British GQ June 2020

Self-possession isn’t the sole preserve of the heroic and yet it’s certainly much in evidence in this issue. This is our second annual GQ Heroes issue, a celebration of the great and the good in entertainment, politics, mental health, advocacy, sport, management, luxury, media, art and tech. The world is changing so quickly, in so many ways, that when we decided to host an event last year to try to bring our brand to life, we decided to focus on the people we fill our pages with (both real and digital), people who are game-changers, people who make a difference and those who are ultimately shaping our future. All of them affect the culture, all of them affect the way we live our lives. Some have challenged not just the…

Kenneth CAPPELLO Photographer Kenneth Cappello shot business partners and close friends Dr Dre and Jimmy Iovine for one of this month’s covers. “They’re both legends in music,” says Cappello. “I got to talk to Dre about a concert I saw when NWA played with 2 Live Crew and the Geto Boys while I was in high school. We had a great day.” Elliott WILCOX Elliott Wilcox was the photographer tasked with capturing Britain’s fastest woman, Dina Asher-Smith, just before the coronavirus lockdown came into effect. “Have you ever done a photoshoot during a pandemic?” says Wilcox. “Neither had I. A bizarre experience – greetings with elbow taps, standing two metres apart and lots of hand sanitiser – but it was the first sense of normality and fun I’d had in weeks. Dina was a breath…

In early January, with the United States Senate making preparations to try Donald Trump on the bill of impeachment voted by the House Of Representatives, the president took a few minutes out from his anger, annoyance and plans for revenge to listen to an intelligence briefing. He often tried to avoid this daily exercise, listening for a few minutes to briefers before leaving the room, changing the subject to whatever intelligence issue he was personally interested in, offering his own information and interpretations rather than listening to the experts or, often, giving aides a concise instruction about the briefing: “Blow it off.” But he did, it appears likely, actually listen to this briefing not long after the turn of the new year and register details about the flu virus spreading…

On a busy recent Sunday afternoon at Rough Trade East just off London’s Brick Lane, a man wearing a beanie browsed racks of tapes before selecting a “limited-edition coloured cassette” version of Björk’s 2001 album Vespertine. “I grew up with cassette tapes and recently I’ve gone back to them,” said 47-year-old Gabriele. “CDs always annoyed me because they get scratched. Cassettes are sturdy.” Anyone who remembers winding up unspooled tape with a pencil may disagree, but it’s true that Gabriele is not alone in returning to tapes. In fact, we’re in the middle of a boomlet. According to BPI, the record labels association, 80,404 cassettes were sold in the UK in 2019 – the highest annual total in 15 years. The top seller on the format was Robbie Williams’ The Christmas…

Big tech style saviour Victoria Hitchcock Who do you call when you can programme a satellite but have trouble choosing your outfit in the morning? Victoria Hitchcock runs a Silicon Valley-based consultancy that helps employees at the likes of Facebook, Apple, Uber and Google to up their style game. Do you encourage ‘decision-free’ uniforms such as Mark Zuckerberg’s? “A lot of my clients have time limits that mean they can’t keep track of where anything is – at the cleaners, in their ski home, on their boat. What I do is simplify it, recognising I don’t want them to wear one uniform. Let’s create five or six uniforms, if we must, but not one.” How do styles differ between companies? “You might see one company that’s more focused on the comfort of shoes,…

Aviators were originally designed for American pilots in the 1930s to keep the sun out of their eyes at all angles while up in the air, and the style has endured in all its chest-thumpingly macho brilliance. For their latest outings, however, designers have been particularly playful: from Ray-Ban’s unusual monoframe and the wildly oversized styles at D&G (no doubt inspired by Brad Pitt in Once Upon A Time In… Hollywood, right) to Prada’s angular heptagonals and Tom Ford’s tortoiseshells – oh, and check out the chunky top bar from Eyewear By David Beckham. Bonus tip: all are best accompanied by a lustrous mane for the full sexed-up 1970s effect. TvdB Photographs Interscope; Shutterstock; Warner Music Group…