Table of contents for July/August 2021 in Esquire UK

NATHANIEL GOLDBERG’s photographs appear regularly in Vogue Paris, Vogue Italia and V magazine. He has shot campaigns for Giorgio Armani, Hermès, Gucci and Christian Dior. ‘BORN TO RUN’, PAGE 92 JOHN GRANT is a singer-songwriter. His albums include Queen of Denmark; Pale Green Ghosts; Grey Tickles, Black Pressure; and Love is Magic. His new album, Boy from Michigan, will be out on 25 June. ‘VETUR’, PAGE 76 JOE DUNTHORNE’s most recent books were a collection of poetry, O Positive, and a novel, The Adulterants. His novel Submarine was made into a film by Richard Ayoade. ‘MORTALITY, PARENTING AND THE EPIC EXISTENTIALISM OF PIXAR’, PAGE 118 ANNIE LAI’s photographs have appeared in Vogue, The New York Times and Another. Her clients include Mulberry, Net-a-Porter and Uniqlo. ‘SEA STATE’, PAGE 122 SIMON…

There is something mountain-coming-to-Mohammed-ish about the arrival in London of a hotel from the American hospitality group NoMad; just when the elegance and exoticism of foreign travel seemed an impossibility, the elegance and exoticism of foreign travel has come to us! Recently opened in Covent Garden, NoMad London is a hotel from the company that already has locations in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and its original site in New York, “NoMad” being short for “North of Madison Square Park”. NoMad Hotels have a reputation for a certain refinement and European panache so the British outpost brings both the glitz of America and the glamour of Europe to our shores just when we need it most. As well as demure, luxurious interiors, NoMad establishments are renowned for luring high-calibre clientele: Beyoncé…

When the British industrial designers Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby approach a project, they try to do one of two things. Either solve a “problem” with an existing design or capture the “essence” of that design in some new way. “People are very comfortable when they understand an archetype,” says Osgerby. “But in order to bring something new, you have to change it. So, our job is to update, and improve on, those archetypes.” Take their Pacific Chair. With its castor wheels, business-like armrests and tall rectangular backrest it is indisputably a piece of office furniture. Except Barber and Osgerby have concealed all the sliding controls and levers now required (by law!) to adjust the seat, arms, backrest etc within the chair’s body, creating a “visually clean” version that responds…

Jack Thorne is sitting with his baby son, Elliott, on Deal Beach in Kent. Elliott is just learning to crawl, but for some reason, in that mysterious way that certain babies do, he finds it is easier to go backwards. As Thorne watches, Elliot starts to bum-shuffle his way down the short, steep pebble beach until he is almost at the sea, a look of pure joy on his face — the pleasure of learning this new thing. Thorne is grinning, too, watching his son’s exhilaration, and realising, in that moment, that parenting is not about any of the things he had expected it would be. If he had to pick just one memory to relive for eternity, this is the one that Thorne, the 42-year-old screenwriter and playwright, whose…

WHEN TOM BOSWORTH WAS A TEENAGER, he was picked on mercilessly. He was taunted for being skinny (which he is, and always was) and being gay (which he is, but wasn’t so clear to him back then). On one occasion, a group of bullies smashed his head through a window. Another time, a kid told him his dad was going to set Bosworth on fire. So, you’ll have to forgive him if he’s not overly fussed if you don’t think that his sport — race walking — is really a sport. “It’s never bothered me very much,” says Bosworth, eating lunch — pasta salad and a flapjack — overlooking the track at Leeds Beckett University where he trains. The facilities, which include swish, 80m rooftop running lanes and an environmental…

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“THE TEST OF A FIRST-RATE INTELLIGENCE is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” That’s F Scott Fitzgerald, writing in Esquire in 1936. The essay was called “The Crack-Up”. It’s a sadly familiar trap for the writer on sport to fall into, a journalistic crime worthy of pillory in “Pseud’s Corner”, to find himself summoning airy literary quotations when trying to describe commonplace feelings about, say, a game of football. But I’m afraid Fitzgerald’s epigram popped into my head the other evening when I was plonked in front of the first leg of the Champions League semi-final between Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City, and resistance was futile. On the one hand, the distasteful spectacle of watching…

If you’re not green-fingered yourself, you’d be forgiven for not having heard of Dan Pearson, but for decades his has been a name to conjure within horticultural circles. Now, the explosion in popularity of gardening over the past year or so, as locked-down homeowners discover the joys of time spent in their own green spaces, as well as in public parks and gardens, has made Pearson, at 57, an unlikely social media star. He has 56,000 Instagram followers tracking both his professional work and his more intimate, diaristic updates about life in north Somerset, where he moved last year after 28 years spent in London. (You can find him @coyotewillow). “I think the pandemic has made people think about what has value and how easy that connection can be with…

You might think that running a swimwear company during a time when your customers can’t go on holiday, fly anywhere or, indeed, swim in a swimming pool might be cause for despair. If so, you would be reckoning without the eternally sunny disposition of Roland Herlory. “For me, the future is super-bright!” the CEO of Vilebrequin, makers of flamboyantly patterned swim shorts, says. “I really believe people will take their revenge on all these restrictions. We are a brand of escapism. We are a brand of ‘let’s enjoy’. And that’s needed more these days than ever before.” Perhaps Herlory’s optimism is helped by his lockdown location. Zooming in from an airy workspace one afternoon recently, Esquire asks where he’s speaking from. “This is my office,” he beams. “And this” —…

‘WHEN YOU’RE IN THE WORLD CUP FINAL, YOU’RE CONVINCED YOU’RE GOING TO WIN. YOU WALK ONTO THE FIELD, THE TROPHY IS THERE, AND YOU TELL YOURSELF IT IS IMPOSSIBLE THE OTHER TEAM WILL TAKE IT’ KYLIAN MBAPPé WAS 18 when he walked into the changing room of the French national team. “It’s very difficult,” he recalls, “because great players don’t want to give you their place. That’s what makes them great players. They especially don’t want to give you their place if you arrive with the label of ‘Future Great Player’.” Within a year, Mbappé and France had won the World Cup in Moscow. Three years on, we are talking in a room of his mansion in the leafy, old-money streets of Neuilly, just outside Paris. It isn’t even his…

1 THEY HAVE BEEN MARRIED A FEW YEARS when Bobby leaves Carol and their new baby and goes bush to shoot kangaroos. It is all the work he can think of to do when the force let him go. They tell him that if he goes quietly and makes no noise about losing his pension, charges will be dropped. While he’s there, finally with the peace and quiet, he tells Carol he’ll make a plan. A man can’t think with the baby crying all the time and the house smelling of Dettol and milk powder. He leaves Carol sitting on his mother’s plastic-wrapped sofa, dark and silent, only the anger left now. “She’ll come around in a day or two,” his mother says at the door, “I’ll make her come…

A AARON PROBYN aaronprobyn.com ACNE STUDIOS available at mrporter.com AIMÉ LEON DORE aimeleondore.com ALEXANDER MCQUEEN alexandermcqueen.com AMAZFIT available at amazon.co.uk ANISSA KERMICHE available at conranshop.co.uk APC apcstore.com APPLE WATCH apple.com ARIES available at mrporter.com B BARBER OSGERBY barberosgerby.com BARENA VENEZIA barenavenezia.com BIANCA SAUNDERS biancasaunders.com BIRKENSTOCK birkenstock.com BODE bodenewyork.com BOSS hugoboss.com BOSS available at mrporter.com BRAUN braun.com BREITLING breitling.com BRIONI brioni.com BRUNELLO CUCINELLI brunellocucinelli.com BYREDO byredo.com C CAMBRIDGE AUDIO cambridgeaudio.com CANALI canali.com CANTAILS cantails.co.uk CASABLANCA casablancaparis.com CASABLANCA available at matchesfashion.com CHARLES JEFFERY LOVERBOY available at matchesfashion.com CHURCH’S church-footwear.com CRAIG GREEN craig-green.com CREED creedfragrances.co.uk D DIOR dior.com DOLCE & GABBANA available at matchesfashion.com DRAKE’S drakes.com DS & DURGA dsanddurga.com DUNHILL available at mrporter.com E EAST LONDON LIQUOR COMPANY eastlondonliquorcompany.com EMPIRICAL CAN empirical.co EMPORIO ARMANI armani.com ERES eresparis.com F FITBIT available at amazon.co.uk…

In his introduction to a 2000 Norwegian translation of On the Psychological Effects of Wine, a work by 19th-century Italian novelist Edmondo de Amicis, the Norwegian psychiatrist Finn Skårderud made an interesting suggestion. It was one about which he was only partially serious. What if our everyday malaise had a simple solution: wine? “After a couple of glasses, everything falls into place. It feels right,” he wrote. “You quickly conclude that you were actually created with a negative blood alcohol content of about 0.05 per cent.” In other words, life would be better if we corrected that balance; if we spent most of our time, well, a little bit drunk. Of course, a specific blood alcohol level might be difficult to maintain, Skårderud acknowledged, and it would be easy for…

For its new all-in-one music player, Cambridge Audio has turned the dial back to 1968, the year of its first product, the P40 amplifier. The late 1960s and 1970s was an era of hi-fi as style statement: it had to both look good and sound good. In today’s age of mesh-and-plastic smart speakers, those criteria have rather fallen by the wayside. So Cambridge Audio has come up with Evo (as in “evolution”), a minimalist music streamer combining premium materials and classic industrial design. The 1970s vibe is represented by its walnut side panels (the P40 had similar) that complement its black anodised aluminium body. Streaming is managed through the company’s StreamMagic app, a remote control, or the whopping dual-centric rotary dial on the front. Next to that there’s a 6.8-inch…

It’s touching to think that, even in this day and age, Polaroid is still considered “instant” photography. When images can be captured on a phone in a heartbeat — and for all we know if technology continues apace, by a heartbeat — the very idea of waiting 15 whole minutes to see your masterwork seems like the epitome of delayed gratification. Yet it turns out the artistically inclined are continuing to embrace the ingenious invention of Edwin H Land, who developed the polarizing technology in 1932 and, after experimenting with other essential uses for it (variable density train windows, glare-reducing goggles for dogs), eventually developed the iconic camera that continues to be cherished to this day. There were many famous fans of the Polaroid image and its iconic white-framed format…

THE SHOPPING PAGES FRAGRANCES SUMMER JACKETS LONG-SLEEVED T-SHIRTS FITNESS WATCHES BUCKET HATS BUCKET HATS CANDLESTICKS SWIM SHORTS SANDALS PRE-MIXED COCKTAILS…

Was it cold, in the car park at Camber Sands? Yes, of course it was cold. Did the wind howl and the sky glower and the sea roil? We’re talking England in April: what do you reckon? Did it begin to rain just as the team broke for lunch? Obviously, it began to rain just as the team broke for lunch. Was Esquire’s cast and crew complaining, let loose in the wild after so many months cooped up in sterile, strictly policed, socially distanced, Covid-compliant studios? Hardly at all! They do like to be beside the seaside, fashion people, and this was their first opportunity since 2019. They made the most of it. In addition to a Ford Transit full of the finest summer menswear from the famous international designer…