Índex per March 2017 a Esquire UK

When do we start With those four words, Adrian Gill did me perhaps the greatest service of my professional life. And for all the many other words and sentences and paragraphs he and I exchanged in the 16 years we worked together, including all the many coruscating pieces he dictated to me over the phone, and the countless clever and wise and compassionate and funny and unrepeatably rude things he said to me in conversation, those four are the ones I thought of first, and have talked about most since 10 December, when I heard, along with everyone else, that Adrian — who was, among many other things, this magazine’s Special Contributing Editor (Agony) — had died. (That bracketed “Agony” had multiple meanings, as I hope will become clear.) When…

Fashion / Grooming / Tech Wardrobe space permitting, you can never have enough suits. And while styles change, the classics remain the same: every man needs to own at least one (and probably more) blue single-breasted suit, one dinner jacket, one grey double-breasted suit, one lightweight summer suit, and so on. But it’s not just the owning, it’s the wearing. Over the following pages, Esquire explains how to breathe new life into traditional tailoring. Grey doublebreasted: find the right tone The idea of an all grey ensemble might sound a bit odd, but labels such as Bottega Veneta, Prada and Versace have shown that the tonal thing is the direction to go in this season. Layer up with a rollneck and polo shirt of a similar shade and equal weight.…

Ï When training for long term results you need to freshen things up every once in a while. If you’ve fallen into a routine, chances are you’ve stopped challenging your body and mind, causing a lull in progress. Sound familiar? It’s now time to recalibrate your workout. To give you some fresh inspiration, Esquire predicts the biggest fitness trends set to dominate 2017. BOXING Mastered HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training)? If so, boxing will take your stamina to the next level, build muscle and endurance and burn calories. A no brainer, right? On cue, IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua has this month opened BXR London, a state-of-the-art, 12,000sq ft, members-only training facility, and Sweat By BXR offering three concept studios: Technique, Strength and Conditioning and Cardio. BXR’s staff includes ex-champion…

We’re not saying they’re the reason he got the gig, but Michael Keaton’s eyebrows — those distinctive parabolas that soar to a point and make him so adept at expressing a certain quasi-demonic mania — also bear a passing resemblance to the golden arches logo of one ultra-successful hamburger restaurant chain. But perhaps it was also the aforementioned aptitude for quasi-demonic mania that bagged him the role, as this is a character trait that Ray Kroc, the man who made McDonald’s into McDonald’s™, as portrayed in director John Lee Hancock’s new film, The Founder, seems to have in spades. The title is pointedly ironic, as Kroc, it transpires, was not really the McDonald’s founder at all. It was two brothers, Dick and Mac (what-do-you-know) McDonald, who worked out how to…

Tillmans is willing to explore all kinds of subjects and all photographic media If you had to choose one description of Wolfgang Tillmans, the German-born, Turner-Prize-winning photographer who is the focus of a new show at London’s Tate Modern, you might plump for “open-minded”. This is a man willing to explore subjects from youth culture to still lives to political reportage, and all kinds of photographic media, from blown-up photocopies to cutting-edge digital imaging. He’s also man who, when he discovered an entire track of music he’d made (he has a record label, Fragile) had been tacked on the end of Frank Ocean’s audiovisual album, Endless, without permission, accepted it with a Teutonic shrug. Tillmans’ work is very much associated with the Nineties — his documenting of club and fashion…

No 67 £1,395 burberry.com Since Thomas Burberry invented his iconic gabardine coat in 1879, it has become a stalwart of contemporary fashion. Now the British house has given its most recognisable creation a slight refresh. The Sandringham long heritage trench coat, shown here in the honey shade, is more closely tailored to the body than the classically cut Westminster iteration. Despite the updated choices of length and fit which also includes the Chelsea and the Kensington, each new coat will perform as dependably as ever in wet weather thanks to Burberry’s patented waterproof cotton gabardine construction. It’s a timeless garment offering guaranteed protection against the vagaries of inclement weather and – celebrated fictional detectives aside – an essential high-quality element in every well-dressed man’s day-to-day wardrobe.…

What does it mean to be a man? To be honest, I have no idea. I struggle to come to terms with my masculinity on a daily basis and often find myself in a bizarre psychological and sociological hinterland where the date is always 9 September 1981. It was then I found myself in a domestic science class at The Heathland School in Hounslow, not quite sure why I wasn’t in metalwork or technical drawing. Without really thinking things through, I had accidentally chosen cookery as an option in the compulsory “technology” section of the curriculum core. And there I was, surrounded by pots, pans, loaf tins, slotted spoons, tea towels and girls. I hasten to add that none of these aspects of my new surroundings caused me too much…

Who doesn’t love a sad sack? Some of our best friends are mopes, and musical misery is as good as any. So all hail then two great new albums that are blue in sentiment if not style: Prisoner by Ryan Adams and The Tourist by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Adams, as you may know if you read the apposite gossip rags, has recently divorced the actress Mandy Moore (she got the Prius, he got the pinball machines). Alec Ounsworth, who essentially is CYHSY following the departure of his bandmates, has described his album as coming out of a “difficult time”, and given song titles like “A Chance to Cure”, “Ambulance Chaser” and “Visiting Hours”, one assumes serious illness was involved. And though, of course, they — and we —…

Perhaps you’ve got an idea niggling away in your head for a multi-series TV show set in a Glaswegian biscuit factory in the Seventies, or a Mancunian garage in the Eighties, but you’re not sure how to commit it to paper, let alone get it onto the small screen. Allow Matthew Weiner, who made a little show set in a New York ad agency in the Sixties, which ran from 2007 to 2015, to give you a glimpse into his creative process and show how he did both. Matthew Weiner Mad Men is a twovolume book tribute as careful, considered and beautiful as the show itself. It wallows in the sumptuous cinematography, complex characterisation and painstaking attention to detail that made Mad Men so critically revered, and monkeyed with our…

Why is it better to decide to sacrifice your beautiful hand for your infant nephew’s life, than to do so instinctively? MANY YEARS AGO, I was standing on a winter’s afternoon outside an Oxfam shop in Hampstead, north London. The precision with which I identify this location is important, as you’ll shortly realise. Anyway, I was standing there, holding my infant nephew, while his father — an inveterate benefactor — checked out whether there was anything in the shop he could buy, bag up, and then leave outside another charity shop. I was standing there, cradling the baby’s head in my hand — which is what you have to do when you hold a very young baby — and looking first at that hand, and then at his own tiny…

When Robert Baden-Powell, coined the Boy Scout movement’s motto, “Be prepared”, in his 1908 book Scouting for Boys, he meant that his young charges should steel themselves for the challenges of the great outdoors by learning to whittle and tie knots. Esquire readers might like to think of the same phrase in relation to this season’s most unexpected fashion trend, one that would look very familiar to Baden-Powell himself. (Be very prepared, indeed.) From multi-pocketed field jackets at Moncler Gamme Bleu to backpacks and wind cheaters at Prada; from sandals at Louis Vuitton to the leather bumbags shown at Salvatore Ferragamo, the boy scout look was all over the S/S ’17 shows. To ensure you won’t be caught out, here’s our survival guide on how to do your very best…

Christopher Columbus had a rather unfortunate way with names. Known in Spain as Cristóbal Colón, he went and landed on a Caribbean island while trying to find India and named it “Anguilla”, “Eel” in Spanish. Little could he have imagined that 500 years later, “Eel Island” would take its place in the pantheon of finest Caribbean destinations. The island remains one of my all-time favourite places in the world, to the extent I’ve been seriously torn over letting the secret out. You’re welcome. Tom Barber is a founder of award-winning originaltravel.co.uk See Anguilla’s marine life and passion for sailing on a snorkelling trip aboard the beautiful Tradition. After a swim in the deliciously warm waters of Little Bay (turtle sightings possible), enjoy an equally divine lobster roll and rum punch…

If you don’t know the word, allow zoologist Bill Schutt, author of new book Eat Me: A Natural and Unnatural History of Cannibalism, to explain it, by way of banana slugs, “which become so entwined during sex that they sometimes chew off their partner’s corkscrewshaped penis in an effort to disengage. During this process, known as ‘apophallation’, penises are slurped down spaghetti-style, occasionally by their owners.” Professor Schutt is also awarded Gratuitous Simile of the Month for the Eat Me: A Natural and Unnatural History of Cannibalism (Profile) is out now…

It’s astonishing so few novels are about football. There are some, and some great ones, such as David Peace’s The Damned Utd, but given it’s such a hotbed of writerly material — all seething, stunted masculinity, tortured egos and flailing ambition — it’s a wonder there aren’t more. Thank goodness that Ross Raisin, a gifted writer who blazed onto the literary scene with his 2008 debut, God’s Own Country, uses it in his new one, A Natural. Tom Pearman is an introverted 19-year-old aspiring player whose visions of the big time are already starting to cloud: released from his boyhood club by new bosses, he’s trying to make a mark with League Two team, Town. Separated from his family and surrounded by men whose own dreams are being crushed, Pearman…

Watching Kelly Reichardt’s new film, Certain Women, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what about it is so unusual. Based on short stories by Maile Meloy, it’s the loosely interwoven tales of three people in Montana: a lawyer (Laura Dern) defending an unhinged construction worker, a small business owner (Michelle Williams) building a house for her wayward husband and surly teen daughter, and a ranch hand (newcomer Lily Gladstone) who feels a tug of untapped emotion when a new teacher (Kristen Stewart) drives into town. Then you twig: the characters, in a low-key, 21st century way, have a steeliness, selfdetermination and commitment to hard work that makes them frontiersmen in the great American tradition. Except they’re not men. It’s not Reichardt’s style to shout about it. But, once you’re alert to…

Look 1 Indigo denim jacket, £405, by AG Jeans Navy cotton overshirt, £120, by Jigsaw Camel/black/white striped acrylic cycle top, £25, by River Island Brown cotton trousers, £245, by Joseph Navy leather trainers, £165, by Russell & Bromley Black acetate sunglasses, £180, by Persol Rose gold-coloured stainless steel Rebel Spirit chronograph on blue alligator leather strap, £270, by Thomas Sabo Look 2 Navy wool-silk trench coat, £485, by Daks Navy checked seersucker blazer, £130, by Marks & Spencer Autograph Cream cotton polo shirt, £80, by Jigsaw Navy cotton trousers, £40, by Marks & Spencer Autograph Grey suede woven espadrilles, £185, by Russell & Bromley Grey suede-leather fold-over backpack, £595, by Daks Matte blue steel watch on blue steel mesh bracelet, £260, by Emporio Armani…

Brullen Company Made in the USA, Brullen Company design and produce men’s belts and other accessories that are intended to be a partner in the voyage of life, and because of this, they offer long-lasting high quality leather goods that are not mass produced, but each crafted and sold in small quantities to ensure the utmost attention to detail. While some high-end manufacturers have started using PVC, Brullen Company has stayed true to its values of only using the best leathers. Visit brullencompany.com and follow us on Facebook and Instagram: @brullencompany GWC watches The Gentlemen’s Watch Co is home to an unrivalled collection of unique affordable timepieces. The strikingly minimal Mesh Chrono from Megir boasts a steel mesh band, precision stopwatch and calendar wheel at four o’clock. Three variations, £49.…

A AG Jeans agjeans.com Albam albamclothing.com Alice Made This alicemadethis.com B Bell & Ross bellross.com Belstaff +44 20 7495 5897 belstaff.co.uk Berluti +44 20 7730 1740 Bottega Veneta +44 20 7838 9394 Breitling for Bentley +44 20 7499 8596 breitling.com Burberry +44 20 7980 8425 burberry.com C Calvin Klein calvinklein.com Canali canali.com Chopard chopard.co.uk Church’s church-footwear.com Coach +44 20 3141 8901 uk.coach.com Corneliani+44 20 7493 7921 corneliani.com Crockett & Jones +44 207839 5239 crockettandjones.com D Daks daks.com David Clulow davidclulow.com Dior Homme +44 20 7172 0172 dior.com Dolce & Gabbana +44 20 7495 9250 dolcegabbana.com E Escentric Molecules escentric.com Emporio Armani armani.com Ermenegildo Zegna zegna.com Etro etro.com G Gant Diamond G +44 207042 9680 gant.co.uk Gieves & Hawkes +44 02 7432 6403 gievesandhawkes.com Giorgio Armani +44 207235 6707 armani.com Gucci +44 02 7235 6707 gucci.com H Heeley jamesheeley.com Hermès +44…