Innholdsfortegnelse for October/November 2021 i Esquire

EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO, I GRADUATED with a degree in history from the University of Illinois. I had vague notions of becoming a college professor, maybe a writer. The joke among history majors was that you became a teacher or unemployed. I fell into the latter category. Because I wanted to move out of my parents’ house, I compiled my clippings from the college newspaper and got a job at a local paper in the Chicago suburbs, the Journal & Topics. I would be a cub reporter. The editor was and remains a guy named Todd Wessell, one of the unsung heroes of local journalism. Todd taught me how to be a reporter—importantly, a reporter, a title he preferred to journalist. He also worked my ass off. No job was too…

DECANTER ($225), MARTINI GLASS ($95), TUMBLER ($95), AND ICE BUCKET ($295) BY RALPH LAUREN HOME; VINTAGE ROYAL NAVY ICE BUCKET, COURTESY @CROWLEY_VINTAGE. THE JAMES BOND of the movies is known to enjoy a martini or two, but he is an utter lightweight compared with the 007 of Ian Fleming’s original novels and short stories, published between 1953 and 1966. There, Bond reportedly consumes 317 drinks. His average weekly intake is 92 units of alcohol, or four times the safe amount for a male adult. Drinking that many of one cocktail would be terribly boring, of course. Fortunately, Fleming’s Bond consumes more than martinis. His palate contains multitudes. He drinks bourbon and Scotch but prefers the former. (Fleming retrofitted a Scottish provenance to Bond after seeing—and liking—Sean Connery in his first…

WHY IS IT SO hard to find a good oxford-cloth button-down? In the past few years, this pillar of the American wardrobe seems to have vanished. Or rather the ones we want to wear have. So much of style is subjective, but there is at least one objective sartorial truth: A flimsy white shirt isn’t a good investment. It’s a damn shame. If you want to really wear your clothes—like, into the ground—it pays to sleuth out the heaviest cotton you can find. Crunch is important. This version, from Thom Browne, probably weighs twice as much as those other dress shirts. It’s twice as good, too. When new, it has a robustness that echoes the built-tolast clothes of your grandfather’s generation. As it ages, things get interesting. Collar and cuffs…

HAVE WE REACHED peak collaboration? Not yet. But in a world where KFC x Crocs is an actual collab that sold out in half an hour, you can be sure we’ve hit a fever pitch. So how do you keep the art of collaboration fresh when it’s become so commonplace? If anyone’s able to unpack that question, it’s Hiroshi Fujiwara, the man behind Fragment Design, which has worked with Moncler, Levi’s, and Supreme and helped create some of the coolest Air Jordan 1’s of all time. Now, for the first time, Fujiwara is embarking on a collaborative endeavor under his own name with luxury Italian label Loro Piana. It’s all a little eyebrow raising: a brand renowned for the preciousness of its clothes joining forces with a guy who delights…

I HUGGED MY FATHER GOODBYE FOR THE last time in a hospital room in March 2014. He was a seven-year survivor of pancreatic cancer. No one thought he’d make it much longer. He was laboring to breathe, and I was due on book tour. It was, he said to me, now or never, kid. Pride insisted he climb from the bed on his own. He had to negotiate around half a dozen tubes. But then he opened his arms to me and I fell into them as I had been doing for forty years. He whispered that he loved me and we wept and shook in each other’s embrace, the profoundest love and the profoundest loss expressed in one gesture. Over our grief, neither of us could hear the cosmic…

A GREAT DINNER PARTY doesn’t have anything to do with well-appointed linens or shiny silver platters. It starts with a good guest list. You want people who have some touchstone in common but don’t necessarily know each other, people who will enjoy meeting each other. __ I LIKE TO LEAVE things to the last minute. I cook most of the meal, go have a shower, have one glass of wine before anybody gets there. And then when people start arriving, have them help make a salad together—just to break the ice. __ THERE WERE MANY aspects __ I WOULD LOVE to write more children’s books. I think children can understand complex things so long as you explain them in words they can wrap themselves around. __ I REMEMBER roller-skating all…

An occupational hazard, if you like men of style and their watches, is a regular deep dive into Google Images. By zooming in on ancient and grainy 35mm paparazzi shots, you get to forensically examine the wrists of the great and the cool to try to identify the unknown timepiece they might be wearing. Case in point: Beatles manager Brian Epstein, seen here arriving in Germany for a press junket with John Lennon on September 5, 1966. His outfit is fairly nondescript, but his watch—four black subdials on a white background—is pretty unmistakable. To this somewhat educated eye, it looks for all the world like a Universal Geneve “Eric Clapton,” named after its most famous owner. If you spend enough time gawping at pictures of him online, it’s apparent that…

dave holmes’_america AMERICA LOVES TO PICTURE ITSELF as the star of the movie, a self-image that is not unearned. We defeated the Nazis and the Japanese at the same time. We flew food and supplies into Berlin for 11 months straight. We won the cold war. Some fine early work! But time has passed, and we cannot move forward into the better days we deserve until we face a hard truth: America is no longer the strapping young hero. We are now the child star in middle age. The early critical admiration was well deserved. Our victory over the Confederacy at such a young age—that’s Ricky Schroder, age nine, becoming the youngest Golden Globe winner for Franco Zeffirelli’s The Champ. Defeating fascism in Europe? Schroder’s prime-time run on Silver Spoons.…

Does it suddenly feel as if everyone is asking you to subscribe to their newsletter? That’s because they are. Email editorials are experiencing a remarkable boom, thanks to services like Substack. But they don’t all belong in your in-box. These seven are worthy of your time, attention, and almighty contact info. THIS HERE NEWSLETTER INTERNET CULTURE embedded A SHARP, fun newsletter from Kate Lindsay and Nick Catucci for the perpetually logged on—or for those who aren’t and need a reader’s digest. Turn here for levity and insight via Q&A’s with Very Online personalities, plus reflections on how to send invitations to casual events in a post-Facebook world. —LAUREN KRANC PARENTING THE NEW FATHERHOOD There’s a lot of good advice and inspiration out there for moms. Less so for dads. The…

WHEN’S THE LAST time you thought about your pajamas? I mean actually thought about them, as in, What am I wearing to bed tonight? Been a while, surely. But just as we’re all embracing getting dressed for life again, we should make getting dressed for bed—or for brunch in your own kitchen, or for your run to grab the morning paper—not just a chore but a celebration. The goal is an ensemble that sucks all the Big Languishing Energy out of what you’ve been wearing at home and makes your partner look at you the way Beyoncé looks at hers over breakfast in the “Partition” music video. Because you and your pajamas deserve this renaissance, and even if nobody ever really “woke up like this,” it doesn’t mean you can’t…

“I’m not allowed to just go out and get drunk and have a rant and get kicked out of a pub.” WHEN HE TESTED POSITIVE FOR COVID-19 IN MARCH 2020, Idris Elba was in New Mexico, just about to start shooting a western called The Harder They Fall with an all-killer cast that included Jonathan Majors, Regina King, and LaKeith Stanfield. Jay-Z was producing and lending a hand with the soundtrack; Netflix was footing the reported $90 million bill. Elba posted two live videos on social media from isolation in Albuquerque—one eight minutes long, the other almost eighteen—and they are notable for their lack of the composure and breeziness we have come to expect from him. He seemed, as the British say, to be bricking it. No offense to Tom…

Elaine, a kindergarten teacher in the suburbs of Memphis, liked babies. Years earlier, she’d fostered several children. At least with infants, there were no midnight calls from the police, no fights in the street. Instead, there were court dates, doctor appointments, paperwork. Elaine needed more help than Ember’s father was willing to give, and after they’d had the twins for a couple months, she left him. Caring for the children was easier on her own, which didn’t mean it was easy. One day she drove by a church whose lawn was studded with crosses representing the souls of aborted fetuses. She called the pastor. “In my house there are a couple of babies that could’ve been aborted,” she told him. “Now they’re here, and I have to go to work.”…

STORE INFORMATION Table of Contents, p. 15: Dolce & Gabbana jacket, sweater, and trousers, dolcegabbana.com. Grenson boots, grenson.com. Blueprint, p. 31: Thom Browne shirt, thombrowne.com. P. 32: CDLP robe, cdlp.com. B|M|C lounge set, bmcstudio.com. Loro Piana slippers, us.loropiana.com. David Yurman necklace, davidyurman.com. P. 34: Tekla shorts, teklafabrics.com. Loro Piana robe, us.loropiana.com. Charvet pajama shirt and pants, mrporter.com. Artemis Design Co. slippers, artemisdesignco.com. P. 36: Loro Piana Featuring Hiroshi Fujiwara hooded sweatshirt, trousers, boots, sweaters, T-shirts, skirt, socks, jacket, and hat, us.loropiana.com. P. 40: Loewe bag, loewe.com. P. 42: Gucci bag, gucci.com. Telfar bag, shop.telfar.net. Man of Letters and Warm Coats, p. 96: Louis Vuitton Men’s coat, louisvuitton.com. P. 97: Gucci coat, gucci.com. Gap tank, gap.com. Levi’s jeans, levi.com. P. 98: Prada coat and sweater, prada.com. AG jeans, agjeans.com. Moral Code…

JACOB CHANSLEY WHO? The QAnon Shaman, who broke into the Capitol building and hoped to escape notice by painting his face and wearing horns. WHY? After cutting a plea deal with federal prosecutors, Chansley’s lawyer requested that “future references to him be devoid of the use of the letter Q.” CHILD-STAR EQUIVALENT Rebrands are hard, especially right after splashy debuts. Ask Elizabeth Berkley in 1994, fresh off Saved by the Bell, ready to enjoy some artistic credibility, signing on to Showgirls. THESE PEOPLE WHO? Two unnamed women at an anti-mask protest, on a rare morning off from being rude to the waiter. WHY? The sheer nerve of assuming Ph.D.-level virology expertise while openly failing fourth-grade spelling… CHILD-STAR EQUIVALENT …is the same force that pulls Corey Feldman ineluctably toward a career…

YOU’VE HEARD the advice from other parents: “Savor this time. Soon your adorable children will ask for a TikTok account and stop returning your texts.” You heed the advice. At first. Then, around the time school starts, you pine for your pre-kid existence. The slow burn into midlife has begun. If you’re like many men, you will direct these feelings to your next car purchase. Not a sports car but a vehicle that gives you a hit of youth and seats a family comfortably. The auto industry knows this. That’s why it invented the crossover, a not-too-big vehicle that moves the family but also looks like an SUV. There’s a reason they’re the fastest-selling cars in America. The Rav4 is a Potemkin village. Instead, lean into the car tailormade for…

THE SHORTS All shorts are you-can-sleep-in-them shorts, unless, of course, we’re talking about Tekla’s poplin sleepwear shorts. These, my friends, are pajama shorts. Stone-washed for extra softness and borrowing vibes from the same low-inseam styles you wore outside all summer, they’re a big step up from the mesh pair you’ve lived in since college. SHORTS ($100) BY TEKLA. THE SLIPPERS None of this is supposed to be hard work—and that means we’ve got no time for in-home footwear that requires bending over to squeeze into. Instead, slip on something you love—but don’t stop there. Grab a pair like these handmade mules from Artemis. The character is woven in, and they’re made by Turkish cobblers whose families have being doing this for generations. Once they’re broken in—and this will take a…

We could almost reach out and touch that disco ball on a velvet stick, couldn’t we? Everything was supposed to be normal-ish this fall and we could release our up-all-night, pent-up party energy into a vaxxed world. Then the pandemic got messy. Again. We sort of got hit with the stick. But it’s a velvet stick, right? The big party you wanted to throw at your home might not be the luxe bacchanal that you had conjured while fever-dreaming on fresh antibodies, but you can still clink glasses with a small group of vaccinated folks and not feel as if you’re hosting the super-spreader of the season. Right? Maybe? Yes. Let’s gently slide into entertaining at home once again. Let’s take back the party. Away from Zoom. Away from shivering…

LEE PACE AND I HAVE FORMED A SCI-FI BOOK CLUB. HIS IDEA. Without anyone intending it, dinner at a Japanese restaurant in Brooklyn has turned into our club’s unofficial first meeting. There’s The Lord of the Rings and Dune, of course, which the actor has read more times than he remembers. He also sings the praises of his favorite writer, Ursula K. Le Guin, and the universe-rattling Three-Body Problem, by Cixin Liu. He pulls out his Kindle to show me the Bobiverse series, which he’s currently reading, and to download a couple books I suggest (Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice and Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire). I have no doubt he’ll read them immediately. “We have to get back together and discuss,” he says. Pace strikes me as not just…

PICTURE IT: You’re in a friend’s backyard on an autumn evening as the sun drops from the sky and the firepit warms up. It’s a little crisp, and you didn’t bring an extra layer, October catching you by surprise yet again. “Here,” says the friend, your host, lobbing something at you. A sweater, a pullover, a light jacket. Not your style, not exactly, but you’re cold, so on it goes. And will you look at that: It’s great on you. It fits perfectly. The colors you think you don’t wear? They suit your skin tone flawlessly. It feels like it was made exclusively for you. Which it was; it just had to go through your friend first. The only thing better is when he says, “I never wear that one…