Содержание выпуска: July/August 2019 — Esquire UK

MIRANDA COLLINGE Shortlisted for the PPA Magazine Writer of the Year award for her work on Esquire, our features director specialises in stories of unusual people doing unexpected things. Cranks, obsessives, quixotic quests — all are grist to Collinge’s mill. For our design and technology issue, she profiles a very strange fish and the people who keep it, that takes in the two themes while avoiding the clichés that attach themselves to both topics. She also meets Asif Kapadia, director of Senna, Amy and, now, a film about another strange fish: Diego Maradona. GILES COREN Esquire editor-at-large, The Times restaurant critic and columnist, bestselling author and television presenter, Coren is among Britain’s best-known journalists. A natural born controversialist, he’s famous for his pungent humour and savage wit. But for this…

On a cold night in Greenpoint, New York, conversation turns, unexpectedly, to The Great British Bake Off. “It’s funny because I can be a cinephile snob,” says Christopher Abbott, swirling a mezcal Negroni and swabbing rosemary fries in mayonnaise, “but then I also love First Dates, Gogglebox. I like them better than American reality stuff. I think The Great British Bake Off is one of the purest shows I’ve ever seen in my life.” He’s even watched Love Island. Not the viewing habits you might expect from a 33-year-old actor who just spent months filming a six-part Hulu and Channel 4 adaptation of Catch-22, in which he plays Yossarian, the paranoid hero of Joseph Heller’s classic novel. Or one whose first movie was the 2011 cult drama Martha Marcy May…

Over the last few years, LED technology has advanced to make ultra-thin lights a possibility, and now you can’t move for swoops, pendants and halos: minimalist, linear designs are the biggest trend in lighting. SkLO Studio takes a different approach. “We go out of our way to make things that are immediately identifiable as hand-made,” says Paul Pavlak, the designer and architect who founded the company with his wife Karen Gilbert, a craft artist, metalsmith and jeweller. “Sklo” is Czech for glass. “Czech glass is not like Italian glass. It’s not fussy or delicate. It’s aggressive, large and chunky,” says Pavlak. SkLO, which also uses “the craft traditions of the old world” for a line of similarly hand-blown objets d’art — seductively stout vessels, bowls and wall pieces — embraces…

The founders of Luzli, a headphone firm based in Basel, Switzerland, that takes its design cues from the Swiss watch industry, set out with a simple promise. “We wanted to make a design classic,” says co-founder Andrew James Lee. Six years of research and development were rewarded when its inaugural product, the Roller MK01 headphones, won a 2018 Red Dot Design Award, the international product design prize that has been awarded to Porsche, Apple and Ferrari. With its distinctive machined metal aesthetic, Luzli worked with makers of link bracelets for luxury watches: its handmade headphones roll up into a pocketable ball. Lee and co-founder Dina Guth spent years developing products for high-end audio and visual brands before wanting to specialise further. “This is a different category, it’s not consumer electronics,…

“They were nearly an hour over luncheon. Course followed course in disconcerting abundance, while Colonel Blount ate and ate, turning the leaves of his book and chuckling frequently. They ate hare soup and boiled turbot and stewed sweetbreads and black Bradenham ham with Madeira sauce and roast pheasant and a rum omelette and toasted cheese and fruit. First they drank sherry, then claret, then port. ‘Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to have little nap’,” says Colonel Blount in Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies. In less than an hour! Blimey. That’s going it a bit. Cramming that lot into less than several hours suggests a degree of vulgar excess. Lunch is to be loved. Lunch is to be lingered over. To lunch properly is to loiter with intent.…

The other Friday evening, my daughter, aged nine, came sauntering downstairs for her supper trailing one of her familiars (Roxy, a regular visitor) and announced to the household, apropos absolutely nothing as far as I could make out — though doubtless Roxy knows something the rest of us don’t — that she wished her mum was Perrie from Little Mix. Yeah, chimed in Roxy, or Taylor Swift would be good. No, said our angel, with an imperious flick of her hair. She was firm on this point, as she is on so very, very many things: Perrie from Little Mix was the mother she wished for. She would accept no substitutes. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I couldn’t resist. I know how you feel, I said. I wish your…

Fashion assistant: Dan Choppen Photographer’s assistant: Michel Bewley-Bienvenu Grooming: Paul Donovan at CLM Hair and Makeup using Bumble and Bumble Model: Kohei Takabatake at IMG See Stockists page for details…

ONLY £28 for six issues of Esquire PLUS The Big Watch Book SAVE 33 per cent on the cover price FREE delivery, direct to your door To subscribe visit: hearstmagazines.co.uk/eq-magazine or call 0844 322 1762 and quote offer code 1E 11684 Offer valid for new UK subscriptions by Direct Debit. After your first year, your subscription will continue at £28 a year unless you are notified otherwise. The standard subscription price is £42 for six issues of ESQUIRE plus THE BIG WATCH BOOK, based on the standard cover price of £6. Subscriptions may not include promotional items packaged with the magazine. All orders will be acknowledged and you will be advised of the start issue within 14 days. Subscriptions may be cancelled by providing 28 days’ notice. This offer cannot be…

PUTTING THE WORK OF THE DESIGNERS Emiliano Salci and Britt Moran into words isn’t at all straightforward. If you’re talking to someone in the know — and that someone would likely come from the worlds of fashion or interior design: the Fendi family, Sonia Rykiel or the pilgrims who attend the Milan furniture fair Salone del Mobile each April — then their Dimore Studio might conjure up a certain aesthetic: exuberant but refined, chaotic yet intelligent, nostalgically lavish. But try to describe the duo’s projects from a standing start, projects that run from furniture to fabrics to shop overhauls to interiors for private residences, then you really need to experience them yourself. Take The Arts Club in London’s Mayfair, where a rose-pink mirrored tunnel plunges guests into an underground lair…

* OK, WE’LL ADMIT IT: this issue’s behind-the-scenes glimpse into the making of Esquire is a bit of a stretch. The picture below, of Julius Shulman steadying his camera, and himself, to photograph the Stahl House in the Hollywood Hills, does not document a moment in the making of this magazine. Not strictly speaking. Although you can, on page 180, see Shulman’s most famous photo of that same house, which was taken in the evening of the same day in which he is seen here. A recent visit to the Stahl House, or Case Study House #22, designed by Pierre Koenig, is the jumping off point for Will Self’s piece, here, on the breathtaking architecture of mid-century Los Angeles. Shulman was commissioned by Arts and Architecture magazine to document the…

EAU DE COLOGNE ON THE ESQUIRE carpet during the making of this issue, as a bitter turf war erupted over the content and direction but most of all the look of the magazine. This conflict was, as you might imagine, not an especially butch affair — manbags at dawn, to put it kindly — and it was conducted, for the most part, electronically, as arguments so often are these days (alas). Still, it was good, clean, passive-aggressive-shading-into-aggressive-aggressive fun. I’m told that at one point of high needle, the term “basic bitches” was used. I’m told it was I who used it. The opposing sides, then, each bristling with indignation and seething with resentment at the wrongheadedness, the ignorance, the idiocy of the other, were as follows: In the colour-clashing, flock-wallpapered,…

As thousands of stocky Sunday league strikers prove every week, style can be found in even the sturdiest of places. Paraboot has been making the Michael derby since 1945, and though it was designed as a thing of function and comfort, it’s a handsome shoe. A little jolie laide, maybe, but handsome. The low-profile, moc-toe shape and chunky rubber sole, handmade in France and held together with “Norwegian” stitching (an alternative to Goodyear welting), have been copied ad nauseam, probably because of the shoe’s universal appeal. You’ll see hip dudes with cropped trousers and white socks creeping about town in a pair of Michaels. And you’re as likely to spy some on the feet of bookish Bloomsbury types, loafing through the classics section, as you are on those of a…

Asif Kapadia’s new film, Diego Maradona opens with a shot of the back of a very ordinary hatchback as it careens through the streets of Naples. It is 1984, and Diego Maradona, the world’s greatest footballer, then 23 years old, is in the car in front, on his way to the Stadio San Paolo to sign for Napoli from Barcelona in what will be the biggest transfer deal ever made. The camera is in another vehicle which follows closely behind, and its view of the squat little car’s chaotic journey through the crowds, its hazard lights flashing — don’t say you weren’t warned! — serves as a tantalising metaphor for the lively and chaotic story to follow. Kapadia, who has something of a glittering reputation of his own, is the…

Photographer’s assistants: Emma Ercolani, Max Scott Fashion assistant: Dan Choppen Hair and grooming: John Mullan using Mr Mullan’s Apothecary products Models: Bakay Diaby @Milk Management; Tai Makessa @Models 1 See Stockists page for details…

AS COMPANY MISSION STATEMENTS GO, Vollebak’s is a good one. To make the future of clothing. Concepts that have never been seen, or even attempted, before. Take its Graphene Jacket. Made from the only material to win a Nobel Prize, it can conduct electricity and store heat, something Vollebak says has the same potential to change life on Earth as stone, bronze and iron once did. How about a pair of trousers so tough you can take a blowtorch to them without leaving a mark? You might try its 100 Year Pants, made of Kevlar, the same material used to protect the International Space Station from micrometeoroid strikes. Then there’s its Baker Miller Pink Relaxation Hoodie that zips up over your face, eliminating all outside stimuli, “a portable isolation tank”,…

IN THE PAST FEW DAYS, LIFE HAD BEEN STRANGE and at times not remotely enjoyable. Despite this, Adam was determined to survive. He wept as he sharpened the knife. Gladys, meanwhile, was at least oblivious, or that wasn’t quite right. She was not oblivious. She was simply pre-linguistic. Or, nonlinguistic. She was, essentially, a pig. Adam told himself that she was stressed by the fire, the violence, the general uproar. He told himself that he was stressed by these things, too. If anything he was losing his grip on reality, because the death of a pig, Gladys’ imminent death, seemed so much worse to him than everything else that had happened. But what was reality, anyway, if things like this happened? If you ended up hiding in an urban farm,…

A billionaire walks into a vintage clothing showroom. Usually this space, tucked down an unassuming avenue in Paris’ chic 16th arrondisse ment, is off limits to the general public, but being a part of the global 0.001 per cent opens doors that would otherwise remain closed. “He was a friend of a friend so I agreed,” says Gauthier Borsarello, a former classical musician and the owner of the showroom. A smooth-headed and smoother-mannered 30-year-old Parisian, Borsarello’s name alone feels tailor-made for a collector and purveyor of rare and exquisite vintage clothing. Jackets from WWII, Fifties collegiate sweatshirts and Levi’s 501s line the walls and shelves. There’s an original Abercrombie & Fitch hunting jacket the brand desperately wants to buy for its archive, but Borsarello can’t — won’t — part with…

“Bespoke” is a word that is misused, abused and traduced. Once it was reserved for the expert workmanship of the tailors of Savile Row. Today, you can order your bespoke salad from a bespoke menu on your bespoke phone while pumping the pedals of your bespoke bicycle with your bespoke training shoes at a bespoke fitness class. A bespoke suit can, of course, be a fine thing. But unless you are a very unusual shape indeed, you can more than make do with made-to-measure, or have an off-the-peg adapted to your specifications. Bespoke furniture? Maybe — if you’ve got a really awkward space to fill. Bespoke car upholstery? Bespoke bathroom towels? Bespoke dog bowl? Please. Bespoke spectacles, though, I highly recommend. Every face is unique; there can be no one-size-fits-all…

Long remembered as 12 months of global financial crisis and catastrophe, 2008 is a year best forgotten. Except to Champagne enthusiasts, for whom, perversely, 2008 summons the sound of corks popping rather than celebrations being put on ice. The most recent house to release its loot is Champagne Bollinger, fashionably late to the party but well worth the wait with a deep, aromatic Grande Année with a hit of acidity. This dry Champagne uses 71 per cent Pinot Noir and 29 per cent Chardonnay grapes from 18 villages in the region, fermented solely in old French oak barrels. “We believe that the 2008 is a genuine gastronomic wine,” says cellar master Gilles Descôtes, who served it to Esquire alongside silken, salty jambon — the rich flavours and mutual salinity complementing…

In early 2017, Santiago Lastra took a call from Rosio Sanchez, the former head pastry chef at Noma in Copenhagen. Noma was about to announce a new residency in Tulum, Mexico — following wildly popular pop-ups in Japan and Australia — and she wondered if Lastra would like to meet René Redzepi, Noma’s head chef, about a job. Lastra, a 29-year-old Mexican, already knew Redzepi; everyone in the food world knows Redzepi. But he’d never spoken to him, despite having worked for four months at the Nordic Food Lab, the experimental offshoot of Noma. “It’s not so easy to know René Redzepi,” says Lastra. “It’s like, [if] you’re a priest, you don’t know the Pope.” By then, Lastra was working in Russia, overseeing the creation of Mexican dishes for a…

According to Al Gore, “Airplane travel is nature’s way of making you look like your passport photo”. Well, airplane travel, or more specifically long-haul stopovers, just got a whole lot more refreshing with the opening of Cathay Pacific’s new Business Class Lounge at Hong Kong International Airport. The lounge, also known as The Pier, is at Gate 65. So what, you say? Well, if you’ve ever transited through that airport you’ll know gate numbers are neither sequential nor logical. The airport covers almost five square miles with 90 gates numbered from 1–525 (us neither). Some of the gates don’t even exist — they’re virtual. We got lost. Twice. But once you’re through (down the escalator, turn immediately right), it’s worth the circumnavigation. At 1,000sq m larger than its predecessor, it…

I am thinking of founding a new summer festival. No, it won’t be a cheese jamboree starring I the guy from Blur and his Brie-chomping confrères. It won’t feature weepy guitar balladeers inside a telephone box on the Isle of Muck, either. It won’t be Garsington and it won’t be Glyndebourne or Aldeburgh because none of them is posh enough. My festival, most assuredly, will be a hip-young-gunslinger-free event, so classy, indeed, that every attendee has their own private loo and drinks slave. I’m currently deep in negotiations with a slew of hand-picked sponsors, Claridges, Twinings, John Lewis and Armitage Shanks, with the aim of making my festival the one with the highest thread count in the world. Don’t apply for tickets because it’s totally like Eton, your name has…

I would like to say sorry. To my sister, Victoria, for sticking out my leg when you came running excitedly into the telly room in 1976, when you were four and I was seven, to tell me and Daddy something (I never found out what), so that you tripped and fell and smashed your head on the onyx-topped iron coffee table and cried and cried and cried. I don’t know why I did it. I have never known. That trip could serve as a metaphor for so many of the stupid, mean things I have done in my life without knowing why or even noticing I was doing it. I’m such a twat. I’m sorry, ’Toria. I love you. To my gerbils, Pixie and Dixie, for not coming to feed…

ON WHAT WAS TO BECOME THE MOMENTOUS DAY in February 2017 when he visited One Fish, Two Fish, his local aquatics store in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, though it was in fact an hour away from his home in Truro, Joey Mullen had sworn off making any impulse purchases. He’d gone to take a look around, pick up a few nerite snails and some otocinclus catfish and a pearl stingray he’d had his eye on, and to film a tour of the store for his YouTube channel on which Mullen goes by the name “The King of DIY”. But something about this particular fish, in a tank by himself, made him stop. It was a young flowerhorn cichlid, around six months old and three inches long. It seemed to be looking…

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