Esquire UK May/June 2020

GEOFF DYER One of Britain’s foremost authors, essayists and critics, now based in California, Dyer, a longtime Esquire contributor, has written celebrated non-fiction books on everything from DH Lawrence to life aboard a US Navy aircraft carrier, as well as four celebrated novels. In this issue, he offers a meditation on what it means to travel in the 21st century, when viruses, carbon footprints, Greta Thunberg, and, in Dyer’s case, airline loyalty programmes weigh heavy on all our minds. MAX OLESKER Comedian, actor, and screenwriter, you might have heard Olesker on Radio 4, or watched him on Channel 4, or seen him on stage as part of cult comedy duo Max and Ivan. Perhaps you’ve even read him on the pages of Esquire, where he has nobly embodied the term “spornosexual” and taken…

WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE! (At the moment of writing.) What a time to be a magazine editor! (Last I checked.) What a time to publish a travel issue! (I know.) As I write this, in mid-March, the coronavirus is rampant. The supermarket shelves are emptying, the stock markets are tumbling, flights are being grounded, schools have closed, all organised fun has been cancelled or post-poned. Italy — Italy! — has banned kissing. Until yesterday, for us at Esquire, as for every-one else, overseas travel was still possible, at least for Business Critical reasons. Today, it’s out of the question. Less for Business Critical reasons than out of Despair and Embarrassment, I’ve kept quiet to the high-ups here, on our daily video conferences, about the fact that Esquire is, as I say,…

‘Nobody told us we couldn’t do it’ With their new project, Mike D, Ad-Rock and Spike Jonze invent a new format: the live documentary In 2018, Michael “Mike D” Diamond and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz released Beastie Boys Book, a memoir as brilliant and unorthodox as their music. Its 571 pages were packed with first-person anecdotes, photographs, lists, illustrations, recipes, mixtape playlists, flyers and shaggy dog stories. It also served as an often heart-breaking tribute to their best friend and bandmate, Adam “MCA” Yauch, who died of cancer in 2012. It went to the top of The New York Times’ best-seller list and the audiobook was nominated for a Grammy Award. Then came “Beastie Boys Story”, a two-man, three-and-a-half-hour live show based on the book and co-written and directed by their frequent collaborator, the…

The biggest trend in home interiors right now? Outdoors. Key Italian furniture brands like Cassina and B&B Italia have made innovative outdoor lines a focus for 2020, as advances in materials mean it’s possible to produce high-end furniture that’s both stylish and weatherproof. Cassina has announced its first complete collection of furniture for outside spaces, including reissues of Le Corbusier chairs and a “love bed” by Patricia Urquiola, art director at Cassina since 2015. Cassina Perspective Goes Outdoor includes furniture, lighting, rugs and accessories all designed as “an extension of the home”. Meanwhile, B&B Italia has bolstered its outdoor offering with three new ranges, including the minimalist Ayana sofa and complementary low table. Philippe Starck, the irreverent French designer, has worked with B&B Italia on a collection that folds in half…

One of the lesser known products of Seventies New York, the Fun Shirt was the result of a happy accident. The story goes that trainee shirtmakers at Brooks Brothers would learn their craft by stitching together random pieces of fabric found around their workshop, resulting in garments made up of panels of spots and stripes and wild colour clashes. An executive with the unimprovably preppy name Ash Wall noticed the apprentices’ mongrel creations — “Hey! These are some fun shirts!” — and an Ivy League style classic was born. You can still buy a Fun Shirt at Brooks Brothers. And this spring, plenty of other labels are offering their own, including New York brand Aimé Leon Dore, Jermyn Street’s Thomas Pink — which has unveiled limited edition patchwork shirts made from…

Rado is a watchmaker known for its clever use of materials. In 1962, it created the DiaStar 1, a hefty, lozenge-cased model made of a mixture of carbide and tungsten: the world’s first scratch-proof watch. In 2002 came its V10K, a square, retro-futurist piece with a case coated in synthetic diamonds, baked in a furnace with the atmospheric pressure of Jupiter: the world’s hardest watch. Rado became synonymous with lightweight, scratc-hand shock-resistant watches, adopting the tagline “master of materials”. For 2020, it is pairing all that hard science with influences from nature. Branded “Feel It”, Rado deploys trees, plants and barefoot models in its advertising and releases its flagship diver’s watch in a new look. Besides its bronze cases, the Captain Cook Bronze family comes in three colours to reflect the natural…