Inhoudsopgave van Summer 2025 - Esquire UK

Michael Amherst is a writer and critic. His debut novel, The Boyhood of Cain, was released in February. Lanre Bakare is a writer and arts correspondent for The Guardian. His first book, We Were There, was published in April. Silvia Draz is a photographer whose work has appeared in Elle, Vogue and Wonderland. Joe Dunthorne is a poet, novelist and journalist whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, London Review of Books and Granta. His debut novel Submarine was made into a film, directed by Richard Ayoade. His most recent book, Children of Radium, was published in March. Simon Emmett, a photographer-at-large for Esquire, has shot more than 20 covers for the magazine over the past decade. Joshua Ferris is an award-winning author of four works of fiction, including the 2007…

“Alcohol,” proclaim the Facebook memes and novelty kitchen signs, “because no great story ever started with someone eating a salad.” To which I say: have you ever tried a tomatini? The ever-so-slightly frothy cocktail, the colour of a… take a guess, tastes like a freshly made salad, the kind you’d eat overlooking a lavender field in Provence. Then comes the tang of balsamic and finally a gulp (or two) of vodka. When I visit the swish London branch of La Petite Maison, the restaurant chain that first served the drink, there is at least one glass of the just-muddled beverage on every candlelit table. I dutifully order a second before my main course arrives. “I think bartenders hate me for it, because it’s a cocktail that takes a tremendous amount…

Rachel Whiteread is used to her work provoking strong reactions. The 62-year-old artist won the Turner Prize in 1993 for her landmark sculpture, “House”, a plaster cast of the inside of a Victorian terraced house in east London. Less than four months later, despite a public campaign to save it, it was torn down by Tower Hamlets Council. In 1996, her plans for a Holocaust memorial in Judenplatz, Vienna — a room constructed from casts of shelves lined with books, their spines turned inwards — created a political furore. On that one, sense prevailed, and it still stands. This summer, Whiteread, who was made a dame in 2019, will be the inaugural artist to have a solo show at Goodwood Art Foundation, a new sculpture park and gallery on the…

ONE AFTERNOON IN MARCH, the staff at Bar Valette in London’s Shoreditch are counting snails. The restaurant — the new, less stuffy sibling of the two-Michelin-starred Clove Club around the corner — has only been open for two weeks, but its owner Isaac McHale says snail sales are brisk. When I press him for numbers he pauses, then defers to the group of staff who are eating a pre-shift family meal at the sunny window counter. “We’re going through six kilos a week,” says head chef Erin Jackson Yates. “With most tables who get them there’s one person who is confident about it. They make it happen.” “Are people not concerned about them being, well, slimy?” I ask. “Generally, if people don’t like snails, they won’t order them,” replies the…

Steven Spielberg famously hasn’t held back from explaining all the issues he had filming Jaws, his iconic movie — which turns 50 this year — about a hungry jumbo shark munching its way through the oceans around New England’s fictional Amity Island. “I thought that if we could pull the shark off — if we could get the audience to believe in this big, mechanical monstrosity, if it really worked, if it even floated — people would be frightened,” the director told Laurent Bouzereau, author of Spielberg: The First Ten Years. “Deciding to go into the Atlantic to make a movie about a great white shark was insane. I didn’t see the insanity of it. I saw the authenticity of it.” The audacious approach means blockbuster fans have a lot…

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Welcome to Esquire’s annual round-up of the best watches on the planet. This year’s list reveals a broad spectrum of luxury, design philosophies and pricing tiers within the watch world. A few clear trends emerge. First, sports and tool watches remain dominant, with models such as the Omega Seamaster Diver 300m, Longines Conquest and Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Tech underlining our enduring fondness for durability and under-water functionality. Similarly, chronographs and travel complications — seen in the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore and Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Tribute Geographic — highlight the ongoing appeal of multifunctional elegance. Design-wise, brands embrace both minimalism and bold statement-making pieces. Gucci’s G-Flat and Chanel’s J12 Bleu come with a sleek, modern aesthetic, while Hublot’s Big Bang 20th Anniversary All Black and Piaget’s ultra-thin perpetual calendar show off…

OH. IT’S SUPERMAN. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE DOG. The teaser trailer for the new Superman film — called, simply, Superman — features no voiceover, no narration, no exposition and no information about its cast. There is no title card. It contains just five words of dialogue, which come prefaced with a whistle. It opens on an icy landscape. The titular superhero, played by a young actor you probably don’t recognise, smacks down to Earth from the sky and lies still, sparked out in the snow. But then, as blood oozes from his face, Superman put his lips together and blows. Across the frozen tundra, something barrels towards him at speed, answering his call. “Krypto,” Superman gasps. “Home. Take me home.” Krypto is Superman’s pet dog, a small white mutt who…

While filming Warfare — Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza’s relentless account of US Navy Seals on a mission in Iraq, which came out last month — it dawned on the actor Joseph Quinn that he wasn’t a rookie any more. Fellow millennial troopers/troupers Will Poulter, Charles Melton and Cosmo Jarvis had similar epiphanies on set as they witnessed their younger castmates take to it all with a bit more… bounce. “Kit Connor and D’Pharoah [Woon-A-Tai] were just leaping out of bed in the morning, and the birds were coming in to take the duvets off them, and the deer were coming in to iron their shirts,” the 31-year-old south Londoner tells me overa video call from LA, where he is currently promoting the film. “It was like something out of…

If you were a member of the Scouts (if you’re one currently, your youthful support of print mags should be merited) then sewing patches — or as they’re more institutionally known, badges — onto your clothes was no weird thing. Something to be proud of, in fact. Fashion designer Faraz Zaidi feels the same. “Lots of the patches used on the Farmstead Quilt jacket are personal parts of my life and nostalgic memories,” he says, describing a padded-cotton number designed for his label, Found, which comes covered in patches name-checking agricultural groups and farm stalls from the northeast of the US. “When my family moved to central New Jersey, our home was right across from a horse farm. After we left, the new owners transformed the land into a fully…

A few weeks before the publication of Ocean Vuong’s first novel, 2019’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, his mother died from cancer. She had only just moved into the house that Vuong bought her with proceeds from the book. “I was a zombie,” the 36-year-old tells me over a video call, in a tone that suggests, while the shock is no longer fresh, disbelief lingers. We are speaking a month out from the publication of his second novel and, this time round, he is just doing his best to pay attention. “I’m not an author that really understands my work clearly while I make it,” he warns me at the very top of our conversation. “And so, it’s like I’m waking up from a dream, and now I have to…

Right now, the creative industries are in an existential flap about the dangers posed by AI. Yet there are plenty of reasons to remain cheerful. Machines are still some way off replicating the nuances of creativity, originality and the human eye. When it comes to fashion, AI can help with visualising materials and patterns, but it’s just not very good at designing clothes. And its understanding of a good pun is even worse. Tod’s, the luxury Italian fashion house, calls out all these shortcomings in its spring/summer 2025 collection. Titled Artisanal Intelligence (ha!), it puts quality, materials and the human hand front and centre. Nowhere is this more apparent than in its Pashmy project, an edit of leather goods that includes outerwear such as the Bomber Jacket, Gio Jacket and…

THE ORIGINAL PREPPY PREPPIES HAVE BESTRIDDEN THE EARTH with their very own specific swagger, even sprezzatura, doubtless in variants of the Sperry Top-Sider deck shoe, for many decades and probably centuries. The Official Preppy Handbook, the undisputed bible and anthropological skewerer of the style, published in 1980, decided that the proto-preppy was John Adams: born and bred in New England, Harvard alum, second president of the United States and, latterly, the butt of jokes in the musical Hamilton. His ordination dated to 1778, during the American War of Independence. “On his first visit to France,” the handbook, edited by Lisa Birnbach, notes, “he established a Preppy tradition by rudely addressing everyone in English, including Louis XVI.” As for the name, that came along much later. It — spelled “preppie” —…

Shooting a summer fashion story in early spring was always going to be an ask, even in Provence, so the intrepid band who put together “As a cloud” (page 166) definitely had to pack their brollies and think on their feet. At the end of a cold and wet day’s work they were at least able to retreat to Capelongue, a charming five-star hotel in the picturesque village of Bonnieux. In the warmer months, the 57-room Capelongue boasts lavender gardens, a padel court, a yoga deck and a swimming pool; on the shoot, the team had their sights set on a different luxury: a hot shower. www.beaumier.com/en/properties/capelongue-hotel…