morgan, this sci-fi noir stars Joel Kinnaman
(below) as body-swapping detective Takeshi Kovacs. Out now on Netflix.
The Shape Of Water
Guillermo Del Toro’s fable about
a mysterious creature is a feat of
imagination. Out on 14 February.
Red Sparrow
J-Law is a Russian spy skilled in the
art of seduction. Pity the CIA officer
who crosses her. Out on 2 March.
Roman J Israel, Esq
This story had us at “from the
director of Nightcrawler”. Out now.
Lady Bird
Oscar pundits are swooning over
Greta Gerwig’s low-key, coming-
of-age comedy. Out on 16 February.

Rebel
by Nick Nolte
A candid memoir of self-destruction,
drugs and testicle tucks from the
Oscar-nominated actor. Out now.
Microshift
by Hookworms
The Leeds space-rockers lift off,
exploring emotional trauma with
cosmic intensity. Out now.

Don’t miss
Journeys With
The Waste Land
at Turner Contemporary, Margate
In his most famous poem, TS Eliot
wrote, “On Margate Sands/I can
connect/Nothing with nothing.” The
curators of this exhibition about his
work’s impact on the arts had no
such trouble. Until 17 May.

Johnny Burfoot Christy Brown Daniel Plainview Abraham

Daniel in My Beautiful in My Left Foot in There Will Be Lincoln in
Day-Lewis has Laundrette (1989) Blood (2007) Lincoln (2012)
announced that couture (1985) For his A study in Day-Lewis strips
A fascist street Oscar-winning brutality and Honest Abe out
Photograph Rex

drama Phantom Thread

punk who falls performance as corruption of mythology
(out now) will be his
for a British the cerebral that drunk the and off the
final film. Herewith, Pakistani man. palsy-afflicted milkshake of banknotes
four legacy-defining Not an easy role, artist, he spent everyone else up to render him
performances that capture but Day-Lewis months living in for that year’s real, complex
why that’s a tragedy… nails it. a wheelchair. Best Actor Oscar. and human.

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 77

 THE

RUMOUR
MILL

BY Alex Wickham

Theresa May’s aides

have resorted to
gallows humour to
lift the mood at Number
Ten. I hear that when
things get tough the
prime minister’s senior
advisors tell each other
“nothing has changed”
in reference to their
boss’ famous election
campaign gaffe. We
highly doubt she’d find
it funny...

Theresa May’s chief

of staff Gavin Barwell
is currently jostling
for position to be the
next Tory candidate
for mayor of London.
It speaks volumes
about life at Number Ten
that he is considering
leaving a plum job
there for the near- VIDEO
THE
Far Cry 5 is playing politics
impossible task of
defeating Sadiq Khan.
GAME
(and it’s about time too)
May herself deals with
In the latest instalment of the hit first-person series, gamers fix crosshairs on Red State
the strains of the job in America. Trump-age reality check or just another routine shoot-em-up?
a less dramatic manner.
Ubisoft, maintains that the title
A cabinet minister tells
me that during an
important one-on-one
 A s technology continues to
shrink our world, so time seems
to quicken. And as news channels
5, meanwhile, pits you against a
Montana-based cult and far-right
militia, similar to the kind whose
promises not a battle between
conservative and liberal America, but
meeting a few weeks
currently struggle to cover break- support Trump’s campaign appears a more traditional (and less divisive)
ago, the prime minister
dozed off and had to be ing developments, pity the makers to have courted. clash between good and evil. But is
woken by a loud clearing of blockbuster video games, whose Critics argue that the game, in that kind of narrative, long the staple
of the minister’s throat. visions take years to bring to life. which you play as a deputy sheriff of game writers everywhere, starting
Sleepless nights?
Addressing contemporary themes facing off against said militia, to look naive? Game developers
Jeremy Corbyn is known through games in a fast-changing could easily devolve into a redneck should not be afraid to get political,
as “the absolute boy” world is risky. Still, some game devel- hunt, presenting a partisan and especially when choosing such
by his supporters. And opers have successfully dealt with classist caricature of contemporary loaded settings. And when they do,
now Angela Rayner, the
Corbynista choice to current events. Watch Dogs 2, for America. The game’s publisher, it could be the difference between a
be the leader after Jez, example, casts you as a member of game that’s exciting – perhaps even
has been dubbed “the
absolute babe” by her
a hacktivist group vying to take Critics argue the a game that’s great – and one that’s
down a privacy-violating corporation, exceptional. Simon Parkin
admirers in the party.
Because that’s not at a setting that’s ever more relevant
game could devolve Out for PS4, Xbox One and PC on
all patronising... by the day. Next month’s Far Cry into a redneck hunt 27 March.
 DETAILS

MY

STYLE

Simon Webb
Wish list
The My Style photographer
steps in front of the camera to Jacket
share his wardrobe highlights “The vintage leather
is stunning. The back
SELF PORTRAIT BY Simon Webb is pleated, so your
shoulder blades can
move around when
you lean over.”
By Ralph Lauren, £2,865.
ralphlauren.co.uk

Coat
“Sandro always delivers a great cut
Wish list in a wonderful material. I often pop
my collar because it looks better.”
Sunglasses £550. sandro-paris.com
“I’ve loved Tom Ford frames
ever since I found a pair in
a South African airport. This Watch
style suits my round face.” “The mocked-up designs, which I first saw
£320. At Selfridges. selfridges.com on Kickstarter, were inspired by old café
motorbike racers and tanks. I loved them.”
By Seals, £600. seals-watches.com

Jewellery
“This bracelet is still as beautiful
as the day I bought it. I really like
cowboy-style accessories and this
one features pistols.”
By Metal Couture, £445.
metalcouture.com

Camera
“I wanted a camera to
carry in my bag instead
of relying on my iPhone.
This Leica is a field model. Dog
It’s so well made, I can “Tommy is always in the
studio. He makes my
take it with me every day.” subjects so much calmer.
£3,570. leicastore-mayfair.co.uk There’s no ego when
you’ve got a lovely dog
jumping on your lap.”

Boots
Story by Eleanor Halls

Wish list “At Tricker’s, you sit on a stool,

Watch
“Panerai’s Luminor Marina is a beautiful
shape. Plus, it’s black and silver, which
are the two colours I always wear.”
£5,900. panerai.com
a man gets on his knees, puts
the shoe on for you and calls you
sir. I love those old-school details.”
£425. trickers.com

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 79

 LEICA. DAS WESENTLICHE.

NEW

Available in the Leica Store Mayfair, City,

Manchester and at authorised Leica dealers
leica-camera.com
 DETAILS

How time flies

Originally (and literally) launched in 1911, the first
iteration of this soaring timepiece was strapped to the
wrist of aeronautical hero Alberto Santos-Dumont

THE

WATCH
PAG E

I
 
n 1906, the Brazilian
aviator Alberto Santos-
Dumont became the first
man to achieve powered
flight without the aid
of a launch device. He
was, a scant two years
later, the first to produce
a commercially available
aircraft, the Demoiselle.
Unsurprisingly, he was
also the first to sport his
eponymous wristwatch,
created by his friend Louis
Cartier, which is credited
as being not only the first
pilot’s watch, but also the
first wristwatch designed
specifically for men. The
Santos went on sale in
1911, serving as perhaps
the most elegant “tool
watch” of its age, achieving
truly mass appeal when it
was finally made available
in bicolour and steel
models in the Seventies.
But the design is no relic:
PH
its handsome “rounded OT
OG
square” case is instantly RA
Photography assistant Davide Cassinari Paper artist Maud Vantours

PH
recognisable and its BY
Th
credentials as a horological om
groundbreaker ensure as
Le
its continued currency. gr
an
Cartier has chosen 2018 d
to celebrate Santos-
Dumont’s daredevil
genius by offering two
new steel-cased models:
one automatic (available
in two sizes), the other
a skeletonised, manually-
wound version available
in the larger size. Bill Prince
Santos De Cartier by Cartier,
from £4,100. cartier.co.uk

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 81

 Ben Cura
Hayden Keys

Eric Underwood
Isaac Carew
Allen Leech

Jim Chapman
Craig McGinlay

Douglas Booth
Joe Cole

THE

PARTY

Olga Kurylenko and

Ludovic du Plessis

Photographs James Mason

PAG E
Freddie Fox

Louis XIII toasts

‘100 Years’
Rémy Martin’s Louis XIII Cognac
and GQ Editor Dylan Jones
co-hosted a dinner at London’s
Arts Club to celebrate “100 Years”,
a song by Pharrell Williams
produced by the drinks brand
to highlight climate change.
The song will be publicly
Henry Lloyd-Hughes

released in a century’s time

Mark Stanley and

Edward Holcroft
Rubee Mahboob

– if rising water levels don’t

Ezra Miller and

destroy the only recording...

Jessica Lemarié-Pires

and Elizabeth Parte

and Youri Djorkaeff
Sophie Djorkaeff

and Robert Pires

Amaury Vinclet
Jeremy Irvine

82 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

 DETAILS

THE

TREND
ALERT

Your next T-shirt

must be glitched
River Island’s Blood Brother team-up can’t be faulted
The graphic T-shirt is hardly anything new, but
the love it has been getting from the fashion world’s
upper echelons certainly is. So much so that trends have
developed within the trend, from political slogans to music
tour merchandise. The new fixation is glitch-defect prints –
deliberately distorted photographic images. One of our
favourites comes from River Island’s latest Design Forum
collaboration with menswear brand Blood Brother.
Having started as a graphic T-shirt specialist label in 2011,
Blood Brother has released an eleven-piece capsule collection
that references military garments and vintage streetwear, using
a muted colour palette of black, indigo and grey offset by accents
T-shirt by Blood Brother x
of “safety” orange. Let your T-shirt do the hard work so you don’t River Island Design Forum,
have to. Carlotta Constant riverisland.com £25. riverisland.com

Five other glitch-defect T-shirts that nail the trend

T-shirt by Diesel, £50. T-shirt by APC, £95. T-shirt by Prada, £440. T-shirt by Boss Orange, £35. T-shirt by Givenchy, £320.
diesel.com At Harvey Nichols. harveynichols.com At farfetch.com hugoboss.com At matchesfashion.com

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 83

 The winner of
72 major awards

GQ is the only magazine in Britain dedicated to bringing you the very best in style,
investigative journalism, comment, men’s fashion, lifestyle and entertainment.
British GQ is the brand to beat
NEW! 2017 BSME Editor Of The Year 2010 Amnesty International Media Award
2017 Lovie Best Website For Lifestyle 2010 One World Media Press Award
2017 Digiday Publishing Awards Europe 2010 The Maggies Magazine Cover Of The Year
Best Use Of Facebook Live 2010 P&G Awards Best Styling (GQ Style)
2017 Digiday Publishing Awards Europe 2009 PPA Writer Of The Year
Best Branded Content Program 2008 BSME Editor Of The Year
2017 PPA Writer Of The Year 2007 BSME Magazine Of The Year
2017 AOP Audience Development Team Of The Year 2007 BSME Brand Building Initiative Of The Year
2017 CNI Best Brand Financial Performance In 2007 MDA/MJA Press Gazette Awards Best Cover
Native Advertising 2007 P&G Awards Best Styling (GQ Style)
2017 CNI Best Native Campaign Of The Year 2006 P&G Awards Best Grooming Editor (GQ Style)
2016 BSME Editor Of The Year 2006 P&G Awards Best Styling (GQ Style)
2016 Digiday Awards Europe Video Team Of The Year 2006 MDA/MJA Press Gazette Awards
2016 Shots Awards Brand Entertainment Interviewer Of The Year
Of The Year - Series 2006 MDA/MJA Press Gazette Awards
2016 Ciclope Festival Finalist, Best Direction Best Designed Consumer Magazine
2016 Lovie Long Form Or Series Video First Place 2006 MDA/MJA Press Gazette Awards
2016 Lovie Long Form Or Series Video People’s Choice Subbing Team Of The Year
2015 DMA Men’s Lifestyle Magazine Of The Year 2006 PPA Writer Of The Year
2005 PPA Writer Of The Year
2015 FMJA Stylist Of The Year (GQ Style)
2005 Magazine Design Awards Best Cover
2014 BSME Digital Art Director Of The Year
2004 Association Of Online Publishers Awards
2014 DMA Designer Of The Year Best Website
2014 TCADP Media Award 2004 BSME Magazine Of The Year
2014 FPA Feature Of The Year 2003 PPA Writer Of The Year
2014 FPA Journalist Of The Year 2002 BSME Magazine Of The Year
2014 Amnesty International Media Award 2002 PPA Writer Of The Year
2014 PPA Editor Of The Year 2001 BSME Magazine Of The Year
2014 FMJA Online Fashion Journalist Of The Year 2001 PPA Designer Of The Year
2013 EICA Media Commentator Of The Year 2001 Printing World Award
2013 DMA Men’s Lifestyle Magazine Of The Year 2000 Total Design Award
2013 BSME Editor Of The Year 2000 Jasmine Award Winner
2013 FMJA Outstanding Contribution To 1999 Printing World Award
London Collections Men 1999 Jasmine Award Winner
2013 PPA Magazine Writer Of The Year 1999 PPA Designer Of The Year
2012 Mark Boxer Award 1995 Ace Press Award Circulation
2012 BSME Editor Of The Year 1995 Ace Press Award Promotion
2012 DMA Lifestyle Magazine Of The Year 1995 PPA Columnist Of The Year
2012 Help For Heroes Outstanding Contribution 1994 PPA Publisher Of The Year
2012 Px3 Prix De La Photographie Paris Gold Medal 1991 British Press Circulation Award
2011 Foreign Press Association Media Awards, Sports Best Promotion Of A Consumer Magazine
2011 Amnesty International Media Award

Street eats are about to get some all-weather competition. Introducing: the capital’s
next-gen food halls, which fuse the buzz of the souk with the hype of destination dining
Japan Centre
The lunch one
35b Panton Street, SW1.
japancentre.com
The new flagship of this famous
“depachika” – Japanese for
“basement food hall” – is now open
off Piccadilly Circus. Inside there’s a
supermarket, fishmonger, cafeteria,
chilled counter and hot deli. Good for
speedy lunch hours and stocking up.
The vibe inside: The bright, breezy
space is seriously no-frills – think
strip lighting and wipe-clean tables
– but it’s smart and everything is set
around a 100-seat courtyard, which
creates a communal buzz.
Seek out: Something traditional
from the Sake Room, or enjoy
grab-and-go hand-pulled udon,
ramen or gyoza prepared on the
spot. Pillowy hirata buns, stuffed
with strands of gently marinated
pulled pork, are best enjoyed
steaming hot there and then.
THE
LONDON
SCENE
How very bazaar
Peckham Levels
The secret one
95a Rye Lane, SE1.
peckhamlevels.org
Open since last October, Peckham
Levels is in the same South London
car park as the much loved rooftop
bar Frank’s Café. Seven unused
floors have been repurposed for
foodies, as well as studio space for
emerging artists.
The vibe inside: Street-food vendors
and a café are joined by a craft
taproom and cocktail bar across the
fifth and sixth floors. For those not
working, making or creating on-site,
these floors are what it’s all about,
so head right on up.
Seek out: The chicken – whether
the wings from Drums & Flats or
the burgers from Other Side Fried
– which are best washed down with
something golden and hoppy from
Lady Godiva. Be sure to stay for live
music afterwards.
Feast Canteen
The business one
King Street, W6. feastcanteen.co.uk
Claiming to reinvent the canteen
for the modern age, Feast – which
opened in Hammersmith last month
– features four rotating restaurants
(the first set includes Salvation In
Noodles, Patty & Bun and Breddos
Tacos). Wi-Fi and workstations
make it popular for working lunches.
The vibe inside: Rustic wood,
modern glass and bold pops of
colour have transformed the ground
floor of this mall into a epicentre of
lunchtime excellence.
Seek out: Something from every
kiosk then share it with the rest
of your squad. Our ideal mix: a
baja fish taco with limo mayo
and pico de gallo; a classic “Ari
Gold” cheeseburger; a wood-fired
pizza laden with goat’s cheese on
beetroot-infused dough; and a
zesty chilli and garlic prawn salad.
DETAILS
Sample Japan Centre’s ramen
and sushi menus, then
reproduce the dishes at home
Bang Bang Oriental
The gargantuan one
399 Edgware Road, NW9.
bangbangoriental.com
Build it in Colindale and they will
come, they said – and they weren’t
wrong. This food hall dedicated
exclusively to Eastern eats has put
the North London locale on the
gastro map. Take a whistle-stop tour
of everywhere from China to Korea.
The vibe inside: There’s luxury at the
Golden Dragon, an upscale, ground-
floor Chinese restaurant, while
upstairs an airport-style hangar,
decked out in wood, features
counters and shared tables fringed
by 30 kiosks from every region.
Seek out: Comfort in familiarity
– sushi made on the spot from
Umi, for instance. Alternatively, go
beyond the bao at Taiwanese Street
Food, or plunder lesser-known
dishes on the Malaysian menu at
Coconut Tree. Nicky Rampley-Clarke
MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 85
 W Sine by Audeze

W
P9 Signature by
This pair of stylish cans scooped a Red Dot Bowers & Wilkins
design award last year and we can see why. As One of the best over-
well as their slick charms, they also neatly fold ear Lightning ’phones
away for easy travel storage and offer terrific money can buy –
sound thanks to their bang-up-to-date “planar Bowers has retooled
magnetic” drivers. As good for the recording its classic P9s for the
studio as they are for a long-haul flight. jack-free world. The
£400. audeze.com build (Saffiano leather
pads and a thick steel
band) is sublime; and
the sound (deep and
expansive) is just out
of this world.
£700. bowers-wilkins.co.uk

THE

LAB
TEST

Flash in the cans

As Apple ushers in
a new era of jack-free
handsets, a wave of
headphones come
with Lightning
connectors so you
can still plug in.
These are the best...
Photograph Matthew Beedle

Data hit... Rather than a traditional jack, this crop of must-have headphones have
a Lightning connector, which plugs into the universal socket on all new Apple devices.

86 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

 DETAILS
W
Triple driver headphones by 1More
As in-ear buds go, little-known UK manufacturer 1More
has set a benchmark that even the likes of big-hitter Bose
cannot quite match. Its headphones are weightier than
Bose’s sturdy set, but worth it for a sound this rich.
£160. 1more.com

UrBeats3 by Beats

W
We haven’t always been the biggest fan of
Beats’ bass-heavy numbers – but for its in-ear
UrBeats3, the Apple influence is now clear.
From the small-form factor to sleek styling,
there’s a lot we like in these buds. It still doesn't
hit all the right notes, but few look this good.
£90. apple.com
W

iSine10 by Audeze
Yep, they don’t exactly look conventional. But
then, these aren’t conventional headphones.
The bigger size enables them to offer a deep,
robust and detailed sound – and, at this price,
you would expect nothing less.
£450. audeze.com

W Rayz Plus
by Pioneer
They might be on the
cheaper side of this
high-end group, but
Pioneer’s in-ear buds
still pack a punch. With
smart noise-cancelling
and nifty features such
as auto-pause (thanks
to the powered
Lightning connection),
these are a solid and
stylish option. SM and CB
£150. pioneerrayz.com

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 87


‘The range has
taken years.
I had to go
over every
single detail’
THE
GROOMING
NEWS
Need a new tattoo moisturiser? You do?
David Beckham’s new grooming range fills gaps in your bathroom cabinet you never knew existed
T he trouble when celebrities
release their own lines of
grooming products is that they
bear their name (occasionally
even a great name), but often
that’s it. David Beckham’s asso-
ciation with House 99 can’t be
accused of that. As cofounder of
the company, England’s former
number seven has produced an
impressive set of products – and
named the brand after his heyday.
“For many reasons, on and off the
pitch, 1999 was such an impor-
tant year for me,” he says. “In ’98,
that red card [during the World
Cup match with Argentina]...
it was such a tough year. And
so ’99 was my way out of that
difficult time. I became a man,
had my first son and ended up
winning the treble at Manchester
United. It was special.”
House 99’s inaugural collection
includes 21 must-have cabinet
essentials, some of which veer off
the beaten path – take the tattoo
moisturiser or the beard purifier.
The formulae are just as consid-
ered as the products’ purposes
and include spirulina and quinoa,
All by House 99 by David Beckham. house99.com
Moisturiser, £22. Beard balm, £17.
arsenal with David Beckham’s House 99
ingredients rich in antioxidants
that smooth the skin, revitalise
the body and strengthen hair
fibres. “This isn’t something that
we have been working on over-
night,” Beckham explains. “It’s
taken a good few years. I went
to the factory in Paris and got
Eye balm, £19.
DETAILS
Turn your cabinet into a metrosexual
to meet the experts and people
making the products. I had a
clear idea in my head. I know
what I like, from the smells to
the texture. If you ask the team,
they’ll probably say I’m too
involved, but I have to go over
every single detail.”
As for the perception that
celebrities lend their name to
brands then walk away, he’s une-
quivocal: “I’m not the guy to do
that. I’m passionate. It’s a part-
nership, so I’m invested.”
It’s testament to Beckham’s lon-
gevity that the man named “the
biggest metrosexual in Britain”
in 2002 by the journalist Mark
Simpson (who invented metro-
sexuality) is still on the front line
of male style. CC
Watch our exclusive interview
with David Beckham at GQ.co.uk
MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 89
 HOW TO R
  emember “normcore”? Jeez.
How laughably preposterous
SPOT... that whole thing was, right? The
idea was that trendy people could
dress up like prison janitors to
fashion, but no longer cool to
shout about it through your shirt
labels. Then came the revamp and
maximisation of Gucci, of course,
and everything changed. Again.
The SWE wants to glide silently
through business lounges/restau-
rants/the door of his blacked-out
Prius, without so much as a flicker
from watchful rubberneckers. This

The stealth show how trendy they really

were. Space-black hoodies, track-
The stealth wealth exec is the
top-tier business world’s answer
means style that keeps his wealth
totally cloaked: ubiquitous white

wealth exec suit bottoms, Common Projects

Money talks, but in
2018 serious money
whispers. Jonathan Heaf
tips his baseball cap to
the new low-key masters
of the universe
trainers, a scowl – essentially, no
ostentatious “fashion” signifiers.
It was a push against the commer-
cialisation and democratisation of
“cool” and all the wealthy show-
offs who could actually afford to
wear chichi, expensive labels and
logos. Suddenly it was cool to be
working within the inner circles of
to normcore; those incredibly suc-
cessful tech billionaires, CEOs,
CCOs, VPs and other WTFs who
want a way of dressing that does
not reflect the endless zeros
that run at the end of their pay-
checks. Whereas once the hyper
businessman – the Mayfair-based
hedge fund manager, for example
– could swan from his 7am coffee
in Cecconi’s to a long Dover sole
lunch at Scott’s in astrakhan coats
and cashmere-blend tailoring, in
2018 all that luxury feels a bit
like rubbing salt in the wound of
humanity. A little bit like wearing
a tuxedo to a party to celebrate
the end of the world.
wireless AirPods plugged into the
ears, a rain cloud-grey Moncler
Rodin jacket, a low riding baseball
cap (plus Chance The Rapper‘s “3”
embroidered on the front for street
cred), Tom Sachs x NikeCraft Mars
Yard trainers, a Rimowa silver
carry-on and perfectly peaking
facial hair, only possible with the
help of a 24/7 groomer.
Snapchat king Evan Speigel
is the boss of this flex and only
betrayed by a supermodel on the
stairs of his PJ at Santa Monica
Airport. Greed is still good for
these next-gen wealth titans, but,
like their dividends, best kept off-
shore and off the radar.

Snapchat king
Evan Speigel
is the boss of
this flex – only
betrayed by
the supermodel
leaving his PJ
The world’s ultra-monied elite have
abandoned conspicuous consumption
(you might not have noticed)
THE

RETAIL
TREND
Soda (London) Opening Cermony (NYC) YME Universe (Oslo)
The concept (in their words): The concept (in their words): The concept (in their words):
“We’re the School Of The Digital “In addition to stocking established “A curated universe of fashion,
Concept stores Age, a destination for new ideas and and emerging homegrown art, interior and design.”
emerged as a way to innovative technology products.” designers, every year OC showcases Who’s behind it? Central Saint
lure online customers Who’s behind it? Grace Gould, the spirit and merchandise of Martins graduate and graphic
back to bricks-and- formerly entrepreneur in residence a visiting country.” design trailblazer Nicolai
at venture capital firm LocalGlobe. Who’s behind it? UC Berkeley friends Schaanning Larsen.
mortar shops. Now,
Buy: The Light Phone, Carol Lim and Humberto Leon. Buy: “03 Untitled (Frog)”,
the best have
a credit card-sized Buy: A classic OC varsity a limited-edition
websites so you handset that stores jacket with bespoke poster artwork by
can browse nine numbers. embroidery. £317. Tim Barber. £50.
from afar... £120. soda.shop openingceremony.com ymeuniverse.com
 DETAILS

THE

INSIDE
STORY

EDITED BY Aaron Callow

3
1

5
1 Clock by 22 Design Studio, £120.
At Kohezi. kohezi.com
2 Carafes by Nisi, £80 for two. nisiliving.co.uk
Illustration Jonathan Allardyce Photograph Alexander Kent

3 Desk light by Buster + Punch, £295.

busterandpunch.com
4 Tape dispenser by 22 Design Studio, £55.
At Kohezi. kohezi.com
5 Stationery tin by Danzo, £50. At Kohezi.
kohezi.com. Spectacles by Boss, £205.
hugoboss.com
6 Pen by Midori, £20. At Oggetto.
oggetto.com
7 Charger by Native Union, £140. 6
nativeunion.com
8 Desk ornament by 5mm, £100.
5mm-store.com
9 Cups by Eradu, £30. eraduceramics.co.uk

Hard work
Who needs colour when outstanding design can brighten up your desk? From marble to concrete and
steel to ceramics, reshape your office with an assembly of monochromatics

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 91

EXPLORE THE WIDE WORLD
OF VIDEOS AT GQ.CO.UK
 DETAILS

The only BAND

GQ

swimwear O - M AT I C

you need Do something different

and tune in to these
new sounds...

this year
Hot new brand Les Girls Les
Boys gets set for summer

Q uick: what colour and brand

are the underpants you’re
wearing right now? Chances are Into: Kris Kristofferson?
you can’t remember, but a new wave Try: Louis Brennan
Stories of love lost,
of businesses are making underwear ambition thwarted and,
a higher priority – and one of our erm, Jeremy Corbyn all told
favourites is Les Girls Les Boys. by a master storyteller with
a voice like rolling thunder.
Set up last year by Serena Rees,
Dead Capital is out on
‘The men’s founder of lingerie label Agent
Provocateur, Les Girls Les Boys is
28 February.

collection is an underwear house dedicated to

inspired by intimates and loungewear for

summers in
the Seventies’
Shorts by Les Girls Les Boys,
£80. lesgirlslesboys.com
Wet work Heading to Europe? You’ll need to pack ‘les slips’...
Trunks by Les Girls Les Boys,
£50. lesgirlslesboys.com
men and women. For us, that’s
sleek sleep separates, T-shirts
with cool designs and pants
you’d be proud for others to see.
Into: Staff Benda Bilili?
Now, after a successful first season, Try: Baloji
the brand is branching into swimwear. Born in the Democratic
“The men’s collection is inspired by Republic Of Congo and
summers in the Seventies: everyone now based in Belgium,
THE
Baloji blends the musical
running around carefree,” says Rees.
FASHION This has translated into a chic,
traditions of both
countries to make full-
RE-UP
Royal Tenenbaums vibe: trunks and blown party anthems.
137 Avenue Kaniama is
boardshorts in a series of vibrant
out on 23 March.
primary colours, sometimes broken
up with bold, black deckchair stripes.
However, perhaps most notable are
the swim briefs cut from something a
bit different: waterproof blue velvet.
“I liked the idea of using velvet as
it’s not what you usually find,” says
Into: Elvis Costello?
Trunks by Les Girls Les Boys,
Rees. “Every boy needs a pair!”
Try: Ezra Furman
£50. lesgirlslesboys.com Watch out, David Lynch. Nick Carvell The Chicago-born
singer-songwriter’s new
album examines the
violence and paranoia
of Trump’s America

The Insta classics

Happy-snap your Instagram feed by
following the ’grammers behind three – with great pop hooks!
posts we hit ‘like’ on this month Transangelic Exodus is
out on 9 February.
Photographs Pixeleyes

Into: Bruno Mars?

Try: Ivan Dorn
The debut English-language
album from one of Ukraine’s
biggest pop stars is a
compelling mix of funk,
soul and hip hop. Kevin Perry
@BOYWITHNOJOB @THEFATJEWISH @FRIENDOFBAE OTD is out now.

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 93

 DETAILS
THE

ENTREPRENEUR

Fabien Riggall
The founder and director of Secret Cinema – the immersive cinematic experience that has
sold more than half a million tickets since 2012 – reveals what he has learned

Break the rules

Based London
Age 42 “After watching Dead Poets
Society, I escaped from
school with £5 to start a life in
EDUCATION London. I was inspired by the
idea of romantic adventure.
There was a huge search
Fabien Riggall at a pro-EU rally, July 2016
1983 – 1988 party and I was found.”
Horris Hill prep school, Berkshire

Look up the ladder 1988 – 1992

Cheltenham College
“I wanted to direct and produce,
but I could see unhappy 50-year- 1993
old second-assistant directors Alleyn’s School, Southeast London
with no hope of producing
1994 – 1996
because the climb was so hard. Hurtwood House college, Surrey
So I started making short films.”
1996 – 1997
New York Film Academy
New York Film Academy

Manners maketh man

“We grew the Future Shorts
CAREER IN BRIEF community by sending the
audience notes saying, ‘Thank you
for coming. We look forward to
1999 – 2003 seeing you again.’ We asked them
Director’s assistant, Rogue Films to let us know their thoughts
2003
on the films.”
Riggall and Lin-Manuel Miranda Telephone sales, Euronews
at Secret Cinema’s screening of
Moulin Rouge! in London, 2017 2003
Launched short-film festival
Blag it Future Shorts with brother
“The confidence I got Jeremy Riggall

from telephone sales 2005

helped me as a producer. Launched events company
Future Cinema
I’d get through to CEOs by
pretending to be my own 2007
assistant and creating an Future Cinema launches
Secret Cinema Secret Cinema presented Star Wars:
illusion that I was successful.” The Empire Strikes Back in London, 2015
Story by Eleanor Halls Photographs Alamy

2017 Change your scene

Secret Cinema celebrates ten
years with a Moulin Rouge! show
Dust yourself off
“Our Back To The Future
screening got cancelled. Next
year, instead of laying low, we
Riggall in the DeLorean at Secret Cinema’s
planned Back To The Future screening, 2014 went bigger with Star Wars
and sold 100,000 tickets.”
94 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018
“Last week I felt down so I
went to Paris, walked around,
sat in cafés and wrote.
I immediately felt better.
Similarly, when I moved to
New York, it gave me a sense
of optimism and the feeling
that anything could happen.”
 The Charles Jeffrey
Loverboy show

Photographs Getty Images; James Mason; Beccy Nuthall; Nigel Pacquette; Rex; Ashley Verse

THE

FASHION
EVENT

London Fashion Week Men’s: Season 12

In January, London Fashion Week Men’s debuted Autumn/Winter 2018, with a four-day extravaganza
of shows, presentations and parties. Highlights included Oliver Spencer’s Seventies-inspired outing,
which featured female models for the first time, and an exhibition-cum-presentation showcasing the recent
collaboration between David Beckham’s label Kent & Curwen and photographer Perry Ogden. As for the
trends to wear later this year? Invest in some Nineties sunglasses and a velvet suit. Trust us. Teo van den Broeke

96 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

 Eric Underwood, Darren Kennedy,
Jim Chapman and Josh Patterson

Dermot O’Leary and Jason Atherton

Charles Jeffrey

The Blood Brother show

The Kent & Curwen show Rita Ora and Liam Payne

James Massiah The Liam Hodges show The Bobby Abley show
DETAILS

David Furnish and Gordon Richardson

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 97

 Photographs Ben Broomfield; Getty Images; James Mason;
Beccy Nuthall; Nigel Pacquette

Eric Rutherford and Robert Konjic The JordanLuca show

The What We Wear show

The Nicholas Daley show

Lethal Bizzle and Krept

The Tourne De Transmission show Tinie Tempah

The Astrid Andersen show The Xander Zhou show The Edward Crutchley show

The John Lawrence Sullivan show

The Grenson x New Balance launch James Basmajian and Tom Stubbs
DETAILS

Caroline Rush The Band Of Outsiders show The Wood Wood show The Christopher Raeburn show

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 99

 The Asos show Nicholas Coleridge and Lou Dalton
Jonathan Newhouse
DETAILS

100 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

The Lou Dalton show

The Wales Bonner show

Roxxxan and Jade Laurice

The Cottweiler show

The Phoebe English show

The Belstaff show The Kiko Kostadinov show Toby Huntington Whiteley,
Darren Kennedy and Hu Bing

The D Gnak show

Matthew Hancock Grace Wales Bonner

Photographs Ben Broomfield; Getty Images; James Mason; Beccy Nuthall; Nigel Pacquette; Ashley Verse
 The Man show
DETAILS

102 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

Hu Bing and Slick Rick

The Ben Sherman show The Tonsure show

The Per Götesson show The Oliver Spencer show
The A-Cold-Wall show Ben Nordberg

hosted

Côtes Du

Martinis and
Men’s dinner.
GQ’s London

Les Dauphins
Les Dauphins
Les Dauphins
Guests drank:
Fashion Week

Rhône Villages
Berners Tavern
Jason Atherton
and the team at

Grande Réserve
Blanc De Blancs
Côtes Du Rhône

Belvedere Vodka

Espresso Martinis
Tinie Tempah and Tracey Emin

Craig Green Kris Thykier and Albert Read

The Craig Green show The Daniel W Fletcher show

Photographs Getty Images; Instagram.com/bennordberg;

James Mason; Beccy Nuthall; Nigel Pacquette; Ashley Verse
 For a handful of highly competitive professionals, success means
excelling under extreme pressure day in, day out. Together with
Wilkinson Sword, GQ meets three such steely mavericks who work
at the limits of their physical and psychological capabilities
PHOTOGRAPHS BY Alex Wallace

ith a jawline as sharp as any
W
  ridge he’s traversed, Kenton
Cool, 44, is one of the most
experienced and successful
high-altitude climbers Britain
has ever produced. Cool – originally “Kuhle”,
the family named was changed by his half-
German grandfather during the Second World
War – has reached the summit of Mount
Everest (8,848 metres above sea-level) a
G Partnership
Kenton Cool
Born in Slough,
Berkshire, Cool, married
with two children, is one
of the UK’s leading
alpine and high-altitude
climbers. He has led
many expeditions to
Everest and conquered
the mountain 12 times.
Cool has worked on
numerous climbing
documentaries for
television and is
currently working on
his second book;
his autobiography
One Man’s Everest was
published in 2015.
staggering 12 times. Not only has he led the physically demanding, highly pressurised
likes of Sir Ranulph Fiennes’ up the highest
mountain on earth, in 2013 he attained the
Everest Triple Crown, hitting the three peaks
that make up the Everest Horseshoe in the
space of seven days without going back to base
camp. “People always ask, ‘What is it like up
there?’” says Cool. “I tell them, it’s not those
journey that has led you to that incredible
moment.” When Cool isn’t guiding wealthy
adventurists into (and, mostly, out of danger)
you’ll find him preparing rigorously for the next
challenge. “Gym work, cross fit and my diet is
all very significant. But climbing is where my
passion lies. Get me out of the city and into a
last five steps to the summit that are important. wide-open space and I’m home. I need to keep
It’s about what takes you there; the intense, testing myself; I need to keep evolving.”
 ‘Knowing
how to turn
pressure into
useful energy
rather than
cracking is
crucial’

Lance Tredell
Not yet 30 years old and
only six centimetres shy of
a towering two metres,
Tredell has the potential
to become one of this
country’s greatest ever
rowers. Selected for the
GB men’s eight at the
European Rowing
Championship in 2012, he
went on to graduate from
Oxford Brookes University
in 2015, then studying and
rowing at Cambridge
University, earning a Blue
in 2016 and 2017. He is
working towards
numerous competitions
and securing an Olympic
spot for Tokyo 2020.

You don’t just become a world champion
rower, a budding Olympian even, by hopping
into a row boat one day, having a paddle
about and waiting for your number to be
called in. To reach the sort of heights that
Lance Tredell, 29, has achieved as a member
of the British Rowing squad, you have to
know that rowing will become your life; it
will consume you until you and the boat
are one. “As a professional athlete, you
have to want to win above all else,” Tredell
explains. “Every time you get on the water
you’re not just competing against whomever
you’re racing against, you also want to beat
your own times – and your teammates. It’s
ferocious. Putting pressure on yourself, and
knowing how to turn that pressure into
useful energy rather than cracking is crucial.”
Tredell was selected for the GB men’s eight
at the European Rowing Championships in
2012 where he finished fifth, although his
best result so far was a gold medal at the
WCI Sydney. Naturally, he is eyeing Tokyo
2020: “If any athlete tells you they haven’t
got at least got one eye trained on the
Olympics in Japan then I’d call them out.
Yet, it’s about taking incremental, measured
steps rather than peaking too soon.” When
he’s not using his massive frame to propel
the thin, elegant rowing boats down the
Thames in Putney with some serious elan,
he’s in the gym or, occasionally, on his
second great passion, his beloved motorbike.
“Speed is a thing for me. Speed, control and
performance. Well, my coach would worry if
it wasn’t to be honest.”
 G Partnership

Jeremy Todd
Todd is a currently a
Watch the GQ Under
Contract Administrator at
Crossrail Ltd, and part of Pressure film
a team of engineers
working on the new GQ filmed Kenton, Lance and Jeremy in an
Elizabeth Line station at exclusive look into each of their areas of
Tottenham Court Road. expertise. Go to gq-magazine.co.uk to watch
He graduated with a BE the video to find out more about using
(hons) in Mechanical pressure to your advantage.
Engineering from the
University of Canterbury,
NZ, in 2009 and previous
professional positions
include time as a team
co-ordinator at Revolution
Fibres and as a contract
administrator on HS2. He
lives in London and
enjoys running.

As a native New Zealander, when he
graduated in Mechanical Engineering from
the University of Canterbury in 2009 you
would think that Jeremy Todd was somewhat
used to dealing with epic distances and
huge, panoramic superstructures. Yet little
did he think he’d be working on a project
as all-encompassing as Crossrail – Europe’s
biggest infrastructure project costing £14.8
billion, now in its final stages with the new
Elizabeth line due to open in December 2018.
“Crossrail provides such a great opportunity
and a unique set of challenges to set your
mind on as an engineer,” says Todd, having
before this worked as a contract administrator
on HS2. “It’s mostly about problem solving,
which seems to suit the way my brain works.
There’s nothing else like it. Imagine such a vast
project occurring in central London, as busy
and dynamic as that is. It’s about turning the
pressure of working in such an environment
into a set of achievable, practical solutions.
The benefits of the new line will be staggering;
it will bring an extra 1.5 million people to
within 45 minutes of central London.”
Of course, there’s no suggestion of Todd and
the Crossrail team not making the deadline.
“The different engineering teams working Visit gq-magazine.co.uk
at the individual Tube stations being built or to view the film
upgraded are very competitive; it drives us #underpressure
on and keeps us focused. Pride is a powerful
thing when put under pressure.”

The New Wilkinson Sword Hydro 5 Sense

One of the greatest misconceptions
about experiencing an ultra-close shave
is the need to apply more pressure to the
razor and to one’s face. For a smoother,
closer shave with five blades and a water
activated gel reservoir with menthol, the
new Wilkinson Sword Hydro 5 Sense
Energize Razor includes innovative shock-
absorbing technology which auto-adjusts
to pressure thereby providing just the right
amount of contact with your skin. Let the
new Hydro 5 Sense Energize Razor take
the edge off your grooming routine, while
you keep focused on your professional
challenges ahead.
 this month: fine time p.110 prize assets p.111 dinner’s new delight p.112 hat hatred p.121 style shrink p.124

This is for the style

lodestars. The agitators.
The peacocks. This section
believes in combining an
aesthete’s eye with an inner
rebelliousness. From killer
opinion to white-hot trends,
these pages are not
about following tradition,
but beating your own path.
Welcome to GQ’s…

Jonathan Heaf
Photograph Allstar Collection

EDITED BY

Michael Douglas cranks

corporate cool in Wall Street
(1987) – see our guide to
bossing braces on page 116

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 109


D I A L ST Y L E
You WILL like
these
watches
when
you’re
ANGRY
Do you know your Rolex
‘Kermit’ from your Rolex
‘Hulk’? The latter has a
green dial/green bezel
while the former has a black
dial/green bezel. Still, the
crucial bit is the acceptance
of the colour green into
your wrist game. Time to
wear envy with some élan
110 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Illustration by Ricardo Fumanal
1. Watch by SHINOLA, £675. shinola.co.uk
2. Watch by EARNSHAW, £340.
thomas-earnshaw.com
3. Watch by SEIKO, £219. seiko.co.uk
4. Watch by GUCCI, £650. At mrporter.com
5. Watch by TUDOR, £2,630.
tudorwatch.com
UP
Margot Robbie as Tonya Harding
I, Oscar?
Fashion’s football scarves
Remixed for the style crew by the
likes of Gosha Rubchinskiy and Palace
– fine stuff, but actually our pick is
your girlfriend’s Alexa Chung number.
Velocity Black
Wanna eat wagyu beef on the edge
of a live volcano while dressed in
impossible-to-buy Vetements? Your
wish is Velocity’s command.
@ugandaskateboardcommunity
Bringing the country’s skaters
together, one grind at a time.
Stealth ‘analogue’ tech
The Omata One bicycle speedometer;
combining beauty and (digital) brains.
Purple reign
Pantone predicts that “Prince” purple
will be the colour of 2018.
Daniel Day-Lewis’
non-phantom threads
Heavy denim, crumpled flannel shirts
and junkyard belt buckles – sartorially,
an astonishing personal performance.
BAROMETER
Hoodies
So… regular.
Liquor accoutrements
There is tragic. And then there are
whisky stones.
Wallets
Nothing says old-school/disorganised
like a bloated wallet the size
of a Big Mac.
Admissions of Netflix bingeing
You shameless, lazy, squared-eyed
slobs. Go for a run.
Thirst trap selfies
Like having a mirror on your bedroom
ceiling: funny at first but, ultimately,
very weird and creepy.
‘Mindful’ chip fryers
Using air rather than oil. Is
nothing sacred?
Pleated trousers
Only look right on braying aristos
or men in period dramas.
DOWN
 G New House Rules

cop, A hypebeast’s investment portfolio

TA K E STO C K

drop Commodities schommodities. Stocks and bonds are for chumps. Trainers, watches, luggage and
streetwear are now the new asset class. Greed may be good, as Gordon Gekko famously declared,
but here, at New House Rules, we always respect the “style never sleeps” rule.
Buy clothes to wear? What are you? A schmuck on wheels? Bought that shirt because your wife

or
liked it? Loser. You can get rich while getting dressed if you know how: cop (invest) or drop and flip
(resell on eBay or grailed.com). Look at the hypebeasts (cool-hunting investors) lined up outside the
Supreme store every week. You think they wait just to spend their parents’ hard-earned cash on yet
another branded hoodie? Nope. They’re hustling their way to the next “grail piece” (an extremely hot
commodity), such as those rarer-than-Elvis-duetting-with-2Pac pair of Pharrell x Adidas NMDs.

flip? But what happens when Craig David is seen carrying that Supreme x Louis Vuitton rucksack? How
do you minimise the potential price drop? Or, if Drake is instead sporting the rucksack, maximise the
reward? Simple: portfolio diversification and insider information. It’s time to get rich, the New House
Rules way, with GQ’s essential style stock tips.

By Alfred Tong

Expert take: “The
Virgil Abloh collab is
Nike’s response to the
really successful Adidas
Yeezy collab,“ says DJ
Kish Kash, whose trainer
range has been exhibited
in the Design Museum.
“The story is really
interesting because
Abloh of Off-White is a
Kanye West collaborator.
Demand is driven by
supply and hype, so
Photographs Matthew Beedle
Expert take: “Andrew
Grima was the celebrity
jeweller of the Sixties
and Seventies. His work
was truly extraordinary,”
says Tim Bent, founder
of vintage luggage
specialist Bentleys. “His
extravagance has been out
of vogue, but the brutalist
textures he created are
mesmerising. I’d buy
them. They’re wearable
art, beautifully detailed
Expert take: “Demna
Gvasalia’s version of Ikea’s
blue tote bag doesn’t have
the same appeal to me
and might be seen as
purely ironic and soon
forgotten,” says Bent. “At
least the Louis Vuitton
trunk [far right] is
handmade by its best
craftsman and reflects
the brand’s heritage and
values. So I’d say that
the Vetements bag is a
Expert take: “The thing
about a mechanical watch
is that in 50 or 60 years’
time it’ll still work,” says
Chris Hall, digital editor
of luxury watch magazine
QP. “Will that necessarily
be true of the Apple
Watch Hermès? Or will
it become yet another
electronic device
gathering dust? It might
have some appeal to a
certain kind of nerd,
Expert take: “My feeling
is that the Supreme x
Louis Vuitton trunk will
be the iconic embodiment
of collaboration in this
decade, a statement of
intent from the ultimate
luxury fashion house to
embrace street culture,”
says Bent. “Any Vuitton
collector would feel
they should have one
in their collection – it’s a
massively impressive and

while the hype for these
is off the charts, it’s still
unclear how many will be
released. We don’t know
how high the prices will
go and for how long.
It depends on the
eventual availability.”
GQ says: Cop and flip
– and do it quick.
and utterly unique.”
GQ says: An artist’s
reputation is often
established when an
influential collector starts
to buy their work. Right
now, Grima is being
talked up by every luxury
magazine editor this side
of the Burlington Arcade.
high-risk option – a real
roll of the dice.”
GQ says: Is the
luxurification of the
mundane by Gvasalia
either postmodern art for
the Instagram generation
or simply the emperor’s
new clothes? That’s the
gamble you take...
but I wouldn’t buy it for immediately recognisable
investment reasons.” piece of design.”
GQ says: Some ultra-rare GQ says: Collabo di
digital watches have huge tutti collabo.
cachet among collectors.
Could the Apple Watch
Hermès go the same way?
Oversaturation could be
an issue as Apple will
have made a ton of them.

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 111

G New House Rules
pyramids wrapped in gold leaf
and cost $150 for a box of four,
GET HIGHER
decorated with Mexican Day Of
The Dead motifs. You can get
20 people pretty high with one

Ari Gold
pyramid. It’s important to get
the dose right.”
The dealer harvests the
mushrooms on a full moon
and adds essential oils – I
mean, it wouldn’t be LA if
there wasn’t some pseudo
health-kick to all this, right?

Takes
Hawaiian mushrooms make
for an ecstasy-type high,
which is smoother and less
brain-flipping than British
psychedelic mushrooms.
“They’re popular at Coachella
and Burning Man,” says the
actress. “Filmmakers and writers
take it in micro doses to help
them focus. It helps to reset you
in a way and it’s been proven to

a Trip
help with depression.”
A while back the likes of
Nick Nolte used to enthuse
about the creative advantages

How psychedelic truffles became LA’s new after-dinner mint
By Alfred Tong
You may think that
you like clothes, but
have you ever looked at your
trousers while high on magic
mushrooms? Allow us to
enlighten you. Here’s some
next-level trouser appreciation
from Aldous Huxley’s 1954
book, The Doors Of Perception:
how rich, how deeply,
mysteriously, sumptuous!”
Woah. Every decade and
social set has its drugs
of choice and, right now,
upwardly mobile creative
people are all about
psychedelic mushrooms. Trust
us, your bespoke suits and
midcentury furniture will never
look the same again. Nor will
the ground is cool, but
since you failed biology
and chemistry GCSEs also
pretty dangerous. Right
now, a mysterious dealer of
psychedelic champignon
chocolate is the talk of
Tinseltown. “I’ve never met the
connection and the guy I get
them off has only just started
dealing with the person directly
‘Filmmakers
take it in
micro doses
to help
them focus’
of taking GHB, now it’s
psychedelic fungi that’s got LA
talent all starry-eyed. Think of
them like turbocharged dinner
mints. “You’d never be able to
tell what it was by looking at
it,” the actress tells NHR. “I
left a half-eaten [mushroom-
infused praline truffle] in the
fridge and I was like, ‘Dad, do
you know what happened to Illustration Jason Levesque Photographs Getty Images

“Those folds in the trousers your next screenplay, app or after eight years,” a Hollywood my herbal chocolate?’ He went
– what a labyrinth of endlessly marketing strategy. actress informed us at a British to Homebase afterwards...”
significant complexity! And the But don’t just do any old wedding last summer. “They’re His trousers must have
texture of the grey flannel – shrooms. Picking them from beautifully packaged little looked incredible, man.

The business case for… refining your carry-on

Let’s first consider the route one of business/first class – wheelie bag and backpack. Nothing disturbs
its ubiquity. But wait, there’s an alternative to such nagging conformity – the hard-shell briefcase and
suit-carrier combo as sported by Paul Newman (right). It does what it says in its sober superiority,
which roughly translates as: “I shall forego the courtly jostle for the overhead by boarding last and
placing my flat-packed squashable atop all your crimped aluminium cabinware. And I will seal the
no-big-deal deal by jettisoning the jumped-up gym bag in favour of an under-the-seat-in-front attaché
that screams On Her Majesty’s (Secret) Service.” Just don’t neglect to pack the aviators, obvs. Bill Prince

112 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

Your exclusive G
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 G New House Rules

Orlando LEADING MAN

The bon vivant of don’t-give-a-damn cool

has subverted dress codes across the social
spectrum to become a casual hero for spring
change and Grant went
to his usual tailors.
Today, Hollywood stars
don’t have style, they
have stylists. What
piqued our reinterest
in Bloom is that it looks
as though he dresses

Bloom
himself. In fact, from
gives ZERO f***s eveningwear to airports
to the beach and back
again, Bloom is the most
low-key and laid-back
Hollywood dresser
we’ve ever scoffed at.
So, here’s four signature
Bloom manoeuvres you
can integrate into your
own look this spring.
By Alfred Tong Hang loose, fellow
style slackers.
You’re wrong about
Orlando Bloom. Yes, you
heard. Just plain wrong. Four ways
And here’s why: he has to Bloom
single-handedly turned
the oxymoron “well- 1. Easy airport style
dressed lazy hobo” into Bloom’s relaxed approach
spring 2018’s liveliest seems precision tooled for
long-haul flights: lightweight
style statement. When
layers consisting of vest,
was the last time a shirt with three buttons
Hollywood star did undone and a bomber jacket
that? Keanu Reeves on top, drop-crotch trousers
and brown Nikes down low.
sitting alone on a bench Turning left has never looked
with a cupcake? so effortless.
Bloom’s slouchy
approach to getting 2. Dress-down black tie
Black tie with no tie? No
dressed makes him
problemo. Hi-top trainers
the living, breathing Orlando Bloom navigates with tieless black tie? Why
embodiment of zero- the roads of LA in style the hell not? Double down
fucks-given slacker on the casual at night and
you won’t be mistaken for
style. Smart-casual is a waiter. Make sure your
for fashion apologists,
those who sit on the
fence between making
Smart-casual white shirt is crispy AF to
pull off dress-down black tie.

an athleisurewear
statement and wearing
is for fashion 3. Restructured suiting
What’s softer than Drake’s

apologists
Photographs Blackgrid; Getty Images; Alexei Hay; Xposure

ear lobes, cooler than Tom

a navy tie. Legolas – Ford’s stubble line and easier
as he’ll always be than the Evening Standard
known – is nailing crossword? Orlando Bloom’s
take on soft tailoring, that’s
“casual-casual” right what. His bromance with the
now, even when he’s in stuff shows us that slackers
a suit, which he wears can wear suits too.
with trainers. Yes, it’s 4. Short shorts
a thing. And, yes, you Even if you haven’t been
can do it too. It’s about #blessed with Bloom’s
confidence. Cary Grant, all-action bod, the length
of these shorts will be way
in many of his famous more flattering to men of
roles, dressed himself. all shapes. Long shorts have
For North By Northwest the curious effect of making
the diminutive look even
and To Catch A Thief,
smaller. Plus, the go-to-hell
Alfred Hitchcock simply cherry-red colour sorts the
1 2 3 4
flung him a chunk of men from the boys.

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 115

 G New House Rules

Brace! Brace! BRACES? By Tom Stubbs

They’re right. They work. They clarify, cut through and capture the essence
of ‘corporate escapism’. Oh yes, gentlemen, Wall Street’s best look is back
The Nile Rodgers mix of doubly well from skinheads, A Clockwork
“Lost In Music” rolled on in braces. Waistbands have Orange and the big dick-
my ears days after it accompanied gone higher too and swinging culture of Wall
Fendi’s Spring/Summer show. It braces bring them up Street. There’s bondage
was an electrifying affair. A hectic, critical inches. Trews involved, too, straps
alpha mix of Eighties tracksuit- just hang better without evoking Sam Browne
inspired leather blousons, madras belts, which can be holsters. Tongue-
jackets clashing with bold print ties bulky and restrictive. in-cheek bravado in
and wicked-pleat trousers held up Braces are effectively getting “twanged-up”
high by striped braces. Fendi called pro-tailoring. Belts is a stance upgrade.
it “corporate escapism” but to me are heinous with suits Another appeal is the
it was Wolf Of Wall Street does anyway, but now instant access; there’s a
casual. Braces cranked up the ballsy deploying braces gives low-budget braces scene
retro mix. That’s what braces do. a fresh frisson of virility. on Amazon and eBay for
Michael Douglas as Gordon
I got into braces through the Braces channel a strain those who are looking.
Gekko in Wall Street, 1987 burgeoning wide-trouser scene. of macho aggro via A couple of clicks and
Well-cut voluminous strides hang associations with snap! You’re holding
an arsenal. Go for cool
colour matching or
tonal blending with
The NEW members’ club anti-dress codes existing looks. Contrast
with stripes. Even go
(Clue: trainers are fine so long as you can’t actually run in them) exotic with leopard- or
zebra-print for a hidden
flash under eveningwear.
As for fastenings, you
have two options: clip-
on or buttons. Clip-ons
are a major “skin” motif,
MARK’S SOHO 5 HERTFORD but also punk and
ANNABEL’S WHITE’S
CLUB HOUSE STREET
new wave and have a
generally homemade
look – an immediate
OFFICIAL/ One of the improv accessory. I’m
UNOFFICIAL Mark Birley
James
Otis Ferry
Derek Queen’s
MEMBERSHIP Corden Blasberg corgis. also busting out strides
MASCOT A male one with existing brace
buttons too, such
Anything that
as from Anderson &
T-shirts, polo
shirts, collarless
isn’t a bespoke Sheppard or Edward
“Leather navy-blue suit,
WHAT NOT or unbuttoned A neck tie
or suede” tie and polished
Sexton. These look
TO WEAR shirts. Oh, and Flip-flops significantly vintage
black leather
cowboy boots
Oxfords and evoke the early/
Box-fresh mid-20th century, which
Gucci ace Whatever
you drove up can be a cool accent.
Loro Piana embroidered Occasionwear,
cashmere- trainers preferably
in from Stow- Whatever your Avoid looking too
WHAT TO On-The-Wold
blend blazer velvet groomsman quaint and antique
WEAR (except picked out
the wellies) for you with the button option,
though. Plus, watch
“How does one “The only (another age concern)
Photographs Alamy; Getty Images

WHAT TO “Litecoin is the “Would you

judge Picasso’s Jeremy “Meghan
sign my the lengthened-derriere
SAY AT THE blue period new Bitcoin” I know
petition?
Markle?
BAR AT in a post- who’s fit
Black Labs
So, so… factor – a braced pant
MIDNIGHT Weinstein for office is modern”
world?” Clarkson”
Matter” can make your backside
look a yard long. That
WHILE Check one’s said, it didn’t stop
IN SAID social media Stanley in A Street Car
Go into a Not gossip accounts less Be a
ESTABLISHMENT, Not be drunk cubicle alone furiously than once woman Named Desire simmering
ONE MUST every 15 in brace backs. Just ask
NEVER minutes
Marlon Brando...

116 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018


It’s what’s inside your head, not on it, that counts. No peak
or porkpie can compensate for a deficit of life purpose
By Dylan Jones
Some years ago, back
when God was a boy, Tony
Parsons suggested an idea for a
piece he wanted to write for me
called “The Tattooed Jungle”. His
article claimed that tattoos were
symptomatic of the decline of the
working class and contentiously
suggested that if you can’t make
a mark on your life then you
make a mark on your body.
Well – to use a word that Radio
4 hate so much – I feel pretty
much the same about hats. To wit:
you only wear one if you can’t
succeed at anything else. Sure,
T H R E E WAYS TO W E A R : T H E P O LO S H I R T T H E B A S I C T H AT ’ S A N Y T H I N G B U T
THE STANDALONE
Listen, we get your apprehension
at rocking a plain polo shirt
without any other style trimmings
– no varsity bomber to give you
some swag, no safety blanket by
way of a grey marl sweater. No
one wants to look like a golfer,
not even men who play golf,
but stop to appreciate how
someone such as Idris Elba uses
Photograph Mark Lebon
the humble polo shirt. Combined
with a pair of well-tailored
trousers, a quality cashmere-blend
polo shirt can look hyper modern
and confident. The trick is to get
the fit right: not too tight or too
loose. It also helps if you have a
punchy set of guns to add shape.
there are exceptions. Rock stars
can wear hats, in the same way
that rock stars can (and should)
wear anything. As can cyclists,
policemen, builders, workmen
and anyone else who needs one
for their job. If you
need to wear a hat
for safety or to
signify authority, so
be it, I applaud you.
The rest of you
Dylan Jones, 1986
are just showing
off, trying to appear
as a hipster or an
itinerant boho and
looking ridiculous in
the process. If you
THE SUIT SAVANT
As we pull ourselves out of
our winter wardrobes, we can
finally think about what our
lives might be like without
cold-battling coats, scarves
and snoods. A smart polo
shirt with a killer suit is
a surefire way to get props.
You need some élan to carry
it off: the best route is to let
your suit do the popping and
underlay the tailoring with a
subtle polo shirt. You don’t
want to look like anyone
who’d call themselves a
“creative”, so stay away
from fashion trainers or
jazzy embellishments.
Illustrations by Bill Hope
G New House Rules
sport a trilby, a beret, a beanie or
baseball cap, a fedora, a homburg
or a porkpie hat (probably the
worst titfer crime of them all),
then you are simply taking too
much time getting dressed in the
morning. Which means you can’t
have anything else to do.
Trust me, you won’t be taken
seriously if you wear a jaunty
hat. Also, in this day and age,
cultural appropriation is deemed
deeply inappropriate by our
Dylan Jones, 1984
snowflake brethren and you
stand a good chance of being
castigated the minute you step
over the threshold of your faux-
Victorian drinking den of choice.
Yes, you can wear a Panama hat
to keep off the sun and, yes, you
can wear anything you like to with it, but at the
keep out the cold come autumn time it was genu-
time, but wear a hat between inely arresting, like
April and September and you run peroxide hair had
the risk of serious peer alienation been half a decade
(plus, you won’t get laid). before. He wasn’t
The only hat I’ve ever really being insulting, just Dylan Jones
liked is the shtreimel, the big fur dressing up. and Alix
hat worn by many married Hasidic But dressing up Sharkey, 1985
jews. In the Eighties, I even had to such an extent
a friend who wore in 2018 feels really, really old,
one, back when stale and childish.
you could barely Do I wear a hat? Of course I do.
leave the house Between October and February
unless you were I wear a beautiful navy-blue cap
dressed as a Day-Glo from Lock & Co, which makes the
stormtrooper or a best hats in the world. But then
zoot-suited razor due to excessive use of perox-
boy. For him it ide as a teenager I’ve been bald
was fancy dress since I was 20.
and nowadays he So, unless you’re similarly
wouldn’t get away afflicted, please go commando.
THE SENSIBLE ROCK GOD
Remember when you used to look
at photos of boys in bands draped
by supermodels at parties and
wonder why you’re going home
with an M&S meal for one and
a copy of the TLR? Well, a polo
shirt might be your way back into
the game. Pick something with
swagger – in silk or one with an
eye-scrambling pattern – and then
throw over a vintage leather jacket.
Wear untucked with a pair of black
Acne narrow jeans and (if you dare)
those Saint Laurent Cuban heels.
Walk like Jim Morrison, drink like
Jim Beam. For extra points add
a gold chain and (why not?)
an earring. JH
MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 121
G New
New House
House Rules
Rules
Nick Foulkes’ 1,001 manssentials
(because who doesn’t need, well, everything?)
Forget brand values and mission statements, this luxury leather goods start-up lets its wares do the talking
It is not often I get excited
by a luxury start-up. I am
bombarded with information
from inchoate brands impatient
to burst upon the world and into
the wallets of the rich. While I am
delighted that people still make
nice stuff, experience tells me that
luxury requires maturity. When
parting with large sums of money,
things need to be thought through
and grown up: materials, execu-
tion, retail experience... the lot.
And that takes time to get right.
But once in a while something
comes along that has done all
the thinking in advance. LONB –
which stands for Love Or Nothing
Baby – is just such a thing.
Although it might sound like a
tattoo parlour slogan from the
early Seventies, it is in fact a new
luggage brand that comes ready
bundled with its own concept.
Created by Reinhard Mieck
and Melissa Morris – they met
when he was CEO of Labelux and
she was at Belstaff, one of its
brands – my advice is to bypass
the mission statement, which
is all “traditional luxury values
married with a modern outlook
to create a heritage which starts
today”, and go straight to their
London flagship store on South
Audley Street, conveniently
located across the road from
Harry’s Bar and George,
a couple of doors down
from Purdey.
I see a lot of leather
bags in a year and the
criteria by which I judge
them is simple: would I
want one? The answer to
what I saw at LONB is yes.
Four yeses. One of those David
122 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018
THIS MONTH
Walliams yeses that results in a
shower of golden tickets falling
from the ceiling in Britain’s Got
Talent. The croc is soft, supple
and super expensive – a bag will
cost about the average national
salary. The black calfskin is
French and blemishless. But the
brown “Marrakech” suede is the
real winner. I am sure it would,
ahem, “patinate” rapidly with use,
but it is gorgeous. Its handle is
addictive, almost worth a detour
to the shop to come and stroke it.
The overall feel is robust rather
than delicate and the result is an
aesthetic that is equally at home
on a hot and dusty bus journey in
Morocco as it is on a private jet.
Construction and finishing
appears to be commensurate
with the standard of the materials:
A £ 2 6 , 9 0 0 C R O CO D I L E - L E AT H E R B AG
high-quality, even stitching, skins
skived away to nearly nothing in
the wallets, handles built around
cores of rope not rubber, edges
painted with the sort of care that
Canaletto would have appreciated.
But it is the concept that makes
the difference. The entire range
is built around the “Runaway”, a
travel wallet/clutch that opens flat
and fits into the larger bags using a
clever system of chrome hooks to
provide an instant in-bag organiser
for all the stuff you spend hours of
It is equally
at home on
a hot, dusty
bus and a
private jet
your life looking for in the dark-
ened depths of your hand luggage.
This modular approach has been
extended to include a number of
zip-up pouches for shirts, socks,
toiletries etc. Their carefully cal-
culated dimensions ensure that
they can be arranged in an inter-
nal jigsaw puzzle in each bag.
The brand was inspired by the
Sixties and Seventies. Mieck will
happily tell you how the stitching
on the Vagabond, the most ver-
satile of their bags (pictured), is
borrowed from a vintage motor-
cycle jacket and the undoubtedly
satisfying and solid click when
you snap the Runaway into place
inside the bag is based on the
sound when he closes the door
of his 1971 Porsche.
The Sixties/Seventies fetish
continues in the shop, which fea-
tures a statement chandelier in the
Pierre Cardin-meets-Barbarella
idiom, slatted wooden panelling
and, instead of a cash desk, a little
bar at the back that creates the
ambience of a cocktail lounge in
an upscale hotel, circa Studio 54.
And in that it mimics the inte-
rior detailing of the bags: there
are pockets and slots and gussets
galore. So many that in the larger
bags one loses count as another
compartment is opened and
a new set of card slots,
phone holsters, pass-
port places and so on are
revealed, making LONB
the luggage for you if
you have multiple iden-
tities. But even if you are
not Jason Bourne you will
still find much to like.
59 South Audley Street, London
W1. lonb.com
Bag by LONB, £26,900. lonb.com
 So, fugly trainers.
What’s up with them?
I’ve noticed this trend too.
I say fine if you’re under 26
– you’re young enough to at
least appear trendy – and fine
if you’re over 75 – these things
can resemble “stroke” slippers.
Otherwise, avoid.
I’m considering the foulard
as my go-to accessory for
spring. Please advise.
My grandmother once said to
children’s TV star Tony Hart,
“Foulards are for dullards.”
Renowned for her acid tongue
and intolerance of anything less
than a formal tie, Gran was a real
character. I have slightly more
modern views on accessorising.
A foulard is, of course, a thin silk
or cotton tie-like handkerchief
tied effortlessly round the
neck, under the collar. Tied too
tightly, however, and you’ll look
overdone. Go for it, but make
sure its effect isn’t too studied
– no one wants to look like a
needy fashion blogger.
What do you think when you
see a man with a briefcase?
That he means business.
What’s the best thing to wear to the divorce courts?
Your new partner? Just kidding. Don’t bring them or you’ll lose
everything. This is a tricky one. On the one hand, you want to
appear clean-cut and responsible enough to share custody of the
children, on the other, you don’t want to appear ostentatiously
rich so you get taken to the figurative cleaners. I’m not a fan of
the word “sober” but in this case that’s exactly the vibe you should
go for. But then, one does want to look great – if nothing else, to
rub your ex-partner’s nose in it. Your outfit should say, “I’ve moved
on, I’m going places, I’m a desirable man in his prime” rather than,
“I’m lonely and spend my evenings crying and watching endless
episodes of Designated Survivor.” It’s a fine line, I admit – one I
walk every single day. Any accessories that are too noisy scream
midlife crisis. Avoid. In the end, it all rather depends on the game
you’re playing. If there are no children involved, perhaps it’s best
to appear a tragic mess so the court takes pity on you (wear a
onesie) or if you want to gloss over any transgressions and give
an air of respectability, go smart. I would wear a simple classic navy
two-button suit or perhaps a double-breasted – you can’t go wrong
at Gieves & Hawkes. It’s best to wear quality tailoring – you only
get divorced once, twice at the most.
Suit by Gieves & Hawkes
£895. At Harrods. harrods.com
124 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018
What should a best man
wear to a wedding?
The following advice naively
presupposes that you actually
like the groom and that you
aren’t secretly in love with
the bride. If my assumption is
incorrect, then do everything
you can to pull focus or
make a joke out of the entire
proceedings – in which case,
perhaps dress as a clown, roll
your eyes during the vows and
heckle throughout the service.
If all is well, then take your
lead from the groom. This isn’t
your moment. I was recently
a groomsman at a friend’s
wedding. The groom wore a
double-breasted navy suit, the
best man wore single-breasted.
Groomsmen should coordinate.
Colour-matched suits are a must,
as are ties, pocket squares and
flower buttonholes. The key is
continuity. Do watch out for fat,
glossy ties – horrific. The only
shiny thing at a wedding should
be your shoes and your forehead
after eight hours of bacchanalia.
Socks: when should
they match a man’s suit
trousers? And when should
they match his shoes?
Now we enter the exciting and
heady world of socktiquette.
The classic rule is socks
must match the trousers, not
the shoes. The more formal the
occasion, the thinner and darker
the sock. Dress socks – which
should always be pulled up to
the calf – should be worn with
dress shoes. Pantherella makes
Photograph Tomo Brejc
beautiful ones and the London
Sock Company (below) has a
subscription service, Sock Club,
where fresh pairs arrive on your
doorstep. Perfect for elegant/
lazy gentleman such as myself.
G New House Rules

Jim Chapman is Black Cleansing Oil by Erborian

8 /10
the GQ Test Pilot I must say, I was a little unsure about
this one when it landed on my doorstep.
This month: It’s a jet-black combination of charcoal
and oil to be massaged into dry skin.

charcoal Charcoal is good at absorbing sebum

(the oil your skin produces) so surely
suspending it in oil will negate this
Whoever does the PR for charcoal deserves a medal – or at least property? Somehow no.
It’s actually very gentle and when the
a pay rise. When I was at school, the only time I ever came into
time comes to rinse it off, the warm water
contact with it was in the art department while capturing a still transforms it into a light emulsion that
life. But it’s also handy at gobbling up impurities and now the stuff melts away impurities, dirt and excess
filters the water in our bottles, whitens our teeth, cleanses our skin, sebum without leaving your skin dry and
tight. Where some charcoal products
alleviates gas, absorbs toxins and even has anti-ageing properties. may dry out sensitive skin, this one,
Basically, it’s brilliant and if I had been eating it during my art class based on Korean cleansing techniques,
rather than drawing with it, I would probably have lived forever. is suitable for almost everyone.
At £24 for 190ml, it’s not the cheapest
Being the civic-minded man that I am, when I was given a bunch of cleanser out there, but for something
charcoal-infused products to pilot, I didn’t hesitate to put life and you’re supposed to use every day it is
limb (teeth and skin) on the line (see GQ.co.uk for video proof) in a treat for your skin. erborian.com
an effort to find the crème de la crème.

Bamboo Charcoal Whitening Polish by Mr Blanc Teeth 9/10 Face Mask by Le Labo 8 /10
This is the toothpaste I will be using for the rest of my life. I’ve seen Le Labo makes beautiful fragrances and the packaging of this mask
people promoting the whitening effects on Instagram and the results has the same kind of “apothecary” vibe as the brand’s other products.
looked too good to be true. It’s just so easy to edit photos that I didn’t They look great in any bathroom and when you open the lid, you’re
trust a single one of the images I saw, but I can testify that it works. greeted by a good-enough-to-eat scent of marzipan (the fact that the
Charcoal whitens teeth in a similar manner to the way it cleans skin – substance itself is a black paste should be enough to deter you from
by soaking up anything that shouldn’t be there. It also improves general actually having a nibble).
oral health by altering the pH balance in your mouth, making it an It’s refreshingly cool on
environment that discourages the usual dental suspects. your skin and very easy to
The packaging, however, is diabolical and brushing your teeth with work into every nook and
black paste does take some getting used to. It’s also worth noting that cranny your face has to
I have naturally offer. Once on, it goes to
white teeth and work absorbing pollution,
this is a stain toxins and general detritus
remover, not and ten minutes later you
an active can enjoy a complexion
whitener, but that feels clean and oil-free.
it’s the best one A little goes a long
I’ve used and way and the tub holds a
at £8 a tube, generous 125ml, so even
I’m sold. though it comes in at £32
mrblanc it has serious longevity.
teeth.com lelabofragrances.com

Charcoal & Black Pepper Soap by Scrubd 7/10 Detoxifying Charcoal Facial
Male skin has some features that differ from female skin, with specific Wipes by Yes To 7/10
areas requiring a little TLC. This soap is made specifically for men and For the most part, face wipes are
you can tell by the way it looks. It’s a big black block. Admittedly, we a bit naff. You can’t massage them
didn’t get along on our shower together: it was cumbersome to hold into your skin and there’s nothing
and took a lot of working before it would lather up. But it didn’t take to wash off. Essentially, when you
long to become more ergonomic and bubble-friendly, at which point, use them you’re just pushing dirt
my opinion totally changed. around your face. Adding charcoal,
Often, I find bars of soap can dry out my skin, but the shea butter though, is a stroke of genius. It
left me feeling actively pulls unwelcome additions
hydrated, the from your skin.
black pepper Wipes of any kind are never going
oil energised to replace an actual facial wash, but
me for the day if you’re in a rush or travelling, or as
ahead and an additional step after a cleanse or
the charcoal face mask, they can definitely add
Illustration Ricardo Fumanal

got me clean. value. They’re user-friendly and won’t

It’s also a spill over your clothes when you
handful, so at pack them in your suitcase. At £4.99,
£17 it should consider them a handy addition to
last a while. your charcoal arsenal. G
scrubd.com yesto.co.uk

WATC H J I M C H A P M A N ’ S V I D E O R E V I E WS AT G Q .CO. U K / P R O F I L E /J I M - C H A P M A N

126 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

 The G Preview: March
E D I T E D BY HOLLY ROBERTS

Bringing you the very latest in fashion, grooming, watches, news and exclusive events

Junior Retail Editor Michiel Steur

1 Jacket by Oliver Spencer, £290. oliverspencer.com 2 Glasses by Tom Ford, £220. tomford.com 3 Jacket by Michael Kors, £970. michaelkors.co.uk
4 Rucksack by Moncler, £425. moncler.com 5 Watch by Bremont 1918, £16,995. bremont.com 6 Bag by Emporio Armani, £550. armani.com
7 Jacket by Loro Piana, £1,930. loropiana.com 8 Shoes by Massimo Dutti, £109. massimodutti.com 9 Jacket by Barbour, £179. barbour.com

128 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

 PREVIEW

We love
Spring/Summer 2018 by
Ermenegildo Zegna Couture
Photograph Roger Stillman

For his debut Spring/Summer collection for Ermenegildo Zegna

Couture, artistic director Alessandro Sartori deconstructs traditional
tailoring codes and delivers sportswear-inspired styles in the most
sophisticated materials. Stand out in this bright silk striped bomber
jacket, so team with this bold green leather perforated vest for an
explosion of colour. Worn with this beautifully soft pair of tanned
leather trainers, it will express your personality in the most elegant
way for the perfect kick start to a brand-new season in menswear.

Bomber jacket, £2,630. Vest, £3,780. Trainers, £430.

All by Ermenegildo Zegna Couture. zegna.com
 PREVIEW

The Curtain, 45 Curtain

Road, London EC2A 3PT.
thecurtain.com

Jumper by Autograph at Watch by Kronaby,

Marks & Spencer, £39.50. £425. kronaby.com
marksandspencer.com

Rucksack by
Prada, £830.
prada.com

L’Eau Majeure D’Issey

by Issey Miyake, 100ml
for £61. At House of Fraser.
houseoffraser.co.uk

Blazer by Brooks Brothers,

£1,400. brooksbrothers.com

Glasses by Lindberg,
£1,220. lindberg.com

How to
Dress for both work and play
Looking for a Shoreditch House substitute?
The Curtain may be just what you need.
With an interior straight out of Downtown
Manhattan (think warehouse industrial with
a sense of modern masculinity) blended
with an effortlessly cool east London
attitude, the Curtain slots seamlessly into its
professional encounters and for times when
business needs to take a back seat. But
whether you’re there for work or play, it’s
important to keep your look sharp. Keep
your tailoring relaxed and layer over
textured knitwear to give a soft alternative
to a stuffy suit. If using its co-working
Retail Editor Holly Roberts

bustling surroundings of Shoreditch while
breathing new creative energy into the area.
The members club, which opened last year,
is a place to work, network and play. Along
with the newly opened co-working space, it
has all the tools in place for both
space, ensure your commute is hands free,
with this sporty, but smart, rucksack from
Prada – perfectly sized to pack all of your
daily essentials.
The Curtain, 45 Curtain Road, London Bag by Remus Uomo, £149.
remusuomo.com
EC2A 3PT. thecurtain.com

130 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

The tango 300 is an ideal timepiece to explore the ocean’s
depths, courtesy of its impressive 300m water resistance.
Combining elegance with functionality, the unidirectional
bezel upholds the tradition of diving watches.

Join the discussion #PrecisionMovements tango collection

store-uk.raymond-weil.co.uk
 the book O the recipe O the bar O the bottle O the restaurant O the clubs O the hotel O the trolley

The Book

The F word is back

Take your pick: ‘fit’, ‘food’ or ‘flavour’. Gordon Ramsay
tells GQ’s Paul Henderson how to have it all
E D I T E D BY BILL PRINCE & PAUL HENDERSON
Photograph Jamie Orlando Smith

Gordon Ramsay’s tomato

salad from new recipe book
Ultimate Fit Food

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 133

 The Book
Ultimate Fit Food by Gordon Ramsay
Gordon Ramsay can still
remember the exact
moment he realised he had
to take his diet more seriously. It was
22 miles into his first marathon back
in 2000 and although tired and
sweaty he remembers seeing a lady
leaning over a barrier on the bridge
and calling out his name. “Gordon!”
she shouted. Ramsay looked up,
grateful for the support, and gave
her a wave, attempting a smile
through the pain. “Not so hard now
are you, you fat fuck?” she shouted.
“It was just so humiliating,” says
Ramsay, who back then weighed a
bulky 18-and-a-half stone. “Then
I watched this lady run along to the
next bridge and she shouted again.
‘Where’s your sports bra?’ That was
all the motivation I needed to start
getting fit. Six months later I ran an
ultra marathon in South Africa, all
because of her.”
Ramsay doesn’t look back on
the incident as fat-shaming – as he
freely admits, “I give a lot of shit, so
I can take a lot of shit” – but rather
he considers it a wake-up call. His
father had died two years earlier
from a heart attack at the age of
53 and Ramsay was on a fast-track
to following him: the most famous
chef in the country was stressed and
angry (Hulk angry, really), worrying
If you about his career and his heroin-
eat right addicted brother, and working 16-17
hours a day before going out in
most of Chinatown, eating sweet-and-sour
the time, stodge and drinking far too much.
He decided to change. First running,
the odd then cycling and swimming. Finally
In-N-Out he was competing in Iron Man
triathlons. And his diet changed too.
burger At first he took influences from
can be OK Asian diets (“eating less, but more
often throughout the day”), then it
was about developing techniques for
seasoning and delivering punchy
flavours (“Healthy food is notoriously
bland, but it doesn’t have to be”) and
spending a lot of time in California
helped (“When the sun shines every
day, you approach your whole life
differently”). But most importantly
he learned that if you eat the right
food most of the time, you can
indulge yourself occasionally (“the
odd In-N-Out burger and cheesy
fries or a Pizza East can be OK”).
“Our attitude to food has changed,”
he says. “More of us care about what
we eat and what impact it has on our
bodies. If you had told me 15 years
ago I’d be coming up with recipes
for flageolet bean houmous and tofu
and kale scramble, I’d have told you
to fuck off! But here I am because I
think it is important to make positive
dietary choices taste delicious. That
is what this book is about.”
At 51, Ramsay is more successful
than ever. He runs his own TV
production company and has 30
restaurants to his name, all of which
has made him very wealthy (Forbes
claims he earned £45m last year). But
the chef is adamant money doesn’t
fuel him. What does, he says, is that
he feels fitter and healthier. So is the
once fat chef in the shape of his life?
“Put it this way,” he says with classic
Ramsay mischievousness, “Tana [his
wife] isn’t complaining.”
He laughs like a naughty
schoolboy. He hasn’t changed
that much. PH
OGordon Ramsay’s Ultimate Fit Food
(Hodder & Stoughton, £25) is out now.

The Recipe

Bavette steak with rosemary chimichurri (serves four)

From Gordon Ramsay’s Method
Ultimate Fit Food
For the chimichurri, mix together the
parsley, oregano, garlic, rosemary,
Ingredients chilli, red wine vinegar and a third of
Large bunch of parsley, the oil. Season with a little salt and
finely chopped pepper, then leave to infuse for
approximately two hours.
Small bunch of oregano, leaves
finely chopped When ready to cook, heat a large
griddle pan over a high heat.
3 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
Brush the steak on both sides with
2 rosemary sprigs, leaves the remaining oil. Then, when the
finely chopped griddle is smoking hot, carefully place
it in the pan and fry for four minutes
1 red chilli, deseeded and on each side. Remove the steak, wrap
finely chopped in tin foil and leave to rest.
35ml red wine vinegar Put the sliced mushrooms in the
Photograph Jamie Orlando Smith

30ml rapeseed oil pan in a single layer and cook

Sea salt and ground black pepper
1kg piece of bavette steak
4 portobello mushrooms, brushed
clean and cut into thick slices
12 whole cherry tomatoes
on the vine
Watercress, to serve
for two minutes on each side.
Take the mushrooms off, then
add the tomatoes and cook for
approximately two minutes.
Carve the steak against the grain into
long, thin slices and arrange the slices
on a serving platter. Drizzle with a
generous amount of chimichurri
sauce and serve with the mushrooms,
tomatoes and watercress.

134 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

 TASTE

The Bottle

Ceylon Arrack
A highly sought spirit from Sri Lanka’s palmtops
Ceylon Arrack owes everything to the “toddy tappers”, the
men who clamber spider-like up tall palms, then walk between
them on perilous single ropes to collect the precious coconut
sap. It must be harvested at dawn so exactly the right amounts
of yeasts and sugars are preserved, after which the sap is left
to ferment naturally before being distilled then aged in native
Halmilla wood vats.
It’s a versatile spirit, popular in cocktails at the likes of Hoppers,
Soho’s perpetually packed Sri Lankan bolt hole, where it’s the
star of the arrestingly named Arrack Attack No2 (Arrack, lime,
cucumber, ginger beer and turmeric). Neat, it lies somewhere
between a refined rum and a light single malt, with whispers of
caramel and honey alongside the coconut and floral aromas. Pour
out a glass, imagine the breezes from the Indian Ocean instead
of the biting wind and be thankful to the toddy tappers that your
next drink is no longer a tree-climb away. Amy Matthews
The Bar
O£28.99. ceylonarrack.com

Out Of The Blue

at The Blue Bar, The Roundup

The Berkeley Arcade fare: The best bites at

Four for four at Britain’s most intimate bar Bloomberg’s new City Of London HQ
Cocktails billed as full-on sensory
experiences may be everywhere these Homeslice Bleecker Caravan
days, but nowhere are they served quite 69-71 Queen Street, 16 Bloomberg Arcade, 22 Bloomberg Arcade,
like at Out Of The Blue. In London’s Knightsbridge, London EC4 London EC4 London EC4

The Berkeley hotel’s new alcohol odyssey begins homeslicepizza.co.uk bleeckerburger.co.uk caravanrestaurants.co.uk

in The Blue Bar with a palate cleanser, before

guests are escorted to a tiny bar at a secret location
within the hotel walls. The vault seats four people,
with four unidentified tipples lined up in front of
each place. Over the course of four seven-minute
experiences you guess what is in each cocktail,
as taste is bolstered by scents, sounds and
stunningly visceral visuals projected onto the
walls around you. The liquid inside the glass
becomes an immersive virtual reality. A warm
caramel smell, the sound of carbonated liquid
and an epic, shifting desertscape sculpted from The setup: These 20-inch The setup: It began life in The setup: The fourth
demerara sugar accompany the sweet, fizzy, pizzas come straight from 2012 as a London food truck Caravan in the convoy,
gloriously alcoholic option. Eerie, tinkling music, the wood-fired oven and set up by New York lawyer this multi-terraced affair
would put most wagon Zan Kaufman, but there has it all (almost): an
abstract sheets of cracking ice and dark colours wheels to shame (but a few are now three permanent open kitchen; a coffee/
envelop the room when the time comes for a subtle can be ordered by the slice). branches – including this cocktail bar; space for
drink served with a steel ball. And for the cocktail Diners are treated to booth smart new 30-seat outpost flexible working. With a
seating overlooking a sunken in the Square Mile. nod towards the wellness
that tastes suspiciously like Scotch comes the open kitchen and cocktail crowd, the menu includes
Eat this: Be sure to get the
unmistakable smell of peat and panoramic shots bar in Homeslice’s fourth full Bleecker’s experience “fermented and raw” and
of an idyllic pastoral scene that would look at bricks-and-mortar site. by ordering the British “salads and grains” sections.
home in a David Attenborough documentary. As Eat this: The topping rare-breed, pasture-fed Eat this: Caravan’s brunch
an experiment in how we perceive flavour, this is choices change seasonally, beef in all its 40- to 50-day, list remains a game changer.
but new pizza creations dry-aged, umami glory, No hangover stands a
best enjoyed as a group of four, where you can laugh in the face of condensed into the simple chance against the pork
bounce off one another through every sip (plus tradition: there’s now a form of the cheeseburger belly, kimchi pancake and
you pay for the room and not per visitor). At once kimchi, porcini cream and (£6.50) on a sesame-seed sunny duck egg (£12).
basil as well as spiced lamb, bun. Not a brioche in sight. Drink this: More unusual
awe-inspiring and provocative yet not slightly savoy cabbage and sumac Drink this: Alongside craft offerings include
gimmicky, we’re certain that even the most jaded yoghurt (£20 each). We like beers and sodas, there’s pomegranate kombucha,
of gentlemen will be glad to revel in the novelty. Homeslice very, very much. the Black & White shake a fermented tea (£3.50).
Kathleen Johnston Drink this: Guest craft beers (£4.50) – a perilous medley There’s also a “shrub
(£5) are always on rotation of soft-serve ice cream, station” in the dining room
O£200 for a one-hour slot for up to four guests. Wilton – and they also do a mean whole milk, Valrhona so guests can create their
Place, London SW1. the-berkeley.co.uk Fig Martini (£7). Obviously. chocolate and vanilla. own cocktails. Jennifer Bradly

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 135

 Tonteria
Why am I on the guest list? Because
you’ve spent too many nights
at clubs without character. With
this iconic party spot’s major
refurbishment comes liberatingly
basic chart toppers, private table
shows featuring men donning lion
masks, plus sharer cocktails served
from ceramic donkey piñatas.
Snooty or simpleton? Both. Tonteria
attracts the kind of man who
chooses a casual suede loafer over
a pair of old Air Max 1s, but doesn’t
mind getting them sticky.
Tiramisu at Harry’s Dolce Vita
Glitzy gimmick: The toy train
delivering shots of tequila to VIPs.
The Restaurant
Royal appeal? The first nightclub to

Harry’s Dolce Vita eschew semi-naked dancing Barbies

(better late than never), Tonteria
Where Felliniesque fare makes the cut avoids a royal blush by favouring
male dancers, body staplers and
What’s the story? The latest opening from dwarfs dressed as monkeys instead.
Richard Caring’s Caprice Holdings – the
Party ranking: 8/10
restaurant group behind The Ivy, Sexy Fish
and Scott’s – is an elegant all-day dining room inspired O7-12 Sloane Square, London SW1. 020 7881 5991. tonteria.co.uk
by Italian style from the Fifties and Sixties, with a
fedora tip to the iconic Harry’s Bar in London’s Mayfair.
The Clubs
How does it look? How do you think it looks? Like
a luxurious and glamorous Roman villa, with leather
stools and banquettes, warm and overly rich fabrics, Tonteria vs Mahiki Kensington
classic brass fixtures and handcrafted glass from the
HRH has a party to plan. But which royal-approved local wins?
Venetian island of Murano. Put it this way: you’ll
want to linger.
What’s on the menu? We’re talking Italian, traditional
and seasonal. Tuna carpaccio, truffle burrata and
Mahiki Kensington
plenty of pizze, of course. Then there are a few Why am I on the guest list? Because
impeccable signature dishes, including spaghetti Mahiki Kensington, sibling of Mahiki
vongole, pappardelle bolognese and whole sea bass Mayfair, isn’t just about the crazy
baked with fennel and Amalfi lemons. dance floor and its strange fusion of
hip hop and house. For a few civilised
And to drink? With the Harry’s Bar influence, the
hours, enjoy rather good pan-Asian
cocktails are exceptional (we recommend Harry’s
cuisine at restaurant Pufferfish before
Espresso Martini with homemade limoncello), as is the
tables are pushed aside by 11pm.
carefully curated Italian wine list. But keep an eye out
for the ever-circling grappa trolley and use its approach Snooty or simpleton? Snooty. If
as a signal to order another aperitif/digestif/one for you’re not dropping five figures on
the road. a table and 50 Mai Tais, the staff
don’t want to know.
Who’s in the kitchen? Er, an Argentinian.
Glitzy gimmick: Mahiki’s iconic
What? Don’t worry... Diego Cardoso spent 12 years
treasure chest, serving eight via
honing his Italian technique working with Angela
super-long straws.
Hartnett. After stints at The Connaught, Cielo and
Murano, Cardoso is working his Michelin-star magic Royal appeal? Mahiki Mayfair lost its
as the executive chef. glamorous legacy beneath relentless
visits from the nouveau riche. But
The last word: “My grandparents were from Naples.
billed as the “grown-up” Mahiki and
My father was one of 13 children, a great Italian family
only a stone’s throw from Kensington
with great Italian cooking,” says Caring, chairman of
Palace, the area’s new jaunt has come
Caprice Holdings. “Harry’s Dolce Vita will be another
to give the brand its mojo back.
great Italian family with great Italian cooking.” PH
Party ranking: 9/10 Eleanor Halls
O27-31 Basil Street, London SW3. 020 3940 1020.
harrysdolcevita.com O2a Kensington High Street, London W8. 020 7368 1180. mahikikensington.com

136 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018


The Hotel
Titanic, Liverpool
Mersey’s dockside regeneration starts here, at this high-end waterfront address
No jokes about sinking,
please. Titanic is not a
themed hotel, but it does
borrow from the storied tradition
of Liverpool’s docks. It is also the
first major step in the £5 billion
redevelopment of the Mersey
waterfront that will transform the
look and feel of the entire city.
Like so many things about this
resurgent and resilient place,
football is a factor. Sport tourism
is not only the biggest pull the
city has – along with some pop
band you may have heard of –
but almost all the Premier League
and European teams visiting to
play either Liverpool or Everton
decamp to the Titanic, knowing
they will get the luxury, privacy
and quality of service their
pampered players expect.
One of the advantages of such
an impressive – indeed massive –
building with which to develop the
offering (it was constructed in 1854
as the North Warehouse on Stanley
Dock, which is itself part of a
Unesco World Heritage Site and
had stood derelict between 1980
and 2014) is that it can facilitate
awesome spaces for restaurants
and conference and event centres
The Trolley
Aquavit London
Meet the Scandi spirit service shaking things up
Photograph Ming Tang-Evans
OSt James’s Market, 1 Carlton Street, London SW1.
020 7024 9848. aquavitrestaurants.com
TASTE
Small Bites
Where we have been
eating this month...
Luca
Bearded hipsters who gush about
The Clove Club, this one’s for you.
Highbrow pseudo-midcentury interior
meets clever Italian comfort food.
Standout dish
Conchiglie with pork sausage,
– plus the calm-inducing silence of their generous suites. tomato and ricotta salad.
GQ’s Dockside suite had more rooms than The Crystal 88 St John Street, London EC1.
020 3859 3000. luca.restaurant
Maze and from the window, we faced the millpond
stillness of the docks and the next building set for
rebirth, the even more monumental Tobacco Warehouse.
Downstairs, Stanley’s Bar & Grill delivers the moreish
classics you would expect and the bar specialises in
quality rum, with more than 100 names from around
the world, while the spa’s below-ground pool and
treatment rooms add to the sense that this a genuine
retreat in the most unlikely of locations. Titanic shares
the size and style of its namesake, but when it comes
to the future it is heading in an entirely different Meraki
direction. George Chesterton Peter and Arjun Waney’s modern
Greek restaurant offers authentic
OLiverpool Stanley Dock, Regent Road, Liverpool L3 0AN. regional dishes and classic mezze.
0151 559 3356. titanichotelliverpool.com
Standout dish
Celebration leg of lamb with herb crust
and caper salsa verde (for three).
Pop into London’s Michelin- 80-82 Great Titchfield Street,
London W1. 020 7305 7686.
starred Aquavit and ask for
a Scandi Mule and you’ll be meraki-restaurant.com
served the house’s signature
cocktail consisting of a lemongrass and
grapefruit syrup mixed with lime juice,
fennel, ginger beer, caraway tincture
and a shot of OP Anderson Original,
Sweden’s oldest and most celebrated
“aqua vitae” – the healing liquid first
distilled by a Spanish alchemist in the
13th century more commonly known
as aquavit. Today, the national spirit of
Scandinavia – and therefore the perfect
nom de cuisine of London’s premier
Nordic restaurant – is now served from
its own tailor-made trolley containing
The Northall at Corinthia
the largest selection of aquavits in the Hotel London
UK. Available to try before, during or Ewan Simpson’s sumptuous British-
after a meal, their flavours range from based fare is served up in a high-
the aniseed of OP Anderson Original to status yet convivial atmosphere.
a floral variant flavoured with elderflower
Standout dish
for those who prefer a milder taste.
Cumbrian beef sirloin, Yorkshire
Experts are on hand to advise on the
pudding and roast potatoes.
perfect food pairing or you can book
an hour-long Aquavit spirit masterclass 10a Northumberland Avenue, London
hosted by Jon Anders Fjeldsrud on WC2. 020 7321 3100. corinthia.com
monthly Mondays from 6.30pm. BP
MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 137
 E D I T E D BY BILL PRINCE
TRAVEL
this month: upcountry in oregon p.143 downhill in the dolomites p.144

Multnomah Falls cascades

through the Columbia
River Gorge, Oregon

The Trail

Take
a
Photograph Plainpicture

hike
Alex Hannaford leaves the taprooms and roasters of Portland to scout falls,
peaks and coastlines in the Pacific Northwest

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 141

 This month on

Go …to GQ.co.uk every Thursday at 8pm to discover who we’ve

included in our gallery feature “Women We Love This Week”.

Subscribe
…to the British GQ
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Strike!, hosted by
“foodball mad” GQ
Style Fashion Director
Elgar Johnson. Guests
so far have ranged
from Theo Walcott
to Oliver Spencer.

Treat
...yourself to a table at one of London’s most
romantic restaurants. Select one to visit from
our hugely popular and regularly updated
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and Facebook Lives. be buying this year.

Timberline Lodge (aka The Shining’s
Overlook Hotel) and (below)
McMenamins Kennedy School Hotel
The Trail
Peak performance
Oregon’s open wilderness is a rambler’s dream
STORY BY Alex Hannaford
In winter, a stretch of the Columbia River
a short drive east of Portland, Oregon,
becomes a raging, icy torrent. The wind
whips the surface into foamy crests and
numerous waterfalls, which in warmer
weather descend from the cliff edges,
are frozen in time. It’s beautiful and
best viewed from a snow-brushed
forested perch in the hills by Multnomah
Photographs Martin Child; Getty Images; Kat Nyberg/McMenamins
Falls, the state’s highest waterfall.
It’s here that I find myself one winter
afternoon, standing amid the pines
overlooking the river. While scores of
people negotiate the icy car park below,
trying (and mostly failing) to avoid slipping
while walking in inappropriate footwear to
the nearby Benson Bridge for a spectacular
view of the Falls, I’m smugly sporting a
pair of £20 crampons. I hiked on for an
hour, feeling like a mountain goat, for the
best view.
But Multnomah Falls, which has provided
countless photographers with a scenic vista
for postcards since its construction in 1914,
is just the tip of the iceberg. Head to the
lodge near the bridge for a hot chocolate and
take a look at the map on the wall: you’ll see
TRAVEL
you’re standing on the edge of a vast, almost
300,000-acre canyon that slices through the
Cascades. Run by the US Forest Service, there’s
endless hiking and numerous campsites – just
beware the bears emerging from hibernation if
you’re there at the tail end of winter.
I’m staying in Portland, the ideal place if – in
BA flies from addition to the bustle, convenience and charm
London Heathrow
to Seattle via Dallas – you’re looking for mountain climbs, frozen
from £1,547. ba.com waterfalls, cold-water surfing, beach hikes or
a trip to the US’s only year-round ski resort.
Yes, Portland is the outdoor fanatic’s dream: a 90-minute drive in
either direction from the winter sports mecca of Mount Hood and
the Oregon Pacific coast, with its spotless beaches.
It’s there that I head next – to Cannon Beach, to hike for a
few miles along the empty sand next to towering Haystack Rock,
cemented in the minds of gen Xers as the coastal monolith in
The Goonies – before driving further down the coast on a road
occasionally shadowed by a canopy of pine, yet devoid of the
traffic that’s an inevitability in summer.
Back in Portland, I check in to the McMenamins Kennedy School
Hotel, a refurbished elementary school where guests stay in one
of the 57 “classrooms”, complete with original chalkboards and
cloakrooms. Tucked away off a side street in the north of the city,
it’s sprawling and warm inside, with four bars, a cinema and an
alt-rock band playing in the gym. I order the lobster mac and
cheese for dinner – sustenance to ready me for a trip to the
mountains the following day.
Mount Hood, a volcanic mountain in the Cascade range, is
home to the famous (some might say infamous) Timberline Lodge,
which stood in for The Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s film
version of The Shining. It is also the centrepiece of a magnificent
ski resort. At the check-out desk, everyone is renting skis and
snowboards and there are racks of snowshoes available. I’m
looking for solitude and a good hike, so I take the trail behind
the Timberline. It’s picturesque – there’s a steep climb up to a
grove of spruce and glorious views over the mountains before it
loops back around and begins to wind towards the hotel again –
but this is a National Forest, so if you get a wilderness permit you
can disappear with your snowshoes into the mountains and pretend
to be Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant for as long as you can stand.
Just watch out for those bears.
The Society Hotel, from £59 per night. 203 NW 3rd Avenue, Portland,
Oregon 97209. +1 503 445 0444. thesocietyhotel.com. McMenamins
Kennedy School Hotel, from £115 per night. 5736 NE 33rd Avenue,
Portland, Oregon 97211. +1 503 249 3983. mcmenamins.com. Cars from
£30 per day. hertz.com. For more information, visit travelportland.com
Cannon Beach on
Oregon’s northern coast
Beware
the bears
if you’re
there at
the tail
end of
winter
MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 143
 TRAVEL
The Piste
How to do the Dolomites
Tablecloths match the powder in the playboy playground
The Dolomites is the thinking man’s mountain range. Ernest
Hemingway and Saul Bellow holidayed in the shadow of the
Sella Massif and, in Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley,
Dickie Greenleaf and Freddie Miles would head for Il Dolomiti
for their annual winter sports break. (“Excellent skiing. Excellent,”
pronounces Jude Law’s Greenleaf in the film adaptation.) Pink
Floyd’s Nick Mason, Prince Albert of Monaco and Fernando
Alonso have all hung out here, as well as local South Tyrol boy
Giorgio Moroder, who grew up in nearby Urtijëi. What’s more, the
Dolomites is home to the highest concentration of Michelin-starred
chefs in Italy. GQ visited at the very start of the season when the
majestic Unesco World Heritage site area was still waiting for its
first big snow dump. The mountainsides were lush and green, but
thanks to an extensive and efficient state-of-the-art snow-making
machine system, pretty much every run was white, fast, groomed
and open for business.
Where to ski
The Hotel Ciasa Salares’ in-house ski
instructors, Ilaria Bonato and Irene Pollini
Giolai, are experienced and ambitious winter
sports adventurists who offer guests hero
packages that include tours of Sella Ronda,
Mount Lagazuoi and Marmolada Mountain,
as well as heli-trips to Kronplatz and Mount
Piana. Arm yourself with a Dolomiti Superski
pass, which grants access to all the resort
town’s slopes, and plan for early Aperol
British Airways stops at chic Piz Boé, followed by lasagne
flies to Venice from
London Heathrow and cold beer at the Jimmy Hütte. “Excellent
from £70. ba.com skiing” indeed.
Italy’s Marmolada Mountain is visited
by royalty, rock stars and F1 drivers
144 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018
The pool at Hotel Ciasa
Salares looks out over
the local landscape
Where to stay
A short drive from the chairlift at San
Cassiano (embarkation point for the fabled
Sella Ronda tour with its 26 kilometres of
downhill trails), the Hotel Ciasa Salares
(from £320 per night. ciasasalares.it) is a
family-run business – “ciasa” means “home”
in the local Ladin dialect. The Wesiers –
husband and wife team Stefan and Wilma
and their chef son Jan Clemens (a pole-less
downhill crazy who rides on Hieronymus
Bosch-style skis) – are gently modernising
the jet-set Tyrolean hotel’s suites towards
cosy expressions of rustic-luxe rendered in
larch wood and fresh white bed linen. All
materials are locally sourced, in accordance
with the indigenous green building
philosophy. There’s a lovely indoor pool,
a chocolate room and a quirky little wine
cellar (where you can also dine). The kitchen
at Hotel Ciasa Salares’ famous La Siriola
restaurant is home to Matteo Metullio,
Italy’s youngest Michelin-starred chef.
Where to eat
Photograph Camera Press/Guenter Stand
Break up your ski day with a white-tablecloth frutti di mare lunch
at Rifugio Emilio Comici (rifugiocomici.com) at the foot of the huge
Langkofel rock. Named after a famous climber and Casanova, the
restaurant has been a Val Gardena fixture since 1955 – octopus,
langoustine and scallops are delivered daily, all the way from Venice
– the Comici hut is to the Dolomites what The Ivy is to the West End.
They recently added an al fresco champagne bar where, during peak
season, you can make like Greenleaf and Miles with an iced Spritz
Veneziano in your hand and a Comici Apero appetiser on your table,
watching the passing bellezze sciistiche instructors in their Armani
uniforms under a cloudless Italian sky. Simon Mills G
 G Partnership

Glenmorangie Spìos
Private Edition No9, £74.
glenmorangie.com

Whisky
in the
rye
Glenmorangie’s new limited-
edition single malt is its first
ever to be fully matured in
American ex-rye whiskey casks
very year since 2010,

E
  Glenmorangie has released a new
single malt to add to its Private
Edition collection, a series which
has already helped the Highland
distillery pick up a long list of awards. This
year’s ninth entry into the canon is one of its
most intriguing creations yet. Glenmorangie
Spìos is its first ever single malt to be entirely
matured in casks that once contained
American rye whiskey.
As any Scots Gaelic speaker will tell you,
spìos means spice. The name invokes the
distinctive, spicy style of the rye whiskey,
which was so popular back in the early 20th
century that it inspired such timeless
cocktails as the Old Fashioned and
the Manhattan.
Although rye whiskey later slipped out of
fashion, its rare cinnamon and clove notes
caught the attention and the imagination of
Glenmorangie’s Director of Distilling &
Whisky Creation, Dr Bill Lumsden. In the late
Nineties he arranged for the finest first-fill
casks from American rye whiskey’s heartland
of Kentucky to be shipped over to the
Glenmorangie Distillery in the Scottish
Highlands. In the years since they’ve
imparted their intriguing spice to
Glenmorangie’s famously smooth spirit.
It’s now available for the first time ever.
Glenmorangie Spìos represents the bringing
together of whisky traditions from either side
of the Atlantic, a process which has created
a full-bodied, savoury single malt that’s
unmistakably Scotch while also conjuring
up American rye whiskey’s golden age.
Glenmorangie Spìos tasting notes
The nose is fresh, herbal and perfumed with hints
of cherry. The taste has a spicy texture, with
toffee, clove and buttery vanilla. The finish is rich,
sweet and lingering.

Twitter: @TheGlenmorangie Instagram:

glenmorangiecom Facebook: @Glenmornagie
 THE GQ
Andrew Keen probes Silicon Valley’s morality deficit p.148 Olivia Cole reviews
this month’s must-read memoirs p.149 Stuart McGurk on the art of monstrous
men p.150 Tony Parsons on failing a medical p.152 Matthew d’Ancona asks can
Corbyn cancel Brexit? p.155 Dorian Lynskey on the power of Spotify playlists p.156
Photograph Eddie Peake/ White Cube (Ben Westoby)

White Man Sort Your Self Out

by Eddie Peake (2017)

Common ground The concrete pitch that gave Eddie Peake the title of his new show at White Cube Bermondsey refers to the artist’s boyhood hangout in Finsbury
Park, London. “I liked that it could be used by everybody and not contingent on class or race or sex.” As in life, so in Peake’s absurdist, sexually ambiguous aesthetic,
which enrols performance, video, installation and sculpture to explore the body as an erotic object. As well as paintings, Concrete Pitch hosts Kool London DJs, who
are broadcasting an online radio show for the duration. Until 8 April. whitecube.com. To read Sophie Hastings’ full interview with artist Eddie Peake, visit GQ.co.uk

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 147

 Technology
The great Silicon Valley
moral crash
Dotcom’s billionaire revolutionaries once promised brighter futures.
So why are their platforms replaying history’s ugliest mistakes?
STORY BY
Apple’s HQ in Silicon Valley, where tech giants have reached their morally questionable middle years
ast year was Silicon Valley’s annus
L horribilis. In contrast with the great
dotcom stock market crash of 2000,
however, 2017 will be remembered as the
year of the great Silicon Valley moral col-
lapse. It was the year that most of us finally
lost faith in the ability of the new economy’s
youthful tech giants to improve the world.
“From heroes to villains” screamed one
headline about this radical shift in public
opinion of these young leviathans. “Silicon
Valley is not your friend” is how another sum-
marised our new digital predicament.
Every week of 2017, it seems, brought new
ethical questions about the behaviour of these
companies, with their brash, young billionaire
CEOs and increasingly ubiquitous products
and services. And each week their seductive
promises of delivering more freedom, more
enlightenment and more economic growth
became less and less persuasive.
The list of these transgressions and scandals
is endless. Straight-faced Mark Zuckerberg
denied Facebook has a problem with fake
148 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018
Andrew Keen
news; Uber’s licence to operate was chal-
lenged in London; a rash of sexual abuse
cases infected tech investors; Google faced
an EU anti-trust investigation; Apple and
Amazon were fined billions of dollars for
not paying their overseas taxes; a clueless
Twitter was mined by anonymous Russian
trolls to sway the American election; there
was seemingly a collective failure of Silicon
Valley firms to hire women and minorities.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The
young masters of the new digital universe
told us that they would be different. The
wisdom of youth, they suggested, would
trump the wisdom of experience. They pre-
sented the world as a tabula rasa that could
be magically transformed by their new tech-
nologies. They promised that the “new”
economy would be simultaneously profit-
able and moral. They said that the internet
would change everything.
“Do no evil,” Google’s Sergey Brin and
Larry Page boasted about the search engine
company they founded as graduate students
at Stanford. Twitter, we were told, was sup-
posed to empower the democracy of the
Arab Spring. Facebook, a twenty-something
Zuckerberg endlessly prophesied, would
bring the world together.
No, it was not supposed to be like this.
These digital revolutionaries promised us
more freedom, enlightenment and economic
growth, new solutions to old problems. But
all we’ve really gotten from Silicon Valley is a
radical compounding of old problems – more
inequality, more unemployment, more incivil-
ity, more monopolies and more surveillance.
Rather than everything, the internet has, in
many ways, changed nothing about the way
the world works.
So how to fix the future? How can these
young companies really become our friends?
T he answer is to grow up. They need to
learn that their disruption isn’t quite as new
or as unprecedented as they like to think it is.
They need to understand that the world isn’t
a tabula rasa and never will be. They need to
learn that with all their massive power comes
equally massive responsibility.
Above all, they need to learn from the
past. They need to realise that we’ve been
here before with the profound economic and
cultural dislocation triggered by the digital
revolution. History repeats itself. And much
of what’s now happening at the beginning of
the 21st century with today’s radically dis-
ruptive digital revolution also happened in
the 19th and 20th centuries with the equally
disruptive industrial revolutions.
One way of learning from the past is by
talking to senior executives at more seasoned
tech companies that have been through these
disruptive cycles many times before. You
see, the wisdom of experience trumps the
wisdom of youth. And the young billion-
aires of Silicon Valley have much to learn
from the experience and outlook of older
technology companies.
Two of the world’s most storied tech com-
panies are the American Telephone And
Telegraph Company (AT&T) and the Swedish
hardware manufacturer Ericsson. Both
were founded in the 19th century: AT&T in
1885 by Alexander Graham Bell, the inven-
tor of the telephone, and Ericsson in 1876
by Lars Magnus Ericsson, an instrument-
maker who owned a telegraph repair shop
in Stockholm. And both have the historical
experience – what today’s technologists would
label “legacy” – to provide an essential map
into the future for Silicon Valley’s Young Turks.
“You can’t get to be 130 years old unless
you care about doing the right thing,” John
Donovan, the CEO of AT&T Communications,
 explains. And doing the right thing, Donovan
explains, means “representing the society
that we serve”.
Which, besides AT&T’s serious commitment
to diversity in its workforce (despite tech
industry hiring having fallen from 37 per cent
to 22 per cent over the last decade, 52 per cent
of the engineers hired at AT&T in 2017 were
women), means taking a longer-term perspec-
tive on the impact of technology on society.
There’s a real danger that Silicon Valley could
become the next Wall Street, Donovan warns.
And to avoid this, he explains, citing the work
of the Israeli-American behavioural econo-
mist Daniel Kahneman, corporations need to
think “more slowly”.
This slower thinking, Donovan explains, will
help us focus on and reinvent our relationship
with technology. We need to make people the
master of their devices, he explains, rather
than enabling those devices to master us. “I
don’t want my devices to be too smart,” he
says. And, if we are to avoid the regulation
of personal technology, he says, we need to
regulate our use of our devices.
D onovan’s attitude toward technology
is mirrored in the work of Elaine Weidman-
Grunewald, Ericsson’s chief sustainability
and public affairs officer. With a global
staff of 85 people and a direct report to the
company’s CEO, Weidman-Grunewald’s role
at Ericsson is to leverage its technology to
improve the lives of people in the develop-
ing world. But, in contrast with Silicon Valley
behemoths such as Facebook and Google,
Ericsson’s commitment to technology for the
good isn’t premised on simply promoting its
own products and services.
Ericsson’s public policy initiatives,
Weidman-Grunewald tells me when I
visited her at the company’s headquar-
ters on the outskirts of Stockholm, are based
on a commitment to the UN’s sustainable
development goals. Working with notables
including Columbia University economist
Jeffrey Sachs and the Hollywood actor
Forest Whitaker, Ericsson are seeking to
improve internet access in developing nations
such as South Sudan, Uganda and Rwanda,
and are working with the government of
Myanmar to finance the education of more
than 22,000 girls.
To regain our trust, the masters of our
new economy must learn from old economy
companies such as Ericsson and AT&T. That’s
Photograph Reuters
how to fix the future. It’s how Silicon Valley
can again become our friend.
How To Fix The Future: Staying Human In The
Digital Age (Atlantic, £20) by Andrew Keen
is out on 1 March.
Literature
Love and poison finds
new expression
Brett Anderson revisits the painful formative years before Suede;
plus tales of dos sides from a Mexican-American border guard
STORY BY
wenty-five years after their first album,
T Suede’s frontman, Brett Anderson,
delivers his memoir, Coal Black
Mornings (Little Brown, £17) – a confessional
close-up on his childhood in arty poverty in
Haywards Heath followed by messy years
living in freezing, flea-ridden rented flats in
Finsbury Park and pre-gentrification Notting
Hill, “before anyone knew or really cared”.
And what a rich, sad and honest tale it tells.
There is of course the famous love affair
with the public schoolgirl muse Justine
Frischmann of Elastica, who Anderson met
while he was studying town planning at
University College London. She was an archi-
tecture student and very removed from his
life experience up to that point. He notes that
as well as her beauty she possessed “what I
thought at first was a speech impediment”.
Besides dishing on Britpop’s most famous
love triangle (Frischmann left Anderson for
Blur’s Damon Albarn), Coal Black Mornings
is less a portrait of the hell-raiser as a young
man than a book about his family. There’s his
difficult relationship with his father, “a col-
lection of fascinating people” whose foibles
included acquiring full Arabic robes in homage
to TE Lawrence, and parading “around his
council house dressed like Peter O’Toole’s
double cast adrift in some bitterly ironic
parallel universe”. The formative event in
Anderson’s early life was the sudden death of
his mother when he was still a teenager and
he pays a moving tribute to the unusual edu-
cation and influence she provided. “As almost
everything at home was homemade, the idea
of making one’s own songs didn’t really seem
like a stretch.” Coal Black Mornings wisely
Olivia Cole
stops at the point where Suede got their big
break, but Anderson doesn’t hold back in
his reflections on what became the Britpop
moment, railing against the way his songwrit-
ing was dismissed as “social tourism”.
“Given the levels of real, cynical, social
tourism during that decade, when groups of
patronising middle-class boys were making
money by aping accents and culture of the
working classes, the irony would be exqui-
site.” Safe to say none of that crowd will have
a memoir to write like his.
This month’s other must-read memoir, The
Line Becomes A River (Bodley Head, £15),
is by third-generation Mexican-American
Francisco Cantú. While New Journalism
taught writers to immerse themselves in their
subject matter, Cantu’s background makes
most of its proponents look dilettantish.
In his early twenties, he’d had no plans to
become a writer and thought his future lay
in law or international relations – subjects
he wanted to understand from the inside.
So, between 2008 and 2012, he worked as a
border patrol agent in the deserts of Arizona,
New Mexico and Texas, hands-on in the
messy day-to-day repatriation of migrants
trying to cross the border illegally.
There’s enough workaday detail on the
cartels, “coyotes” (people traffickers) and
ritual violence to make Breaking Bad seem
lighthearted, but Cantú’s skill as a writer
proves an equal match for his material. A
digestible account of US and Mexico rela-
tions, a nuanced portrait of Mexican cultural
blessings and ills, The Line Becomes A River
is a page-turning personal story that holds
until the final page and wrenches long after.
MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 149

Monsters, inc
Art does not ask us to validate its creators. Leaving Kevin Spacey
on the cutting room floor is gesture politics that changes nothing
STORY BY
t the time of writing, Ridley Scott
A is shooting a film he’d thought he’d
already shot. All The Money In The
World, which Scott filmed in Italy last
summer, told the tale of John Paul Getty,
his kidnapped grandson and the ransom
the tycoon famously refused to pay for the
boy’s safe return (the price for this was
his grandson’s ear, which arrived a little
squished after it had been delayed by an
Italian postal strike). It was a film ideally
placed, with a December release date, for
the awards season run. The heavyweight
cast too – Kevin Spacey as Getty, Michelle
Williams as the boy’s mother, Mark Wahlberg
as a CIA operative – would all expect to be
in the running.
Then, in late October, came the Spacey
scandal, with co-star after co-star – some
of whom were underage at the time of the
alleged incidents – coming forward to claim
sexual assaults. London’s Old Vic theatre,
where Spacey served as artistic director for
over a decade, revealed it had received 20
allegations of inappropriate behaviour.
Spacey was dumped by his publicist,
Netflix announced it had suspended pro-
duction on House Of Cards and Scott
had a serious problem. All The Money
In The World was set to premiere at the
American Film Institute’s festival in
November, but it was swiftly axed “out of
respect for those impacted”.
Spacey’s role in the film wasn’t a large one,
but the film was now all about him. No fes-
tival would take it; every review would be
tainted. And so Scott decided to do what a
decade ago would have been unthinkable:
he decided to reshoot Spacey’s role, with
Christopher Plummer taking his part.
The decision was a practical one: films
like these, without brands or capes, rely on
buzz. Often, half the budget goes on mar-
keting alone. Money, as ever in Hollywood,
trumps morality. But it also poses a ques-
tion: when does our statute of outrage end?
Or, now that we can airbrush out assholes,
where do we stop?
According to people familiar with the
reshoot (dubbed the “Spacey Replacey”)
only close-ups will be reshot on loca-
tion. Those featuring other cast members,
150 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018
Film
Stuart McGurk
meanwhile, will use the original footage.
Plummer will act to green screen and he’ll
be digitally mapped over Spacey in post-
production. They still hope to hit the same
release date. Plummer has a decent shot of
the Supporting Actor Oscar Spacey would
have been gunning for.
It’s an oddly fitting cycle of events. The
online studios diminished Weinstein’s power
and loosened his grip, social media turned a
whisper network into a global megaphone
and technological advances means separat-
ing the artist from the art is no longer a state
of mind, just a few extra shoot days.
A nd yet, should we have to?
Granted, when an artist turns out to
be so at odds with their art, it’s impossi-
ble to appreciate one without thinking of
the other. Manhattan’s older-man-dating-
a-teen storyline was always weird, but
made profoundly more so by Woody Allen
marrying his young stepdaughter, Soon-Yi
Previn, in real life – it turned what could
have been a detached commentary into icky
wish-fulfilment.
Louis CK’s stand-up riffs about the trials
women face dating men are a little less hilar-
ious when you know that if CK had been on
that date he might have pulled out his penis
and masturbated in front of her.
It barely needs pointing out, mean-
while, that the cuddly curmudgeon
patriarch of The Cosby Show isn’t quite so
homespun-hilarious when you know he’s
an alleged rapist.
Spacey, of course, should not be excused.
But can’t the art be, if it’s unrelated to
the man? He, lest we forget, is an actor
whose famous roles include a president who
murders people; a computer who murders
people; a serial killer who murders people
according to the seven deadly sins; a master
criminal who murders other master criminals;
and Lex Luther. The closest he’s come to
playing a likeable person was in American
Beauty, and even there he was trying to
sleep with his teenage daughter’s best friend
from school.
To watch Spacey in All The Money In The
World is not to watch him play, say, a Robin
Williams-style man-child who laughs sick
children well or a Tom Hanks-esque every-
man who successfully crash-lands a plane.
It is watching him play, in John Paul Getty,
a real-life version of Mr Burns.
H ere’s the thing: yes, actors are dif-
ferent from other artists. They are harder
to separate from their art, because, simply,
they’re right there. It’s why film stars are film
stars. We’re buying into them, their charm,
their charisma, their ease and their poise.
And yes, it’s true that the history of art
is, in large part, the history of hideous men.
Wagner was a raging anti-Semite; Ezra
Pound was a fascist; Caravaggio killed a man;
Norman Mailer tried to kill his wife; Picasso
was so terrible that, of the seven women in
his life, two went mad and two more killed
themselves. But none of their art requires our
attachment to them. And time, of course, is
the greatest airbrusher of all.
But to repeat: this is Kevin Spacey we’re
talking about.
Spacey is not the only current example,
but it is the most complicated. The BBC, GQ
understands, is currently desperately scan-
ning through the footage of a recently shot
three-part drama, originally due to air over
the Christmas period, to see if one of the
roles could be organically recast, or even,
like Spacey, digitally remapped.
The star in question, Ed Westwick, is
accused by multiple women of rape. The
drama? Ordeal By Innocence, an adaptation
of an Agatha Christie tale in which someone
is sentenced for a terrible crime they didn’t
commit. You see the problem here.
Both Spacey and Westwick’s cases have
caused huge delays for series and films
currently in preproduction as previously
cast actors have their backgrounds combed
through before shooting starts, lest the pro-
ductions find themselves in similar situations.
Along with firing him from House Of Cards,
Netflix also decided not to release Gore,
about the life of Gore Vidal, in which Spacey
took the lead. There were no extra costs to
release it, no cinema costs to show it and
no marketing budget that needed to be put
aside for a film that would simply be clicked
on or not.
For some, it might turn their stomachs
to find it appear on their “recently added”
Photograph Marco Grob
list. That a man like Spacey should be seen
on screen playing a giant like Vidal would
horrify more still. But shouldn’t we be the
ones to decide?
All The Money In The World is out on
22 December.
After allegations of sexual misconduct, Kevin Spacey’s role in Ridley Scott’s All The Money In The World
was recast and production of House Of Cards put on hiatus

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 151

 Health

A cancer scare can save your life

Last year, Tony Parsons received the call from his doctor we all dread.
For him it came in time, and yet too many men would never get it at all

ILLUSTRATION BY Joe Waldon

here is a black hole in our health its proper medical name, a finger up the a feeble excuse because some forms of cancer

T and fitness. We turn up at our gym

with the unbending devotion previ-
ous generations reserved for church and,
butt? When your GP wants a clear view of
any problems with your prostate gland, a
prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test
come looking for young men. Almost half (47
per cent) of men diagnosed with testicular
cancer in the UK every year have yet to cel-
increasingly, we think about the fuel we will do the job. ebrate their 35th birthday. Testicular cancer
put into our bodies. How long before your It is so easy to find out you are well. In the is the young guy’s cancer. If you are going to
nutritionist is as important as your per- time it takes to drink two cups of coffee you get it, there are good odds you’ll get it young.
sonal trainer? I give it five years. And how can be reassured about your blood pressure, But you can survive testicular cancer and go
long before many more of us follow Lewis your freedom from cancer cells, the health on to live the kind of life other men will envy.
Hamilton’s example and go vegan? I give it of your heart and so much more. Perhaps the most celebrated survivor of tes-
two years. And yet there is still this here- But it is so simple to put it off. Some men ticular cancer was Bobby Moore of West Ham
be-dragons dead zone that we would prefer vaguely think that they might start getting and England, who beat the disease before he
never to think about, even as we ponder regular medicals when they hit 40, but that is lifted the World Cup. And yet still we don’t go.
the risks and rewards of red meat and dairy
products, and even as we pump our hearts
and build our muscle and get the lactic acid
burning in our biceps, and even as we pack
our kit bags for the next trip to the gym the
moment we get home.
Men don’t like getting tested.
We are the gender with white-coat syn-
drome. We obsess about our health and
fitness, yet resist the simple set of tests
that would quickly confirm we are indeed
as healthy and fit as we look. Men – many
of us – resist the yearly trek to the doctor
that would make us aware of any underlying
problem, even though we know the most
effective way of preserving our hard-earned
fitness is the annual full general medical
checkup, and even though we know that
early detection is the most effective way
to head off any medical problem. Catch
cancer early and you are likely to survive.
Catch cancer late and it is likely to be game
over. And yet still we don’t go. Why not?
Health screening doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t
take long. Even on Harley Street, where a
general medical might include running on
a treadmill with stress electrocardiogram
stickers attached to your thrusting nipples,
it only takes 30 minutes out of your year.
Half an hour every 12 months to know
you are as well as you look! Er, no thanks,
doc. Even men who spend more hours in
the gym than they ever spend in restaurants
and bars will not spare 30 lousy minutes a
year to let their GP run a series of simple
health checks.
What are we afraid of? Is it, perhaps, the
digital rectal examination – or, to give it

152 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

 Women are far, far better at this stuff.
Women are not the gender with white-
coat syndrome. Women are better at being
screened, better at keeping healthy, better
at staying alive. The Office For National
Statistics puts life expectancy for men at
79 and 83 for women. Men die years earlier
than women and men are far more likely to
commit suicide. The Movember Foundation,
the only charity tackling men’s health on
a global scale, estimates that poor mental
health leads to half a million men taking
their own life in a year. That’s not a statistic.
It’s a massacre.
So why are we so reluctant to see our
doctors once a year? Because ignorance is
bliss. Because we are stupid and scared.
And because the health check is not a test
you can pass forever. Because we are all
afraid we will get a call like the one I got
last summer. We live in quiet dread of that
call. The one in which someone says, “There
might be a problem.”
A s it happens, I have never been one of
those men who resisted going to the doctor.
I have had regular health checks every year
since the millennium, when I got sick on a
gruelling American book tour and was rushed
to a doctor in Beverly Hills, feebly waving my
American Express card.
But the occasional health scare can be
good for you. A health scare can be just the
early-morning wake-up call you need to put
your wellbeing on track. After seeing that
doctor in Beverly Hills, I thought far more
deeply than I had ever thought in my life
about my health and fitness. Sometimes,
a health scare is just what you need to save
your life. And so, the annual health screening
at the end of every summer became a part
of my routine.
And I actually enjoyed them because –
year after healthy year – the reports were
always glowing. I had them at the tail end of
August and it was always nothing but blue
skies. I felt a quiet pride – vanity even – in
my results. Weight steady, cholesterol fine,
blood pressure under control. The blood
tests showed adorably normal red cells,
white cells, ESR and platelets – whatever
they might be. Biochemical tests of the liver,
kidneys, bones, calcium and iron were all
good. And the PSA test of the prostate gland
was always well within normal limits, which
is between one and four nanograms per mil-
lilitre of blood. And then, this summer, there
was suddenly a black cloud in that blue sky.
After having been around the one mark for
ten years – ridiculously good – my PSA level
had suddenly more than doubled.
The NHS recommends that when you have
a PSA test you should not ejaculate less than
48 hours before or do serious exercise. I had
done both – although not at the same time
of course. But there is another reason your
PSA level might suddenly spike. And that is
the reason that could kill you.
If I had my tests with the local NHS GP,
they would have patted me on my pros-
tate gland and sent me on my way. But at a
private doctor’s rooms in Harley Street, alarm
bells began to ring. More than doubled. A
specialist was contacted. An MRI scan was
booked. After preening with vanity for so
many summers, my prostate gland was ready
for its close-up. And summer ended with
thoughts of cancer.
And this is why health screening is so
important, and this is why we are so loath
to go. Because we forget, you see.
We tend to forget that the reason men do
not relish getting regularly tested once a
year is that somewhere, somehow, inevita-
bly there will be a test you fail.
Five weeks later, a top oncologist told me
there was no visible cancer. But from the
moment the needle slipped into my arm on
Harley Street, to the MRI scan I had a month
later, to the moment I sat across from that
specialist in his quiet Mayfair office, the
possibility was always there. And it felt like
quite a long time to have mortality tugging
at my shirt-tails. I understood why so many
men do not fancy a regular medical. It knocks
the cockiness right out of you.
Y ou surrender control when you sign
up for the regular health check. As soon as
your trousers come off – be it in a crowded
NHS surgery or high-ceilinged Harley Street
– you know that for all those hours in the
gym and for all those avocados you have
eaten like a good boy, you are in the hands
of the fates. You relinquish control because
you are allowing the possibility of illness and
death to enter your realm. And if you have
annual screenings, sooner or later – even if
it is 20 years later – there will be a blip. But
we need a health scare every once in while
just so we remember we are mortal.
My latest health scare has concentrated my
mind. For a start, the next time I am sched-
uled to have a PSA test, I will refrain from
serious exercise and serious ejaculation. But
this brush with bad news has done much
more than that.
For years, my wife has been telling me
about the direct link between dairy prod-
ucts and hormonal cancers – ovary and
breast cancer for women, testicular and
prostate cancer for men. And for years I
have been saying, “Yes, dear,” while stick-
ing firmly to my dairy-based Western diet,
as if I can’t believe that milk is not as good
for me as it is for a baby cow. But not any
more. Not after that call from the doctor, the
45-minute MRI scan and meeting a man who
is a cancer expert.
“We have all been brought up with the
idea that milk is good for us,” Professor Jane
Plant told the Daily Telegraph. “But there
is evidence now that the growth factors
and hormones it contains are not just risky
for breast cancer, but also other hormone-
related cancers, of the prostate, testicles
and ovary.”
Professor Plant, a geochemist and the
author of a number of bestselling books
on beating and preventing cancer, lived for
30 years after first being diagnosed with
breast cancer, something she attributed to a
dairy-free diet.
“Cow’s milk is good for calves,” she said.
“But not for us.”
You change your ways after a health scare.
And this time round I have stopped pouring
half a pint of milk on my cereal every
morning. I am now eating so many tomatoes
– a rich source of cancer-crushing lycopene
– that I have actually started enjoying them.
But a health scare also helps you to get things
in perspective. While waiting for the all-clear,
I realised cancer would not be the end of the
world. It would not even be the end of life.
Sir Ian McKellen revealed he had prostate
cancer in 2012. He has always chosen not
to have surgery.
“You do gulp when you hear the news,”
said McKellen. “But if it is contained in the
prostate, it is no big deal. Many, many men
die from it, but it’s one of those cancers
that is totally treatable. So I have ‘watch-
ful waiting’.”
And watchful waiting – monitoring without
fear – is surely what all men should be doing
with their health.
When you step onto the treadmill of the
health industry, sometimes you can lose sight
of the fact that it is still your body. A health
scare helps you to remember.
If one day cancer comes calling, I will not
rush to surgery or chemotherapy. What are
the side effects? Is it worth it? If I can’t have
a sex life then, on balance, I think I prefer to
have no life at all.
We should be making informed choices
with the aim of living a healthy and active
life for as long as possible. But we can only
do that when we have all the information
available. And while nobody gets out of this
world alive, health screening gives you the
priceless luxury of choice.
Whatever you eventually die of, don’t let
it be ignorance.
MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 153

Clowns to the le, jokers
to the right: stuck in the
middle with EU
If failing Brexit talks kick the Conservatives from the negotiation table,
Jeremy Corbyn could be coerced into rolling back the referendum
ow that the New Year festivities are
N well behind us, it is time to face the
cold reality of the months that lie
ahead. Unless something truly unexpected
happens – and remember that we live,
literally and metaphorically, in the age of
Stranger Things – the United Kingdom will
leave the European Union at 11pm on 29
March 2019. That is how close the greatest
change in our nation’s status since the
Second World War really is.
In fact, the terms of the deal, if there
is one, must be agreed by the autumn to
enable our soon-to-be-former EU partners
to peruse the fine print. It remains quite
conceivable that there will be no agreement
at all, that the rest of Europe will not sign
off whatever London and Brussels cook up or
that the Commons will vote down the prime
minister’s offering.
Against this backdrop, the main parties will
try to conduct the normal business of politi-
cal conflict and party management. They will
fail. Brexit is not the proverbial elephant in
the room, but a herd of grumpy pachyderms,
braying collectively as it prepares to charge
in our direction. No politician, however
obtuse, can ignore its approach – though
some will try, maddeningly, to pretend that
business is proceeding as usual.
For Theresa May, the mission remains
what it has been since the exit poll on the
night of 8 June revealed that she had lost
the Conservatives’ Commons majority:
medium-term survival, damage limitation
and preparation for an orderly departure
from office.
The second half of 2017 was a dismal series
of failed “relaunches” for the government:
the PM’s Florence speech, the Tory confer-
ence, Philip Hammond’s budget. But there
was never going to be a second wind for May
or a spectacular renaissance of her fortunes.
Frankly, she lacks the dynamism and agility
for such a feat.
So she is stuck with the wearying task of
plodding on, dependent upon a Commons
Politics
STORY BY Matthew d’Ancona
deal with the professionally sour Democratic
Unionist Party. That deal, bought with your
money for £1.5 billion, expires next summer.
It keeps May in Number Ten, but not much
else. The government remains in office,
rather than in power, undead rather than
properly alive. Some admire the PM for
staying put, for hanging on at all costs, but I
am not among them. By clinging on she has
entrenched the impression that her party
considers itself entitled to power and has
plunged the entire political class into deeper
disrepute. The fragility of her position is such
that her grip may fail at any moment this
year and force another election at the worst
possible moment of the Brexit cycle.
A s for Jeremy Corbyn, some of the
lustre of his remarkable election performance
has faded since June. He has established
an undoubted rapport with the electorate,
beyond the core Labour vote, and decontami-
nated the politics of the left to an extent that
shows how profoundly the landscape has
changed since the high season of Blairism.
His promise of renationalisation, higher
taxes, nuclear weapons that are never used
and an orchard of magical money trees rep-
resents everything that New Labour tried to
banish from the party’s policy programme.
What Corbyn grasped was that a nation
weary of austerity, job insecurity, over-
stretched public services, inadequate housing
and frayed social cohesion was suddenly
receptive to the brand of politics he had
espoused throughout his career. It may be,
then, that he has rewritten the rule book.
The point is, however, that we cannot yet say
with certainty that he has done so. He is still
more than 65 seats shy of a Commons major-
ity – which is to say he must win another ten
per cent of the available constituencies to
head a Labour-only government.
This may look like one more heave –
another nudge to finish the job – but it is
no such thing. To win office, Corbyn must
convince a great many more voters who are
older, less left-wing and comparatively afflu-
ent that his brand of redistributive socialism
is what the country needs.
T his is not intrinsically impossible:
Donald Trump’s election as president has
redefined the borders of the politically
possible. But Corbyn and his team have
done little since the election to reach out to
the tranche of voters they undoubtedly need
to end up in Downing Street.
Indeed, they have behaved less like
persuaders than inquisitors of an inflexi-
ble political religion. John McDonnell, the
shadow chancellor, refuses conspicuously
to flesh out the sweeping measures that he
proposes to enact – measures that would
transform the organisation of the economy.
It is one thing to say that you are planning
a revolution. But when people have to vote
for it, it is a good idea to explain how you
plan to go about it.
As things stand, the next election, when
it comes, is still Corbyn’s to lose. But it is
now 13 years since the electorate awarded
a single party a robust Commons majority
(remember Tony Blair?). If he is wise, the
Labour leader will spend as much of 2018
as he can discreetly exploring the possibil-
ity of coalition or looser alliance with Vince
Cable’s Liberal Democrats or the Scottish
Nationalists or both.
He may need their help sooner rather
than later. But what would they demand
in return?
If this question arises before 29 March
2019, the smaller parties might insist that
Corbyn apply the emergency brake to
Brexit – perfectly possible under the terms
of Article 50, as long as the rest of the EU
agrees. Would the Labour leader take such a
risk to secure the ultimate prize? This could
be the year we find out.
MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 155

Meet the new gatekeepers of
your next favourite idée fixe
Thanks to Twitter buzz and Spotify playlists, it’s never been easier
to find records that cut through the noise. Ah, but hold on...
STORY BY
iscovering a great new artist is one
D of the purest pleasures available to
a music fan. Yesterday you didn’t
know who they were; today you’re obsessed.
Those moments tend to burn brightly in the
memory. I remember the day in 2011 when
Lana Del Rey’s debut single, “Video Games”,
went viral and my Twitter timeline buzzed
with excited speculation. Who was she?
What was she up to? Was there more where
that came from?
What with all the bad news and Russian
trolls, Twitter isn’t so useful for that any
more, but there are other avenues. Whether
I found a favourite artist through radio, TV,
an internet forum, a festival slot or a tip from
a friend, I still associate them with that initial
thrill. They had me at hello.
Discovery matters to the industry too.
Without those “baby acts” there’s no future.
But like everything else in the music indus-
try the process of discovery used to be a lot
simpler. There was a ladder to climb and you
knew where the rungs were. For new bands
with an alternative slant, that meant the
weekly music papers and Radio 1’s indefatiga-
bly curious John Peel. “My dad was the only
outlet for certain obscure things, whereas
there’s whole radio station versions of [him]
In 2011, millions of tweets propelled Lana Del Rey’s first single to ridiculously far-reaching global popularity
156 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018
Music
Dorian Lynskey
now,” says Peel’s son Tom Ravenscroft, who
flies the flag for new music at BBC Radio 6
Music. “Individuals have less influence.”
The more moving parts there are, the less
power each one has to break an artist. Ten
years ago, Fleet Foxes had sold a decent
100,000 copies of their debut album off the
back of glowing reviews and memorable live
shows. Then Radio 1 and Radio 2 both A-listed
their single “Mykonos”, their label, Bella
Union, capitalised with some well-chosen
TV adverts and album sales tripled. “That
was the last time,” says label founder Simon
Raymonde, who also has Father John Misty,
John Grant and Ezra Furman on his books.
“Today? Not going to happen. If you’ve got
a Radio 2 playlist and a sold-out show at the
Roundhouse and some great reviews and a TV
appearance then you might see some effect
on record sales. One of those things isolated
is going to have no effect. You’ve got to work
so hard on all the different angles.”
Some old-school gatekeepers can still shape
their genres: take 6 Music’s Steve Lamacq
(indie), Radio 1’s Annie Mac (dance) or
1Xtra’s Charlie Sloth (grime). But there are
new tastemakers now and none more influen-
tial than Tuma Basa, who compiles RapCaviar,
Spotify’s rolling 50-track hip hop playlist.
Streaming dominates pop, hip hop domi-
nates streaming and RapCaviar, with almost
8.5 million followers, shapes hip hop. Spotify
has similar playlists for almost every genre.
“Until Spotify came along, a new artist
needed substantial resources to grab the
audience’s attention,” says Austin Daboh,
senior editor at the streaming app, who over-
sees dozens of new music playlists. “We
don’t make a distinction between estab-
lished and new, meaning an emerging artist
can find themselves sitting alongside global
superstars.” Spotify playlist curators combine
old-fashioned gut instinct and word-of-mouth
buzz with hard data. If listeners respond to a
new song it gets promoted to more influential
playlists. Britain’s biggest, Hot Hits UK, can
turn a song like UK rapper Yungen’s “Bestie”
into a hit even before it gets daytime radio
support. “Spotify shows artists their worth,”
says Daboh. “We can share data that they
wouldn’t be able to source anywhere else.”
F or most of us, finding new music is fun
and painless. For the professionals, though,
it requires long hours scouring online plat-
forms such as SoundCloud and Bandcamp,
countless nights out at clubs, gigs and fes-
tivals and the Sisyphean task of processing
submissions from young hopefuls.
“We’re all oversaturated with new things to
listen to,” says Raymonde. “It’s a real strug-
gle to fit all this stuff in.”
For John Doran, cofounder of respected
music website The Quietus, listening to new
artists all the time is “a form of self-harm.
There’s so much absolute dross. But then
occasionally you put one on and it’s really
good and it just about makes it all worth-
while. I try to keep that open-mindedness.”
For a self-described “neophile” such as
Doran, plucking new music from obscurity
is central to his mission as a journalist and a
fan. It also underpins the reputation of The
Quietus, which gave important early expo-
sure to the likes of Fat White Family, Savages Photograph Glynis Carpenter/Contour by Getty Images
and Wild Beasts. “It’s not our most popular
content but it gives the site its character. We’re
there to introduce people to new and unusual
music. There’s a lot of cultural capital in it.”
Ravenscroft says that boosting a new art-
ist’s chances is a bonus, but really he’s just
addicted to the chase. “I’m flicking through
hundreds of tracks at breakneck speed and
at some point something makes me pause,”
he says. “It’s like fishing. I suddenly feel like
I’ve caught one.” Then he sums up that pre-
cious, lightning-bolt thrill that we all feel
when we find someone new to love: “You
find one little thing and then you want to
know everything.” G
 Laurent-Perrier
chosen by The Ritz London.

Illustrated by Quentin Blake

CUVÉE ROSÉ
CHOSEN BY THE BEST

Photo credit: Iris Velghe / Illustrator credit: Quentin Blake

Michelin Pilot Sport 4 s
Genuine Passion
Exceptional Drives

Ranked N°1 for braking on dry surfaces* and excellent on wet surfaces, the
MICHELIN Pilot Sport 4 S is engineered for superior safety and performance.
Thanks to its Dynamic Response technology and ultra-reactive tread pattern,
it delivers revolutionary steering control and instantaneous responsiveness.
Acclaimed by most performance car makers, it’s for those who love driving.
For more information and to find out just how good a sports tyre can be,
visit michelin.co.uk

*Tests conducted by TÜV SÜD in June and July 2016 on tyre size 255/35-19 96Y.
 COMPILED BY Jason Barlow, Paul Henderson and Rich Taylor PHOTOGRAPHS BY Christoffer Rudquist

I N A S S O C I AT I O N W I T H

This is it. The biggest and best line-up of GQ Car Award winners... ever. For this year’s awards, in
association with Michelin, we turned Rupert Murdoch’s old printworks in Wapping into the world’s
most spectacular garage to bring you 12 pages of killer concepts, hardcore hypercars, all-EV dream
machines, futuristic supertrucks and even our own custom motorcycle. Impressed? You will be
MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 159
Michelin Pilot Sport 4 s
Genuine Passion
Exceptional Drives

Ranked N°1 for braking on dry surfaces* and excellent on wet surfaces, the MICHELIN Pilot Sport 4 S is engineered for
superior safety and performance. Thanks to its Dynamic Response technology and ultra-reactive tread pattern,
it delivers revolutionary steering control and instantaneous responsiveness.
Acclaimed by most performance car makers, it’s for those who love driving.
For more information and to find out just how good a sports tyre can be, visit michelin.co.uk
*Tests conducted by TÜV SÜD in June and July 2016 on tyre size 255/35-19 96Y.
 82 per cent
Proportion of
components and parts
in the new Continental
GT that are unique
to this car.

Bentley Continental GT
● Best Interior (And Possibly Exterior)
The original and slightly mischievous plan was to give the new Continental GT a GQ Award
purely for its interior. Bentley’s challenge was to locate the sweet spot where hi-tech intersects
with fabulous luxury. Challenge met: the leather that swathes so much of the GT’s cabin has
310,675 stitches, there’s ten square metres of veneer and the new central infotainment display
sits in a binnacle that deploys 40 motors to rotate it out of view. Bentley has created a stunning
environment. And then you drive it – rarely has such epic performance been so gracefully
orchestrated. Best interior? Yes, and the rest.
From £154,400. bentleymotors.com

162 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

 GQ CAR AWARDS

‘RR’
As in “Skepta RR”,
the track recorded
by grime’s golden
boy in the back of
a Phantom.

Rolls-Royce Phantom
● Best Supernatural Driving Experience
Rolls-Royce’s millennial reboot, the company airily declared back in 2003, was “the last great
automotive adventure”. The all-new Phantom doubles down on that and then some – simply put, this
beautiful machine does nothing less than reinvent the concept of car travel. Beyond its four enormous
wheels and 6.6-litre, 563bhp twin-turbo V12 engine, the Phantom keeps the outside world firmly at bay
(especially if you sink into the embrace of the most sumptuous rear compartment ever created). When
driving, it feels like Rolls-Royce has found a new and improved version of silence, as well as space – it
has an art gallery where others have a humdrum dashboard. A dazzling experience.
From £360,000. rolls-royce.com

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 163

 Drag race
Because of its
aerodynamics, the
Elemment has a
similar drag
co-efficient to
a sports car.

24-hour care
Marchi’s
engineers can
remotely check
a vehicle’s
diagnostics
anytime,
anywhere in
the world.

Heli-car
The Elemment’s front
interior is designed to
look like a luxury jet’s
cockpit, but the cool
bubble-shaped
windscreen was
inspired by a
helicopter’s.

164 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

 GQ CAR AWARDS

68 square metres
The largest
model offers
more living
space than many
two-bedroom
apartments.

Heavy metal
The Visione model
is 12 metres long,
2.5 metres wide,
four metres high
and weighs in at
26 tonnes.

Supermodels
There are four
models in the
Elemment range:
the MMpro,
the Visione
(pictured), the
Viva and the
Palazzo.

Marchi Mobile Elemment

● Best Flightless Private Jet
What do you get if you cross the design features and aerodynamics of a racing car, the opulence and
comfort of a superyacht and the aeronautical beauty of a luxury aircraft? The answer will probably be
the Marchi Mobile’s stunning Elemment range. The company was founded by former trucking magnate
Mario Marchi and these fantastical and futuristic vehicles are considered to be the world’s most
prestigious motor-mansions. They can be tricked out as extravagantly as your heart desires, with prices
ranging from £650,000 for the base model, right up to £2 million for the top-of-the-range Palazzo
Superior (that even comes with a retractable roof deck dubbed the “sky lounge”). Quite simply, this is
one of the most extraordinary means of transportation we have ever seen, on land or in the air.
From £650,000. marchi-mobile.com

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 165

Creating
Uwe Dreher, BMW Vice President
of Brand Communication
Photographed at BMW Park Lane

modern
luxury
PHOTOGRAPHS BY Hamish Brown

BMW is taking its iconic brand

in a bold new direction and the
journey starts here…

hen BMW unveiled its

W all-new 7-Series, it re-

defined the German brand’s
interpretation of what a
luxury car could be. Yes, it
was packed full of cutting-edge technology
(gesture control, voice commands, remote
control parking). Yes, the drive was quieter
and smoother than ever. And yes, it was built
using new production methods and advanced
manufacturing techniques. But more than
that, it was a bold statement of intent that
BMW was not just taking its brand upmarket,
but also reinventing its design philosophy and
pushing into the realm of luxury.
Nice to know that an iconic 100-year-old car
company can still surprise us.
Far less surprising, however, is that the
ultra-efficient German automotive giant has
made the move after much thought, careful
consideration and no small amount of invest-
ment. If the 7-Series was the first step on a
journey, this year will see the release of a
further six new models, creating a whole new
line of design for the Bayerische Motoren
Werke and a luxury portfolio that could trans-
form the company.
“Expanding at the top of the range is some- past. There is more free-thinking, and much ever been,” he explains. “From the food they
thing we have planned for a while,” says more of a pioneering attitude to luxury.” eat and the clothes they wear, through to the
Uwe Dreher, BMW’s Vice President of Brand Paul Solomons, GQ’s Creative Director, way, how and where they travel, they have a
Communication. “But what was important for agrees. And he should know. Having spent clear idea of what they want. What they’re
us was to get the definition of luxury correct, the past 20 years studying the design process looking for is someone to deliver it.”
and to establish that emotional connection. The and working almost exclusively with luxury And BMW has always had a knack for
traditional view of luxury is that something brands, he is uniquely placed to explain what delivering new creative solutions. Five years
should be expensive and opulent. Modern the modern customer wants at that top level. ago it introduced BMW i, a range of elec-
audiences don’t want that. The view of luxury “The consumer has always been smart, but tric cars (including the i3 and i8) created
today is far less static than it has been in the people are more informed now than they have with an emphasis on sustainability, that was

Dylan Jones
Editor-in-Chief, GQ
Photographed in his GQ
office at Vogue House
initially greeted with scepticism. In 2017,
BMW sold over 100,000 electrified vehicles.
Dreher believes that it is younger consum-
ers that are pushing designs to be braver, more
innovative and have greater ecological respon-
sibility. “Millennials know what they want
from a luxury car,” he says. “They want an
electric component, super-connectivity, fantas-
tic looks, and they want comfort.” He laughs.
“Twenty years ago, things were simpler... cus-
tomers wanted beautiful design, comfort, and
decent handling. Now, if your iPhone doesn’t
connect with your car the instant you sit down,
it’s a problem.”
This new consumer, the next generation of
dedicated – and very well informed – follow-
ers of fashion, have thus become the target
market for every luxury company competing
for their business. And according to British GQ
Paul Solomons
Creative Director, GQ
Photographed at the Design
Museum in Kensington
Editor-in-Chief, Dylan Jones, these younger
consumers are already “hyper aware of those
big brands, perhaps more so than any previ-
ous generation”.
However, for these consumers, it isn’t just
about the luxury, or about the cost. “What
they are still looking for is ‘cool’,” says Jones.
“What they are looking for is ‘design’. Some
things are still driven by cost, exclusivity, by
rarity, but equally they want a product to
be interesting because they want to know
more about it. And they are prepared to
wait for a product they want if it fulfils their
ethical criteria.”
With those six new models in the luxury
range set for 2018, spearheaded by the
stunning 8-Series, it looks certain that the
next generation of BMW drivers won’t have
to wait long.
BMW concept 8-Series
G Partnership
Rules of
engagement
Adrian van Hooydonk, BMW’s Chief
Designer, is the man responsible for
turning the concept of modern luxury
into automotive reality. Here are his
five rules for taking the BMW brand
to the next level…
“It is not enough to be at the
forefront of technology. We must also
be at the forefront of design. The
challenge for us when producing the
7-Series was that it wasn’t enough to
produce a luxury car. It also had to be
a completely modern, top-of-the-
range luxury car, that also delivers
the most vital BMW element: the
driving. We need to create the
complete package.
Millennial customers
know what they want
from a luxury car and it
is up to us to fulfil that
“Customer demand has changed our
thinking. A few years ago, the concept
of improving engine technology and
developing connectivity seemed
contradictory in terms of enhancing
the driving experience. But because
customers wanted both, we found
a solution.
“In the future our cars will be driven…
and not driven. Our research tells us
that our customers enjoy driving as
much as they ever have, but if they can
spend half of a six-hour journey in
control of the car and half of it relaxing
and letting the car take over, that is
their ideal scenario. That should be a
possibility within the next five years.
“Next year will see an entirely new
line of design for BMW. Our new form
language will be cleaner, there will be
fewer lines, and the lines we do have
will be sharper than ever before. On
the interior, the cars will be cleaner,
with fewer buttons because the cars
will become more and more intelligent.
And the model I am most excited
about is the new 8-Series, which
is going to redefine the top end of
our brand.”
Adrian van Hooydonk
BMW Chief Designer
 2020
According to Audi
CEO Rupert Stadler,
total automotive
autonomy will be
“technologically”
possible in two
years’ time.

Audi A8
● The Taking The Limo To The Next Level Award
The only surprise about the Audi A8 winning a GQ Award was that it didn’t turn up driving
itself to collect the prize. Not only is the A8 a luxury technological marvel, it’s also the
first production car to feature “Level 3” autonomy, which means it can take over the driving
duties up to 37mph. That alone is utterly incredible, but even more amazing is that Audi has
produced a luxury automobile so refined and such a pleasure to drive that you won’t even
want to engage its AI smarts. Now that’s really clever…
From £68,215. audi.co.uk

168 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

 GQ CAR AWARDS

No ‘e’
Derived from the latin
velare, meaning “veil”,
the Velar name dates
back to the Sixties when
Land Rover was building
its first Range Rover and
wanted to keep it
under wraps.

Land Rover Velar

● The Climb Every Mountain In Luxury Award
On the outside, this mid-sized SUV is a sleek and stylised take on the modern Range Rover: flush door
handles, rakish roofline and Land Rover designer Gerry McGovern’s effortless reductionism. On the
inside, it’s a futuristic reinterpretation of a cockpit governed by minimalism (three touchscreens control
everything), sustainability (Kvadrat textiles are a seductive option) and elegance (it’s clean, clutter-free
and cool). That it can cruise effortlessly through any urban landscape is a given, but when called upon, it
can also conquer where mountain goats fear to tread. We love the new Velar. There, we said it.
From £44,830. landrover.co.uk

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 169

 261mph
The Chiron’s
electronically limited
top speed. Bugatti
says it will go faster
and has promised
to prove it
this year.

Bugatti Chiron
● Best Way To Make The Jump To Light Speed (And Stop Just As Quickly)
If the Rolls-Royce Phantom is luxury and beyond, the Bugatti threatens to tear clean through that into some
unknown outer edge. The Chiron’s essence is hard to compute: a £2.5 million price tag; an 8.0-litre, quad-
turbo, 16-cylinder engine that produces 1,479bhp and a top speed of 261mph; then 0-62mph in 2.5 seconds,
124mph in 6.5 or 186mph in 13.6… It would go faster if only the Bugatti’s (already spectacular) Michelin
tyres could cope. When Andy Wallace, Bugatti’s chief test driver, told GQ that, “It really comes alive above
150mph,” we wondered how many clients had their own private runway to test that. Paradoxically, the Chiron
is so magnificently designed, engineered and made that it’s just as impressive at 0mph.
From £2,518,000. bugatti.com

170 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

 GQ CAR AWARDS

15
seconds
The time it takes to
lower the McLaren’s
roof at any speed
Farewell V12
below 25mph.
It’s believed the
Superfast will be the
final Ferrari powered
by a pure V12
engine.

McLaren 570S Spider

● The Technological Hedonism Award
McLaren Automotive isn’t yet a decade old, but the cars keep
on coming and – off the back of a serious £1 billion investment
plan – getting better. The 570S Spider nails one simple but
surprisingly elusive thing: that the nanosecond you climb out
of the car, you want to get straight back in and do whatever
you were doing all over again. Cars such as this are all about
sensation and the 570S drips with the stuff, especially with its
roof down. It’s all there in how you steer it, how you sit in it, how
precisely you can place it on the road and how perfectly poised
its handling and ride are. The year’s purest driving machine.
From £164,750. mclaren.com
Ferrari 812 Superfast
● The Most Super Superfast Supercar Award
In Ferrari’s 70th year, it’s fitting that the company redefined the car that
epitomises its allure: the front-engined V12 GT. In the Fifties and Sixties, it
was this template that forged the Ferrari brand and the 812 Superfast (yes,
it’s a silly name but there’s an antecedent in the shape of the 1964 500
Superfast Ferrari) is a timely reminder that there truly is no substitute for
cubic inches (and 12 cylinders). There are no turbos here to interrupt
the combustion process and the 812’s 6.5-litre engine, even from these
Italian legends, really is a masterpiece. The rest of it is not bad, either.
From £253,000. ferrari.com

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 171

 Wheels in
motion
The brains behind GQ Drive Time
test two more of the year’s most
remarkable cars on two of Britain’s
most demanding roads
STORY BY Jason Barlow
he supercar market moves
T as fast as the cars that
occupy it, and the Audi R8
isn’t the hot young thing
any more. In fact, it’s just
celebrated its tenth birthday, and for
that alone it probably deserves some
sort of special achievement award.
It was the R8 that helped push the
brand firmly into the stratosphere.
By combining the exotic looks of an
Italian supercar with the genius
engineering and aluminium expertise
of Germany’s most unflappable car
company, the result was a uniquely
irresistible proposition.
Time has not dulled the R8’s ability to
slacken your jaw, especially on a road
like the one we drove it on for GQ’s
latest Drive Time film, in association
with Michelin. Fitted with the French
giant’s latest Pilot Sport rubber, an R8
Spyder on the swoops and fast, open
sections of the coastal road to
Freshwater on the Isle of Wight delivers
a combination of elements that could
enliven your week, month and
probably your year.
At its heart is an engine of
phenomenal power and character.
It’s a 5.2-litre V10, shared with
Lamborghini’s mighty Huracán, which
makes just over 600bhp, and revs to
8,700rpm. The latest turbo cars blend
amazing performance with impressive
efficiency, but there’s still some
definite magic to an engine that
doesn’t have them. All in a world in
which electric power threatens to
re-set the high performance paradigm.
The R8 is the perfect showcase for
Michelin’s Pilot Sport tyres, whose
clever construction is designed to
bring out the best in a car, irrespective

TYRE TECH
The MICHELIN Pilot
Sport 4S’s hybrid of
aramid and nylon
means optimum
transmission
between steering
and the road.
THE ROUTE
The road winds
through the
glorious island
landscape, with
open sea on the
left-hand side.
of the weather conditions. Needless to
say, the grip generated by the R8 – with
its Quattro four-wheel drive – is enough
to make your insides move about,
especially on really fast sections of road.
Of course, a car like the R8 Spyder, even
with that famous four-ring badge on its
nose, is not for shrinking violets. If you
want to go about your business in
something less “look-at-me”, BMW’s new
540i is satisfyingly stealthy. We love cars
that fly under the radar, that move with
an assured self-awareness (after all, isn’t
“cool” something that doesn’t squander
energy trying to define itself?) To put it
another way, if you’ve seen the brilliant
Baby Driver, you can imagine Ansel
Elgort’s music-obsessed titular getaway
driver executing the perfect disappearing
act in one of these.
We took this 3.0-litre twin-turbo V6
version to the Cheddar gorge, recently
G Partnership
voted in the top ten driving roads in TYRE TECH
the UK. The all-new M5 has almost
600bhp, although the 540i has such
real-world pace you really do have to
ask yourself how much more you
need. It’ll do 0-62mph in less than five
seconds, and it hooks up incredibly The MICHELIN
well because it’s fitted with BMW’s Pilot Sport 4 tread
pattern is adapted
“X-drive’” four-wheel drive hardware. from motorsport
Its handling, especially on Michelin and reacts to
tyres and on a slippery road, really is demands of the
road surface.
something to savour. Perhaps one of
THE ROUTE
the keys to its effortless sense of
performance is that it produces 332 lb
ft of torque from just 1,300rpm – beautifully designed menus, and the
that’s barely tickover – all the way to system combines touchscreen
5,200rpm. Like we say, cool. functionality with a rotary controller.
When you’re not taking the long The 540i also advances BMW’s
way home, you can always lose The road is full autonomous driving programmes. Set
of tight, twisty
yourself in the 540i’s interior. BMW sections where
up the system, and it’ll change lanes
pioneered the iDrive infotainment the route has at speeds between 44 and 112mph by
system in the 7 series 15 years ago, been dictated by itself when you put the indicator on.
the geography
and it’s arguably the best in the game of the gorge. Very clever. But when a car’s this
now. There’s a 10.3in touchscreen, good to drive, why let it do it itself?
In association with
The R8 is the perfect
showcase for Michelin’s
Pilot Sport tyres, whose
clever construction is GQ Car Awards
designed to bring out GQ Car Awards enters its 9th year and for
2018 we are proud to have Michelin as our
the best in a car headline partner. Keep an eye out for GQ Car
Awards content on; www.gq.co.uk
Jason Barlow
 740bhp
With four electric
engines, the Vision
produces serious
5.5 seconds power and has a
The time it takes
range of more than
for the E-Type Zero
300 miles.
to accelerate to
62mph. In 1961, the
original E-Type took
6.7 seconds.

Jaguar E-Type Zero
● Best Use Of Electricity Since The Lightbulb
Nearly 60 years after the world’s most beautiful car hit the road, the E-Type
still turns heads and reduces grown men to slack-jawed schoolboys. But now,
thanks to Jaguar’s growing classic division, the E-Type is not only gorgeous
to look at, but also good for the planet, after being retro-fitted with a zero-
emissions, all-electric powertrain. There is only one right now, of course, but
Jaguar says that it can convert any classic Jaguar – and change it back again
too (if so desired). If that doesn’t deserve a GQ Award, then nothing does.
jaguar.co.uk
Vision Mercedes-
Maybach 6 Cabriolet
● The Vision Of The Future Award
The Mercedes-Maybach 6 looks like it has time-travelled from the
Back To The Future: Part II set. Or, as GQ decided at the photo
shoot, the Cabriolet’s design is a cross between the Batmobile
and FAB 1 from Thunderbirds. This all-electric, hyper-modern and
stunning concept car not only shows design at its most ambitious,
but also that it can be purposefully playful, with the interior
featuring a pulsating, fibre-cabled “flux capacitor”. All we know is
that wherever the Vision is going, hopefully we will need roads…
mercedes-benz-co.uk

174 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

 GQ CAR AWARDS

Power pack
If the standard i30N
isn’t fast enough, an extra
£3,000 buys you the
Performance Pack,
with an extra 24bhp
and an electronic
differential.

Four
The difference in bhp
between the new
VW Up! GTI and the
original Golf GTI, at
109bhp, made
40 years ago.

Hyundai i30N
● Life And Seoul Of The Party Award
How do you turn up the heat on a hot hatch
from scalding to practically geothermal?
The answer, in Hyundai’s case, was to hire
a German engineer. Albert Biermann, the
head of high-performance development in

Volkswagen Up! GTI South Korea, made his name as the man who
pushed the BMW M Series to its absolute
limit – and now he is taking the i30 to
● The Scream If You Want To Go Faster Award
infinity... and beyond. This ferociously fun
Lest you think we live in a world utterly detached from reality, we give you the Up! GTI. five-door rocket ship has been developed
VW’s tiny city car was designed by the man now in charge of colouring-in at Ferrari and on the Namyang proving ground and the
its transition from spirited to sportiness is deftly managed. The Up! is almost Apple-like in Nürburgring Nordschleife (which might
its minimalist surfacing and detail. Its engine – one-eighth the size of the Chiron (VW owns explain why Hyundai calls its sporting
Bugatti) – is a 1.0-litre turbo three-cylinder that produces 113bhp. But its size and lack of R&D team the N division) and, as a result,
mass (hitting the scales at less than a tonne) make for a diverting physics lesson, because is giving the Focus RS, the Golf GTI and
maintaining momentum in the VW is the main source of entertainment here. And even when the Honda Civic Type-R a serious run for
you are pushing on, you won’t be going all that fast. You’ll be going fast enough, though. your money.
From £14,000. volkswagen.co.uk From £24,995. hyundai.co.uk

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 175

 GQ CAR AWARDS

Noisy pipes
The Thruxton R’s original
exhaust was chopped
off just below the
Back in black foot-pegs and replaced
with a perforated Light fantastic
The original rear was straight-through A handmade headlight
replaced with a stealthy steel exhaust. bracket, fabricated
LED-powered brake light
from sheet aluminium,
to keep the back
holds the dechromed
of the motorcycle as
Handcrafted Blinking cool and blacked-out
minimal and aggressive
UMC commissioned Indicators by single headlight.
as possible.
Glenn Moger to make a Motogadget, visible
handmade brown leather from both the front and
seat that’s slimmer and rear, are built into the
tighter than the original bar-ends of the lowered 
Thruxton R seat and is clip-ons with no
fully exposed. visible wiring.

The GQ-Barbour International

Triumph Thruxton R By Untitled Motorcycles
● Best Custom Motorbike We Built (OK, Commissioned) Ourselves

The big question on GQ’s mind was: how do
we decide on the best motorcycle of the year?
Then we had an idea: why not build our own?
(With a little help from our friends, of course.)
A collaboration was born between GQ, Barbour
International and Triumph Motorcycles. With the
GQ man in mind, we wanted style, sophistication
and a hint of rebellion in our bike design. But,
of course, we couldn’t do that ourselves, so
we gave the job to custom bike builder Adam
Kay, the man behind Hampstead-based Untitled
Motorcycles (UMC).
For the GQ-Barbour International bike, Kay
selected a Triumph Thruxton R as the starting point
and Triumph heartily agreed. “The Thruxton R was
born to be a GQ bike,” says Triumph’s Luke Bowler.
“Uncompromised engineering is combined with
elegant lines, poise and ultimate performance.”
And with that, Kay set to work. “Design-wise, we
chose a stealthy black theme to run throughout the
bike. And then contrasted that with the gold fork
stanchions, chain, Barbour branding and a hand-
stitched leather seat,” he says.
The centrepiece of Kay’s design, however, is
a fabricated rail around the seat of the Thruxton
to hold two bespoke Barbour leather satchels,
perfect for a touch of traditional sophistication.
“Our Barbour International clothing collections are
all inspired by the brand’s motorcycling heritage
since 1936 and I think this bike represents the very
best of Barbour International and GQ’s style and
personality,” says Barbour’s Paul Wilkinson.
“This is a timeless authentic design that conveys
a freedom of spirit, confidence and individuality.”
But the Thruxton is no stealthy bike once it’s on
the road. “The sawn-off, straight-through exhausts
are loud and the low-mounted clip-on handlebars
make for a no-nonsense riding position,” says Kay.
Combined with the premium Ohlins suspension,
Brembo brakes and sticky Michelin tyres, it’s a bike
that means business and ticks all of our boxes.
“I am really pleased with how it turned out,” says
Kay. “It’s the embodiment of UMC style with GQ
and Barbour sophistication, inspired by Triumph.”
And we agree with him. It is undoubtedly our
motorcycle of the year. G
Thanks to: untitledmotorcycles.com.
triumph.co.uk. barbour.com

176 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

It took half a century for the civil rights movement to deliver an African American
to the White House. But in a nation where police disproportionately target
and kill young black men, where opportunities for black voices are still narrow and
prescribed, and where counterprotesters feel emboldened to say black lives
don’t matter, the fight is far from finished. Now, MICHAEL B JORDAN,
star of MARVEL ’s $200 million blockbuster BLACK PANTHER , is picking up
the baton. Here, in conversation with writer and activist KEVIN POWEL L ,
he explains how he’s lending his strength to a new generation of struggle

PHOTOGRAPHS BY Gavin Bond CREATIVE DIRECTION BY Paul Solomons STYLED BY Jeff K Kim
 MICHAEL B JORDAN

‘Whenever
there’s a shift
in power, it’s
going to be
rough. We’re
going through
that right now’
Coat by Burberry, £2,345. burberry.com.
Rollneck by John Smedley, £150.
johnsmedley.com. Trousers by DSquared2,
£455. dsquared2.com. Boots by Jimmy
Choo, £595. jimmychoo.com. Beret by
Lock & Co, £95. lockhatters.co.uk.
Sunglasses by Ray-Ban, £127. ray-ban.com

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 179


THE
FIRST
TIME
I truly noticed Michael B Jordan was in the
2013 low-budget indie film Fruitvale Station.
Yes, I knew his journeyman standing from
TV shows such as HBO’s The Wire and the
American soap opera All My Children, but
nothing – nothing – prepared me for his
spirit-chilling depiction of police shooting
victim Oscar Grant. In this extraordinary
performance as the young black man shot
and killed by a police officer in Oakland,
California in 2009, Jordan simultaneously
morphed himself into a major actor and a
living, breathing symbol of what most black
men fear: being killed simply because we
are black.
In Fruitvale Station, Jordan was a poetic
embodiment of the issues Grant and many
men like him face in life and death. It was an
ancestral dance about black lives mattering
that brought to mind Viola Davis and Denzel
Washington. It was social realism: Michael
B Jordan was Oscar Grant and Oscar Grant
was him. That the events of the film would
end in the city where the Black Panther
Party was born, at the height of the civil
rights movement in the autumn of 1966,
was not lost on me. Nor the fact that Grant
was gunned down a mere three weeks before
Barack Obama was inaugurated as the US’s
first black president. Jarring, all of it, and
hypnotic and prophetic too.
Afterwards, as the credits rolled, I sat in
the theatre, crying unashamedly at my coun-
try’s sordid love affair with racism. And I
said to myself, “This young man is going to
be somebody...”
And being young, gifted and black, as
Nina Simone once crooned, for Jordan,
meant being handed the Rocky franchise
by Sylvester Stallone, in the form of the
blockbuster movie Creed. It also meant co-
starring in the new Marvel juggernaut Black
Panther. Created, coincidentally, by comic
book innovators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
just months before Huey Newton and Bobby
Seale founded the political organisation of
the same name, Black Panther was the first
superhero of African descent in mainstream
180 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018
US comics. It has been a long time coming
for this franchise to make the transition to
cinema, but here it is, at long last.
With a budget estimated at $200 million
and a predominantly black cast, there has
never been an otherworldly warrior treat-
ment like Black Panther. Indeed, it comes
at a time of great change and turmoil in the
United States, from the wildly unpredictable
presidency of Donald Trump to endless
racial violence and divisions to nervous
conversations about diversity and inclusion.
Directed by Ryan Coogler, the film marks
the third time, after Fruitvale Station and
Creed, that he and Jordan have collaborated,
very much in the tradition of the classic
partnership between Martin Scorsese and
Robert De Niro. All of this is unprecedented,
especially the fact that it is two young
black men staking claim to a Hollywood
that would not have been open to them in
this way when Spike Lee first hit the scene
in the late Eighties.
Things done changed.
But have they really?
This is what Michael B Jordan wants to talk
with me about and I with him.
And there he stands, inside a cave-like old
warehouse in sun-kissed Los Angeles, one
moment costumed as a hybrid of Martin
Luther King Jr and Malcolm X, the next
seen in a black beret, like Newton and Seale
when “Black Is Beautiful” was in vogue, long
before we began using words like “woke”
to describe social awareness. Woke he is,
Michael B Jordan, just creeping up on 31
years of age, California-born, New Jersey-
bred, power on his mind.
Jordan was a child actor who is a man
today, marching to a drumbeat tapped out
by the freedom shoes of black artist-activists
such as Paul Robeson, Harry Belafonte
and, yes, Nina Simone. Jordan is a bit under
six-feet-tall, both Hollywood and ’hood
handsome with an Imax smile that could
woo ancient bronze church ladies with a
single flash. He is polite, humble and acces-
sible in a way that is highly unusual for a
star. Perhaps it is because he was raised by
a mother and father – Donna and Michael A
– who taught him early on to appreciate
everyone and everything, to take no one and
nothing for granted.
‘I have peers who
are extremely
talented. Why
am I the only one
who gets this?’
KP: People are calling you one of the most
dynamic actors in America. How do you
feel about that?
MBJ: Oh, man. It’s epic, man. In the
beginning, I never really started off
acting. I never got into the industry
on purpose. My mom was at a doctor’s
appointment, she has lupus, and I was
sitting in the waiting room and the
receptionist said, “You know, you should
get your son into modelling.” She had
two boys in the industry so I went and
crashed one of their auditions. I booked
the first one that I went out on. It was
just like a snowball effect. I never really,
as a kid, dreamed or watched movies
thinking, “I want to be an actor.”
KP: What was your first acting job?
MBJ: It might’ve been a public service
announcement for Big Brothers Big
Sisters [the US’s largest mentoring
network], something super small. I was
on The Sopranos as background extra
work. All those small little successes
added up to this path.
KP: When was the first time you actually
used the word actor to describe yourself?
MBJ: Probably on All My Children. It was
after The Wire. I got killed off in The
Wire and then immediately after I went
on this audition in New York for All My
Children and I got it.
KP: How old were you?
MBJ: I was about 16. That was the first
time I owned up to what I was doing.
The Wire was the first time I fell in
love with acting. Actors like Idris Elba,
Dominic West and Andre Royo I credit
a lot for my drive. That planted that seed
in me, but I still had the fear that it was
always going to go away.
KP: But you were going to regular school,
you weren’t out of school per se?
MBJ: No. The first two years of high
school I went to Arts High School in
Newark, New Jersey. The last two years
I got home-schooled because I was just
working so much. At that point, I made
a decision that I wasn’t going to college
and I was going to pursue this thing full
force. I planned on moving out to Los
Angeles when I graduated high school
to see this thing through. My parents
always really supported me. Family is
our support group. We hold each other
accountable and we hold each other
up. That was instilled in me as a kid.
I celebrated Kwanzaa growing up, the
seven principles, those things.
KP: Who did you love as an actor when
you were a teenager?
MBJ: The funny thing is I didn’t have that
many. I didn’t have anyone as a kid »
 MICHAEL B JORDAN

Jacket, £1,850. Trousers,

£595. Both by Ralph
Lauren Purple Label.
ralphlauren.com. Shirt
by Dior Homme, £390.
dior.com. Tie by
DSquared2, £105.
dsquared2.co.uk.
Glasses by Ray-Ban,
£133. ray-ban.com

‘When Trayvon
Martin got shot I
wanted to express
myself as best I
could, especially
as a black actor’
MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 181
‘When you get success you get
judged by everybody, most
of the time by your own people’
Coat by Burberry, £2,950. burberry.com. Shirt by Dior Homme, £390. dior.com. Beret by Lock & Co, £95. lockhatters.co.uk. Glasses by Ray-Ban, £133. ray-ban.com

182 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

MICHAEL B JORDAN

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 183

» growing up. I was more into cartoons
and animations: Dragon Ball Z and Duck
Tales and any Disney movie. I was the
kid watching anime and reading comic
books, that type of thing. But I always
could appreciate films like Bad Boys and
Armageddon and Rounders. Even films
that I wasn’t supposed to watch [such as]
Scarface and, you know, The Godfather
and Friday.
KP: Did you move to Los Angeles alone?
MBJ: I came by myself for the first six
months. One of my best friends moved
out with me a little bit after that. It
was tough. I was working but I wasn’t
working enough. I would doubt and
hope and get nervous. Right when I
was getting ready to give up there was
something that would keep me there for
a little bit longer. Sleeping on my boy’s
couch, staying with friends, I was blessed
to really have a lot of friends in LA. I
remember one of my friends, Sterling
[MTV host Steelo Brim], and I used to go
to [fast-food chain] Jack In The Box. We
were so broke. We tried to fill out job
applications to work there after The Wire.
We were overqualified.
KP: What got you past these rough times
in Los Angeles?
MBJ: I was getting ready to call it quits
around September 2008.
KP: You were about 20 or 21 years old.
MBJ: Twenty-one. I went to Anthony
Hemingway’s house. I went for
Thanksgiving dinner. I knew he was
up [to direct] this movie Red Tails,
with George Lucas producing. He told
me he was going to get me an audition.
In my head, I was like, “Hopefully,
it’s going to work.” That was the job
that gave me enough money to stay in
Los Angeles. I remember all of us over
his house: me, Nate Parker, David
Oyelowo, Elijah Kelley, Tristan Wilds,
Leslie Odom Jr...
KP: Leslie Odom Jr, the Tony Award
winner from Hamilton?
MBJ: Yeah, exactly. We were all in there,
and it was one of those things where
[Hemingway] was like, “You know, we’re
going to do something epic.” Working
with George Lucas, shooting over in
Prague, overseas, the whole thing. That
movie saved me.
KP: Fruitvale Station happened and both
you and Ryan Coogler, the director, saw
your lives change forever. How does it
feel when you two are compared to
Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro?
MBJ: Those guys were making movies
longer than I’ve been alive. It’s an
incredible honour. Me and Ryan
184 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018
‘The studio felt it
was the right
time... that Black
Panther would
make an impact’
connected on a personal level, on a
business level, on a work level and
on a human level. We linked up at a
perfect time in my life, in our careers,
and we been bopping out ever since.
KP: How did you meet?
MBJ: I met Ryan when I was coming back
from shooting Chronicle in South Africa,
right around the time Trayvon Martin
got shot. I remember feeling sick and
wanting to express myself as best I could
as an actor, especially a black actor. Being
political and speaking out on issues at
that time, I felt a little nervous to really
speak my truth. I felt it was really tough.
I remember writing stuff on Facebook
and deleting it. I reached out to my
agent and said I want to show I can act.
Just give me a gritty independent; let
me see if I can do it.
KP: This was spurred by Trayvon Martin
getting killed?
MBJ: Yeah. It all happened one after
another. It just so happened that [the
Fruitvale Station] script came through
and I read it and I cried. Read it again,
cried again. I wanted to sit down and
meet [Ryan].
KP: That’s how it happened?
MBJ: Yeah. A couple of weeks after
that we were talking about Creed.
KP: That fast?
MBJ: Yeah.
KP: How did Sylvester Stallone get
involved in the project?
MBJ: Ryan did a lot of that work,
honestly. He had a vision he pitched
to Sly’s agent.
KP: Ryan came up with the idea of
resuscitating the franchise?
MBJ: Without a doubt. You know, Sly
took some massaging to get him on-
board. Obviously, it’s his baby, his
franchise that he created a long time ago.
He wanted to do this thing about Apollo
Creed’s son and Ryan pitched to him a
couple times and he still said no. Me and
Ryan went and shot Fruitvale Station. It
won Sundance, premiered in Cannes, got
all these accolades and then Sly slowly
started coming around and Creed
became more real.
KP: You’re a black man in the US and a lot
of black men don’t get these opportunities.
Do you suffer survivor’s guilt?
MBJ: Yeah. I don’t know, man. Why me?
I’m from Newark, New Jersey. I have
friends and peers, other actors that I
think are extremely talented. I grew up
in an audition room; I see them all the
time auditioning for roles. Why am I
the only one that gets this? I used to feel
animosity from other actors. The way
the industry is, it naturally creates this
competition between each other and it’s
not a friendly competition. It becomes
more standoffish. We can see each other
at a party and no one wants to be the one
to come over and say hello – I remember
that a couple of times. I never really felt
intimidated by anybody, but it got me
thinking, wanting to create more, to
produce. I want to really change the
landscape of the game.
KP: You said earlier that you used to be
nervous, but now you want to talk about
changing things, to talk about race, to talk
about diversity. What has shifted for you
in these few years of success and stardom?
MBJ: Becoming more unapologetic, I
think. Before I wasn’t that confident in
myself. I think the times are changing.
I feel the responsibility I have [to] my
people, my community – especially
through the work that I do and the
roles I portray – that I’ll be doing them
a disservice if I didn’t speak up for
the people that look to me to set an
example. The temperature and the
climate of the world, especially the
US, is in a crazy place. People in the
older generation have said they’ve seen
it before but this is the first time I’m
seeing it. The Sidney Poitiers, the Harry
Belafontes, they’ve been through this
already – a lot worse than it is right
now – so it would be disrespectful not
to bang down that door, to continue to
pick up the baton from where they left
off and keep it moving. Obviously, the
game’s changed a little bit, you’re not
quite fighting the same, but it’s still
a fight and I’ve got to do it my way.
KP: Sidney Poitier came from the Bahamas
to the US in the Forties. He was looking
for a job and he saw two ads: one said
dishwasher and the other said actor. He
picked actor. About a decade later Dr King
got his PhD at 26 years old and said he just
wanted to have a little church with his
wife. He landed in Montgomery, Alabama.
Then Rosa Parks, the bus boycott – the
rest is history. Some people are called to
do certain things. Do you feel you have
been called to do what you do? »
 MICHAEL B JORDAN

‘We don’t gotta

be gangbangers
or comic relief.
We can be
superheroes’
Shirt by Dior Homme, £390. dior.com.
Tie by DSquared2, £105. dsquared2.co.uk.
Glasses by Ray-Ban, £133. ray-ban.com

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 185

‘It’s tough
being a black
man in America.
It’s why I have
chosen to do
what I do. It’s
a weight I’m Hair Jove Edmond
willing to bear’ Grooming Barbara Guillaume
Photography assistants
Kevin McHugh; John Mims
Coat by Burberry, £2,345. burberry.com. Styling assistant Hannah Lewis
Rollneck by John Smedley, £150. johnsmedley.com. Digital technician Dale Gold
Beret by Lock & Co, £95. lockhatters.co.uk Production Flower Ave

186 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018


MBJ: Yes.
KP: Why?
MBJ: I don’t know. I feel like doing what
I do, it’s not just acting; it’s what goes into
becoming an actor. People see the end
results. They see the lights, the premiere,
the movie. They don’t see the time that
you put in by yourself, the lonely journey.
They don’t see the moments you sleep in
your car. They don’t see the moment
when you have to go into a gas station,
swipe your card to pay then hurry up
and go in the convenience store and get
chips and frozen pizza before your card
gets declined because you don’t have
that much money in your account. But
somehow you still have faith that you
are doing what you’re supposed to
be doing. When you get some success
you get ridiculed and judged by
everybody, most of the time by your
own people: “You’re not this, you’re
not that, you’re not doing as much as
possible.” It’s tough. Being a black
man in America, you have a systemic
oppression that’s there. A system that’s
put in place that’s always constantly
ripping you down, [saying] that you’re
not good enough. It’s tough being a
black man in America. It comes with a
lot. So, it’s why I have chosen to do what
I do, because it’s a weight I’m willing and
able to bear. I’m still trying to figure this
shit out.
KP: What’s the biggest misconception
about Michael B Jordan?
MBJ: I’ve been blessed there’s not that
many things that have been misconstrued
because I stayed out the way. There’s
things I’ve got to do to be the best actor
I can be and to be in a position to create
my production company, to be able to
create more opportunities and more roles
for men, women, people of colour, all
ethnicities, to reverse-engineer this
whole prejudice racist shit.
KP: Are you a leader?
MBJ: Very much so.
KP: Why?
MBJ: Because I have to be.
KP: Like Malcolm X or like Martin Luther
King Jr?
MBJ: I’m a mixture of both. I’m a little bit
of Malcolm, a little bit of Martin. You
know, you gotta be smart and there’s
moments where you gotta be a little bit
more like Martin and moments you have
to be like Malcolm.
KP: What does diversity mean to you
in Hollywood?
MBJ: You know, diversity only makes
sense in a system where it’s lacking. If
it’s not lacking equal opportunity there’s
no need for diversity. Since the beginning
of film, it’s [been] for white people
[who] slowly allowed other ethnicities
to contribute and tell stories. As times
changed, we got to the point today that
you see so many men and women behind
the camera. Women are getting more
opportunities in all different lanes,
politics, scientific, everything. Mankind
has been evolving; the technology has
changed. I feel like anybody can pick up
an iPhone and become a filmmaker.
KP: This is the ten-year anniversary of
Barack Obama becoming the first black
president of the United States. How far
have you come since Obama was elected?
MBJ: Man, I feel like we’ve come a long
way. Ten years since Obama? That’s insane.
I remember the day he got elected. I still
have the newspapers.
KP: That’s around the time you were about
to quit acting.
MBJ: Exactly. I feel it’s the perfect storm
right now.
‘It would be
disrespectful not
to bang down
that door, to pick
up the baton’
KP: For Black Panther or everything?
MBJ: For everything. Just to get the
opportunity to have a conversation about
a movie like Black Panther, however
many millions of dollars the budget is. It
had to be a perfect storm. The studio had
to feel it was the right time to back a film
with a predominately black cast, that
hasn’t been done before with this budget.
They felt comfortable enough that it
was going to make an impact, make a
statement and make money, because this
is a business and it is about money.
KP: How important is Black Panther?
MBJ: I think it’s extremely important. I
feel like I never had that many actors to
look at and inspire me growing up. Black
actors that I could identify with, that
look like me on screen. I used to see
other films growing up and I would
automatically play make-believe, films
like X-Men. I watched Blade and I saw
Wesley [Snipes]. I didn’t have to try that
hard to imagine because I was seeing
someone that resembles me. And I’m just
thinking about what this movie is going
to do to the kids growing up.
MICHAEL B JORDAN
KP: Which kids?
MBJ: Black kids, white kids, all kids,
because they can imagine just as much
as we can, but specifically black kids
who don’t have that many positive
examples to look at on TV and film.
We’re giving black people power,
royalty – we don’t gotta be crackheads
or gangbangers, selling drugs or robbing
people. We don’t have to be comic relief.
We can be superheroes. Imagine what
that’s going to do to the imagination
and ambition of kids watching these
movies. That’s the real impact of this film.
When it’s a black cast, everyone wants
to act like the project is only for black
audiences. That doesn’t make sense to
me. Why can’t we look at this movie and
be inspired and go on that journey? They
should be able to do that and if you can’t
that’s the problem.
KP: You’ve mentioned women. #MeToo
has exploded worldwide. What are your
thoughts as a man about what’s going on?
MBJ: I think it’s just a cleansing. I think
it’s a power thing and that’s in all
industries. I feel like whenever there’s
power and men in power, there’s going to
be an abuse of power, that’s just human
nature. The conversation: how do we hold
people accountable and responsible for
having that power? The culture of
Hollywood is changing now, on all levels,
behind the camera [and] in front. And
whenever there’s a shift in power, it’s
going to be rough. We’re going through
that stage right now. I’m glad it’s coming
out. Because now you have to hold people
accountable. People that were scared to
say or speak their truth now are feeling
comfortable. People are going to be
more responsible with the positions that
they are in right now and that’s taught
down. The assistants that are coming up,
the producers, the actors coming up –
everybody’s learning. You have to weed
the motherfuckers out so the next crop
that come up can learn the right way. G
Kevin Powell is the author of The Education Of
Kevin Powell: A Boy’s Journey Into Manhood.
Follow him on Twitter @kevin_powell.
Black Panther is out on 12 February.
More from G For these related
stories visit GQ.co.uk /magazine
Adam Driver: Edge Of Darkness
(Alex Bhattacharji, December 2017)
Chris Pratt: Guardian Of The Galaxy
(Stuart McGurk, January 2017)
How Benedict Cumberbatch Became
Marvel’s Strangest Superhero
(Stuart McGurk, November 2016)
MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 187
The inauguration on 20 January
of Donald J Trump was day
zero in an astonishing year in
American politics. And if you
thought 2017 was wild, if 
you thought your capacity for
shock and perplexity exhausted,
well, we’ve got news for you.
Here, we look beyond the
rhetoric, ego and internecine
spats to predict what the next
breathless months will bring.
Including: MICHAEL WOLFF
on the cracks he found from
inside the Trump White House;
MATT KELLY on the damage
being done to America’s
vision for the Free World;
MATTHEW D’ANCONA
predicts the tragic outcome of
weaponised identity politics;
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL
asks why mental health
experts don’t speak out about
the president’s psyche; and
GARRETT M GRAFF reveals
how little it would take to
bring the whole thing down...

WHAT TRUMP
DID NEXT
188 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018
 MICHAEL WOLFF

The great value of

the presidency
was becoming the
most famous man
in the world, and
fame is always
adored. Isn’t it?

Eight days into office,

Photograph Getty Images

President Trump is joined by

national security advisor
Michael Flynn (centre), who
he would later fire, and Steve
Bannon. Bannon’s interviews
for Michael Wolff ’s new
book prompted Trump to
declare that his former chief
strategist has lost his mind

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 189


On 19 April last year, Bill O’Reilly, the Fox
News anchor and the biggest star in cable
news, was pushed out by the Murdoch
family over charges of sexual harassment.
This was a continuation of the purge at the
network that had begun nine months before
with the firing of its chief, Roger Ailes. Fox
achieved its ultimate political influence with
the election of Donald Trump, yet now the
future of the network seemed held in a
peculiar Murdoch family limbo, between
conservative father and liberal sons.
A few hours after the O’Reilly announce-
ment, Ailes, from his new oceanfront home
in Palm Beach, Florida – precluded by his
separation agreement with Fox from any
efforts to compete with it for 18 months –
sent an emissary into the West Wing with a
question for Steve Bannon (at the time, still
Trump’s chief strategist): O’Reilly and Fox
News host Sean Hannity are in, what about
you? Ailes, in secret, had been plotting his
comeback with a new conservative network.
Then in internal exile at the White House,
Bannon – “the next Ailes” – was all ears.
This was not just the plotting of ambitious
men, seeking both opportunity and revenge;
the idea for a new network was also driven
by an urgent sense that the Trump phenom-
enon was about, as much as anything else,
right-wing media. For 20 years, Fox had
honed its populist message: liberals were
stealing and ruining the country. Then, just
at the moment that many liberals – including
Rupert Murdoch’s sons, who were increas-
ingly in control of their father’s company –
had begun to believe that the Fox audience
was beginning to age out, with its anti-gay
marriage, anti-abortion, anti-immigrant
social message, which seemed too hoary for
younger Republicans, along came Breitbart
News. Breitbart not only spoke to a much
younger right-wing audience – here, as exec-
utive chairman, Bannon felt he was as much
in tune with this audience as Ailes was with
190 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018
his – but it had turned this audience into
a huge army of digital activists (or social
media trolls).
As right-wing media had fiercely coalesced
around Trump – readily excusing all the ways
he might contradict the traditional conserva-
tive ethos – mainstream media had become as
fiercely resistant. The country was divided as
much by media as by politics. Media was the
avatar of politics. A sidelined Ailes was eager
to get back in the game. This was his natural
playing field: 1) Trump’s election proved the
power of a significantly smaller but more
dedicated electoral base – just as, in cable
television terms, a smaller, hardcore base was
more valuable than a bigger, less committed
one; 2) this meant an inverse dedication by
an equally small circle of passionate enemies;
3) hence, there would be blood.
If Bannon was as finished as he appeared
in the White House, this was his opportunity
too. Indeed, the problem with Bannon’s $1.5
million a year internet-centric Breitbart
News was that it couldn’t be monetised or
scaled up in a big way, but with O’Reilly
and Hannity on board, there could be tele-
vision riches fuelled by, into the foreseeable
future, a new Trump-inspired era of right-
wing passion and hegemony.
Ailes’ message to his would-be protégé was
plain: not just the rise of Trump, but the fall
of Fox could be Bannon’s moment.
In reply, Bannon let Ailes know that, for
now, he was trying to hold on to his position
in the White House. But yes, the opportu-
nity was obvious.
Even as O’Reilly’s fate was being debated
by the Murdochs, Trump, understanding
O’Reilly’s power and knowing how
much O’Reilly’s audience overlapped with
his own base, had expressed his support
and approval: “I don’t think Bill did any-
thing wrong... He is a good person,” he told
the New York Times.
But, in fact, a paradox of the new strength
of conservative media was Trump himself.
During the campaign, when it suited him,
he had turned on Fox. If there were other
media opportunities, he took them. (In the
recent past, Republicans, particularly in
the primary season, paid careful obeisance
to Fox over other media outlets.) Trump
kept insisting that he was bigger than just
conservative media.
In the past month, Ailes, a frequent Trump
caller and after-dinner advisor, had all but
stopped speaking to the president, piqued
by the constant reports that Trump was
bad-mouthing him as he praised a newly
attentive Murdoch, who had, before the
election, only ever ridiculed Trump. “Men
who demand the most loyalty tend to be
the least loyal pricks,” noted a sardonic
Trump failed
to distinguish
between political
advantage and
personal need
Ailes (a man who himself demanded lots
of loyalty).
The conundrum was that conservative
media saw Trump as its creature, while Trump
saw himself as a star, a vaunted and valued
product of all media, one climbing ever
higher. It was a cult of personality and he
was the personality. He was the most famous
man in the world. Everybody loved him – or
ought to.
O
n Trump’s part this was, argu-
ably, something of a large
misunderstanding about the
nature of conservative media.
He clearly did not understand
that what conservative media elevated,
liberal media would necessarily take down.
Trump, goaded by Bannon, would con-
tinue to do the things that would delight
conservative media and incur the wrath
of liberal media. That was the programme.
The more your supporters loved you, the
more your antagonists hated you. That’s how
it was supposed to work. And that’s how it
was working.
But Trump himself was desperately
wounded by his treatment in the mainstream
media. He obsessed over every slight until
it was succeeded by the next slight. Slights
were singled out and replayed again and
again, his mood worsening with each replay
(he was always rerunning the DVR). Much
of the president’s daily conversation was a
repetitive rundown of what various anchors
and hosts had said about him. And he was
upset not only when he was attacked, but
when the people around him were attacked.
Photograph Getty Images
But he did not credit their loyalty or blame
himself or the nature of liberal media for the
indignities heaped on his staffers; he blamed
them and their inability to get good press.
Mainstream media’s self-righteousness
and contempt for Trump helped provide a
tsunami of clicks for right-wing media. But »
 MICHAEL WOLFF

C O M M E N T

Truman
vs Trump
Can the global vision of America’s
33rd president survive the nation’s
current ‘casino boss’ narcissist?
By Matt Kelly

They could not be more different, the two

presidents book-ending the 70 years since
the creation of the Marshall Plan, the US’s
post-war gift to Europe, born from the
philosophy that European greatness is
intrinsic to American greatness.
Harry S Truman, 33rd president of the
United States. The disciple of Teddy
Roosevelt’s “speak softly and carry a big
stick”. The architect of the Truman Doctrine,
that Europe’s prosperity was essential to
the prosperity of the US. And he didn’t just
talk it, but also got Congress to agree to
more than £100 billion, in today’s money, to
rebuild Europe. The president upon whose
desk sat a simple declaration: “The Buck
Stops Here”. Only in the mind of someone
deranged could any equivalence with the
current holder of the presidency be found.
Which is a suitable juncture to turn to
Donald J Trump, 45th president of the
United States. Because in his warped
world-view, Trump does see an equivalence.
In his speech to the United Nations last
year, Trump quoted Truman: “The success
of the United Nations depends upon the
independent strength of its members.” In
doing so, he took Truman’s message of
internationalism and perverted it into a
doctrine of nationalism that threatens the
very stability and harmony Truman built.
Trump’s vision is not internationalism. It’s
nationalism. It’s the myopic world-view of a
dealmaker with business interests stretching
across the globe. And Trump views the EU as
a rival entity – one he can undermine to the
US’s advantage. Witness his chronic assaults
against those he sees as being part of some
suspect social experiment of international co-
dependency. Europe is the precise opposite
of the “Trump Doctrine” – the go-it-alone-
and-screw-you attitude of a casino boss.
Europe’s years of peace and prosperity
aren’t cyclical (one hopes) but structural –
the product of the wisdom and generosity
of Truman. We depend on precisely the
shared nationalism, eradication of borders
and common sense of purpose envisioned by
Truman and every president since. Until No45.
President Trump gives every sign of neither
understanding the long road our continent
has walked in the past 70 years, nor why that
With daughter and journey has been so intrinsic to the arrival of
advisor Ivanka by his the US as the world’s sole superpower.
side, Trump converses He is the businessman who has forgotten
via video link with Nasa – or never knew – where the great fortune he
astronauts aboard the
International Space
inherited came from in the first place.
Station, 24 April 2017

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 191

» an often raging, self-pitying, tormented
president had not gotten this memo, or had
failed to comprehend it. He was looking
for media love everywhere. In this, Trump
quite profoundly seemed unable to distin-
guish between his political advantage and
his personal needs – he thought emotion-
ally, not strategically.
The great value of being president, in his
view, was that you’re the most famous man
in the world, and fame is always venerated
and adored by the media. Isn’t it? But, con-
fusingly, Trump was president in large part
because of his particular talent, conscious
or reflexive, to alienate the media, which
then turned him into a figure reviled by the
media. This was not a dialectical space that
was comfortable for an insecure man.
“For Trump,” noted Ailes, “the media rep-
resented power, much more so than politics,
and he wanted the attention and respect of
its most powerful men. Donald and I were
really quite good friends for more than 25
years, but he would have preferred to be
friends with Murdoch, who thought he was a
moron – at least until he became president.”

T
he White House Correspondents’
Dinner was set for 29 April, the
100th day of the Trump adminis-
tration. The annual dinner, once
an insiders’ event, had become
an opportunity for media organisations to
promote themselves by recruiting celebri-
ties – most of whom had nothing to do with
journalism or politics – to sit at their tables.
This had resulted in a notable Trump humil-
iation when, in 2011, Barack Obama singled
out Trump for particular mockery. In Trump
lore, this was the insult that pushed him to
make the 2016 run.
Not long after the Trump team’s arrival
to the White House, the Correspondents’
Dinner became a cause for worry. On a
winter afternoon in Kellyanne Conway’s
upstairs West Wing office, Conway and
director of strategic communications Hope
Hicks engaged in a pained discussion about
what to do.
The central problem was that the presi-
dent was neither inclined to make fun of
himself, nor particularly funny himself – at
least not, in Conway’s description, “in that
kind of humorous way”.
George W Bush had famously tried to resist
the Correspondents’ Dinner and suffered
greatly at it, but he had prepped extensively
and every year he pulled out an acceptable
performance. But neither woman, confiding
their concerns around the table in Conway’s
office to a journalist they regarded as sympa-
thetic, thought Trump had a realistic chance
of making the dinner anything like a success.
Clockwise from top: Former chief strategist Steve
Bannon; with US national security advisor HR
McMaster; Trump signs an executive order to
undermine Obamacare, 12 October 2017
In the workplace,
Trump confided
in women and
kept men at
arm’s length
“He doesn’t appreciate cruel humour,” said
Conway. “His style is more old-fashioned,”
said Hicks.
B o t h wo m e n , c l e a r l y s e e i n g t h e
Correspondents’ Dinner as an intractable
problem, kept characterising the event as
“unfair”, which, more generally, is how they
characterised the media’s view of Trump.
“He’s unfairly portrayed.” “They don’t give
him the benefit of the doubt.” “He’s just
not treated the way other presidents have
been treated.”
The burden here for Conway and Hicks was
their understanding that the president did
not see the media’s lack of regard for him as
part of a political divide on which he stood
on a particular side. Instead, he perceived it
as a deep personal attack on him: for entirely
unfair reasons, ad hominem reasons, the
media just did not like him. Ridiculed him.
Cruelly. Why?
The journalist, trying to offer some
comfort, told the two women there was
a rumour going around that Graydon
Carter – the editor of Vanity Fair, host of
one of the most important parties of the
Correspondents’ Dinner weekend and, for
decades, one of Trump’s key tormentors in
the media – was shortly going to be pushed
out of the magazine.
“Really?” said Hicks, jumping up. “Oh,
my God. Can I tell him? Would that be OK?
He’ll want to know this.” She headed quickly
downstairs to the Oval Office.
Curiously, Conway and Hicks each por-
trayed a side of the president’s alter ego
media problem. Conway was the bitter antag-
onist, the mud-in-your-eye messenger who
reliably sent the media into paroxysms of
outrage against the president. Hicks was the
confidante, ever trying to get the president a
break and some good ink in the only media

192 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018


he really cared about – the media that most
hated him. But as different as they were in
their media functions and temperament,
both women had achieved remarkable influ-
ence in the administration by serving as the
key lieutenants responsible for addressing
the president’s most pressing concern: his
media reputation.
While Trump was in most ways a conven-
tional misogynist, in the workplace he was
much closer to women than to men. The
former he confided in, the latter he held
at arm’s length. He liked and needed his
office wives and he trusted them with
his most important personal issues. Women,
according to Trump, were simply more loyal
Photographs Getty Images; Ron Sachs/CNP
and trustworthy than men. Men might be
more forceful and competent, but they were
also more likely to have their own agendas.
Women, by their nature – or Trump’s version
of their nature – were more likely to focus
their purpose on a man. A man like Trump.
It wasn’t happenstance or just casting
balance that one of his Apprentice sidekicks
was a woman, nor that his daughter Ivanka
had become one of his closest confidantes.
He felt women understood him. Or, the kind
of women he liked – positive-outlook, »
C O M M E N T
National identity now
trumps prosperity
As the latest tragic skirmishes in America’s culture war
open new wounds and widen divisions, we ask why Trump
fomented discontent on both sides of the political fringe
By Matthew d’Ancona
It was the year in which Donald
Trump became the orange maypole
around which the world performed
its contentious dance. The president’s
embrace of economic nationalism
presented the first serious threat to
globalisation from the US in decades.
His interventions in the Middle East
and the Korean Peninsula jangled nerves
on every continent. But the real battle
of Trump’s first year was fought over
culture and identity.
True, this conflict is nothing new in
American life. What we now call the
“culture war” was perhaps launched
by Nixon’s salute in 1969 to “the
great silent majority”, the traditional
Americans who were quietly hostile to
the countercultural revolution
of the Sixties. For decades,
US politics has fizzed with Trump
fury over abortion, feminism,
illegal immigration, flag- did not
burning and creationism – so much
a fury that found grassroots
expression in the rise of
drain the
the Tea Party movement. swamp, as
But if that phase of the
struggle was fought with
extend its
conventional weapons, borders
metaphorically speaking,
Trump was the first president to deploy
the WMD of social media. His every
tweet seemed to sharpen the divide
and clarify the battle lines.
On one side of the conflict were the
forces of resistance to Trump’s quest
for cultural hegemony: Black Lives
Matter; Hulu’s extraordinary TV version
of The Handmaid’s Tale; the #MeToo
movement; a more assertive form of
transgenderism; campus riots and
the entrenchment of postmodern
“identity politics”.
On the other arose a new
establishment of the cultural right: the
launch by Milo Yiannopoulos of his own
company; Cassie Jaye’s renunciation
of feminism in her (frequently banned)
film, The Red Pill; the ethno-nationalism
of Richard B Spencer; the power of
Breitbart and its imitators; and, of
course, Trump’s own interventions on
a range of issues, from Saturday Night
Live to militant Islam to transgenderism
in the military.
Interpreted in isolation, the president’s
MICHAEL WOLFF
tweets, with their upper-case
outbursts and one-word denunciations
(“Sad!”), often seemed capricious and
disconnected. Considered collectively,
they gave cover to a loose-knit network
of activists, vloggers and internet
platforms that had previously operated
at the fringes. Because the president
took Alex Jones of Infowars seriously,
the rest of us had to keep an eye on
what the frenetic conspiracy theorist
was saying.
Donald Trump abolished the old
distinction between the centre and
the periphery, between the respectable
and the marginal. He did not so much
drain the swamp, as extend its borders
from sea to shining sea.
In this regard, the unholy
pivot of the year was
Charlottesville: ostensibly
rallying against the planned
removal of a statue of
the Confederate general
Robert E Lee, a rabble of
white supremacists brought
bloodshed, hatred and
death to this beautiful city
in August. Trump’s insistence
that the “alt-left” were as
much to blame as the neo-
Nazis and that there were “very
fine people” alongside the Klansmen
was a deplorable babble of phony
equivalence. It gave great comfort to
the far right and gravely dishonoured
Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old paralegal
killed by a car ploughing into a crowd of
anti-racist protesters.
The rules of the game have changed,
profoundly so. Just as (according to
polls) Brexiteers still back Britain’s
departure from the EU, even if the deal
is bad, so Trump’s supporters continue
to support him, not because of his barely
there policy achievements, but because
of what they think he stands for.
For the first time since the rise of
fascism, culture matters more than
prosperity to a great many people. This
president has nurtured a version of
identity in which you are not what you
do, or even what you earn and own,
but what you feel. And the trouble with
feelings is that, left to themselves, they
observe no limits: much, in fact, like
Trump himself.
MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 193
 C O M M E N T

American
psycho
Medical ethics prohibit diagnosis of mental health
without consultation. But Trump’s alarming
behaviour is prompting psychiatrists to speak out
By Alastair Campbell

Donald Trump keeps breaking all the rules. And leadership

being what it is, that is making others break them too. Take
the Goldwater Rule.
You’ve never heard of the Goldwater Rule? Well, back in
1964, when Trump was just 18, his predecessor as Republican
presidential nominee was Senator Barry Goldwater.
Though he was a model of virtue and moderation alongside the
campaign excesses of recent times, there were fears among the
Trump presides over a
nation’s psychiatrists that Goldwater was – how to put it politely? meeting of his cabinet,
– a few cents short of the dollar. A magazine called Fact polled 1 November 2017;
psychiatrists and enough of them concurred with that view to (below) advisors
allow a headline suggesting he was mentally unfit for office. Kellyanne Conway
Goldwater, somewhat Trumpian in his views of the media, (centre) and Ivanka
(left) host a meeting
sued, successfully, and the magazine closed in the process.
with military spouses,
But another consequence was that the American Psychiatric 2 August 2017
Association added the “Goldwater Rule” to Section 7 of its
Principles Of Medical Ethics. It makes clear that it is unethical
for psychiatrists to give their medical opinion about public
figures unless they have treated them personally and have their
permission to talk about their diagnosis. However, some of the
nation’s top psychiatrists are finding it impossible to sit idly by
amid fears that their president may be seriously mentally ill.
On the back of Trump’s retweeting of hate messages and
videos by Britain First (you keep thinking he can go no lower,
then he finds a way), the latest to break the Goldwater Rule
was Dr Lance Dodes, a former Harvard professor now with the
Boston Psychoanalytic Society And Institute.
Trump, he argued, is “a psychopath… an enormous present
danger… a very sick man… displaying symptoms of psychosis”.
On Trump’s compulsive tweeting, Dodes said, “The simple
explanation for it is that he’s not in control of himself. This is what
we mean when we say that somebody is becoming psychotic or
is briefly psychotic... All of his delusional ideas come up when he
is stressed in some way and then he loses track of reality because
it doesn’t fit what he needs to believe.” He also said it was “an
extremely dangerous thing” for a position of power to be held
by someone who “appears so wantonly unconcerned about the
welfare of others and willing to do anything to promote himself”.
It’s not as though we weren’t warned: remember his very
first official visit after his inauguration, to the HQ of the CIA?
Smart move, I thought: he is going to build bridges after the
rows with the intelligence community during the campaign.
But no. He stood in front of the wall

‘Trump of stars commemorating CIA officers

killed serving the US and created a

is an huge storm about the media reports

that there had been bigger crowds
enormous for Barack Obama’s inauguration than
his – which there had. At best, chronic
present narcissism; at worst, a personality
disorder that would be pretty scary
danger... in anyone, but frankly terrifying when
we are talking about the president of
a very the United States. Which is why the

sick man’ shrinks are refusing to be silent, rule

or no rule.

194 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018


» can-do, loyal women, who also looked
good – understood him. Everybody who suc-
cessfully worked for him understood that
there was always a subtext to his needs and
personal tics that had to be scrupulously
attended to; in this, he was not all that dif-
ferent from other highly successful figures,
just more so. It would be hard to imagine
someone who expected a greater awareness
of and more catering to his peculiar whims,
rhythms, prejudices and, often inchoate,
desires. He needed special – extra-special –
handling. Women, he explained to one friend
with something like self-awareness, generally
got this more precisely than men. In particu-
lar, women who self-selected themselves as
tolerant of or oblivious to or amused by or
steeled against his casual misogyny and con-
stant sexual subtext – which was somehow,
incongruously and often jarringly, matched
with paternal regard – got this.
K
ellyanne Conway first met
Donald Trump at a meeting of
the condo board for the Trump
World Tower, which was directly
across the street from the UN
and was where, in the early noughties,
she lived with her husband and children.
Conway’s husband, George, a graduate of
Harvard College and Yale Law School, was
a partner at the premier corporate mergers
and acquisitions firm Wachtell, Lipton,
Rosen & Katz. (Though Wachtell was a
Democratic-leaning firm, George had played
a behind-the-scenes role on the team that
represented Paula Jones in her pursuit of Bill
Clinton for sexual harassment.) In its pro-
fessional and domestic balance, the Conway
family was organised around George’s career.
Kellyanne’s career was a sidelight. Kellyanne,
who in the Trump campaign would use her
working-class biography to good effect,
grew up in central New Jersey, the daughter
of a trucker, raised by a single mother (and,
always in her narrative, her grandmother
and two unmarried aunts). She went to the
George Washington University Law School
and afterward interned for Reagan’s poll-
ster, Richard Wirthlin. Then she went on
to work with Frank Luntz, a curious figure
in the Republican Party, known as much
for his television deals and toupee as for
his polling acumen. Conway herself began
to make appearances on cable TV while
working for Luntz.
Photographs Getty Images
One virtue of the research and polling
business she started in 1995 was that it
could adapt to her husband’s career. But
she never much rose above a mid-rank pres-
ence in Republican political circles, nor did
she become more than the also-ran behind
Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham on cable
MICHAEL WOLFF
television – which is where Trump first saw
her and why he singled her out at the condo
board meeting.
In a real sense, however, her advantage was
not meeting Trump but being taken up by bil-
lionaire Trump donor Robert Mercer and his
daughter Rebekah. They recruited Conway
in 2015 to work on the Ted Cruz campaign,
when Trump was still far from the conserv-
ative ideal, and then, in July 2016, inserted
her into the Trump campaign.
She understood her role. “I will only ever
call you Mr Trump,” she told the candidate
with perfect-pitch solemnity when he inter-
viewed her for the job. It was a trope she
would repeat in interview after interview
– Conway was a catalogue of learned
lines – a message repeated as much for
Trump as for others.
Her title was campaign manager, but
that was a misnomer. Bannon was the real
manager and she was the senior pollster. But
Bannon shortly replaced her in that role and
she was left in what Trump saw as the vastly
more important role of cable spokesperson.
In private,
Kellyanne
Conway
regarded Trump
as an absurdity
Conway seemed to have a convenient “on-
off” toggle. In private, in the off position,
she seemed to regard Trump as a figure of
exhausting exaggeration or even absurdity
– or, at least, if you regarded him that way,
she seemed to suggest that she might too.
She illustrated her opinion of her boss with
a whole series of facial expressions: eyes
rolling, mouth agape, head snapping back.
But in the on position, she metamorphosed
into believer, protector, defender and
handler. Conway is an antifeminist (or, actu-
ally, in a complicated ideological somersault,
she sees feminists as being antifeminists),
ascribing her methods and temperament to
being a wife and mother. She’s instinctive
and reactive. Hence her role as the ultimate
Trump defender: she verbally threw herself
in front of any bullet coming his way.
Trump loved her defend-at-all-costs
schtick. Conway’s appearances were on his
schedule to watch live. His was often the
first call she got after coming off the air. She
channelled Trump: she said exactly the kind
of Trump stuff that would otherwise make
her put a finger-gun to her head.
After the election – Trump’s victory »
MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 195
» setting off a domestic reordering in the
Conway household and a scramble to get
her husband an administration job – Trump
assumed she would be his press secretary.
“He and my mother,” Conway said, “because
they both watch a lot of television, thought
this was one of the most important jobs.” In
Conway’s version, she turned Trump down or
demurred. She kept proposing alternatives in
which she would be the key spokesperson
but would be more as well. In fact, almost
everyone else was manoeuvring Trump
around his desire to appoint Conway.
oyalty was Trump’s most valued
L
attribute and in Conway’s view
her kamikaze-like media defence
of the president had earned her
a position of utmost primacy in
the White House. But in her public persona,
she had pushed the boundaries of loyalty
too far; she was so hyperbolic that even
Trump loyalists found her behaviour extreme
and were repelled. None were more put
off than Ivanka and her husband, Jared
Kushner, who, appalled at the shamelessness
of her television appearances, extended this
into a larger critique of Conway’s vulgarity.
When referring to her, they were particularly
partial to using the shorthand “nails”, a
reference to her Cruella de Vil-length mani-
cure treatments.
By mid-February, she was already the
subject of leaks – many coming from Kushner
and Ivanka – about how she had been side-
lined. She vociferously defended herself,
producing a list of television appearances still
on her schedule, albeit lesser ones. But she
also had a teary scene with Trump in the Oval
Office, offering to resign if the president had
lost faith in her. Almost invariably, when con-
fronted with self-abnegation, Trump offered
copious reassurances. “You will always have
a place in my administration,” he told her.
“You will be here for eight years.”
But she had indeed been sidelined, reduced
to second-rate media, to being a designated
emissary to right-wing groups and left out
of any meaningful decision-making. This she
blamed on the media, a scourge that further
united her in self-pity with Trump. In fact,
her relationship with the president deepened
as they bonded over their media wounds.
Hope Hicks, then aged 26, was the cam-
paign’s first hire. She knew the president
vastly better than Conway did and she
understood that her most important media
function was not to be in the media.
Hicks grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Her father was a PR executive who now
worked for The Glover Park Group, the
Democratic-leaning communications and
political consulting firm; her mother was »
196 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018
C O M M E N T
Atomic destruction is one
(personal) attack away
In nuclear game theory, the side that offers the appearance
of insanity has a powerful advantage. Of course, it only
works if the madness isn’t real...
By Conrad Quilty-Harper
In 1961, a document from the most
senior officers in the US military landed
on President John F Kennedy’s desk
marked “For the president’s eyes only”.
This document answered his question
to the joint chiefs of staff: “How many
people will be killed if plans for nuclear
war are carried out?” Daniel Ellsberg,
the man who helped end the Vietnam
War by leaking the Pentagon Papers,
happened to see this document before
it got to Kennedy’s desk. In his chilling
new book, which tells the story of the
US’s nuclear secrets, he recalls from
memory what was on the first page:
a line chart that estimated 275 million
deaths on the first day of a global
nuclear war, rising to 325 million after
six months. If the US struck
first, more than 600 million
people would die, equivalent
to “a hundred Holocausts”.
The power
Today, we know that the to wipe out
reality of a nuclear war all human
would be much worse. Even
a limited exchange could life lies in
cause a “nuclear winter”, that the hands
would wipe out all human life
on earth within a couple of
of a volatile
years. The power to realise narcissist
this horrible vision is now in
the greasy hands of a volatile, paranoid
narcissist who threatens foreign states
with violent rhetoric, sends early-
morning maniacal tweets and runs the
White House in a constant state of crisis,
full of inexperienced staffers.
Donald Trump’s threat to North Korea
of “fire and fury” was notable and
scary because of the nuclear power
that he wields. Remarkably little stands
in the way between Trump and the
thousands of nuclear warheads in the
US arsenal. Thanks to a system invented
by President Kennedy after the Cuban
Missile Crisis, every US president can
authorise the launch of nuclear weapons
within minutes. Campaigners describe
this system as a “nuclear monarchy”,
with Trump being the current king.
If he wanted, Trump could end the
world by beckoning over the military
aide who holds the nuclear briefcase,
selecting an option on the laptop inside
and reading out the verification code on
the “biscuit”, which he keeps in his suit
pocket. Some, such as Trump’s former
ghostwriter Tony Schwartz are worried
that if the FBI’s investigation goes badly
for Trump, he might recklessly “punch in
the codes to avoid his own catastrophic
humiliation”. And we should certainly
all be concerned by Trump’s long and
weird fascination with nuclear weapons,
especially considering how little he
appears to know about them. This is a
man who, during the campaign, revealed
he had no idea what the “nuclear triad”
was (the US’s three delivery systems for
nuclear weapons: bombers, submarines
and ICBMs) and who told Playboy
magazine in the Nineties that he “often
thinks of nuclear war” when asked about
his “longer-term views of the future”.
What we should all be more
worried about, however, is
Trump getting himself into
an escalating situation with
North Korea from which
he can’t back down and
emulating Nixon’s “madman”
theory of nuclear negotiation,
which says you can win if you
appear to be madder than
your opponent. Unfortunately,
madman theory only works if
you’re not actually mad.
Or there could be a
reoccurrence of a situation such as
that which Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy
Carter’s national security advisor,
experienced in 1979: “Sorry to wake you
up. We are under nuclear attack,” were the
chilling words he received over the phone
at 3am, which continued, “Thirty seconds
ago, 200 nuclear missiles were fired at
the United States.” Brzenzinski had three
minutes to confirm this information and
hand it on to the president, who would
then have had four minutes to decide
whether to fire US missiles back. As it
turns out, it was a false alarm (someone
at Norad had left a training tape in the
machine) and Brzezinski went back to
bed. The man who would answer the
phone today is General HR McMaster,
who was reported earlier this year to
have told friends at a private dinner that
Trump was an “idiot” and a “dope” with
the intelligence of a “kindergartener”.
Apparently, the fate of the human
race rests on the hope that this
kindergartener-nuclear king doesn’t
throw his toys out of the pram.
 MICHAEL WOLFF

Conservative
media saw
Trump as its
creature,
while Trump
saw himself
as a star
Vice president Mike Pence (left)
confers with speaker of the
house Paul Ryan (right) before
the president’s first address to
Congress, 28 February 2017
Photograph Getty Images

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 197

» a former staffer for a Democratic con-
gressman. An indifferent student, Hicks
went to Southern Methodist University and
then did some modelling before getting a PR
job. She went to work for Matthew Hiltzik,
who ran a small New York-based PR firm
and was noted for his ability to work with
high-maintenance individuals, including the
movie producer Harvey Weinstein (later pil-
loried for years of sexual harassment and
abuse – accusations that Hiltzik had long
helped protect him from) and the television
personality Katie Couric. Hiltzik, an active
Democrat who had worked for Hillary
Clinton, also represented Ivanka Trump’s
fashion line. Hicks started to do some work
for the account and then joined Ivanka’s
company full-time. In 2015, Ivanka sec-
onded her to her father’s campaign. As the
campaign progressed, moving from novelty
project to political factor to juggernaut,
Hicks’ family increasingly, and incredu-
lously, viewed her as if having been taken
captive. (Following the Trump victory and
her move into the White House, her friends
Senate minority
and intimates talked with great concern leader Chuck Schumer
about what kind of therapies and recuper- (left) and White
House director of
ation she would need after her tenure was legislative affairs Marc
finally over.) Short (right) in talks
with Trump ahead of a
summit on tax reform,

O
ver the 18 months of the cam-
paign, the travelling group
usually consisted of the candi-
date, Hicks and the campaign
manager, Corey Lewandowski.
In time, Hicks became – in addition to an
inadvertent participant in history, about
which she was quite as astonished as anyone
– a kind of Stepford factotum, as absolute-
ly dedicated to and tolerant of Mr Trump as
anyone who had ever worked for him.
Shortly after Lewandowski, with whom
Hicks has been rumoured to have had an
on-and-off romantic relationship, was
fired in June 2016 for clashing with Trump
family members, Hicks sat in Trump Tower
with Trump and his sons, worrying about
Lewandowski’s treatment in the press and
wondering aloud how she might help him.
Trump, who otherwise seemed to treat Hicks
in a protective and even paternal way, looked
up and said, “Why? You’ve already done
enough for him. You’re the best piece of tail
he’ll ever have,” sending Hicks running from
the room.
As new layers began to form around
6 September 2017
Trump regularly
berated Sean
Spicer for his
ham-handed
press briefings
Hicks, sponsored by Ivanka and ever loyal
to her, was in fact thought of as Trump’s real
daughter, while Ivanka was thought of as his
real wife. More functionally, but as elemen-
tally, Hicks was the president’s chief media
handler. She worked by the president’s side,
wholly separate from the White House’s
40-person-strong communications office.
The president’s personal message and image
were entrusted to her – or, more accurately,
she was the president’s agent in retailing that
message and image, which he trusted to no
her with the ultimate job: a good write-up in
the New York Times. That, in the president’s
estimation, had yet failed to happen, “but
Hope tries and tries”, the president said.
On more than one occasion, after a day –
one of the countless days – of particularly
bad notices, the president greeted her, affec-
tionately, with “You must be the world’s
worst PR person.”
In the early days of the transition, with
Conway out of the running for the press
secretary job, Trump became determined
to find a “star”. The conservative radio host
Laura Ingraham, who had spoken at the
Republican National Convention in 2016,
was on the list, as was Ann Coulter. Fox
Business’ Maria Bartiromo was also under
consideration. (This was television, the
president-elect said, and it ought to be a
good-looking woman.) When none of those
ideas panned out, the job was offered to Fox
News’ Tucker Carlson, who turned it down.
But there was a counterview: the press sec-
Photograph Getty Images

Trump, first as nominee and then as presi-
dent-elect, Hicks continued playing the role
of his personal PR woman. She would remain
his constant shadow and the person with
the best access to him. “Have you spoken
to Hope?” were among the words most fre-
quently uttered in the West Wing.
one but himself. Together they formed some-
thing of a freelance operation.
Without any particular politics of her own
and, with her New York PR background,
quite looking down on the right-wing press,
she was the president’s official liaison to the
mainstream media. The president had charged
retary ought to be the opposite of a star. In
fact, the entire press operation ought to be
downgraded. If the press was the enemy,
why pander to it, why give it more visibility?
This was fundamental Bannonism: stop
thinking you can somehow get along with
your enemies.

198 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018


As the debate went on, the future White
House chief of staff Reince Priebus pushed
for one of his deputies at the Republican
National Committee, Sean Spicer, a well-
liked 45-year-old Washington political
professional with a string of posts on the
Hill in the George W Bush years as well as
with the RNC. Spicer, hesitant to take the
job, kept anxiously posing the question to
colleagues in the Washington swamp: “If I
do this, will I ever be able to work again?”
There were conflicting answers.
D
uring the transition, many
members of Trump’s team
came to agree with Bannon
that their approach to White
House press management
ought to be to push it off – and the longer
the arm’s length the better. For the press,
this initiative, or rumours of it, became
another sign of the incoming administra-
tion’s antipress stance and its systematic
efforts to cut off the information supply.
In truth, the suggestions about moving the
briefing room away from the White House,
or curtailing the briefing schedule, or limit-
ing broadcast windows or press pool access,
were variously discussed by other incom-
ing administrations. In her husband’s White
House, Hillary Clinton had been a proponent
of limiting press access.
It was Donald Trump who was not able to
relinquish this proximity to the press and the
stage in his own house. He regularly berated
Spicer for his ham-handed performances,
often giving his full attention to them. His
response to Spicer’s briefings was part of
his continuing belief that nobody could work
the media like he could, that somehow he
had been stuck with a communications team
that was absent charisma, magnetism and
proper media connections.
Trump’s pressure on Spicer – a constant
stream of directorial castigation and instruc-
tion that reliably rattled the press secretary
– helped turn the briefings into a can’t-miss
train wreck. Meanwhile, the real press oper-
ation had more or less devolved into a set
of competing press organisations within the
White House.
There was Hope Hicks and the president,
living in what other West Wingers charac-
terised as an alternative universe in which
the mainstream media would yet discover
the charm and wisdom of Donald Trump.
Where past presidents might have spent por-
tions of their day talking about the needs,
desires and points of leverage among various
members of Congress, the president and
Hicks spent a great deal of time talking about
a fixed cast of media personalities, trying
to second-guess the real agendas and »
C O M M E N T
What happens to the ‘free
world’ without its leader?
If America refuses to defend the legacy of Enlightenment
values, 21st-century liberal democracies will
become much darker places
By George Chesterton
The 20th century did its best to push
back at the ideas of the Enlightenment.
A generation of dictators and the masses
who obeyed them were not exactly
friends of human rights, democracy and
the rule of law, but that rough battle was
eventually won by the forces of good. Or
at least most assumed it had been. Now
in the 21st century, Donald Trump, with all
his mendacity and amorality, represents
a different danger to that of the
demagogues of those dark years. That’s
because, as an American president, he
is supposed to embody the fight against
tyranny, not be its standard bearer.
No matter what the US has done
or how many wrong turns it has
made, Planet Earth needs it. Trump is
attempting to turn his country
away from a tradition that we
in Britain often mock or take
for granted. Whether we like
For Trump,
it or not, the US really does lying is
stand for freedom. a dirty
Trump may not get all he
wants, but his aims are that bomb – it
of the dictator. That’s why bewilders
he loves to fawn over “strong
men” around the world, such
and
as Rodrigo Duterte and Xi terrifies
Jinping. That’s why, obviously,
he wants to appease, and is probably in
collusion with, Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
When you consider Trump’s attitude to
the free press, accountability, American
history, ideas of personal dignity and
service, and, of course, to the idea of
truth itself, it’s clear he is anti-American.
He is working against the interests of
his own nation, its people and all those
around the world who – whether they
realise it or not – in some way need
the US to represent the values of the
Enlightenment. These progressive values
did not just appear from nowhere (the
US is, after all, founded on freedom and
slavery): they had to be nurtured and
fought for. They are fragile – and more
so now than at any time since 1945.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill’s view
of political systems, you can never really
talk about the “best” but rather the
“least worst”. To become the least worst
is where the Enlightenment has taken
some societies around the world at
different speeds, with different freedoms
taking longer to manifest than others.
MICHAEL WOLFF
For anti-American fetishists, Trump is
the final proof that they were right all
along. Trump could make anyone lose
faith in what the US stands for. When he
openly supports racists or undermines
the First Amendment, the whole world
witnesses the erosion of the US’s
standing and, ultimately, power. This is
not just a geopolitical zero-sum game,
but a cultural and environmental one
too. Trump is not so much creating a
power vacuum as a free-for-all.
Brexit (welcomed, naturally, by
Trump) is a blow for the values of the
Enlightenment because it divides and
weakens democratic, free Europe. Whom
does that serve? Russia. Who serves
Russia (knowingly or otherwise)? Trump.
The US has never been a
paragon of national virtue, but
given the choice, American
imperfection is preferable to
the repressive, undemocratic
or theocratic regimes around
the world. You don’t need to
feel blind love for the US to
get chills at the thought of
what may follow if the US
abandons its role as the leader
of the liberal democracies and
a levee against tyranny.
The Enlightenment sought to replace
witchcraft with science, but for Trump’s
class of millionaire Republican enablers,
science is witchcraft. And for Trump’s
hardcore supporters (the ones for
whom he is increasing the tax burden,
taking away healthcare, trashing their
children’s chances of college and
destroying the environment) lying in
the face of contradictory facts is a valid
expression of their faith in ignorance.
For Trump himself, lying is a dirty bomb:
it bewilders and terrifies. It is profoundly
unsettling to be told lie after brazen
lie, when the liar knows he is lying and
he knows we know he is lying. There
was a time when lies were part of the
diplomatic circus or used to hide a
dirty state secret. Trump’s lies are of a
different degree – they are the harpies
of truth, spreading confusion and a
sense of helplessness.
What would any rival of the US wish?
For it to be inward-looking, misgoverned,
divided and worst of all – to stand for
nothing. Donald Trump is your man.
MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 199
» weak spots among cable anchors and pro-
ducers and Times and Post reporters.
Often the focus of this otherworldly ambi-
tion was directed at Times reporter Maggie
Haberman. Haberman’s front-page beat
at the paper, which might be called the
“weirdness of Donald Trump” beat, involved
producing vivid tales of eccentricities, ques-
tionable behaviour and shit the president
says, told in a knowing, deadpan style.
Beyond acknowledging that Trump was a
boy from Queens yet in awe of the Times,
nobody in the West Wing could explain
why he and Hicks would so often turn to
Haberman for what would so reliably be a
mocking and hurtful portrayal. There was
some feeling that Trump was returning to
scenes of past success: the Times might be
against him, but Haberman had worked at
the New York Post for many years. “She’s
very professional,” Conway said, speak-
ing in defence of the president and trying
to justify Haberman’s extraordinary access.
But however intent he remained on getting
good ink in the Times, the president saw
Haberman as “mean and horrible”. And yet,
on a near-weekly basis, he and Hicks plotted
when next to have the Times come in.
K
ushner had his personal press
operation and Bannon had his.
The leaking culture had become
so open and overt – most of the
time everybody could identify
everybody else’s leaks – that it was now for-
mally staffed.
Kushner’s Office Of American Innovation
employed, as its spokesperson, Josh Raffel,
who, like Hicks, came out of Matthew
Hiltzik’s PR shop. Raffel, a Democrat who
had been working in Hollywood, acted as
Kushner and his wife’s personal rep – not
least of all because the couple felt that
Spicer, owing his allegiance to Priebus, was
not aggressively representing them. This
was explicit. “Josh is Jared’s Hope,” was his
internal West Wing job description.
Raffel coordinated all of Kushner and
Ivanka’s personal press, though there was
more of this for Ivanka than for Kushner.
But, more importantly, Raffel coordinated
all of Kushner’s substantial leaking or, as
it were, his off-the-record briefings and
guidance – no small part of it against
Bannon. Kushner, who with great convic-
tion asserted that he never leaked, in part
justified his press operation as a defence
against Bannon’s press operation.
Bannon’s “person”, Alexandra Preate
– a witty conservative socialite partial to
champagne – had previously represented
Breitbart News and other conservative
figures such as CNBC’s Larry Kudlow and
200 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018
C O M M E N T
Can the FBI bring down
the White House?
As Robert Mueller continues to use mafia-busting methods to
uncover Trump’s ties with Russia, an impulsive response from
the president could bring about constitutional crisis
By Garrett M Graff
Robert Mueller is perhaps the only
person in the US who could have taken
on the assignment of investigating
Donald Trump and Russia’s attempts
to interfere in the 2016 presidential
election. In a city filled with politics and
partisanship, Mueller stands almost alone
as a respected nonpartisan, apolitical
prosecutor. At age 73, after spending
nearly half a century in public service,
the longest-serving FBI director since
J Edgar Hoover now finds himself in the
midst of what history will almost certainly
show is his most consequential chapter.
Mueller’s career has been defined by
three unique attributes: his tireless work
ethic, his immovable moral compass and
his fearless fight for justice, all of which
have been on display so far
in his investigation. That’s no
surprise: together, his 17 or so
prosecutors represent perhaps
It’s hard
the most talented team the to not see
Justice Department has ever Mueller
assembled; many are key
former aides to Mueller with zeroing
deep respect for his trademark in on
brusque cross examinations
and their experience includes
the First
roles on almost every major Family
investigation in the last quarter
century, from mafia cases to chasing
Al-Qaeda in Africa to the prosecution
of energy giant Enron.
The FBI’s standard textbook when
going after a mafia family or a drug
cartel is to work bottom-up and outside-
in, leveraging charges against junior
members to learn information on higher-
ups or to charge key figures with ancillary
matters. That precise strategy was on
display in Mueller’s opening moves
– convincing a junior figure, George
Papadopoulos, to cooperate against
more senior members of the campaign
in exchange for a lenient sentence and
targeting Paul Manafort’s past business
dealings for an alleged decade-long
money laundering fraud.
It’s been a shockingly leak-free
investigation, with Mueller making
clear – through his surprise plea deals
with Papadopoulos and former national
security advisor Michael Flynn – that
he’s in charge of releasing news when he
sees fit and that his investigators know
far more than we do. His team have been
surprisingly aggressive – executing a
no-knock search warrant on Manafort’s
house, with FBI agents picking the former
campaign chairman’s lock – and he has
repeatedly demonstrated his almost
omnipotent knowledge of its targets.
He moved to quash a motion to release
Manafort from house arrest, announcing
that his team knew Manafort had been
ghostwriting an op-ed in violation of a
court order. When he denied doing so,
Mueller released the “track changes”
version of the file, showing countless
edits made by Manafort.
His court filings often reflect the phrase
“These facts do not constitute all of the
facts known to the parties concerning the
charged offence,” leaving other Trump
associates to wonder what else
might be up Mueller’s sleeve?
Given the opening acts –
quick charges against two top
Trump aides – it’s hard to not
see Mueller zeroing in tightly
on the White House itself and
the First Family. He’s already
reportedly moved to subpoena
and gather key financial
documents on the Trump
empire, which the president
once declared was a “red line”
he wouldn’t allow the special counsel to
cross. Yet Mueller’s decision to charge
past that Rubicon makes clear that he’s
not slowing in this final search for justice.
Ultimately, the investigation is more of
a political problem for the president and
congressional Republicans than a criminal
one – a question of how far Mueller will
be left to push before Trump’s volcanic
anger erupts into what might very well
turn out to be constitutional crisis. Left to
his own timetable, given the scope of his
inquiry and the cases already underway,
it’s likely Mueller’s team will be hard at
work into 2019 at least. But deciding to
pick a fight with Mueller on the very turf
where he’s spent his entire career might
very well turn out to be worst mistake of
Trump’s short political life.
How the investigation unfolds is
anyone’s guess, in part because only one
person really knows what the president
and his family are guilty of: Trump himself.
Garrett M Graff is the author of The
Threat Matrix: Inside Robert Mueller’s
FBI And The War On Global Terror.

was close friends with Rebekah Mercer. In
a relationship that nobody seemed quite
able to explain, she handled all of Bannon’s
press “outreach” but was not employed by
the White House, although she maintained
an office – or at least an office-like presence
– there. The point was clear: her client was
Bannon and not the Trump administration.
Bannon, to Kushner and Ivanka’s contin-
ued alarm, had unique access to Breitbart’s
significant abilities to change the right-wing
mood and focus. Bannon insisted he had cut
his ties to his former colleagues at Breitbart,
but that strained everybody’s credulity – and
everybody figured nobody was supposed
to believe it. Rather, everybody was sup-
posed to fear it.
There was, curiously, general agreement in
the West Wing that Donald Trump, the media
president, had one of the most dysfunctional
communication operations in modern White
House history. Michael Dubke, a Republican
PR operative who was hired as White House
communications director, was, by all estima-
tions, from the first day on his way out the
door. In the end he lasted only three months.
Photograph Getty Images
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner
rose, as much as any other challenge for the
new president and his team, as a test of his
abilities. He wanted to do it. He was certain
that the power of his charm was greater than
the rancour that he bore this audience – or
that they bore him.
Trump at a rally in
Pensacola, Florida,
where he endorsed
the Alabama Senate
candidate accused
of sexual assault,
Roy Moore, 8
December 2017
Trump agreed
to forego the
event and his
staff breathed
a lot easier
He recalled his 2015 Saturday Night
Live appearance – which, in his view, was
entirely successful. In fact, he had refused to
prepare, had kept saying he would “impro-
vise”, no problem. Comedians don’t actually
improvise, he was told; it’s all scripted and
rehearsed. But this counsel had only mar-
ginal effect.
Almost nobody except the president
himself thought he could pull off the
Correspondents’ Dinner. His staff were ter-
rified that he would die up there in front
of a seething and contemptuous audience.
Though he could dish it out, often very
harshly, no one thought he could take it.
Still, the president seemed eager to appear at
the event, if casual about it too – with Hicks,
ordinarily encouraging his every impulse,
trying not to.
Bannon pressed the symbolic point:
the president should not be seen curry-
ing the favour of his enemies or trying to
MICHAEL WOLFF
entertain them. The media was a much better
whipping boy than it was a partner in crime.
The Bannon principle, the steel stake in
the ground, remained: don’t bend, don’t
accommodate, don’t meet halfway. And in
the end, rather than implying that Trump
did not have the talent and wit to move
this crowd, that was a much better way
to persuade the president that he should not
appear at the dinner.
When Trump finally agreed to forego
the event, Conway, Hicks and virtually
everybody else in the West Wing breathed
a lot easier.
Shortly after five o’clock on the 100th day
of his presidency – a particularly muggy
one – while 2,500 or so members of news
organisations and their friends gathered
at the Washington Hilton for the White
House Correspondents’ Dinner, the presi-
dent left the West Wing for Marine One,
which was soon en route to Andrews Air
Force Base. Accompanying him were Steve
Bannon, Stephen Miller, Reince Priebus,
Hope Hicks and Kellyanne Conway. Vice
president Mike Pence and his wife joined
the group at Andrews for the brief flight on
Air Force One to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
where the president would give a speech.
During the flight, crab cakes were served,
and John Dickerson of CBS political show
Face The Nation was granted a special 100th-
day interview.
The first Harrisburg event was held at a
factory that manufactured landscaping and
gardening tools, where the president closely
inspected a line of colourful wheelbarrows.
The next event, where the speech would be
delivered, was at a rodeo arena in the Farm
Show Complex And Expo Center.
And that was the point of this little trip. It
had been designed both to remind the rest of
the country that the president was not just
another phony baloney in a tux, like those
at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner
(this somehow presupposed that the presi-
dent’s base cared about or was even aware of
the event) and to keep the president’s mind
off the fact that he was missing the dinner.
But the president kept wanting an update
on the jokes. G
More from G For these related
stories visit GQ.co.uk /magazine
Can Trump Really Drain ‘The Swamp’ Or
Is He Out Of His Depth? (Michael Wolff,
October 2017)
Why Roger Ailes Was Responsible For Donald
Trump’s Rise (Michael Wolff, May 2017)
How Donald Trump Fooled The Media
(Michael Wolff, February 2017)
MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 201
Jeremy Irons
James Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey Into Night at Wyndham’s Theatre, London

When does an actor transition from being a man

loved across generations to being crowned a bona
fide national treasure? Whatever the timeline or
requirements, to say audiences still adore Jeremy
Irons in all his guises, whether on stage or on
screen, feels a little pat. He is, was and always
will be a mesmerisingly watchable transmitter
of high-performance art. Classically trained at
the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Irons brings
decadence and decorum to every character vessel
he pours himself into, whether part of the Royal
Shakespeare Company, appearing in West End
productions such as The Winter’s Tale and Embers
or winning a Tony on Broadway for his portrayal
of Henry in Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing. “I
became an actor to be a rogue and a vagabond,”
he likes to say. Irons’ intelligent craftsmanship
ensures he continually delights – and provokes.

For your
consideration
From piercing work by Jack O’Connell for Cat On A Hot Tin Roof to
Bryan Cranston’s night-by-night breakdown in Network, British theatre
walked tall on the world stage last year. Here, ahead of next
month’s Olivier Award nominations, this exclusive portfolio captures
the outstanding performers of the past 12 months

STORY BY Jonathan Heaf PHOTOGRAPHS BY Charlie Gray STYLING BY Grace Gilfeather

202 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

 THEATRE

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MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 203

Kwame Kwei-Armah
Artistic director of the Young Vic, London

At a time when many industries had to look closely at how they are run and
by whom, the appointment of Kwame Kwei-Armah as artistic director of the
Young Vic – somewhat astonishingly the first and only African-Caribbean to run
a major British theatre – felt particularly auspicious. Kwei-Armah couldn’t be
better qualified for the role, being both an accomplished actor and playwright,
with his plays Elmina’s Kitchen, Fix Up and Statement Of Regret all staged at the
National Theatre. Previously artistic director of Baltimore Center Stage, where
he sought out diverse voices and changed the demographic of his audience,
Kwei-Armah’s grand plans for the Young Vic are eagerly anticipated by all.

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Trousers by Paul Smith, £185. At Harrods. harrods.com

204 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

 THEATRE

Damian Lewis
Martin Gray in The Goat, Or Who Is Sylvia? at Theatre Royal Haymarket, London

Goat love: we’ve all been there. OK, maybe not a

goat, but what about an attraction to a particularly
cute hamster? No? What about your pet dog?
Not even after one Guinness too many? OK, we’ll
stop, but there’s a point to be explored – about
the destructive, uncontrollable nature of human
sexuality – and Damian Lewis’ turn last year as a
starchitect looking into the abyss of, yes, a goat
obsession, staged at the Theatre Royal Haymarket,
raised many uncomfortable truths. Starring
opposite the electric Sophie Okonedo, Lewis’
performance captured a man’s terror at realising he
is a sexual outlaw trapped in a society where sex,
love and marriage have strict, delineated codes.

Jacket by Brunello Cucinelli. £4,230. Polo shirt by

Tom Ford, £1,040. Both at Harrods. harrods.com. Jeans
by Belstaff, £250. belstaff.co.uk. Shoes, Damian’s own

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 205


Bryan Cranston
Howard Beale in Network at the Lyttelton Theatre, London
With accusations of “fake news” and Donald Trump’s all too
public spats, it’s easy to see how Network – portraying the
psychological unravelling of a veteran newsman live on air,
written by Paddy Chayefsky in 1976 – chimes so loudly with the
modern-day audience. It helps, of course, that the play is being
steered by an actor with the coiled, commanding presence
of Bryan Cranston. From our days and nights obsessing over
Breaking Bad we are used to seeing Cranston walk the line
between full-on nervous breakdown and megalomania, but in
Network it’s how he keeps one hand on sanity while delivering
his diatribes that secures a truth to his performance. Cranston’s
profile, not least the fact he could easily pass for an actual
anchorman himself, only adds to the drama.
206 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018
Shirt by Officine Générale,
£175. At mrporter.com
Sienna Miller
Maggie Pollitt in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof at the Apollo Theatre, London
When your co-star (Jack O’Connell) starts the play
manspreading in the buff, while facing the front row under an
actual shower, your theatrical fireworks need to be white-hot
to command the crowd’s attention. Before the opening night,
it’s fair to say some critics were a little sceptical that Sienna
Miller had the range for this, one of Tennessee Williams’ most
beloved parts and deftly executed in the past by the likes
of Lindsay Duncan and Elizabeth Taylor, but, boy, did the
actress’ superb run in 2017 at the Apollo Theatre vanquish
the doubters. Striding around the boards (mostly on her toes,
although at times on all fours) wound up and wounded, Miller
projected an emotional intensity that reverberated through the
audience long after the curtain came down. Meow indeed.
 THEATRE

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MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 207

 Bertie Carvel
Rupert Murdoch in Ink at the Almeida Theatre and Duke Of York’s Theatre, London
Journalists love it when they – or at least
their profession – is front and centre stage,
and one might argue that no one makes
for such a rich theatrical subject as Rupert
Murdoch. Ink, written by James Graham,
focuses on the media mogul before he
himself was front-page news, charting the
time when he had just acquired the Sun
and was punching it into the beast it would
become. It would have been easy for a
lesser actor to slip into a caricature, but
Bertie Carvel (best known for playing the
conniving ex-husband in Doctor Foster)
kept the Australian’s reputation in check,
delivering a performance that underlined
the man’s great tactic: eagle-eyed
observation followed by bursts of intensity.
Carvel is now an unmissable talent.

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208 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

 THEATRE

Christian Slater
Ricky Roma in Glengarry Glen Ross at the Playhouse Theatre, London

You wouldn’t think that an estate agent would make for

zingy material; anyone who’s spent a Saturday morning
discussing stamp duty with a pushy realtor will attest to
the thin drama at work here. Still, not for playwright David
Mamet, who saw these real estate hustlers – at least the
ones based in Chicago – as silver-tongued, amoral greed
monsters selling the gullible public cheques (or dreams)
that they would never be able to cash. Slater’s role as one
of these sleek, macho conspirators, shown at the Playhouse
Theatre, was as captivating as it was entertaining. Slater
seemed to delight in revealing the framework that props
up such pompous, arrogant men. A timely revival.

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Nichols. harveynichols.com. Trainers by Lanvin, £295. lanvin.
com. Socks by Pantherella, £12. pantherella.com

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 209

Natalie
Dormer
Vanda Jordan in Venus In Fur at
Theatre Royal Haymarket, London

Five years ago, if you could beg a

ticket off someone you might have
been lucky enough to see Natalie
Dormer stun in Miss Julie, a Patrick
Marber rewrite of Strindberg’s war
classic. Well, with Marber directing
Dormer at the Theatre Royal
Haymarket, it seems the creative
partnership has brought out the
best in one another yet again.
Although the run ended in
December, Dormer’s take on
the mysterious Vanda, a savvy,
unapologetic New York actress
busting down audition doors with
sex and self-confidence, has gone
some way to reminding critics that
she is far greater than the sum of
her television appearances, most
famously her role in the mighty yet
oh-so-drawn-out Game Of Thrones.
On stage, her serious star wattage is
switched on and luminous for all to
see. We watch on, happily beguiled.

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210 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

 THEATRE

Jack
O’Connell
Brick Pollitt in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
at the Apollo Theatre, London

Jack O’Connell is one of those actors,

not unlike Tom Hardy or Daniel
Day-Lewis, who seem to carry their
star status somewhat begrudgingly.
One gets the impression that all
O’Connell’s chat about commitment
and the work isn’t just the airs and
graces of a flouncing British thesp,
but of someone who is here to
make brilliant, vital work for as long
as he possibly can. His run as the
liquor-fuelled Brick alongside Sienna
Miller was a lesson in stripped-back
excellence that left the audience
truly intimidated. O’Connell is that
rare breed in Hollywood: the real
dramatic deal. On stage, his raw
talent is startlingly clear.

T-shirt by Private White VC, £75.

privatewhitevc.com. Jeans by AG
Jeans, £175. At mrporter.com

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 211

 Rhys Ifans
Scrooge in A Christmas Carol
at The Old Vic, London

Yes, OK, we know what you’ll say: there

will never be a smarter, more timeless
adaptation of this Charles Dickens
classic than when the Muppets took
charge of the text for the big screen.
Consider, however, that behind this
play (the initial run of which finished
in January), is none other than Jack
Thorne – the playwright responsible
for mega-West End smash Harry
Potter And The Cursed Child – and
immediately ears prick up. Watching
what Rhys Ifans does with a text and
physical form is always fascinating and
his threadbare wraith of a Scrooge
pumps new life into a yarn we all know
a little too well. It’s a redemptive,
considered performance, giving new
thrills to an old story.

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stellamccartney.com

212 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

 THEATRE

Andrew
Garfield
Prior Walter in Angels In America
at the Lyttelton Theatre, London

There’s always been something a little

otherworldly about Andrew Garfield.
He has a gentle, horizon-seeking
stare, a vibe that cuts pleasantly
against more red-blooded leading
men. There’s no doubting Garfield
is an intelligent, self-searching soul,
and his considered, diligent approach
was only too clear in his role as Prior
Walter in Tony Kushner’s Aids-era
drama, Angels In America. For those
lucky enough to see the eight-hour
production, Garfield’s was the stage
performance of the year. For those
who missed out, there’s now another
chance, with the play transferring
to Broadway in 2018. Steal, bribe or
beg for a ticket.

Jacket by Paul Smith, £1,200.

paulsmith.com. T-shirt
by Sunspel, £65. sunspel.com

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 213

Wayne McGregor
Resident choreographer of The Royal Ballet

You know when you’re watching a performance

choreographed by Wayne McGregor because it looks,
sounds and feels like nothing else. McGregor’s pieces
– works he both directs and choreographs – are always
crammed with his own character traits. His calling cards:
skittish, sharp movements, a flux of tempos and moods
and a sublime fluidity that allow his dance works to feel
both contemporary and cutting-edge while also having
a timeless quality about them. New work this year for
The Royal Ballet includes a brand-new piece to celebrate
Leonard Bernstein’s centenary.

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214 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

 THEATRE

Andrew Scott
Hamlet at the Almeida Theatre and the Harold Pinter Theatre, London

One of an actor’s greatest challenges is to transmit all

the poetry and emotion of Shakespeare’s text but in
a way that feels modern. Andrew Scott’s performance
– seen first at the Almeida Theatre before transferring
to the West End – was an all-consuming spectacle and
a marvel to witness. He chose to power the role with a
sort of electric suspicion, a watchfulness that hinted at
a madness; suddenly the well-known verses became
newly illuminated and thrillingly visible once more.
Scott has proved himself a force to be reckoned with,
even up against such weighty and intimidating drama.

Coat by Burberry, £1,595. burberry.com

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 215

Richard Coyle
Larry Lamb in Ink at the Almeida Theatre and Duke Of York’s Theatre, London

Richard Coyle has some empathy with his character, Larry Lamb, the first editor of the Sun and a man who had to
work with – and no doubt wrestle – its new owner, Rupert Murdoch. Both men’s career trajectories have come as a
surprise. “When I was growing up I didn’t want to be an actor,” Coyle notes. “It wasn’t that I was actively not wanting
to be an actor. I was just from a background where acting wasn’t even on the horizon. I wanted to be an architect.”
The building trade’s loss is the theatre’s gain and this performance has put Coyle back on the theatrical map – a map
he’s been absent from since Polar Bears at the Donmar Warehouse in 2010. For us, it’s a welcome return.

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216 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

 THEATRE

James
Norton
Zack in Belleville at the Donmar Warehouse

This is an actor who brings an almost

Federer-esque sense of Zen to a career,
one that seems to leap from one
impressive peak to the next. Although
his television roles in McMafia and War &
Peace have brought James Norton critical
praise and Cumberbitch-level fans, it’s on
stage where one believes this actor gets to
push himself a little more. Amy Herzog’s
play, recently staged at the Donmar
Warehouse, saw Norton play half of an
expat married couple living the high life
in Paris. Once again, his subtle dramatic
touches allow empathy and humanity
to seep into roles that, in the hands of
others, would feel flat and too familiar.
Heartbreaker turns scene-stealer.

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MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 217

Michelle
Dockery
Diana Christenson in Network at the
Lyttelton Theatre, London

It’s been six years since Michelle

Dockery last appeared on a stage,
and while she’s certainly been busy,
finishing Downton Abbey, shooting
Steven Soderbergh’s western Godless
and filming US drama Good Behavior,
there was anxiety on her part about
walking the boards again alongside
Bryan Cranston in Network. She
needn’t have worried as audiences
seem utterly taken with her portrayal
of Diana, an ambitious TV exec
who must deal with plummeting
ratings and a veteran TV anchorman
(Cranston) going rogue. “It’s obvious
how it’s relevant today,” she says. “I
think to a lot of people it will feel like
a play about Trump’s America.”

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218 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

 THEATRE

Dominic Cooper
John Wilmot in The Libertine at Theatre Royal Bath and Theatre Royal Haymarket, London

The role, previously played by the

likes of John Malkovich and Johnny
Depp, requires an actor who is utterly
convincing in his rakishness while able
to present morally ambiguous situations
without judgment. Dominic Cooper
has that about him, a glint in his eye
that betrays something of a rebellious
streak, albeit one that is playful and
boyish rather than anything too sinister.
That glint, and a lightness of touch, has
propelled him through some stunning
performances, not least his epic turn
as heart-throb Dakin in Alan Bennett’s
The History Boys. This role has shown
once again Cooper’s ability to move and
entertain in equal measure. G
Nominations for the Olivier Awards With
Mastercard 2018 will be announced on
6 March. The ceremony will be held at
The Royal Albert Hall on 8 April.
olivierawards.com

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Additional styling Carlotta

Constant; Jake Pummintr
Grooming Karen Alder
at K Management; Julia
Carta; Carlos Ferraz;
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Make-up Marcio Abraao;
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MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 219

*Influencer
(in-floo-uh n-ser) noun
1. A person or thing that influences;

2. A person who has the power to influence many people, as through

social media or traditional media;

3. A super narcissist who purports to wield the power of the digital crowd,
yet by fusing their own often sheltered personal lives and niche interests
with a vast commercial ambition has lost complete control of their own
identity and, in some cases, their morals

STORY BY Eleanor Halls ILLUSTRATIONS BY Gavin McBain

The f irst influencer species evolved from the millennial. They were
discovered around seven years ago on YouTube, where they spent their
days VLOGGING about their pets and how many avocados they ate for
lunch. They then briefly migrated to Twitter and Facebook, where they
were bored and did nothing, before settling in their millions on the glossy
plains of Instagram, where they now post SELFIES wearing athleisure
and drinking turmeric lattes in an attempt to lure their primary source
of sustenance: FOLLOWERS. Between followers, the influencer snacks
on good lighting, symmetry and modishly shabby Shoreditch rooftops.
The influencer’s special treat is a juicy “paid-for-partnership”. But the
influencer is breeding fast. Too fast. Soon, influencers may even be
considered pests, like the grey squirrel. The influencer is everywhere,
identifiable by the tiny balls of light that flash around their puckered
lips as they brandish a selfie stick. They have captured SOCIAL MEDIA
and are holding it hostage. According to marketing company Mediakix,
total advertiser spending on Instagram influencers in 2017 amounted
to almost £750 million, with this figure projected to double by 2019.
The traditional CELEBRITY, which once wielded power like no other,
is now nearing extinction as the influencer sucks its bones.
So, who comprise this new breed? What do they want? How do they live?
And, more importantly, what exactly is their game? Welcome to GQ’s guide
to influencers, where we put this strange creature under the microscope...
220 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018
INFLUENCERS

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 221

 1 MY WEEK, BY AN INFLUENCER 4
International Friendship Exhibition videos with a manicure. The
THE RISE OF
M O N D AY THE SOCIAL
House. “Exactly!” I said, beaming. beautician said, “You have so many
O6am: Woke up not feeling that
#blessed because “hun” was at it
Looking pained, she said, “I mean paper cuts!” I felt proud. POST SATIRISTS
I think it’s exploitative.” O10pm: Tonight’s dopamine kick
with her Dyson Light Ball vacuum
“I think you’re being unreasonable,” was super. I managed to press
again. She got sent it in August,
I replied. “thumbs down” on four rival Meet the influencers
but has since received three
other supersonic vacuums
“You know very well I’d give you bloggers’ new videos within one who dedicate their feeds
free entry. And queue-jump.” minute of each going live. God to taking down the
and can only keep one.
That’s our rule, or else our bless Google Alerts. influencers. Meta, much?
home would become a free W E D N E S D AY
gift museum. Actually, that O8am: I banned the word F RFI R
D IADYA Y Shame On Wrist
sounds quite lucrative... “nose” from my YouTube Instagram: @shameonwrist
O7am: I’m outraged. A
O10am: Over breakfast, and Instagram comments Followers: 32,200
just for a lark, I report family-run restaurant in
today. Was starting to get a As the name suggests, this account
SartorialSleekChic to the rural Tuscany has screenshot
bit upset. People kept saying it
an email I sent them asking for a is dedicated to shaming those who
Advertising Standards looked like a pig pressed up against
complimentary dinner in return for put their best wrist – read: expensive
Authority for misleading glass. Did a side-by-side comparison
coverage and posted it on Twitter. watches – forward. The feed is
branding on an Instagram and I don’t think it’s fair at all.
I am now the laughing stock of the purposefully unsightly, with crude
post about his grandmother. O3pm: Think I may have got to the
blogging community. memes and fugly watches. Captions
Anyway, I’m pretty sure he bottom of nosegate. I spent the include “Is it just me or does this
reported me last week. O10am: I’ve regained some dignity
last five hours scrolling through strap look like a casted vagina?”
O6pm: Head of press at my photo archive and realised by writing 250 bad reviews of said
and “Ninety-eight per cent of the
[redacted] just emailed every single shot of me taken by restaurant on TripAdvisor and have
men who like the new 5522A prefer
to ask why the limited- my second assistant is from my reported it to the Tuscan Meat And
having sex with their socks on, since
edition, monogrammed bad side. I will have to ask my first Poultry Hotline. Is this what Sheryl
taking them off is too much work for
leather wallet they sent me assistant to let her go. Sandberg means by “leaning in”?
a 45-second performance.”
for my birthday has ended O3pm: Was a guest on the Fools On
O8pm: Still feeling a bit low. I’ve
up on Ebay. “We’d have Hashtags podcast over lunch and
sent an email to my agent asking if What A Bunch Of Dildos
been a bit less peeved,” got the horrible feeling it was all a
perhaps I could get a complimentary Instagram: @what.a.bunch.of.dildos
she said, “if you’d at big hoax. The hosts kept laughing
nose job if I agree to Facebook Live Followers: 591
least Instagrammed when I said, “content creation”. I’m
the procedure. I think fans would
it before you sold it probably just being a bit paranoid. Billed as “The menswear magazine
appreciate the honesty.
to the highest bidder.” for the discerning dildo”, this
O8pm: I’m very excited for
the HelloWorld blogging event Instagram account mocks the
T U E S D AY T H U R S D AY industry’s peacocks. A recent post
tomorrow in Birmingham. All the
O10am: I’ve got a meeting with my O11am: Went to a bloggers’ brunch ridicules one style writer as “the
main talent will be there. Though
manager about my five-year plan. at Shoreditch House. No one dullest voice in the field of men’s
I’m a bit concerned that
Think I’m going to suggest the free spoke. One girl spent so long style reporting. His ability to drain
they’ve billed it as a “four-
gift museum. It could also have a taking pictures of her eggs all colour and life out of something
hour immersive live event
regift shop. Punters would have to Florentine she had to send as rich and sumptuous as men’s
like nothing on Earth”.
pay for the gifts, naturally. them back and get a fresh tailored clothing is truly astounding.”
I’m pretty sure we’ve
plate. Rumour has it that the founder is
O3pm: My manager didn’t like the only been paid to stay
free gift museum idea. She says O3pm: Prepared for a very bitter tailor on Savile Row.
three minutes. I wonder if
it reminds her of Kim Jong-un’s tonight’s slew of unboxing that’s each or collectively.
Wellness Ted
Instagram: @wellness_ted
Followers: 24,300
UNDER THE
2 MICRO-INFLUENCERS: 3 INFLUENCE? Men’s Health journalist Edward
BECAUSE SIZE DOESN’T MATTER Lane started his parody Instagram
account after getting fed up taking
If your partner decides to photographs of his gym bunny
Can’t get above 10,000 followers? So what? Call yourself become an influencer, sure, you girlfriend and Women’s Health
a micro-influencer and everyone will nod sagely could dump them. You could also digital editor Amy Hopkinson. His
piggyback off their success... feed, in which he describes himself as
Micro is to macro And the higher your mode, so followers an “unqualified PT and knowledge-
what hipster is engagement, the must request his 1. Quit your job and become an free nutritionist”, shows Lane in
to mainstream more visible your post approval before they influencer. It’s the only way you’ll a pink crop top with a drawn-on
becomes and the are privy to his feed, be able to tolerate them. Plus, six-pack and shots of junk food with
Or what the hipster
more consumers will thus cultivating a couple vlogs are so hot right now. clichéd captions about clean eating.
used to be, before it
became mainstream. care. Neither macro sense of privilege 2. Quit your job and become their
Call yourself a micro- nor micro? If you have and gratitude among photographer. The money’s good Get Off My Internet
influencer and you are between 100,000 and his inner circle. His and, when the time comes, you’ll gomiblog.com
uncorrupted. You’re 200,000 followers, follower count is low, be so sick of looking at them the
you’re a “power A blog from New Yorker Alice
not just a soulless, sure, but you can’t breakup will be painless.
middle-influencer”. Wright, Gomi went live in 2008 as
walking billboard. fault the quality, which 3. Quit your job and become a reaction to those “who talked
You’re real. And now The hyper-curated extends to the calibre their manager. Influencers’ short nonstop about blogging and being
savvy brands have (and tiny) circle of of the comments. And attention spans mean they never bloggers”. The magic happens on
caught on. Marketing super-influence eventually it becomes finish reading contracts. Make her subscription-only offshoot,
company HelloSociety A certain pedigree of self-regulating. Would your money and run. snark.blog, where “snarky” threads
has found that influencer prunes his you have the audacity 4. Watch Get Out. 2017’s best about big bloggers are created
accounts with 30,000 profile like a delicate to follow Elon Musk horror film saw a black man visit by “hamcats”, as Gomi users call
or fewer followers plant, fearful that if his followers were his white girlfriend’s family. His themselves. The hamcats are brutal,
have 60 per cent any unwholesome made up of 50 of the story begins with a struggle for bestowing awards for the worst
higher engagement followers may tarnish world’s most respected sanity and ends in a desperate blogs and even once reported
rates than those with his reputation. His entrepreneurs? Of need to escape. This will be your a motherhood blogger to Child
higher followings. profile is on private course not. journey, too. Protective Services.

222 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

 INFLUENCERS

The adventurer dad The auto blogger

This guy always catches the worm. And he’ll tell you about it every single
morning with a 4am picture of his fingers splayed between sunbeams, his
wrists threaded with bracelets. The caption? “Harness the light.” Backtrack
through his feed and you’ll see him eating insects with his children,
alongside captions about educational reform and how this is not a holiday.
You’ll see his wife, barefoot and toe rings glinting, in the back of an RV
that shrinks every year as the family blog extols the virtues of downsizing.
Eventually, they will just wear their homes on their backs, like snails.
For the supercar influencer, everything is outrageous. The way the engine
purrs? Outrageous. That speed? Outrrrrageeous. Once in the car – sorry,
“toy” – the petrolhead behaves as if recording a voice-over for a porno.
“Yeee-ahhhh.” “Watch that beauty go.” “Ohh-h-h-h, yes, yes, go on, go on!”
It’s the sex he never had and never will if he keeps pairing yellow V-necks
with red trousers and wearing his driving shoes to parties. He can’t dress,
but that’s fine, because you’ll only see his hands on the wheel, stamped with
a signet ring and the Rolex his uncle bought him for his 18th birthday.

5
The emoji: The hashtag: #Homeiswheretheheartis The emoji: The hashtag: #Fastlife
The geotag: Location not found The filter: Lark The geotag: Emirates Lounge, Dubai The filter: Sierra

Meet the
niche
influencers

The horological
connoisseur
The horological connoisseur is
anxious to let everyone know that
he is superior to the auto blogger.
They may move in the same circles,
use the same private jets, tailors,
jewellers and accountants, but they
couldn’t be more different. The HC
is a professor of his craft; the AB
is a show-off. The AB lazily goes
to one car event a month, whereas
the HC makes sure he attends a
different luxury watch launch every
night, so long as he’s paid a fee.
This means that his weekdays
have been replaced by watch
themes: #MaitresduTempsMonday,
#TourbillonTuesdays and
#TwinTurboThursdays. Only high-
complication watches designed by
boutique ateliers make the cut – and
he’ll check your wrist before your
name to make sure you do too. Just
as well there isn’t a day beginning
The gamer with Q, because the HC wouldn’t
If his thumbs weren’t propped up like struggling shrubs on stakes, touch a quartz watch with an
the gamer would be an MC, because between 16-hour stints of COD, exhaust pipe. No, the only timepiece
during which he must pee in a cup, snort crushed Pro Plus off his Oculus tolerable to him is the pocket
Rift and get Deliveroo to physically nourish him as he plays lest he lose a watch, neatly tucked into the ticket
single viewer, the gamer is rapping. He got the knack for spitting 140 beats pocket of a three-piece suit, which is
a minute while monologuing at great speed, primarily about his childhood, steamed daily by his mother.»
to maintain viewership. He can’t talk about the present, obviously, because
his social life stopped when he got his first console. The emoji:
The hashtag: #Swisslife
The emoji: The hashtag: #Rekt The geotag: Baselworld, Switzerland
The geotag: VidCon, Anaheim Convention Center The filter: Normal The filter: Mayfair

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 223

 6
THINGS YOU SHOULD
NEVER SAY AS
AN INFLUENCER
‘Influencer’
Say the word “influencer”
to a fellow influencer and
they’ll never feature you in
their dog-filtered Snapchat
video again. Calling them
influencers makes it sound
like all they do is trick you
into buying Cocowhite teeth
whitening kits on Instagram.

‘Thanks for buying my house’

When faced with a room full of fans
who have all paid £31.98 to come
and see you speak at the annual
blogging event HelloWorld, under no THE SERIOUSLY DUMB (BUT VERY
circumstance must you ever imply their
now empty wallets funded your recent
move. They might be too young to get
7 POPULAR) ART OF UNBOXING
Some people will watch anything. Repeatedly...
the joke, but their parents aren’t.
“Unboxing” videos (where DO with financial incentives for
1. Moisturise your hands and oil accepting deliveries when
‘The F word’ you open a new gadget)
up those cuticles. you’re out.
and “haul” videos (where
No, not the curse word. 2. Invest in a quality penknife.
you work through a
“Famous.” As an influencer, mountain of free gifts)
Watching you struggle DON’T
you did not seek out this life of with a stubborn piece of 1. Start your video by baby
have become a new form cardboard will instantly break talking to your pet, mindlessly
money and celebrity. It came of online hypnotherapy. the hypnotic spell. scatting or negging your
to you. You could never have It’s like watching Dr Pimple 3. Spend time peeling the partner as if you didn’t know
predicted a humble hobby Popper release a unicorn protective plastic off your new the camera was rolling and
could prove so successful. Thus, cyst. Sure, they make you screen. It’s the “haul fetishist” then forgot to edit it out.
equivalent of an orgasm. 2. Dither on for more than
there is no hypocrisy when seem a bit gormless, but 4. Keep repeating how blessed, 16 minutes. Eleven minutes
complaining how disrespectful wait until you see the grateful and spoilt you are. is the optimal time. Six is
fans are to camp outside your viewing numbers. Here’s 5. Invest in a large skip for your too short.
home like you’re the latest how to make a living from prospective recycling and 3. Admit you’re going to sell this
Apple product. your post: sweeten up your neighbours all for a profit on Ebay.

8 WARNING! BECOMING AN INFLUENCER CAN BE BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH

The multimillionaire games: £1,200. He was “I did it for eight years pussy last year I had to So I decided to leave. I
24-year-old Londoner shocked. He said I was and there were highs and defend myself. That’s didn’t tell anyone. I just
Olajide Olatunji, better earning more than him. So lows. It was a lot of fun why I’m fighting him in a left. I deleted my videos.
known as KSI, has over 17 I quit school that day. My and I loved playing games. boxing match this month. Everyone freaked out.
million subscribers on his parents were devastated. Racism was a big low. I Some people think it’s “I didn’t create content
channel and was the UK’s I started playing video got a lot of comments, as fake, but they’ll see when for four months. I travelled
biggest gaming YouTuber. games 24/7. It was tough well as verbal and physical I beat the shit out of him. instead. I got a girlfriend
He began in 2009, but because I was the writer, abuse. YouTube is a hostile That will teach people not and that helped. It made
in February 2017, after director, producer, editor place, because drama to take the piss out of me. my life a lot easier. I
billions of views, he and actor on a constant sells. People want blood. “Eventually, I lost my worked out. I finally did
quit. When he surfaced basis. I didn’t do anything Wroetoshaw wrote that head. I got sick of it all. everything that wasn’t
four months later, he’d besides eat, sleep and diss track [‘KSI Sucks’, with I saw my parents once a YouTube. My last stop
dropped gaming for a work. I never went out. lyrics including ‘You’ve got year despite the fact they was LA, where I hung
music career. I would just eat junk a girlfriend now... Did you live 90 minutes away. I out with YouTuber and
“One day, when I was food. My parents were seduce her with your rape had no friends outside of musician RiceGum. After
16, I went to school and extremely worried. They face?’] so I had to defend YouTube. I was too busy. that, I was ready to come
asked my teacher how hid my Xbox and cut off my grind. It started off as I burnt myself out and was back. I was excited by
much he earned. I told the internet, but it just banter but got serious. physically sick. I had been YouTube again and ready
him how much I was paid motivated me to make Similarly, when YouTuber doing it for so long, I felt to start a music career.”
a month for playing video YouTube work. Joe Weller called me a drained. I was depressed. As told to Eleanor Halls

224 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018


9
TOOL UP!
So you actually want to be an
influencer? You’re going to
need some serious kit
Pen-F camera
by Olympus
£999. olympus.co.uk
Appeal: Every
influencer’s third hand.
Tech spec: Built in Wi-Fi, built-in viewfinder
and touch screen. For photo over video.
A7R II DSLR by Sony
£2,399. sony.co.uk
Appeal: For filming your Saturday night
GRWM (get ready with me) video before
tweeting, “Goodnight, world” at 10pm.
Tech spec: 4K video capture, full-frame
sensor and optical image stabilisation.
MacBook Pro
by Apple
£1,249. apple.com
Appeal: The lightest laptop
with a shell so shiny you
can see your quiff in it.
Tech spec: Ten-hour
battery life, lightweight and Retina display.
Final Cut Pro X 10.3 by Apple
£299.99. apple.com
Appeal: Because #NoFilter is the sweetest
myth of the entire 21st century.
Tech spec: The best editing software for
your MacBook, with a Magnetic Timeline 2
that automatically colour codes by role.
Snapseed app
itunes.apple.com
Appeal: For editing your
brunch shot over brunch.
It’s not like your dining pal
is here for the conversation.
Tech spec: Eleven unique
filters to rival Instagram’s
and a perspective tool that automatically
corrects skewed lines.
InstaSize app
itunes.apple.com
Appeal: The iPhone cropping tool that
keeps your lies out of shot.
Tech spec: Photo collage creation, as well
as white balance and layering options.
Battery bank
by Powakit
£29. At iphonepro.co.uk
Appeal: No one wants to see
an influencer go 2007 Britney
when their lifeline fails.
Tech spec: Four USB slots and
20,000mAH of battery power.
Portable worldwide adaptor
£19.95. At amazon.co.uk
Appeal: Often, hotels refuse to lend an
influencer an adaptor so they’ll stop
blinding other guests with their flash.
Tech spec: A compact universal plug
adaptor for nonearthed appliances.
INFLUENCERS
10 HOW TO BUY FRIENDS
AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE
(Or how to spend your way to a loyal-ish following)
For newborn influencers, growing influencers can join a themed pod (essentially
your follower count organically can a group chat or the #squad you never had),
be like watching paint dry. It can in which they work together by liking and
take months or even years. So why commenting on each other’s posts on a daily
do it by the book? After all, buying basis. In theory, a pod brings influencers
friends isn’t just limited to social
with common interests together for the
media... It got Donald Trump to the
greater good. In practice, a pod is full of
White House.
random ’grammers with no mutual interests,
Bot bundles all trying to get a leg up. Because of the
For £9.99 at Greedier Social Media way Instagram’s algorithm works, active
(greediersocialmedia.co.uk) you can instantly pods generating high engagement between
jump up by 1,000 Instagram followers. For users means Instagram favours the pods and
£139 you can get an extra 50,000. But hold features them in the “explore” tab. Some pods
up, you need to start low. Add 1,000 a month cost money to join (between £5 and £15) to
and match it with bought engagement (likes keep podders active, plus pod moderators
and comments) to get that “natural”-looking enforce strict rules: no generic comments and
glow. Sorry, growth. You can buy 1,000 all comments must be more than five words
likes for £4.50 and 250 comments for £26 at long and free from emojis. Another risk is
buysocialmediamarketing.com, but remember, shadowbanning, when Instagram deems
they’re all fake and follow the same formula: your hashtags incompliant and makes you
“Wow!” “Nice one!” “Great page!” Plus, a bot undiscoverable to nonfollowers, which means
is indiscriminate – it can’t tell the difference reaching new audiences is virtually impossible
between a gravestone and a plate of smashed and really lets the pod down.
avo, so “Great shot!” could appear on both.
The sycophant strategy
The glow up This method of growing your ’gram should
Alternatively, Social Upgrade (socialupgrade. only be used when things get desperate. As
co) promises to spring clean your profile in you’ve prematurely quit your day job to
without blowing hot air up your ego. “Don’t become famous on social media. It’s basically
waste your money on fake followers. Our spamming other influencers’ feeds with
growth service uses Instagram marketing obsequious compliments, tailended by
techniques to get you real, targeted results,” “Follow back”, “#LFL” (like for like) or
it says, charging £29 for 65 per cent growth “#F4F” (follow for follow). It also entails
and £74 for 100 per cent growth. following new people every day (stick to the
30 mark or else you’ll get shadowbanned for
The pod a “suspicious activity surge”) in the hope that
An Instagram comment pod is an insular they’ll return the favour. If they don’t (check
pocket of corruption, like Vladimir Putin’s, the InstaFollow app for the analytics), then
but it works a treat for growth. A number of unfollow them. Follow. Unfollow. Repeat.
HOW TO SPOT A BOT BUYER IN FIVE EASY STEPS
OTheir follower count cuts a neat six figures but you could blow tumbleweeds
across the comment section.
OAll their pictures look like a) head shots, b) they’re from a catalogue or c) show only the
backs of their heads.
OThere is only ever one person in each picture.
OTheir Instagram Stories are as dusty as Theresa May.
OThe account’s tagline includes any of the following: “wandering girl”, “born to be
blessed”, “live for the moment” and “live, laugh, love”.
And if you’re still not sure…
Consult Social Blade, which has accurate data on every user across Twitter, YouTube and
Instagram, along with graphs to track growth. It also grades from A to F for popularity. All
the brands swear by it. Are you writing notes? You’re probably an F. »
MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 225
 The caption
#TBT (Throwback Thursday)
The pose This can make or break
Placing your subject slightly
off-centre is far more your post. A witty #OOTD:
The only day to
pleasing to the eye than bang caption can excuse a One of the most legitimately post
in the middle.
soppy couple’s snap, popular hashtags
a narcissistic selfie on the ’gram is old pictures without
or a holiday gloat. the fabled “outfit
of the day”, often
being totally cringe.
The filter accompanied by
Instagram has a “candid” shot
#Instagood
of the influencer
40 different A seal of
walking along a
filters of different The hashtag pristine residential excellence.
brightnesses and Using a small number street in Fulham.
contrasts, which of niche, specific The This hashtag
can make your Anatomy hashtags allows your
post to come up in hashtag should only
teeth whiter, of a post label your very
skin brighter and
Instagram’s “explore”
tab for the glossary best photos.
hair shinier. hashtagged word.
#TagForLikes
The detritus of #FBF (Flashback Friday)
The emoji
A fail-safe cop-out
TFLers, those tragic Often a segue to discuss body
The time to post
According to marketing for when you’re upstarts trying transformation. Post a picture of
your previously disgusting self
platform Later, try low on puns. to make it big by next to a picture of your shiny,
7pm and 10pm on promising randomers new self and demand praise for
Mondays, 3am and 10pm likes in the hope that how far you have come.
on Tuesdays, 5pm on they will return the
Wednesdays, 7am and
favour. Just don’t. #IGers
11pm on Thursdays, 1am
and 8pm on Fridays,
12am and 2am on
Aka, Instagrammers.

11
The geotag
Saturdays and Including your A group of people
5pm on Sundays. location boosts
your post’s
who so greatly value
visibility and is
favoured in the
How to... their Instagram input
that they must define
Instagram explore
tab for that
location.
TALK themselves with
INFLUENCER a hashtag.
The tried, tested and
reposted lexicon of Instagram’s Flat lay
true blue-tick brigade, Every influencer’s favourite
Shadowban Instagram shot: the bird’s eye
dissected for your scrolling
What happens when you use vague, view, often taken by standing
pleasure
on a chair. The wider view
incorrect and conflicting hashtags at once. means their charming woven
Did you hashtag #TravelTuesday when place mat stays in shot with
you’re actually at your desk? Instagram will their quinoa pancake.
shadowban (hide) you appearing in the
feed for that hashtag. Similarly, if you think
more hashtags means more visibility for Affiliate link
your post, you’re wrong. You’ll end up After gazing at a Boomerang
shadowbanned for every hashtag. Stick (a one-second video that
to a maximum of four. plays backwards and
forwards) of an influencer
clicking the heels of their
Throwback
Words to new leather loafers together,
An influencer’s way of
posting an old holiday live by they’d like you to visit the
picture in mid-December ...and their designer’s page (“link in my
because their body looked
great, without provoking meanings bio!”) and buy them, please,
sarky put-downs. so they can get a healthy
cut of the revenue.
Spon
Short for sponsored Rule of thirds
post and a naughty If you want your Instagram feed to look neat, apply this rule
to every photo. Divide a photo into nine squares using two
influencer’s way of horizontal lines and two vertical lines. Anything of importance
should be placed along the lines or at their intersections,
obscuring an advert. which creates a pleasing aesthetic of balance.

226 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

 INFLUENCERS

12
‘GET MY
DAMN
AGENT ON
THE PHONE!’
To get serious, you’ll need
an agent on speed dial.
Lucy Lendrem, head of
talent at super-influencer
management team Gleam
Futures – whose roster
includes GQ’s very own
Jim Chapman – explains
how to get on her books
13
CASH, MONEY, 15
CARS AND
(VAPE) CIGARS? THE GQ
GRAFTOMETER
An (improbable) timeline
Eventually it all comes down to the wedge, the
cheque, the bitcoin. But what rate should you put on to formidable social
your press pack? Stephanie Abrams Cartin, co-CEO
and co-founder of Socialfly, which pairs brands with its
media success
database of influencers for campaigns, talks numbers 1. Your Instagram profile goes live.
You feel uncomfortable.
25,000+
followers and a two per cent engagement rate
2. You sign up to Condé Nast Italia’s
six-month Social Academy to learn
how to be a professional influencer.
(Disclaimer: this is a paid-for post.)
Between £300 and £350 for an Instagram post and £350
3. You start vlogging about the highs
to show up for an event.
and lows of your daily commute.
4. You buy your first high-quality

Stand out
“We get approached about 20
times a day and we have a very
small roster so we don’t take talent
on often. I’ll still check out every
person. If I’m interested, I’ll meet
100,000+
followers and a two per cent engagement rate
camera for slick production.
5. You start posting #OOTD shots
posing on council estates.
Between £1,000 and £2,000 for an Instagram post and 6. You reach 10,000 followers and call
£1,500 to show up for an event. yourself a mini-micro-influencer.
7. You get approached by Protein

them right away. If I’m not sure, I’ll
monitor them for six months.”
Nurture steady growth
“A lot of it has nothing to do with
numbers, but growth. I’ll check
Social Blade to monitor their growth
chart over the past six months. If
it’s slow, it means they’re coming
to the table with brand and agency
relationships already, which makes
it easier. If it’s a sudden peak, we’ll
need to check growth continues.”
Find the gap
“We’re really strong on fashion
and beauty and have broadened
out into fitness, entertainment and
food. There’s still room for music,
sport and the generations above
and below millennials.”
Engage
“You don’t need to look a certain
way, be confident or funny. You just
need to be engaging in some way.”
Gleam Futures timeline of
talent success
OAgent Lendrem emails new talent
to indicate interest.
OShe then invites prospective
talent for lunch outside the office.
OLendrem then conducts a
background check. If it’s clean,
she’ll invite the talent to the
Gleam offices for a meeting.
OAfter the second meeting,
Lendrem will introduce the
talent to Gleam founder Dominic
Smales: the deciding moment.
O If Smales is on board, a contract is
drawn up.
OEach talent is kept on a three-
month trial period and called in
for a biannual assessment and
five-year-plan re-evaluation.
500,000+
followers and a two per cent engagement rate
Between £4,000 and £10,000 for an Instagram post and
£7,000 to show up for an event.
LAI: LAW ABIDING
14 INFLUENCER
Social media is the Wild West, for now. Here are
the three golden rules to keep legit according
to chief executive of the Advertising Standards
Authority Guy Parker
1. Get your facts straight
“If promoting health products, it
must be an authorised claim.”
2. And the hashtag right
“Adverts must be identifiable
and therefore must be labelled
with #Ad or Ad. #Sp or #Spon
[sponsored] are unacceptable.”
3. But don’t be sneaky
“The word ‘ad’ must be one of
the first words in the comment
section. It cannot be lost under
the ‘view more’ tab.”
And if you still want to
play dirty?
You’ll face investigation
“After a maximum 35-day
investigation, the ASA will ask
you to edit your social post
with the correct label and will
need assurance that you have
understood the code. No formal
apology is needed.”
You might get blacklisted
“Repeated violation of the codes
will lead to you joining the
online blacklist of noncomplying
advertisers on the ASA website.”
(Joining the ranks of Groupon,
Skinny Coffee Club and Natural
Healing Solutions.)
Your ad may be pulled
“The ASA can ask search engines
to suspend an ad pending
investigation if the body thinks
it is a danger to society by
showing unsafe practice.”
Or you could end up serving
actual prison time
“Serious and repeated
violation of the codes will
lead to the ASA referring you
to the Trading Standards,
who can take action under
consumer law. Sanctions
include fines and imprisonment.
All intermediaries are responsible
[for the offending post], from
the talent agency and the public
relations agency to the brand
and the influencer – but mostly
the brand.”
World for potential sponsorship.
8. With 30,000 followers you are a
fully fledged micro-influencer and can
now make an honest living.
9. You are approved to join
Socialfly’s database of influencers.
10. You install a cat flap on your front
door for parcel delivery from brands.
11. You quit your day job and move
out of your mum’s house.
12. Your other half quits their job to
become your photographer.
13. You attend three to four different
brand events every evening.
14. You stop seeing family and friends
and your other half hates you. Their
photos of you reflect this hate.
15. You have a nervous breakdown.
16. You break up with and fire your
partner and hire an assistant.
17. You get an influencer ranking
on Social Blade.
18. You are scouted by agent Lucy
Lendrem at Gleam Futures.
19. You hire a second assistant.
20. Your bloggermail gets delivered
to Gleam instead of your home.
21. You become “this week’s
influencer to follow” on LinkedIn.
22. The word “spon” stops
autocorrecting to “soon” on
your iPhone.
23. You stop going to evening events.
24. You are put on the roster
for prestigious blogging show
HelloWorld. Here, you find love with
another influencer.
25. You publish your memoirs or
a vegan-themed baking book. G
MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 227
The collections
PHOTOGRAPHS BY Mariano Vivanco STYLING BY Luke Day CREATIVE DIRECTION BY Paul Solomons

228 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

 FASHION

SS18
Exquisite tailoring meets easy cool
in this season’s apparel nonpareil.
The cuts, tones and textures
reboot every staple – the attitude
you’ll have to bring yourself...
From left:

GIORGIO ARMANI
Ewout wears:
Blazer, from £800. Shirt, £450.
Trousers, £500.
Robertas wears:
Coat, from £1,500. Trousers, £540.
Shoes, £470. armani.com

MICHAEL KORS
James wears: Coat, £750.
Jumper, £530. Shirt, £150.
Shorts, £110. michaelkors.co.uk

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 229

 FASHION

From left:

PHILIPP PLEIN
James wears: Jacket,
£2,140. Shirt, £355. T-shirt,
£340. Trousers, £622.
Shoes, £958.
Augusta wears: Jacket,
£2,006. Shirt, £401. Jeans,
£669. philipp-plein.com

CANALI
Adrian wears: Coat, £1,550.
Suit, £1,560. Shirt, £220.
Shoes, £370. canali.com

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 231

From left:

LOUIS
VUITTON
Bram wears: Jacket, £2,100.
Shirt, £1,330. Trousers,
£560. Necklace, £550. Belt,
£400. uk.louisvuitton.com

PAUL SMITH
Jonathan wears: Shirt,
£215. Trousers, £305. Shoes,
£160. paulsmith.com

CORNELIANI
Ewout wears: Jacket, £725.
Shirt, £138. Trousers, £210.
Scarf, £125. corneliani.com

CRAIG GREEN
Augusta wears: Top,
£470. Trousers, £350.
craig-green.com

232 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

FASHION
From left:

GUCCI
Augusta wears: Jacket,
£2,420. Trousers, £615.
Sang wears: Jacket, £1,310.
Shirt, £355. Trousers, £435.
Boots, £1,620. gucci.com

BERLUTI
Ewout wears: Jacket, from
£1,400. Jumper, from £600.
Trousers, from £860. Shoes,
from £1,200.
Bram (second from right)
wears: Jumper, from £600.
Vest, from £450. Trousers,
from £550. Shoes, from
£1,200. berluti.com

SALVATORE
FERRAGAMO
Robertas wears: Jumper,
£400. Shirt, £165. Shorts,
£460. Shoes, from £595.
James (far right)
wears: Jacket, £4,855.
Jumper, £600. Trousers,
£395. Shoes, from £595.
ferragamo.com

234 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

 FASHION

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 235

 From left:

HERMÈS
James wears: T-shirt, £760.
Trousers, £330. Shoes, £610.
Jonathan wears: Jumper,
£1,170. Trousers, £540.
Shoes, £700. Belt, £630.
uk.hermes.com

BOTTEGA
VENETA
Bram wears: Jacket, £2,250.
Shirt, £675. Trousers,
£2,610. Belt, £535.
bottegaveneta.com
 FASHION

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 237

 From left:

DOLCE & GABBANA

Robertas wears: Jacket, £2,456. T-shirt, £174.
Trousers, £308. Shoes, £754. Belt, £465.
James wears: Jacket, £1,110. T-shirt, £218.
Trousers, £528. Shoes, £444. Belt, £266.
Bram wears: Top, £1,741. Vest, £129.
Trousers, £710. Shoes, £486.
Ewout wears: Jacket, £1,741. Vest, £129.
Trousers, £531. Shoes, £620.
dolcegabbana.com

238 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

 FASHION
From left:

DIOR HOMME
Adrian wears: Jacket, £1,600. Shirt, £410.
Trousers, £500. Trainers, £800.
Augusta wears: Jacket, £1,250. Trousers, £590.
Trainers, £800. Scarf, £320. Bracelet, £230.
Jonathan wears: Jacket, £1,250. Shirt, £410.
Trousers, £500. Trainers, £800. Bracelet, £260.
Sang wears: Jacket, £1,700. Shirt, £860.
Trousers, £520. Trainers, £800. Scarf, £230.
Necklace, £320. dior.com

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 239

240 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018
 FASHION

From left:

BOSS
Ewout wears: Coat, £850.
Jumper, £219. Trousers,
£189. Shoes, £319.
Belt, £105.
Adrian wears: Jumper, £170.
Trousers, £189. Shoes, £319.
Scarf, £85. Belt, £105.
Augusta wears: Jacket,
£470. T-shirt, £69. Trousers,
£189. hugoboss.com

BILLIONAIRE
James wears: Jacket,
£3,350. Shirt, £575.
Trousers, £535. Shoes,
£775. Belt, £310.
Robertas wears: Jacket,
£52,500. Jumper, £600.
Trousers, £445. Belt, £1,670.
billionairecouture.com

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 241

From left:

DSQUARED2
Augusta wears: Polo
shirt, £1,465. Shirt, £250.
Trousers, £430. Shoes,
£890. Collar, £170. Scarf,
£107. dsquared2.com

CALVIN KLEIN
205W39NYC
Bram wears: Blazer,
£1,190. T-shirt, £165.
Trousers, £470. Shoes,
£1,150. calvinklein.co.uk

242 GQ.CO.UK MARCH 2018

 FASHION
From left:

PRADA
Adrian wears: Jacket, £1,120. Shirt,
£435. Trousers, £485. Shoes, £560.
Socks, £130. Belt, £420.
Sang wears: Jacket, £1,120. Shirt,
£520. Trousers, £395. Shoes, £495.
Socks, £130. Belt, £475. prada.com

Set design Trish Stevenson

Assistants Harry Wolff Evans;
James Reygate
Models Adrian M at Elite; Ewout at
Established; James K at Models 1;
Bram at Supa; Jonathan B at
Next; Augusta, Robertas and
Sang at Select
Photography assistants
Al Habjan; Tomas Hein;
Gabor Herczegfalvi
Fashion assistants
Harry Clements; Met Kilinc;
Georgia Medley; Henry Sanders;
Emily Tighe
Grooming Ben Jones using Leonor
Greyl and Givenchy Beauty
Assistants Freddie Leubner;
Brooke Neilson; Emma Small
Retouching Mariano Vivanco Studio
Casting Paul Isaac G

MARCH 2018 GQ.CO.UK 243

 The living room in the Penthouse at Riverside Quarter also available.

THE JOY OF
RIVERSIDE LIVING
Beside the Thames in Wandsworth SW18: Immaculately designed two
bedroom apartments ready to move into now from £745,000 with pool,
gym, steam room, gardens, car parking and a delightful river attached.
Travel by Thames Clippers directly to the West End or the City.

RIVERSIDEQUARTER.COM
The Sales Gallery, Milliners House, Eastfields Avenue, SW18 1LP
LONDON 020 8877 2000
S U P E R YAC H T C H A R T E R

cecilwright.com
 TAG HEUER CARRERA CALIBRE HEUER 01
Chris Hemsworth works hard and chooses his roles carefully. He handles pressure
by taming it, and turning it to his advantage. #DontCrackUnderPressure was coined
with him in mind.
www.tagheuer.com