Esquire UK

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Alex Bilmes Editor-in-Chief Deputy Editor Johnny Davis Features Director Miranda Collinge Entertainment Director / Associate Editor Tom Macklin Content Director Will Hersey Deputy Style Editor Finlay Renwick Art Director Lisa Barlow Assistant Commissioning Editor / Assistant to the Editor-in-Chief Rachel Fellows Creative Director Nick Millington Fashion Director Catherine Hayward Photo Director / Managing Editor Henny Manley Style Director Charlie Teasdale Chief Copy Editor Brendan Fitzgerald Copy Editor Josh Bolton Senior Designer Lauren Jones Designer Drew Burns Fashion Assistant Dan Choppen Editors-at-Large Sanjiv Bhattacharya (US Correspondent), Giles Coren, Andrew O’Hagan, Tom Parker Bowles, Will Self Photographers-at-Large Tom Craig, Simon Emmett esquire.com/uk Digital Editor Sam Parker Digital Style Editor Murray Clark Deputy Digital Editor Nick Pope Junior Digital Writer Tom Nicholson Senior Digital Writer Olivia Ovenden Social Media Editor Hannah Enderby Contributing Editors Tim Adams / Olie Arnold / Tom Barber / Richard Benson / Kevin Braddock / Peter Bradshaw Mick Brown / Ed Caesar / Dan Davies / Martin Deeson / Joe Dunthorne / Geoff Dyer / Jo Ellison Ekow Eshun / Matthew Fort / Andrew Harrison / Mark Hix / Michael Holden…

contributors

MIRANDA COLLINGE Shortlisted for the PPA Magazine Writer of the Year award for her work on Esquire, our features director specialises in stories of unusual people doing unexpected things. Cranks, obsessives, quixotic quests — all are grist to Collinge’s mill. For our design and technology issue, she profiles a very strange fish and the people who keep it, that takes in the two themes while avoiding the clichés that attach themselves to both topics. She also meets Asif Kapadia, director of Senna, Amy and, now, a film about another strange fish: Diego Maradona. GILES COREN Esquire editor-at-large, The Times restaurant critic and columnist, bestselling author and television presenter, Coren is among Britain’s best-known journalists. A natural born controversialist, he’s famous for his pungent humour and savage wit. But for this month’s “Journal” section,…

interiors monologue

EAU DE COLOGNE ON THE ESQUIRE carpet during the making of this issue, as a bitter turf war erupted over the content and direction but most of all the look of the magazine. This conflict was, as you might imagine, not an especially butch affair — manbags at dawn, to put it kindly — and it was conducted, for the most part, electronically, as arguments so often are these days (alas). Still, it was good, clean, passive-aggressive-shading-into-aggressive-aggressive fun. I’m told that at one point of high needle, the term “basic bitches” was used. I’m told it was I who used it. The opposing sides, then, each bristling with indignation and seething with resentment at the wrongheadedness, the ignorance, the idiocy of the other, were as follows: In the colour-clashing, flock-wallpapered, tchotchke-stuffed, tapestry-hung,…

brand new you’re retro

A billionaire walks into a vintage clothing showroom. Usually this space, tucked down an unassuming avenue in Paris’ chic 16th arrondisse ment, is off limits to the general public, but being a part of the global 0.001 per cent opens doors that would otherwise remain closed. “He was a friend of a friend so I agreed,” says Gauthier Borsarello, a former classical musician and the owner of the showroom. A smooth-headed and smoother-mannered 30-year-old Parisian, Borsarello’s name alone feels tailor-made for a collector and purveyor of rare and exquisite vintage clothing. Jackets from WWII, Fifties collegiate sweatshirts and Levi’s 501s line the walls and shelves. There’s an original Abercrombie & Fitch hunting jacket the brand desperately wants to buy for its archive, but Borsarello can’t — won’t — part with it. “He…

career high

On a cold night in Greenpoint, New York, conversation turns, unexpectedly, to The Great British Bake Off. “It’s funny because I can be a cinephile snob,” says Christopher Abbott, swirling a mezcal Negroni and swabbing rosemary fries in mayonnaise, “but then I also love First Dates, Gogglebox. I like them better than American reality stuff. I think The Great British Bake Off is one of the purest shows I’ve ever seen in my life.” He’s even watched Love Island. Not the viewing habits you might expect from a 33-year-old actor who just spent months filming a six-part Hulu and Channel 4 adaptation of Catch-22, in which he plays Yossarian, the paranoid hero of Joseph Heller’s classic novel. Or one whose first movie was the 2011 cult drama Martha Marcy May Marlene.…

last in its line

After the first Audi R8 came on the scene in 2006, it was quickly billed as the “everyday” supercar. Partly thanks to the familiarity of those four rings on the grille, its relative affordability compared to the mainly Italian alternatives and a generally agreeable manner that meant owners could drive a mid-engined performance car around town without inducing a panic attack. Yet this “everyday” tag always tended to underrate its contribution. From a standing start, Audi produced an instant classic with original looks, race car handling and a personality that could instantly switch from docile to devastating. Thirteen years on, in what sensible predictions suggest will be its last upgrade before an all-electric successor, many of these attributes remain. It looks sharper and pricklier and comes with various tweaks and upgrades, now…