Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2023 i Esquire

ANDREW WATT CAN’T SAY WHAT HE’S working on. It’s mid-December in London, and the record producer behind hits by Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, and Post Malone is feeling a little tongue-tied. It’s not his news to share, you see. But it’s important—“the most excited I’ve ever been about anything,” he says about the mysterious project. What can he mention? First off, that it’s freezing outside. Really fucking cold. Every day is just a bundled-up shuffe from the hotel to the studio and back again, keeping quiet when people like me ask what he’s up to in the Big Smoke. Except Watt isn’t feeling stifled by the secrecy. Instead, he’s downright giddy. “It brings me to tears sometimes,” the 32-year-old admits. “It’s overwhelming to work with people who are part of your…

THREE YEARS AGO, JUSTINE KURLAND SET OUT TO destroy her personal library. Kurland, a photographer whose works hang in world-renowned museums like the Whitney and the Guggenheim, lives in a tenement apartment in Lower Manhattan jam-packed with books. Assessing her collection of expensive, lavishly produced photo books, she realized something: 99 percent were authored by straight white men. At first, that fact disturbed her; then it inspired her. Armed with scissors, glue, and a very sharp knife, Kurland embarked on a project that would define the next phase of her career. She sliced and diced each photo book, then used the inside cover as the canvas for a new collage, assembling the book’s imagery into her own feminist critique. What began as a punk-rock act of destruction soon grew into an…

A DECADE AGO, ALMOST every style-minded dude suddenly developed an obsession with double-monk-strap shoes. They even called them “dub monks.” Yeah, we’d like to forget about it, too. But don’t let that deter you from slipping into the style’s chilled-out older brother, the humble and, now that you mention it, cool-as-hell monk strap. When you nail the proportions like venerable English shoe-maker Tricker’s does—thicker sole, more substantial toe, never too flimsy or pointy—you’ve got something that can lay the foundation for a surprisingly wide swath of outfits. The subtle strapand-buckle closure cuts a clean line under everything from suit trousers to selvage denim, while the lack of laces places it just outside the ordinary. Unexpected but entirely easy to wear? If there’s a better combo for footwear right now—or, really, ever—we’ve…

WHEN I VISITED McALLEN, TEXAS, IN 2018, THE STAND off at the U. S.-Mexico border was starting to feel like DEFCON 1. The Trump administration had imposed a “zero-tolerance policy” and was separating children from their parents. Much of America, and the world, was horrified. And that was kind of the point. The logic of family separation was simple and brutal: Make it terrible to come to this country so that people will stop coming. I saw the human toll of this approach written on the faces of detainees as I peered through the chain-link fences at a Border Patrol processing facility in the Rio Grande Valley. Tough but effective, the policy’s defenders might argue—except the strategy didn’t work. Border “encounters,” in which authorities detain or expel someone arriving at the…

THERE IS, INSIDE THE HEARTS OF BASEBALL FANS, AN ALARM BELL THAT GOES OFF every time someone tries to change the game. True, the alarm is not inside all baseball fans, but it’s there for many of us, and it rings “Nooooooo!” whenever even the most subtle of changes to baseball is proposed. I don’t know that this happens for any other game. For instance, a few years ago, the powers that be in baseball—in their never-ending and previously hapless efforts to speed up the game—ruled that pitchers no longer had to physically throw the four pitches when intentionally walking a batter. Since the dawn of the game, pitchers looking to purposely walk the hitter would toss four outside pitches to the catcher, a boring little production often played to…

AGING BRINGS WITH IT A NUMBER OF STAR-tling indignities and diffcult internal mono-logues, and while we have our elders, decades of American literature, and countless two-guystalkin’ podcasts to help guide us, there are some things each of us has to face alone. What I am saying is that I did not expect to be the guy who rocked a little too hard at the Toad the Wet Sprocket show. I wasn’t the only one. There is something in the air about that medium-mope, wounded-dude mid-’90s music moment: Counting Crows, Collective Soul, Soul Asylum. Somehow I’m hearing it more now than in 1996, my glory days of wearing a Kangol hat backward and trying to use hype as an adjective. The soul-patched soundtrack of alternative radio, a revolution that was ignited…

DJ SNAKE FEAT. JUSTIN BIEBER, “LET ME LOVE YOU” The 2016 song that changed the course of Watt’s life. He cowrote and coproduced the cut, which would eventually crack the Billboard Hot 100 top five and log more than a billion streams on YouTube. POST MALONE FEAT. OZZY OSBOURNE AND TRAVIS SCOTT, “TAKE WHAT YOU WANT” Was there any song that better exemplified the culture in 2019 than this nostalgic but new rock-rap hybrid? (“We’re in the playlist generation, right?” Watt asks by way of an answer.) SHAWN MENDES AND CAMILA CABELLO, “SEÑORITA” Watt cowrote and co-produced this Latin-pop sweatfest that topped charts in the U. S.—and dozens of other countries—in 2019. OZZY OSBOURNE, ORDINARY MAN AND PATIENT NUMBER 9 Once he paired up with Watt, the Black Sabbath frontman’s…

Q+A IMAGINE THIS: IN YOUR EARLY 20S, YOU’RE ALREADY ONE OF AMERICA’S biggest heartthrobs. By your late 30s, you are America’s biggest heartthrob. Then you decide to try your hand at being a race-car driver and land on the podium at Le Mans, one of the world’s most grueling endurance races. Next you become co-owner of a racing team. Now you’re 57, still racing a bit, and you just landed a role in Michael Mann’s forthcoming Ferrari movie, because, oh yeah, you’re still an incredibly handsome actor. That’s Patrick Dempsey. We caught up with him from his home in Maine to find out how he keeps his charmed life in balance. Esquire: Early in your career, after the movie Can’t Buy Me Love, you did the thing that I wish most…

After years spent in infamy—and ignominy—bootcut jeans are slowly creeping back into style. Yep, it’s happening. But there’s no need to panic. This is a kinder, gentler bootcut than those bell-bottomed, bedazzled disasters from back in the day. In classic washes with a subtle flare at the ankle, they’re not too far off from your favorite straight-leg denim but still different enough to give any outfit a little oomph. _THE THROWBACK Sensing a late-’60s/early-’70s vibe here? That’s no mistake. Channeling the best fashion impulses of the era—like, say, pairing light denim with brown suede—is an easy way to bring the bootcut into your own rotation. Of course, seeing as you’re not swapping your Spotify subscription for an eight-track player, you’ll want to inject some modernity with the fit (slim, not…

NOT LONG AGO, I STUMBLED UPON A photo of a fresh-faced Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern attending a toxic-waste benefit at MGM in Culver City. Sounds very chic. It was September 1986, and perched atop MacLachlan’s head was a blue-and-white cap with a large, colorful—but indiscernible—patch on the front. It got me wondering, What is that hat? When it comes to caps, I like them as random as possible. No brand names. No sports teams. I’ll take something stranger, thank you. What started as an idle curiosity about MacLachlan’s hat quickly became an obsession. After securing a hi-res image to work from, I futzed for hours in Photoshop until the word palomar emerged from the pixels. Bingo. Palomar Mountain Spring Water, I learned, was founded in 1984 at the start of…

__ MOVING HAS BEEN VERY IMPORTANT for me, discovering new places, realizing that the more you know, the more you know that you know nothing—especially cooking. __ THE RITUALS THAT GO INTO the process of cooking and enjoying the meal are a gigantic ritual of feeling. Feeling is the most important thing we do from the moment we’re born to the moment we die. Next to breathing, it’s the thing we have to do all the time. __ IF YOU DON’T control the fire, you cannot cook. __ I TAUGHT MY DAUGHTERS how to use a knife since they were four or five, or before. The earlier they learn, the safer they are. __ MY DREAM IS TO BECOME local everywhere, but the world is too big to do that,…

Grooming: Devra Kinnery for Dior Sauvage at Art Department. Models: Rockwell Harwood and Natasja Madsen at IMG. For store information see page 124.…

STORE INFORMATION For the items featured in Esquire, please consult the website or call the phone number provided. Blueprint, p. 46: Tiffany & Co. signet ring, tiffany.com. Nili Lotan jacket, nililotan.com. Theory shirt, theory.com. Tie Bar tie, thetiebar.com. Ray-Ban sunglasses, nordstrom.com. P. 49: Tricker’s shoes, trickers.com. P. 50: Sandro jacket and tank top, us.sandro-paris.com. Levi’s jeans, levis.com. Ernest W. Baker loafers, ernest-w-baker.com. P. 51: Wrangler x Gant blazer and Wrangler jeans, wrangler.com. Nili Lotan shirt, nililotan.com. Alessandro Vasini boots, alessandrovasini.com. Denim Tears sweater, denimtears.com. Sunspel T-shirt, sunspel.com. Flaneur Homme jeans, flaneurhomme.com. Amiri shoes, amiri.com. P. 52: Giorgio Armani 11 watch, select Giorgio Armani boutiques. Be Your Self, p. 80: Drake’s jacket, us.drakes.com. Celine Homme by Hedi Slimane  scarf, celine.com. Nick Fouquet necklace, nickfouquet.com. P. 81: Brunello Cucinelli suit and T-shirt,…

WHAT’S THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A TOURIST and a traveler? The willingness to form new friendships on the road. Finding your people in a strange town can happen quickly. You just have to know where to start. After a day full of meetings or museums, bars have typically been the simplest places in which to connect with like-minded locals. What kind? You could always try the hotel bar. But it’s rare that the person next to you is going to invite you to their artist friend’s house party. Pubs? Sorry, they’re not the same social scene in the U. S. as they are in the UK. Clubs? Like where you dance? I wish I could. Over the years, I’ve become accustomed to heading straight to a city’s high-end cocktail bar to…

ASK MOST FOLKS TO DESCRIBE THE average pinkie-ring wearer and they’ll immediately think Good-Fellas, Godfather, gabagool. But it’s not just enforcers in tracksuits and capos in bespoke tailoring who can rock one. Out here in the real world, the pinkie ring is for everyone. The trick is picking a version that won’t leave you looking like a caricature. That means skipping the beefy baubles and opting for something understated and undeniably cool. Enter the signet ring, one of the oldest—and easiest—pieces in the pantheon of men’s jewelry. Drop your monogram on it like a tweedy type from New England or leave it off for a touch of modern minimalism. Whichever way you play it, you already know there’s only one place to wear it.…

YOU CAN COUNT ON ONE HAND THE SUCCESSFUL ATTEMPTS AT high-end watchmaking by fashion brands. Making a serious watch requires a serious collaboration with a serious watchmaker, not something the fashion world generally has an affnity or the patience for. But think of it this way: It’s hard to imagine a fashion designer releasing a car without relying on a recognized automaker to legitimize it. The same goes for watches—and not just for the technical rigors of mechanical movements. Harmonious design and finishing aren’t possible without the elevated eye and hand of experts. Giorgio Armani knows this. For a new line of dress watches, the Milanese designer went right to the top, harnessing the expertise of Parmigiani Fleurier to create a collection of elegant, restrained pieces defined by the spare aesthetic…

THE SOUNDS OF A SHIP IN a storm can drive anyone mad. The wind screams through the rigging; the flapping edges of the sails boom like thunderclaps; the fiberglass hulls twist under stress, creaking and popping like joints in old age. A boat is as serene as a sleeping duck when she’s in port, but in a maelstrom, she groans and growls as if every seam were coming undone. When I turned 40, I took a yea-rlong break from writing novels and built a catamaran on the southern tip of Africa, a boat that I would then take across the Atlantic and the Pacific to Fiji and beyond. It’d been my dream to sail around the world since I was young. Growing up in North Carolina, I learned to sail soon…

LISTEN, I GET IT. YOU SAW THE NEWS THAT NOMA, THE EXPENSIVE restaurant in Copenhagen, was planning to close, and you snorted. Maybe you left a comment on a media platform drawing a comparison between Noma and The Menu, the goth Ralph Fiennes movie about an expensive restaurant. Maybe you liked a post on Facebook declaring that fine dining has suffered a lethal blow and that no sane person will ever again seek out the bloated, calcified pleasures of a tasting menu. Perhaps you nodded along with Frank Bruni of The New York Times as he categorized Noma as one of those “internationally renowned, ardently coveted temples of gastronomy that are forever trying to dazzle self-regarding epicures with new stunts, novel sensations, modes of presentation that we hadn’t imagined, flora and…

Casting by Barbara Pfister. Hair by Adam Markarian using Oribe. Grooming by Claudia Lake for Chanel. For store information see page 124.…

IMAGINE THIS. You’re inside a multistory, air-conditioned sanctuary—a safe space away from the stresses of modern life. Worried about climate change? Not in here. Monsoon rain, dangerous hail, and oppressive humidity are outside concerns. You, meanwhile, are cozy and sipping a vanilla frappé in the food court. Stressed about the twenty-four-hour news cycle? I don’t think so. How could you be when you’re getting a thirty-minute shiatsu in a massage chair at Brookstone? Infuriated by relatives sharing conspiracy posts on Facebook about how lizards spread Covid-19 through critical race theory? Get buzzed sniffng scented lotions at Bath & Body Works. Where can you find this all-purpose haven, offering a respite for every ill? Why, the mall, of course! Now, we know what you’re thinking. What is this, 1993? We do our…