Innholdsfortegnelse for October/November 2020 i Esquire

THE FIRE STARTED BY THE GARBAGE CANS IN THE BUILDING’S COURTYARD. Someone had just moved out, leaving a pile of wooden furniture and an old mattress. It’s unclear what ignited this pile of kindling and fuel—a smoldering cigarette butt? an overworked heating duct?—but sometime after midnight on a hot night in August, a spark set off a conflagration that by 2:30 A.M. was raging. “Fire!” my wife, Sally, yelled to wake me. “Michael, fire!” I heard the pulsing shriek of smoke alarms and shouting coming from beyond our front door before I fully opened my eyes. Through a haze of yellow smoke, I saw Kelsey Grammer. We’d fallen asleep to Frasier reruns. I shot out of bed and into the hallway. Smoke was snaking along the ceiling, creeping around the…

A glass of S. R. Tonella with Anthony Anderson. A hefty pour of Far Niente cabernet with Jamie Foxx. Caymus uncorked at the sight of, well, any famous face. The conceit of Carmelo Anthony’s weekly You-Tube talk show, What’s in Your Glass?, was simple: The NBA star and a guest would share a few sips of their favorite vintages while catching up. But as COVID-19 forced us to stay home and a swell of protests in support of Black Lives Matter urged us not just to get angry, the Brooklyn baller’s lines of questioning changed. As Killer Mike, Tiffany Haddish, and Snoop Dogg appeared on split screen, Melo no longer cared if they liked sangria. Instead, it was what advice the Run the Jewels rapper wants all young Black men…

Hot Fuzz It seems almost inconceivable, at this point, that polar fleece was ever not a part of the way we get dressed. But it’s true: The material was invented in 1979 by Malden Mills and quickly snapped up by Patagonia to make its now-iconic Synchilla fabric. These days, you can get fleeced by everyone from the originator to a new breed of innovators, like Aether and Martine Rose. No matter who it’s from, though, it’s still cozy—and cool—as hell.…

In the late 19th century, Brooklyn’s Gowanus neighborhood was a thriving hub of textile manufacturing. But Gowanus’s manufacturing clout dwindled in the years following WWII, as one industry after another abandoned Brooklyn. Today, two fearless souls are helping to bring back the old fighting spirit—crafting a uniquely American product and drawing on traditional American characteristics: pluck, determination, and a profound dedication to quality. Glenn’s Denim NYC cofounders Glenn Liburd and Daniel Lewis took a break to sip Knob Creek® and talk with Esquire about why they choose grit and perseverance over “fast fashion”—and why there are few things more American than bourbon and blue jeans. In recent years, the Knob Creek Distilling Company has been lifting up local heroes—spirited entrepreneurs and dedicated craftsmen who truly abide by the longstanding American…

Pursuing one’s passion doesn’t always come easy. It takes dedication, tenacity and the ability to follow your dream even—nay, especially—in the face of adversity. Creative talents Spike Lee, Chen Kun and Taron Egerton hail from different parts of the globe and are at different stages in their careers, but all are redefining the pursuit of success in the 21st century, and share Montblanc’s belief that “What moves you, makes you.” CHEN KUN An actor, singer, author, mentor and philanthropist, Chen Kun is always exploring new facets of life while inspiring others to do the same. As co-founder of The Dome Studio in Beijing, Kun shares his passion for the stage with students, often sending them handwritten letters of encouragement. Spurred by the belief that acting is a profession that requires…

DAVID BYRNE’S AMERICAN UTOPIA BEGINS WITH THE SOUND OF birds for close to a minute before revealing the singer, seated alone at a desk, holding a human brain. Otherwise, the stage is empty, save for a curtain composed of hundreds of thin metal chains that line the walls and shimmer like streaks of rain. As in Stop Making Sense, the 1984 Talking Heads concert film, band members emerge as the show progresses. They, like Byrne, are dressed in gray suits, with no shoes, no socks. It’s a stripped-down look for a show that is as cerebral and subtly political as it is raucous and joyful. Byrne wrote or cowrote almost every song in it—a few are from his 2018 album of the same name, and about half are familiar Talking…

GRANPOP’S DINOSAUR OF A BUICK STATION wagon creeps along the dirt road at twenty miles an hour. Frank Brown is driving with his eyes slitted and his mouth compressed to a fine white line. Corinne, his missus, is riding shotgun with her iPad open in her lap, and when Frank asks her if she’s sure this is right, she tells him everything is fine, steady as she goes, they’ll rejoin the main road in another six miles, eight at most, and from there it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump to the turnpike. She doesn’t want to say that the blinking blue dot marking their location disappeared five minutes ago and the map is frozen in place. They’ve been married fourteen years and Corinne knows the mouth her husband…

The situation: too many emails, too many cooks, it’s too hot, it’s too cold, everybody’s being a pain in the ass. Your phone won’t stop dinging at you, and everyone needs a solution right this second. We know what you want to do: tell your coworkers to eat shit and let your family know you’re stepping out for a pack of cigarettes—then buy a one-way ticket to Uruguay and change your name. ¶ Here’s what you should do: take a deep breath; walk away from the computer, the dishes, the fight, whatever; head toward the bed. Make like a Victorian lady experiencing an episode, or Don Draper at the end of a long drunken day, and flop down dramatically. Facefirst if it’s a true emergency. Issue the sigh of a…

IT’S BEEN NEARLY A YEAR since the virus that changed everything arrived in America, and we’re starting to grasp the impact the coronavirus will have on our bodies and our communities. Before the pandemic, more than 37 million people in this country lived in households that couldn’t afford or didn’t have access to proper amounts of nutritious food. It’s a horrifying number that experts believe will grow by as many as 17 million this year due to increasing unemployment rates. To help people in need of meals, Esquire and its parent company, Hearst Magazines, have teamed up with Feeding America. The hunger-relief organization sets up food banks around the country. If you’re able, we encourage you to donate as well by visiting feedingamerica.org. FEEDING AMERICA In partnership with Feeding America,…

THE PASHA DE CARTIER IS, AS THE STORY GOES, named for the Pasha of Marrakech, who commissioned the timepiece from the French brand in 1933. He wanted something waterproof—Rolex’s Oyster, the world’s first waterproof watch, had debuted just a few years before—that could stand up to his penchant for active sport. Thus a modern icon was born. Just one thing about that story: It’s not true. Why the confusion? Record keeping and self-mythologizing, mostly. When its namesake fell from power, the original Pasha watch supposedly disappeared. In 1943, a Cartier special order featured a watch with a rounded case and a steel cage to protect the glass. And 42 years later, in 1985, a watch bearing a striking resemblance to that timepiece—brought to life by Gérald Genta, the legendary watch…

IT’S A LATE-SUMMER AFTERNOON IN LONDON, WHERE KYLIE MINOGUE, ONE OF THE GRANDE dames of pop, is philosophizing about disco music. It’s transformative, she explains, because if you’re in the right frame of mind, the music can carry you away on its signature bass lines and horn sections. “When you’re at a club and you’re surrounded by people, you can still just shut your eyes and feel like you’re the only person on the dance floor,” she tells me. “Or you can be the only person in a room and feel like you’re out, surrounded by all this energy.” I am talking to Minogue because in this tumultuous year, disco is experiencing a renaissance. Minogue is among several artists with new albums in 2020 that sound as if they’re echoes…

SO I’D THOUGHT THAT THE LAST PICTURE OF ME AND MOM before she died, on a hospital bed in the living room of the Penn Hills house my parents were renting after the bank foreclosed on theirs of ten years, was taken in the lobby of Mount Ararat Baptist Church, in Pittsburgh. It was the day I was baptized, in 2013, which my soon-to-be fiancée convinced me to do because we liked the church and it was a requirement for joining. My gray slacks are the bottom half of a Sean John suit I’d bought off a clearance rack. The red gym bag that hangs on my left shoulder contains the soaked white shorts and crewneck I’d worn beneath the white caftan provided by the church for my immersion, in…

EVERY FRIDAY NIGHT AROUND DINNERTIME, the actor Matthew Rhys conducts a ritual in which he mixes himself a vodka martini. He prefers it with olives, and sometimes the big hit of salt from making it lousy with olive juice. On the rare occasion that he’s out of vodka, Rhys will opt for gin, but he’s cautious: There’s a reason it’s called “mother’s ruin.” It’s not his first drink of the week. In the past several months, Rhys and his partner, the actor Keri Russell, who joins him for this languid ceremony, have taken to drinking Pomerol, a merlot from the Bordeaux region. But the martini is a mile marker—another week of this god-awful year of pandemic and death and turmoil in the books. “I try to keep this bizarre, futile…

AS QUARANTINES GO, FRANCIS FORD Coppola’s setup in the Napa Valley sounded pretty sweet. I did a couple of Zoom conversations with the film director and winemaker over the summer, and what he described, as I sat by my laptop with yet another tin of tuna, struck me as a sort of Italian-American midpandemic Eden. Coppola and his family were sequestered on the expansive acreage of the old Inglenook estate that he and his wife, Eleanor, had purchased back in 1975, when the Coppolas were flush with cash from the first two Godfather films. And when I say “family,” I mean much of Coppola’s extended clan, including his children and grandchildren and nephews and apparently anyone else with a soft spot for cabernet sauvignon and wraparound porches—about 25 people total,…

IT’S LIKE THERE’S A GLITCH IN THE Matrix. Except instead of Keanu (beautiful, sweet Keanu) muttering “déjà vu” at a black cat, it’s guys catching a glimpse of a Goodyear-welted boot or a flash of buffalo plaid and thinking, Wait, haven’t I seen this before? Yep. Heritage men’s wear—the sturdy, historically inspired stuff of late-2000s obsessions and early-2010s Tumblrs—is making its way back into how we dress now. “It definitely feels familiar,” says Todd Snyder, who fueled Heritage 1.0 when he was helping popularize Ludlow suits and Red Wing boots at J. Crew before launching his namesake label in 2011. This time around, though, instead of mashing up suits and boots, we’re mashing up down vests and chamois shirts with sweatpants and sneakers. The vibe is still informed by the…

AU DÉPART IS THE OLDEST OF WHAT ARE ACKNOWLEDGED AS THE BIG FOUR of French luggage houses, along with Louis Vuitton, Moynat, and Goyard. But there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of it. Despite a timeline that stretches back to 1834, the brand was basically consigned to history in the ’70s, when it ceased production. That changed last year, when it made its comeback at Milan design week, drawing on those historical bona fides while injecting a healthy dose of 21st-century cool—and some serious tech, too. Many of Au Départ’s new pieces feature this striking update of the original house pattern established in the early 1900s to differentiate the label from its competitors. The new spin, though, is that it’s now engineered in a highly reflective woven cloth, called…

IN CASE IT WASN’T already abundantly obvious: Yes, being stuck inside for months on end did change some of the calculus of grooming in 2020. Rallying under the flag of “Who’s going to see it, anyway?” we countered cabin fever with enthusiastic experimentation. We gave ourselves haircuts, we tried different facial hair, we painted our nails, we spent way more time on skin care. And thanks to all those endeavors with the new and novel, we reminded ourselves of an old standby: Grooming isn’t always about quantity; it’s also about quality. And, hell, we had the time to find it. So through extensive trial and error, we discovered updated essentials, revisited a few classics, and reimagined our routines from the ground up courtesy of these winning products. hair BEST SHAMPOO…

“THE FIRST THING I DID WAS CANCEL ALL my little subscription things,” Matt Breen told me. “That’s about a hundred bucks a month, right? Give or take … then it was like, ‘Okay, I’m not gonna get takeout anymore.’ That was the second thing. Now I’m at the point where I’m like, ‘All right, eat one meal a day—that could be okay.’ “I’m eating a lot of ramen noodles these days,” he said. When we spoke in late August, Breen had just submitted his three hundredth job application. He was laid off from his job at a new Catholic school in Fayetteville, Arkansas, in June. Breen is twenty-seven years old. He has a girlfriend, but he lives alone with his mixed Blue Heeler–Catahoula Leopard dog, Count, in a little apartment…

“I’ve been thinking about this, Mr. Hand. If I’m here and you’re here, doesn’t that make it our time? Certainly, there’s nothing wrong with a little feast on our time.”—Spicoli, J. “I never think of the future—it comes soon enough.”—Einstein, A. “TIME, HE’S WAITING IN THE WINGS/HE SPEAKS OF SENSELESS THINGS/HIS SCRIPT IS YOU AND ME, BOY.”—BOWIE, D. “‘WHAT A CURIOUS FEELING!’ SAID ALICE; ‘I MUST BE SHUTTING UP LIKE A TELESCOPE.’”—CARROLL, L. “TIME ISN’T HOLDING US / TIME ISN’T AFTER US.”—BYRNE, D.…

For the items featured in Esquire, please consult the website or call the phone number provided. The Short Stories, p. 20: Cartier watch, cartier.com. Caruso jacket, mrporter.com. P. 22: L. L. Bean x Todd Snyder vest, jacket, boots, and hat, toddsnyder.com. Todd Snyder trousers, toddsnyder.com. P. 24: Polo Ralph Lauren vest, similar styles on ralphlauren.com. The Elder Statesman socks, elder-statesman.com. Woolrich parka, woolrich.com. Blundstone boots, blundstone.com. The Society Archive bag and sunglasses, thesocietyarchive.com. Taylor Stitch jacket and shirt, taylorstitch.com. P. 25: Levi’s Authorized Vintage jeans, 646-613-1847. Chamula cardigan sweater, standardandstrange.com. Filson backpack, filson.com. Carhartt WIP trousers, us.carhartt-wip.com. Yuketen boots, yuketen.com. The Society Archive shirts, thesocietyarchive.com. Closed x Nigel Cabourn jacket, closed.com. East Harbour Surplus hat, eastharboursurplus.com. Aether Apparel jacket, aetherapparel.com. Patagonia jacket, patagonia.com. Napa by Martine Rose jacket, ssense.com. P.…