Tabla de contenidos para Spring 2024 en Esquire UK

JON SAVAGE is a longtime contributor to Esquire and the author of numerous books on pop and youth culture, including the definitive account of punk, England’s Dreaming. His new book, The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Resistance Shaped Popular Culture (1955-1979), will be published by Faber on 6 June. For this issue, he writes about Oasis. ‘POPTIMISM’, PAGE 80 WILL SELF is an Esquire editor-at-large and the author of numerous works of fiction, including the trilogy Umbrella, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Shark and Phone. ‘FEELING SLIGHTLY RUFF’, PAGE 71 FINLAY RENWICK, Esquire’s former deputy style editor, works for Drake’s, the men’s outfitter. ‘THE GRIT FACTOR’, PAGE 104 JESSE LAITINEN’S photography has appeared in Vogue Italia and Luncheon magazine. ‘GOING UNDERGROUND’, PAGE 138 MICHAEL DONKOR’S writing has appeared in…

On the ground floor of Yinka Shonibare’s east-London studio, two imperious figures from British history have been scaled down to slightly-smaller-than-life size. The statues are painted in bright patterns, an unmistakable signature of the artist’s work. For a moment or two, it makes them unrecognisable. Soon, you realise you are staring down Winston Churchill (the hunch is a giveaway) and William Pitt the Younger (this one, admittedly, takes a little prompting from a studio assistant). The British-Nigerian artist, 61, identifies them as “decolonised structures”, inspired by statues of people who have links to an ugly past — the slave trade or colonial administrations, for example — and now watch over London streets. With his reimagined effigies, Shonibare wonders: “Are they being celebrated, because they have all these wonderful colours on…

Genuine question on the r/Watches subreddit: “Why is a large part of the watch community so hateful and unhinged?” Hold on there, Redditor, you might think: some of Esquire’s best friends are in the “watch community”. Then Audemars Piguet goes and releases a line of merchandise with Travis Scott’s streetwear label Cactus Jack and the reaction is so, er, strong, you figure… maybe they’ve got a point? The problem, as some people saw it: that the 149-year-old Swiss manufacturer of luxury watches and clocks would team up with the 32-year-old American rapper and serial Air Jordan collaborator. This, from the creators of the world’s first minute-repeating movement! Sure, it was a stretch to imagine Jules Louis Audemars in a $60 Cactus Jack dad hat, or Edward Auguste Piguet protecting himself…

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IN OCTOBER 2011 I WAS AT STANSTED AIRPORT with my wife — the journalist and editor Georgina Henry — and our two children for an early flight to Berlin, where we had rented a flat for the half-term holidays. Georgina ducked inside a WHSmith’s and bought an armload of newspapers. This was before the internet had transformed our consumption of news, and the week before the first season of Top Boy was due to air on Channel 4. I was excited, about Berlin and the show. We boarded and settled into our seats. Georgina started to go through her reading with the speed and ruthlessness of a seasoned newspaper professional, turning the pages swiftly, her practised eye scanning for items of interest and moving on quickly if she couldn’t find…

“I remember writing in this journal that I would capture father later — I meant to do a brilliant character sketch. Capture father! Why, I don’t know anything about anyone!” — Cassandra Mortmain in I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith Prologue train: London St Pancras Intl to Paris Gare du Nord, 2h 24m On the Eurostar from London to Paris on a morning in late September, as I listen to three small children on the next table enjoying three different AI-generated nursery-rhyme cartoons on three different iPads, their parents seemingly having forgotten to pack even one set of headphones, I start to wonder what I was thinking. I am on my way to meet my dad, who lives in France, to begin a train trip across Europe that I…

This issue of Esquire is dedicated to the memory of our friend and colleague, Russell Norman. The founder of the Polpo restaurant group, which began with a tiny, high-spirited Venetian-style joint in Soho before spreading its tentacles across the capital, then the country, Russell was a restaurateur of genius. After his exit from Polpo in 2020, he opened an even more atmospheric and inviting restaurant: Brutto, in Farringdon. He was also an accomplished writer. He published a series of beautifully illustrated books displaying his deep knowledge of, and fierce passion for, food and cooking and the culture of restaurants — predominantly but not exclusively Italian. And he was Esquire’s “Accidental Cook”: our food columnist for five years up to 2018. When that column came to an end, he and I…

Richard Benc doesn’t know where the idea for the watermelon watch came from. “I wish I could say there was a eureka moment,” he says. He allows that it may have been born out of rebellion; that, after six years as the product developer and designer for Braun watches, it was a way of doing something not minimalist, tasteful or black and white. (“Or, if we were feeling particularly adventurous — grey.”) Or, perhaps he was inspired by the watch website that published an eight-year-old’s crayon drawing of a fantasy Rolex, based on a can of Sprite. (“I liked the idea of poking fun at an industry that is typically very serious.”) Either way, he hardly expected the pink, green and lime watch he launched in a “colourful and playful”…

As befits the storied Italian fashion brand whose most instantly recognisable product is its suede Gommino driving shoe, Tod’s is all about travel. Specifically, travelling in as much comfort as possible. Its summer wardrobe is usually the best place to see this idea executed with class and verve — this year in its “even more relaxed” casual tailoring, featuring technical shirt-jackets made of structured cotton, versatile fabric bombers and super-soft shoulder bags, all in a variety of warm browns and creamy ecrus. For 2024, Tod’s has paid particular attention to its belts — notably its Greca belt. Can a belt be relaxed and comfortable? Of course it can. Built from strong canvas and supple leather, with its distinctive leather snap buckle, stamped monogram and branded loop, the Greca has been…

IN THE SPRING OF 2004, there was only one book being published. At least, that was how it felt to me. The noise around Helen Walsh’s Brass was ambient, inescapable. The author had been breathlessly profiled in a number of broadsheet papers, as part of the carefully co-ordinated PR campaign I’d once assumed to be the due of any debut novelist. Walsh was catnip to journalists, for obvious reasons. She was young and beautiful and clever. She came with an intriguing back story and a suite of provocative opinions. She was an early exemplar of the author-as-brand, a person more interesting than the writing she produced. The book itself occupied a tricky hinterland: insufficiently complex to be classed as literary fiction; too smart to be dismissed as chick lit. But…

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“I CAN’T,” SAYS KIM JONES. HE’S BEEN ASKED TO PUT INTO WORDS a famous silhouette created by Yves Saint Laurent, one of his predecessors at the house of Christian Dior, in Paris. “You have to see it to understand it.” He slices the air with his hand, fingers slightly curved to form a serpentine line. “For me,” Jones says, “there’s a fluidity to his line that makes it very, very sensual. I think that’s what’s so appealing about his work.” Saint Laurent was celebrated, as was Christian Dior before him, for his tailoring, among other things, which borrowed the structure and conventions of formal men’s clothes and applied them to womenswear, most famously in the case of Le Smoking, his dinner jacket, first seen in 1966 and a staple of…

STYLIST'S ASSISTANT: Dominik Radomski. PRODUCTION: Laura Nicholson. CASTING: Tom Casey. GROOMING: Yoshitaka Miyazaki, using Oribe. MODELS: Jean-Luc at Established Models, and Yuto at Next Model Management. With special thanks to Dryrobe…

Esquire is a style magazine with a literary bent. We believe in being well dressed, naturally. Also, in being well read. You don’t have to be a decorated man of letters to cut a dash, but erudition, lightly worn, is every bit as chic as a sharply tailored jacket over a crisp white shirt. This issue, as ever, we offer a distinctive look at the latest in men’s fashion — check out our troglodytic spring/summer collections shoot, from page 138, and marvel at the best-dressed cavemen since Fred Flintstone knotted his last necktie — alongside new work from some of the most accomplished writers currently putting fingertips to keyboards. Andrew O’Hagan’s Caledonian Road, which publishes in April, is a big, ambitious, rambunctious story of modern London life, and it will…

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Kurt Cobain never washed his, and an auction house later sold it on for over £260,000. Steve McQueen wore his with a shawl collar — brown in The Cincinnati Kid, maroon in Bullitt and navy in real life. And the man who gave the garment its name, the Earl of Cardigan, was a cantankerous womaniser who led the British Army in The Charge of the Light Brigade. Yet somehow the cardigan’s cuddly image persists — knitwear for retirees. This season, the cardigan has been reimagined as something more fashion-forward. On the spring/summer 2024 catwalks, it appeared everywhere from Fendi to Dior, made of everything from tweed to fine cashmere and doubling as a scarf (ie: worn around the neck) at DSquared2. SS Daley followed up its hit “Harry” Jasper Cardigan,…

YOUR EYES UN-GUM AT COCK’S CROW, and there’s a bleary view of dawn through the dormer window: you may be a knight of the realm, but you’re a pretty damn lowly one, so your room is in the attic of the Le Grand Commun, the building the King has allocated to those nobility who, at his command — and dependent upon his sinecure — are permanently resident at court. It may be early, but you go straight from languor to ardour. And for what? Not the nubile coquette sprawled beside you in the lit bateau, whom you waltzed away from the festive fun late last night; and chased, laughing, between, the fountains bubbling with champagne, but preferment, of course — because at court, all is preferment, achieved principally by taking…

YOU NEVER WANT TO BE ON THE BACK FOOT with a 10-year-old. But on a nightly basis between the years of 2007 and 2009, notwithstanding a certain swagger I felt I had earned on the poorly attended alternative-comedy circuit, I would succumb in secret, behind the well-buffed front doors of Notting Hill, Kensington and Mayfair, to the whims of awful children. “If you don’t like me I’ll have you sacked.” This from a boy of around eight, whose face of seraphic innocence, adorned by well-kept blond curls, was but a distraction from a frankly indomitable sense of self. It was a time of provisional identities, when ambition and fantasy were close neighbours: two years after leaving university, it was still unclear whether I would be a comedian, auteur, national treasure,…

IF THERE’S A DEFINITIVE ITEM OF MEN’S CLOTHING RIGHT NOW, it’s probably the humble chore jacket. Invented by the French to outfit 19th-century railway workers, the chore has become ubiquitous among a more contemporary set of earners: architects, designers, creative directors, chefs (who used to be creative directors) and Monty Don on the TV, pottering around the garden in Blundstones and a ragged bleu de travail, a golden retriever weaving between his feet. It’s the perfect hybrid garment — a bit of blazer and a bit of outerwear, with loads of pockets and a simple silhouette that can be manufactured in wool, cotton, denim, canvas or suede. It epitomises the style of clothing known as workwear. You don’t have to wear it to work in. But you can, especially in…