Esquire UK March/April 2021

contributors

ANDRÉ ACIMAN is the author of novels including Call Me By Your Name and the memoir Out of E_pt. MARK ARRIGO is a photographer and director who has worked for Wonderland and Monocle, as well as Rimmel and Chanel. ANNA BU KLIEWER is a mixed-media artist working in both analogue and digital collage. ED CAESAR is an Esquire editor-atlarge, a contributing writer to The New Yorker and the author of a new book, The Moth and the Mountain: a True Story of Love, War and Everest. RICHARD DOWKER’S photography has appeared in Dazed, Interview and Document Journal. Clients include Nike and Vivienne Westwood. JOE DUNTHORNE is a novelist, poet and the author of Submarine. His most recent poetry collection is O Positive. VIRGINIE KHATEEB is a photographer and director. Her work has appeared in Wallpaper*, Numéro…

so many hits, so little time

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF “HE’S A BEAUTIFUL HUMAN BEING,” SAID SHELBY J, a singer from North Carolina. “He’s caring and generous and he doesn’t hesitate to impart his wisdom. He’s one of the most amazing musicians who ever lived but he’s also one of the cats. Working with him is the biggest thing that’s ever happened to me in my life. He’s the general and we’re the true funk soldiers.” “He’s like a conductor,” said Greg Boyer, trombone. “You keep one eye on him at all times and take your lead from him. It’s like a language, a physical and musical language. You have to keep up. Ever watch a cheetah taking down a gazelle? The other cheetahs better be right there, or they don’t eat.” “Spending time with him,” said Renato Neto, keyboards, “is as…

people to watch, places to be, products to buy

If there is a contemporary equivalent of the solitary artist in the garret, beavering away at a masterwork by candlelight, it might well be Arlo Parks writing her debut album during our plague year of 2020. Over that summer, the 20-year-old singer-songwriter from west London eschewed a draughty attic for an Airbnb in Hackney (“I like the more human ones, with the weird little paintings, little trinkets everywhere”) where she set herself up with notebook, candle, tea and “ambient, soundscapey” background music and wrote through the night. “I don’t think I’ll experience anything like it ever again, to be honest,” says Parks over the phone in December, back home in west London now, where she lives with her parents and her younger brother. “Just the fact that the world was collapsing,…

always looking to learn

Men’s fashion — it’s just like women’s fashion, but without the fun. That’s what the truism says, anyway: that women get all the variety and vava-voom and men get shirts and jumpers. It makes you wonder why any female fashion student, let alone one who grew up devouring her “so chic” mum’s fashion magazines, “from the front to the back, literally every single word” and studied “all the different brands and designers”, would choose to do an MA in menswear. Turns out for all the reasons above. “Women are easier to convince to wear something, for sure,” says Priya Ahluwalia, 27-year-old founder of the London-based menswear label Ahluwalia and the aforementioned student. “The idea is that menswear is really safe, and that men have been wearing the same clothes forever. But…

horse of a different colour

There are no circumstances or alternate realities in which a motoring journalist would be classed as a key worker. Ventriloquists stand a better chance. However, during the gloom of a January lockdown it does give you a legitimate reason for escaping your own four walls — and indeed postcode — in the name of work. In my case, the new Ford Mustang Mach-E was as close to a getaway car as I’ve ever come. As a disclaimer, it is possible that all the excitement may have coloured my objectivity over the following paragraphs. Never has the A21 looked so full of possibility. First, though, we need to get the name thing out of the way. You might be wondering how an all-electric crossover SUV with a vegan leather interior relates to…

good to go

It’s a chilly Sunday in late October, but the heat coming from the tiny kitchen at Flor, the acclaimed restaurant, wine bar and bakery in London’s Borough Market, is so intense that head chef Pamela Yung is teaming her apron and now-obligatory face mask with a pair of shorts. In the normal run of things there would be all kinds of dishes coming across the pass in front of her: razor clams with Meyer lemon and celeriac; burrata with persimmon, chicory and bee pollen; veal sweetbreads with plum sauce and kalibos cabbage. But this is not the normal run of things, and Flor, for the time being, is no longer Flor: it is Asap Pizza. And tonight the menu is all about one thing. “It’s kind of funny that I ended…