GQ February 2021

CHRIS HEATH Correspondent For GQ’s first issue of 2021, longtime correspondent Chris Heath spoke to 12 cultural luminaries about happiness. The resulting story, “The Happiness Project,” explores “this huge thing that sits in the middle of all our lives that most of us don’t discuss,” Heath says. “I wasn’t looking for a right answer—I was looking to find out what people think.” Office Grails…

OPENING PHOTOGRAPH: PROP STYLIST, STELLA REY AT MARK EDWARD INC. FOLLOWING STILL-LIFE PHOTOGRAPHS: PROP STYLIST, CLAIRE TEDALDI AT HALLEY RESOURCES. RUNWAY PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY OF BRANDS.…

YOU HAVE TO understand that at the moment Noah Centineo swung open the door, mask dangling from his ear, his goofy smile catching some sunlight, I hadn’t embraced, let alone touched, a human adult male for the entire seven months of my quarantine. So when he stretched his arms out in the gesture known from the Time Before as “come on in here for a hug,” I admit I allowed my brain to entertain the various disease-denier talking points—COVID-19 is a hoax, it’s really no deadlier than a flu, the mental health ramifications of not embracing Noah Centineo could in fact be more harmful than the virus itself, etc., etc.—before, and not without some heartbreak, extending my elbow for the signature pandemic knob bump instead. “Oh, right!” Centineo said, dropping his…

AS MEN’S FASHION GOES, so goes the watch world. When menswear was in the thick of Mad Men mania 10 years ago, collectors couldn’t get enough of elegant, Don Draper–esque dress watches. The rise of Americana coincided with the resurgence of rugged vintage dive designs, the horological equivalent of a pair of deeply patinaed selvage jeans. And now that we’re wearing sweatpants with disconcerting consistency, casual, cool, shockingly affordable timepieces are rocketing to the top of watch nerds’ wish lists. Today we take convenient timekeeping for granted, but it wasn’t until World War I that the wristwatch became a mass-produced utilitarian tool, thanks in part to the brand Hamilton, which had a contract to issue sturdy field watches to American troops. Now, amid our renewed interest in honest timepieces at honest…

NOT TOO LONG AGO, missing sleep was something that was okay to brag about. Rise and grind, right? We’d feel guilty if we skipped a workout or some late-night emails, but not if we cut short our rest. Which is wild, because sleep is like a natural performance-enhancing drug. Your workouts and emails—and meetings, lunches, and dates—are all tasks performed better when you’re well rested. Luckily people are starting to get the concept. Not sleeping enough is like the new smoking: It just isn’t cool anymore. There’s so much we don’t understand about sleep. (Ask five researchers exactly why we need it every night and you’ll get five different answers.) But the thing we know for sure is that it’s vital. You can go weeks without food, but sleep deprivation starts…

ON A STEAMY late-summer Monday, Rhuigi Villaseñor eased his black McLaren 720S (gull wing doors, gold rims, $300K price tag) down from his house in the Hollywood Hills and into the sweeping driveway of the Beverly Hills Hotel. The Polo Lounge, just off the lobby, is where generations of Hollywood machers have downed martinis and struck deals, and it’s also where Villaseñor, the brains behind the menswear label Rhude, takes his meetings. The lobby was eerily quiet—a pandemic spares no one, not even the crown jewel of a hotel group owned by the Sultan of Brunei—but Villaseñor, in a silky black button-down, diamond studs, backless snakeskin Celine babouches, and a don’t-try-this-at-home Caesar haircut, was unfazed. He gave warm hellos and elbow bumps to various staff members, making the lobby feel more…