Table of contents for Issue 26 in British GQ Style

Bertie Brandes Londoner Bertie is the co-founder of Mushpit magazine and a contributing editor at i-D. ‘For this issue I immensely enjoyed writing a guide to being a man, which was almost tragically straightforward as there seem to be endless ways to get it wrong. I started with a dick pic anecdote from a recently bereaved friend and built it out from there. I hope you enjoy it and find it triggering in equal measure.’ Ewen Spencer In-between shooting fashion stories for the world’s best magazines, Ewen publishes photo books and exhibits his images widely. His latest book Young Love, published by Stanley Barker, explores love and loss on dance floors and in youth centres around the UK in the year 2000. ‘For this issue I photographed some of the…

Marina means freedom to me; that special freedom that you can only get while sailing. I have tried to put that feeling in the pieces,’ says Stone Island’s Carlo Rivetti of his themed designs within the main SS18 collection. ‘And of course, my summer vacation is always on a boat. I fully enjoy that freedom when I am there.’ Developed as folded and all-over styles, Stone Island Marina pieces are made as full garments then dyed and printed by hand with original graphic motifs; a red reflective ‘Marina’ print completes the look. Stone Island is renowned for its dedication to research and technology – this is the brand with a lab at its Ravarino HQ and over 40,000 garments in its archive, collected from its 35-year history. Go to a…

Louis Vuitton’s latest collection is built for exploring our blue planet and inspired by surfing, scuba and trekking wear. These are looks for wearing in the great outdoors, in the sunshine, while you’re climbing a volcano or paddling out across the reef. ‘Someone gave me the book Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands I Have Not Visited and Never Will,’ explains the brand’s outgoing Men’s Artistic Director Kim Jones, ‘and I realised I’d been to about all of them! I thought of specific islands, but I was also inspired by the idea of an island, and of travel. Of moving easily from place to place, and experiencing these different pockets of civilisation, these different identities simultaneously.’ We particularly like these sunglasses for their laid-back surf vibe, their rainbow mirror lenses…

With the dominance of messageboards, podcasts and the likes of – oh goodness – Arsenal Fan TV, football fans have come to relish a strange celebrity of their own lately. But for those long-term devotees with the season tickets who just happen to be women, it would be fair to say that the spotlight doesn’t find them quite as often. Which is odd when, according to a Premier League survey, 23 per cent of UK matchgoers are female. As it happens, this 23 per cent are showing up week after week, their dedication just as steady as the next fan – and thanks to Girlfans, a zine created by fashion lecturer and Liverpool supporter Jacqui McAssey over weekends and holidays, we can see that they are magnificent. From pensioners proudly…

Celebrating its 50th birthday this year, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is the landmark by which all sci-fi cinema is now compared. Still the subject of awe and intrigue, it’s the pinnacle of the ‘don’t complain, don’t explain’ attitude – Kubrick famously never discussed the ending, or what his intentions were. An interview he gave to Playboy at the time of release can be paraphrased succinctly: make of it what you will. Arthur C Clarke, whose short story The Sentinel was the blueprint for the script, explained, ‘If you understand 2001 completely, we failed. We wanted to raise far more questions than we answered.’ The plot? A mysterious monolith has been found buried under the surface of the moon, and a mission is undertaken to make sense of it…

When Astrid Andersen began thinking up ideas for AW18, she knew right away that she wanted to reference one of the most influential eras of modern British style: the Buffalo movement in the Eighties, when Ray Petri and his ever-evolving collective of photographers like Jamie Morgan and Mark Lebon, stylists like Caroline Baker and Judy Blame, models like Nick and Barry Kamen, pop stars like Neneh Cherry and many others besides, captured the best of west London street style and attitude in a series of legendary photoshoots and music videos. She spoke to her stylist Elgar Johnson (our Deputy Editor and Fashion Director, and a diehard fan of Buffalo), who put her directly in touch with the source: Mark Lebon. ‘I asked if there was any way I could perhaps…

After cutting his teeth as a junior at Bayern Munich, German midfielder Thomas Hitzlsperger went on to play for, among others, Aston Villa, Lazio and Bundesliga-winning Stuttgart, which he later went on to captain, also accruing 52 caps internationally. He’s had a hand (or a foot, perhaps) in many landmark events for the sport before injury forced his retirement in 2013, but also made history off the pitch when he came out in 2014 – by far the highest profile footballer to do so. GQ Style caught up with him just as his home team gears up for Russia. So, Thomas – you’re back at Stuttgart. Can you tell us what your role with the team is now? I was just appointed the new Academy Director at VfB Stuttgart. The…

JHus doesn’t like doing interviews. Not that that makes him a reluctant participant; he just believes that an examination of his life so far feels a little… premature. ‘You don’t review the book before it’s finished, you know? I’ve got so much I want to do and I haven’t even achieved half of it yet,’ he flashes a shy grin. ‘Nowhere even near half.’ Born Momodou Jallow in 1995 to a Gambian mother and Ghanaian father, he could be living a completely alternative existence right now. Hus could, had he continued to do what he was doing, quite possibly be dead or very probably be in jail; the product of those horrible stereotypes that afflict the young, black, working class male. Hus was bought up by his mother – ‘my…

Model A was sent by his agent to see Photographer B. It was Model A’s first audience with Photographer B, a giant in the game, the visual auteur behind scores of garlanded advertising campaigns and editorial work. He is the owner of a personally amassed fortune and friend to the famous. Photographer B is a door opener, starmaker, page turner, known widely for the extracurricular muscle of his philanthropy. Publically, he is very much one of the good guys. Still, there were industry rumours, of which Model A was all too aware. Fashion is a business built on gossip, brick by brick. The glisten and sparkle of rumour – what is true, what is not – is one facet of its strange magnetism. ‘I’d heard stories before about him,’ says…

So, you’re a man who wants to do better. OK. Well I guess that’s a start. The journey might not be much fun, but it will be worth it. Becoming a paragon of maleness or a Good Man probably seems abstract and difficult and to be honest and upfront with you, it’s not not either of those things. Defining what we mean by Good is tenuous at best. At what point do you graduate from simply being Man (awful) to Better Man (acceptable) to Good Man (impossible)? Are there levels, like ‘Mario Kart’, or is it more a kind of icy Skyrim hinterland you’re forced to wander through aimlessly, searching for fleeting interactions upon which to demonstrate your Not Bad-ness? It’s confusing and uninviting, but also important. So important in…

Stuart Vevers is talking about what drove him from a working-class childhood in Carlisle to his current position as executive creative director of Coach 1941. ‘Fashion should be fun to work in. It’s really important.’ You’d perhaps expect someone with his title, helming America’s greatest luxury leather empire, to be kind of, well, grand. Vevers however is nothing of the sort. ‘I’m not a tortured artist. I create fun, beautiful things,’ he laughs. ‘Hopefully!’ His collections have been met with both critical and commercial success since he debuted the brand’s ready-to-wear almost five years ago, and without any of the dramatics that can follow immensely talented people. Vevers, quite frankly, always looks like he’s having a good time, whether it be in the studio of the Coach headquarters or taking…

There aren’t many brands with quite as much rock’n’roll credibility as Pretty Green – which Liam Gallagher launched in 2009 – so when they set about looking for a print collaborator for SS18 they wanted someone pretty rock’n’roll too. Katie Eary, the east-London-based menswear designer who was awarded the British Fashion Council’s designer support initiative NEWGEN MEN in 2010, went on to collaborate with Kanye West, and is now in her tenth season, is just that. ‘When I was asked to do the collaboration,’ she recalls, ‘I had just watched Supersonic [the 2016 Oasis documentary] and I had goosebumps throughout the entire film, and I just thought, fuck yeah, I want to work with a company linked to this legendary status.’ Not that the collection is just for rock’n’roll types:…

Egon Schiele, the Austrian artist famed for his gnarled and erotic portrayal of the nude figure, is the subject of Life in Motion, a new show at Tate Liverpool. However, the exhibition is far from a clear-cut examination of his work, for the expressionist shares the gallery walls with another renowned 20th-century artist: photographer Francesca Woodman. Where Schiele used sharp, minimal lines to reflect the animated energy of his models, Woodman employed long exposures to create a distorted, soft-focus image that captured extended and unsteady moments in time. However, as the show’s curator, Marie Nipper, explains, there are more similarities to the pairing than initially meets the eye. ‘What is fascinating about the constellation of Schiele and Woodman is that they both had the ability to capture, whether in drawing…

Kiko Kostadinov It’s been a busy few months for Londonbased menswear designer Kiko Kostadinov, 28. Having shown his fifth collection ‘Obscured by Clouds’ at London Fashion Week Men in January, it was then straight on to Paris for a new role as creative director for the British heritage brand Mackintosh. Add a collaboration with Asics, now in its second season, and a new partnership with Camper and it’s been a busy 2018 so far. In fact it’s been pretty non-stop for the Bulgarian designer since he graduated with an MA from Central Saint Martins in 2016. Winning NewGen sponsorship straight after graduation, Kostadinov saw plenty of early buzz. ‘I had a meeting with Dover Street Market with my MA collection and they wanted to be the exclusive partner and stockist…

Jordan Bowen is explaining the AW18 debut of JORDANLUCA, the brand he’s created with Luca Marchetto. ‘We wanted to get inside the head of a lad, uncover the anxieties, the bravado, all that ego but all that fear too,’ he begins. ‘The presentation was layered with spoken word from my diaries and projections of tinny car radio and football fails. We thought it was important to recreate my teenage feelings of disappointment and repeated disaster.’ On a tiled stage during London Fashion Week Mens, models (willingly) had their heads shaved, exploring ‘a collective sense of self-identity.’ The collection’s title? ‘Angry Staffy’. ‘We had one when I was little but he wasn’t very angry – which didn’t actually matter at all because a Staffy is instant kudos where I grew up…

What makes Shit Indie Disco Supersonic? We started Shit Indie Disco as a good excuse to play lots of the mid-Noughties indie songs we all used to dance to and that we hadn’t heard on a night out for ages. It was always just about having a great time with great people. ‘No pretension’ has always been our motto! The crowd are what really make it: they’re always up for a good time, come along with their bucket hats and handmade signs and sing along to every word of every song. Do You Remember the First Time Shit Indie Disco held a party? Yeah, we had no idea what we were doing; we still don’t, ha ha! 24 Kitchen Street very kindly gave us a Friday night – and we’d…

Once every two years comes a summer without football – a three-month period between seasons and barren of international tournaments. I know that I’m not alone when I say that I just don’t feel like I’m all there during these months. It’s as if a great void opens up within me; entire days seem to pass by with no distinguishing features, and social functions blend into one as I autopilot my way through conversations about holidays and rent prices with people whose names I don’t remember when I wake up the next morning. Saturday afternoons are set adrift in endless brunches and half-watching Wimbledon. Quite simply, I really, really miss the football – in the same way people miss grandparents or exes, rather than a sporting fixture list that will…

My footballing inspiration would be Zidane. Incredible player,’ says Marouane Fellaini, 30. They have a lot in common. Like his idol, Fellaini is a very tall European superstar from a North African family. And like Zidane, his footballing prowess was spotted at a young age and encouraged – they both shone in junior leagues. ‘Off the pitch,’ he continues, ‘I would say my Dad, as he’s worked very hard and has supported me my whole career.’ Football certainly runs in Marouane Fellaini’s blood – you could say it’s the family business. Originally from Tangier in Morocco, his father Abdellatif was a professional footballer who played in goal for Moroccan football clubs Raja Casablanca and Hassania Agadir. And he was good – so good that he was signed by Belgium’s Racing…

My whole life has been about grime. Every single day.’ With a didactic intelligence, an insatiable curiosity and an innate talent for the contruction of both bars and beats, 21-year-old Kojo Kankam is quite unlike anyone else you’ve ever met. Kankam made his first recording aged six in his grime-loving uncle’s home studio, and at 12 – keenly aware of the social and political issues in his south London community – successfully applied to become Deputy Young Mayor of Lewisham. As his love for grime deepened he entwined the two worlds to become, of sorts, a voice of the people, bestowing upon himself the mantle of Novelist – ‘I like to tell stories, I’m a storyteller’. His energy quickly caught the attention of Wiley and Skepta and by the time…

Time is very different when you’re on a surfboard,’ explains Leonardo Fioravanti, on a rare break from his busy schedule of training for eight hours a day in-between competing in the World Surf League. ‘Some of the best waves of my life go by very slowly in the moment, but then you almost forget about it until you watch a video later. It’s hard to explain. It’s almost as though you’re so in the moment and thinking about every detail of the wave that everything stops for a second and you fall into your own imagination. It’s the best feeling ever.’ Leonardo, 20, comes from Rome and is Italy’s only professional surfer. He’s also an international heartthrob and a brand ambassador for Gucci. Since first jumping on a board at…

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As anybody who ever watched early episodes of Mad Men already knows, cigarette and alcohol advertising has often been elevated into an art form. There’s something about these particular vices that brings out the very best in creatives and art directors; perhaps it’s that so many have such ongoing, passionate love affairs with these products themselves, or maybe we’re just all overly besotted with a drink and a smoke. The latest edition to Taschen’s series of advertising compendiums, 20th Century Alcohol & Tobacco, gathers together a hundred years of creativity designed to lead us down a path of beautiful sin. Its devilish cover girl gazes seductively, if a little groggily, out at us, strong drink in one hand, pitchfork with ice cubes impaled on its prongs in the other; and…

Love conquers all – but what conquers love? Enter ‘Conqueror of Love’, Shamballa Jewels’ collection for 2018: a powerful suite of mystical jewellery that will bring you what you want this year. It will help you fall in love, but also help you to love yourself, and Mother Earth, and everything! With one of these bracelets around your wrist, or necklaces resting on your chest, all will be full of love. ‘Conqueror of Love’ takes its inspiration from the beauty of the natural world, as highlighted by its vibrant greens and blues: blue turquoises, green turquoises (for the first time in a Shamballa Jewels collection) and rare green sapphires, too. Turquoise has been valued as a royal talisman and shamanic charm for millennia, helping its wearers achieve their goals since…

Mr Katayama’s idea,’ explains Woolrich’s Global Creative Director Andrea Canè, ‘has always been to respect the DNA of the brand by modernising the use of elements from our historical mill: wood, iron and the iconic check. In this new Milano concept store, we asked him to create a trail through some physical experiences. It’s not only a point of sale, but also a place where consumers can live sensorial experiences.’ Woolrich’s new flagship store on Milan’s Corso Venezia is the place to pick up the newest, warmest Arctic parkas, mountain and Teton jackets, but also offers a template for the future of retail. As such, alongside Mr Masamichi Katayama, Canè filled his new store with a variety of interactive surprises: there’s a Lounge Area with a coffee shop and museum…

NEW! 2017 BSME Editor Of The Year 2017 Lovie Best Website For Lifestyle 2017 Digiday Publishing Awards Europe Best Use Of Facebook Live 2017 Digiday Publishing Awards Europe Best Branded Content Program 2017 PPA Writer Of The Year 2017 AOP Audience Development Team Of The Year 2017 CNI Best Brand Financial Performance In Native Advertising 2017 CNI Best Native Campaign Of The Year 2016 BSME Editor Of The Year 2016 Digiday Awards Europe Video Team Of The Year 2016 Shots Awards Brand Entertainment Of The Year - Series 2016 Ciclope Festival Finalist, Best Direction 2016 Lovie Long Form Or Series Video First Place 2016 Lovie Long Form Or Series Video People’s Choice 2015 DMA Men’s Lifestyle Magazine Of The Year 2015 FMJA Stylist Of The Year (GQ Style) 2014 BSME…

Group A Russia Hosts of the World Cup and an unknown entity. If they get out of the group stages they could be dangerous. The added public pressure could be a telling factor. A nation awaits. Prediction Group stages Key Player Igor Akinfeev (CSKA Moscow). Goalkeeper and captain, he is the heartbeat behind the Russian team and its Mr Reliable. Akinfeev will need to have his big hands on to get them out of this group. Uruguay The two-time winners of the World Cup left it late to qualify from their group. Not quite carrying the fear factor of past teams but still tricky opponents. If a certain member of the squad can refrain from nibbling on the opposition, they are a threat. Prediction Last 16 Key Player Luis Suárez…

Remember when rap had to come from America to be credible? Those times are long gone. Emerging from its underground, urban niche, grime is now all over the Brits and on Radio 1, institutions which once shut the scene out for being too brash, too loud, too (dare we say) black. Over the last year, artists including Mist, Krept & Konan, Bugzy Malone, Wiley, Dizzee Rascal, and J Hus have reached top ten and higher, and, in the case of Stormzy, number one – for his debut album ‘Gang Signs & Prayer’. Crucially, attention from global superstars such as Pharrell and Drake has pushed the sound out from Britain to the world, with grime artists now selling out global tours. Many of the above acts have achieved their awards, accolades…

Money has always been Aaron Davies aka Bugzy Malone’s motivation. ‘I told myself I want to be a millionaire by 30,’ says the 27-year-old Mancunian; ‘I’ve outdone myself by three years.’ There’s more to his motivation than simple greed, however, stemming from when a young Davies’ mother remarried and the pair found themselves enduring physical and mental abuse. ‘There would be times I’d get beaten up or shouted at,’ Bugzy recalls, matter-of-factly. ‘They would be arguing about money. We had no carpets, no heating, no electricity. The way I saw it, the problems were about money. I’d tell myself, I’m gonna be rich when I grow up. That was my only answer to the problems a child doesn’t have answers for.’ After a short spell in prison aged 17, he…

The Nigerian parents of Collins Nemi – aka producer and DJ Conducta – were insistant that their eldest son set an example to his three younger siblings by becoming a doctor or lawyer. And he tried to fulfil their wishes; he really, really tried. ‘Knowing how hard they worked to give me and my sisters every chance in life, it was hard to forge my own path. It felt duplicitous,’ he remembers. But the lure of chords and compressions proved too enticing; at the age of 15, Collins and his two cousins borrowed a crappy laptop and made their first track, Be Huge, which they sent to BBC Radio 1Xtra and ended up being played by MistaJam. ‘We were so gassed. It made me think, what am I capable of…

Blieve us, 2002 was a fraught moment in British history. The country was divided. War was looming. New Labour was falling apart. Cool Britannia was over. And the most illustrious British heritage brand of all – Burberry – was deep in the doldrums ever since Eastenders star Daniella Westbrook was papped dressed head-to-toe in its famous check, holding her daughter Jo in a matching skirt and pushing a (let’s be honest, really amazing) Burberry pram. This was a couple years after Westbrook had done so much coke that she lost part of her nose, and it was not considered a good look; so much so in fact, that it actually caused the brand’s share price to drop (from 244 on the day she went shopping to 232.50 the next, when…

I was on my stoop, and I ran into this guy who I rap battled with not long ago in SoHo, and he was like “Yo what up, this is that white kids who raps” to his friends, and so I was squatted up with like eight people on my stoop rapping, then one of A$AP’s friends, Kamil, pulls up and he was like, “This thing. Tomorrow.” You feel?’ This is how 19-year-old Judah Lang, with a face that’s half-angel, half-scamp and graced with a portwine stain that should one day render him globally recognisable, explains how he came to appear in the video for A$AP Mob’s RAF, a tribute to the Belgian menswear designer, among others (‘Please, don’t touch my Raf / Bought a Kris Van Assche / Alessandro…