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 CONTENTS

December/January
GQ World Behind the Scenes
With the People Who
Make GQ
Inside I N D US TRY: the Best, Most Coked-Out
Show of the Year.......................... ...... .................. 39
Contributor
the Story of the Stranger Things
J OSE PH Q U IN N :
Star’s Breakout Year............................................. 57

JAME S CAME RO N : the Box-Office King Returns........ 71

Finally, a Smartwatch for Serious Time Nerds........... 79

GARY YOUNGE
GQ’s Class of 2022: our MOTY Honourees. .. . .. .. . . ... .. . 82 Writer
Gary Younge is a writer, broadcaster and
professor of sociology at the University of
Manchester. He profiled Stormzy for this
issue. “Stormzy had been on an intense
personal journey. He seemed more reflective,
Features determined and heavily focused on self-
improvement than I have ever seen him.”

A Deep Conversation with ANDRE W G ARF IE L D

About His Winning Year, Grief, and Love. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Office Grails
←
Euphoria’s SY DN EY SWEE NEY Is Delivering a FEDERICO SARICA
Head of Editorial
Drop Kick to Hollywood Stereotypes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 Content, GQ Italy
“What will never
die? Loafers,
and KI T C ONNOR: the Heartstopper Boys
J O E LO C KE denim, and
white socks.
on the Journey of Their Netflix Hit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 (Pink shirts
come and go.)”

S TO RMZY Isn’t Who You Thought He Was. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154

L E A H W IL L I AM SON :
for the Captain of the Lionesses,
→
England’s Euros Win Is Just the Start........................ 164 TRACY ACHONWA
Associate
Commerce Writer,
British GQ
JACK HAR LOW ’s Quiet Confidence Is His “Ksubi’s Kube
Greatest Trick........................................................ 176 keeps my office
ID handy.”

ZOË KRAVITZ Only Now Feels That She’s Made It.......... 188

MAX VERSTAPPEN: the Cold-Blooded F1 Champion..... 200 ←

MURRAY CLARK
Senior Style Editor
British GQ
The 2022 GQ Global Fashion Awards...................... 210 “I’ve been
rewatching The
Sopranos for the
fifth time, if you
couldn’t tell by the
vintage Sergio
Tacchini tracksuit.”

D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 1 9
 ST YLIST, MICHAEL DARLINGTON. GROOMING, SONIA LEE FOR EXCLUSIVE ARTISTS USING LE DOMAINE SKINCARE AND ORIBE. BARBER, JEFF VERBECK. TAILOR, YELENA TR AVKINA. PRODUCTION, PE T T Y CASH.

P H O T O G R A P H
B Y
L U K E
G I L F O R D
For our story on Andrew Garfield, see page 118.
Trousers, £2,850, by Alexander McQueen.

D E C
2 0 2 2 / J A N
2 0 2 3
G Q
CONTENTS

2 1
 ST Y L I ST, A N G E LO M I TA KO S . TA I LO R, V I K K I E TA R B U C K AT K A R E N AV E N E L L . G RO O M I N G , B E N TA L B OT T AT T H E WA L L G RO U P. S E T D ES I G N , G E O RG I A C U R R E L L .

P H O T O G R A P H
B Y
D A N N Y
K A S I R Y E
For our story on Jack Harlow, see page 176.
Balaclava, £180, cardigan, £290, by Jacquemus.

D E C
2 0 2 2 / J A N
2 0 2 3
G Q
CONTENTS

2 5
 CONTENTS
ST YLIST, ITUNU OKE. GROOMING, BIANCA SIMONE SCOT T. SET DESIGN, SEAN THOMSON.

For our story on Stormzy, see page 154.

Jacket, £745, by Mr P at Mr Porter. Rollneck, £940, jeans, £690, by Tom Ford.
Trainers, £650, by Christian Louboutin.

P H O T O G R A P H B Y J E N N Y B R O U G H D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 2 9
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Chief Business Officer, Travel & Lifestyle Classified v p , h e a d o f r e v e n u e s t r at e gy ,
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c h i e f b u s i n e s s o f f i c e r , t r av e l & c l a s s i f i e d d i r e cto r
Style Malcolm Attwells
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e u r o p e a n d i r e cto r o f c o n t e n t
o p e r at i o n s
business manager Emma Alessi
e x e c u t i v e a s s i s ta n t Charlotte Taylor Helen Placito
cl assified sales manager
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l e a d b u s i n e s s r e p o rt i n g m a n a g e r Natalie Moss-Blundell
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tr ainers
business manager food & bever ages Grace Fox Rosamund Bradley
Ellen Garlick Natasha Callin
senior cl assified sales executive
s e n i o r a c c o u n t d i r e cto r
Georgia Graham Managing Director, Europe
Emma Heuser
cl assified sales executive Natalia Gamero Del Castillo
Style a c c o u n t d i r e cto r
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v p , b u s i n e s s pa rt n e r s h i p s Kieran Coyne
Claire Singer a d v e rt i s i n g s a l e s a c c o u n t
Marketing Deputy Managing Director,
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vice president, consumer revenue,
& be aut y
fa s h i o n Sophie Chai europe Albert Read
Madeleine Churchill account manager, Russell Cleeve
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fa s h i o n & lu x u ry Christopher Daunt Louise Lawson

Charlotte Pennington c o m m e r c i a l d i r e cto r , pa p e r s e n i o r p r o d u ct i o n
h o m e & pa rt n e r s h i p s controller
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a c c o u n t e x e c u t i v e , lu x u ry senior account manager
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manager
Christopher Warren Events Claudia Long
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insights manager
Ellen Garlick Michelle Russell
Erin Mcquitty
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a c c o u n t d i r e cto r , a u to m ot i v e
Anna Byrne i ta l i a n o f f i c e

Nicholas French h e a d o f p r oj e ct m a n a g e m e n t , c n x Mia Srl

account manager, media/
Gareth Hogan
e n t e rta i n m e n t c r e at i v e d e s i g n d i r e cto r

Rosie Campion Jeffrey Lee

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 LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
The Agony and Ecstasy
GREETINGS FROM GQ HQ.
And welcome to our 25th
annual Men of the Year issue.
Yup: this marks a quarter
century of our biggest, brashest,
shiniest moment, MOTY. It’s
the time of year that we
celebrate and honour the
people who have shaped
culture most radically.
Here at British GQ, we’ve
spent much of the past year
rethinking… everything.
And that approach applied
to MOTY, too.
So, a few pieces of
housekeeping. Firstly, we have
for many years honoured people
who are, in fact, not men!
Secondly, we’ve chilled out the
mood a little this year, dropping
traditional “awards” and
“categories” and instead
simply filling our pages with a
collective of honourees that we
truly and deeply admired. Lastly
– and this needs to be said –
jeez, what a year.
I’ll spare you the indignity of
recounting everything that was
lousy about 2022. If you have a
pulse (and a data plan) I’ve no
doubt you’ve been bombarded
with shitty news on every
On The Covers
Stormzy wears Bottega Sydney Sweeney wears Andrew Garfield wears
Veneta. Versace. Saint Laurent by Anthony
Vaccarello.
Photographed by Photographed by
Jenny Brough. Charlotte Rutherford. Photographed by Luke Gilford.
Styled by Itunu Oke. Styled by Anna Trevelyan. Styled by Michael Darlington.
P H O T O G R A P H B Y J A M I E S A L M O N S D E C
phone, tablet, wearable and
IoT device in your proximity.
(We have banned the
word “stagflation” at
home. Permanently!)
There are years – bad years –
that fall apart so cleanly, it’s as
though they’re torn from a
perforated roll. Those years
leave no room for debate, no
silver linings. But this was not
one of those years.
2022 felt instead like a
culture withstanding a storm: a
storm of wars, of revolving-door
prime ministers, of monarchs
lost, of frothy inflation and
frothier collective anxiety.
The year was a lot, but so
was the culture. It takes a beat
to remember, but when you
do, it comes in waves. I grin
uncontrollably thinking about
that summer afternoon in
Wembley, when the Lionesses
did what no England football
team has done in nearly 60
years: won a major trophy. And
until I’m eaten by worms, I will
have that bloody “Jiggle Jiggle”
stuck in my head (thank you,
Louis Theroux. Your new show
is incredibly lovely also). And I
still feel the frisson from the
Joe Locke and Kit Connor wear
Boss and Boss Bottled.
Photographed by
Brendan Freeman.
Styled by Angelo Mitakos.
2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 3 5
 LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
album listening session we had
at Def Jam, hearing the serene
and heartfelt and deeply layered
soundscapes of Stormzy’s
nearly-finished This is What I
Mean float around the room.
And the TV… oh man, the TV:
Euphoria! Industry! House of
Dragons! It was – somehow,
someway – good enough for me
to momentarily forget that we
didn’t get a new season of
Succession this calendar year
(booooo HBO, booooo).
We wanted to bottle up all
that energy into this issue. We
have – as you can see from the
shoots inside these pages –
retained every ounce of
glamour, bravado and flair that
MOTY is known for. But, along
the way, we realised that we,
and the crazy universe of stars
we were working with, were
carrying feelings. Maybe it’s
been a long year. Maybe it’s been
a long couple of years. But
rumination and reflection are
baked into this year’s MOTY.
And that feels right.
One of the tenets of this new
era of GQ is a determination to
lean into the duality in all of us:
the sublime and ridiculous, the
agony and ecstasy, the brash
and thoughtful. You can feel
that in so many of the
interviews with our cover stars
in this issue.
It’s Stormzy – one of the
artists most profoundly shaping
British culture – making the
Jack Harlow wears
Boss and Boss Bottled.
Photographed by
Danny Kasirye.
Styled by Angelo Mitakos.
3 6 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N
most revelatory album of as wonderful as anything for about two minutes.
his career, but reminding I can remember. 5. My loud and annoying and
himself that no part of his One thing I’ll be taking beautiful cat, Duaa.
journey of personal growth into 2023 – and this is corny, 6. The partners who helped
can be accelerated by a plaque but stay with me – is gratitude. bring MOTY to life this year:
or cheque. It is a superpower. Fear, anger, Boss, Jaguar, and Peroni.
It’s Leah Williamson, frustration, stress – they literally Thank you.
remembering before the melt away when faced with 7. The stars who brought
champagne spray of the gratitude. It’s very easy, let their time, their creativity
Euros even dried that female me show you. and their vulnerability to
footballers had a generation collaborate with GQ.
stolen from them. Some things I’m grateful for: 8. You, wherever you’re
It’s Andrew Garfield, Golden 1. Alex Marxsen. reading this. Thank you. We
Globe in tow, blossoming into 2. The team I get to work with hope you love reading this as
one of the actors of his every day. much as we loved creating it.
generation while working 3. A walk around Highbury
through terrible grief. Fields after work. Adam Baidawi
It’s Sydney Sweeney, the 4. A fat green olive after DEPUT Y GLOBAL
galaxy of charisma and star it’s sat in a vodka martini EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
of two of the most fascinating
television shows of the century,
pushing up against infantile
stereotypes and archaic
Hollywood expectations.
It’s Jack Harlow, who
soundtracked a huge part of the
past 12 months, pondering how
to make something last in an era
of 22-second TikTok hooks.
It’s the breakout duo of
Netflix’s Heartstopper, Joe
Locke and Kit Connor, carrying
both the gratitude of a global
viewership, and pathetic gossip
that shouldn’t be directed
at anyone – let alone two stars
so young.
While I can’t claim anything
as high as those highs, long O FFI C I A L B EER PA R T NER O FFI C I A L PA R T NER
stretches of this year ground me
down to a nub. But still, other
moments were as peaceful and
On The Covers
Zoë Kravitz wears Max Verstappen wears Leah Williamson wears
Saint Laurent by Uniqlo. The Row.
Anthony Vaccarello.
Photographed by Photographed by
Photographed by Steven Klein. Mikael Jansson. Elliot James Kennedy.
Styled by B. Åkerlund Klein. Styled by Kate Phelan. Styled by Angelo Mitakos.
2 0 2 3
PRE SPRING 2023 ‘AFTER HOURS’ NOW AVAILABLE ONLINE AND IN STORES
 Cuvée Rosé, chosen by the best.

Illustrated by Quentin Blake

The Royal Albert Hall

MAISON FAMILIALE INDÉPENDANTE

champagnelaurentperrier www.laurent-perrier.com
Photo credit: Iris Velghe / Illustration credit: Quentin Blake / Conception Luma
 G R O O M I N G F O R H A R RY L AW T E Y, C H A R L I E C U L L E N @ G A RY R E P R E S E N T S U S I N G D I O R B E AU T Y. H A I R ST Y L I ST F O R M A R I S A , E L I OT M C Q U E E N @ F U T U R E R E P U S I N G L’ O R É A L P R O F E S S I O N N E L .
MAKEUP FOR MARISA ABEL A, NEIL YOUNG AT PREMIER HAIR & MAKEUP USING CLÉ DE PEAU BEAUTÉ. PHOTOGR APHED AT COMMON DECENCY BAR, THE NOMAD, LONDON.

S T Y L E D
B Y
A low-scoop neck under
BANKERS’ BONUS

P H O T O G R A P H S
wearing Boss Alive
eau de parfum, £92.
wearing Boss Bottled
parfum, £86. Marisa is
£289, by Boss. Harry is
£259, vest, £59, dress,

B Y
Tuxedo, £650, trousers,
a velvet blazer? Officewear this is not.

A N G E L O
T U N G
M I T A K O S
W A L S H
D E C
2 0 2 2 / J A N
Starring
the cast of
INDUSTRY
GQ
World

2 0 2 3
G Q
3 9
 VIBEY HANDBAG
Introducing 2023’s first
It bag: this swooping
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SUPERSIZED RING
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There’ll be no risk jeweller Panconesi
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crochet hats – sported established itself as a
by everyone from modern classic, thanks
Kendrick Lamar to Adam to showstopping editions
Driver – are back in a like this rose-gold one
handful of fresh palettes splashed with diamonds
and patterns like this (£12,500).
peppermint stripe (£180).

SHRED-READY
SPECS
Dior Men designer
Kim Jones’s love of retro DAZZLING
FERR AGAMO AND PANCONESI: COURTESY OF BR ANDS. PROP ST YLIST, SHARON RYAN AT HALLEY RESOURCES.

winter sportswear roars DERBIES

through loud and Prada designed
clear on these high- costumes for Baz
voltage ski goggles, Luhrmann’s Elvis earlier
engineered by the this year, and judging
performance-eyewear by these intricately
experts at Sweden’s bejewelled lace-ups, the
POC Sports (£700). King’s influence hasn’t
yet worn off (£1,750).

SEARING STRAP
The tufted flames give
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personality (belt, £490;
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CHOCOLATE
TROUSERS
Yes, you can pull off
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ICY BRACELET is the best place to
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P H O T O G R A P H S B Y A L E X H O D O R - L E E D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 4 1
 GQ World
Drops
REFRESHED
ROLLIE ALL-AMERICAN
The latest version of JEANS
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JUMBLED LEATHER
After years of serving
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This new hardback from Styles joined Michele
Rizzoli documents at the sketching table
the monumental creative to produce a full
GAUDY GOBLETS partnership between collaborative line for
Don’t let wine snobbery the designer Mike Gucci – headlined by
ruin your next bottle of Amiri and the painter this vintage-inspired
red. Dolce & Gabbana Wes Lang (£100). patchwork calf-hide
Casa glasses will keep jacket (£5,350).
things light and fun and
less focused on tannins
(Champagne glass, £295;
wine glass, £335).

LOUIS VUITTON, BALENCIAGA, AND LOROD: COURTESY OF BRANDS.

TEXTURED
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This Louis Vuitton
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fragrance collection of a Matrix film (£3,200). no better Christmas
smell incredible, of gift than these freaky
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smoked wood – but it’s draped in looks from the
the epic, hand-painted label’s autumn 2021
porcelain bottles that haute couture collection
make ’em truly worth (prices upon request).
copping (£275).

4 2 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
Don’t judge a boot by its shine.
This boot’s been put to work by
Australians for generations.
Buy once, buy well.

Not all

crafted equal

rmwilliams.com

GQ World
Culture
How
Industry
Became
the Best
Show of
the Year
A hit show about bankers?
In this economy? Inside the
horniest, coked-out, most
anxiety-inducing series
on TV. B y B E N A L L E N
ITTLE ABOUT INDUSTRY,
L
the least BBC show the
BBC has ever aired,
should work. It’s a work-
place drama that dropped
during the pandemic, when the very
notion of the workplace lay in tatters.
A show about careerist tenacity set in
an era in which, as Kim Kardashian
said, “It seems like nobody wants
to work.” One led by Gen-Zers but
pitched at FT readers (and quite suc-
cessfully, at that).
Its core characters are City of
London bankers, who, post-pandemic
and mid-cost of living crisis, are less
relatable than ever. “All of the people
in this world are incredibly selfish,”
Marisa Abela, who plays Yasmin, one
of the show’s ascendant leads, says.
Plunging the depths of the UK’s vacant,
hyper-capitalist soul, it forces us to
confront society’s flaws head-on when
the news is doing a pretty decent job of
that already.
“It shines a light on a pretty dark
part of the human psyche,” series
co-writer Mickey Down says. “I think
people don’t like to think that people
like that actually exist, or it makes
people think weirdly about their own
motivations and who they are.”
But somehow, Industry, which is
written by former bankers and first-
time showrunners Down and Konrad
Kay, has emerged as the defining
show of the year, and perhaps one of
the sharpest cultural reflections of
4 4 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
modern Britain. With a knockout sec-
ond season that digs into cronyism in
politics and the ways in which the uber-
wealthy profited from the pandemic, it
has solidified its place as Succession’s
successor. Not just because it centres
around moneyed sociopaths talking in
grey meeting rooms, but for the ines-
capable humanity of even its most rid-
icule-worthy characters, and layered,
propulsive storytelling that makes
House of the Dragon look dull. Put sim-
ply: it’s really fucking good telly.
If you’ve not yet caught the series,
a quick briefing: Industry follows
four Gordon Gekko wannabes in their
early 20s at fictional London bank
Pierpoint: nepo-baby Yasmin (Abela),
old Etonian Gus (David Jonsson),
cokey-but-kind Rob (Harry Lawtey)
and Harper (Myha’ la Herrold), a
dogged American who forges a col-
lege degree to land her position and,
we quickly learn, will throw just about
anyone under the bus to get ahead.
Only one of that lot is a white man –
a point that the show refuses to labour.
Instead, it smartly pokes and prods at
the prickly dichotomy between race
and class.
“I think the show does a good job by
highlighting that the element of race
isn’t entirely forgotten about because
class is the biggest issue,” says Herrold,
who, like Harper, was a New Yorker
fish-out-of-watering it in the UK. Gus,
a gay Black man born into great privi-
lege, is perhaps indicative of that. “I’m
an East London boy, we don’t come
from anything near where Gus comes
from,” Jonsson says. “So to read that in
a script felt to me like, I’ve never seen
this before.” And yet, Gus faces similar
struggles to Harper: the need to prove
himself that bit more than his white
peers. “You can easily play the truth
of it, that he was born into [immense
privilege]. But he’s still a young Black
man. And that comes with its own
set of rules.”
In season one’s first episode (which,
not for nothing, was directed by Lena
Dunham), the four grads look like
children in their parents’ suits playing
office, craving to be taken seriously.
When they’re not having sex with each
other, they’re stabbing one another
in the back. But as they settle into
the cutthroat environment (early on,
a fellow trainee dies of exhaustion),
they mature quickly, weaving through
dubiously-motivated mentors, several
“It shines a light on a pretty dark part
of the human psyche. I think people
don’t like to think that people like
that actually exist.”
counts of sexual harrassment and more
than a few fuck-ups.
When I spoke to real-life bankers
for GQ when Industry first dropped in
late 2020, one told me they “felt sick”
watching it for the memories of bul-
lying and sleep-shattering pressure it
stirred, for all its realism. The darkest
turns see these wide-eyed young people
being corrupted by power in real-time.
They’re encouraged to leverage sexual
assault for professional advancement,
and sweep harrassment under the
carpet because, well, they might get a
bigger bonus next year.
The young trainees’ impostor syn-
drome was a key part of that first sea-
son, and it was reflective of how the
fresh-out-of-drama-school cast really
felt. “We were just raring to go – really
scared, but excited, and hungry to
make something good,” Lawtey says.
The writers, still very fresh to TV, were
also feeling their way through the dark-
ness, yet they were refreshingly open
and collaborative with their stars, giv-
ing each actor plenty of wriggle room
in the material to make their creations
feel whole.
“On the page, Harper seemed a bit
more outwardly nervous, like sweaty
palms, you know what I mean?” says
Herrold. “I just thought, I can’t imagine
being that person and showing up to
this place with so much to lose and
letting anybody know that I’m nerv-
ous. So I took that outward expression
and made that her inner life and then
G R O O M I N G F O R D AV I D J O N S S O N , A N YA M C D E V I T T. B A R B E R , J H A M A L J AY. P H OTO G R A P H E D AT T H E M A I N E , M AY FA I R .
chose this defence mechanism, a sort
of facade around the way she presented
herself at work.”
When the first series dropped simul-
taneously on the BBC and HBO in the
US, it took a while to build up steam,
ultimately finding a modest but keen
audience via streaming. The surest sign
of its cult following was the widespread
clamouring over a purple hoodie,
branded with Pierpoint’s logo, which
became one of the ultimate menswear
grails of the pandemic. “ It wouldn’t
look out of place on Balenciaga’s run-
way among the label’s post-apocalyptic
officewear,” said Dazed at the time.
Much of the press around the show
(there has been a lot of it) zoned in on
its proliferation of sex and drugs. And,
sure, it has a lot more ketamine and
shagging than your average BBC/HBO
co-production, plus the occasional veer
into the truly shocking (such as when
Yasmin makes Rob eat his own semen,

GOING OUT-OUT
No longer confined to our
houses, this is the first
party season where we’ve
got to actually, er, party.
Giorgio Armani crushed
velvet it is.
Shirt, £390, by
Giorgio Armani.
Trousers,
£1,340, by
Canali.
GQ World
Culture
or when Rob gets coke blown up his
backside at the Christmas party).
But in reality, those elements form
a small part of the tapestry, and Kay
and Down’s ultimate aim is to portray
accurately the industry and the young
staff at its core. The sex scenes, for their
part, are far from voyeuristic, but often
deeply unsexy and transactional, such
as when one Pierpoint worker has sex
with another in a dingy toilet cubicle
and upon finishing prematurely, tells
her he did it “to get the poison out”.
“Nothing good ever comes from anyone
having sex on this show,” says Abela.
BY PRETTY MUCH every metric, the sec-
ond season is superior to what came
before, with the creative team on both
sides of the camera settling into their
roles. “I think in every department
it’s a more mature show,” Lawtey
says. Herrold agrees, “Most of us have
worked in between, so we’ve got more
experience, we’ve got years under our
belt, we all grew up and gained a lot of
self-assuredness on our own.”
When we are dropped back into life at
Pierpoint at the beginning of season two,
the pandemic is in Q4 of its life-cycle,
and workers are being urged to return
to the office after a year-and-a-half out of
it (it smacks of late 2021, but the actual
date isn’t specified). It is arguably the
first show to get the pandemic right,
fast-forwarding through the uninterest-
ing bits of isolation to the point where
we all returned to our sad little desks,
a little more fucked-up than we were 18
months before. In one scene, Yas exposes
her plushy but hollow lockdown exist-
ence in a rant about her quest to find
the perfect pair of white pyjamas. “If the
universe didn’t hear her talking about
those pyjamas, maybe her dad would
never have cut her off,” Abela jokes.
Most impressively, Kay and Down
manage to expound upon season one’s
most intriguing ideas, about banks as
rotting institutions emblematic of a
nation on its knees, of deep-set priv-
ilege and its reverberations, and how
bad behaviour bleeds down from gen-
eration to generation.
Perhaps the most surprising and
successful story arc belongs to Gus.
Outside the bank in season two,
he takes up part-time jobs with a
government minister and as a tutor for
the son of hedge fund manager Jesse
Bloom, a newly-minted billionaire.
In a scene that Down and Kay had to
D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 4 5

GQ World
Culture
fight HBO to keep, Gus greases the
already sweaty palm of an Oxford pol-
itics professor with the promise of a
government internship programme
in order to get Bloom’s son into the
college. “We really think that the Gus
storyline, even though it’s quite light-
touch compared to the other stuff, feels
the truest and most quintessentially
British,” Kay says.
A few weeks after season two
dropped, Industry was renewed for a
third outing. But unlike many shows
with such voracious critical acclaim,
it never felt like a given. There’s a dis-
connect, Kay says, between the amount
of people that talk about the show and
the amount who watch it. “I think it’ll
never break through into mainstream
4 6 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
culture,” he says. “And in some ways it’s
a bit of a shame that more people won’t
see it. But the people who love it seem
to really evangelise about it.”
Abela, Herrold, Lawtey and Jonsson
are all learning this firsthand. Herrold’s
DMs are full of messages from Black
women in banking. “They’re like, ‘This
is me. Thank you for making it complex
and real and not being prescriptive
about how people are supposed to feel
about this person in finance.’”
Lawtey tells a story of someone
approaching him in a public toilet a
few days before we spoke. “He said,
‘This is like a scene from the show’. And
I was like, ‘I’m just washing my hands!”
Whether or not Industry does ever
ascend to Game of Thrones-levels
P H O T O G R A P H
S T Y L E D
DISCO INFERNO
Studio 54 is back, as are
sequins, retrofuture fits
and a dangerous amount
of hairspray. Freak out.
Dress, £4,000,
by Miu Miu.
Shoes, £675,
by Manolo
Blahnik.
Jewellery,
stylist’s own.
M A K E U P F O R M Y H A’ L A H E R R O L D, T I M M A C K AY @ T H E O N LY. H A I R ST Y L I ST, N A E E M A H L A F O N D AT T H E WA L L G R O U P U S I N G A M I K A . P H OTO G R A P H E D AT T H E STA N D A R D, E A ST V I L L A G E , N E W YO R K .
of attention, its legacy – as the new
template for workplace drama and
launchpad for a generation of talent
– feels secure. While the young cast
aren’t about to trade their BAFTA
memberships for Goldman Sachs
lanyards, they’ve all developed an
appreciation and an understanding
of the stresses and strains involved
in banking.
“I never understood really what
was required of a person to be in
this environment,” Herrold says. “So
I have a deep appreciation for how hard
their jobs and lives are. But it’s still:
fuck capitalism!”
ben allen is gq’s Associate
Digital Editor.
B Y S I N N A N A S S E R I
B Y M A R I O N K E L L Y
TISSOT prx 35 mm
A SWISS MADE THROWBACK TO A FLAGSHIP
TISSOT DESIGN FROM 1978

TI S S OT WATC H E S .CO M
 GOWN JEWELS
NEW TOY Lounging on a sofa in
GQ World Teddy bears for Christmas a Dolce & Gabbana
as a kid; teddy bears for dressing gown, you are
Drops Christmas as a big kid. not hungover. You are
And now, they’re crystal- a Miami club tycoon.
embellished, turned into You are drinking Krug
a pendant,º and carrying from the bottle. You are
Vivienne Westwood’s DJ Khaled (£950).
big magic orb (£210).

BIG READ
A bible for the Palace
faithful, nerd out on a
select archive of the cult
brand’s outré product
descriptions (£34.95).

SCENTS CHECK
Buying someone a
fragrance is a gamble,
but Amaffi’s punchy
lavender and artemisia
Place Your Bets scent
has some very good odds TOP-SPEC DRYER
(£3,000). From the good people at
Dyson comes the most
powerful hair dryer in
the biz: fast-drying plus
heat control intelligence
equals a really banging
hair day all week (£360).

LIGHTERS UP
No Bics in this house.
Instead, it’s a classic GYM FLEX
gold-plated lighter You can do a downward
that nods to Dunhill’s dog, sure. But have you
heritage as a tobacconist done it on a Giorgio
for fancy men who Armani yoga mat
smoked pipes in work made from eco-friendly
meetings (£1,495). leather? Nah, didn’t think
so (£1,000).

FACE MASSAGER
Pummelling your face
with a battery-operated
mini boxer from HOT SAUCE
TheraFace Pro Chrome Hearts is the
might not sound all that cult brand that decked
appealing, but it feels out the interior of Drake’s
damn good – and does Rolls-Royce in custom-
damn good – at the end branded leather. These
of a long work day (£375). ketchup and mustard
squirters come in at a
CRAFT GRAIL
little less (price upon
The GOAT. The BOTA. The
request at Selfridges).
boss. Before the Birkin,
the Haut à Courroies was
Hermès’ It-bag, and
this reissue will sell out
equally fast. Cop one
if you can (£17,000).

GLASS CANDY
A fine whisky (Macallan,
P H O T O G R A P H S
Lagavulin, Dalmore et al)
B Y M I T C H deserves a decanter and
P A Y N E glasses to match. Enter
MUSIC BOX designer to the five-star
S T Y L E D B Y
Martin Luther once said hotels, Tom Dixon (£225).
A N G E L O that music is a gift from
M I T A K O S A N D God. We’ve no proof, but
I T U N U O K E it sounds like pure heaven
from a bass-heavy Bose
Beosound speaker (£1,399).

4 8 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
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Thought Rimowa was all about carry-on luggage and Dior collabs?
The label also pops off with its own bottle case. Fill with Veuve, and
plenty of it (12-bottle case, £6,830. Rosé Champagne, £51).

COLLAB BAG
A Dior holdall is one thing. A green and gold one found at the Fabulous
World Of Dior at Harrods? Your gym bag could never (£2,450).

CITY
RIDER
The London Underground has its perks,
as does a cab. But neither come close
to the smooth ride of a VanMoof bike
on a crisp morning (£2,248).

D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 5 1
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and other TM are trademarks of Signet or its licensors.

Is This the First Smartwatch
for Horology Fans?
Apple’s rugged new Ultra targets lovers of mechanical watches,
but the best things about it are entirely digital. B y N I C K F O U L K E S
ARLIER THIS AUTUMN,
E
when it released its
Ultra, Apple did more
than simply put out
a new timepiece: The
company took its first truly momen-
tous step forward with its watch since
debuting it back in 2014. This was a
watch designed to appeal to mechan-
ical-watch aficionados. Not that the
previous iteration didn’t suit their
smartwatch needs, but, viewed horo-
logically, Ultra features many of the
characteristics found in a classic tool
watch: the larger case size and crown;
activity-specific bands (elastomer for
diving, woven textile for climbing);
and a fortress-like construction with a
titanium case to protect the glass and
crown guards.
COURTESY OF APPLE.
The redesign is radical, and cer-
tainly newly alluring for Rolex fans,
but Ultra’s best attribute is that it runs
on software. Which means it can be
truly multifunctional while still being
smartly and beautifully crafted. In
short, it does things that no conven-
tional tool watch can.
Apple’s Alan Dye, vice president of
human interface design, told me that
the company was inspired by historic
watches that were purpose-built for
adventure. But it realised that a big
virtue of the Ultra is that it can be so
many different things at once. “We
don’t need to confine ourselves to
experiences for a single-use case,” he
says. “The user can configure it to be
the ultimate watch face, for hiking and
orienteering, or running and diving.”
Or, for that matter, just a watch
face that is pleasing to look at. The
world-time dial, for instance, which
has a map of Europe and Africa,
adopts a visual language pioneered
by Patek Philippe with its Heures
Universelles watches, first produced
in the ’30s. This intricate face design
is now familiar to modern wearers
of Vacheron Constantin’s Heures du
Monde and Montblanc’s Star Legacy
Orbis Terrarum, among many others.
D E C
GQ World
Watches
And it can be seen on the wrists of
Apple fans for a fraction of the cost –
and to much greater effect, thanks to
the Ultra’s 49-mm screen.
Historically, Apple’s product
designers have favoured doing away
with buttons, but Ultra is in part
defined by the addition of a new, cus-
tomisable Action button. As Evans
Hankey, vice president of indus-
trial design at Apple, explains, it
“allows for quick access to a variety
of capabilities that accommodate all
sorts of activities.” It also contains
updated hardware functions that set
a new standard for the wristwatch
as an essential safety device – like
car-crash-detection hardware and the
86-decibel emergency siren.
Hankey describes Ultra as a sort
of wrist-worn guardian angel. “As
we near almost a decade with Apple
Watch, we have learned about the
pivotal role Apple Watch has played
in the lives and health of our custom-
ers and their families,” she says. “It
provides an enormous peace of mind
around health and wellness, especially
around heart health.” Ultra will notify
you if your heart rate is too low, too
high, irregular, or if you just aren’t
doing enough cardio.
In conceiving Ultra, Apple went
beyond the confines of its Cupertino,
California HQ. “Research included
meeting with modern-day explorers,
ultra athletes, biologists, climate scien-
tists, filmmakers, cyclists, and divers,”
says Hankey. However diverse their
disciplines, it seemed, they shared the
same goal. “An underlying theme that
echoed throughout our discussions
was that, rather than being motivated
by personal glory, each of them seemed
driven by their relationship with our
planet.” Ultra is infinitely customisa-
ble, but it launched with three essen-
tial activity-based profiles – the hiker,
the endurance runner, and the under-
water explorer.
While it may seem counterintuitive,
what makes the Apple Watch so appeal-
ing to mechanical-watch enthusiasts
is not the more overt references to
mechanical watches – at least not for
this watch enthusiast. Watches that
achieve greatness serve as excellent
tools, with pleasing design and a strong
identity. With Ultra, Apple has earned
that distinction.
2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 5 5
This fleece
has roots.
Unmistakable 90s heritage, ultra-soft
comfort. The High-Pile Denali Jackets
are made with 100% recycled
polyester fleece – they’re icons, evolved.
 GQ World
Culture

Joseph Quinn’s
Upside-Down Year
GROOMING BY BRADY LEE.

He’s gone from hustling for bit parts to playing

a beloved character in one of the biggest shows
on TV, thirsted after by fans and fellow celebrities
alike. Inside the surreal year of 2022’s buzziest
British breakout. B y J A C K K I N G

P H O T O G R A P H S B Y B E N P A R K S
S T Y L E D B Y F A B I O I M M E D I A T O D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 5 7
 GQ World
Culture

HEN JOSEPH QUINN took p r e v i o u s pa g e Sadly we’ve never got to work together, reuniting with Colman; under Steve

W
the call that would come Jacket, £239, but we’ve always stayed close.” McQueen in the first part of his criti-
shirt, £99,
to change his life for Quinn’s early luck with Dickensian, cally acclaimed anthology film series,
fragrance, £86,
good, he was standing Boss Bottled as it turns out, was a touch premature; Small Axe. “I’ve been so lucky that I’ve
in his kitchen in South parfum, by after that show ran its course, Quinn not had to graft, and wait tables, and do
London. His agent was on the other Boss. didn’t work for nearly a year. But an the traditional catering jobs in between
end of the phone. “He called me, like, t h i s pa g e
influx of parts eventually came his to keep the lights on,” Quinn says. “I’ve
‘Who’s that?’ And I was like, ‘What Shirt, £500, way: first a gig as a Stark soldier in an been fortunate enough, and savvy
do you mean?’ So he goes, ‘I’m sorry, by Gucci. episode of Game of Thrones, then, sud- enough with my money just about,
is that Eddie from Stranger Things?’” Trousers, £924, denly, a job on stage opposite Olivia when things are looking a bit bleak,
Quinn recalls. “I literally fell to my loafers, £650, Colman at the National Theatre. “He to book another gig. And that keeps
by Dolce &
knees. Like, What? Are you sure? It is utterly joyful, naughty, and fun,” the wolves from the door.” It was
Gabbana.
felt like it’d just fallen out of the fuck- Colman says of Quinn. “He puts the around the time of the London Film
ing sky.” It was November 2019. Only o p p o s i t e pa g e work in. You know you’re in safe hands.” Festival premiere of his first major
three weeks prior, in the very same Blazer, £2,360, A steady trickle of work followed: indie film, the psychosexual slow-
shirt, £500,
flat, he’d recorded his first self-tape trousers, £890,
BBC’s Howards End mini series, oppo- burner Make Up, that he sent in his
for the hit Netflix series with the help boots, £1,230, site Matthew Macfadyen; as the tragic Stranger Things audition tape.
of his then-girlfriend and flatmate. by Gucci. revolutionary Enjolras in the Beeb’s A few days after the call came in,
“Obviously, at that point, I’m just fuck- not-a-musical adaptation of Les Mis, he met the sibling duo who puppeteer
ing suspicious about the whole thing.
This never happens. And here we are.”
Flash forward to today: after storm-
ing into the public consciousness as the “I literally fell to my knees.
sci-fi throwback’s latest anointed break-
out, starring as punkish pariah Eddie
Like, What? Are you sure?
Munson in Stranger Things series four, It felt like it’d just fallen out
the 28-year-old has just flown out to LA
for the third time in his what-the-fuck of the fucking sky.”
year. It’s a rhythm he’s still very much
getting used to. Resultantly, we’re chat-
ting over Zoom, myself in London’s Mile
End, a short swim down the Thames
from the unassuming world of his ado-
lescence. “I love South London. I still
live there – you get accused of heresy
if you leave,” he jokes. “I might want
to branch out somewhere different,
because you don’t want to feel stagnant.
But my life’s there: I went to school
there, it’s where I met all of my friends.”
He scored his first job, on the 2015
TV drama Dickensian, in his third year
at LAMDA (“I was a jammy fucker,”
he says), the hallowed Hammersmith
drama school where British acting
royalty – Cumberbatch, Cox, Ejiofor –
cut their teeth. It was while he was
in his graduating class, in fact, that he
met Fabien Frankel, then a first year,
now enjoying his own rise apropos of
the Game of Thrones spin-off House
of the Dragon.
“It’s fucking hilarious,” Quinn says
of Frankel’s new-found stardom.
“We’ve shared similar anxieties about
the ridiculousness of our situations.”
The two are good friends; Frankel, for
his part, brims with praise. “As much
as it pains me to say, he was always just
a brilliant actor,” he says of Quinn.
“There was always some magic on stage.

5 8 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
GQ World
Culture
GQ World
Culture
 Coat, £3,200,
shirt, £1,950,
trousers,
£1,300, by
Prada.
Shoes, £980,
by Church’s.

D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 6 1
ALL NEW
RENAULT
MEGANE
100% electric
E-TECH

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 GQ World
Culture

“One moment, you’re fine, and then

the show drops. It’s on in millions
and millions of houses. After that,
it just kind of snowballs.”
Stranger Things, the Duffer brothers,
over Skype. “They were very nice, and
very kind,” Quinn remembers. “I was
very disarmed by the whole thing.
Kind of like, ‘Are you sure?’ And they
said, ‘Yeah, we really want you to do
it.’” In total, 287 actors read for the part,
according to the Duffers, who describe
the process as one of the longest casting
searches they’ve ever had. “At one point,
we remember getting nervous,” they say.
Munson was abrasive and unlikeable on
the page; they needed him to be lovable,
without wanting to be loved. That con-
fluence of traits seemed an impossible
bullseye, until Quinn’s reels arrived.
“Joe was hilarious and charming, but
with an unpredictable, wild edge about
him,” they recall. It was a no-brainer.
The call was a formality. “He’s a direc-
tor’s dream because he takes what’s on
the page and sprints with it.”
Quinn’s anecdotes from those early
days are cut with the sincere self-dep-
recation you might expect of a guy still
scrambling to catch up with his own
ascent. This is the stuff that Faustian
bargains are made of, after all: over
a billion hours’ worth of Stranger Things
series four was watched within the first
month of release. That’s a lot of eyeballs.
“I was talking to Dan Cohen, the [exec-
utive] producer of Stranger Things,
about it,” he says. “He talked about the
over-nightness of these experiences now,
with these streaming platforms. One
moment you’re fine, and then it drops.
It’s on in millions and millions of houses.
After that, it just kind of snowballs.”
The first table read came next. “It
was a very weird experience. I was
sat next to the lovely Jamie Campbell
Bower, who’s had experience in these
bigger shows before,” he remembers.
“Obviously, because everything has to
be documented on this show, they were
filming the table read to keep the fans
satiated. The setup was that the pre-ex-
isting cast were on a very long table,
and we were behind them, being kept
secret from the cameras. We were shout-
ing, delivering the lines to the back
of the cast’s heads, which felt very odd.”
Both he and Campbell Bower, as Quinn
recalls, were “shitting it”. Following that,
he had weeks of fittings, kitting him out
in the idiosyncratic metalhead threads

D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 6 3
 GQ World
Culture
“People will weave narratives about
you that aren’t true. If you’re going
to correct people constantly,
you’re going to end up exhausted.”
that form Munson’s outcast armour. He
had his first day of shooting, and then…
whiplash. “[Stranger Things co-direc-
tor] Shawn Levy came out at the end
of the day and said we’re going into…
a lockdown of some kind,” he says.
“A hiatus of two weeks. Which would’ve
been nice.” It would be another six
months before Quinn returned to set.
What felt to him like a decade later,
the show finally bowed to the masses.
He watched the Stranger Things series
four finale, wherein Munson goes out
with self-sacrificial aplomb, with his
little sister, dad, and his dad’s wife.
Do they treat him differently now?
“No, definitely within your immediate
circle you hope nothing changes. It’s
a very weird thing to comment on… [if ]
6 4 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N
you take into consideration the actual
fucking fresh hell that people are
going through now, it feels like an arbi-
trary thing to feel threatened by,” he
says. “Eighty percent of it is amazing.
Professionally, 100 percent is amazing.
20 percent of it is… fucking bizarre.”
Somewhere within that 20 percent:
the online drama between co-star Noah
Schnapp and Doja Cat soon after the
season aired, when the former publicly
shared a DM from the rapper asking
Schnapp to play Cupid between her
and Quinn. “I’m kind of hesitant to
talk about it really, because I didn’t
do anything,” Quinn notes. “It’s not
something that I put out into the world.
But I do think she’s an incredible artist.
It’s flattering.” This intrusive level of
2 0 2 3
public scrutiny obviously comes part
and parcel with sudden, incandescent
fame. The tyranny of Instagram gossip
and fans reading telescopic paparazzi
photos like tea leaves are the unfortu-
nate by-products of being at the top of
the screen-acting game. Nevertheless,
it must be difficult to adjust to. “People
will weave narratives about you that
p r e v i o u s pa g e aren’t true, I guess,” he says. “And
Coat, £1,970, I think accepting your powerlessness
Jil Sander by over that [is best]. If you’re going to
Lucie and Luke
Meier. T-shirt,
correct people constantly, you’re going
£7.90, by to end up exhausted.”
Uniqlo. Hat, But being famous, a term he loathes
£325, by Lock to use for himself, isn’t all bad. Take
& Co. Hatters. the sudden groundswell of cultish
t h i s pa g e Munsonmania, perhaps no better
Jacket, £1,400, demonstrated than at London Film
trousers, £725, and Comic Con this summer. “It was
by Etro. Shirt, the first time I’d ever encountered
£99, by Boss.
Boots, £1,750,
the fandom,” he recalls. There were
by Dior. rumours that Quinn was “mistreated”
by the staff during a meet and greet,
blindsided by the sheer number
of Munsonites, but he was quick to
debunk them, a point he reiterates
now. “It was very overwhelming.
 GQ World
Culture

I don’t think the Con were prepared

for the numbers. I certainly wasn’t.”
In a viral video widely shared online at
the time, a fan expressed their impas-
sioned gratitude: for Quinn’s time at
the Con, for bringing Munson to life.
Quinn seemed emotionally over-
whelmed, dabbing away tears with the
inside of his elbow, barely conjuring
a murmur. An outsider might con-
clude this to be the moment that the
pin dropped. “I don’t want to sound too
saccharine about it, but it is moving,”
he says. “If you have a curiosity about
people and storytelling, for a character
you’ve created with the help of others…
for that to resonate with people, it feels
very profound, you know?”
And then there are the holy-shit
moments. First up: in late July,
he made his chat-show debut on
Jimmy Fallon, though that came within
a whisker of being cancelled. “I was
sick before I went on,” he says. “I stu-
pidly had oysters for lunch on the day,
thinking that I needed some vigour and
vitality and that’d get me through it.”
Turns out his mind was playing tricks:
that stir in the pit of his gut was the
product of acute anxiety, per the show’s
backstage nurse. But he still went on.
He met Kevin Hart, “a consummate
pro,” in the green room backstage. “The
nerves just bounce off him, I think,
whereas they were just leaving bullet
holes in me,” Quinn says. A month
before our interview, he was named “If you have a curiosity about people
one of Variety’s 10 Actors to Watch for
2022. Patton Oswalt introduced him- and storytelling, to have your
self to Quinn at the swanky brunch
coronation thereafter. “He just feels so
character resonate with anyone
many miles away from my life. For him feels very profound, you know?”
to come up to me was very weird.”
Stratospheric parts like Eddie
Munson are a “lottery ticket,” as Quinn Jumper, £1,050, Really though: Bond? “I think I’d him to overstay his welcome,” he con-
puts it. And at the end of it all, he’s shirt, £680, be fucking stupid to say no to that,” he tinues, ever the diplomat, seemingly
effectively coming away with a blank by Dior. says, laughing. “But, come on, it’s not wary of disappointing the legion of fans
check. Is he going to put his energy into even worth entertaining.” who made him. But a sense of certitude
indie roles, like the drama he finished Even that is on the presumption undergirds his prudence; the feeling
shooting over the summer, Hoard, that Munson’s Stranger Things jour- that, after years of cohabitation, he’s
or is he marching up to the Broccolis ney is over. “Yeah, I’ve said I don’t know ready to let Munson go.
to demand Bond? “Yeah, I’ve just got because I really don’t know,” Quinn “He did the job that the Duffers
off a Zoom with Barbara, actually…” he says. “Shawn Levy has said it publicly. wanted him to do,” Quinn says. “By
jokes. “I don’t know. It’s such a fucking I think [his return] would be very, very, no means am I ruling it out. That’s
cliché, but it’s about connection to the very unlikely. He seems pretty fucking a decision for the grown-ups to make.
material. With Hoard, I’m specifically dead to me,” he says, punctuated by But Stranger Things was doing fine
excited for the director, Luna Carmoon, a sharp chortle. He takes a moment. without Eddie. I think they’ll be fine
and the lead, Saura Lightfoot Leon. “It’s just a beautifully written arc. The next season without him, too.”
That’s a lovely experience, completely beginning, middle and end is so power-
different to these behemoth sets. But ful as it stands, so I think to just crowbar jack king is a freelance culture writer
you want range.” A judicious answer. him into a narrative… you don’t want for British GQ.

6 6 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
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THIAGO ALCANTARA
 GQ World
Culture

It’s been 13 years since

James Cameron released
Avatar, the highest-grossing
film of all time. Now, the
director is back with
a deeply personal sequel –
Cameron on a prop
jet boat at the New
and the reasonable
Zealand studio where expectation that it could be
he shot Avatar: the biggest thing he’s done
The Way of Water. yet. B y Z A C H B A R O N

P H O T O G R A P H S B Y L E V O N B A I R D D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 7 1
 GQ World
Culture
FTER JAMES CAMERON’S Avatar
A
came out in 2009 and made £2.4
billion, the director found the
deepest point that exists in all
of Earth’s oceans and, in time,
he dove to it. When Cameron reached the bot-
tom of the Mariana Trench, a couple of hun-
dred miles off the southwest coast of Guam,
in March 2012, he became the first person in
history to descend the 6.8-mile distance solo,
and one of only a few people to ever go that
deep. Since then, others have followed – most
prominently, a private-equity titan and for-
mer Naval Reserve intelligence officer turned
explorer named Victor Vescovo – but Cameron
is adamant that none have surpassed him.
Vescovo, Cameron told me, “claimed he went
deeper, but you can’t. So he’s basically just
making shit up.”
As people sometimes do in response to
Cameron’s stories, Vescovo disagrees – “I have
a different scientific perspective,” he told
me, diplomatically – but even he is a fan of
Cameron’s films. Like Cameron, Vescovo has
made multiple dives to the wreck of the Titanic,
and while returning from one of them, he
emailed Cameron. “I said, ‘I watched Titanic at
the Titanic.’ And he actually replied: ‘Yeah, but
I made Titanic at the Titanic.’ ”
It is perhaps illustrative of Cameron’s gifts
as a filmmaker that even his most determined
rivals will admit that Cameron has written
and directed some of the most successful films
of all time. It would be fair to call him the
father of the modern action movie, which he
helped invent with his debut, The Terminator,
and then reinvent with his second, Aliens. It
would be accurate to add that he has directed
two of the three top-grossing films in history,
in Avatar (number one) and Titanic (number
three). But he is also a scientist – a camera he
helped design served as the model for one that
is currently on Mars, attached to the Mars
rover – and an adventurer, and not in the dilet-
tante billionaire sense; when Cameron sets out
to do something, it gets done. “The man was
born with an explorer’s instincts and capacity,”
Daniel Goldin, the former head of NASA, told
me. Sometimes, Cameron seems like a man
in search of a problem to solve, or a deadly
experience to survive, but he is emphatic that
there is a purpose to the challenges he takes on.
Cameron says the ideas for Avatar originally
came to him in a dream: “I have my own
private streaming service that’s better
than any of that shit out there. And it runs
every night for free.”
7 2 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
“There’s plenty of dangerous things that I won’t
go near because they’re dangerous, but they
have a randomness factor to them,” Cameron
said. “Whitewater rafting? Fuck that.”
This month, Disney will release Avatar:
The Way of Water. It’s the first feature
Cameron has directed in 13 years, and the first
of four planned Avatar sequels. The movie is
about family. Many of the main characters
from the first film are back, but older and
with kids to take care of. “What do two charac-
ters who are warriors, who take chances and
have no fear, do when they have children and
they still have the epic struggle?” Cameron,
a father of five, posited. “Their instinct is
to be fearless and do crazy things. Jump off
cliffs, dive-bomb into the middle of an enemy
armada, but you’ve got kids. What does that
look like in a family setting?” Among other
things, Cameron said, The Way of Water
would be a friendly but pointed rebuke to the
comic book blockbusters that now war with
Cameron’s films at the top of the box office
lists: “I was consciously thinking to myself,
Okay, all these superheroes, they never have
kids. They never really have to deal with
the real things that hold you down and give
you feet of clay in the real world.” Sigourney
Weaver, who starred in the first Avatar as
a human scientist and returns for The Way
of Water as a Na’vi teenager, told me that the
parallels between the life of the director and
the life of his characters were far from acci-
dental: “Jim loves his family so much, and
I feel that love in our film. It’s as personal
a film as he’s ever made.”
The original Avatar – a brightly coloured
dream of a movie, set in the year 2154, about
an ex-Marine falling in love with a blue, nine-
foot-tall princess on a foreign moon, Pandora,
which is being invaded and stripped of its
natural resources – required the invention
of dozens of new technologies, from the cam-
eras Cameron shot with, to the digital effects
he used to transform human actors into ani-
mated creatures, and the language those crea-
tures spoke in the film. For The Way of Water,
Cameron told me, he and his team started all
over again. They needed new cameras that
could shoot underwater and a motion-capture
system that could collect separate shots from
above and below water and integrate them
into a unified virtual image; they needed new
algorithms, new AI, to translate what Cameron
shot into what you see.
Nothing would work the first time Cameron
and the production tried it. Or the second.
Or usually the third. One day in Wellington,
New Zealand, where Cameron was finishing
the film, he showed me a single effects shot,
numbered 405. “That means there’s been 405
versions of this before it gets to me,” he said.
Cameron has been working on the movie since
2013; it was due out years ago. In September,
he still wasn’t done. The Way of Water was
expensive to make. How expensive? “Very
fucking,” according to Cameron, who told me
he’d informed the studio that the film repre-
sented “the worst business case in movie his-
tory.” In order to be profitable, he’d said, “you
have to be the third or fourth highest-grossing
film in history. That’s your threshold. That’s
your break even.”
But as Cameron worked late into the
evening, day after day, solving the infinite
problems that The Way of Water continued
to present, he seemed to be enjoying himself.
“I like difficult,” he told me. “I’m attracted by
difficult. Difficult is a fucking magnet for me.
I go straight to difficult. And I think it proba-
bly goes back to this idea that there are lots of
smart, really gifted, really talented filmmakers
out there that just can’t do the difficult stuff.
So that gives me a tactical edge to do some-
thing nobody else has ever seen, because the
really gifted people don’t fucking want to do it.”
CAMERON A N D H I S fifth wife, Suzy Amis
Cameron, live in New Zealand, where they’ve
owned a 5,000-acre farm east of Wellington
since 2011 – ocean on one side, lake on the
other, mountains in the distance. They grow
hemp and organic vegetables. “I’ve never
really checked this out,” Cameron said, “but
I’m told we’re the biggest supplier of organic
brassicas” – a category of plant that includes
broccoli, kale, cauliflower – “in New Zealand,
which is a niche of a niche, granted.” For
a while, Cameron attempted an experimental
agricultural project, taking 25 acres of trees
and intercropping between them, producing
“143 different species of fruit, different apples
and pears and berries.” But that proved unvi-
able, commercially. So he thought he’d just
open the land to the public. Civilians could
just wander in and eat, like Eden. “We could
probably feed a thousand people out of that
forest,” he told me. But then he realised there
was also a flaw in that plan; his food forest, far
from the nearest city, was nowhere close to the
people it was meant to feed. “You learn as you
go,” he said, shrugging.
In the early days of the pandemic, Cameron
and his wife gave up their home in Malibu and
became full-time residents. I asked Cameron if
it had been lonely, moving halfway around the
world. “I don’t have any friends, so it’s okay,” he
said, with only a hint of a smile.
Cameron’s Malibu compound was known
for its survivalist vibe: fast cars, a security
team trained in fighting wildfires, guns. But
assault rifles are banned in New Zealand, and
Cameron told me he perceives a less feral and
more collectivist spirit in his neighbours. In Los
Angeles, he’d had himself trained by one of the
best championship shooters in America. “He’s
the guy that taught Keanu Reeves how to be
John Wick. I was his first Hollywood contact.
I trained with him for three years. He didn’t
know anybody in Hollywood. A guy named
Taran Butler up in Simi Valley. And so I’m
a competition-grade shooter. But I don’t have to
worry about it here.”
Instead, at 68, Cameron rises at 4:45 a.m.,
often kickboxes in the mornings, and moves
between their farm and a modest home they
keep in Wellington, a windy, midsize city at
the southern end of New Zealand’s North
Island where the director Peter Jackson’s dig-
ital-effects company, Wētā FX, has long been
headquartered. When I visited, Cameron
was working out of one of Jackson’s facil-
ities, Park Road Post Production, in what
Cameron said he thought was Jackson’s old
office – burgundy couches and wood, bare
walls, paper everywhere. Like Jackson’s Lord
of the Rings trilogy before it, “Avatar’s a big
piece of business for the New Zealand gov-
ernment, but controversial with the citizens
here,” Cameron told me. “ ‘We’re handing out
millions to these foreigners to come.’ But for
every million they hand us, we bring eight or
nine million into the economy. So the govern-
ment sees the math, but the average person
needs it explained, which occasionally we
have to do.”
Cameron is proud to work at the biggest
scale possible – Terminator 2: Judgment Day,
True Lies, and Titanic were all among the
most expensive films ever made at the time
of their release. “And I used to be really defen-
sive about that because it was always the first
thing anybody would mention,” Cameron said.
“And now I’m like, if I can make a business
case to spend a billion dollars on a movie,
I will fucking do it. Do you want to know why?
Because we don’t put it all on a pile and light
it on fire. We give it to people.” That money
was going to be spent somewhere, Cameron
said. “If the studio agrees and thinks it’s a good
investment, as opposed to buying an oil lease
off of the north of Scotland, which somebody
would think was a good investment, why not
do it?” To date, all of his films have made their
money back, many of them spectacularly.
Self-doubt, in general, is not something
Cameron has a lot of experience with: “I don’t
think I’m hardwired with that. I don’t know
why. It sounds egotistical, but I think there’s
an innocence to it. I really do. I don’t think
it’s about, ‘Yeah, I think I’m better than you.’
I think it’s more just like, ‘Wow, that’s really
interesting. Let me just pursue that idea for
a while.’ ” Cameron, who grew up far from
Hollywood, first in Ontario, Canada, and
then later in Orange County, was always the
type of person whose confidence preceded
his achievements. As a scientifically inclined
child, he perceived himself as “different, but
happy about being different.”
It was while working as a lorry driver in
his 20s that Cameron decided to become
a filmmaker, and so he taught himself film-
making. He’d go to the library at the University
of Southern California, home of a vaunted
filmmaking program Cameron couldn’t afford.
“I’d find somebody’s 300-page dissertation on
optical printing,” Cameron said, “and I’d be
going through it and I’d think, Well, I got to
get this. So I’d pull the staples out and I’d pho-
tocopy the entire 300 pages. I basically gave
myself a college education in visual effects and
cinematography while I was driving a truck.”
The rest of the story is familiar Hollywood
lore: Cameron got hired by Roger Corman,
the B-movie master who helped start the
careers of everyone from Francis Ford Coppola
to Martin Scorsese, and worked his way up
as a model maker and a production designer.
The idea for The Terminator came to him
in a dream; so did the pivotal scene in his
second film, Aliens, when Ripley finds herself in
a silent room full of alien eggs and turns
around to see the alien queen.
Cameron has a rich dream life to this day,
he told me: “I have my own private stream-
ing service that’s better than any of that shit
out there. And it runs every night for free.”
Avatar, too, originally came to Cameron while
he was asleep. “I woke up after dreaming of
this kind of bioluminescent forest with these
trees that looked kind of like fibre-optic
lamps and this river that was glowing biolu-
minescent particles and kind of purple moss
on the ground that lit up when you walked
on it. And these kinds of lizards that didn’t
look like much until they took off. And then
they turned into these rotating fans, kind
of like living Frisbees, and they came down
and landed on something. It was all in the
dream. I woke up super excited and I actually
drew it. So I actually have a drawing. It saved
us from about 10 lawsuits. Any successful film,
there’s always some freak with tinfoil under
their wig that thinks you’ve beamed the idea
out of their head. And it turned out there were
10 or 11 of them. And so I pointed at this draw-
ing I did when I was 19, when I was going
to Fullerton Junior College, and said, ‘See
this? See these glowing trees? See this glow-
ing lizard that spins around, that’s orange?
See the purple moss?’ And everybody went
away.” Zoe Saldaña, who starred in the first
Avatar and returns for The Way of Water, and
who also works frequently in the Marvel uni-
verse, pointed out how comparatively unique
Cameron’s approach is in modern Hollywood.
The Marvel franchises are built by dozens
of comic book artists and writers and direc-
tors who work together to create stories. By
contrast, Avatar is the result of the vision of
a single man. “Without Jim’s heavy, heavy
brain,” she told me, “this would all fall apart.”
Corman, Cameron’s first mentor, was
famous for his ability to make films with lit-
tle money and fewer resources, and many of
Cameron’s predecessors and fellow auteurs
went on to do the same, directing small, per-
sonal films before they made giant ones. Even
George Lucas, before Star Wars, wrote and
directed American Graffiti. But for Cameron,
giant is personal; his dreams just happen to
D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 7 3

The real-life
deep-sea
explorer, inside
a vessel made
for his Avatar
films. Cameron
says he’s already
shot a third
Avatar movie
and portions of
a fourth.
be bigger. “I’m way over this whole thing, this
question that I get asked all the time,” he told
me. He affected the voice of an aggrieved film
nerd: “ ‘Don’t you want to just make a little
movie with just a couple of actors?’ It’s like:
Yeah, I make that movie every time I make
a big movie. On a given day I might be doing
a scene with two actors in a room, me hand-
holding the camera. How is that any different
than the smallest independent film? It’s just
that maybe the next day I’m doing a battle with
40,000 people. I like to do that too.”
WHEN CAMERON MOVES, he moves fast and
favours one side. When I asked him what he’d
done to give himself a limp, he looked at me
curiously. “I’ve got one short leg,” he said. “It
doesn’t slow me down any though. I remember
my first wife, when we were just first dating,
she said, ‘Walk ahead of me on the sidewalk.’
And I said, ‘Why?’ She said, ‘I want to study
your walk.’ And I turned around and I said,
‘Why?’ She said, ‘Well, I think I can correct it.’
Fuck you!”
One night, I followed a speeding Cameron
down a carpeted hallway into a darkened the-
atre where he was working on the sound mix
of The Way of Water. The room, littered with
half-eaten cheese plates and empty choco-
late-bar wrappers, looked like it had been lived
in for some time. Seven sound mixers manned
various computers and different sections of a
mixing board that stretched the width of the
theatre. Cameron was in the midst of work-
ing on a noisy interrogation scene. The film’s
composer, Simon Franglen, had already writ-
ten a score for the sequence, and Cameron and
his mixers were trying to balance the music
against the sound effects in various shots.
“Can you just play the effects by them-
selves?” Cameron asked.
7 4 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
A harsh sound emanated from the screen as
the scene rolled.
“We don’t want that,” Cameron said, recoil-
ing. “I don’t know what that is. That sounds
like a cart bumping on a bumpy road. Play me
solo what you are going to play against the
music. Does it have a name or a number?”
“We call it D-FX,” one of the mixers said.
“D-FX? That’s not very creative,” Cameron
said, dryly.
The scene continued, silently now.
“Something’s going on but we’re not hear-
ing it,” Cameron said.
The atmosphere in the room was uneasy.
Cameron turned to me. “I’m always telling
them there’s too many damn knobs,” he said.
“I mean you could run a starship with fewer
knobs than this.”
“Nothing is playing,” one of the mixers said,
audibly frustrated. “That’s bizarre.”
“This is just because a big-shot journal-
ist is watching,” Cameron said, again trying
to lighten the mood. “It’s classic observer
effect, right?” He turned to his team: “No pres-
sure, but…”
Cameron, in his nearly 40 years of film-
making, has earned a reputation for having
a temper. Some would say he’s earned this
reputation several times over. On more than
one Cameron set, crew members have taken
to wearing shirts that read: “You can’t scare
me – I work for Jim Cameron.” Cameron is well
aware of this. “I think there was a period of time
early on where that reputation worked in my
favour,” he told me later. “And it took on this
Paul Bunyan–esque, slightly larger-than-life
quality. And then there was a legitimate time
when I looked at like, ‘All right, why am I get-
ting so upset, and what is that solving?’ I’m not
saying I don’t get upset once in a while. I mean,
everybody, I think, is entitled to a bad day. But
whereas before, it might have been once every
couple of weeks, now it’s like twice a year.”
Cameron, despite his famous temper, has
always inspired loyalty; his obsessive focus
when he’s in the middle of making a film often
obscures the erudite and charming Canadian
he is when he’s not working. Weaver, who first
met Cameron when she starred in Aliens in
1986, told me: “It really wasn’t until we went
to Venice with Aliens for the film festival, when
I was sitting at dinner with him, and I went,
‘Jesus, you’re so funny! Where was this guy the
whole time?’ ” Others have sworn off work-
ing with the director only to return, like Kate
Winslet, who spoke wearily after the Titanic
shoot of her lack of fondness for Cameron’s
penchant for filming in water tanks. And yet
Winslet is not only in The Way of Water – she
learned to free dive for it, so that she could
shoot her scenes underwater. “I think she had
something to prove to herself,” Cameron said.
“And so, I mean, no extra charge for the ther-
apy, for the healing moment where she got to
hold her breath underwater for seven and a half
minutes and be the underwater queen.”
In the theatre, the sound mixers admitted
defeat. They’d have to reboot the board, try
again. Cameron took a deep breath and prom-
ised to return before he stood and headed to
another room in the facility, where a team from
Wētā and other members of the production
were working on the visual effects for the film.
“Okay, well, that was a total failure,” he said
to me outside.
Cameron walked unevenly down the car-
peted hallway to VFX, where a barefoot guy
named Eric Saindon, a visual-effects super-
visor at Wētā, was leading a Zoom meeting
full of visual-effects and animation techni-
cians. Saindon began cuing up various shots
from The Way of Water. The process for how
Cameron builds the Avatar films is complex;
it involves creating a data-rich but visually
undistinguished package that Cameron calls
a template – on which he captures the light-
ing, performances, and camera moves he
wants – which then gets handed over to Wētā
to apply algorithms and layers of animation to
bring the template to life. “It’s not animation in
a Pixar sense where they’re just making stuff
up,” Cameron told me. “The actors already
defined what they did, but it has to be trans-
lated from the captured data to the 3D-CG char-
acter. And there’s all sorts of AI steps in there.”
I asked if he knew of anyone else working
this way. Cameron laughed. “They’d be insane
to try,” he said. “And I don’t mean that we’re spe-
cial. I mean like, if we hadn’t made more money
than any other movie in history, this is the last
fucking thing I’d want to be doing.”
CAMERON IS FAMOUS for being able to do any
job on a movie set; some say he can do most

jobs better than the people he employs to do
them. Cameron disputes this, although mildly.
“Not better than,” he told me. “But I’m not just
some brain-in-a-bowl creative type sitting
over in a tent someplace saying, ‘Yeah, put
that over there.’ ” He makes a point of under-
standing enough about enough things that he
knows what he’s asking for when he asks for
something. “Jim has the ability to articulate
the reason behind anything,” Jon Landau,
Cameron’s long-time producing partner, told
me. “And only certain people can handle that.”
Because of Cameron’s clarity, and his ability to
bring his crew into his process, Saldaña said,
“When you are a part of a James Cameron pro-
ject, you don’t feel like a tool. You don’t feel
objectified.” But she acknowledged it took
a particular mental toughness: “If you can
take it, hang on, because it’s always going to be
fun and beautiful and rewarding. But if you’re
sensitive, and you can’t take it, then trust me,
there is always somebody else who is going
to accept it.” (She also said she’d gotten good
advice from another actor who had worked
with Cameron before, who’d noticed that
Cameron often got so focused on what he was
doing that he forgot to eat: “If he starts getting
edgy, make sure you give him some chocolate
and you give him some nuts.”)
Saindon called on a visual-effects supervisor
named Mark Gee, who cued a scene of a helicop-
ter landing. Cameron scrutinised the physics of
the shot. “Yeah, I really like this blast across the
surface of the water here, that’s working well,”
Cameron said. “I don’t see the need to do any
more to this.”
“Yeah, no, we’re good then,” Gee said quickly.
“Don’t be so damn eager,” Cameron said,
laughing, but not entirely joking. “You should
strive for perfection and you should argue
with me. You should say, ‘You like it, but I don’t
like it yet.’ ”
IT IS A CURIOUS fact that Cameron has
directed only two feature films in the last 25
years – and perhaps more curious that both
are Avatar instalments, and perhaps even
more curious that the next three films he hopes
to direct are also Avatar sequels. I’d asked
Cameron about this a few times – how someone
who, as he once told me, has “50,000 ideas” that
as yet remain unmade has decided to keep mak-
ing Avatar instead – and still felt like I didn’t
understand.
We were at another office Cameron keeps, at
Stone Street Studios, the facility where the Lord
of the Rings trilogy and King Kong were shot,
and where the Avatar production still main-
tained an active soundstage, just in case they
needed it. Cameron was hungry. “Do you want
some houmous? That’s what I’m going to have.”
I said sure.
“I looked up how you pronounce houmous,”
Cameron said. He’d gone on Google, and with
typical exactitude had tried to find a definitive
answer, which for once had eluded him: “The
answer is humm-us. Or humm-us.”
A decade ago, Cameron and his wife
decided to become vegans: “I’m 10 years, one
hundred percent, not a molecule that I know
of of animal entering my face. And I’m health-
ier than I’ve ever been, and most of these
punks can’t keep up with me.” In an oblique
way, this is part of the explanation for why
Cameron has at times drifted away from film-
making. “Nobody does empathy better than
Hollywood,” Cameron told me. “But there’s
a certain point where my mind wants to solve
problems that are real-world problems.”
One real-world problem Cameron came to
be obsessed with, in the years after the first
Avatar was released, is the fact that many peo-
ple on the planet eat meat. “It’s not a biologi-
cal mandate that we have to eat this stuff,” he
said. “It’s a choice, just like any luxury choice.”
Cameron and his wife helped produce the 2018
Netflix documentary The Game Changers,
about athletes with plant-based diets. But,
Cameron being Cameron, he also decided he
needed to go deeper than just producing some
documentaries. “We started looking around
at the protein sources, and the fastest rise in
what we call market demand for new vegan
products like meat analogues and things like
that was in pea protein. So we thought, All
right, well, let’s look into pea protein. Where
can we grow it? What kind of processing? How
can we make our own?” After a little investi-
gating, Cameron and his wife decided to build
a pea-protein facility in Saskatchewan. They
have since sold it, but this is what Cameron
has always done: identify a problem and go to
extremes to solve it. “I love this stuff as much
as moviemaking,” he told me. “And I know peo-
ple think that sounds nuts: ‘Wait a minute. You
love farming and pea protein as much as mov-
ies?’ Yeah, pretty much.”
Cameron even went so far as to try to
rebrand the lifestyle. “I tried to come up with
a good term for it because vegan has all those
connotations. ‘How many vegans does it take
to screw in a light bulb?’ ‘It doesn’t matter.
I’m better than you.’ You just want to punch
a vegan. ‘Punch a vegan today, it’ll feel good.’
So the term I came up with is futurevore. We’re
eating the way people will eat in the future.
We’re just doing it early.”
And then of course there was, for a while,
the career in ocean exploration, which
Cameron got serious about after Titanic and
which nearly kept him from ever directing
a film again. “I didn’t get back into making
movies for eight years,” he told me. “I was hav-
ing too much fun.” And when he did decide
to return to Hollywood, with the idea for the
first Avatar, Cameron’s long-time studio, Fox,
GQ World
Culture
almost didn’t want to make it. Cameron has
mellowed with time and age, but he is still
a score-settler, a keeper of grudges. He will
recount, in great detail, the conversation he
had with Peter Chernin, then the head of Fox,
when the studio initially passed on the film.
Chernin, in Cameron’s recollection, read the
script and liked it. But, he asked: “ ‘Is there any
way you can get the kind of tree-hugging hippy
bullshit out of it?’ Quote, unquote. I said, ‘So
Peter, I’m at a point now in my career and in
my life where I can pretty much make any
movie I want. And I chose to make this story
because of the tree-hugging hippy bullshit.’ ”
But Chernin, in Cameron’s telling, held firm
in the end, and passed. “And I said, ‘Now you
know before your tail lights are out of sight,
I will be on the phone with Dick Cook at
Disney who wants this, and we’ll make
a deal, and that’ll be that, and then whatever
happens, happens. And you might look like
a big dick if it makes a lot of money.’ And
you can see him kind of like, recoil, because
that’s the moment that all studio execu-
tives are absolutely terrified by. That you
pass on something. Like Casey Silver passed
on Titanic at Universal, right? He looked
like a dick later. Just for that one thing. Casey’s
a good guy. There was that flinch. But he said,
‘Nope, we’re passing.’ ” (Chernin – again, as
sometimes happens with Cameron – recalls
it slightly differently: “I don’t remember the
‘tree-hugging hippy bullshit.’ I may have said
that. But that’s not it at all.” The issue, he said,
was around the budget of the film. “And I’m
not even sure we passed on it. We passed on
the price, and then we went back and forth.”)
In the end, Fox did come back, and Cameron
made Avatar with the studio. (The Way of
Water was also a Fox project, before the com-
pany was bought and subsumed by Disney.)
But Cameron still remembers an executive
at the company – “who will go unnamed,
because this is a really negative review” – who
approached Cameron with a “stricken can-
cer-diagnosis expression” after a pre-release
screening of the film and begged the director
to shorten it. “I said something I’ve never said
to anybody else in the business,” Cameron
recalled. He said he told him, “ ‘I think this
movie is going to make all the fucking money.
And when it does, it’s going to be too late for
you to love the film. The time for you to love
the movie is today. So I’m not asking you to say
something that you don’t feel, but just know
that I will always know that – no matter how
complimentary you are about the movie in
the future when it makes all the money’ – and
that’s exactly what I said, in caps, ALL THE
MONEY, not some of the money, all the fuck-
ing money. I said, ‘You can’t come back to me
and compliment the film or chum along and
say, ‘Look what we did together.’ You won’t be
D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 7 5
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able to do that.’ At that point, that particular
studio executive flipped out and went bug shit
on me. And I told him to get the fuck out of my
office. And that’s where it was left.”
And then, of course, the film came out
and made all the money. In his office, I asked
Cameron whether he had a theory about
why it made so much. “I don’t think I need
a theory,” he said. “I think anybody that’s seen
the movie knows why; it’s a fucking gigantic
adventure that’s an all-consuming emotional
experience that leaves you wrung out by the
end of the movie. And it was groundbreaking
visually, and it still holds up today. So I don’t
think I need a theory.”
After Avatar, Cameron again walked away
for a while. He dove the Mariana Trench, to
either the deepest or maybe the second-deep-
est point on Earth. “There was a period there,
about a year and a half, where I didn’t even
know if I wanted to make another Avatar
film,” he told me.
But the problem was, he still had ideas.
He knew, of course, that on some level, he
was running out of time. “When you get into
your mid-60s, you start realising that the
axe could fall at any moment. Maybe it’s next
week, maybe it’s in 30 years. But the thing
is, it wasn’t a decision between Avatar and
something else in the movie industry. It was
a decision between doing more movies and
very probably Avatar movies, or not doing
more movies and doing expedition stuff and
ocean exploration and sustainability pro-
jects, which I’ve been doing on the side the
whole time. Why not just do that? That’s more
fulfilling.”
Yes, why not?
“Yeah. Why not? Exactly.”
I’m asking!
Cameron said that in the end, the answer
he landed on was this: “I’m a storyteller
and there’s a story to be told.” In Avatar, he
decided, he could explore everything he cared
about. His own complicated feelings about
balancing fatherhood against the extremity of
the projects he can’t help but continue taking
on. A people, in the Na’vi, with a communi-
tarian ethos. A way of life that is connected
to the natural world. “And anything I need
to say about conservation and sustainability
and all of these themes, the pros and cons
“I love this stuff as much as moviemaking.
And I know people think that sounds
nuts. ‘Wait a minute, you love farming
and pea protein as much as movies?’
Yeah, pretty much.”
7 6 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
of technology and where the human race is
headed and all that sort of thing, I could say
within that greater landscape.”
Cameron told me he’d already shot all of
a third Avatar, and the first act of a fourth.
There is a script for a fifth and an intention
to make it, as long as the business of Avatar
holds up between now and then. It seems
entirely possible – maybe even probable – that
Cameron will never make another non-Avatar
film again. I asked if he was okay with that,
the idea that these films, in the end, would
be his monument, the great project that he
leaves behind.
“I think first of all, that’s really unhealthy,”
Cameron said, shaking his head. “Secondly,
I’m not done until the big hook comes out
from the side of the side curtain. So to me,
everything, every idea, is a work in progress.”
THE LIST OF THINGS Cameron has failed
at is short. But there are a few destinations
that have eluded him. One of them, perhaps
unsurprisingly, is space. He’s come close, in
his telling. This was after Titanic: Cameron
became determined to make a documentary
in outer space. First, Cameron said, he went
to the Russians, who agreed to let him go up
to the Mir. Then he went to Daniel Goldin,
who was then the NASA administrator and
overseeing the assembly of the International
Space Station, and asked if he could go up
to the American side of the ISS instead. And
Goldin, in Cameron’s telling, considered this.
(Goldin, in Goldin’s telling, did consider it, but
perhaps less enthusiastically than Cameron
remembers: “You don’t just say, ‘You’re a great
guy, Jim, thank you for doing that wonderful
picture Titanic.’ I think the man is unique. But
I had the responsibility of getting the ISS built.”)
They met for a summit at Taverna Tony,
in Malibu. Cameron told it to me like it was
a scene in one of his movies: “After dinner, I’m
driving him back to his car. So it was like, if
I was filming, it would be a spooky night out-
side, one street light, people dark in the car.”
Goldin asked Cameron why he wanted to go.
Mars was the future, Cameron said, and that
would require long-duration space flight, and
so what Cameron really wanted to see was the
human drama of people living in space. Goldin
offered Cameron a shuttle flight instead. No
ISS, but he’d see the planet from above. He’d
see space. Goldin said the ISS, at the moment,
was too difficult.
Cameron was doing dialogue for the scene
in his office for me, his parts and Goldin’s both.
“Look, we can go around and around on this
all night, but I’m going to offer you a shuttle
seat right now, and I will sign it in blood and
you will fly,” Goldin said.
Cameron thought about it. He said to him-
self, Maybe everything I’ve been doing over
the last few years leads to this exact moment
where the administrator of NASA is willing to
make a solid deal to fly me on the space shuttle.
But he looked in his heart and he decided: no.
He would only go to space on his own terms.
“I said, ‘I’ve got to say no. I want to stick to
my plan even if it can’t happen. Even if it ulti-
mately gets derailed.’ First of all, there was
a long pause. And Dan looks over at me and he
says, ‘Now I know you’re serious.’ I said, ‘Damn
right, I’m serious.’ ”
Goldin let him in line to go to the ISS.
Cameron went to Houston, started train-
ing. He began mapping out the logistics of
his shoot. “And they were going to fly me,”
Cameron told me, “and then Columbia was
lost.” February 1, 2003, the space shuttle
Columbia disintegrates on reentry, taking with
it seven souls. Cameron went to their memorial
service. But he never got to go to space.
I asked what level of regret he had about
this, the fact that he never went.
“Zero,” he said. “Different life. The stuff
I did instead was equally cool. Yeah, it would’ve
been great and I think if I had really, really
put my mind to it, I could have remanifested
that a few years later with a better camera sys-
tem and a better plan even. But see, by then
I was into Avatar and that was a whole other
level of cool.”
He traded Mars for Pandora and he’s been
on a planet of his own making ever since.
Speaking of which, he said, he had to get back
GROOMING BY SUSAN DURNO. PRODUCED BY JOHANNA SINCLAIR.
to finishing the film – there were more effects
shots to review. The sound was far from com-
plete. There were hundreds of people just
beyond the doorway with a hundred prob-
lems that only Cameron could solve. We shook
hands and he walked me out.
I was driving back to my hotel, not too long
after, when the phone rang. It was Cameron,
wanting to talk again about the shuttle flight
he turned down and which eventually became
– Goldin’s recollection differs here again, but
no matter – a very notorious flight indeed.
“I forgot the punch line to the story!” Cameron
said. “The punch line is, the shuttle mission
I refused? It was the Columbia.”
His voice rose: “I fucking saved my own life
by choosing the higher path!”
zach baron is gq us’s senior staff writer.

Spirit of
Adventure
The third chapter of Bushmills’
Causeway Collection comes
with the eagerly awaited 1997
Rum Cask edition, an evocative
single malt crafted off the shores
of the Giant’s Causeway.
OR GENERATIONS,
F
innovation and crafts-
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intricately woven into
Bushmills’ 400-year-old
narrative. With every new guardian at
the distillery, a new tale is told, built
on the unsurpassable inventory of
more than 400,000 distinctive casks.
These giants of Irish whiskey at the
world’s oldest licensed distillery con-
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as well as the new Causeway Collection
1997 Rum Cask, which follows the 1991
Madeira Cask and 2000 Port Cask from
the same range.
To create this intriguing premium
single malt, Bushmills selected
American oak casks previously used to
store Caribbean rum and filled them
with Irish whiskey on 14 February 1997.
The intention was to impart its fabled
single malt with sophisticated tropical
layers, but it resulted in so much more:
exquisite flavours led by summer fruit,
apricot, and pineapple, then deepened
with notes of honey and black pepper,
producing a remarkable, complex, and
utterly original spirit that sets a new
standard for “the water of life”.
This rare whiskey has been care-
fully monitored and now released by
master blender Alex Thomas – her first
Causeway Collection edition. “It has
“It has been a privilege
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© Ranjan Ramchandani/WWF

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panda.org
 GQ World
Watches

Because monochrome
doesn’t have to
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By MIKE CHRISTENSEN

HRONOGRAPHS –

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P H O T O G R A P H B Y T A I S S I R O T E
S E T D E S I G N B Y P E N N Y M I L L S D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 7 9
In which we shout-out the year’s most radical breakouts
and winning-est performances.

Sheila Atim’s Latest Act
The star of The Woman King is ready for her throne.
B y A M O N WA R M A N N
I T ’ S O N L Y A few days after the UK
premiere of The Woman King, the
biggest role of Sheila Atim’s career,
but she already has her sights on the
next job. “I’m trying to change my
broadband,” she says. “These little
life things are a big goal right now.”
This has been a breakout year for
the 31-year-old. In May, she made her
Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in
Doctor Strange and the Multiverse
of Madness as Sara Wolfe, who
sacrifices herself in a pivotal
moment to help save the multiverse.
“If it wasn’t for me, that movie could
have turned out very differently!” she
says. “I just want to play roles that
are impactful in some way.”
A part in Disney’s live-action
Pinocchio followed, and then there
P H O T O G R A P H
GQ World
MOTY
is her turn in The Woman King, a
film which Atim has been happy to
see being embraced by audiences
worldwide. “At the London premiere,
there were rounds of applause at
certain points,” Atim says. “I’ve just
been overjoyed to see the response.”
Atim’s fascination with the arts
started when she was growing up
in Essex. Describing herself as a
“curious child”, she credits her
Ugandan single mother for being
“very encouraging and nurturing of
me, my effervescence and obvious
creative streak.”
It’s a streak that first led to success
in the theatre. Screen work, though,
was harder to come by. “I always
assumed it was because I was just
quite hard to slot into things. I’m not
really a ‘slot into’ person.”
That began to change with the
double whammy of The Underground
Railroad and the Halle Berry-directed
Bruised. 2022 however, has seen
directors recognising her versatility,
as both a magnetic screen presence
and butt-kicking action star.
In The Woman King, she wields
a spear with might as Amenza, a
lieutenant in the fearsome Agojie
army. Atim and the rest of the cast
trained intensely for months so they
could execute their own stunts, and
every bit of her 5ft 11in frame is used
in the battle scenes. “The fact that
my height was deemed an attribute
and was capitalised on was very
exciting.” Atim even got to keep her
character’s signature weapon.
“I’m waiting to finish decorating
my flat and then I’ll hang it up. It
will always be in eyeshot. It’s not
intimidating, but it’s there.”
With any luck, Doctor Strange
won’t be Atim’s only foray into a
superhero world as fans have already
started noticing her talents. Online,
people have begun to cast her as
the DC heroine Vixen. When I show
her some side-by-side pictures, the
excitement is palpable. “I’m very into
it! Let me make some calls.”
But Atim isn’t resting on her
laurels, she’s focused on developing
her own ideas. “By the end of the year, I
would like to have created something
that I have brought to fruition.”
It’s the next thing on her to-do list
– as soon as the Wi-Fi is sorted.
B Y J E N N Y B R O U G H
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 GQ World
Louis Theroux’s MOTY

Rediscovery Period
Two new thoroughly
Theroux-esque projects
see everyone’s favourite
interrogator back in the
limelight. B y O L I V E R
F R A N K L I N - WA L L I S

“FOR ME, THIS was the summer of

‘Jiggle Jiggle’,” says Louis Theroux.
It’s been a surreal year for Britain’s
favourite documentary-maker: he’s
chased down porn stars and far-right
zealots in Louis Theroux’s Forbidden
America, and breathed new life into
celebrity interviews on BBC Two. But
his most unlikely hit came when a
clip of Theroux rapping on YouTube’s
Chicken Shop Date was remixed by
Duke & Jones, becoming a viral dance
sensation – and reintroducing the
next gen to Theroux’s unimpeachable
back catalogue.

After “Jiggle Jiggle”, did other

rappers ask you to spit a few bars?
When I spoke to Stormzy [for Louis
Theroux Interviews…] we were in
the early stages of what I’m gonna
call ‘Jigglemania’. I said to him, “You
know, this thing’s gone viral on
TikTok.” And he’s like, “Yeah, I heard
about that.” I said, “There’s talk of me
recording it as a single. We’re trying
to figure out whether I should get an
artist to guest on it.” He goes, “Okay,
interesting.” I said, “If only I knew a
rapper.” And he laughs, but he goes,
“Yeah… I think that’s just you.” Little
did I know at that stage that it would
grow over the following weeks and
months, and then I ended up doing
a record with Jason Derulo.

It must be surreal. Thanks to that

and Netflix, iPlayer, etc, a new
generation is discovering your
back catalogue.
I don’t want to analyse it like this is
an important social phenomenon,
but I’m going to grandiosely say I
think this is like second or third wave
of rediscovery of my oeuvre. Okay,
I can’t believe I just said that! But
because I remember seeing it in 2017,
after they went up on Netflix, I noticed
that on Twitter people were going,
“My money don’t jiggle, jiggle.” It was
sort of a wave of positive nostalgia.
People in their late-teens and 20s
were talking about how much they
liked them. And when I did the math,
I realised they wouldn’t have been
alive, or might have been one or two
years old when the shows came out.
So many of your interviewees –
Jimmy Savile, Max Clifford, the
Tiger King, now the alt-right –
have gone on to darker things.
Do you think you have a sense
for that?
I don’t think honestly I’m proud
of having seen early that there
were stories brewing, or that there
were issues in the background.
I think in the end, what’s at the
heart of this is the fact that people
are quite weird, in general. The
way it’s expressed, or the way it’s
transmitted, and disseminated
might change – and that has
definitely changed. But at its
heart, our psychological impulses,
are consistent and familiar and
don’t change.
Which of your creations do you
think you’ll be remembered for?
Definitely “Jiggle Jiggle”.
I’m guessing you don’t drive a
Fiat any more.
I drive a Seat Alhambra. The
pleasing part is that ‘Seat’ still scans.
Although it’s not a compact, what
is it called? It’s a minivan.
But the seats do go back.

P H O T O G R A P H B Y D A V I D V I N T I N E R D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 8 5
 The Ascension of Emma D’A rcy GQ World
The breakout star of House Of The Dragon Rubric
MOTY
slayed on screen – while delivering red carpet
style moments of pure fire. B y C H R I S M A N D L E

WHEN EMMA D’ARCY removes the signature blonde

Targaryen tresses worn for House of the Dragon, the actor
becomes unrecognisable. But on the red carpet, their
transformation goes beyond taking off a wig. Promoting
the Game of Thrones prequel this summer, D’Arcy (who
identifies as non-binary) used the chance to indulge in
the wonderful and freaky: in London, they capped off
a regal Acne Studios look (big white shirt, slim leather
trousers) with blue gloves and a shimmery gold vest. In
Amsterdam, they completed a ballooning Marni suit with
sad-clown makeup the colour of rosacea. And in Los
Angeles, they wore a severe all-black Vetements suit with
Mr Tickle-sized sleeves and Vetements platforms.
Improbably, D’Arcy, 30, says the inspiration for their
red carpet look came from dazzle ships. The First World
War vessels were coated in thick, clashing stripes of
black and white and the guns were dappled in grey. The
idea was that hiding on open water was impossible, so
distorting the ships’ ability to be seen made them harder
to track down. The same is true on the red carpet. The
outfits “are a disguise, a mask, but it’s playing a bit of
a game within the context of this place,” D’Arcy says.
“I wanted the clothes to feel like full armour, so that’s
what we did. The Vetements look was boiling [hot], but
something about all that fabric felt like a barrier.”
That toughened outer layer will come in handy. Though
D’Arcy didn’t appear until episode six of Dragon, they
have become the breakout star of the latest installation
of one of the planet’s biggest series. Amelia Alcock said
the attention from being on the show “fucking sucks”, but
for D’Arcy, being able to hide in plain sight helps navigate
those choppy waters.
Though D’Arcy prefers short hair (“The word I used
when explaining it was that I am almost ‘allergic’ to lots
of hair”) the luscious Targaryen wig brought about a
welcome transformation. “I think the art of wigging is
complete magic. They are made for you, so they fit your
ST Y L I N G , RO S E FO R D E AT T H E WA L L G RO U P. H A I R, J O DY TAY LO R. M A K E U P, J U ST I N E J E N K I N S .

head perfectly. The illusion is seamless. Immediately, a

good wig changes your behaviour, your posture, but also,
fractionally, it changes how you are read and perceived.”
It was so impactful that, whenever it was removed, D’Arcy
felt “rendered invisible” on set.
That invisibility exists for Rhaenyra, too. Despite being
born into Westeros’s powerful Targaryen dynasty, and
being named heir to the throne, her gender is seen as a
hindrance and a threat to the status quo. “I was drawn to
Rhaenyra because I saw a person who, from a young age,
was sort of obsessed with masculinity. Part of that is an
appreciation for the space afforded to men. As a child, my
hyper awareness of gender presentation was the same as
Rhaenyra’s. I craved the right to take up space in the way
that I saw men doing naturally.”
Which brings us to the transformative style on red
carpets globally: it’s a way to take up space while
protecting themselves. “Glamour is not a word I’m
particularly fond of… I have an awkward relationship
with it,” D’Arcy says. It feels too loaded a term for the
things D’Arcy wants to subvert and achieve. Their
mission statement could be summed up like this: “In
those inherently public spaces, I try to distance myself
from myself. I want to be at least two steps to the left of Coat, £2,590,
me, because it can be very vulnerable being out there in boots, £1,190,
these places as myself.” Not camouflaged, exactly, more by Alexander
concealed. But dazzling the whole time. McQueen.

P H O T O G R A P H B Y J A S O N B E L L D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 8 7

GQ World
MOTY
Es Devlin Takes Centre Stage
If you’re a globe-trotting pop star, planning a
show for 80,000 people, you don’t mess around.
You call Es Devlin. B y R E B E C C A D O L A N
FOR GRAMMY WINNERS, global fashion houses
and playwrights, Es Devlin was the woman to
collaborate with this year. The British designer
has masterminded stages for Beyoncé, Adele,
and Dua Lipa. She also designed tours for
Florence + The Machine and The Weeknd,
sets for the Royal Opera House and National
Theatre; displays at the Super Bowl and Tate
Modern; installations for Cartier and Saint
Laurent. Chances are you’ve seen a Devlin
design, even if you don’t recognise her name.
Looking back at 2022, what would you
consider your biggest success?
What does the word success actually mean?
Can we look it up now?
How about we go with “accomplishment
of desired end.”
The Super Bowl I was really proud of. What
I was pleased with was it was very specific
to one place on the planet. It’s quite easy to
get general if you’re making something for
the world. That piece was really specific to a
junction in Compton in LA, where Kendrick
[Lamar] saw his second murder, aged eight,
and Dre saw his umpteenth murder. It was on
the same crossroads.
8 8 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
What’s it like working with The Weeknd?
He’s a resonating instrument, that man Abel.
Without really talking about it consciously,
we made a piece about the decline of empire
and veiled femininity, veiled women, right
at the time of Roe vs Wade. Not consciously,
just intuitively.
Why do we still go to see live shows?
I think we have an urge in our bodies for ritual.
Communal ritual. Live theatre, music, are
places where we can still feel that.
If you could redesign anything in the UK,
what would it be?
Sundays. If you don’t want to go to church,
don’t go to church, but we probably need
three-day weekends, at least. A day when you
are outside, with whatever form of awareness
of something greater than yourself.
Big, big stars want to work with you. Don’t
they worry about competing with each other?
I don’t know that those artists see themselves
in competition. Making work, at the level these
people make it, is not something you just do,
in any kind of casual way. It’s devotion of your
time on Earth.
P H O T O G R A P H B Y D A V I D E L L I S
Lee Jung-jae’s
Got Game
A Cannes directorial debut,
triumph at the Emmys, and
a return to the darker side –
all in a year’s work for
South Korea’s standout
star. B y I A N A M U R R AY
F O U R D A Y S B E F O R E the first
anniversary of Squid Game, its star Lee
Jung-jae walked on stage at the Emmys
to accept the award for Best Actor. In
beating the likes of Jeremy Strong and
Jason Bateman, Jung-jae was writing
history in real time; becoming the first
Asian actor to win the prize. But to him,
that didn’t matter. “I didn’t want to
focus on discussing that element of it
any further,” he says.
Nevertheless, it’s impossible to
ignore Squid Game’s success. In
its first four weeks, the show was
watched by 142 million households,
surpassing titans like Stranger Things
and Bridgerton. But the actor prefers
to express his gratitude for the “crazy
amount of love” he’s received than to
quantify the personal impact of one
of the biggest TV shows on Earth. A
beloved star in South Korea for over
two decades, now he gets approached
by as many fans worldwide.
During Jung-jae’s wildest year
yet, he stopped by the Cannes Film
Festival to unveil Hunt, a spy thriller
that marks his directorial debut. “I had
no idea that I would end up directing
it,” he explains, noting that he was set
to produce and star, but after reading
– and then rewriting – the first draft
of the screenplay, he came to one
conclusion: “I realised it was supposed
to be a Lee Jung-jae project.”
South Korea’s cultural exports
have long-fascinated the globe, but
Squid Game turned the K-wave into
a tsunami. Jung-jae has noticed a
shift and a greater appreciation of the
universality of his national cinema.
“The projects that I tend to be involved
with are either very distinctly Korean in
content, or have a theme that a global
audience can relate to,” he says.
Next up: a return to Squid Game.
Jung-jae is as in the dark as the rest
of us about Seong Gi-hun’s second
season, save for the spoilers that
creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has been
drip-feeding. (Reportedly, Gi-hun will
seek vengeance against the maniacal
organisers.) Reticent to share
anything else on the subject, Jung-jae,
with a knowing smile, only expresses
his excitement to “perform the darker
side” of him. Let the games begin.
P H O T O G R A P H B Y H O N G J A N G H Y U N
 GQ World
MOTY

This Is Sharon Horgan’s Time

With Bad Sisters, the creative powerhouse
secures her crown as the queen of unflinching
comedy. B y C O L I N C R U M M Y
SHARON HORGAN SLIPS onto a sofa
in a Soho hotel and announces
her displeasure. “This place,” she
says, “I fucking hate this place.”
It is a quintessential Horgan shot:
blunt, brutal and followed up by
a chaser of her most generous
laugh. Horgan, 52, takes pleasure
in delivering unfiltered truths,
whether her subject is romance
(Pulling, Catastrophe), the end of it
(Divorce) or family (Motherland). The
Irish creative powerhouse turned
homeward for Bad Sisters, a comedy-
thriller about four sisters who want
to murder their sibling Grace’s
abusive husband. An adaptation of a
Flemish drama which she co-writes,
produces and stars in, it tackles toxic
masculinity and coercive control,
laced with Horgan’s acerbic humour.

The series Bad Sisters is based on,

Clan, is pretty wild – an enormous
death count, the Chinese mafia,
hitmen. Why did you dial it down?
I was interested because really
fucked up stuff happens in real life,
and I immersed myself in enough
murder documentaries and podcasts
to know that normal people can do
pretty suspect things when pushed.
I wanted to show how Grace’s
husband breaks her, destroys her.
It had to be upsetting to watch; to
be on the sisters’ team, you have to
want them to kill him quite badly.

Can you talk about casting

Claes Bang as the villain?
It was really important that he wasn’t
a sexy bully; he wasn’t someone
whose abuse could be seen as
titillating; we wanted him to be an
idiot. Criminal behaviour of that type
can be portrayed [on screen] in
a sexual way and I don’t like it.
Do you make TV differently now
you have power over your shows?
[laughs] Power!
Why’s that funny?
It’s just like ‘I have the power.’ Like
He-Man or something. Behind the
scenes TV is still a super-white,
male, middle-class environment, so
in those roles that are typically male,
like the director of photography, we
try and redress the balance. Starting
out, I was told by a man that I wasn’t
a writer, I was a producer because
producing was a female, nurturing
role. And I said, no, I want to do it all.
Does TV feel different now from
when you were pitching Pulling?
It’s such a different world. We were
the only female comedy at the time.
We were ahead of our time and we
got lucky, but at the same time,
[despite] winning awards and [being]
BAFTA nominated, we still got
cancelled because a male-fronted
show got its third season instead.
And I hate saying stuff like that
because it sounds ungrateful.
How was it playing Nicolas Cage’s
wife in The Unbearable Weight of
Massive Talent?
He’s one of the most professional
people I’ve ever worked with. I’m
such a fan. There’s just something
so strange about doing a car chase
with Nicolas Cage that in a weird
way it was kind of the pinnacle.
I just kept looking at him thinking
‘this is fucking mental’.

P H O T O G R A P H B Y M A T T H E W S H A V E D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 9 1
Subscribe to British GQ on YouTube for
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Sir Mo Farah Has
Arrived Again
A decade after becoming
the nation’s hero at
London 2012, he’s finally at
one with who he really is.
By MIKE CHRISTENSEN
NOT ALL FOUR-TIME Olympic gold
medallists begin their quest at a
service station on the M1. It was
lunchtime on 6 July, 2005 and Mo
Farah was heading to an athletics
meet in Birmingham with his Newham
& Essex Beagles teammates.
“We stopped at a petrol station
and were listening to the radio to
see if we’d got [the Olympics],” says
Farah. “It was like, Oh my god, it’s
going to be London.” Inspired, he
P H O T O G R A P H B Y N I C K W I L S O N
won his race that day, just as he did
seven years and 29 days later on
Super Saturday to write himself into
the history books. “I still think, Why
was I smacking my head?” he laughs,
smiling down the Zoom link from the
Pyrenees training camp that’s been a
summer staple for as long as he can
remember. “But yeah, London 2012 is
the proudest moment of my career.”
Farah always knew he had the
talent but “talent can only get you so
far. You have to then be able to commit
and work and understand.” In his early
20s as a uni student, nights out and
Pro Evo sessions almost curtailed his
promise. “I enjoyed uni, but I had to
ask myself, Do you want to become an
athlete or an average runner?”
The rest is history, with one of his
four children’s names engraved on
each of his Olympic golds. “You win
medals from working hard, but being
GQ World
MOTY
knighted by the Queen, the country
gives you that,” he says. “As a boy
coming to the UK, who had no clue
about life and didn’t speak English, to
achieve what I have is incredible.”
This year, he’s rewritten history
to reflect the true “I” – he was
born in Somalia, as Hussein Abdi
Kahin. Since The Real Mo Farah
documentary revealed his traumatic
upbringing, the response has been
overwhelming. “To see people
sharing their stories and saying
‘thank you’, that’s what really
touches me… because it’s just who
I am and what I’ve been through.”
Being honest with his kids is what
inspired him to tell his story. “I wanted
to get answers for myself,” he adds, “to
better understand what happened.”
Through it all, there’s been one
constant in his life: “Running,” he
says, simply. “It frees me.”
D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 9 3
 GQ World
MOTY
Leon Edwards Is on Top of the World
But what does the newly-crowned UFC welterweight
champion rank as his greatest achievement this year?
Making his mother proud. B y T O M WA R D
IN AUGUST, INSIDE an octagon-shaped
ring in Salt Lake City’s Vivint Arena, Leon
Edwards hit Kamaru ‘The Nigerian Nightmare’
Usman with a head-kick that reverberated
throughout the sporting world. It was a
move that – out of nowhere – announced the
Jamaican-born, Birmingham native as UFC’s
new welterweight champion.
In a sport in danger of becoming predictable,
31-year-old Edwards’ win injected a much-
needed jolt of instability. Belt secured, dreams
achieved, the new champ – who’s been hustling
since the age of 17 – did what any man would.
He called his mum and shed a tear or two.
What do you put your victory down to?
Usman was the number one, pound-for-
pound, best fighter in the UFC; a long-reigning
champion. But to become a champion you
have to go out there and beat a champion.
I probably could have [won the title] three or
four years ago, but I feel like [this time] I was
ready. Everyone doubted me, but I kept saying,
“Listen, I’m going to beat him.”
Does this mean you have a free pass
around Birmingham?
Everyone here is gassed; they’ve seen
9 4 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 P H O T O G R A P H
my journey, you know? Who would have
thought that a guy from Birmingham would
be able to bring the UFC championship
back here? Everyone keeps telling me I’m
an inspiration to their kids, which I’m
hugely grateful for.
How did your mum react?
To be a son that at one point was getting into
trouble and wasn’t making your mum proud,
to now having your mum crying and telling
you how proud she is of you is an emotional
thing. I know fighters that don’t like to be
emotional, but I think if you’re comfortable
being emotional, that’s the toughest thing
you can do as a man.
What would you say to those who argue
UFC is too violent?
Imagine mixing all the combat sports in
the world into one form and making it look
like art. That’s what we’re doing. I’ve learned
a lot from this sport. It teaches discipline,
I’ve even learned about how to pay tax
through martial arts. My son does jiu-jitsu,
but I don’t want him to fight. I want him
to use it as a tool to achieve whatever he
wants to achieve.
B Y O L A V S T U B B E R U D
Imagine Being
Michael Imperioli
The Sopranos legend’s
cult following is about
to go mainstream.
B y JOEL G OLBY
A F T E R T H E P A N D E M I C , as venues
tentatively reopened and people
emerged blinking, into the streets,
Michael Imperioli realised something
about his fans. “Yeah,” he laughs over
a Zoom call from New York, “they were
getting younger.”
Over lockdown, the actor (and
writer) (and screenwriter) (and
Buddhist meditation practitioner
and singer-songwriter and podcaster
and artistic director) discovered and
doubled-down on Instagram, which
he uses unlike anyone else: a rolling
curated blog of sorts, a real early
years of the internet throwback, long
paragraph devotions to semi-obscure
shoegaze bands he loves, vintage
photos of actors and musicians he
admires, book recommendations
(recently he’s been loving Emmanuel
Carrère’s Yoga and David Milch’s Life’s
Work), hour-long guided meditations,
and unofficial rewrites of Sopranos
lore. In the run-up to the 2020
election, for example, he claimed
Tony and Chris were out canvassing
for Biden and Kamala. “That was a
whole other can of worms,” he says in
a perfect Chris Moltisanti I-fucked-it-
up-Tone tone, “realising that maybe
half of my fan base were [for] Trump.”
In 2006, Imperioli formed the band
Zopa in the strangest way possible –
he tracked down a now-grown child
actor he’d worked with on 1994’s
Postcards From America because
he heard he played drums and felt
some strange impulse to jam with
him. Now, using IG, he’s pushed their
old album out to a new audience
who had flocked to his page for his
impeccable tastemaking. “We’ve got
the opportunity to tour, to play shows,
we’ve met other musicians and bands
and done shows together – a lot of this
came out of Instagram.”
It was helped, too, by the success
of Talking Sopranos, the podcast he
co-hosts with Steve ‘Bobby Bacala’
Schirripa. “The first, I would say, six
episodes are not good at all,” admits
Imperioli, who plays the perfectionist,
note-taking, renaissance man to
Schirripa’s ‘I remember that!’ ball-of-
fun (“I’d never listened to a podcast
before,” Schirripa tells me over Zoom.
“I still haven’t. That’s not a lie. I haven’t
listened to my own podcast back.”)
But then it clicked at the exact same
time that everyone was dipping into
a lockdown re-watch of what is still
the greatest TV show ever made; the
director’s commentary reflection made
Imperioli into the face of The Sopranos’
thoughtful, genre-changing legacy.
Post-Sopranos, Imperioli’s career
took a perhaps-unexpectedly
meandering path – some writing
projects that never quite happened,
good US network shows that didn’t
P H O T O G R A P H B Y A S H L E Y
get renewed, guest turns and non-
acting projects that all took him
away from being on screen as much
as his talent demands – but now it
feels like he’s having a well-deserved
pastrami summer.
After a turn in Hulu’s This Fool
– “There’s a whole generation of
filmmakers now who were teenagers
with Walkmen when they were
watching The Sopranos. Now they’re
showrunners” – Imperioli is back
on HBO again as Dom, one of the
O L A H
fascinating moving parts in the
second series of the Emmy-bagging
show The White Lotus. It takes the
first series’ woozy humanity and
constant, looming sense of dread,
and places it in Sicily; and it’s safe
to say Imperioli loved spending
four sun-soaked months living
and breathing the place. “When
the material is really good and the
director is good and the other people
are good – when all that’s happening,
acting is really wonderful.”
D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 9 5
 GQ World
MOTY

Ashley Walters Won’t Stop Creating

Top Boy’s anti-hero wants you to appreciate
that life is defined by the choices we make.
By ANIEFIOK EKPOUDOM

THIS IS YEAR 30 of Ashley Walters’s long

career in entertainment. In that time, he has
become an emblem in Black-British culture.
“I’ve continually had to reinvent myself,” he
says, “but all those stages of reinvention have
never been contrived. I’ve just naturally gone in
the direction that I feel like I should be going.”
What started with minor roles in children’s
TV shows aged 10 evolved into a music career
with the legendary So Solid Crew in the new
millennium. A turnaround back into acting
followed, with appearances in cult classic
films Bullet Boy (2004) and Get Rich or Die Tryin’
(2005), before a career-defining role in Top Boy
(2011), where he plays Dushane, a gangster
wrestling with his own morality and mental
health in a city that can be a pressure cooker.
The fourth season (the second on Netflix
since its 2019 revival) dropped this year and
is the rawest yet, depicting the ruthlessness
coursing through London: gentrification
tearing apart communities, immigration
officers tearing apart families, youth violence
snatching sons from mothers, politicians
caring about none of it. This coldness is
threaded through Dushane.
“He is definitely a product of his environment,”
he says. “I see it all the time… everything
is geared towards you failing when you’re
growing up in areas like that. As a kid from
Peckham, all the people I looked up to went
to prison,” he pauses. “But, interestingly,
you have choices.”
Recently, Top Boy’s success has seen
Walters, now 40, recalibrate. He’s started
directing, beginning with a short film,
Boys, and then moving on to the Channel 4
school drama Ackley Bridge. He directed
the first five episodes of the show’s fifth
series. Set in a Yorkshire mill town, “It was
a cultural sort of melting pot that I didn’t
understand and a place that I’ve never
been to,” he says.
The learning curve has been steep and
shooting up to seven pages of script a day
made him feel like a beginner again. “It was
good to be in that space to see if I could
sink or swim. Surprisingly, I relished it.
I loved the pressure.”
The experience has left him wanting to
direct more, and he’s still making music
too. It’s a creative impulse that has
always been in him.
“Creating can be within
anything for me,” he says.
“It just became this
playground for my mind.”

9 6 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 P H O T O G R A P H B Y D E R R I C K K A K E M B O
 BOSS BOTTLED PARFUM,
FOR A MAN WHO KNOWS HE’S A BOSS.
HIS SOPHISTICATION IS STRIKING,
HIS WARMTH INSPIRING.

THIS PERFUME FOR MEN FEATURES

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 GQ World
MOTY

ward. “I remember thinking, Oh my

god, can we actually show this?” he
says of the visceral birth scenes.
“It’s extraordinary to say it felt so
extreme, as there’s nothing more
natural. But, nonetheless, there’s a
sense – particularly with men – of
averting our eyes from this reality.”
Over the past 12 months, Whishaw
has found himself an unexpected
conduit for people dealing with
reality, as the Paddington sketch later
became an articulation of people’s

Ben Whishaw Is in the Thick of It

grief when the Queen died. “People
have such affection for that character
and obviously for the Queen. He’s
A heart-warming role in the Queen’s final act and the star somehow just a channel for people to
of this year’s most pertinent NHS drama put the actor in feel certain things,” he says, trying to
the centre of the action in 2022. B y C O L I N C R U M M Y make sense of it all. “It’s a connection
to a gentleness that otherwise people
BEN WHISHAW HAS had such a weird starring Whishaw as an overworked, maybe struggled to access.”
year you can’t blame him for being fried-eyed junior medic in 2006. Airing The other British institution
shoulder-shrugging-emoji-guy about in January, the dramedy absorbed our Whishaw finds himself party to is
it. Still, he’s lovely enough to try to pandemic anxiety and anguish for a 007. Where does that go next? Will
articulate all the weirdness – starting health service on the brink. “It was he be back as Q? He shrugs. “I could
with that Paddington tea party with right in the forefront of our minds imagine, honestly, that they might just
the Queen. “I didn’t act with Her and our experiences at the time,” says recast the whole thing,” he ventures.
Majesty, but I was so amazed,” he Whishaw, reflecting on shooting the That said, if he did return, he’s certain
says, himself the voice behind Peru’s BBC series during COVID. “It’s not all about one thing. “They switched the
most famous export. “I thought she that often that you work on something dynamic when I took over as Q to him
did such a brilliant job. But, yeah. that feels as pressing and as relevant being younger than Bond. I would
What a strange year it’s been.” to the moment.” really enjoy being older than Bond. I’d
The strangeness started with This It took a scalpel to the messy like to be the older guy, crotchety and
Is Going To Hurt, a medical drama reality of working on an NHS labour impatient – that would be really fun.”

P H O T O G R A P H B Y A R V E D C O L V I N - S M I T H D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 9 9
 Jumper, £119,
by Boss.
GQ World Trousers, £940,
by Giorgio
MOTY Armani.

Stephen Graham Is on Fire

A seminal part in the Peaky Blinders finale
and the leading role in Boiling Point have
finally raised the heat on Graham’s stardom –
all the way up to icon status. B y S A M PA R K E R

NOT MANY PEOPLE have a CV that reads like a roll-

call of the buzziest British TV hits from the past 15
years (This Is England, Line of Duty, Peaky Blinders)
amid some heavy Hollywood blockbusters (Pirates
of the Caribbean, The Irishman). After another
non-stop year, the 49-year-old Scouser is quietly
pushing his credentials as one of our finest actors.

Boiling Point was filmed in a kitchen in one take.

Was it as intense to make as it was to watch?
Well, it was a real kitchen, so it was very
hot. When we got to the end and [director]
Philip [Barantini] yelled “Cut”, the whole cast
cheered. Making it was the most zen-like
experience I’ve had as an actor. You had
to be in the moment the entire time.

Four BAFTA nominations isn’t bad...

It’s a true, authentic British indie film.
Never did I think some fella would stand
on a stage and go, “And the nominees are
Leonardo DiCaprio, Will Smith, Benedict
Cumberbatch – oh, and Stephen Graham.”

Peaky Blinders must have been

a blast. Are you just collecting
iconic British shows for fun?
Ha, well, I’ve been exceptionally blessed
to have people writing stuff for me,
including Steve [Knight]. I was a huge
fan of Peaky Blinders – Tommy Shelby
is one of the finest characters I’ve ever
seen on television. When I met Cillian
[Murphy], I’ll be honest, I had a flutter.
It was the eyes, I was lost in his eyes!

You and Knight are teaming up on

A Thousand Blows for Disney+, about
illegal boxing in Victorian London.
Yeah, I’ve just come back from the gym
with my son where I’ve been trying to
get in shape for it. It’s about two young,
Black men who came over from Jamaica
in the late 1800s and one of them became
a really popular underground fighter.

Why haven’t you left rainy England

behind and moved to Hollywood?
Upping the kids and going to America was
never me. My bread and butter and heart
and soul are in Britain. I’ve asked myself,
“Are you really ambitious?” And I don’t
think I am. When I did Boardwalk Empire,
I traded my eight first-class flights for like,
50 economy ones so I could be home more.

1 0 0 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 P H O T O G R A P H B Y J O S E P H S I N C L A I R
 love where you live

a new collection of studios, one and two-bedroom

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 GQ World
Most Stylish

On the red
carpet, we’ve
never had it so
good – and GQ
salutes the
people who’ve
made the world a
wilder, madder,
happier-looking
place.
B Y M U R R AY C L A R K ,
Z AK MAO UI, AND
F I N L AY R E N W I C K

I N A S S O C I AT I O N W I T H
 GQ World
Most Stylish

Chris Pine
We were blessed with
quite a lot of Pine Time
during the press run
for a little film called
Don’t Worry Darling.
Much documented
drama aside, Pine’s
style has been a
highlight. He’s gone
from bearded LA
mountain man (or at
least Erewhon Market)
to slick-backed gold
Day-Date daddy, with
Wayfarers and wide,

Lizzo

P H OTO G R A P H S , ( I N C LU D I N G P R E V I O U S PA G E ) D A N I E L A R C H E R , G E T T Y.
wide-open shirt. The
man has range.
Dua Lipa The flute is
fashion’s biggest
Kosovan Kween
accessory. For
Thomas Dua Lipa is the
Jacquemus muse. that, we thank
Doherty That’s because she Lizzo: an artist that
Scottish actor Thomas has has all the star broke boundaries
Doherty hasn’t done power of a proper and your lowly
red carpets for long. stadium filler, but recorder to become
Not that you’d know. with a girl-next-door one of this year’s
He goes shirtless under attitude, all while best-dressed
Dior suits, evokes dripping in Versace
acts. No, bitch:
Mars Attacks with and vintage Dior.
you emotional.
his sunglasses, and
generally does all the
sort of highly sexed-up
shit you’d expect from
a Gossip Girl 2.0er.

1 0 6 G Q
 Er, that’s Miss Flo to you.
Because after a Venice
appearance in a huge
Valentino dress and a
septum ring, the new
supreme cemented herself
as an insurgent Hollywood
presence: she hits back at
haters, she dresses up to
the max, and she even has a
line of team T-shirts printed
in her honour.

D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 1 0 7
 G-Dragon
G-Dragon was selling out Seoul
stadiums before BTS was even a Petri
dish in a K-pop factory farm. Coloured
hair? Womenswear? Chanel and luxury
house campaigns? Nike collaborations?
G-Dragon did it first and he’s still out
Jaden there. Looking a bit sad in a blurry photo
on IG? That’s a G-Dragon thing!
Smith
Jaden Smith’s
saving the planet
with water in a
box – and his day-
to-day style is still
thinking outside of
it with a great mix of
classic and weird.
Yasmin
That means classic Finney
Vuitton suits with A rising star
colourful bandanas, from Netflix’s
and tuxedoes, Heartstopper,
but cropped 19-year-old Finney
and covered in has that decade-
astrophysical blending young
and confident
diagrams and trippy
wardrobe that
puffer jackets from merges the ’70s
MsftsRep, the and Y2K, but it
left-field brand he doesn’t age her
cofounded with a single day.
sister Willow.

1 0 8 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N
 The Best-Dressed DWYANE WADE
AND GABRIELLE
UNION
Couples of the Year There’s something
about a pair who love
(Because clothes and wear
them in ways that
True Love complement one
another. That is the
Brings out case with the golden
couple everyone
Good Fits) wanted to sit with at
the SS23 Prada show.

DOMINIC FIKE AND

HUNTER SCHAFER
At Euphoria high, the
kids are well-dressed,
TINA KUNAKEY but miserable. IRL,
AND VINCENT they’re well-dressed,
CASSEL but in love! Dominic
Few supermodel- and Hunter have kept
actor unions are as up the show’s appetite
impossibly French for clothes that are a
(or as impossibly bit mad and a lot of fun.
chic) as Cassel and
Kunakey. He wears CHARLIE HEATON
white wedding suits. AND NATALIA DYER
She wears custom Before Hunter and
Vera Wang. They Dominic, Charlie and
don’t even look like Natalia were the OG
they’re trying cool couple from a hit
that hard. show – and they know
exactly what they’re
BELLA HADID AND doing on a red carpet.
MARC KALMAN
Marc Kalman doesn’t AUSTIN BUTLER
quite have the name AND KAIA GERBER
recognition of Bella What is it like to be
Hadid. But who cares very tall and very
when he’s paired famous in a sort of
up with the world’s ’90s great hair and
biggest supermodel. faces-hewn-from-
Plus, there’s a “his some-precious-and-
’n’ hers” wardrobe especially-rare-marble
that doesn’t feel kind of way? We’re not
absurd. Great sure. But Austin Butler
coats, great trainers, and Kaia Gerber do.
great trousers.
LUKA SABBAT AND
HAILEY AND JUSTIN JASMINE DANIELS
BIEBER A supermodel, and a
She likes a big shirt man who sort of does
and a pair of blue loads of different
jeans, a kind of LA things, and has a
Lady Di look. He’s little moustache, and
either dressed like a possibly lives in the
wavy 10-year-old or a Chateau Marmont. It’s
Balenciaga poster boy a classic A-List love
– and it works every and style story.
single time.
LILY ALLEN AND
RIHANNA AND DAVID HARBOUR
A$AP ROCKY Dark suit, bushy
You say: social beard, big overcoat
media pregnancy husband; fun shirt
announcements are and billowy skirt
tired. We say: largely wife. Sounds very
true – unless it comes traditional. But Lily
from Rihanna and and David injected
A$AP Rocky. With white picket-fenced
P H OTO G R A P H S , G E T T Y.

looks that channelled bliss with big sleeves,

’90s Madonna and big prints, and Dior.
a bit of Michigan
workwear, this was Head over to
a set piece worthy of @britishgq on Instagram
space on your feed. to have your say.
Me,
Myself,
and
Inclusive
Style
ITUNU OKE
GQ’s Style Project Editor recognised that her growth in confidence was reflected
in her courageous approach to vivid hues.
“MY STYLE HAS changed over the
years and each evolution reflected
where I was in my life at the time. I
used to shy away from colour, maybe
due to a lack of confidence. I wanted
to hide behind my clothes and I
favoured dark colours, especially
black. As I got older my mindset began
to develop and I started to incorporate
more colour. But if you had told me
all those years ago that I would be
P H O T O G R A P H S B Y D A N I E L
Alongside Peroni Nastro
Azzurro, GQ’s friends and
family are expressing
themselves through
fashion like never before.
IN 2022 STYLE is no longer
defined by the old rules that have
for so long dictated how people
dress; clothes no longer act as
just an exterior and instead are
a reflection of the inner self, no
matter what that may look like.
Style is also fluid. Harry Styles
is out there wearing gowns and
Bella Hadid is rocking menswear
separates better than, well, most
men. Peroni Nastro Azzurro has
also embraced this freedom,
alongside the new GQ Most
Stylish list, which features stars
who exude both brands’ values.
But it isn’t just starry names who
are doing it. Here, we call upon
members of the GQ world to tell us
what style means to them.
Shirt, £219, Skirt, £129, by
Baum und Pferdgarten. Shoes,
£525, by Christian Louboutin.
Ring (right hand), £1,250, ring
(left hand index finger), £300,
by Vashi. Ring (left hand middle
finger), £65, by Daphine.
Earrings, Itunu’s own.
wearing colourblock, I’d never have
believed you!
“My confidence has grown over the
years, but so has my understanding
of fashion and the stories you can
tell through personal style. I wouldn’t
say my clothes define me, but they do
highlight and bring out a personality
that I may not always show. Style is
a very individual thing; it is one of the
ways I choose to express myself.”
B E N S O N
 GQ ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE

Vest,
£265,
trousers,
£695, by
Nanushka.

ZAK
MAOUI
How the GQ Style Editor discovered
his looks are no longer mapped out
by the trends.

“ I H A V E A L W A Y S had an interest in
getting dressed up, but I wouldn’t say
I always stayed true to myself with it.
When I was younger I thought being
preppy was the way forward, because
that’s what everyone around me was
doing. In my late teens I had a stint
when I dabbled in ‘indie sleaze’ –
again, because others were doing it.
“Today, I dress for myself. One day
that might mean a sleeveless, flesh-
flashing Nanushka vest, while another
I’ll be wrapped up in an Our Legacy
knit and oversized coat. I’ve learned
that personal style is exactly that:
personal. Trends are there to inspire
and I don’t automatically subscribe
to them.
“The same sensibility goes for
when I’m dressing up for an event.
I like to wear something that I feel
comfortable in, but also will allow me
to stand out from the crowd. A flared
leg isn’t something I thought I’d be
into, nor a sheer shirt, but today I’m
all about it.”

“Trends are there to inspire and I don’t

automatically subscribe to them.”
 GQ ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE

KAMRAN
RAJPUT
The stylist explains how he
found his individuality through
his way of dressing.

H A I R , D I O N N E S M I T H . M A K E U P, J OY A D E N U G A . G R O O M I N G , E L I OT M c Q U E E N . LO C AT I O N S , S E E D L I B R A RY AT O N E H U N D R E D S H O R E D I TC H , N O R D I C P O E T RY.
“I GREW UP in quite a conservative
home. I always rebelled against it
and struggled with my own personal
identity growing up. I was always
trying to fit into someone else’s
norm. Now I have come full circle and
basically play dress-up every day.
“I express myself with different
ways of dressing and draw on that
when styling a shoot or someone
else’s outfit, and especially when
working with a celebrity client. It is
quite funny when asked what I think
is cool. I always thought of myself
as someone who is really uncool
and now I am being asked what I
think is cool.
“I feel I have come into my own
with my style, shopping in both the
women’s and men’s departments, not
really conforming to societal norms
of dressing. I always style myself in
something fun; life is about being
yourself and being remembered, even
for the subtleties.
“On my first day interning in fashion
I wore a black cape. Would I wear that
today? Probably not. Individual style is
about being yourself, and expressing
yourself, and ever evolving.”

Jumper, £488,
by Stefan
Cooke.
T-Shirt, £75,
“I always style myself by Sunspel.
Trousers,
in something fun; £3,450,
belts, £420
life is about being each, by Miu
Miu. Boots,
yourself and being Kamran’s own.

remembered.”
 ANGELO
MITAKOS
GQ’s Fashion Editor reveals how
he gets wavy with his decade-
appropriate vintage finds.

“ O N E O F M Y earliest memories is of
me wearing a pair of red corduroy
Mickey Mouse dungarees at two years
old and feeling amazing. But growing
up in Greece with three other siblings
always meant money wasn’t readily
available. If I wanted a particular
item, I had to source it in a savvy way.
This led me to shopping pre-loved.
Whether it was in charity shops, flea
markets, boot fairs, or even eBay,
vintage became my thing.
“Shopping vintage allows me to
explore my fascination with all eras of
fashion. Whether it’s the ’70s flare, an
’80s power shoulder, or even a ’90s
chunky loafer, you can rest assured
that not only have I tried it on, but I
have something like it in my wardrobe.
“Nights out are when I really get to
play with how I look. One of my go-tos
has to be ’70s disco: bright bold ties,
exaggerated flares, big buckled belts,
and the all-important dagger collar.
“Grooming also plays a big part.
Whether I’m slicking my hair back with
Brylcreem ’60s style, quiffing it with
mousse for an ’80s vibe, or even the
classic ’90s curtains, I use techniques
from the era that inspired me to give
my look authenticity.”

All vintage and

Nordic Poetry.
 Justin Bieber
GQ World
The many phases of
Most Stylish Bieber. A famous bowl
cut and 10,000 tattoos.
He loves his wife, a
big beanie, and has, in
his latest style phase,
become the Balenciaga
Zoë Kravitz guy. His inscrutable gaze
and love for a massive
Kravitz isn’t just a last suit lends itself perfectly
name. It’s a proper to the Demna-led
cultural legacy. And fashion revolution.
Zoë – one of our MOTY
cover stars – maintains
the family honour with
her signature mix of
Saint Laurent elegance
and LA grunge. It even
landed her a very
starry, very smoky
campaign with said
brand, and they’re
actually very hard to
come by.

Lewis
Hamilton
When you’re a champ
you’re allowed to
experiment. One of
Britain’s greatest ever
sporting exports, and
Kid Cudi
someone who is He wore an Off-White
actually into fashion, wedding dress on SNL and
Hamilton likes to look has kept the grunge in
beyond the obvious rap flame alive. You can’t
with his clothing, accuse Cudi of being a
steering towards out- minimalist, but if there’s
the-box brands such as a guy who looks better in
Études, Isabel Marant, a slouchy Nirvana mohair
Bianca Saunders and cardigan then we’ll eat a
Martine Rose. pot of black mascara.
 Austin
Butler
Austin Butler got
so engrossed in the
role of Elvis that
it seems like his
accent (originally
Californian) will
always be blessed
with a little
Tennessee twaaang.
You could say the
same about his
style. While there
are no white-winged
jumpsuits, the
leather jackets,
scoop-neck tees,
and dusty boots give
Butler something
of the classic
Americana in the
way he dresses.
P H OTO G R A P H S , B A C KG R I D, G E T T Y.

Zendaya
Disney kid-turned-Euphoria
darling Zendaya wears more
suits than most guys in this
list. And she wears them better
too: Fear of God, Valentino,
Alexander McQueen, Berluti...
Your wizened Hollywood action
star could never.
 GQ’S MOST

Bella Hadid STYLISH

PERSON ON
THE PLANET

Menswear. Womenswear. Streetwear. Workwear. Smartwear.

Wavywear. Few can wear it all (and pull it off). But few are
Bella Hadid, the princess that was promised, she of abundant
angles, the chosen one who really can wear anything – and
our best-dressed person on the planet. As soon as the Real
Housewives progeny hit supermodel rank, the dam was
broken on a flood of fits that stand toe-to-toe – and often
above – the stuff she’s actually paid to wear.
There’ve been countless throwbacks: the thongs peeking
out over tracksuit bottoms, the Clueless checks, the
hipster jeans with a cut well below sea level. But, with some
Balenciaga grunge and genuine affection for clothes-wearing,
Bella’s throwbacks feel newer, sexier, even a bit intimidating
(history tells us that one should always be a little nerve-
wracked in the company of supermodels). And there are so
many versions of her.
Our favourite version, and the one that secured Hadid the
top spot: Menswear Bella. Tailoring. Prada loafers. Big denim
jackets. LSD fur trappers. There was even a tie at one point.
It’s wavy, classic, and uncomplicated all at once. Hadid does
menswear better than most men – and she can still wear
everything and anything else.

P H OTO G R A P H S , G E T T Y.
 AFTER A YEAR-PLUS OF CREATIVE FECUNDITY – A GOLDEN GLOBE WIN,
AN EMMY NOMINATION, THAT SPIDER-MAN CAMEO – THE ACTOR IS RECKONING
WITH A NEW AND JOYOUS CAREER FREEDOM. IT JUST SO HAPPENS

THAT ALL THIS HAS FOLLOWED HIS GREATEST LOSS.

 FEW MINUTES ACROSS the bor-
der between Los Angeles and
Ventura County sits a mem-
bers-only club called Little
Beach House Malibu, and in
that club’s open-air dining
room, on a balmy Thursday in
October, an out-of-work actor
sits facing the sea. Andrew
Garfield – modestly bearded,
dressed in white painters’
trousers, a logo-less black
T-shirt, and your basic incog-
nito-celeb baseball cap, whose
brim he keeps tilting upward
like the visor of a knight’s hel-
met – orders a cheeseburger
with sweet potato fries, yel-
low mustard on the side, and
begins to elaborate on what
he’s been up to lately, which
isn’t much.
“I’m in a real period of
not-doing,” he says, cheerfully.
“The usual aggressive, ambitious, driven heartbeat, rapping at the door
has subsided for a while.”
The break he’s on now comes after 14 months of remarkable work,
even by Garfield’s standards: Tick, Tick… Boom! and The Eyes of
Tammy Faye. A surprise return to the role of Peter Parker in Spider-
Man: No Way Home. An Emmy nomination for the TV miniseries Under
the Banner of Heaven. To hear Garfield tell it, all this work has been
challenging, rewarding, and unexpectedly satisfying – and all of it has
been put in perspective by the loss of his mother, who died of pancreatic
cancer in 2019. Over the course of a few hours in Malibu, he’ll bring up
her passing again and again – not as a painful memory, but as a line
of demarcation; an experience that’s broken him open in unpredicta-
ble ways, recalibrating his understanding of existence itself, and how
fleeting it can be.
At some point in the future, he’s set to play Richard Branson, in
a David Leitch miniseries about Virgin Atlantic’s feud with British
Airways. But that’s a long way off. Whatever force has driven Garfield
this far is, as he puts it, “hibernating, or taking a nap or something.”
For now he’s taking time to enjoy other people’s work – he’s already
binged hours’ worth of hard hitting documentaries, and has Jordan
Peele’s sci-fi horror film Nope on deck for tonight. Only occasionally is
he nagged by the sense that he should be doing more – like when he
drives around Los Angeles, looking up at billboards showcasing other
people’s projects.
“You start to go into, Well, what am I doing? Why don’t I have a bill-
board?” Garfield says, laughing. “It’s so stupid. It’s insane. It can be a
really great fuel, but it can also be maddening.”
Did you have to carve out this time off deliberately, or did it
just happen?
No. I didn’t, thankfully. I didn’t have to force my way into letting myself
rest. [Bites burger] It was interesting. I’ve been thinking about this
a lot, the reason for this weird peace I’ve been experiencing. I think
the loss of my mum was a big thing. That cataclysm is a forever-
reverberating shift into a deeper awareness of reality. Existence. The
shortness of this window we have. I think that’s working on me in
profound ways that I’m probably not even aware of. Combined with
a lot of output – a few things coming out at the same time, things I
was really happy and proud of. We’re never satisfied, really, but there
was – I don’t know – a semblance of satisfaction [laughs] that I started
to feel, with how Tick, Tick… Boom! turned out, with how Angels in
America turned out. And actually with how being involved in that
Spider-Man movie turned out.
1 2 0 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
←← My sense is that your time as Spider-
OPENING PAGES Man ended sooner than you would have
trousers £2,850 expected. Did it feel like you were finally
Alexander McQueen
closing a circle, by coming back to that part?
→ I don’t know if I had an expectation of doing
OPPOSITE PAGE more. I was very open to it being whatever it
trench coat was meant to be. But there was an undone
£2,405 feeling. Like, What was that experience about?
Saint Laurent by
And how do I close that circle in my living room
Anthony Vaccarello
on my own? And I was doing that – and then it
blazer
was like that classic thing, when you’re getting
(price upon request)
Vivienne Westwood over a relationship, and you’re first starting to
really feel free and untethered from that thing –
gloves £380
Gucci the person knows to call the hour after the first
good night’s sleep you’ve had.
But doing [No Way Home] was really just kind
of beautiful. I got to treat it like a short film about
Spider-Man with buddies. The pressure was off
of me. It was all on Tom’s shoulders. Like, it’s his
trilogy. And me and Tobey were there to provide
support and have as good a time as possible,
actually, and be as inventive, imaginative, and
kind of dumb as possible. Y’know, between the
three of us, I was like, Oh shit, this is going to be
interesting. You have three people who feel real
ownership over this character. But it was really,
like, brotherhood first, I think. And I think that
comes through in what we shot.
It’s my favourite part of the movie, to be
honest. When it becomes the three of you
basically doing a podcast about what it’s
like to be Spider-Man...
[Laughs]
…which was a very different job, for each
of you. Tom Holland still has to carry these
films, but they’re part of the larger Marvel
machinery, which means on some level
they’re too big to fail. You walked in there,
after Tobey Maguire, and had to carry a
Spider-Man movie by yourself. With no
guarantee that you’d get to do it again.
Yup. It was an interesting experience, for sure.
And I was 25, 26...
I always forget that. Peter’s supposed to be
so youthful, but you were in your late 20s.
But still young, though. I feel that about myself
as a 26-year-old. I’m like, Fuck, that was a lot
to take on. It’s a shit-tonne to take on. And I
wanted to take it on. I was ready. I was so up
for it. It didn’t feel heavy. But I think there were
elements that felt very... I sensed danger for
myself, in terms of fame and exposure. Even as
I took [The Amazing Spider-Man] on, I was like,
I wanna make sure I get to do Angels in America
and Death of a Salesman in a few years’ time.
I wanna be a theatre actor first, because that
feels evergreen. If I can do theatre for the rest
of my life to an audience of 50 people a night,
I know that my life is going to be satisfying.
That’s not me being glib – I really know that.
If everything else fell away, we weren’t able
to eat here [he gestures to the breeze-swept
dining room, the ocean view beyond] I’d rent an
apartment in London, and I can do theatre.
Danger aside, though, a franchise like
Spider-Man also opens up opportunities,
doesn’t it? Presumably even Martin
Scorsese would not have gotten to make
Silence, a movie about 17th-century
Jesuit priests, without casting Spider-
Man and Kylo Ren.
I think that. I think so. And even with that, it
was hard for him to get it made. [Pause] It’s that
eternal struggle between being devoted to the
invisible world, the world of spirit, the world
of imagination, creativity, what we know we’re
meant to do. But if we were purely devoted to
that, it would be much harder for us to put a
roof over our heads. So how do we balance
that? We’re living through a capitalistic period
in the history of humanity. And it’s deeply
disgusting and horrific and ugly and all those
things, as well as beautiful. It’s a fascinating
time to be alive. And how do artists – how does
anyone, because everyone is an artist – really
retain that connection to soul, to spirit, to the
unseen, to the thing that really pulls us? Our
own personal genius. Our own personal calling.
Giftedness. The Greeks, they call it the daimon.
The divine twin. That spirit we were separated
from as we passed through the birth canal.
Is that what happens?
That’s what happens, yeah. [Laughs] The
Greeks figured it out. Basically, like, before
we’re born, we’re in consort and connection
with our divine twin, with our daimon, with our
genius spirit. And then I forget what happens.
I think part of the problem is we pass a tree
of forgetfulness as well, as we’re about to be
born. And we get separated and split from the
divine. The idea is that after we’re born, for the
rest of our lives, we get the opportunity to try to
be reunited – to seek that genius spirit, to seek
that twin that’s also seeking us.
Have you had moments where you feel
like you’re hand-in-glove with that
divine energy?
For sure. Yeah. I’ve been very lucky. I can think
of multiple experiences – personally, creatively.
It can show up in a friendship. Like, You’re good
for my life and I’m good for yours. And also in a
breakup, you know? It’s like, Oh, you’re back.
I’ve been surfing a lot, and whenever I surf,
that’s a way of bringing it closer to me, for sure.
And with work, definitely. Recently – this last
period of time that we’ve been talking about –
I’ve been given the gift of having that energy,
that spirit, close to me.
This phase of your career, this chapter of
work that you’re now on the other side of –
where do you feel like it started?
It was Angels in America. The sense of
achievement with that. The sense of surviving,
and not missing a show, for however many
months in London, and then however many
months in New York – I didn’t drop a show. To
live in that play for that long is like being in a
washing machine for a year and a half. [Laughs]
“Doing No Way Home was
really just kind of beautiful.
I got to treat it like a short film
about Spider-Man with buddies.
The pressure was off of me.
It was all on Tom’s shoulders.”
← An existential washing machine. With angels and demons and lovers and
top £475 ghosts, and longing for life, and illness, and the fragility of the mind and
Dunhill
the fragility of the body – ultimately creating, like, a deep awareness of
trousers £1,140 how remarkable it is that we’re all here.
Ferragamo
So that play, I think, really starts to just pull me apart. And then my
boots (price mum gets sick. [Laughs] And it’s like, Oh, right. I was preparing for
upon request)
something. The person that brought me into existence not being in
Zegna
existence any more. I felt like it was all connected. She dies young. She
gloves £380
dies at 69. Tick, Tick… Boom! became this kind of place where I got to
Gucci
continue singing her unfinished song, to keep her song alive, somehow.
When you said in April that you were looking forward to a
few months off, it made headlines. People reacted as if you’d
announced your retirement. That’s the nature of the culture now –
there’s pressure for creative people to keep pushing out product all
the time. If you’re not on the grind…
Maybe I should just stay on the grind. Maybe I should find something to
attach myself to. I’m freaked out now. Just this conversation has done
it. [Laughs] I will absolutely get back on it. I will be a slave to capitalism.
[Garfield leans in closer to the recorder on the table] I’m down. I love
capitalism. I love capitalism. I will be a cog in the machinery.
I mean, obviously I’m in a privileged position. I’m of a generation
slightly older than the iPhone generation. That kind of ‘hustle culture’ – I
lived pre-that, I suppose. But it’s a tricky one, because I’m for hard work.
I was raised by a swimming-coach father. I like feeling devoted. I like
grinding at something that I care about, for sure.
Right. You were an athlete before you were an actor. I have to
assume that never leaves you.
It’s in me. For sure. There was a time when winning and losing was my
identity. And it still is, kind of. I played pickleball with some friends
the other day. It was my first time playing, and I was playing these two
incredibly gifted young tennis athletes, just in their driveway – and inside
I was just burning. [Laughs]
Why? Because you were getting...
Whupped! [Laughs] It never goes away. That shame of losing, and the
relief of winning.
I think it says something that even someone in your position
grapples with this stuff: the pressure to constantly be producing,
the fear of being left behind. There’s not a level of success that
frees you from those questions.
No. It makes me think about – and it’s funny, I’m sorry, but my reference
point for everything now, I just go back to my mum not being here. I just
go to that and what that means. It means I’m not gonna be here long, and
we’re not gonna be here long. That doesn’t provide any answers, but it
does feel like it sharpens an arrow of direction, in some mysterious way.
But then, I don’t know – my dad, right now, I think, is just meant to
tend his back garden. He’s lost his wife, and I think all he’s meant to do
D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 1 2 3
right now, for the most part – it’s going to make
me cry – is play with his grandkids, and create
this back garden. He’s turned it into, like, a
subtropical jungle. He’s got a water feature and
a moat. He’s gone crazy, as grief will make you
do, but he’s gone toward beauty and nature and
self-soothing. And I’m really kind of impressed
with him for that. The fact that he’s created
something so beaut–

[A pause. Garfield tears up]

Fuck. Fucking hell, man. It’s awful. It hurts

– the beauty of it hurts, so much. Knowing he’s
created something so beautiful out of the worst
loss you could ever, like – [voice breaking] They
were together, in love. They were an imperfect
couple that stayed together. And for him to be
left, now, to deal with what that means – I’m
not going to speak for his experience, because
that’s not appropriate. But I feel like I can say:
I feel like making a garden is plenty. You know
what I mean? I don’t think we’re all meant to
save the world all the time.

All this makes me think about Tick, Tick…

Boom!, which among other things is a story
about a guy who’s pushing 30 and worries
about what he still hasn’t accomplished.
You’re, what, 38?
Thirty-nine. I’m turning 40 in a year. Next
summer. Next August.

It’s closer than I thought!

Me too! [Laughs]

How does that feel? Does that date feel

like it’s something looming over you?
It’s interesting. It feels far off. I need to start
thinking about a good party. If I organise
something fun, it’ll be great. And the good
news is, all my high school friends, we’re all
celebrating [turning 40] together. But it’s
interesting – I always thought I would be the
first to have kids and settle down, and they’re
all shacked up and a couple of kids deep, for
the most part. And I’m like… [Trails off, laughs]

You’re here with me.

I’m here with you, eating a burger, just
contemplating existence. Trying to fill my days
with as much nonsense as I possibly can. So
that’s interesting. Releasing myself from the
societal obligation of procreating by the time
I’m 40 has been an interesting thing to do with
myself. [Laughs] I’m not going to bore your
readers with the machinations of...

Of why it didn’t happen?

Oh, God. Where do I start with why it didn’t
happen? [Laughs] No, it’s more about
accepting a different path than what was kind
of expected of me from birth. Like, By this time
you will have done this, and you will have at
least one child – that kind of thing. I think I
have some guilt around that. And obviously
it’s easier for me as a man...

D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 1 2 5

“The loss of my mum was a
big thing. That cataclysm is a
forever-reverberating shift into
a deeper awareness of reality.
Existence. The shortness of
this window we have.”
There’s still time.
As far as I know. [Knocks on wood]
You could be Anthony Quinn. Get at it in your 70s.
I’d rather not.
You say that now.
Yes. No, we’ll see. [Laughs] Life seems to be a perpetual practice of
letting shit go. Letting go of an idea of how a thing should look, or be, or
feel. And that one’s a big one [to let go of], because of course I would’ve
loved my mum to have met my kids, if I’m going to have kids. And she will.
In spirit. She’ll be there for it. I know she’s there, for all the big ones.
But, yeah. Life, life, life. Life is in charge. We’ll see. We’ll see what
happens. I’m curious.
BACK WHEN GARFIELD was going to his first movie auditions, he’d see
the same faces at every casting call. Actors like Eddie Redmayne (“my
friend, my bro”) and Robert Pattinson. Charlie Cox. Jamie Dornan. It’s
an estimable list of elder-millennial British actors who’ve gone on to
different kinds of commercial and creative success. But Garfield’s arc
might be the most surprising, particularly post-Amazing Spider-Man.
His hits have been unlikely ones – like Hacksaw Ridge, a war movie
about a conscientious objector – and his misses are still interesting (the
hipster Pynchon-style mystery Under the Silver Lake).
There’s also a broader cultural resonance to Garfield’s work. The
Social Network now plays like an accidental prequel to the 2016 US
presidential election. The Eyes of Tammy Faye and Under the Banner
of Heaven seem to speak even more directly to the fracturing psyche
of the United States. They’re both about religious fundamentalism and
what can fester under its aegis – greed and corruption in ...Tammy Faye,
misogynist violence in ...Banner. Despite being set in the 1980s, both
stories felt all-too-topical in an America increasingly gripped by a toxic
Christian nationalism.
In ...Banner of Heaven, Garfield – who was born in Los Angeles but
raised in Surrey from age three, and remains a dual citizen of the US and
UK – plays a decent man confronting the reality that the institutions he’s
built his life around may be irredeemably corrupt. Although the show is
about murder among Mormons in 1984, it captures the feeling of waking
up in a country you no longer recognise. That national identity crisis
plays out on his face in nearly every shot.
Faith has been a through-line in a lot of your work. Silence is about
the way faith persists under extreme duress. The Eyes of Tammy
Faye and Under the Banner of Heaven are about the dark side of
faith. You’ve said you were brought up Jewish, but not particularly
religious, and yet you’re drawn to these themes.
Yeah. It’s instinctive. I think what was compelling to me about Silence
was that it was like an ayahuasca journey this guy was going on,
actually. He had to die. His ego had to die, his belief system. He had
1 2 6 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
to get broken into a million pieces to have
his consciousness expanded, to know that a
life of spirituality wasn’t just an A-to-B, linear,
simple, didactic route.
He has to die in order to know what he
actually believes.
Totally. And to know that a life of faith is a
life of doubt, actually, rather than a life of
certainty. And it’s something similar to what
Pyre goes through in Under the Banner of
Heaven. Pyre was really interesting to me,
because it was a very human dilemma. There
was something really interesting about a man,
a person, who was getting broken open. Who
was kind of sensitive and smart enough to
doubt everything, and to let himself question
everything. And good-hearted enough to leave
no stone unturned and to prioritise the lives of
this woman and her baby over his own.
So, thinking about the draw to faith and
spirituality [in the work], I think it’s more about
the breaking of faith. It’s about growth, really.
The container getting larger somehow. It’s the
same experience I went through with Mum. I
was in a reality where she was always going
to be alive, and now I’m in a true reality, where
it’s like, Oh, no. She was never always going to
be alive. And none of us are always going to
be. I think I’m drawn to that. Just – widening.
Widening consciousness. Widening the heart,
maybe, as well.
But then you think about Hacksaw Ridge.
That was a guy who was touched by something.
Divine protection, courage, genius, whatever
you want to call it – he was surrounded by
the angels.
He had the ring of fire.
Yeah. He had the angels with him. But in
order to get there, he had to go through the
unbearable tension of being stretched and
broken open by a system that didn’t want his
nuance, that didn’t want his individualism,
I suppose. So there’s always some test, I
suppose, that I’m curious about. Like people on
hunger strikes – getting down to their essential
nature, somehow, getting down to the bare
←←
bones of who they are. There’s something
PREVIOUS PAGES
trousers £2,850 about stripping everything away that I’m
Alexander McQueen compelled by, I think. A spiritual journey where
you’re trying to get to the essential spirit of
→ something, which is not material, which is
OPPOSITE PAGE
not the body, which is that kind of ineffable,
trench coat
(price upon request) cosmic, unfathomable thing.
Vintage
blazer £1,890 It seems like, in your work, you’ve been able
Maison Margiela to explore questions and ideas that mean
shirt £625 something to you. Not everybody gets that.
Dunhill I’m grateful for it. I’m very fortunate. I’ve been
trousers £680 mentored by the human beings in my life. I’m
Lanvin so lucky that I’ve had the opportunities I’ve
boots £1,400 had. And the friendships I’ve had, and the
Prada mentors and the teachers. But I’m also pretty
belt £620 intent. Like, I’m not a nice person to be around
Saint Laurent by if I’m not able to follow the thing that I feel I’m
Anthony Vaccarello supposed to follow [laughs].
 If you feel like you’re doing some bullshit?
If I feel like I’m doing some bullshit, if I feel like
I’m in the wrong room with the wrong people –
no one wants that version of me. I don’t want
to subject anyone to that version of me. Let
alone myself.
Directors see you as someone who’s
believable in wrestling with these big
questions. Scorsese is one. But the one
I love is David Fincher, who said he could
never have cast you as Mark Zuckerberg
in The Social Network, because you were
way too human...
[Blows air out – Pbbbt. The sound, perhaps,
of him preemptively deflating his own balloon]
GROOMING, SONIA LEE FOR EXCLUSIVE ARTISTS USING LE DOMAINE SKINCARE AND ORIBE. BARBER, JEFF VERBECK. TAILOR, YELENA TR AVKINA. PRODUCTION, PE T T Y CASH.
…and had too much access to your
inner life.
That’s funny. Yeah. It’s so funny, because
Jesse [Eisenberg]’s inner life is so live-
wire. And I think it was more like, [Fincher]
thought I could do both, but I was just
more naturally suited [for the part of
Zuckerberg’s estranged cofounder,
Eduardo Saverin].
And I love his performance, but looking
back, I think Jesse ended up bringing
an unrealistic level of humanity to
Zuckerberg, too.
That’s what Jesse struggled with so much, I
think. He was like, It’s so hard to be opaque.
Because Jesse is – I don’t know if you’ve ever
met him – but he’s just, like, a mile a minute.
Intellect. Heart. It’s crazy.
But, no. I mean, those are the moments
– whether it’s Fincher or Scorsese, or Tony
Kushner, or Mike Nichols, whoever. It feels like
you’re being blessed by a high priest of the
art. I think we all need that, in whatever we’re
doing. We need blessings from elders, from
the ones that have found their place.
You mentioned ayahuasca. You’ve
mentioned it in interviews before. Have
you experimented with it, or other
shortcuts to expanded consciousness?
I feel like talking about it in interviews never
comes off. In, like, an actor interview. Talking
about plant medicine. [Pause] I’ve definitely
[laughs] had a few very profound experiences.
It fascinates me, really. Consciousness is like
deep space travel – we’re never going to know
all of it. So I’m all for anything that helps us to
reach those doors.
I met someone recently who – I won’t
mention their name – but they developed
this thing after smoking DMT, called advanced
savant syndrome. They did DMT and they
just became an expert in a field that they’d
never studied.
What – like they tripped and suddenly knew
a language?
A scientific language. Astrophysics. So this
stuff is not for the faint of heart. Like, what
“If I feel like I’m doing
some bullshit, if I feel like
I’m in the wrong room
with the wrong people –
no one wants that version
of me. Let alone myself.”
← an amazing gift he’s been given – but also, y’know, that’s a lot to
trench coat £250 contend with.
Mothfood Vintage
rain coat Yeah. That’s my concern. I’m nervous about ego death. Maybe I
(price upon request) need my ego, checking IDs at the door.
Lanvin
Dude. I have to tell you. In one of my plant medicine experiences, there
was a moment where I was so happy to remember what a toilet seat was.
I’m not gonna go into it deeper than that, but there was a purging that I
did, and up until that moment, nothing was identifiable.
Nouns didn’t exist...
I didn’t exist. Like, it was the thing that I had been longing for, with my
work, which is to reconnect with everything. And it’s like, OK. I get it.
Let me back. I wanna go back. But I have to say, the moment after I
vomited, and found my cheek against the toilet seat, this cold porcelain
[laughs] – when I realised I remembered what that was against my
face, I think I started sobbing. Thank God for the ego. Thank God for
the delineation of things. Thank God for the world of opposites – this
being my face, and that being a toilet seat. There’s plenty of time to get
to the everything.
But I think sometimes we need to dip our toe [into that], to
remember. Because otherwise we get too [taps the table] here. We get
too of-the-world. And to become too of-this-world means we lose our
souls. We’re seeing it all the time. We’re seeing a kind of meaningless,
this pervasive kind of epidemic, I think, of lack of meaning in people’s
lives. And I think it’s a lot to do with an overemphasis on [taps the table
again] the material world. Materialism. And rationality. Rather than
the eternal things. The eternal things in nature, in the imagination, the
things that unite us.
You’ve talked a lot about losing your mum today. It strikes me that,
in all the emotional reactions you’re describing, none of it seems to
be about regret.
No. Thank God, yeah. There was no stone left unturned. There was
nothing left unsaid. The wild thing is, even though we loved her to the max
– there’s still love to give. That’s interesting. And that love can feel like grief,
or can be renamed grief, in a way, because it would be so nice to be able
to continue to love her in person. Her not being here to receive it, with her
body, creates some grief. But the love is still love. It’s that unconditional
well of infinity that I suddenly got access to, through the loss. It was like,
Oh, shit – like striking oil. It’s never-ending. The grief is never-ending.
The love is never-ending. Like, Oh. That’s the nature of love.
What do you do with that information?
You let it drown you sometimes. You ride it sometimes. You give thanks,
that’s the point. And it’s so trite and so cliché, but that’s it. Whatever that
unnameable thing is, that we try to call “love,” that’s what we’re meant to
experience here, somehow.
alex pappademas is a writer who lives in Los Angeles.
D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 1 2 9
 Photographs by Words by Styled by
Charlotte Rutherford Olivia Pym Anna Trevelyan

Sydney
Sweeney’s

THE SCENE-STEALING MEME QUEEN OF EUPHORIA

AND THE WHITE LOTUS HAS TURNED PRETTY-VACANT

TEENS INTO SOME OF THE MOST COMPLICATED AND
CONTROVERSIAL CHARACTERS ON TV.
Sydney Sweeney is the sweetest!
How sweet is Sydney Sweeney? So sweet
that even her name sounds like a Sherbet
Dip-Dab swirled in sugar and sheathed in
sparkly cellophane, or an IV drip of
blended rainbows that shoots glitter
through your blood plasma. Two double-
Sydney Sweeneys, extra sprinkles! So sweet
that when Sydney Sweeney tells you you can
do something – and she has every faith that
you can – you will instantly forget why you
ever doubted yourself in the first place.
A compliment from Sweeney – for instance,
while you’re both hanging out at a pottery
painting studio on a sunny afternoon –
is like having a pep talk from Oprah,
or The Rock spot you at the gym:
“I believe in you!” “Don’t be scared!”
“In art there are no mistakes!”
Sydney Sweeney, who is painting a serving
platter with the laser focus that her Euphoria
character, Cassie, brings to her 4am skincare
routine, is actually more of a blue kind of girl
(“my favourite colour”) but today has fallen in
love with cornflower yellow number 49 (“I love
how yellow pops!’). The truth is that Sweeney
really wishes she’d chosen to paint the deco-
rative Christmas platter. Sydney Sweeney
truly, madly, deeply loves Christmas. She loves
Christmas in the get-the-Christmas-napkins-
out, watch-the-Hallmark-Channel-for-28-days-
straight, pipe-white-icing-into-my-veins kind
of way. She badly wants to make a Christmas
movie. The way she has been online looking at
Christmas decorations for months, she says in a
sing-song voice, “is a sickness!” And that might
just be the most Sydney Sweeney thing anyone
has ever said.
Speaking of “holidays”, it is “fall”, and I am
sitting with Sweeney inside a pottery café in
1 3 2 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
a town south-west of Boston, where Sweeney
has been shooting Sony’s Spider-Man spin-off,
Madame Web, since June. And we are in the
airless basement of the building because the
Boston University swimming team upstairs
have twigged that the star of the most tweet-
ed-about TV show of the decade shares their
enthusiasm for painting ceramics.
Sweeney had greeted me on the street with
a full-body hug. Dressed in jeans, trainers
and a jumper, and with minimal make-up,
the 25-year-old almost went unnoticed in
the Saturday afternoon throng of teenage
girls brandishing palettes and sponges. But
then someone noticed that one of the stars of
Euphoria was standing just three feet away,
deliberating between painting a vase or an egg
cup. Judging by the looks on their faces (which
made Edvard Munch’s The Scream look like it
has the emotive range of The Mona Lisa) they
may soon bust the door open. But for now all
is calm, apart from the interruptions of the
extremely polite proprietor, Doug, who has
come in to warn us that news of Sweeney’s pres-
ence is spreading. “Blogging has started,” Doug
says, in the doleful tone of a Silicon Valley whis-
tle-blower. “It’s the world we live in, is it not?”
The hysterics upstairs are normal for
Sweeney. Ever since Sweeney broke through –
with roles in the likes of The Handmaid’s Tale
and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, followed
by this year’s double-Emmy nominations for
Euphoria and The White Lotus – things have
been a little wild. Ceramics have become
Sweeney’s rabbit hole away from all the noise.
Her recent pottery highlights, she explains,
include a cookie plate and a flowery bowl
for her Lab-German Shepherd mix, Tank.
“I love to create a world, even if it’s just for
my dog,” she says.
While Sweeney talks she is studiously ref-
erencing an Instagram post of several bowls
adorned with tiny oranges and frills of flowers
threaded together with green vines. I, mean-
while, am sponging my own platter in number
17 lifeless beige with the haphazard clumsiness
of the plaster mask scene in Mrs. Doubtfire.
“That looks so cool!” Sweeney says, sweetly. “It
does!” (It does not.)
Pottery painting is only one entry in
Sweeney’s long and unexpected list of talents.
She restores vintage cars. She is trained in
mixed martial arts. She has her own production
company, Fifty-Fifty Films. At high school she
spent her time juggling an exhausting number
of sports – including golf, softball, football, ski-
ing, and dirt biking – with the robotics team
and an academic club called, genuinely, Math Is
Cool. It almost goes without saying that Sydney
Sweeney was also class valedictorian.
If you are surprised by any of this, then you
are not the first. Even back then people thought
they had Sydney Sweeney sussed from her con-
spiratorial giggle and shimmer of Cinderella
hair. Perhaps they missed the ember of a wake-
board accident scar glowing beneath her left
eye (you should see the wakeboard!), or the
faded shadows of old wrestling bruises on her
legs. Because the truth is that, while Sydney
Sweeney is the sweetest! She could also prob-
ably crush you.
IF YOU’RE UNSURE whether you’re too old for
Euphoria, a good litmus test is how tired you
feel while watching opioid-curious, body-dys-
morphic, parent-begrudging teenagers career
around while not making a single good decision
during the one-hour episode span. Resigned to
revenge porn and unconcerned by their Screen
Time reports, the youth on Euphoria nego-
tiate our sympathy as we’re guided through
their darkest moments and memories. It’s a
reminder of how teetering between being a
child and adulthood can be both crushing and
invigorating; a depressant and a stimulant in
one heady hit.
After spending the first season of Euphoria
architecting the beautiful and meek
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 “I did everything that people wouldn’t
think I would do, to show them that my
body doesn’t define who I am.”

proto-cheerleader Cassie Howard, Sweeney up for photoshoots and people thought that is From there, the roles have kept coming: a
relished her abrupt downturn in season two. who I am. I worked really hard to change that child-bride on The Handmaid’s Tale, a doe-
“I love the spiral that Cassie goes down,” she perception of myself, especially in high school.” eyed Manson cultist in Quentin Tarantino’s
says, with a villainous smile. “[The darker Sydney Sweeney grew up 20 miles from the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Those roles
material] is the easiest for me. I can access Washington-Idaho border. She has few mem- are increasingly leading ones: Madame Web;
my emotions easily, so that’s just kind of what ories of ever being inside growing up, instead Sony’s forthcoming reboot of Barbarella. As
happens.” Sweeney can see why Cassie might spending her childhood in the sprawling wood- she has become more and more in demand,
have been pushed so hard by the stacked odds lands around Spokane, hiking through forests Sweeney has found herself keeping increas-
of being a young woman that unravelling felt and swimming in open water. It was a happy, ingly surreal celebrity company, from Drake,
like freedom. Judging by the many screenshots all-American origin story, although the music who produces Euphoria and comes to hang
of Cassie in increasingly deranged situations changed when she had to come inside and line on set (“He is super-sweet and super-nice!”) to
that were spun into internet gold, she wasn’t up with all the other girls. Jennifer Coolidge (“I’m obsessed with her!”)
the only one who could relate. As a teenager, Sweeney suffered from acne so Today, the people who had mockingly asked
Sweeney has seen the memes: Cassie cow- bad that she once took the drastic action of cov- what they could see her in are the ones in her
ering in the bath while her best friend, whose ering her face with toothpaste as a last resort DMs congratulating her on award nominations.
boyfriend she just finished having sex with, and came out in horrific rashes for days. Her “I truly believe success is the best revenge,” she
hammers on the door. Her puking in the hot body would wage silent wars with her in other, says, exhaling a breath that sounds like it had a
tub. Her dancing to Sinéad O’Connor while more complicated ways too. “I had boobs before long way to travel.
drunkenly tangled in balloons (which, inciden- other girls and I felt ostracised for it,” Sweeney “All right!” Sweeney puts down the plate and
tally, she’s dying for director Sam Levinson to says. “I was embarrassed and I never wanted smiles the sweetest smile at that lovely shade
release the uncut footage of ). That bathroom to change in the locker room. I think that I put of yellow number 49. “Second coat down. Art is
scene where she screamed at her friends that on this weird persona other people had of me freedom of speech!”
she has NEVER! EVER! BEEN! HAPPIER! because of my body. So I did play every sport
Sweeney was already defending her title as and I studied really hard and I did everything WITH FAME HAS come the realisation that, in
Twitter’s most screenshotted HBO property that people wouldn’t think I would do, to show public at least, it’s hard for Sweeney to be her-
after last summer’s The White Lotus. Sweeney’s them that my body doesn’t define who I am.” self any more. Recently Sweeney went out by
character, the sardonic, Nietzsche-reading Does she still feel like she has to do that now? herself to a flea market (“a terrible decision”)
tyrant Olivia, dragged on holiday to Hawaii “Oh yeah, but now it’s on a whole-world scale.” and was mobbed by people asking for self-
by her excruciatingly boomer parents, sent a When she was 11, a low-budget zombie movie ies. After a while, Sweeney realised that she
collective shiver down the internet’s spine. The came to shoot in her town. Sweeney begged wasn’t enjoying herself any more, but that she
devastating side-eye deployed by Olivia and her her parents to let her audition. She convinced didn’t have a way out. She ‘escaped’ her way:
best friend Paula to any hotel guest who crossed them, landing the role of Lisa in Zombies of by politely taking photographs with everyone
their poolside path quickly became shorthand Mass Destruction. After that she started audi- until there was nobody left asking.
for how utterly out of touch Gen Z think you tioning for whatever she could. When she was It’s not the first time she has found fame suf-
are. The New York Times crowned them “the 13, the family moved to Los Angeles, and for focating. This summer, while shooting a new
scariest girls on TV.” But, as with so many years Sweeney took roles in “not even the good film about the whistle-blower Reality Winner,
of Sweeney’s roles, The White Lotus slowly indies” just to prove she was working. Unable Sweeney had started to feel like she was drown-
peeled back Olivia’s anti-racist, intersectional to afford the rental prices in LA, her parents ing. “I put so much into that movie and every
allyship as a false façade, leaving something gave up their family home and eventually hour I had off I had a photoshoot or interview or
darker underneath. moved into a motel. prepping for Madame Web,” she says. “I wasn’t
Sweeney is a director’s gift when it comes “I hated going home and friends or family allowed to quiet my brain. And that’s hard.”
to fucking with the audience. As both Cassie members being like, ‘When are you going to The burnout led to panic attacks, and stretches
and Olivia, she plays to the cliché of who you come home and get a real job?’” Sweeney says. where she couldn’t sleep. “I had seven days off. I
would expect those girls to be, then pulls the “There were a lot of really condescending state- went home and turned off my phone.” But it was
rug at the moment you think you have them ments that would make me disappointed in all waiting for her when she turned her phone
pinned down. I ask Sweeney myself and guilty that my parents back on. “I was like, ‘Fuck, I can’t do that again,’
whether picking these bait-and- had given up so much to allow me so I have to find a healthy in-between.”
←
switch characters are because she top from £690 to follow my dreams.” Balancing work and rest is not something
feels misunderstood and finds skirt from £2,750 Suddenly, in the way that things that Sweeney always finds easy. In July this
herself performing that gotcha Prada feel instantaneous after you’ve year, she made headlines after giving an inter-
moment herself. “I like finding earrings £33,500 been crawling with no progress view with The Hollywood Reporter, in which
characters who challenge the Tiffany for so long, Sweeney booked both she spoke of taking sponsorship deals and not
viewer,” Sweeney says. “I dyed my necklace £357,000 2018’s Sharp Objects, and the being able to take time out because, unlike
hair blonde and started dressing Yessayan Netflix show Everything Sucks!. many other young actors, she had no support

D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 1 3 5
1 3 6 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
 dress £3,990
shawl £3,600
Moschino
earrings £29,100
ring £5,700
ring £7,300
Yessayan

“I hated going home and friends or family

members being like, ‘When are you going
to come home and get a real job?’”

D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 1 3 7
 “I truly believe success is
the best revenge.”

group. The comments set off a debate online, her parents lose all of theirs. Similarly, the dark
where reactions were split between sympathy stories on Euphoria, which for affluent millen-
for working actors without rich parents, and nials in solid blue states might feel wildly exotic
pretty much, oh, being famous is such a chore, for their nosedive into poverty and trauma, are
boohoo! I ask Sweeney if she resents ‘nepo things she’s actually seen.
babies’ – the internet’s favourite term for child Her own time at school was spent never
actors who are able to walk into Hollywood going to a single party because she “didn’t feel
on the back of their parents’ connections. “I the need”, and obeying her parents’ unerring
might have had to work longer to get through strictness about academic performance. But
the same door they were able to walk through,” there is also, she says, a “really deep, deep
she says. “But there’s nothing I can do. I never streak of addiction” that runs through her fam-
knew that existed until I got to this place and ily, one that she saw pull the people around her
then I was like, ‘What the fuck was I doing for apart from the passenger seat of her childhood.
10 years?!’” “I come from a family of Cassies and [recov-
Sweeney stands out in Hollywood in other ering drug addict in the show] Rues,” she says.
ways. Spokane county, where she grew up, “Mostly Rues. I’ve never actually tried any
voted for Trump by clear margins in both 2016 drug, never drank, because I’ve seen my aunts,
and 2020, and her friends and family have uncles, cousins, and the effect not just on that
seldom left that place. She was criticised after person but the community surrounding them.
photographs of her mother’s 60th birthday It’s hard to watch someone want to destroy
party appeared on Instagram, showing guests themselves. It’s hard when people judge people
wearing Trump baseball caps and T-shirts. they don’t know.”
“Honestly I feel like nothing I say can help the
conversation,” she says. “It’s been turning into D O U G I S B A C K . He wants to thank Sweeney,
a wildfire and nothing I can say will take it back because suddenly his pottery café is the hottest
to the correct track.” spot in the wider Boston metropolitan area and
Telling the story means feeding a narrative quite possibly the entire global ceramics scene.
Sweeney can’t control. She doesn’t mind being I am now adorning the beige platter with some
interviewed, but right now she’s wondering unidentifiable family of fauna that, thanks to
which 10 lines are going to make it into this their yellow centre, Sweeney informs me, look
piece and give people another version of her to like her adolescent acne. It might be the mean-
contend with that isn’t quite right. Fame often est thing Sydney Sweeney has ever said. “I think
seems like a spectator sport at which many are you’ve got this! Mine is just blobs right now so
excited to see her fail. “I’ll see people say, ‘She I don’t know what you’re worried about,” she
needs to get media training’. Why, do you want smiles. “It can be our thing!”
to see a robot?” she says. “I don’t think there’s Perhaps the most unlikely hobby on a long
any winning.” Does she read the comments? list of activities that Sweeney has made her
“Sadly, yes.” thing is Syd’s Garage, her TikTok account, in
Sweeney’s parents eventually divorced. which she records herself fixing up vintage cars.
Sweeney’s father, who has remarried and lives The first project was a 1969 Ford Bronco, which
on a ranch outside the US and without phone she bought at an auction and lovingly restored
service, has never seen Euphoria, or much of brake by brake, tyre by tyre. The account was
what she’s done, as far as she knows. “When just something that she started in order to share
I go home my family doesn’t understand me her progress with her mother, but ended up
or the world I’m in any more,” she says, head amassing 1.5 million followers in the process.
down. “But then in this industry, my home and For Sweeney, working on the cars is another
the place that grounds me is so vastly different way to do something that soothes her frantic
to how people live there. I’m in this mind and keeps her hands busy
in-between place where I feel like on something that isn’t a screen.
←
neither side understands me.” dress £2,060 “It’s more like who I was growing
Sometimes it feels as if GCDS up, with people doing things with
Sweeney is looking over her shoes £825 their hands and getting dirty,”
shoulder, expecting someone to Christian Louboutin she says. “I love it.” See also her
snatch everything back from her. earrings recently discovered love of MMA
Spending money still feels “so (price upon request) fighting and grappling, which
stressful”, she says, having seen Chopard she took up while living in Los

D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 1 3 9
 “I’ll see people say,
Angeles, because travelling for work means she
can no longer play team sports without letting
everyone down. “The thing I loved the most was
how much I was teaching my brain to not give
up,” she says. “If my body thinks it’s tired then ‘She needs to get media training.’
my brain can tell me it’s not. Discipline is one of
the first things that they teach you, and I really
liked the respect I was teaching myself. Now I
Why, do you want to see a robot?”
put that into everything I do.”
Could she throw me to the floor?, I wonder
aloud. “I mean, yes, but not right now,” she
laughs, explaining with some sadness that she’s

H A I RST Y L I ST, G L E N C O C O. M A K E U P A RT I ST, M E L I S S A H E R N A N D E Z . C G I , M E TA P O I N T. X Y Z . R E TO U C H , N ATA LY T R AC H . P RO D U CT I O N D ES I G N E R, N ATA L I E FA LT. P RO D U CT I O N , ST E P H A N B I E L E C K I .

under strict instructions not to fight in case
whoever she is playing on Madame Web (your
guess is as good as mine) turns up on set cov- I think about how often male actors are who it was for. And even right now there is a
ered in bruises. Has she ever actually punched seen as brave or experimental artists when part of me, in this basement, painting pottery
anyone? “Oh yeah. It’s fighting.” they strip off on camera, while women are with Sydney Sweeney, that is wondering how I
Women’s bodies and the theme of bodily so often lessened through exposure. There look from the outside.
autonomy crop up in Sweeney’s work repeat- are so many things I want to know but all I think about the girls on the swim team
edly, most glaringly in the ending of Euphoria’s that comes out is asking if all this makes her upstairs and their faces at seeing Sweeney, the
first season, when Cassie faces an abortion want to hide herself away, and because she Instagram archetype of beauty made reality,
alone. “When I was doing The Handmaid’s Tale is Sydney Sweeney she knows what I mean by and how much that person carries on their
I had a lot of women come up to me and tell me ‘all this’. “Not any more,” she says. “I think it’s shoulders in exchange for being seen that way.
how much the show meant to them,” she says ridiculous. I’m an artist, I play characters. I think of how sex is really about power, who
of her role in the TV adaptation of Margaret It makes me want to play characters that piss gets to hold it in their hands and who has to
Atwood’s once-dystopian novel. With the over- people off more.” keep reaching out for it. I think about the dou-
turning of Roe vs. Wade, the series feels darker Sweeney has nothing but effusive praise for ble-edged sword of being young and beautiful
and more urgent than ever. “People were like, the show’s writer and director Sam Levinson, and successful and talented, and how an out-
‘Oh no that’ll never happen.’ I honestly don’t despite reports – which Sweeney has denied – sider from nowhere who people think just tum-
know how we’re in the place that we’re in.” that she had to talk him down from including bled into Hollywood is absolutely not allowed
Sweeney has come of age at a moment gratuitous scenes of her naked. “Those people to have her red velvet cupcake and eat it, too.
where being an incredibly beautiful woman aren’t on set, they don’t know what’s going on,” But Sweeney doesn’t say that. Sweeney
in the entertainment industry is like stand- she says. “I trust Sam so much with what he sits there, painting that fragile platter with a
ing on a trap-door. If she embraces her beauty does with Cassie. It feels really good as an actor beautiful exterior, then she looks right at me
and talks of sex scenes as empowering, then to be able to trust the filmmaker because it just and says, “Women have to deal with a lot.”
she’s trading on her sexuality and using femi- changes the entire experience.” The final layer of paint is drying on the table.
nism as a get-out-of-jail-free card. If she voices Although little is known about the show’s On Sweeney’s platter, a perfect bouquet of flow-
insecurities about her body, she’s ridiculed for third season, Sweeney confirms she is set to ers has blossomed in sorbet shades of pink and
being some Hot Lives Matter activist seeking return. What would she want for Cassie next? orange. Having covered over the acne splotches
empathy for the trials and tribulations of being “There was a moment there when Cassie (“Lots of artists paint over their canvases!”) I
ridiculously good looking. I find it interesting started learning how to manipulate Nate,” she am back to where we were hours ago. The only
that in our long and winding conversation says. “I think it would be fun to play into that thing left to do is lamely flick some paint onto
Sweeney never conflates her own self-confi- power she learned she had.” the dish in a move that feels deeply disrespect-
dence and body image with a wider feminist Cassie’s sway over men is one of the most ful to Jackson Pollock. “Everyone has their
movement. Perhaps she knows people are tired interesting dynamics on Euphoria. In flash- own version of art! It could be like… a cool?
of everything being empowering, or perhaps backs in season one, we see the moment Cassie marble? hodge-podge? of colours?” Sydney
she’s aware that people don’t think feminism is first felt family friends acting strange with her Sweeney says, and she makes it sound like it
for a girl that looks like her. Really, in exposing as her body changed. “I think everyone goes could even be true.
her body she is trying to tell a story about the through their own experience of that,” Sweeney Earlier, Doug had given her a card with
judgements we make of women. says, of the negotiations women make with his daughter’s number on it and the offer of a
The venom she receives online in reaction to what and who their bodies are for. “It almost home-cooked meal and a friendly face, should
nude scenes proves the point. At one point in feels like a power.” she ever need it. Before we leave, Sweeney
Euphoria’s first season, nude videos of Cassie She leaves the word “almost” hanging places it in her bag with such tenderness that,
are circulated around school. Since the episode in the air. Then she asks, “Did you ever go had he seen it, I think Doug might have wept.
aired, people have taken to screenshotting through that?” When he had finally admitted that he didn’t
grainy stills of the footage and uploading them And of course I don’t know how it feels to know who she was, Sweeney was so sweet about
to Instagram. “It got to the point where they be traffic-stoppingly, break-the-internet sexy, it. She just laughed, “I have no idea either.”
were tagging my family. My cous- but I have conflated my looks with On the street a girl with braces and glasses
ins don’t need that. It’s completely my worth in small ways that grew and the fear that Sydney Sweeney might be lost
→
disgusting and unfair,” she says into something more complicated. forever bursts out of the door after us and starts
dress £2,250
bitingly. “You have a character that Fendi I have felt the thrill of realising you explaining how much she loves her. They take
goes through the scrutiny of being have something people want and a selfie together where Sweeney’s smile breaks
necklace (price upon
a sexualised person at school and request) the hollow chaser of understand- like a wave that recedes gently, and they talk
then an audience that does the Van Cleef ing you cannot use it without about Cassie and pottery and Boston and hasn’t
same thing.” earrings (price upon implicating yourself. I have often the weather been so great!?!
As we talk about the world’s request) cared more about being attractive
fixation with her nude scenes, Yessayan than anything else, but not known olivia pym is a gq Associate Editor.

1 4 0 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
 A YEAR AGO, JOE LOCKE AND KIT CONNOR WERE KIDS PREPARING FOR THEIR EXAMS.

NOW, COURTESY OF NETFLIX’S BREAKTHROUGH QUEER SENSATION HEARTSTOPPER, THEY ARE

Photographs by Styled by
Brendan Freeman Angelo Mitakos

RECKONING WITH SUDDENLY BEING STOP-YOU-IN-THE STREET, INTERNET-BOYFRIEND FAMOUS.

By
Douglas Greenwood
D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 1 4 3
It’s afternoon at Rowan’s, a bowling alley and arcade in North
London. The kind of place where the floors are sticky and the
fizzy cola never quite tastes right. As most grown adults are
wallowing in hungover states, two of the most famous young men
in the country – Joe Locke and Kit Connor, the stars of Netflix’s
Heartstopper – are here surrounded by kids’ birthday parties.
It’s the closest they now get to incognito, since almost no one
their age is kicking around. But while the boys are distracted
shooting hoops, playfully competing against each other, a stray
teenager spots them and whispers into her mum’s ear.
I wonder what she says. How she tries to sum- ←←
marise the sheer power of Heartstopper, the PREVIOUS PAGE
show that changed the pair’s lives and deeply ON JOE
affected many of the millions who watched it. blazer £1,890
How she describes these two men who, a year Maison Margiela
ago, enjoyed their respective normalities: stud- top £2,450
ying for their GCSEs, living at home with their Dior
parents, preparing for the release of a queer TV
trousers £460
show many – including Netflix – thought would Toga Archives
pass by on the cultural calendar as nothing but
ON KIT
a mild, if important arrhythmic blip.
t-shirt £80
In the first month of its release, people spent
Fred Perry
53 million hours staring at Locke and Connor’s
faces on TV – and countless more on social media jumper £960
– as every moment of the show was TikToked to Louis Vuitton
oblivion (the hashtag #Heartstopper alone has trousers £602
over 7.7 billion views). All of a sudden, you can Marni
feel eyes watching them wherever they go. →
Neither of them prepared for this: the fans, OPPOSITE PAGE
the following, the bougie social gatherings and
ON KIT
ceaseless attention. Connor – who has acted
shirt £260
since he was eight, but hadn’t felt mainstream
Ami
recognition like this before – describes it to me
as “like you’ve just got your licence and you’re trousers £269
suddenly asked to be a getaway driver. There are Tiger Of Sweden
certain things that you’re asked and expected to belt £790
do, but you feel so unbelievably unequipped.” Tom Ford
“It just gets weirder and weirder,” Locke necklace,
says, still in a state of disbelief. To keep himself stylist’s own
grounded – or from letting fame’s nasty residue
ON JOE
rub off on him – he tries to remember this is
blazer £740
fleeting. “It’s not at all real.”
trousers £200
On the surface Heartstopper, based on the
Emporio Armani
beloved graphic novel by Alice Oseman, didn’t
seem like the kind of story that would catalyse t-shirt £220
a global obsession. It’s not a hetero-leaning love Vintage Showroom
story like Bridgerton, nor an all-guns-blazing shirt (around
dystopian sci-fi like Squid Game. Instead, it waist) £99
follows Charlie Spring (Locke), a 15-year-old All Saints
English schoolboy who’s recently been “outed”
as gay to his classmates. He has his modest
friend group – the stubborn Tao, and Elle, a
1 4 4 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
trans girl who’s just moved to the all girls’ school nearby – and a down-
low boyfriend. But Charlie’s eyes are drawn to Connor’s Nick Nelson, a
sensitive and open lad on the rugby team, and one of the few who doesn’t
tease him for his sexuality. They sit next to each other in class and, over
time, their friendship blossoms into a gentle and innocent romance.
As sparks fly (one of several visual motifs incorporated from Oseman’s
original illustrations), Nick begins to better understand his sexuality, too.
Upon its premiere in April this year, the show was considered pio-
neering: a joyous and proudly uncynical work of mainstream queer rep-
resentation, geared towards an audience who had never had it in that
form before. Within days of its debut, Heartstopper’s fervent audience,
who had viewed the original webcomics (later published as graphic nov-
els) more than 52 million times, multiplied exponentially. It was esti-
mated Oseman was selling over £1 million-worth of books a month in
the UK alone following the show’s success.
“It hits all the niches,” Locke says: queer, feel-good, and open-hearted
enough to lead millions to wholeheartedly embrace it. Heartstopper
stans – ranging from tweens to folks in their 60s – already queue at
conventions and red carpets to catch a glimpse of the cast. The show’s
press tour stretched from the daytime TV couches of This Morning to the
front rows of Dior and Kenzo at Paris Fashion Week. For a time this year,
Heartstopper was everywhere.
CONNOR HAS FLIRTED with fame for a long time, just never at its current
wattage. Born and raised in Croydon, South London, he’s played support-
ing characters in prime time soaps like Casualty and TV movies, before,
in his late teens, graduating into blockbusters. In 2019 he appeared as
a young Elton John in Rocketman and in the indie drama Little Joe. In
between shoots he attended a well-performing school, where he was, by
his own recollection, the “well-behaved and never really too rebellious”
one among his friends.
Connor remembers, age 11, having to choose between playing the son
of Rachel Weisz and Colin Firth in a British drama by a BAFTA-winning
director, The Mercy, or joining his classmates on a traditional year-end
trip to the Isle of Wight. “It was a real, genuine debate in my head,” he
says. He chose the film, and feels like he made the right decision. “When
you’re younger, these tiny things,” school trips, he means, “seem huge.
I’ve lost a lot of my childhood in many ways, [but] I don’t regret it at all.”
Locke’s childhood had different stakes. He grew up gay in Douglas on
the Isle of Man, the last place in the British Isles to legalise homosexuality
in 1992. “I don’t think anyone who reads about where I’m from could
fully understand it,” he says, calling it “a classic small English town but
 shirt £565
Commission
turtleneck £255
Bianca Saunders
trousers £890
Gucci
shoes £70
Converse

1 4 6 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
 jumper £1,080
Commission
turtleneck £285
Bianca Saunders
trousers £550
Moschino
shoes £70
Converse

D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 1 4 7
 on an island you can’t escape.” It was bucolic,
“safe and sheltered”. When Connor was on his
first TV sets, Locke was still making dens and
playing make-believe wizards with his friends.
“What was I?” he contemplates, when I ask
what he thought of himself growing up. “Loud,”
he says, “but really quite self-conscious and
anxious.” An effervescent exterior covered the
parts of himself he was a little more unsure of.
Like Connor, drama played a part in Locke’s
life. The Isle of Man had what he calls “a really
strangely high calibre” of amateur theatre and,
as one of the few boys interested in it, he was,
he says, almost guaranteed the good roles. But
it never seemed possible to him as a real-life
vocation. “Acting was always my passion,” he
says, “but I think I’d resigned myself to the fact
it wasn’t going to happen.” Older friends had
left to pursue careers in drama in London, “and
then they’d not be lucky in the right ways, or not
find the right things and then not be able to sus-
tain living [there]. The way that people trying
to break into the industry are treated by society
is so shitty and hard.” So he knuckled down and
lined up a different future, planning to go to
university, then perhaps law or journalism.
By the time they were both preparing for
their GCSEs, Heartstopper had started to bring
them together. The show’s casting director,
Daniel Edwards, had auditioned Connor before
and initially thought of him to play Charlie. But
when Connor did his Zoom audition (most of
the casting process happened in early 2021,
during the pandemic), Edwards recalls that “his
maturity was screaming Nick”. Locke responded
to an open audition call on social media. “Joe
sent us a self-tape from the corner of his bed-
room with his posters on the wall,” the show’s
director, Euros Lyn, recalls. “He felt so authenti-
cally like Charlie: a 15-year-old who would apol-
ogise for breathing. There was a quality that Joe
had, a humbleness, that spoke of that.”
The pair met face-to-face for the first time at
Locke’s final audition in London. “Kit was aware
I had no idea what I was doing,” Locke remem-
bers, “and so he made me feel at ease.” Fast for-
ward to today and, after months of filming and
public engagements together, both are relaxed
↑
ABOVE
and confident. Locke jumps at the opportunity to
polo shirt £1,100 try his first slot machine, and Connor and I watch

“As someone who’s in the JW Anderson

→
OPPOSITE PAGE
on and stand guard, waiting for an attendant
to pop up and pull us away from them. While
their romance is palpable on-screen, in real life

public eye, if you look for ON JOE

blazer £489
vest £24
you could call their relationship more of a reli-
ance, leaning in on each other like a two-person
human triangle. They have the energy of two
people saying bad stuff trousers £259
Boss Bottled
parfum £86
deeply trusting and platonic best friends.
Locke left the Isle of Man, only telling his

about you, you’ll find it.” Boss

ON KIT
blazer £429
family and his two best friends (“Sorry Netflix,
I did break the NDA”), where he was going.
Then, in April 2021, the casting for the show
vest £24 was announced and the webcomic fans fol-
trousers £259 lowed them on social media en masse; for
cummerbund £100
Boss Bottled
the first time they felt like the ground had
parfum £86 shifted beneath their feet. Locke describes that
Boss moment as “the mini tidal wave of life chang-
ing”. The shoot wrapped later that summer.

1 4 8 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 1 4 9
 “I don’t think anyone who reads about
where I’m from could fully understand it.
A classic small English town but on
an island you can’t escape.”
Both boys went back to school, and for a few months the intrigue abated.
Then, when release day came, all previous routines became obsolete:
existing, as 18-year-old boys, was no longer quite so simple. “It was a
big change for me,” Connor says, whose acting experience had at least
prepared him for what was coming. “But for Joe it was literally night and
day. It was two very different lives he was living.”
The week after the show came out, Locke went “from 100,000
Instagram followers to 3 million in a week,” he recalls. “I realised, Yeah,
this is never going to be normal again.”
Suddenly the pair were being invited to dinners and parties that guys
their age seldom get to attend. When Connor arrived at his hotel for Paris
Fashion Week that summer, he wept. “It was the first time it felt like a
new world,” he says. “I did not deserve it at all.”
At these events, he was often the youngest, sometimes by a decade or
more. “I felt like a little kid,” he says. “You’re doing it on a big stage for
people to see and you’re just not prepared.” His anxiety would amp up
when he’d walk into those rooms. He wished he was 25 – an adult with
more stories to tell.
It’s taken some getting used to for both of them: they share deep bouts
of imposter syndrome. “I think I got off easy,” Locke still says, doubting
himself in spite of the show’s success. “I just managed to get the first part
I auditioned for.”
CONNOR RECOGNISED HEARTSTOPPER’S significance on set, looking
around at the predominantly queer cast and crew. The show, he says, “was
for us and the representation we never had.” Queer representation of the
scale Heartstopper offered was a rare thing to him and Locke, despite
growing up in the progressive enclaves of the Gen Z internet. Connor saw it
briefly in the TV that, in some cases, pre-dated his birth: relationships like
Willow and Tara’s in Buffy, or the horny teenagers of E4’s salacious Skins.
But it was the summer of 2018 when Locke first properly saw himself in
a queer work of art. Under the covers at night during the school holidays,
he had found a link to watch Luca Guadagnino’s gentle, queer love story,
Call Me By Your Name, online. “Porn ads telling me, ‘There are 40 women
nearby wanting to meet up,’ kept popping up,” he recalls, laughing. “I was
like, I’m trying to watch the gay stuff!” Locke had had what he calls a “sum-
mer dalliance” and found the film drew parallels with his own life. But at
that age, that’s where the positive queer art he saw himself in – unfettered
by the AIDS crisis, not wholly shaped by sex – started and ended.
I’m nearly a decade older than Locke, and when I was his age the only
gay men I remember seeing on mainstream television were comedians
like Alan Carr. “And when you think about it, they were accepted as
queer people because they were taking the piss out of themselves,” he
says. “Now they’re allowed to be unapologetically them. But at the time
the only reason they were accepted was because their jokes involved
self-deprecation. That made it okay.”
People loved laughing at gay people in that way, I say. Locke responds
soberly, without missing a beat, “They still do.”
← For its young fanbase, Heartstopper is a sig-
ON JOE nificant act of representation. Euros Lyn, the
shirt £239
director, considers it to be “a political drama”
Boss Bottled
parfum £86 about the possibilities of queer happiness. “Joe
Boss and Kit have taken that political message to the
turtleneck public,” he tells me. “I’m proud of them.”
£169 This has led to intense scrutiny of the young
Boss actors’ private lives. Days before we met,
ON KIT Connor had deleted his Twitter after photos of
shirt £199 him holding hands with a female co-star from
Boss Bottled a new project went viral. He was accused of
parfum £86 “queerbaiting”, a misused term that insinuates
Boss
straight-presenting people in the public eye are
bolo tie, stylist’s own twisting the aesthetics of their work to pander
to queer people. The assumptions were enough
for Connor, who had questioned the pressure to
declare his sexuality, to quit the platform.
“Social media is not a window into my soul
at all… so [it] was the best decision of my life,”
he says. Now he’s well known, people tend to
invent narratives he can’t control. “In many
ways it’s great, but as someone who’s in the
public eye, if you look for people saying bad
stuff about you, you’ll find it.” At times, he’d
“almost” find himself seeking out the negativ-
ity. “You want to know what people are saying.
Everyone wants to be liked, which is slightly
heartbreaking when you’re in the position of
someone like me or Joe.” (A few weeks after our
interview, Connor went back onto Twitter to
say: “I’m bi. Congrats for forcing an 18-year-old
to out himself. I think some of you missed the
point of the show. Bye.”)
The show’s success has brought unwanted
intrusion on Locke’s side, too: he’s had to
unfollow friends and family who were receiving
messages from his fans; his mum has changed
her name on Facebook after his baby photos
were leaked online. Recently, the tabloids have
started to hypothesise over who he might be
dating. “The idea of a tabloid being interested
in a teenager’s love life is really gross,” Locke
says. “Someone making money out of rumours
about who I – an 18-year-old boy – might be lik-
ing or talking to, it’s really gross and perverted.”
His hands curl in on themselves, but he’s say-
ing it now because he feels like it’s important:
“I’m 18… I don’t know who I am yet.”
D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 1 5 1
 They have each other, which helps. “Joe’s really been such a lifesaver
in so many ways for me; as a support system and a friend to go through
everything with,” Connor says.
“I’ve tried to do the same for him,” Locke agrees, smiling. “I don’t think
Kit really understands what an incredible person he is.”
LOCKE HAS A strong bowling game. He’s hitting strikes and spares, and
every time the ball hurtles down the centre of the lane, obliterating the
skittles, he turns his slight frame back towards Connor and I and pre-
tends to tuck his hair behind his ears, jokingly braggadocious. Connor
is less successful. Every time he throws a gutter ball – which is a lot of
the time – he swoops his red, handsome, curtained hair through his
hands. “You’ve just got to aim it, Kit!” Locke reassures him. “Follow the
arrows.” Rightfully enough, when he takes that on board, Connor’s game
sharpens. We all agree that using the medium weight bowl – designed to
resemble a magic eight ball – is the best route to success.
Though it’s supposed to be hush-hush, Heartstopper season two is in
its second week of shooting. Details are being kept watertight, but fans
will be glad to know the show isn’t opting to shy away from the more,
what Euros Lyn calls, “existential” themes of the source material. In it,
1 5 2 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
Nick is expected to reckon with coming out to
his schoolmates. Meanwhile, the minutiae of
Charlie’s mental health problems come to the
fore: owing to the secretive nature of his past
relationships, he’s deeply insecure. Now, the
gentlest TV show is dealing with issues of self-
harm and disordered eating.
“We grow up with the characters, but we’re
also growing up [as people],” Locke says. “Their
views of the world are changing, and those
changes happen quite quickly when you’re
a teenager because of hormones and school
being horrible.”
The show will also delve into Charlie’s bat-
tle with body dysmorphia, an issue prevalent
among young people who seldom see bodies
like theirs represented on screen, where con-
ventional heartthrob muscle prevails. “Part of
that is because most teen shows have 30-year-
olds playing 17-year-olds!” Locke says. “They
have actual adult bodies; 17-year-olds don’t
look like that!”
It’s a subject Locke can relate to. “I feel like
everyone sees weaknesses and problems in
their own bodies,” he adds. “[For me], they’ve
been heightened in the last year because more
people are seeing my face and seeing the things
that I hate about myself.” He has learned to dis-
sociate from reading people’s opinions on his
appearance, like his ears. “I tried to convince
my mum to get them pinned back. But I
remember one day my friend [held them back]
and was like, ‘Do you really want to look like
TAILORING, FAYE OAKENFULL. GROOMING, JOSH KNIGHT. SE T DESIGN, STEFANIA LUCCHESI. WEARING BOSS BOT TLED.
that?’” He learned quickly that little things that
once felt like big things to him cease to matter
as soon as he switches off. “Now I really like
my ears,” he smiles. “I think they’re a defining
feature of me.”
Connor is excited to play his part again:
Nick’s character trajectory for season two is
similar to Oseman’s story, with some minor
changes. “We realise that it means a lot to a
lot of people, but that’s an amazing pressure to
have,” he says. “It’s on our shoulders now.”
This year, the majority of their friends went
off to university, starting their own paths with-
out such very public pressures. “Maybe I would
have enjoyed going to freshers’ week and get-
ting absolutely hammered,” Locke says, laugh-
ing. “I can’t do that any more and not stress
about waking up in an alleyway.” It would be a
Daily Mail article, he observes, only half-joking.
As we leave the bowling alley, a girl in a
Disney shirt and cropped hair runs out of the
nearby Finsbury Park station flustered and
showing the pair a tattoo of autumn leaves –
Heartstopper’s cartoon insignia – on her fore-
arm. She had got it the day before, the pastel
colours rich and her skin still raw. Her mum – a
teacher at an all boys’ school – chimes in from
afar, praising them for the part they played in
helping the young, queer boys there feel seen
and represented. “Thank you,” Locke and
Connor say. “Of course you can get a picture.”
douglas greenwood is a writer and editor
based in London.
←
OPPOSITE PAGE
jumper £489
Stefan Cooke
→
ON KIT
jacket £900
Daniel W. Fletcher
t-shirt £185
Vintage Showroom
shirt £360
Emma Willis
trousers £250
Eytys
tie £115
Kenzo
ON JOE
top £260
Daniel W. Fletcher
jacket £990
trousers £550
Maison Margiela

D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 1 5 3
 WORDS BY
GARY YOUNGE

PHOTOGRAPHS BY STYLING BY
JENNY BROUGH ITUNU OKE

RE AWA KENING
Three years after that album and that Glastonbury performance,
Michael Ebenazer Kwadjo Omari Owuo Jr. –
the man you know as Stormzy – is back, and a changed man.

OR A MOMENT it is difficult to see the stage for
all the lights. They strafe the ceiling, pound
strobes from the wings, send radiant cones
to the ground from on high, propel diagonal
rays to the upper corners from below, and pan
the stadium with a blinding luminescence.
Fireworks lining the runway shoot vertically
from each side, cascading towards the audi-
ence. The packed crowd at London’s O2 Arena
is well and truly lit. The first few bars of “Big
Michael” roar. Stormzy, real name Michael
Ebenazer Kwadjo Omari Owuo Jr., roars back,
“It’s big Michael!”
His voice fills the stadium; his face fills the
jumbotron, but you can barely make him out
at the back of the stage. It takes the whole song
for him to bound to the front – a tall, kinetic
embodiment of melody, energy and muscle clad
in black. The crowd, who have been waiting to
see him since they bought the tickets more than
two long years earlier, before the pandemic,
before lockdown, cheers an ecstatic welcome.
When the song is finished he pauses. “London,
I’m home!”
A few months later, Stormzy is perched on
his living room sofa in Kingston upon Thames,
recalling that night at The O2 in March. It was
his first major gig in the UK since the pan-
demic. “It was crazy,” Stormzy says. “Every
night I went out I felt like, You guys are still
fucking with me. You’re still there. You still like
my music. You’re still rocking with me. It did a
lot for my confidence because, two years since
my last album, it was a reminder that this art
you’ve done, your contribution to music, this
offering that you’ve had to the world has lived
and people enjoy it and people still fuck with it,
man. It was really reassuring.”
Stormzy is home. Strewn prominently, but
somewhat haphazardly, on the floor under the
huge flat screen TV in front of us stands the
evidence of his accomplishments: The Heavy
1 5 6 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
Is the Head platinum plaque; The ‘Own It’ dou-
ble platinum; the Time magazine cover where
he is hailed as “The Next Generation Leader”.
Behind us his personal chef, Chef Vickz
(Victoria Idowu), chops, spices and simmers
her way towards a red thai chicken curry.
Did he worry that he might have been forgot-
ten? “No,” he says. “I never felt that. It’s just that
for the last few years I’ve been living my life,
walking my dogs every day, just really treading
along in my normal life. So when it’s time to put
on the cape I’m like, Oh, shit. I know I still have
my superpowers, but I haven’t worn this cape
for ages. Then I go into the closet and I put it
on and I know I’m going to fly out and use my
powers, but naturally on a human one, you’re
like, Well, I might feel a bit rusty.”
Most superpowers have an exotic origin
story: the bite of a radioactive spider, gifts from
Greek Gods, talents inherited from another
planet. Stormzy came by his ability to hold
the attention of a 20,000 capacity crowd for
90 minutes by more relatable means – self-de-
nial and graft. His discipline is his power.
So, when the shows were coming, he knew he
had to be ready.
“I pride myself on having an amazing show,”
he says. “I pride myself on being a great per-
former. So I think, Okay, what do you have to do
to do that? I go on the most intense diet and get
my nutritionist in. I get my trainer in and we
do intense workouts; you’d think I was train-
ing for the Olympics. And I stop smoking weed
because I know that the best version of myself
doesn’t smoke weed. I don’t think of it as dis-
cipline. It’s just easy maths in my head. This is
what you need to do.”
At times, this 29-year-old sounds like a cross
between a mystic and a self-help guru, weaving
a kind of idiosyncratic wisdom from the depths
of his own self-belief. “As insane as it sounds, I
feel like anytime I’ve done something like an
O2 or a Glasto or some career-defining event,
everything was comfortable, because I knew it
was going to happen. I feel very prepared and
very ready for it. I try not to let the moment
swallow me. I stand on top of the moment.”
And so there he was at The O2. His torso
shimmering with sweat; his knees thrown high
to the rhyme; bathed in his own light, not so
much standing on top of the moment as fling-
ing himself into it.
I LAST INTERVIEWED Stormzy in November
2019, shortly before the release of his last
album, Heavy Is the Head. He was still on a
high from headlining Glastonbury that sum-
mer, which seemed to have put something
to bed. For all the accomplishments he had
achieved by that time – the MOBO, Brit and
BET awards, the number one albums – none
had brought him tranquillity or comfort until
then. Afterwards, he finally felt he could relax.
“I haven’t had much peace in the past five
years and that’s not even necessarily a bad
thing, because life can’t always be peaceful,” he
told me back then. “But it was the first time I
could sit on this sofa and feel like, You’re good,
with no lingering thought of, I’ve got to do this.”
Now we are back on the same sofa. It may
have been less than three years ago, but it
seems like a different era entirely. Inflation was
1.5 percent; Jeremy Corbyn was the leader of
the Labour party; Liz Truss was international
trade secretary; the pound was worth $1.28;
George Floyd was still living; and the first
confirmed case of coronavirus had not even
appeared in Wuhan.
Though neither of us knew it at the time,
that was the calm before the new Stormzy.
When the pandemic brought the first lock-
down in the UK, Stormzy had to stay at home.
It was the law. And because the law applied to
everyone, he didn’t have to feel guilty about it.
“I always had difficulty taking a break, going
on holiday, taking a vacation, anything like
that. I was a hungry MC, I always felt like I had
shit to do. So when lockdown actually came,
it was a big relief for me. Because usually if
I take a break, I always feel like the world is
still moving. But this time everyone stopped.
The world stopped.”
So for once, Stormzy just chilled. He played
PlayStation with his brothers for the first time
in years. Even though the tour was cancelled,
he stayed off weed. “I could see pretty quickly
that if I smoked weed during lockdown that
would be a recipe for disaster. Just the way my
mind is set up, if I’m sat in this house smoking
weed, that is not going to bring anything good
into my life.”
The detox extended to social media, where
the cacophony of random critics had got into
his head and from there seeped into his music.
On New Year’s Day 2020, he had become
engaged in a public Twitter spat with fellow
rapper Wiley, with Wiley slamming Stormzy for
his collaboration with Ed Sheeran and Stormzy
branding Wiley a “weirdo” and a “dinosaur”.
(This argument formed the basis for the track
‘Disappointed’ in which Stormzy calls Wiley a
“prick” and a “crackhead cunt”: “It’s all jokes
on Twitter, ’til you say the wrong thing/Now
it’s smoke from Twitter.”) “You do sometimes
wonder,” wrote the Guardian reviewer of Heavy
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Stormzy’s own
Is the Head, “if he wouldn’t be better off leaving
Twitter and ignoring the comments sections
rather than scanning them for slights.”
At a certain point the link between social
media and his behaviour became difficult to
deny. “I just don’t think the best version of
myself is scrolling on my phone,” he says. “It
can’t be good for anyone’s mental health. I’ve
got a lot of theories about how it distracts and
manipulates. Especially for someone like me. I
have a lot of energy. I have a lot of traffic. And I
felt like that for a long time. God didn’t design
us to consume that much traffic, that much
information. That much content. I don’t want
it to seem like I’m on a high horse. I just don’t
think it’s that healthy.”
Towards the summer of 2020, during the
first lockdown, Adele, with whom Stormzy had
been close for some time, persuaded him to
take a break with her and a group of friends. A
group of them flew to Jamaica for what sounds
like a cross between a Buddhist retreat and
group therapy. “It was deeply spiritual,” says
Stormzy. “We would sit by the pool all day and
by the water and just talk and just have time
with our feelings. If you’re with the right group
of people, people who encourage honesty and
truth, then talking is so therapeutic. I’d go to
the water every day and I’d pray.”
It was as though he stepped off the merry-
go-round, looked up from his phone and once
everything stopped spinning he felt he saw
things more clearly. “It just really dawned
on me that I had a lot of growing to do,” he
says. “I feel like that’s when my life really
changed forever.”
THE GROWTH IN question was both metamor-
phic and cathartic. Stormzy says he left for
Jamaica a boy and returned a man. “I know
that physically, in my face and how I stand in
the world, and even my age says I’m a man. But
deep down I knew that I was a boy. And that
used to scare me, that God might bring me to a
position where I’m successful and my life is set
up and I’ve climbed these ladders and been on
this journey and I’m still a boy inside.”
He is being hard on himself: by his mid-20s,
on top of building a successful music career,
he had set up a publishing imprint, #Merky
Books, funded scholarships for Black students
to attend Cambridge University and made
successful appeals to young people to register
to vote. He was hardly Flava Flav. If he was
a boy then he was, all things told, a
pretty decent lad already blessed with a
greater sense of social responsibility and
greater political reach than most of the
UK government.
Rappers and grime artists aren’t gener-
ally associated with spiritual wellbeing and
emotional intelligence – particularly the
males. “It’s all born from poverty,” Skepta once
explained, clarifying the similarities between
grime and rap. “It’s all born from pain.” But
there is precious little space to process that
pain without showing weakness.
“I know that physically, in my face
and how I stand in the world, and even
my age says I’m a man. But deep down
I knew that I was a boy.”
Like the Black, urban, working-class com-
munities it emerged from, grime was initially
pathologised as essentially criminal, with
venues and artists specifically targeted by the
Metropolitan Police. The feuds and hypermas-
culinity embedded in its culture are not for the
faint hearted, something reflected in Stormzy’s
own lyrics from “Shut Up”. “Army comes every-
where I go/I can’t run when my enemies show/
Walk in the club with all of my tugs/Party’s
done, everybody go home.” Grime artists are
supposed to flex, not feel.
It took a residential engineering apprentice-
ship in Leamington Spa, after he left school,
for Stormzy to understand that some of his
experiences growing up weren’t the norm. One
day, during a welding course, he removed his
hat to reveal a scar on his head. When another
apprentice asked him how he’d come by it,
he told him he’d been stabbed. “And the shock
and the looks of horror on their faces was
like, ‘What?’ And I’m thinking, Brother, I’ve
been stabbed a few times. That’s when I started
to realise there was a whole world outside
South London.”
This realisation, he says, was driven by
self-accountability, not self-pity; he does not
lament the childhood he had, but simply rec-
ognises its limitations.“I realised, especially
growing up in South London in the environ-
ment I grew up in, there’s never going to be a
time anyone encourages man to go deal with
his feelings.” Stormzy says. “That’s a very adult
thing to think, I’m gonna go deal with my life
and my character with who I am and who I
want to grow to be,” he says. “There is power
in vulnerability.”
His desire to change was in no small part
driven by unresolved emotions he held about
his painful split with the radio and TV pre-
senter Maya Jama, whom he dated for four
years before they broke up in 2019. “I think my
break up with Maya was still really heavy on my
heart. I’d never experienced a breakup and the
feelings that come with a breakup. And I never
wanted to ever be in a position again where I
felt what I was feeling. Because it showed me
that I was a boy. And I do not want to go any
further as a boy. I’ve seen how that manifests
in other people. And I don’t want to be like that.
“So what is the necessary work I have to do to
make sure I’m not in this position again? That
means growth, accountability, changing my
character, changing my routines, my habits, my
tradition, my values, my morals. Because how I
feel right now and how I’ve made someone else
feel and how I’ve devastated a world that I was
living in – I just never want to be in this posi-
tion again. So what do I need to do?”
Wealth and fame, for all their perks, can
make changing your life more difficult. For
Stormzy, success felt like something that was
shielding him from making the changes he felt
were necessary.
“I came to understand that everything I’d
achieved for myself did nothing for how I was
feeling in real time. Nothing,” he says. “There
was no plaque, there was no cheque that was
going to come that was going to make me feel
any better about how I felt.”
NOT LONG AFTER returning from Jamaica,
Stormzy flew to Accra, Ghana, with a rolling
brotherhood of friends and family. Ghana,
where his parents are from, feels like home. He’s
recognised but people aren’t as manic when they
see him; they’re proud. “I’ve been to Ghana loads
but this time was different. I wasn’t going out
and to the clubs and thinking, Yo, where are the
girls at? I went with my big sister and her friends
and the man dem. So we went to clubs, but I was
skanking with my sister and the man dem, and
it was lit. But it was much more rooted in family.”
When he returned to a cold and overcast
London, he got some of his male friends
together and left again, for what he describes as
“a spiritual and health retreat” in Dubai. There
was a 7am roll call each morning with jovial haz-
ing for those who slept in, followed by gym and a
run after breakfast and plenty of talking. “It was
like therapy. We didn’t call it that; we were just
talking. But that’s what it was. I guess that’s been
the biggest headline for me over these last few
years with my friendship groups and my broth-
ers: growth. How are we growing?”
For all the ways he may have grown during
that time, his politics remain much as they were.
He’s still a big fan of Jeremy Corbyn, even after
Labour’s 2019 trouncing at the polls under its
former leader. When I ask him how he felt about
the election, a long sigh fades into short silence
as he seeks to conjure the appropriate metaphor.
“It’s like when you encourage children to make
the right decision and they make the wrong one
even after you’ve explained everything. And
you think, A’ight, that’s your decision… you try
have your cake and eat it then.” He shrugs and
then lets out a big laugh. “Even the way things
have panned out… I’m not gonna say I told
you so, but…”
D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 1 5 9
1 6 0 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
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 Resigned as he is to seeing Britain live
with the consequences of its electoral choice,
the manner in which Corbyn was vilified still
troubles him. “It was really disheartening. I
just thought so highly of him and I still think
so highly of him and I think, Well if they can
make him out to be a pagan then things are
worse than I thought. I mean if he’s the vil-
lain in the grand scheme of things, then shit’s
madder than I ever thought because whatever
your politics or your policies, that’s one thing.
But in terms of his intentions they were 100
percent for good. I mean, if we’re talking about
superheroes against evil villains, I know he
was for good. And the way people spun it, I just
thought, Wow, this is scary.”
Six months later, his faith in the political
possibilities were restored by the Black Lives
Matter protests. Having deleted his social
media, he found out about George Floyd’s kill-
ing through a group chat and then went online
to find out more. “At first it seemed like every
other Trayvon [Martin]; I felt like, We’ve been
here before. But slowly you felt the ripples and
you sensed that this time was going to be a lot
different. It was like everyone was saying,” and
here each word is enunciated clearly and force-
fully, “We. Have. Had. Enough.”
Did it change anything?
“Yeah, I think something changed in the
sense that the calls were universal. ‘We’ve had
enough… everyone’s had enough.’ And people
weren’t saying it in a timid way.” And here his
voice, usually deep and sombre became more
animated and determined. “There was like a
bass in the voice, ‘We have had enough. You’re
fucking taking the piss.’ So I think the tone in
everyone’s voice switched… there was a bit
more bass which I always love. I’ll be real with
you. That is always my favourite tone when it
comes to pagans and injustice. Because some
people don’t recognise nothing, don’t respect
nothing and don’t take nothing seriously until
they hear that bass in the voice saying, ‘You
need to stop doing that.’” Amid the demon-
strations, Stormzy vowed to give £10 million
to Black causes over the next 10 years, the pro-
gress of which he would not be drawn on but
said is going well.
His responses, in these moments, are
less personal and pensive than collective
and reflexive. “I’ll go on a march and then
“I came to understand that everything I’d
achieved for myself did nothing for how
I was feeling in real time. Nothing.
There was no plaque, no cheque that was
going to make me feel any better...”
1 6 2 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
someone will write an elaborate think piece on
why I’ve done this or that. But when it comes
to my journey with my people and that side
of things I just think, What are we on? What
do we need to do? Do we need to grab the mic?
What are we on? And of course it’s great to be
someone who can use their platform and their
voice so I never take that for granted because
my involvement might get more coverage. But
at the same time I’m just a musician and I’m
not really in it.”
So he was there at some of the Black Lives
Matter demonstrations and at the Central
London march for Chris Kaba, the 24-year-
old unarmed black man shot dead by police
in South London on September 5th – a march
which Sky News mistook for a mass mourn-
ing for the Queen. Addressing the crowd he
appealed to them to stay the course and have
the stamina to continue, even when the media
had lost interest.
People can forget, he tells me a week after
the march, that at the heart of it isn’t just an
issue or a cause, but a life that has been taken
and a community in grief. “Away from all the
coverage there’s a reality, an unbearable pain
that his mother and his family have to live that
gets lost quite often. You can feel it.”
A C O U P L E O F weeks later, Stormzy is hang-
ing out with his musical entourage at the King’s
Cross office of 0207 Def Jam. There are cans of
ginger beer and diet Fanta, crisps and a bowl full
of fizzy cola sweets laid out, as half a dozen engi-
neers, executive producers and label executives
stream into the room. Most have known Stormzy
for some time. Among them is Jermaine Agyako,
A&R manager at Merky Records and his cousin:
“I always had the dream of a Black artist doing
Glastonbury and our culture going mainstream.
I always knew we could do it. I just didn’t know
that the person who would do it would be my
cousin,” Agyako laughs.
There’s Alec Boateng, known as Twin, co-pres-
ident of 0207 Def Jam records, who has been
collaborating with Stormzy for years. “I would
not feel comfortable being on this musical jour-
ney without him,” says Stormzy, who was one of
0207’s first signings. “I know it sounds cringe,
but if I’m a Jedi Knight, he’s Yoda. I’m great
without Yoda; Yoda is great without me, but his
guidance makes me better.”
Stormzy sits at one end, commanding the
room but not dominating the conversation.
The conversation flows easily, never straying
far from music and occasionally descend-
ing into banter and laughter. A few days
earlier Stormzy dropped the video for “Mel
Made Me Do It”, his first single in almost
three years. Among the video’s star-stud-
ded cameos, which include Usain Bolt,
José Maurinho, Jonathan Ross and Louis
Theroux, are a roll call of Black British
excellence: Ian Wright, Dina Asher-Smith,
Malorie Blackman and Jazzie B to name but
a few, all clad in white, striding through the
garden of a stately home, gliding on the
monologue-manifesto written by Wretch 32,
voiced by Michaela Coel. “This is not a phase.
This is phase one… You see what we put
together when we come together.”
Stormzy’s ability to draw that range of stars
together speaks to both the breadth and mag-
nitude of his appeal. It is difficult to counte-
nance another figure in British culture who
could read ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’
on Radio 1, address a Chris Kaba rally, have a
publishing label and Cambridge scholarship in
their name, rock a Corbyn T-shirt and still have
a hit album with two “suck your mums” and
one “suck my dick” on it.
He is now at the stage of his career where
he has transcended his music; he is his own
brand. And while he works on both tirelessly,
and one could not exist without the other,
they are not the same thing. Much of the
personal reckoning of the last few years seems
to be with where the man starts and the brand
stops; when he’s Stormzy in his cape and when
he’s just Michael walking his dogs.
Some of this plays out in his new album,
This Is What I Mean, which is more
soulful, doleful and less combative both in
lyric and melody than previous albums. He
sings about turning 30, forgiving his absent
father for his flaws and his previous strug-
gles with paranoia and suicidal thoughts.
One track is called “I Got My Smile Back”. It
sounds like Stormzy; but it doesn’t sound like a
Stormzy album. GROOMER, BIANCA SIMONE SCOT T. SET DESIGN, SEAN THOMSON.
And while this was never the intention, it
was an almost inevitable result of the jour-
ney he has been on. He now looks at success
differently. “My version of success now
requires a man: not just more music and more
money. Now it means taking care of my family,
having children, having a wife, even under-
standing marriage and raising kids, and that
requires a man,” he says.
The album is a step towards that. “More than
anything,” he says, “I know that this album
gives me freedom, which is all I want. Whether
you hate me or love me, at least we can all have a
joint consensus that this guy is going to do what
he wants.”
gary younge is a writer, broadcaster
and professor of sociology at the
University of Manchester.
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 Photographs by
ELLIOT JAMES KENNEDY

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ANGELO MITAKOS

THIS SUMMER , ENGL A ND WOMEN’S

FOOTBA LL CA PTA IN LE A H W ILLI A MSON
DID SOMETHING NONE OF HER M A LE
COU N TERPA RTS H AV E DONE SINCE 1966,
LE A DING THE LIONESSES TO GLORY.
HER NEXT GOA L: CH A NGING THE
W HOLE DA MN GA ME .

1 6 4 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
Leah Williamson keeps a playlist for every game she plays.
She sends the list over to the kit manager who makes sure it’s
playing in the changing room when the team arrives, whether it
be Arsenal or England. “I love how music makes people feel, and
how you can connect with people – most conversations I have
with the girls come off the back of music,” Williamson says.
“I like it because when you think back to key moments, you always
remember the music that was playing.” On the night of the UEFA
Women’s Euro 2022 final, the list included Beyoncé’s “Break My
Soul”, Luther Vandross’s “Never Too Much”, and Céline Dion’s
cover of “River Deep, Mountain High”. It’s an eclectic mix
spanning ages, genres, continents – less so than the ones she
makes for herself, because this one has to please 23 people.
But the key to this whole playlist, the one track it could not be
without, is “Does Your Mother Know”, by ABBA.
“IT’S BECOME A MASSIVE song for us,” she grins. “We
played it before one of the warm-up games and Ella Toone,
for whatever reason, went a bit crazy for it. She went out and
scored, and then afterwards she was like, ‘Can we have that
before every game?’ I went, ‘Yeah! You continue to score, I’ll
play what you want’.”
Toone went on to land the first goal in England’s 2–1 vic-
tory over Germany, bringing home the first major trophy
for England since the men’s team won the World Cup in
1966. A sold-out crowd of nearly 90,000 were at the final at
Wembley, with a further 17.5 million watching on the BBC,
which doesn’t count the crowds spilling out of pub doors,
all eyes glued to their screens. Among the countless tweets
that Williamson saw after the final were hundreds of pic-
tures of little girls too small to know the magnitude of what
just happened: one, in a pink princess dress, stood at the
TV screen transfixed by Leah Williamson’s face just inches
from her own. This was the tweet that got to Williamson.
It marked a change.
“I’ve got loads of inspirational people I’ve always looked
up to, really strong women, who don’t necessarily play foot-
ball,” she says. “I didn’t want to be them, and I didn’t want
to do what they did. But they still inspired me to be me. And
I think that’s the point: that little girl doesn’t have to want
to be a footballer, she just has to grow up knowing that she
can do what she wants. We’re doing something that still feels
like we shouldn’t, almost, until this summer.”
When I was growing up, I thought that women’s football
was less of a thing than men’s simply due to a kind of stand-
ard, ambient sexism; the same non-specific rule at school
that meant we played netball while the boys played foot-
ball. It wasn’t until this summer that I found out why that
is; that just as women once weren’t allowed to vote, or
allowed to have their own bank accounts, women were also
banned from playing professional football for 50 years. My
outrage is still fresh when I arrive at Williamson’s mum’s
house in Milton Keynes, not far from where she grew up.
“You’re going to leave here all fired up, aren’t you?” she
←←
laughs. Her seven-year-old spaniel, Bella, sleeps beside us on
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ing the First World War to raise both spirits and funds for
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shirt £760 jealousy over the bigger crowds: the Football Association’s
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Miu Miu Leah shrugs. “But the point is we’ll never know. The fans
trainers £100 that are now just rediscovering women’s football – that’s
Nike the injustice to me. Just like we were never given the option
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“I’m logical and realistic
about things that need to be
invested in before you see the fruit.
The power is now with us.”
to play at school, they’ve never been given an option to be a
fan.” Though the ban on women’s professional football was
lifted in 1971, you couldn’t see a match on television until
Channel 4 provided coverage in 1989, and even then it was
only once a year for the FA Cup final. For Williamson, miss-
ing that one televised game was not an option – she ditched
plans for Sunday roasts in favour of watching the game. But
women’s football was invisible unless you knew it was there.
“I know I talk about all of this like it’s nothing,” she says.
“But I know it’s outrageous. I don’t know exactly when I
learned about the ban, but I’ve always known it was a thing.
My mum played football. When she was growing up, she
had to cut her hair to pretend to be a boy, and she could
play until someone would rat on her and she’d have to stop.”
It sounds Victorian, archaic. It was 1981. “As I’ve gotten
older, and met the women who were banned from playing,
and heard more of those kinds of stories, it outrages me.
Because it’s like, ‘You’re allowed to play now, so why talk
about it?’ Yeah, but I’m 50 years behind everybody else in
football, let alone in society, as a woman.”
TIME IS A concept that comes up again and again with
Williamson, an irreplaceable resource that was stolen. Time
is history; it is unbound pages of a story that, in the women’s
game, have been left blank. When we talk about the disparity
between men and women’s football – the pay she describes
as “crumbs” compared to the astonishing figures men are
paid; the differences in facilities available to the women’s
teams, how they are relegated to training at night after the
men have left; the shrunken provision of medical care; the
fact that, before the pandemic, the women’s teams would fly
on Ryanair while the men had a plane chartered for them –
it is the stolen history that hurts her the most. It is why all
of this is happening. She says football is a game of opinions,
and old, conventional opinions are what they’re up against.
But the part of her that is training to be an accountant in
case all of this fails knows that it comes down to money. If
women’s football is less visible than men’s, there are fewer
fans. Fewer fans mean less money through the turnstiles.
If a logo isn’t going to be seen by millions on a TV screen,
why would a sponsor invest any meaningful amount of
money in a club? Money calls to money.
For years, female footballers had second jobs to supple-
ment their income. Williamson, 25, who trialled for Arsenal
when she was eight and turned fully professional at 18,
never had to – she was fired from the one part-time job she
did have as a teenager, amounting to exactly one day of hoo-
vering the carpets of a religious book publisher – but older
1 7 0 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
teammates at Arsenal lived through that time, including
Alex Scott, who used to wash the men’s kits in the club laun-
dry room. When I ask if there’s a pay comparison between
her and her male counterpart, England men’s captain Harry
Kane, she says it’s not worth making one. “We’re talking
worlds away. Worlds away. Literally incomprehensible,” she
says. But, being an accountant-in-training, she lists other,
comprehensible numbers. Receipts.
“Arsenal will play a North London derby that is pushing
45,000 tickets already. But then the next week, we’ll go back
to Borehamwood which has a 5,000 capacity. Until that can
be a consistent thing, that money will never reach us,” she
says. “But it is changing in terms of the wages compared
to when I started. It used to be that you wouldn’t pay for a
player if they moved clubs. Now we’re talking hundreds of
thousands of pounds for a transfer. So already you’re seeing
a big jump in the time that I’ve been playing.”
What’s changed since the Lionesses’s triumph is that
opinion is now irrelevant: the popularity of women’s foot-
ball is inarguable. “I’m a ‘prove it to deserve it’ person,” she
says. “I’m logical and realistic about things that need to be
invested in before you see the fruit. The power is now with
us when we ask for things. I’m going in with proof.” Since
the Euros, Williamson has added more: the North London
derby she mentioned went on to record the biggest attend-
ance in the Women’s Super League – 47,000. Arsenal, with
Williamson in defence, beat Tottenham 4–0.
Despite the historical hardships of women’s football,
there is one thing that does seem to be easier: the game
will take you as you are, regardless of religion, culture, or
sexuality. Many of Williamson’s teammates are gay, some
are in relationships and have children (this is not unusual in
women’s sport – among the 25 players the WNBA [US wom-
en’s basketball] list as their all-time greatest, nine of them
identify as something other than straight). “I don’t want to
use the word oppression, because it’s really, really harsh. But
we’ve been banned, we’ve been constantly told ‘you can’t
do this, you can’t do that’. But the one thing that we can be
is whoever we want – whether you are gay, or you aren’t.”
In the Euros, Williamson wore a rainbow captain arm-
band in support of LGBTQ+ rights. She keeps it in a box
with her boots, along with every shirt she’s played in. She
imagines one day they’ll be stitched together into a blanket.
Men’s football is a different world. The players are less
relatable, less accessible than the women; they are untouch-
able, faraway gods whose followers demand conformity.
Right now there is only one openly gay male player in
English football – Jake Daniels, a 17-year-old who plays for
Blackpool – the first to come out since Justin Fashanu, in
1990, who later died by suicide aged 37.
“It’s a massive, massive thing in the men’s game,” she says.
“In men’s football there is still a stereotypical footballer, and
that stereotype isn’t gay. I just think it’s so sad. Statistically,
there has to be more. But coming out as gay, you are sub-
jecting yourself to abuse on a daily basis on social media, in
football grounds – and I know that those people are chas-
tised, those people who are dealt with afterwards, but that
doesn’t mean they can’t say it.
“The split second that they say something can affect you
forever. So you’re basically making a choice: do I want to live
and just be happy in my bubble and be who I am, safely? Or
→
do I want to stand up and be open about it, but then have to
jumper £239 be strong enough to repel all of that negativity?
jacket £429
“I think, from within football, they will be supported,” she
trousers £199
Boss Alive eau adds. “But you cannot stop the abuse that you’d get. Some
de parfum £92 people don’t want to be a figurehead, they just want to live
Boss their life as who they are.”
 shirt £19.90
Uniqlo
vest £35
Intimissimi
jeans £140
Raey at
MatchesFashion
belt £140
Elliot Rhodes
shoes £100
Nike
socks, stylist’s own
 WILLIAMSON SHOWS ME another playlist – the one she would
take on Desert Island Discs. It has Solomon Burke on it.
Donny Hathaway. Joan Armatrading. Songs of loneliness,
human weakness, complicated love. It’s unexpected, wise,
and so is she. She embodies the kind of emotional matu-
rity that makes for a perfect captain: clarity of thought, a
determined hope, a distinct lack of jadedness. She knows
she has limited time to achieve not only her own goals, but
the broader changes the team wants to make for the players
who are toddlers now, or not yet born. She knows that while
female footballers were robbed of 50 years, her generation
was robbed of a further two with the pandemic. She knows
that any one of them who wants to bear a child will do so
with the knowledge that they will lose a year of a career that
might only span 10. She is aware of the brief nature of this
kind of life in a way that others might not be. In talking to
her, the countdown timer becomes almost audible.
We meet again at Somerset House, her favourite place
in the world – a place where she would come as a child to
TAILOR, FR ANKIE FARMER @ K AREN AVENELL. HAIRST YLIST, MIKE O’GORMAN. MAKEUP ARTIST, MARY-JANE GOTIDOC. PROP ST YLIST, NUHA MEKKI. PRODUCTION, DMB.
run through the fountains in summer, then buy a cheap
T-shirt from the shops on the Strand before carrying her wet
clothes home in the bag. “We used to come to London with
no purpose and just end up here.” It was free, and her family
didn’t have much money. “It felt like a part of London that
was ours.” Now she comes to gigs here with her grandma
(Williamson buys two tickets, knowing she will want to go
with her, and laughs when she remembers her grandma
screaming in delight over a performance by Mary J Blige).
Today she arrives dressed in white, apologising for being
late, focusing on her phone’s clock like she is the panicked
rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. Above the square they are
installing an ice rink over the fountains, another clock ticks.
Seconds, minutes, years. She feels them all. “I’m really
afraid of time – of losing time,” she says, as pigeons make
kamikaze flights into café tables around us. “New Year’s Eve
is a big anxiety kicker, because you’re meant to be in the
right place at the right time for one exact moment. And if
you’re not, you fucking know about it. I think because of the
way I live my life – I just do what I want to do, when I want
to – that really, really scares me. It’s the same in football:
to look back and think, ‘What if ?’ What if you’ve wasted
that time? What if you could have done it differently? I just
never want to feel like that. My biggest fear is that I’ll look
back and think I didn’t do enough with the moments.” She
is an ambassador for the Willow Foundation, a charity for
terminally ill young adults, giving them the one thing they
don’t have: time. They put on Christmases in July, fill gar-
dens with fake snow. She has a superstition that she says is
“It’s the same in football: to look
back and think, ‘What if?’ What if
you’ve wasted that time? What if you
could have done it differently?”
← totally irrational but nevertheless true: she won’t look at the
t-shirt £75 clock during a match because every time she does the other
OpéraSport team will score. In the final, she glanced at the clock. She
doesn’t know why. It showed 72 minutes – Germany scored
jeans £140
in the 79th minute. She was furious with herself, ready to
Raey at
MatchesFashion carry the whole loss on her own shoulders until Chloe Kelly
came off the bench to score the decisive goal in extra time,
running around the pitch with her shirt off in an echo of US
footballer Brandi Chastain at the 1999 World Cup. That win
changed the game for women in America like the Euros have
here. “That,” says Williamson, “was like a fairytale.”
Williamson is sentimental – she has not only a desper-
ation to do something with the moments she is given, but
to hold onto them. She carries a 35 mm camera with her
and keeps the photographs in albums under her bed. “I get
feelings off everything, I get feelings off a bloody lamppost,”
she laughs. “It’s memories. It’s things that shouldn’t mean
anything but just mean the world.” Though she says her
footballer persona is “very hard-faced” in a way that may
come across as emotionless, feeling is what drives her. “I’m
a feeler,” she keeps saying, her hand on her heart. “But the
emotion of caring too much can be a detriment sometimes.”
She brings up an infamous penalty she took when she was
18, when UEFA made the unprecedented decision to replay
the final 18 seconds of England’s qualifier against Norway
for the European Under-19 Championship, five whole days
after the match. To watch the footage even now, it is daunt-
ing: it is night, the stands are empty. The set-up is longer
than the game. She scored the penalty, and her teammates
piled into her before remembering they had 16 more sec-
onds to play out. It’s the only match ball she’s ever kept, now
deflated in another box somewhere. Comments under the
YouTube video praise her nerves of steel. But in the five days
leading up to that moment, she felt sick. “It just consumed
me. I used to think, I can’t wait to retire so I don’t have to
do this, I know I want to do this, but I feel like I can’t. I was
wishing away my career because of these nerves. I just went
to sleep. I thought, If I go to sleep, I won’t feel it.”
After the game, she couldn’t sleep. She laid on the floor of
her hotel bathroom, away from her sleeping roommates, in
full kit, her head on the ball, scrolling through her phone,
focusing on the kind of ephemeral internet nonsense you
would, on a normal day, scroll past. She ignored all the mes-
sages from family and friends; she wasn’t yet ready to han-
dle the reality of what she had just gone through. “As I got
older, I thought: you can’t just sleep through every day, you
need to figure out a way to deal with it.”
She met a psychologist, almost daring her to help her
when she felt so helpless. She looks surprised when she says
they found tools to help: “Breathing exercises, and making a
mental note, like a triangle with my goals for the game, kind
of like tick boxes,” she says, picking out three corners in the
air. “I went into the European Championships having never
played a minute, with all of this extra external pressure,
and I just never thought about it – I didn’t feel any of it.”
Without that psychological training, she doesn’t think she
would have remembered the final at all. Where there could
be history, she would have had another blank space.
Like photographs, music can capture a moment. Perhaps
this is why she keeps the hundreds of playlists she makes:
she is trying to trap time in the only way she can before it
slips through her fingers – in memory, in feeling, in a way
over which she has power. “Nothing makes me feel the way
football or music do. But you choose which song you want
to put on… football is out of your control.”
hayley campbell is a writer and author based in London.
D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 1 7 5
 With a second album, a cinematic
debut, and in “First Class”,
one of the songs of the summer,
the smoothest man in hip-hop
is still poppin’.

Words by Photography by Styled by

Lauren Larson Danny Kasirye Angelo Mitakos
 ACK HARLOW WON’T appear on stage for five
more hours, but his fans have been muster-
ing beneath the sky-high white colonnade
of Kia Forum in Los Angeles since dawn.
A long queue, comprising mostly young
women, snakes around the edge of the car
park. Attendants in neon vests seem flum-
moxed by the crowd, first redirecting those
gathered to another entrance, then to a VIP
check-in tent. The line moves compliantly
from place to place like a tentacle.
Four gregarious women at the front,
Theresa, Ivy, Mackenzie, and Geneva,
arrived at the Forum at 4am and waited
in the street until they were allowed into
the grounds. Theresa, with long false eye-
lashes, sleek black hair, and sharp con-
touring that seems calculated to set her
apart from the blur of faces at the front of
the crowd, went to her first Jack Harlow
show in 2021. Tonight, she says, will be her
47th. (“I know who you’re talking about,”
Harlow tells me later when I mention her.
“She’s a fucking legend.”)
“But – and not to brag – we’ve been here longer,”
Mackenzie says, to laughs from Theresa and the others.
“She just has more money.” Mackenzie has hot pink hair
and glasses, and she lifts up the lower left side of her shirt
to display a tattoo she had done in 2019, of Harlow’s name
in swirling script.
That these women are among Harlow’s earliest fans
speaks to the rapidity of his ascent. Mackenzie recalls a show
at The Roxy Theatre in West Hollywood in November 2019
– “pre-‘Whats Poppin,’” she specifies, referring to Harlow’s
2020 breakout track. “We showed up, I wanna say, at like
3pm, and we were stressed out that that was gonna be too
late. We were the first in line for hours. Nobody else came,”
she says. “After he really blew up, it was like, you’d better be
there overnight!”
Harlow’s career can be neatly divided into pre-“Whats
Poppin” and post-“Whats Poppin.” Although he’s been rap-
ping since he was 12 and releasing music with the Atlanta-
based label Generation Now since 2018, “Whats Poppin” was
the turning point. The two years since have been a kaleido-
scope of milestones: hitting the top 10 on Billboard’s Hot
100; remixes and collaborations with industry greats; bless-
ings from other industry icons, including Drake; piles of
award nominations.
Harlow rode into 2022 with his tank still full from
“Industry Baby”, last year’s mega-hit with Lil Nas X
(1.5 billion Spotify streams and counting). He spent the
spring filming his big-screen debut, in a remake of White
Men Can’t Jump. And in May, he released his second stu-
dio LP, Come Home the Kids Miss You. Kanye West shouted
out the album’s lead single, “Nail Tech.” “First Class”, also
off the new album, went viral on TikTok before it was even
released, when Harlow teased a 13-second sample. The track
also topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic, and was
declared Song of Summer at the VMAs.
At the same time, Harlow has become the darling of chat
shows and award shows: smart, but unpretentious; cocky,
but coming across as humble; provocatively funny, but never
crossing the line.
Online, he has become a totem of quiet confidence (the
subtler cousin of “big dick energy”). “Jack is just a genu-
inely nice dude,” Pete Davidson, the US comic, possessor of
BDE and friend of Harlow, wrote in an email. “His talent
1 7 8 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
←← speaks for itself, but I think the way he conducts himself is
PREVIOUS PAGE even more impressive.”
rollneck £1,140 It can sometimes feel like Harlow is Forrest Gump – if
socks £220
sandals £550
Forrest Gump had “game”. He appears everywhere, creating
Tom Ford headlines just by being himself. At the 2021 BET Awards,
trousers £550
Harlow slid into a red-carpet interview with the rapper
Louis Vuitton Saweetie to introduce himself. The resulting “Jack Harlow
shoots his shot with Saweetie” videos have been viewed
→ more than 20 million times. And at this year’s Met Gala,
OPPOSITE PAGE he signed off an interview with YouTube personality Emma
jacket £1,290 Chamberlain with “Love ya, bye,” prompting Chamberlain
shirt £890 to instinctively reply “Love ya!” back, only to look mortified
trousers £690
once Harlow had stepped away.
tie £150
Burberry The ladies of the line warn me about Harlow’s charisma
before I head into the dimly-lit warrens under the Forum to
meet him. “He’s, like, so unnecessarily suave and I hate it,”
says Mackenzie.
“He doesn’t even try,” says Ivy.
I F I N D H A R L O W , who has just finished rehearsing, sip-
ping a Perrier in the green room. He stands when I
arrive, then slouches comfortably on a deep leather sofa
beneath a large photo of a hot dog-shaped hot dog stand.
He’s wearing a black sweat suit with the Generation Now
logo, accessorised with New Balance trainers (he starred
in the company’s autumn campaign). Large diamond ear-
rings – caratage unknown, he says, because they were a
TA I LO R I N G , V I K K I E TA R B U C K AT K A R E N AV E N E L L . G RO O M I N G , B E N TA L B OT T AT T H E WA L L G RO U P. S E T D ES I G N , G E O RG I A C U R R E L L .
gift – glint in each ear. On his left wrist he wears a big
gleaming Rolex dubbed “the Batman” by watch aficio-
nados. He bought it this summer in London after a
conversation with fellow rapper Pharrell. “He was like,
‘Go get you a Rolex, so every time you look down at it you
think: take your time.’”
Fame has advanced upon Harlow rapidly. During his last
tour, he played theatres; now he’s playing arenas. Many of
his newfound fans are women. Those viral clips of Harlow
were like when the quiet kid plays the heartthrob in the
school play: suddenly all the girls who had thought Harlow
was attractive realised they weren’t the only ones. “There
was always women, but it’s definitely… I feel like people
associate my shows and that shit with women now,” Harlow
says. “I feel like that’s the biggest shift.”
His new followers are perhaps also responding to changes
in his look. Between 2020’s Thats What They All Say and this
year’s Come Home the Kids Miss You, Harlow streamlined
himself. He doesn’t snack any more, he says, and he stopped
drinking last year. His face hasn’t lost its friendly roundness,
but it’s gained definition. He also exercises with a trainer
every morning, chiefly because he likes how it makes him
feel for the rest of the day. That, and he didn’t want to wait
until 40 to start getting into shape. (As Mackenzie said:
“He’s huge, he’s so big. He’s just a large individual – you
know that already – but then you see him and you’re like,
‘Damn, he’s built’.”)
Now his fingernails have a high shine, his shoes are
sponsored, and his theatre-kid glasses are long gone. His
hair, which used to form a triangular mop, is now the stuff
curly hair mood boards are made of. “I always say I looked
like I worked at GameStop,” Harlow says. Generation Now
co-founder Leighton “Lake” Morrison agrees: “He looked
like a Napoleon Dynamite that could rap,” he says. “But
I think, just like anybody, he grew into himself, he figured
out what his swag was.” Now his hair looks expensively
coiffed, like the locks on a Greek statue.
Sitting on the green room sofa, Harlow seems subdued
 “I’ll just be chilling and people
be thinking I’m mad, or
having a bad time, just
because maybe the only
things they’ve seen of me is,
‘He’s pretty upbeat.’ I’m moody.”
compared to his public appearances. He is aware of the
discordance between those energetic turns and the pow-
ered-down mode in which I find him now. “I hate the effect
of that. I think I do that to people all the time, when I just
want to be…” he makes a tlock sound with his tongue, wid-
ening his eyes and throwing his hands up in an expression
of sweet apathy. “Because I’ll just be chilling and people be
thinking I’m mad, or having a bad time, just because maybe
the only things they’ve seen of me is, ‘He’s pretty upbeat.’
I’m moody.”
He’s also, he explains, slightly wary of journalists. “I don’t
feel like I’m a darling in the journalism space. I feel like
everyone in journalism is so sophisticated right now, or jour-
nalism is so sophisticated,” he says. “I’m not a niche artist.
I’m out here killing shit. And I’m a white artist in a Black
genre. Journalists can never show me too much love.”
If Harlow is feeling jilted by the media, it might be
because while Come Home the Kids Miss You has been
devoured by fans, the album landed badly with some critics,
who decried the absence of the personality Harlow seems
so comfortable parading in public. “He is funny online and
in interviews and knows how to grab people’s attention.
Without much to grasp with his music, it’s easiest just to
stare,” declared a Pitchfork review. “He’s a cultural chame-
leon; someone that can simultaneously check every box he
needs to gain attention. But that box-checking is, maybe,
also the problem,” read another on the US’s National Public
Radio. It was as if critics had found themselves in the green
room with the off-camera, mellower Harlow and thought,
he looked taller in his photos.
THE RECEPTION OF Come Home the Kids Miss You didn’t
shock Harlow into any sort of professional reckoning.
When the album was released in May, he was in Los Angeles
shooting White Men Can’t Jump, and waited several weeks
to read anything “official.” “I think I felt a little better than
I probably would have if it was the night of…,” he says.
He remembers when his first album came out, scrolling at
midnight to see the online response in real-time. “I read it
and I was like, Okay, I can deal with that, you know what
I’m saying? There’s sentences that aren’t as fun, but I feel
like I read it and I was like, ‘I can stomach this.’”
And some of the insights in the reviews he read of Come
Home… made sense to him. “I feel like people have a hard
time, like, being straight up with me,” he says. “I’ve asked for
it.” He has received some constructive specifics from artists
he respects – when Pharrell told him to go bigger with his
hooks and choruses, Harlow, who feels most comfortable
with verses, took it to heart – but not so often that he doesn’t
see the value in an occasional dose of constructive criticism.
The critical response also hasn’t dulled the album’s recep-
tion with his fans. “First Class”, for example, popped off on
TikTok, where the hashtag #jackharlow has 3.4 billion views.
Harlow bristles at the label “TikTok song”. A track doing
numbers on TikTok, he says, just denotes its wider popu-
larity. “Almost all big songs blow up on TikTok. Now, some
songs are literally rooted in some dance challenge that blew
it up. But some songs go big, and as soon as they go big
they’re gonna be big there, because it’s what kids are listen-
ing to,” he says. “That’s where kids are; sorry.”
TikTok can be a ruthless place for new artists; somewhere
fame often really does last 15 seconds. Harlow himself has
witnessed this, in the disproportionate number of one-hit
and some-hits wonders coming and going. “I feel like I’m
seeing a ton of, like, one-song moments, like, damn, they
← caught a catchy 15 seconds. Even I’m, like, I might even sing
jacket £1,250 it in the shower, this little blip you heard. They have a name,
trousers £1,250 and they might, for that month, have gained 40,000 follow-
Prada ers. And then they vanish. It’s over.”
trainers £120 When Harlow is invested in what he’s saying, he unpeels
New Balance himself from the couch and leans forward, his fingers
turtleneck pointed straight out at his interlocutor like fighter planes.
and socks But now he makes a “poof ” motion with his hands. “And
stylist’s own there’s always been artists that have had a hit and vanished,
watch £32,000 but now kids are just pumping out soundbites,” he says.
Audemars Piguet “I just wonder how many kids we’ll look back on in 20 years
and they’ll be like ‘Yo, remember I had this little nah nah,
man dan buh nuh nuh? Remember that melody? That was
me, bro. I actually got a record deal off that, I made a hun-
dred grand, and that was pretty much where it ended.’ I feel
like there’s gonna be 200 kids like that, that had a little song.”
The challenge of TikTok for new artists, he explains, is
being “reduced to ‘the sound’” – the drop that lends itself to
a cut between before-and-after images, the catchy opener,
or the danceable chorus. Once that happens, an artist has
stepped onto the TikTok hamster wheel and must keep
delivering those tasty morsels or be spat out into oblivion.
Harlow concedes that rap is “a young man’s game.” He
might be a young man, but he is already thinking about
longevity. He looks often to rappers he admires, who have
had enduring careers, and understands the importance
of reinvention in sustaining an audience’s attention.
But how much does a 24-year-old who has only been among
the mainstream for a couple of years really have to rein-
vent? “People might not look at me and think ‘reinvention’
immediately,” he acknowledges, “but there’s a big differ-
ence between ‘Whats Poppin’ and ‘First Class’, sonically,
and there’s a big difference between how I was associated
culturally in 2020 and 2022.”
Then there’s Harlow’s charm. Not many musicians can
attract new fans by sheer force of personality. “There’s so
many artists putting out so much music so fast that the goal
is to get attention first,” says Generation Now’s Morrison.
“People get attracted to lifestyle, and who the person is.” The
music an artist is producing is still paramount, Morrison
adds. Once audiences are drawn to the artist as a person,
the music has to hold their attention.
Harlow’s tracks are both catchy enough to lend them-
selves to video clips and dynamic enough for non-perform-
ative listening. Even on a lyrical level, he pursues long-tail
appeal. He avoids Twitterspeak where possible, for instance.
“It feels cheap and microwaved, doesn’t feel timeless,” he
says, though he acknowledges that “those little modern
sprinkles” can be appropriate on more fun tracks. “But your
album intro or outro or something, where you’re pouring
your soul out, you don’t want to say, ‘it’s giving.’”
D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 1 8 1
 “We work too hard for me
to just say, ‘Well, I wanna
show a little personality.’
I’m not playing with this shit.
This shit is fragile as fuck.”

1 8 2 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 1 8 3
 He tries not to swear excessively on his records, too,
because he believes swear words dilute his writing. “I want
my verses to be just as potent if you Google the lyrics and
read ’em, like I want the writing to be just as beautiful as the
way I’m delivering it.”
With two hours to go before Harlow is due to appear on
stage, Michael Kyser, Atlantic Records’ co-president of Black
music, bursts in wearing a bright green tracksuit to congrat-
ulate Harlow on playing the Forum, his largest show yet. In
the room next door, a woman is preparing a massage table.
Pre-show massages are not customary for Harlow, he’s just
been feeling especially wrung out by the physical demands
of touring. In general, he likes to spend the time before each
show with his inner circle, though he prefers to be alone in
the minutes before he goes on stage, to “lock into a mode”.
His rider, he laments, is very tame. “It’s super bland cos
I don’t want to eat bullshit every day, but I would like to put
some eccentric things on there,” he says. “I feel like I’m at
the level where people need to walk in and be, like, ‘Wow,
you have that?’” Right now it’s mostly “granola and shit.”
Jil Sander by Lucie
Between his sobriety, his modest demands and his
dialled-in pre-show routine, Harlow appears to have
bypassed the “woooh” era that sometimes plagues early
stardom. He looks after his mental health, scheduling phone
appointments with a therapist as needed; two days ago, he
says, he had a good cry while he was venting.
If he had a philandering stage, he seems to have emerged
from it unscathed. “I’ve never been at a point in life where I
was just fuckin’, fuckin’, fuckin’, – nah,” he says. “But I was at
a point where I felt like I needed the company of a woman
constantly.” This was when he was about 19, adjusting to
attention from the industry and from women, too. Then,
he hated being alone, and would often fall asleep talking
to someone on FaceTime. “I don’t know if it was validation
I was searching for, but there was something I wanted.
Now I crave alone time; I love it,” he says. “I’m not running
through ’em like that.” (The past tense prompts me to ask
whether he has a secret girlfriend, which, for those invested,
he will neither confirm nor deny.)
Later, after his support acts, The Homies and City Girls,
have come and gone, Harlow takes to the stage. The show
opens with him rapping in silhouette behind a white stage-
length curtain. He likes that, for that moment, he’s recognis-
able by his hair. “It’s a Black genre, and I’m a white boy with
curly hair,” he says, before sombrely adding that it doesn’t
always behave as he’d like it to. “It’s curls, man. It’s curls. You
don’t tell them what to do. They do what they want.”
But tonight, as he stands in profile like a Victorian cameo
behind the curtain, his curls are a perfect groomed mass.
I spot Mackenzie via her pink hair just below the stage, she
and Ivy incanting every lyric in time with Harlow.
Then the curtain kabuki-drops to a rapturous roar, and
Harlow appears dressed all in white. He strides across the
stage and plants himself next to a smoke cannon, which,
timed to a hip wiggle from Harlow, shoots an ejaculatory
column of smoke out over the crowd.
Harlow seems to activate before an audience. He moves
easily across the stage, his blue eyes, coupled with his scruff-
ily-Satanic facial hair and brows, giving him a mischievous
vibe. He’s 6ft 3in, so when Fergie joins him as a surprise
guest during “First Class,” he towers over her, even though
she’s wearing giant lucite platform heels.
When he was growing up rapping in Louisville, Kentucky,
Harlow enjoyed a lot of attention. “It’s almost like I was
bred for this.” Shows deliver a concrete, satisfying hit of that
attention. Harlow has ascended in an age where celebrities
are simultaneously more accessible to and more alienated
“I was at a point
where I felt like
I needed the
company of a
woman constantly.”
←← from audiences. “It’s not that much of a barrier between
PREVIOUS PAGE you and these people,” he says. “You wouldn’t invite these
knitted vest £685 people to your crib, but they’re in your crib if you’re reading
trousers £2,520
all their thoughts. Should they have access to your brain, for
and Luke Meier real? That’s why you shouldn’t search for your name, that’s
why you shouldn’t read the comments. Because a random
← person shouldn’t be able to reach someone who’s worked
this hard. There was a time when people who worked hard
OPPOSITE PAGE
rollneck £1,140 could truly isolate themselves from the people that weren’t
Tom Ford in their space, that hadn’t earned the right to have their ear.
trousers £550 Now everyone has our ear if we go looking for it.”
Louis Vuitton Harlow tries to avoid social media, where millions spew
hateful thoughts about him daily into the void. There’s love
too, Harlow says, but somehow it doesn’t hit as poignantly as
all the shit-talking. A cheering stadium crowd is an antidote.
He remembers feeling nervous before an audience in
middle school, rapping at his school talent show, but now a
crowd of screaming fans gives him no anxiety. In his early
days, Harlow performed for many rooms with double-digit
turnouts – he calls the tour he did in January 2018 “the
struggle tour.” “Now that people have showed up and they’re
here,” he says, “it’s more comfortable.” It’s not the crowds
that make him anxious, but the alternative.
THE DAY AFTER Harlow’s show, we meet again in another
cushy non-place: a hotel in West Hollywood. LA’s golden
evening light shoots through the trees overhanging a
cobbled lane, which leads to a discreet and celebri-
ty-friendly hotel entrance. From there I am whisked up
to an anonymous room on a high floor, where Harlow is
staying while he’s in town. He has spent the day recharging
after the night before.
“I just took a two hour nap,” Harlow says, opening the
door and beckoning me in to the suite’s vast living area.
The space is sterile and reliant on greys and neutrals; it’s
bright, but the light that had appeared so warm outside
feels muted and airport-like.
Harlow wears a similarly subdued white tank top, swishy
green joggers – the same ones he wore in his recent New
Balance campaign – and New Balance clogs. He sinks back
into a giant green-grey sofa in the middle of the room, his
manager promising to return shortly with a dinner delivery
for him. A few minutes later a cardboard bowl of nonde-
script grains and vegetables appears.
The nap had not come to him easily, he says. “You’re try-
ing to sleep, and you’re not really getting to sleep. And you’re
saying, all right, maybe I’ll work out. And then finally I was
like, bro, fuck that. You’re exhausted. Even if you don’t fall
asleep, just lay here and stop being beholden to shit.”
D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 1 8 5
 Nap secured, we rehash last night’s show. “I’m in a space
now where I can rip theatres, because it’s all right in front of
you,” Harlow says. He’s still getting accustomed to arena per-
formances. Besides the artist’s delivery, he explains, there
are thousands of production logistics in play. It’s also harder
for Harlow to gauge whether the people in an arena’s eyries
are “feeling” the performance. “I’m very conscious of trying
to, like, overstate my body movements sometimes, and, like,
project, and do things that reach the person in the balcony.
Because it’s so far away, it’s harder to get that frenetic energy
just trapped in a ball.”
The challenge is a welcome one. He recalls one of his most
visceral memories, of a show he played at a local theatre in
Wisconsin, pre-pre-pre-“Whats Poppin”. “It was about seven
people, literally,” he says. “But what made it hard for me was
that my family had come up and surprised me. And they
had their family friends from up north there and, like, sat in
the back. And there were more of them than the crowd. So
I was not only embarrassed for myself, but – and my family
didn’t care, they were proud of me no matter what – but
I was embarrassed that that was the crowd I attracted…
it’s more vulnerable when your family is involved.”
He compares the feeling of that show – and the horror
of the possibility that if everything were to go sideways, he
could one day play to an empty room again – to that of being
an anxious kid.
“That is the core feeling underneath all the shit we’re
talking about,” he says. “That feeling of, like, the parents
having to see their kid go through that. That type of shit
could make me cry. That’s the anxiety behind events, behind
shows, behind anything: what if I put all this effort in and no
one cares? My fear is like, I’m gonna have a birthday party
and no one’s gonna come.”
1 8 6 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
→ It’s rare to hear such uncertainty from Harlow, someone
coat £7,895 who has previously been so bullish about his own career
jumper £475 trajectory. (He once told another interviewer that he wanted
shirt £625
trousers and shoes
to be “the face of my generation.”) But these brief strobes
(prices upon of vulnerability are also Harlow at his most endearing. In
request) that viral clip from the BET Awards, for instance, Saweetie
Dunhill quickly defuses Harlow by asking, “Why you shaking?”
“Nobody’s shaking!” Harlow says.
↓ Saweetie, he adds in his retelling, went on to explain that
jacket £1,250
it wasn’t his hand that was shaking as he held hers, but his
Prada lips. He demonstrates this: upper lip twitching, eyes craven.
turtleneck
“I don’t recall it,” he adds, “but I’m not gonna say she’s lying.”
stylist’s own Harlow admits that he has not been as candid and lais-
watch £32,000
sez-faire in our conversations as is typical of him, chiefly
Audemars Piguet because he feels a responsibility not to humiliate the four
tour buses full of crew and friends who are invested in his
career. “I have a very dark side, trust me, but you get to
a space where it’s not just your life,” he says. He’s always
thinking about who he’s talking to, and how what he’s saying
might be perceived. “We work too hard for me to just say,
‘Well, I wanna show a little personality,’” he says. “I’m not
playing with this shit. This shit is fragile as fuck.”
This is part of Harlow’s talent: he has a savvy not just
for garnering attention, but for avoiding the infinite trip
hazards that come with that attention. This skill is at least
in part a function of being a young artist who has grown up
heavily online. “Young people are just, like – and this is prob-
ably how it’s always been – it feels like they’ve just become
more aware. So much information, like social context, is
at their fingertips,” he says. The day before, we’d discussed
how from a very young age, kids are gaining a strong sense
of how people act by reading and watching videos. Being
drenched in social cues is also, he adds now, shaping their
sense of humour. “If you read those comments or you see
some of these TikToks, these 14-year-olds or 11-year-olds are
fucking hilarious because, for better or worse, they’re learn-
ing how socialising works so early.”
Our conversation is winding down, and the sky through
the window turns a dull purple, then a dark navy. Soon
Harlow will need to rally himself for an awards ceremony in
the hotel downstairs, but he doesn’t seem hurried. He sits
straight up on the sofa, his legs out under the coffee table
like a kid waiting to get called into the headmaster’s office.
“You could also argue social skills are struggling,” he says,
“that kids are more awkward, or not as confident. Face-to-
face interactions are harder. But they understand things.
They’re so intuitive.”
Harlow is speaking philosophically but perhaps also from
experience, for he is also a highly alert person who grew
up in the digital age, with the heightened social acuity that
comes with that. This is part of Harlow’s charm: nothing
he says sounds calculated, but you still walk away with the
sense that he has gleefully two-stepped you around the
dance floor and left you exactly where he intended.
Once Harlow has warmly deposited me in the hallway,
I remember another fan I met outside his show; a lanky
teenage lad with long ringlets who was standing with a very
short young woman with impeccable cat-eye eyeliner. Both
could have been characters in Euphoria.
“He’s very humble,” the man said of Harlow, his com-
panion nodding enthusiastically, and he’s very “himself ”.
He’s also very charming, he added, and the woman nodded
bigger, eyes widening.
“He knows what he’s doing,” the man said, with a laugh.
“He knows what he’s doing, absolutely.”
lauren larson is a writer based in Austin, Texas.
By Gabriella Paiella Photographed by Steven Klein Styled by B. Åkerlund Klein

ALWAYS LANDS ON HER FEET

She was already one of the coolest people alive. But it wasn’t until
this year when she played Catwoman (in The Batman) and directed her
first movie (Pussy Island) that Kravitz finally felt like she had made it.
dress £4,650
Alaïa
hat £820
Victoria Grant
gloves
(price upon request)
Urstadt Swan
earrings £530
Jennifer Fisher
necklace £1,950
Bond Hardware
NEW YORK’S UPPER EAST SIDE IS OUT IN FULL FORCE
AT THE NEUE GALERIE, A SHRINE TO AUSTRO-GERMANIC
EXPRESSIONISM TUCKED INSIDE A PALATIAL LOUIS
XIII–STYLE MANSION, ON THIS GLOOMY AUTUMN
AFTERNOON. COATS ARE SUMPTUOUS SHADES OF
NAVY AND BROWN. HAIR IS COIFFED AND GREY.
ELEGANT SILK SCARVES ARE MANDATORY. THE
PATRONS HAVE STEPPED INSIDE THE FILIGREE-
IRON DOORS AND UP THE DRAMATICALLY CURVED
MARBLE STAIRCASE TO BE TRANSPORTED, THROUGH
THE EVOCATIVE POWER OF ART, TO THE GILDED
REFINEMENT OF TURN-OF-THE-CENTURY VIENNA.
ALSO, TO EAT THE CAFÉ’S £30 WIENER SCHNITZEL.
ZOË KRAVITZ GLIDES in wearing a long grey area is the most interesting place you can
black coat over an all-black ensemble with occupy. That’s where she always wants to be in
her hair slicked up in a ballerina bun, looking her work (with Pussy Island; as a yoga teacher
like Catwoman decided to settle down in a with a dark secret in Big Little Lies; as a lova-
fancy apartment on Central Park. Her face is ble female cad in the TV series High Fidelity).
what happens when you combine the DNA Having lived in the public eye since before she
of two of the best-looking people on earth could walk, she knows that’s not always what
(Lenny Kravitz, Lisa Bonet). Her audiences want. But she seems to
mind, however, is somewhere else: ←← relish toying with other people’s
Pussy Island. OPENING PAGE expectations and, whenever the
The 33-year-old actor is midway jacket and briefs opportunity presents itself, sub-
(prices upon request)
through editing her directorial verting them.
Saint Laurent by
debut, about a cocktail waitress Anthony Vaccarello She pauses in front of an
named Frida (Naomi Ackie) who uncharacteristically muted Klimt
stockings £20
accompanies a nefarious tech bil- Falke portrait titled Pale Face. Kravitz
lionaire (Channing Tatum) to his peers at the canvas, thinking
hat £320
hedonistic private island. The film Gigi Burris about restraint and attention
occupies her thoughts day and to detail. She points out an oth-
vintage earring
night. “My brain just doesn’t stop,” Schiaparelli from erwise imperceptible crimson
she says. “It’s screaming about it.” Pechuga Vintage brushstroke in the top right cor-
Kravitz, a longtime Brooklyn res- hoop earring ner. “Kinda like my outfit,” Kravitz
ident, suggested we meet up here (throughout) deadpans, flashing fire-engine red
before she retreats back to the edit- £3,440 for pair socks hiding beneath the layers
ing suite. The museum has been Grace Lee of black. On screen and in photos
one of her favourite places since stud earrings she perpetually appears sharp
she first visited on a high school (throughout) her own and aloof – her name is so synony-
field trip and was blown away by necklace £7,560 mous with the word cool that the
its collection of Egon Schiele and Ohliguer phrase “Zoë Kravitz cool” yields
Gustav Klimt paintings. All these rings (on left index 22,900,000 Google results – but
years later, a Schiele nude is her finger) £2,225 her whole affect is softer and more
phone background. “Specifically, (on left middle) £1,070 lighthearted in person. “She’s
(on right ring) £845
with Schiele, there’s this grotesque, funny as hell,” her old friend Alia
Liliam Shalom
almost ugly-beautiful thing. Even Shawkat told me. “She’s a weird
rings (on right index
with the Klimt pieces, the sadness little freak.”
finger and right
in their eyes…” she says. middle finger, The other conspicuous bit of
This combination is especially prices upon request) colour on her today is a mam-
attractive to Kravitz: for her, the Tiffany & Co. moth emerald pinkie ring. It was
a gift from “Chan,” or Channing Tatum, her
boyfriend and the star of her film. Their rela-
tionship has inspired curiosity since their first
paparazzi photos together in August of last
year: he, an enormous all-American beefcake
on the world’s tiniest BMX bike, pedalling with
the sombre purpose of a messenger deliver-
ing an Uber Eats order to God. She, petite and
alternative, propped up behind him, wearing
sunglasses and casually enjoying the
unexpected ride.
She’s glad to be back home in the city after
a long stretch away, which coincided with a
high point of her career and an upheaval in
her personal life. Much of 2020 and 2021 were
spent slinking around London playing Selina
Kyle in The Batman. “I already think my job is
very bizarre,” she says. “But there’s something
even weirder about someone lubing you up
and covering you in latex at six in the morning
when the whole world is kind of stopped.” The
Batman was released in March; it went on to
gross £670 million internationally and con-
firmed Kravitz’s instincts that, despite acting
for more than half her life, Catwoman was the
role in which she had finally made it. “Batman
was the first time that I felt like I was in some-
thing undeniable,” she says.
Over the summer, she spent three months
deep in the Yucatán jungle filming Pussy
Island. Kravitz started writing the script pre-
#MeToo, to work through anger and frustration
over how she saw powerful men take advantage
of women. It evolved, with the help of co-writer
E.T. Feigenbaum, to be more of an exploration
of the perpetual tug-of-war between the sexes.
“Instead of making one good and one bad,
D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 1 9 1
“I thought she was going
to be a vet, a lawyer.”
L E N N Y K R AV I T Z
 vintage coat from
New York Vintage
earrings £285 for pair
House of Emmanuele
ring £135
Swarovski
 “They wanted this cute, likable version
of this piece-of-shit character. The point
was women could be pieces of shit, too.”

I think it’s interesting to look at what it is we’re in the edit, she has a new set of worries. Are her childhood that felt normal at the time but,
fighting each other for and why and what that audiences going to hate it? “I think it’s really in retrospect, she realised was out of the ordi-
does to us as humans,” Kravitz says. fun for people to hate actresses when they do nary. She pauses to think.
Yeah, the title is provocative. Kravitz stuff that’s not acting,” she says. Will they even “Going to see my father at a studio and
thought, “What would a group of men call this watch it? And if they do watch it, will they just Mick Jagger being there. Going to the VMAs
sort of free-for-all party destination?” and went be on their phones, scrolling and texting the as a kid and sitting on Scary Spice’s lap,”
from there. Now, she’d be lying if she said she entire time? she finally says. “It was kind of a lot of that.”
didn’t enjoy observing other people’s obvious So, yes, underneath that veneer of effortless This, of course, was around the prime age
discomfort with the name of her movie. “I love cool is someone who cares deeply about mak- to think of your parents as totally old and out-
getting on calls with marketing people or what- ing the most out of the opportunities given to of-touch. When your parents are widely con-
ever,” she says. “They’re like, ‘So, P-Island.’ I’m her. Who’s open about her obsessive pursuit to sidered cool by most of popular culture, those
like, ‘Eh! That’s not what it’s called…’ ” create work that matters. And who’s not going embarrassments take on a different hue. “My
The people who know her say she’s always to pretend to be nonchalant about it. parents were very young and they dressed
been like this. Uncompromising and resolute. “I was just a crazy person,” Kravitz says of her really crazy – see-through shirts and velvet
Just ask her dad. “She so knows who she is and experience in the director’s seat. “I still am. It pants and stuff,” Kravitz says. “I had this fan-
who she isn’t, and is not willing to sacrifice who was always frantic. A glass of whisky at the end tasy about just having a parent who wore a
she is,” Lenny Kravitz told me. “If something is of the night or something would calm me down button-up top.”
not her or she’s not feeling it, she’s not going to a little bit. But there was no getting out of it.” In her teens, Kravitz decided she wanted to
put on a face and act to make others comforta- try acting and Lenny was surprised. “I thought
ble or accepting.” L O N G B E F O R E S H E was a neurotic, whisky-sip- she was going to go and run in the exact oppo-
That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a par- ping filmmaker, Kravitz spent her early years site direction,” he told me. “I thought she’s
ticular skill for bringing people together. in idyllic crunchiness with her mum in LA’s going to be a vet, a lawyer.” The two share a
“She’s the best curator of vibe I think there Topanga Canyon. Her folks separated when she publicist today.
is,” Shawkat, who also stars in Pussy Island, was a toddler. Bonet, then coming off a run in After a handful of bit parts, she started to
said. This quality extended to her command The Cosby Show and A Different World, raised land bigger and bigger projects. Kravitz would
of the set. “She’s very calm, and she’s a really Kravitz as a vegan kid who did yoga. This was walk into her auditions for the X-Men and
good pack leader,” she added. Pussy Island star decades before you could get a Beyond Burger Divergent movies thinking, “It doesn’t matter,
Naomi Ackie felt similarly about being directed anywhere in town and we were all downward I’m not going to fucking get this.” This relaxed
by Kravitz. “It was a sight to see, to watch her dogging ourselves into oblivion. (Neither habit attitude, she theorises, is exactly how she got
in her power, with full agency, lead us all into a stuck.) School was a place where you couldn’t them. The blockbusters kept growing in profile:
place where we felt very safe,” she told me. “We watch TV or wear T-shirts with logos on them. she played a harem escapee running through
felt very creative. We felt all very For these reasons and more, peo- the dystopian desert in Mad Max: Fury Road,
connected to each other.” ple tend to think Kravitz is more of then a pure-blood witch from a storied family
But when Kravitz talks about → a hippie than she actually is. in the Fantastic Beasts franchise.
jacket, shirt
the shoot, she mostly remembers When she was a pre-teen, she Kravitz got her biggest break in 2019, when
and bow tie
the anxiety: over managing a huge (prices upon request) moved across the country to live she was cast in a TV remake of High Fidelity.
cast and crew, over having to make Saint Laurent by with her rock star dad in Miami. She would be taking on the role of Rob, origi-
a million decisions a day, over film- Anthony Vaccarello “It was this crazy new freedom of nally played by John Cusack in the 2000 film
ing in a foreign country where she key earring £1,880 having television and eating Pop- adaptation of the Nick Hornby book. Kravitz
didn’t speak the language, against Eéra Tarts. And I could just do what I would produce and write some of the series too.
the backdrop of a possibly haunted brooch £30,700 wanted,” Kravitz says. (Doing the show was also a sweet nod to her
Colonial mansion. Now, immersed Tiffany & Co. I ask her to name a moment in mum, who appeared in the original film.)

1 9 4 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
 Over the past decade or so, Rob ← insane,” she says. “But I cannot this very honest inner compass, and the result
has become a symbol of the mopey coat shake that.” is art and life without compromising who she
fuckboy. Kravitz’s Rob would be a (price upon request) Since she was a teenager, is.” The two, close for years, also became collab-
Saint Laurent by
Black bisexual woman – but she Kravitz has harboured a “deep orators: Kravitz is credited with co-writing and
Anthony Vaccarello
still very much wanted her char- insecurity” about being in the providing background vocals for the first track
dress £4,650
acter to be a fuckboy. This notion entertainment industry. That on Swift’s newest album, Midnights.
Alaïa
was often met with resistance. hat £820 because she has famous parents While filming, Kravitz was eager to learn
“What was interesting is I had to Victoria Grant she’s less deserving of her suc- everything she could about the filmmaking
really fight the producers in a lot sunglasses £345 cess. She brings up the term “nepo process, already doing research for Pussy
of ways to let me be as toxic as she Linda Farrow babies,” and the idea that the chil- Island. Matt Reeves, director of The Batman,
was,” Kravitz recalls. “They really earrings and bracelet dren of celebrities are advantaged told me that she always wanted to stand in
wanted to dull things down. Even (prices upon request) in ways that other people aren’t. front of the monitor, to get an understanding
at the end of episode two, when I Tiffany & Co. “It’s completely normal for peo- of how certain shots worked. “I like to do a lot
screamed, ‘What fucking Lily girl?’ ple to be in the family business,” of takes because I don’t want to do too much
they were like, ‘Can you be less angry?’ Or when Kravitz says. “It’s literally where last names rehearsal. And she just loved that. She would
I fantasised about beating the shit out of Lily, came from. You were a blacksmith if your fam- be like, ‘Okay, let’s go again.’ She just wanted to
they were like, ‘It’s so violent.’ ” ily was, like, the Black family.” (Or Smith.) She’s be good,” Reeves said.
Kravitz didn’t get it. She wanted to subvert proud of her family, citing her grandmother He pointed to a few specific ideas Kravitz
expectations. She wanted to get right into Roxie Roker’s pioneering role in the 1970s US threw his way – mostly about cats. She became
that grey area. Isn’t that way more interest- sitcom The Jeffersons – and that her parents, in attached to the idea that Selina, a wayward per-
ing? “They wanted it to be this cute, likable carving out careers in music and acting, were son herself, would collect strays and therefore
version of this piece-of-shit character,” says able to make names for themselves too. have a Gotham apartment absolutely stuffed
Kravitz.“The point was to show that women Landing The Batman helped pacify those with cats. Reeves wanted to know how they
could be pieces of shit, too.” nagging feelings of insecurity. Filming in could possibly address an apartment full of stray
When the first season of High Fidelity was London, however, was another challenge. It cats for the viewer. Kravitz answered immedi-
released in 2020, it picked up a cult following was an intense shoot, during the long, lonely ately with an easy solution: to have Batman take
and critical acclaim and… was promptly can- days early in the pandemic. She had one the scene in and growl, “You have a lot of cats.”
celed by Hulu. Kravitz says she never really got familiar face nearby: Taylor Swift, who was Reeves laughed. He was sold, and the line
an answer as to why. It still bums her out when there spending lockdown with her boyfriend, stuck. This is how Batman gets possibly his
people bring it up. “If you make something and Joe Alwyn. only joke ever. This is also how Reeves ended
no one liked it and it’s not good, then it makes “She was my pod,” Kravitz says. “She was a up having the production construct a specially
sense,” she tells me. “But when people connect very important part of being in London, just designed custom cat carrier for Catwoman’s
to it, it’s sad. I felt really out of control.” having a friend that I could see and that would motorcycle, another Zoë idea.
Kravitz has long been plagued by a fear that make me home-cooked meals and dinner on Kravitz, by the way, is more of a dog person.
the phones will stop ringing and she’ll never my birthday.” Swift wrote in an email: “Zoë’s “I think cats are bitchy and complicated and dif-
work again, which didn’t help matters after sense of self is what makes her such an exciting ficult, and I’m totally like that as a person,” she
the show’s cancellation. “My agent thinks I’m artist, and such an incredible friend. She has says. “I don’t want to deal with myself, basically.”

THE MUSEUM CAFÉ downstairs has an inter-

minable queue for that Wiener schnitzel, so
we head out into the damp and grey New York
streets to continue talking. Kravitz suggests
stopping at a diner we come across, the kind of
establishment with zero pretence and a menu
longer than Ulysses.
We squeeze into a back table and get a
dose of Upper East Sideness of another vari-
ety. Midwestern tourists in NFL jerseys and
flannels sit side by side with hardboiled neigh-
bourhood septuagenarians unfolding their

“I think cats are bitchy and newspapers over tuna melts.

Kravitz loves it. “It’s so aesthetically pleasing
to me, the colour of the juice and this coffee,”
complicated and difficult, and I’m she says, drumming her red talon nails on the
granite tabletop and looking at her beverage

totally like that as a person.” order with palpable delight. “This is old-school
New York! People sit and read the paper.”
While working on The Batman, she cleared
out most of her Instagram feed. She wanted a
fresh start, feeling increasingly uncomfortable
with the gap between her public image and
who she is as a person. Today, she barely has an
online presence.
“I definitely have a foot-in-mouth situation,”
she says. “And I shouldn’t always say what
I think in the moment, especially because you
don’t always think those things forever.”

D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 1 9 7
 “Zoë’s sense of self is what makes her
such an exciting artist, and such an
incredible friend. She has this very honest
inner compass, and the result is art and
life without compromising who she is.”
- TAY L O R S W I F T

Even without opening her mouth, she’s Karl Glusman. Eighteen months later, she Tatum proved to be a calming presence for
found people pinning words to her. Cool, for filed for divorce.“I just learned to think about Kravitz during her most stressful moments

H A I R BY N I K K I N E L M S F O R M AU I M O I ST U R E . M A K E U P BY N I N A PA R K F O R YS L B E AU T Y. M A N I C U R E BY N A I L S BY A K I
instance. That’s the one that’s stuck, and one who I am and what I want,” Kravitz explains. on the job. “Whether it was making me tea or
that she’s always felt she has to live up to. “The “You meet someone who’s amazing and wants pouring me a drink or going to whip someone
older I get, the more I realise that the person to marry you, and there’s nothing wrong with into shape or whatever – he really was my pro-
that they’re talking about isn’t me. It’s an idea, that. If there’s nothing wrong, then why tector and it was really wonderful and sweet,”

HIR AYAMA USING APRÉS NAIL. TAILORING BY SHIRLEE IDZ AKOVICH. SE T DESIGN BY JACK FL ANAGAN.
and I’m a separate being.” wouldn’t you do it? You love them and she says. “I think if you can do something like
This realisation came, in part, from growing that’s what you do. It’s a hard question to that together, it’s a good test. And we came out
up and shedding some of her youth. Sometimes ask yourself: ‘Maybe I don’t want the thing even stronger.”
literally: she’s having a few of her dozens of that I’m supposed to want, a marriage, chil- It was, in fact, that exact instinct of Tatum’s
delicate tattoos removed, like a fading star on dren, any of it. I don’t know if I want that at to protect Kravitz and make himself useful that
her middle finger she got when all.’ That’s an uncomfortable led to their infamous initial paparazzi photo.
she was 18. “Just things, I’m like, → question, especially for a woman to The first time the two of them went outside
‘I don’t need this on my body,’ ” jacket and briefs ask herself.” together, he walked her to her writing partner’s
she says. (prices upon request) Kravitz met Tatum when she house a few blocks away. She was wearing jeans
Turning 30 also inspired her to Saint Laurent by cast him in Pussy Island. They nat- and had underestimated the weather. “I was
lean hard into domesticity after Anthony Vaccarello urally hit it off. “He’s just a wonder- sweating and he said, ‘Get on the bike, I’ll ride
her wild 20s. “There’s something stockings £20 ful human. He makes me laugh and you over and you can relax,’ ” she recalls. Almost
Falke
PRODUCED BY TR AVIS KIEWEL AT THAT ONE PRODUCTION.

romantic and exciting about being
like, Oh, I’m an adult. I stay home
and cook now. I bake bread,” she
says. “Then I think you do that for a
couple years and you realise there’s
still a lot of life to be had.” There are
still adventures, and relationships,
and new things to create, and you
can’t do that if you’re pretending
that you’re getting your pension
book at 35. “I’m done romanticising
the ‘old is domestic’ thing. It’s cute
for a minute and then it’s not.”
Her experiment with domes-
ticity involved, as so many do, a
marriage. In 2019, Kravitz wed
her longtime boyfriend, the actor
we both really love art and talking immediately, she spotted a pap out of the cor-
hat £320 about art and the exploration of ner of her eye. And almost immediately after
Gigi Burris why we do what we do. We love to that, they became a meme.
watch a film and break it down and “You want to keep it sacred and private as
vintage earring
Schiaparelli from talk about it and challenge each long as you can,” she says. “So that you don’t
Pechuga Vintage other,” she says. have to even think about what the world thinks
So what do the Kravitz-Tatum about it.”
necklace £7,560
Ohliguer Inside the Actors Studio sessions For just a little while longer, Kravitz is able to
look like? The first movie they do the same with her movie. She’ll have to turn
rings (on left index watched together was the freaky over her edit soon, but right now it’s all hers.
finger) £2,225 (on
left middle) £1,070
romantic crime drama True And with that, Kravitz will indulge a single
(on right ring) £845 Romance. They’re also big fans hippie thought. “I think that creative projects
Liliam Shalom of John Cassavetes and Gena have their own spirit,” she says. “And you can’t
Rowlands, another director-actor control them. You have to allow them to show
rings (on right index
and middle fingers, couple who also worked closely you what they want to be.”
prices upon request) together. (She’d be Cassavetes in
Tiffany & Co. this scenario). gabriella paiella is a us gq staff writer.

1 9 8 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
 How Max Verstappen, the reigning
two-time F1 champion, went from being
a young boy with preternatural talent to
becoming one of the most cold-blooded
winners in racing history.
Words by Photography by Styled by
Daniel Riley Mikael Jansson Kate Phelan
Toward the end of Max Verstappen’s first season
in Formula 1 – a season in which he’d become, at 17,
the youngest-ever driver to compete in racing’s
top series – he returned home to the north of
Belgium to take his road test for his driver’s licence.
DESPITE WINNING IN every racing category from seven
years old onward, he hadn’t been in much of a hurry to drive
normal cars, but it was getting to be a little silly. There was
a break in the 2015 schedule, and a tight window to take the
test before jetting off to a stretch of races in Asia. “The driv-
ing instructor was actually very strict,” he told me recently,
before clarifying, “which is very good – it should be like that!
And I wasn’t nervous but just a bit like, I really need to pass
this test. There was a bit of pressure on it.”
Verstappen ultimately passed, but nearly received a fatal
infraction when he failed to cede the road. “Yeah, I didn’t
give way twice,” he confessed, laughing knowingly.
Verstappen, from his earliest racing days, has been known
for an aggressiveness that lives – mesmerizingly or madden-
ingly, depending on where along the pit lane one sits – right
on the limit. “Max’s best form of defence is attack,” the Red
Bull Racing team principal, Christian Horner, likes to say.
Verstappen’s lead rival over the past few seasons, the sev-
en-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, has put it slightly
differently: “Max is kind of do-or-die. It’s like you’re either
crashing or you’re not going by.” In other words: Verstappen
is not giving way. Ever. “I think he pushes it to the limit and
probably beyond,” Hamilton added.
“I don’t think you can go fast if you have fear inside you,”
Verstappen told me last year. And that tactical fearlessness
goes a long way toward explaining his competitive edge and
recent domination, which includes back-to-back world cham-
pionships in 2021 and 2022. At 25, he has won more Grand
Prix than all but five racers in F1 history, and is already com-
fortably regarded within the company of the best half-dozen
or so to have ever done it. Hamilton. Schumacher. Vettel.
Prost. Senna. He can win from anywhere on the starting grid
– not just the front of the pack. And it is when he is chasing
that his proprietary ownership of the racing line is on most
ecstatic display. That sense that he is destined to go past you,
as though by fate’s decree, has seemingly contributed to a
near-pathological certainty that he is never at fault. It can
contribute to the impression that Verstappen, Horner, and
Red Bull are working the refs and squeezing every last advan-
tage. Which is why it might amuse race fans to learn that
despite those infractions at his road test in 2015, Verstappen
managed to talk his way out of it.
“I argued that the other people were still far enough away
that it wouldn’t have made sense to stop,” he explained, smil-
ing. “And he was like, ‘Okay, I’ll let you get away with it.’ ”
When Verstappen and I met in person recently, it was
amid another dizzying stretch of races, of continent-crossing
and ocean-spanning. Verstappen, understandably, needed a
pick-me-up. We were at the Red Bull Racing headquarters, in
Milton Keynes, where there are – perhaps obviously, perhaps
unbelievably – Red Bulls available by the dozens at all points
2 0 2 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
←← of the compass. Someone offered Verstappen one, and he
OPENING PAGES accepted, but only if it was “very cold.” That Max Verstappen
race suit drinks Red Bull answers the first question in my notebook.
and helmet, Up close, Verstappen is taller than many drivers (five feet
his own eleven). He stands stock straight, has a face that rests stern and
watch, his own serious. He has insouciant blue eyes and naturally pursed lips
TAG Heuer that contribute to his rap as a cold-blooded killer. (Very cold.)
→ But he’s also quick to laugh, so long as there’s time for it, which
OPPOSITE PAGE there often isn’t. The 2022 F1 season ran from February to
turtleneck November and included two three-day on-track test sessions,
£154 22 races, and approximately 240 hours of air travel for all
Boss
involved in the global series. Verstappen, who grew up across
the border from the Netherlands, has always raced under the
Dutch flag, like his father before him, but has lived since his
18th birthday – the day after passing that test for his driver’s
licence – in Monaco. I spent much of this year tracking his
private jet around the globe, from Monaco to Milton Keynes to
race weekends and back again. The pace is madness.
While on the track or in the garage, while being inter-
viewed in a scrum of beat reporters at a race, or reacting to
those who crowd him while strolling through the paddock at
any given Grand Prix, Verstappen often appears unfazed by
anything and everything that has transpired, whether he’s
just won a race, crashed out, or been the source of contro-
versy. He can spark to a fight, but in general seems to have
to manually jolt himself to enthusiasm, as though he’s been
encouraged to act like he cares about more than his own busi-
ness. It is another of those obvious aspects of his competitive
edge. There is greatness in sports – and then there is terrifying
indifference. There are those who reach the summit and are
shocked to arrive – and then there are those who regard their
arrival as predetermined destiny, hardly worth noting.
Verstappen’s arrival at the summit was validated at the
2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix – the final race of last season,
and a sporting event for which a reported 108 million
people tuned in worldwide. The season had been as
thrillingly back-and-forth as anything in F1 history, and
the rival camps – Red Bull/Horner/Verstappen versus
Mercedes/Toto Wolff/Hamilton – had been at each other’s
throats all year. Verstappen and Hamilton had crashed with
each other on three occasions. And Horner and Wolff had
spent seemingly every moment of every press conference
for the second half of the season waging PR war against
the other, spinning the public narrative, and generally just
complaining a lot. It wasn’t particularly sporting on either
side, the amount of bitching and moaning. But that was
the context into which the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix began,
with little moments between Verstappen and Hamilton
during the race leading one or the other to exclaim over the
radio that once again, the stewards (F1’s referees) were
always giving the calls to the other guys.
“Some people probably cannot deal
with that kind of behaviour, but
I needed it,” he says of his father.
“From the outside it sounds sometimes
a bit harsh. But I’m very happy
that I had that kind of treatment.”
Earlier that summer, at about the one-third mark of the
season, I had asked Verstappen about his expectations for
the rest of the year. He was sanguine. Despite being the
youngest driver to ever win a Grand Prix (at 18, in his debut
race with Red Bull), 2021 was the first time he’d had a car
that could win a championship. Formula 1 is much more like
team sports than it is like individual sports because so much
performance is determined by the car that the engineers and
mechanics build and maintain in the in-between moments
external to a race.
“It’s just a bit more of a satisfying feeling knowing that
you go into a race weekend having a good shot at it every sin-
gle weekend,” Verstappen told me in June 2021. “Hopefully,
from this conversation onward, we will win a lot more and
end the season on top.”
As the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix unfolded, Hamilton and
Mercedes were pulling away with the race, and practically
sealing another title – what would have been Hamilton’s
record-setting eighth world championship. I recently asked
Verstappen if there was ever a point in Abu Dhabi, with 10
laps remaining, eight laps, seven… that he allowed himself
to accept that all was lost. “Yeah, I was like, it might not
happen,” he said. “But I just kept on pushing till the end, you
know? And even if it wouldn’t have worked out, it would’ve
still been an amazing season.”
Of course, what happened next is known by race fans –
and probably sports fans alike who have never seen a race.
With five laps remaining, another car crashed, causing a
mandated slowdown (safety car period) that brought all the
cars much closer together (no passing is allowed behind the
safety car, but drivers can close up the gaps). Without getting
into the perplexing and controversial intricacies of what did
and didn’t transpire, the race director permitted the race to
resume for just one lap, and with Verstappen right behind
Hamilton. Verstappen had fresh tires – an advantage in a
sprint – and when the race restarted, Verstappen had to
make just one pass before the line.
I, like Verstappen, do not show an abundance of enthusi-
asm during tense sporting moments. But I will never forget
springing to my feet and screaming at my television at what
I was witnessing. The confusion that led to that moment was
like nothing I’ve ever seen in sports. The sudden realisation
by the teams, then the drivers, then the commentators, then
the fans, that this was how this season-long duel was going to
settle itself – and then, in roughly 99 seconds, it was finished?
It was astonishing. Hamilton spoke for many of the hundred
million watching, no doubt, when he said to his team over
the radio: “This has been manipulated, man.” Verstappen,
meanwhile, let out a cry that sounded like a pure exorcism of
the 24 years of total commitment, dedication, torment, and
pleasure that had led him to that moment.
“It was all very emotional,” he told me recently. “A lot of
things flash back from all the years. I’m not really an emo-
tional guy, but my in lap was pretty emotional.”
After he stopped his car, cut his engine, unbuckled his
straps, and removed his steering wheel, Verstappen made
a beeline for one person in particular. I asked him if he
remembers what his father said to him as he slammed his
forehead into his son’s helmet and screamed in his ear.
“Yeah,” he said. “ ‘We did it.’ ”
THAT “WE” IS THE WHOLE story in many ways, at least this
whole story. The “we” began as it does for all fathers and
sons, at once, but it welded itself unbreakable the moment
Verstappen got into the car.
← Jos Verstappen, who raced in Formula 1 between 1994
race suit and 2003, was known as an aggressive driver who made too
and balaclava, many mistakes and was often unlucky. He had zero career
his own wins, two podiums. When it came to his firstborn son, the
project, from day one, then, was to build a driver with all the
upside of that fearless style but with all of the downside, all
of the liability, ironed out. Jos was like someone who learned
a second language later in life but desired fluency for their
child. “After he finished with Formula 1,” Max tells me, “he
basically dedicated the rest of his career to make me a better
person – and to make me faster than him.”
Max was on a quad bike by two, in a go-kart by four, racing
by seven. Between the ages of seven and 11, he says, he won
68 or 69 of the 70 races he entered. For all the intensity of
that record, it is not wholly uncommon in racing, given that
many former drivers lead their kids into the sport and to
success in early days. But, I suggest to Max, lots of former
drivers try to replicate their success in their children – and
none of them become Max Verstappen. Why not? “I think it’s
pretty simple,” he says. “Yes, a lot of drivers have tried to do
it. But I think my dad has gone way beyond.”
Ordinarily, he explains, a father would outsource most
of the raw work on the kart to a team, while standing by
to give encouragement and advice. But when Jos retired
from racing, he turned to Max’s go-karting days full-time. He
was, Max says, his mechanic, his engine tuner, his chauffeur,
and his coach. “A lot of drivers, yes, they were great drivers
themselves, but they didn’t really have a lot of knowledge
about how to set up a go-kart or how to make an engine,” he
says. “They all do their own thing in their own right to try
and support their son, and they will always, of course, try to
give them their best guidance. But I think our way was way
more extreme than others. We did everything ourselves…
We were not dependent on anyone.”
When Max was 12, his parents split, his younger sister
going to live with his mum, and Max with his dad, the better
to focus on the only thing worth focusing on. Max went to
school Monday to Friday, with Jos in their workshop at home
from the moment he dropped Max off at school till their time
on the track in the afternoons, and often again after dinner
till nine or 10 at night, Max says. On weekends, they would
pack up a custom Sprinter van, with space for four go-karts,
toolboxes, and a bed in the back, and make the long drive
from the north of Belgium to southern Europe, most often
Italy. Max says it’d be just an hour after school on Fridays
before they’d be in the van, where he’d pass the time playing
PSP or taking in the scenery or nagging his dad, “asking him
a million questions – to the extent where he would tell me to
shut up,” Max says. A lot of times he’d just sleep in the back.
A 10-hour drive overnight, and he’d wake up an hour before
arriving in the morning, ready to race. Max estimates they
D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 2 0 5
put at least 50,000 miles on the clock each year during those
karting seasons in Europe.
At the track, Jos and Max did things a little differently.
While the other kids would put in their practice runs and
then go off to play, Jos would call him back to the garage: “I
still played and had a lot of fun, but I also needed to under-
stand that it was serious, what we were doing, because we
were working toward something. Of course, from seven
to 11 years old it intensified quite a lot, but he wanted me
to be there to see what he was doing. Do you see a crack
somewhere? Do you see a problem with the go-kart? I’d see
him take everything off the go-kart, then put it back on,
so I’d understand the mechanics behind it. All these kinds
of things that he was trying to explain to me because he
wanted me to understand that it’s not a joke, it’s not that
we’re here for fun. Because we are working toward trying to
reach the top.” That attitude was the difference, Max says,
between him and his competitors. “I was just a lot more on
it, in terms of just being more professional about it. That
definitely came from my dad, because if he wasn’t my dad,
I would also be running around, playing, having fun. And I
need that kind of push.”
When Max began to attract the attention of teams
in Formula 1, the powers that be were drawn to the sin-
gle-mindedness, the commitment, and the advanced matu-
rity that had been developed in him so young. Helmut
Marko, the head of Red Bull’s driver-development program,
says that when he meets young drivers, he often spends just
20 or 30 minutes sussing them out. With Max, whom he
met aged 16, they talked for a couple hours. When I ask Max
about that first meeting, he remembers it well. “I’m quite a
geek with races. Like, I know a lot about any kind of racing,
so that helps a lot to answer questions,” he says. “But my
dad had also drilled into me that I needed to know about
my sponsors as well: what they do, what they’re involved in,
how many employees they have, how many shops.”
That story reminded me of an anecdote that the 23-year-
old McLaren driver Lando Norris shared of his first meeting
with Marko, in 2016. Norris had just taken pole in a junior
series race in Monaco, and Marko invited him onto the Red
Bull barge in the Monte Carlo harbour. After bullshitting a
little bit, Marko asked Norris if he knew how much his car
weighed, and Norris honestly had no idea. “Well, Max would
know,” Marko responded, according to Norris. “Max knows
everything about the car.”
That Build-A-Bear approach to crafting Formula 1’s
greatest driver from scratch is not without complication,
of course. Emmanuel Agassi, Earl Woods, Richard Williams
– these are men who set out to create champions, and over-
whelmingly succeeded. And though loved by their children,
they are regarded more uncertainly by those outside the
cocoon, for the intensity of many of their tactics and the
boldness of their dreams.
In that sense, Jos Verstappen is no different. With tremen-
dous commitment and total devotion, he has given his son the
opportunity to make a reported $50 million a year driving the
most extraordinary race cars on Earth, while ascending to the
pinnacle of a global sport. But the man at the centre of this
particular plot has left a choppy wake behind him.
On and off the track, reports have occasionally surfaced
of alleged aggression or violence – most notably an incident
in 1998 at a karting track in Belgium that left a 45-year-
old man with a fractured skull. Jos and his father, Frans,
were found guilty of assault, and each was given a five-year
suspended jail sentence after reaching an out-of-court
2 0 6 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
“I have achieved everything I wanted
in Formula 1. But now I want to try
and do it again and again and again.
You never know how long your car is
going to be competitive for, or how
long you’re going to be around for.”
→ settlement with the victim.
shirt £199 Jos was also a passionate and determined manager of
Alpha Tauri Max’s career – and a seriousness of purpose pervaded their
sweater £960 relationship during Max’s karting days. It is that context
The Row within which sit some of the stories from Max’s teenage
t-shirt, price years. Like this one, from 2012: Max was 14 for most of the
upon request 2012 season, and had moved up into the “shifter” category
COS
of karting, the first division with a multi-gear transmission.
Jos’s best friend had three boys, two of whom were older
than Max, and Jos helped coach the two older boys in part,
Max tells me, so that his father would be better prepared
for the moment that Max moved up. In 2012, Jos had built
the best car, Max says, and it was not really a question of
whether he would win that final race of the season, but by
how much. Max had a slow start, and needed to pass the
leader, and went after him way too early, way too aggres-
sively, and crashed. “Basically, I fucked up,” he says, reflect-
ing. “I misjudged the place where I wanted to pass the guy
in the lead, and – too much risk. I could have waited one
more lap, two more laps, and I would’ve passed the guy,
and I would’ve just taken off and that would’ve been it. But,
yeah. So I crashed. And that was it, no world championship.”
The mistake lingers – and informs his racing to this day.
But for Max, the day is just as memorable for what tran-
spired on the ride home. “My dad, he put so much effort into
it over the years to that point. So that if I got there it would
all be ready to go. And that’s why he was so angry,” he says.
In the van, “I kept trying to get into a conversation with him
about why I did it and what I thought of the situation. But
then at one point he was like, ‘Max, if you don’t shut up now
I’m kicking you out.’ And, of course, I didn’t think he would
do that. So I kept on talking, trying to talk to him. Next fuel
station he stops and he’s like, ‘Get out.’ ” Max chuckles. Then
repeats it. “ ‘Get out.’ ” He got out and called his mum, who’d
come to Italy for the race, and had left the track after them.
But Jos ultimately returned to pick him up. “So we drove 17
hours back home, we didn’t speak. Of course we ate, but no
contact. Luckily, he paid for my food, though.”
At home, Max figured they’d return to the routines of Jos
in the workshop and Max at school. “But we didn’t speak
for, like, a full week,” Max says. “Like, he was so upset with
the whole situation, and not talking to me at the same time.
I felt terrible, of course, with everything. But in a way it
also helped me a lot, because I started maybe to think more
about what an outcome of a race can do to you, and how we
have to handle a race. You have to be more patient.”
Jos has said that winning came so easily to Max for so long
that he really wanted him to feel the pain of losing at times.
It had to hurt, Jos has said, to understand the consequences
of mistakes. “My dad, of course, kept telling me, ‘It’s going
great, but you will lose. It’s not gonna be great forever,’ ” Max
 tells me. “But it helps a lot later on – like now, in Formula
1. You learn to lose, to give it its place. Because you have to
accept that you cannot win every race.”
From that week of silence on, Max says, “I really started
to understand the importance of being patient in the race. I
think I needed a hard reset at the end of that year to be bet-
ter the year after.” In 2013, “we won everything.” And there’s
really been no turning back.
I begin to change the subject and Max cuts me off. “I
mean, it sounds horrible. Like, it sounds a bit horrible. Like,
some people probably cannot deal with that kind of behav-
iour, but I needed it. I was that type of character, probably,
who needed this kind of treatment.”
I start to shift again, but he stops me to clarify further: “Of
course, from the outside it sounds sometimes a bit harsh.
But I’m very happy that I had that kind of treatment.”
AT ONE POINT during my time at the Red Bull factory this
autumn, Christian Horner burst through a door like Hulk
and looked around hammily at Max and a film crew. “Sorry,
have I crashed into something very serious?” There were
big laughs. Vibrations at Red Bull were high frequency with
another title in sight.
Horner has said of Verstappen, “He’s still the same guy that
turned up at the team as a 16-year-old.” I asked Verstappen
what that means to him. “Over the years, you mature a lot,”
he said. “But I think the basics stay the same. That will to win.
Even when you win a championship, nothing changes.”
Verstappen’s world championship in 2022 was practically
a foregone conclusion after it was clear, early in the season,
that Red Bull had produced the superior car on the grid
HAIR, DAVID HARBOROW AT STREE TERS. SKIN, ERIN GREEN AT BRYANT ARTISTS. TAILORING, L AIMA ANDRIJAUSK AITĖ.
under the new regulations. A report in October found Red
Bull’s 2021 budget – some of which was used to develop
that superior 2022 car – in breach of the cost cap. The FIA
ultimately fined RBR $7 million (£6.05 million) for the over-
spend, adding credence to the cries from competitors that
Red Bull often bends the rules and receives only the lightest
wrist slaps. (Red Bull, for its part, accepted the fine – but
Horner maintained “not one penny [of the overspend] was
spent on performance.”)
Regardless, Verstappen and Red Bull were back on top.
But neither driver nor team took their domination for
granted. “I have achieved everything I wanted in Formula
SE T DESIGN, SAMUEL OVERS AT NEW SCHOOL. PRODUCTION, SAMUEL ABERG.
1,” he told me. “But now I want to try and do it again and
again and again, as long as [I] can, because you never know
how long your car is going to be competitive for, or how long
you’re going to be around for.”
While at the Red Bull Racing facility, I was given a tour
that at times felt like the one in Jurassic Park, gazing as we
were through glass at science guys in white coats who were
surreptitiously scheming. A new steering wheel. A carbon-
fibre wing. Engineers. Mechanics. Strategists. More than a
thousand people in a high-tech office park on the outskirts
of a commuter town, working tirelessly and expensively – for
what? Glory. That Champagne bath on the other side of the
world, in Abu Dhabi last December or Suzuka this October.
Hundreds of the best of the best, all rowing in the same
direction. It’s pretty inspiring. And rare. In many ways, that
sense of purpose and pride articulates the appeal of F1 as
much as a screaming engine down a high-speed straight.
At one point at RBR, I watched Verstappen sidle up to
Horner and his engineers for what was described to me as a bit
of “Max time.” He was buoyant, in his most preferred environ-
ment. And it was a vivid reminder that a title for Verstappen is
a title for many, many people who are not Verstappen. He is the
← steward now – of his family, his team, and his sport.
turtleneck £154 Which is what has made his absence from F1’s most
Boss essential marketing tool – the Netflix documentary series
jacket, price Formula 1: Drive to Survive – so palpable. That is, the sport’s
upon request ascendant star has been largely missing for the past two
Prada
seasons from the product that has done more than any-
trousers £199 thing in recent years to juice fandom. On Drive to Survive,
Alpha Tauri
most of the drivers are interviewed in regular sit-downs or
in constructed scenes at races or at home, where the crew
follows them into quasi-real-life situations where the driver
and a friend or spouse talk about the state of affairs. But
Verstappen opted out after feeling like too many liberties
were being taken with fabricated drama.
When we first spoke, in 2021, he told me why. “I under-
stand they want to bring more fans to F1 – and it works,” he
said. “But a lot of the scenes are literally copy-pasted, even
with sentences, things that had been said that I know have
not been said at the time. Or, like, shots. At the end of the
day, it doesn’t matter, of course, to get someone who doesn’t
understand Formula 1 energetic about it. But if you are a
die-hard fan, it’s not realistic.”
The season of the show about 2021, then, has intimate
interviews with everyone but the guy who won. (As a cre-
ative solution, the season frames the principal rivalry of
Horner versus Wolff as the more essential battle – which,
admittedly, is frothier. They both love to talk, love to preen
and provoke, like the most garrulous politicians.) But this
summer, Verstappen and Netflix seemed to reach a détente.
When we last spoke, days before he clinched his second
world championship, he had just come from a sit-down
interview for the show’s new season.
“It’s just good to understand what we both want from
each other, right?” he told me. “And I think the interview we
did was good, so… I just wanted to keep it real. You know,
no fake stuff. No overhyped things. Because that’s not how I
am. I just want it to be to the point, and my opinion, and how
I see things. Of course, we still need to see the end product,
but it all sounds good.”
Verstappen had long been the chosen one. Predestined for
greatness. An inevitable multi-world champion. And he held
the keys now. He had the leverage to do whatever he wanted
– but he also had the responsibility to be this moment’s face
of the sport, and to drive the sport forward. “I know it’s
important for Formula 1. So we came to an agreement and
I’m very happy about that.”
Despite his former frustration with Drive to Survive,
Verstappen is a fan of other sports documentaries on Netflix.
He likes “to see how other people are operating,” he told me.
Not surprisingly, one that resonated was The Last Dance.
“Of course, not everything about that is 100 percent true,
because it’s a documentary and some things for sure are a
bit hyped up,” he said. “But I did like the spirit of Michael
Jordan, how he was pushing it, how he was driven to win.”
As delicious as comparisons to Jordan’s competitiveness
might be, it would be a mistake to think that Verstappen is
looking to emulate anyone else. He grew up in a room, like a
lot of kids, with pictures of cars on the wall. He had a life-size
cardboard cutout of his dad, from his F1 days. But no post-
ers of other drivers, of heroes: “I never really had someone
that I looked up to. Like, ‘I really want to be like this guy,’ or
whatever. I just wanted to be myself. That works the best.
“If you start copying people, you can only be as good as
them,” he said. “You cannot be better.”
daniel riley is a gq correspondent.
D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 2 0 9
 DESIGNER OF THE YEAR R EU DR ITTE SC YR EODF I TS ACI RNET D LI TA UCRREENDTI .T C R E D I T C R E D I T C R E D I T C R E D I T

ANTHONY VACCARELLO
FOR SAINT LAURENT
Anthony Vaccarello and I are sitting in
his stately office, housed in a 17 th-cen-
tury hôtel particulier in Paris’s Left Bank.
Honouring Vaccarello has just presented his spring 2023
the designers, womenswear collection for Saint Laurent in
brands, runway front of the Eiffel Tower, and today things
shows, and are so quiet you can hear his French bulldog,
more that Nino, snoring in the next room. Vaccarello’s
energised the
office is minimally decorated, as if he’s still
culture – and moving in, with a tidy black desk, a few Pierre
our closets – Jeanneret chairs, and a small daybed under-
this year.
says, sipping from a tiny glass of water. “And
very chic.”
Vaccarello, who took over Saint Laurent
as the brand’s sixth creative steward (includ-
ing Mr. Saint Laurent) in 2016, is plenty set-
tled in. Under his design, artistic, and image
direction, the brand’s revenues have exploded
from $1.07 billion (£930 million) to nearly
Saint Laurent’s
$2.85 billion (£2.47 billion). Though YSL
spring 2023
won’t share sales breakdowns, Vaccarello says menswear show
menswear has been a steadily-growing part in the Moroccan
CO

neath some bookshelves. “It’s peaceful,” he of the business. He notes with some pride that desert.

2 1 0 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
GROOMING, AIMI OSADA.

PHOTOGRAPH BY PIERRE-ANGE CARLOTTI D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 2 1 1


he’s achieved this epic expansion without
thinking much about numbers, or paying atten-
tion to what’s selling and what’s not. “I have the
feeling that fashion became a bit too commer-
cial,” he says. “I mean, being commercial is not
a bad word. It’s important to sell, but if you can
sell and have a real message or real style, that
is a bingo for me.”
One example: He’s eschewed splashy
collaborations with other brands and artists,
and avoided big marketing stunts of the kind
we’ve come to expect from large luxury houses.
masculinity and gender expression, and the
Category 5 hurricane of trends swirling on
social media, many designers seem confused
as to what their customers want, or who they
even are. In Marrakech, Vaccarello responded
with a deeply-felt urgency and clarity of vision.
He presented clothing that spoke clearly of an
aspirational life of pleasure and sensuality.
Clothing for men who want to feel beautiful.
It was a definitive moment in establishing the
validity of his men’s line.
It was not exactly destined that Vaccarello
D. GARR ABR ANT/NBAE VIA GE T T Y IMAGES. DAMSON IDRIS: ROBINO SALVATORE/GC IMAGES VIA GE T T Y IMAGES. JODIE TURNER-SMITH:
JEREMY P OPE: COURTESY OF GUCCI. EMILY R ATA JKOWSKI: JACOP O M. R AULE /GE T T Y IMAGES FOR BALENCIAGA. JAMES HARDEN: JES SE
eye he brought to his women’s line. “I had
the feeling that my women’s and my men’s
were very different, even if I was the one who
designed both,” Vaccarello says. “Then I under-
stood that maybe I had to work the men’s as I
did the women’s – more like a fantasy, more
like a film. The woman was like a character.”
The idea was simple, according to Vaccarello:
to make his menswear less “real” and “more
elegant, more chic, more everything.” So, out
went the classic YSL biker jackets, in came
those powerful square-shoulder “le smoking”

C O B R A T E A M / BAC KG R I D. A LTO N M AS O N : JAC O P O M . R AU L E /G E T T Y I M AG ES FO R BA L E N C I AG A .

“I still have that idea of when I did fashion
when I was at school; all the brands were so dif-
ferent and so cool and fresh. Now, it’s all about
doing the next collab and that kind of thing. I
hate it. I find it super-boring,” he says.
What Vaccarello does instead is create fash-
ion that resonates and experiences that are
genuinely moving. In July, in the middle of the
Agafay Desert, a dusty, hour-plus ride outside
of Marrakech, he staged his spring 2023 mens-
wear show. Among those in attendance were
talented people you wouldn’t quite call “celebs,”
like Steve Lacy and Dominic Fike, as well as
dozens of other beautiful creatures wearing
gauzy pussy-bow blouses; fulsome, flowy trou-
sers; and at least one dark cape that made its
wearer look like a Jedi master. As the sun set,
a troop of slender models emerged through
a spooky mist. The first wore a strong-shoul-
dered tuxedo with no shirt and simple black
sandals. Another wore a silky white shirt with a
plunging neckline and long black trousers that
rippled in the wind. Yet another wore a large
faux-fur duster coat, which grazed the tops of
glimmering black high-heel boots.
Men’s fashion is going through a full-blown
identity crisis – in the shifting terrain of
would emerge as a menswear force. When
he arrived at Saint Laurent, he had never
designed a shred of clothing for men, and
his approach was initially cautious. “When
I started doing men’s, it was more about what
I was wearing back then. So it was kind of
selfish, I have to say. Maybe too real,” he says.
One of the designers he was wearing a lot at
the time was Hedi Slimane, his predecessor
at Saint Laurent. Slimane was a tough act to
follow, especially for someone who was new
to menswear. “I felt pressure starting men’s,
because he used to do men’s, and he used to
do really good men’s,” says Vaccarello, who is
wearing, as he does nearly every day, a black
leather aviator jacket designed by Slimane for
Saint Laurent. “That’s why it took me time to
find my own language.” He didn’t hold his first
standalone men’s show until 2018, and even
then the clothes echoed the vibe – think Viper
Room habituŽ with a bad attitude – that had
been established by Slimane. Vaccarello’s leggy
and confident womenswear was rapturously
received, and his menswear was seen as more
of an afterthought.
The breakthrough came when he approached
his men’s collections with the same cinematic
tuxedo jackets and mystique-inducing faux-fur
dusters, both ideas borrowed from Vaccarello’s
previous womenswear collections.
As Vaccarello’s alluring new vision has solid-
ified, men have been rediscovering the brand.
Including guys like Lacy and Fike, two of the
newest members of Vaccarello’s meticulous-
ly-curated inner circle. As other fashion houses
chase influencers and court social-media-
clouted A-listers, Vaccarello has relied on a dif-
ferent approach to build what feels like a more
enduring and authentic community of friends
and ambassadors – Zoë Kravitz, Hailey Bieber,
Vincent Gallo – who burnish the house’s sexy
aura. “I don’t look at the Instagram follower
count,” Vaccarello says. What’s more important
is a smouldering sense of style and loyalty to
Saint Laurent and to Vaccarello, who refuses to
dress people he doesn’t know personally.
If you want to join Vaccarello’s club, you’d
be wise to follow the blueprint he lays out for
the YSL man, the type of guy who knows his
way around a pussy-bow blouse: “It’s a guy
that’s very cultivated,” Vaccarello says. “He’s
a guy that’s clever. He knows how to play.
He knows how to push the limit sometimes.” He
is, in short, very chic. – S A M U E L H I N E

COLLABORATION OF THE YEAR

Adidas collaborations in the wild,
from left: Jeremy Pope in Gucci,
Emily Ratajkowski in Balenciaga,
James Harden in Gucci.
ADIDAS
X EVERYONE
Almost anyone can knock
out a hot sneaker collab these
days. But multiple full-scale
fashion collaborations with
a murderers’ row of the
biggest, most vital designers
on the planet? Only Adidas. In
February, those familiar three
stripes appeared on Gucci’s
Milan runway amid a wide
array of Alessandro Michele’s
exaggerated tailoring and
Pop art sportswear. In May,
when Demna’s Balenciaga
took over the New York Stock
Exchange, the stripes adorned
ankle-length windbreakers
and gigantic flowy tees. Grace
Wales Bonner showcased
her vision of shapely Adidas
tracksuits and thigh-baring
soccer shorts. And Prada
reinvigorated the age-old
Adidas windbreaker and
swishy shell pants in its
legendary Re-Nylon fabric.
In all those instances, Adidas
didn’t simply disappear
into the background of
another brand’s aesthetic.
Instead, it synced up
and signal-boosted each Damson Idris in Prada,
disparate, individual vision. Jodie Turner-Smith in Gucci, and
– YA N G -Y I G O H Alton Mason in Balenciaga.

2 1 2 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
 LOOK OF THE YEAR

ARMANI’S
RETURN TO
ELEGANCE
SHIRT
The silky,
single-breasted
blouson worn like a
shirt here is more
like a light jacket
with a zip front and
double-entry
pockets. The
jacquard fabric
turns throwback-
style GA logos into
a tonal geometric
pattern.

Giorgio Armani has

been a bellwether of formal
TIE dressing for decades. He
The eight- took the edges off the suit
centimetre silk tie in the 1980s and menswear
has a handmade
hasn’t been the same
look, like a vintage
block-printed since. This year, as we look
textile, in a colour to restore elegance to our
that clashes with wardrobes, Armani once
the pattern of the again had the answer: his
blouson just so. spring-summer 2023 men’s
But it’s the way it’s
tied – looped like a
collection. Look number
long, skinny scarf 51, in particular, unlocked
– that seals something we’ve been
the deal. missing. Here, Mr. Armani
explains just what this
is, in his own words.
– NOAH J OHNSON

TROUSERS “This collection is made

The subtlest of up of classic pieces with
details make the
subtle design details to
biggest
differences: make them quietly unusual.
Inside-out pleats, a These are then combined in
perfect cloudy-sky a similarly quietly-unusual
viscose fabric, and way. Everything looks
a split at the hem both familiar and new and
so the tapered cut
can breathe at
different at the same time,
the ankle. because what we need at the
moment is a wardrobe that
is credible and reassuring,
while still offering interest
and character.
SHOES “I wanted a summer feel,
Armani’s take on a sense of freedom, a
blue suede shoes, relaxed mood. I achieved
with an espadrille this with the oversized
sole and a
proportion of the shirt and
moccasin toe.
the fuller cut of the trousers.
But there is still refinement
here, indicated by the tie
and the fact that the look is
not remotely exaggerated or
subversive.”

D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 2 1 3

PRADA
A M E R I C A ’S
CUP
A quarter of a century ago, Prada debuted
the PS0906, a techy performance trainer engi-
neered specifically for the house’s newly-formed
Linea Rossa sailing team to wear on the water
at the 1997 America’s Cup. Almost instantane-
ously, trainer aficionados and fashion freaks
alike fell hard for its curvaceous panels of mesh
and leather, and the shoe became a surprise
crossover smash. The Prada America’s Cup, as
the model is now officially known, has quietly
PHOTOGRAPH BY ALEX HODOR-LEE
REBOOT OF THE YEAR
BOSS
A L L : G E T T Y I M AG ES . C O N A N G R AY: K E V I N W I N T E R /G E T T Y I M AG ES FO R C OAC H E L L A . L E W I S H A M I LTO N : A L A M Y STO C K P H OTO.
After almost a century of
PR ADA AMERICA’S CUP: ST YLIST, BR ANDON TAN. RIMOWA CARRY-ON: PROP ST YLIST, SUZY ZIE T ZMANN. TOMMY DORFMAN:
J A C O P O R AU L E . Z E N D AYA : A R N O L D J E R O C K I . E RY K A H B A D U : PA S C A L L E S E G R E TA I N . S E B A ST I A N STA N : J A M I E M C C A RT H Y.
solid Eurocool tailoring, Boss
was popular. Wildly so.
Whispers of a reboot
caused much panic among
the Boss faithful, then:
what was to become of this
stalwart? What was going
on behind the hoarding
TRAINER OF THE YEAR freshly nailed to stores
across the planet?
And how do you fix
something that isn’t broken?
The answer? Change is
good! With a sharper, refined
logo stamped to waistbands,
accessories, and a new chain
of lacquered flagships, the
steadfast German brand felt
radical again with tailoring
that didn’t try too hard,
near-future metallics, and
the sort of flowing overcoats
remained a staple of the label’s footwear lineup you can wear anywhere and
ever since. In 2022, the shoe cruised back into every day.
the limelight in a major way: Prada tapped the All of that built to a
artist Cassius Hirst – son of Damien – to trans- shuddering climax with the
mute the America’s Cup in a wave of trippy world’s hottest talent in a
textures and neon tones, and it also let the candescent Milan show.
silhouette loose on the label’s website to allow So when Naomi Campbell,
buyers to custom-design their own pair. It’s the Future, Anthony Joshua, and
understated OG colourways, though, that look Khaby Lame walked in the
fresher than ever right now – especially in the advanced, structured stuff of
face of all the flashy, gargantuan kicks that now Nu Boss, only one question
dominate the luxury trainers market the Prada remained: when can we get it?
America’s Cup helped birth. – Y. G . – M U R R AY C L A R K
 COLOUR OF THE YEAR

VALENTINO
PINK
Valentino designer
Pierpaolo Piccioli’s
radical-colour-as-branding
experiment paid off. You
couldn’t throw a rock stud
shoe without hitting a
celebrity decked out in a
shockingly-elegant pink PP
fit this year. “When looking
at one colour, you have to
go deeper than the surface,
to texture, cuts, silhouette,
volume, and detail,” Piccioli
says. “And you also go
deeper into the faces: You
see who the persons wearing
that pink are, and not what
The pink PP squad: Tommy
they represent. I am tired Dorfman, Conan Gray, Zendaya,
of representations – we all Lewis Hamilton, Erykah Badu,
should be.” – S . H . and Sebastian Stan.

CARRY-
ON
ACCESSORY OF THE YEAR

W A
RI MO
Long a status symbol
among the global jet set,
Rimowa’s cabin-size
aluminium suitcase took on
an entirely new significance
this year – and for reasons
having far more to do with
durability than fashion. The
return of pandemic-delayed
intercontinental travel was
met with “airmageddon,” as
airlines couldn’t keep pace
with the boom in Euro trips,
destination weddings, and
far-flung soul searches.
Checked baggage seemed to
be disappearing at alarming
rates, leaving the compact
and efficient carry-on as
the only safe way to travel
abroad without risking
outfit apocalypse. Rimowa
rose to the occasion – not
just as maker of the world’s
premier carry-on luggage,
but on the strength of a
slew of new colourways and
collaborations with the likes
of Supreme, Dior, Daft Punk,
and Porsche. Packing light
has never been this cool. – N . J .

PHOTOGRAPH BY ALEX HODOR-LEE D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 2 1 5

 WATCH OF THE YEAR
OMEGA X
SWATCH
SPEEDMASTER
MOONSWATCH
No watch release this
year was as anticipated
or riotous as the first-ever
collaboration between
bargain-priced Swatch
and venerable watchmaker
Omega. Executives at Nike
and Supreme would blush
at the lines that formed to
purchase the $260 (£225)
watch exclusively sold at
Swatch stores. Collectors
chose from 11 different
vividly-coloured selections
designed with reference
to the key features of our
solar system – each of the
planets, the sun, the moon,
and Pluto. The crowds grew
so large that many Swatch
stores were forced to
shutter early on release day.
It’s a collaboration worth
2 1 6 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N
Five of the 11
MoonSwatch
models, clockwise
from top: Pluto,
Uranus, Earth,
Mars; Mercury
on wrist.
the buzz – an increasingly
rare thing these days. The
partnership takes one of the
world’s most iconic
timepieces – the NASA-
approved Omega Speedmaster
– and makes it accessible to
the kid who might otherwise
have bought a pair of hyped
trainers at the same price.
Just as important, Swatch
opened up a world of candy
colours to the Speedmaster’s
staid profile. Nick Hayek,
PROP ST YLIST, SUZY ZIET ZMANN.
Swatch Group’s CEO,
describes the MoonSwatch
as the “joy of life paired with
real Swiss-made innovation.”
Great watches can sometimes
feel out of reach, but
hopefully the MoonSwatch
is a sign of more to come for
collectors. – C A M W O L F
2 0 2 3 PHOTOGRAPH BY ALEX HODOR-LEE
 RUNWAY SHOW OF THE YEAR

BALENCIAGA’S
STOCK
EXCHANGE
TAKEOVER
Demna presents
In 2022, the runway show jumped the rails clothes for a financial
of fashion and leaped into popular culture apocalypse.
in a grand new way. And nobody has elevated
BALENCIAGA’S STOCK EXCHANGE: COURTESY OF BALENCIAGA. BODE LOS ANGELES: ETHAM M. WONG

the form – turning a commercial exercise into

an intellectual and emotional performance – collection of warped power suits and viscerally evoked America’s big business
quite like Balenciaga creative director Demna. sinister leather trenches, the models fetish – and showcased, to great viral effect,
In May, Demna took over the floor of the shrouded in latex gimp masks. In the middle a beautiful collection of extremely desirable
New York Stock Exchange to show a dark of a literal stock market nosedive, the show fashion. – S . H .

STORE OF THE YEAR

BODE LOS ANGELES

In February, Los Angeles
got the fashion flagship it
deserves when the doors of
a 3,000-plus-square-foot
Bode store opened on a
sleepy stretch of Melrose
Ave. Designed by Green River
Project, the buzzy interior
design firm cofounded by
Emily Bode’s husband and
creative collaborator, Aaron
Aujla, the former furniture
gallery now resembles a
walnut-panelled natural
history museum, where Bode’s
meticulously researched
garments are presented
alongside ancient mastodon
ribs, a replica dodo skeleton,
and delicate bird’s nests taken
from Bode and Aujla’s house
in Connecticut. It’s a uniquely
enthralling aesthetic universe
that makes shopping for a pair
of needlepoint-embroidered
trousers feel like an act of
profound discovery. And it’s
been a godsend for crafty
Angelenos, who have been
clearing the shelves. – S . H .

D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 2 1 7
 SHOE OF THE YEAR
M VIBES
U
L
E Two years of sequestering
at home sent demand for
Crocs and Birkenstocks
surging – and now an eclectic
mix of designers are cranking
out mules, the upscale
cousin to clogs, of an entirely
different order. Martine Rose
introduced a squared-off,
snakeskin-embossed version
with silver-tone detailing;
Marni dropped a slew of
buttery calfskin joints; Our
Legacy lopped the back off
S
its smash-hit boot, added
a buckle strap, and left the
hulking Vibram sole entirely
intact. The dress mule had
2 1 8 G Q D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3
From top:
Marni,
Martine Rose,
Our Legacy.
officially arrived, and it didn’t
take long for it to usurp its
cushier counterparts
as the shoe du jour for hall
of fame dressers like Jonah
Hill, A$AP Rocky, and scores
of style-minded Joes eager
to freak their bodega-run
fits. That canny summation
of the crackling, anything-
goes energy animating
menswear right now –
coupled with its wholly
unique ability to meet the
weirdness of the moment –
makes the dress mule the
only shoe worthy of the
crown. – A V I D A N G R O S S M A N
TREND OF THE YEAR
TENNIS
Tennis has always been
supremely stylish – your
washed-to-hell Lacoste
shirts and standby Stan
Smiths are proof – but the
sport’s sartorial influence
has rarely felt so ubiquitous.
Miu Miu sent a gaggle of
JOHN MCENROE: JOHN G. ZIMMERMAN/SPORTS ILLUSTR ATED/GE T T Y IMAGES. ROGER FEDERER: CYNTHIA LUM/ WIREIMAGE VIA GE T T Y IMAGES. SERENA WILLIAMS: JEAN CATUFFE/GE T T Y IMAGES.
Richie Tenenbaum piped
polos and cropped cable-knit
vests down the runway for
autumn 2022. Rising labels
like Paris’s Casablanca
and Copenhagen’s Palmes,
meanwhile, have built their
identities on the game’s prep-
forward aesthetics. Thanks
to a doozy of a US Open
– punctuated by Serena’s
MULES: COURTESY OF BR ANDS. MIU MIU MODEL: ESTROP/GE T T Y IMAGES. RICHIE TENENBAUM: BUENA VISTA PICTURES/COURTESY OF EVERE T T COLLECTION.
farewell and Carlos Alcaraz’s
coronation – the pro game
felt as red-hot as ever, too.
But the most glaring evidence
of tennis’s style dominance
lies right outside your door:
You can’t go two blocks
these days without running
into someone in a pleated
white skirt or a full McEnroe
tracksuit. – Y. G .
The 2022 tennis mood board:
Miu Miu, Richie Tenenbaum,
McEnroe, Federer, and the
GOAT, Serena Williams.

BREAKTHROUGH DESIGNER OF THE YEAR
During a big year for
new designer appointments
and departures, one seat in
fashion’s game of musical
chairs looked more like
a throne. The February
announcement that Tremaine
Emory would be the new
creative director of Supreme
was unexpected, but not
entirely surprising. And for
those keeping track of the
fashion world’s hierarchy
of influence, it was nothing
short of seismic. Emory, who
grew up in Queens, New York,
had established himself as a
whisperer of fashion whims
high and low, having spent
years working at every level
of the business, starting in
a retail position at J.Crew,
making his way up the ranks
at Marc Jacobs, then helping
to revamp Stüssy. He worked
on the margins of fashion,
too, with Frank Ocean and
Andre 3000, and he set the
global-nightlife scene ablaze
as half of No Vacancy Inn
with his partner Acyde. In
2019, he founded his own
socially conscious streetwear
brand, Denim Tears, which
makes clothes about, as
Emory told GQ earlier this
year, “the plight and glory
of the African American
experience.” His cotton
wreath-printed Levi’s and
Marcus Garvey Pan-African-
flag-striped Converse sell
like box logo tees. His hire at
Supreme felt like the closing
of a loop too: A brand that
has been deeply influenced
by Black culture since the
beginning, centring Black
artists and skaters in many
of its collaborations and
campaigns, was being led
by a Black man for the first
time. Emory’s appointment
signals a convincing path
forward for a brand that will
soon turn 30. With newish
corporate owners and a
mandate to grow, Supreme
has the difficult task ahead

TREMAINE
of staying true to its raucous
roots while balancing on the
bleeding edge of relevancy
– and selling boatloads of

EMORY
hoodies. But you’d be wise
to bet on Emory as the guy
who can figure that out.
Long may he reign. — N . J .

D E C 2 0 2 2 / J A N 2 0 2 3 G Q 2 1 9
 B R I TA I N | P R O P E R T Y

CARIBBEAN
LIFE
Enjoy a more relaxed way of life in this sun-kissed region
and explore the pick of the best properties on the market,
from the Bahamas to the British Virgin Islands

3 NORTH SHORE TERRACE,

NASSAU NEW PROVIDENCE
AND VICINITY
This contemporary masterpiece occupies one
of the prime spots on Paradise Island, with
direct access to the beach. This spacious
property includes seven bedrooms, a home
cinema and a yoga and dance studio. There’s
also a three-bedroom guest house.
Christie’s International Real Estate:
00 1 242 322 1041
beaches overlooking azure seas. of the Ocean Club Estates, the owners
In recent years, these islands have have access to a world-class golf course,
here’s no better way of become more popular than ever. ‘Since a private beach club, and plenty of other
beating the winter blues the pandemic, many visitors have fallen facilities. Built in 2014, this spacious
than migrating to warmer in love with the region and begun property is one of the most impressive
climes in search of some purchasing properties,’ says James on the island, spanning 17,300 square
sun, and the Caribbean has Burdess of Savills. feet and set across four floors, including
long been a favourite destination of the Currently for sale is this remarkable an enormous basement with room for
jet set. The region is extraordinarily contemporary property that’s set in an an entire car collection.
rich in natural beauty, with each of elevated position overlooking the beach Over on the British Virgin Islands lies
the many islands offering something on Paradise Island in the Bahamas, just the Valley Trunk Estate, which spans
special, from mountains verdant with off New Providence and within easy 18.3 acres and has direct access on to
tropical vegetation to pristine sandy distance of Nassau. As it forms part one of the most picturesque beaches
 VALLEY TRUNK ESTATE,
BRITISH VIRGIN ISLANDS
Set amid extensive and
exceptionally private grounds,
this estate has plenty of room for
visitors. There’s the main house,
four additional villas, a further
four-bedroom guest house tucked
away by the tennis court, and staff
accommodation in the form of
three self-contained cottages. POA.
Knight Frank: 020 7861 1553

SECRET BAY, DOMINICA

The award-winning Secret Bay Resort and Residences
is launching eight stunning new residential villas.
Surrounded by acres of verdant rainforest overlooking
the sea, the owners of these sustainably crafted homes
can make the most of the six-star resort experience,
with personalised service and exceptional amenities.
From $1.49 million.
secretbay.dm

VILLA PAPILLON,
ANTIGUA
Spanning four floors and
occupying a hillside setting,
Villa Papillon has some of the
best views in Antigua. Recently
redesigned by the British
interior design studio Ward &
Co, it has an outdoor kitchen,
an infinity pool, a gym and a
walk-in wine cellar. Available
to rent from £34,000 a week.
villapapillonantigua.com
 CABOT, SAINT LUCIA
Situated on a rugged peninsula
on the northern top of the
island, this new resort includes
a world-class golf course,
a beach restaurant, and
fantastic wellness facilities. The
residential offerings range from
turnkey villas to custom-built
homes, and owners can avail
of all of the resort’s top-notch
amenities. From $2 million.
thecabotcollection.com

in the Caribbean. Set amid rolling hills

COVE SPRING HOUSE, BARBADOS
and sculptural natural rock formations,
Occupying a prime spot midway between Holetown and Speightstown, this coastal
property has 10 bedrooms and spans 20,000 square feet. Its elegant open-plan it occupies a particularly romantic and
architecture and elevated position make the most of the light, while also allowing private setting. The property comprises
the trade winds to cool the house naturally. $40 million. multiple buildings – the main estate
onecaribbeanestates.com house, with an open-plan layout and
inside-outside living areas, along with
five further villas that provide a total
of 10 private guest suites, all with
panoramic views.
Located on Barbados’s Platinum
Coast, in the sought-after area of
St James, is an impressive beachside
mansion. Built from coral stone and
inspired by the classical lines of
Palladian architecture, Cove Spring
House sits atop a cliff overlooking the
Caribbean Sea. Add in the private
access to a secluded beach and you have
the perfect tropical hideaway.

MUSTIQUE, SAINT VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES

Set high in Mustique’s Endeavour Hills, this palatial house was built in the
Moorish style and offers far-reaching vistas along the island’s western coast.
Completely refurbished in 2015, it has six bedroom suites, plenty of
outdoor living areas and two pools. $16 million.
Knight Frank: 020 7861 1553
 THE GLAMOUR
OF SANDY LANE
One Caribbean Estates offers Olivewood, an exceptional
mansion that delivers the gilded
lifestyle on Barbados’ platinum coast
S
andy Lane. The very name is
synonymous with glamour. Not
just in the roll call of celebrities
who have sprinkled their stardust
on this fabled stretch of white sand
and tranquil, blue waters on the West Coast of
Barbados – and those include Queen
Elizabeth II, Jackie Onassis, Greta Garbo,
Princess Margaret and Sir Winston Churchill
in the early 1960s to Luciano Pavarotti, Mick
Jagger, Rihanna and Gwyneth Paltrow. Nor
even in the Caribbean setting that has been
the winter-sun playground of presidents and
business tycoons alike. It’s a destination where
heritage, discretion and understated luxury
create a sophistication beyond a holiday whirl
of rum cocktails under palm trees on a sun-
drenched island. Sandy Lane isn’t just a luxury
estate; it represents a particular lifestyle.
The story began in the early 1960s, when
Oliver Messel – an award-winning set and
costume designer for Broadway shows and the
Royal Ballet – and British MP Sir Ronald Tree
saw the potential of showcasing the beauty of
this coast through romantic architecture with
a theatrical flourish. In 1961, Tree opened the
Sandy Lane Hotel while Messel turned his
artistic eye to designing grand mansions with
magnificent outdoor living terraces. The hotel
attracted the elite – the movie star David
Niven used to mix his own cocktails at the bar
and Aristotle Onassis would be rowed ashore
to party from his yacht – and Messel’s fabulous
houses became status symbols of the elite.
Messel’s villas are notable for their pillars,
arched windows, lattice work, symmetry and
use of the local Barbados coral stone. His
homes retain a high currency, and so does his
design legacy. Today, the acquisition of a plot
of land or a property on the Sandy Lane estate
is about desiring a share of that lifestyle, a
time-honoured world of privacy and stability.
This gilded stretch of seafront in the centre of
Saint James parish has long been established
as the address of choice for discerning
investors and owners. These ingredients have
ensured exceptional real estate investment
security, with residential properties representing
not only a top destination for homeowners, but
a solid investment. The Sandy Lane Estate
property has a strong record in increasing in
value and, post- pandemic, demand has
skyrocketed. ‘More and more wealthy people,
from all walks of life, are seeking to invest in a
beautiful safe haven in a piece of paradise,’
says Chris Parra of One Caribbean Estates.
Parra, CEO of the leading, independent
 Clockwise from opposite page, far left: the six-bedroom Olivewood residence is set
around the swimming pool, living area ‘pavilions’ and garden cour tyards; the two-
bedroom guest pavilion; a luxur y bedroom; the dining pavilion styled as a ‘ruin’;
Chris Parra, CEO of One Caribbean Estates; the magnificent outdoor living terrace;
classic decorative touches; the stunning sea view from the master bedroom

boutique property brokerage, is proud to offer
Olivewood for sale. This six-bedroom
property overlooks the third fairway of the
Old Nine Golf Course at Sandy Lane (and
boasts its own custom-designed Ian Woosnam
practice green). Sitting on a private ridge in an
elevated plot of nearly two acres, Olivewood
enjoys spectacular views of the platinum West
Coast and Caribbean Sea. Designed for
maximum privacy by Michael Gomes, and
completed in 2004, its appealing style is that
familiar now classic mix of plantation house
features – a formal main-house structure
adorned with wrap-around verandahs,
shutters and detailing – with more whimsical
decorative touches.
The layout of the villa is based on a series of
five connected pavilions and linking garden
courtyards, set around a swimming pool and
The Sandy Lane
Estate isn’t just
luxury residences;
it represents a
particular lifestyle
garden water features. The pavilions afford
paradisiacal views to the Caribbean Sea, the
golf course and landscaped gardens while
providing a natural, healthy, cross-ventilation
of fresh air through the entire house. The
palatial master suite occupies the entire upper
level, while the dining pavilion is full of island
character. Constructed from reclaimed coral
stone from a demolished sugar factory, it is
designed to look like a magical ‘ruin’, with
chandeliers suspended from exposed timbers
and the openings in the stone walls allowing
the garden plants to creep in. Olivewood has
added allure for an investor. Prospective
owners will be eligible to acquire an adjacent
property, Arcadia, which sits on its own c.
one-acre plot of land and boasts the same
alluring sea views as Olivewood. Arcadia
presents a unique investment opportunity for
anyone seeking to further capitalise on the
success of the Sandy Lane Estate story. One
Caribbean Estates, with its bespoke listings
and personalised client approach across 25
islands in the region, can offer experienced
advice and services to explore and deliver the
Sandy Lane Estate dream.
Guide price: Olivewood – US$9.95m
onecaribbeanestates.com

CONDÉ NAST PROPERT Y

 B R I TA I N | P R O P E R T Y

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IMPRESSIVE
PROPERTIES ON THE
MARKET, AS WELL AS
THE FINEST INTERIORS
AND ARCHITECTURE
FROM AROUND
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B R I TA I N | P R O P E R T Y

PROPERTY |
Centre Stage
Dream houses galore
Owning multiple, gorgeous holiday idylls across Europe
may sound like a pipe dream, but co-owning a collection
with August gives you the freedom, comfort and scope
to enjoy luxury living for years to come
A
second home is top of everyone’s wish list –
and a prospective dream-property’s location
can be a recurring subject of fun discussion
among families. Shall we opt for a restful bolthole
away from it all in the country? Or a villa abroad for
poolside summer escapes? A chalet in the mountains
for skiing? Or a chic pied–à-terre in Paris, Cannes,
Rome or Barcelona for cultural and shopping
breaks? Somewhere specifically good for summer
watersports perhaps, or a location with guaranteed
year-round sunshine?
Questions, questions, questions… and then the
caveats are aired. Some family members want rural
ABOVE, a stone
tranquillity; others want city buzz. Words like ‘hassle’,
farmhouse in the
‘worry’ and ‘maintenance’ fill the air – underpinned
Tuscan hills.
OPPOSITE,
by the statistic that the average holiday home is
CLOCKWISE FROM occupied for just 35 days per year. The subject of the
TOP LEFT, kitchen second home is put on the back burner. Again.
in a Provençal villa; Enter August and its new style of shared ownership,
a cosy Cotswold described by families from all over the world as an
cottage; a stylish ‘absolute no-brainer’. How does it work? August pro-
ski apartment in vides the most convenient way to buy and own homes
Chamonix; the abroad by curating listings of collections, each of
swimming pool in which comprises unique properties in the most desir-
the private garden able European locations. They find, and vet, like-
of a villa on the minded co-owners; establish a co-ownership com-
French Riviera pany; buy and transform the homes; and manage the
CONDƒ NAST PROPERT Y
properties. As a prospective co-owner, you simply pick
the collection that most appeals.
Why be restricted to one villa when you can have
a share of five for less expense and less hassle? As a
co-owner of a Signature Collection – with one-of-a-
kind, beautifully fitted and furnished homes in the
French Riviera, the Alps, Tuscany, Mallorca and the
English Countryside – you pay €370,000 to own a
share equal to 1/21 of the five properties purchased
by the collection. That gives you an average of 12
weeks in any of your homes. All shares of a collection
are equal, all co-owners enjoy the same rights, all have
their own set of keys.
‘We are a busy family, and as we’ve reached business
and family milestones, we’ve realised that we need to
slow down when we can by taking frequent holidays,’
says Hendrik from Belgium. ‘We were immediately
drawn to the Signature Collection. The five locations
and range of different homes, which are large, suited
our family. One reason why we joined was so that we
could take those much-needed breaks every four to six
weeks, effectively “forcing” us to go away!’
With their expertise in locating, buying, refurbishing
and managing properties all around Europe, August
offers a range of collections, including one devoted to
pied-à-terres. An entry price of €280,000 gives you
one of 17 shares in havens in Cannes, Barcelona, Paris
and Rome. A City Collection gives you five homes
in Cannes, Chamonix, Barcelona, Mallorca and
Tuscany. If you want to be that party-loving friend
who always invites people on holiday, the Premium
Collection (€600,000) features large, luxury villas.
August will have 100 more beautiful homes ready for
co-ownership next year.
Buyers value the fact that they don’t have to
worry about the gardener, the pool filter, the fridge.
Co-owners become a real community, leaving each
other wines to try in the cellar, sharing new restaurant
and local discoveries, or clubbing together to buy
house bikes, even a car. Allocation of time spent in
each house is organised through a points system.
Each co-owner has 38 points a year. Weeks in homes
vary from two to five points, according to the season.
If somewhere is not booked within four weeks of a
new booking period opening, it costs 0 points to
go there.
‘So far there have been no clash over dates – each
family’s priorities are different, but there is a waiting
list just in case,’ says an August spokesperson.
As Catherine, an American ex-pat living in London
with her two teenage daughters, says, ‘I like the sharing
economy, it’s not wasteful, especially in today’s world
and you get to enjoy the best part of having a home
from home, as well as actually owning it.’
augustcollection.co
Centre Stage
A new landmark for luxur y living
A stroll from The Ritz and Regent Street, Savile Row and the Royal Opera House,
Galliard Homes’ new TCRW SOHO development will provide world-class apartments in an
unrivalled location off Oxford Street in the heart of London’s West End
A
s Samuel Johnson famously said, ‘When a man is
tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in
London all that life can afford.’ Just as it was for
the 18th-century man of letters, the city’s appeal today
lies in the dynamic complexity of its streets and squares,
little lanes and courts, and there is nowhere that
encapsulates that cosmopolitan vibrancy better than the
West End. And where is the best finger-on-the-pulse
living experience the city has to offer moving into 2023?
Galliard Homes’ new TCRW SOHO scheme.
CLOCKWISE
Resplendent on the corner where Dean Street meets
FROM ABOVE,
Oxford Street, two blocks are set to redefine luxury living
TCRW SOHO
with 81 studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments
on the corner
and 11 one-, two- and three-bedroom penthouses. Block
of Dean Street
and Oxford
C will be notable for a bold, contemporary design,
Street; an constructed in dark reconstituted stone with gold
elegantly panelling; Block D is inspired by Georgian architecture.
appointed Handy for professionals, creatives or students at London’s
bedroom; world-class universities, the landmark development will
reception room treat its residents to a front-row seat – for shopping,
with coffered restaurants, buzzing bars, museums, theatres, parks and
ceiling and grande dame hotels. All with fast-track connectivity to
programmable the rest of the city: TCRW SOHO sits above the new
mood lighting Crossrail interchange at Tottenham Court Road.
CONDÉ NAST PROPERT Y
Galliard have launched seven show apartments from
different designers to indicate how each apartment can
be tailored to individual tastes. The core vision has been
conceived by internationally acclaimed designer Nicola
Fontanella of Argent Design, who has created exclusive
homes in London, Miami, Monaco and New York for
clients including A-listers Madonna, Guy Ritchie and
Naomi Campbell. All apartments have a stylish reception
room with full-height windows, coffered ceilings, a
bespoke entertainment unit with a large-screen smart
TV and statement flooring. Refined specifications
include Geberit AquaClean bathroom technology and
fully fitted designer kitchens. The majority have a private
balcony or winter garden.
Inspired by hotel-style living, each block will have its
own reception foyer and residents will be treated to a
stellar concierge service. Stephen Conway, Executive
Chairman and CEO at Galliard Homes says: ‘Directly
above The Crossrail Interchange, TCRW SOHO is a
truly unique opportunity for buyers to be connected to
the rest of the bustling city whilst owning their own
luxury oasis of calm within the development.’
For further information, please call 020 7620 1500
or visit galliardhomes.com
 Centre Stage

Connections, connections, connections

Rose & Partners offers boutique estate agency par excellence: a refreshing service notable
for discretion, a dedicated 24/7 response and delivery based on a wealth of expertise
and a well-knit network of contacts

I
n the business of top-tier residential sales in his network of contacts for market intel and his impressive
Kensington and Chelsea, South Kensington and black book of connections.
Mayfair, Simon Rose has established a reputation for Simon is ably supported by like-minded consultant
making things happen in even the thorniest of markets. Tom Tangney, an established and highly regarded
Committed to a shrewdly pruned portfolio of no more specialist in Prime Central London, particularly
than a dozen or so properties and a handful of clients at Kensington, Holland Park and Notting Hill. Tom’s
any given time, he gives 100 per cent of his time towards career has also been founded on his excellent long-term
nurturing a successful transaction, from initial brief to relationships. Discretion and ease of the transaction are
completion and beyond. ‘I find it very rewarding when key and Rose and Tangney are both well versed in
a client hands me the keys and asks me to get on and sell dealing with private buyers seeking anonymity, who
their property,’ he says. ‘Trust is so important. It’s all often prefer an off-market approach, as well as in
about the relationship; my clients know I will deliver negotiating on behalf of investors, governments and
for them.’ multi-generational families.
Based in the landmark Michelin House in the centre For further information, please call 020 3838 8366
of his patch, Rose is completely accessible and able to or visit roseandpartners.co
respond nimbly to his clients’ schedules wherever they
are based, poised to act with urgency when required or
simply to dispense the reassurance and spot-on advice
for which he is valued by his long-term clients. ‘Honesty,
transparency and discretion are fundamental,’ he says
CLOCKWISE of his personalised approach.
FROM RIGHT, Rose is the expert in his field. After three decades in
open-plan kitchen the business, he is a safe pair of hands who understands
in a five-bedroom the turbulence of his market. He recognises that every
house for sale client has their own unique challenges and set of
in Tite Street; demands, and each transaction is very different. He
Simon Rose; thrives on understanding and meeting his clients’ needs
reception room with discretion, trust and efficiency. His clients benefit
in a previously from frank advice given by someone they can relate to.
sold flat in Notable deals have been completed as a result of his
Queen’s Gate creativity and ability to think ‘out of the box’, thanks to

CONDÉ NAST PROPERT Y

 LUXURY HOTELS • SPAS • VENUES

CONDENASTJOHANSENS.COM
TORRE A CONA WINE ESTATE, FLORENCE & TUSCANY, ITALY
Turnkey Luxury Chalet
Combloux, France Ski Lift: 0.8 miles, Combloux: 1.9 miles

Brand new and luxurious chalet finished to an exceptional standard with views towards Mont
Blanc and the Aravis. 2 reception rooms, open-plan living area with central fireplace, 6 en suite
bedrooms, lift, balcony, integrated garage for 3 cars and wooden terrace with heated pool.
Freehold

3,842 sq ft | Guide €3.2 million

Guy Murdoch
Savills Ski
+33 (0) 6 29 38 26 68
gmurdoch@savills.com
 B R I TA I N | P R O P E R T Y

NOTEBOOK
A round-up of the best services and the most
desirable properties, at home and abroad

THE RIGHT
RATE
With interest
rates steadily on
the rise, there’s
never been a
more impor tant
time to ensure
that you’re getting
the best terms
when arranging
DRESSED TO IMPRESS a mortgage
The way in which a property is decorated can have an deal. It’s not
enormous effect on how easy it is to sell it. Hence the just the interest
rates – increased
rising popularity of professional house stagers, who can
demand leads to
furnish a property with a view to making it as desirable
longer processing
as possible to potential buyers. The Folio Group launched
times, which can make things especially challenging if you’re in a
earlier this year and specialises in staging properties competitive bid scenario for your dream home. This is where SPF
across London’s super-prime market. Sourcing items from Private Office can help. Mike Boles and his team of specialists can
companies such as Soho Home, Porta Romana and Julian advise on all aspects of bespoke mor tgage solutions for UK and
Chichester, The Folio Group brings a touch of luxury to international buyers, so you can rest assured that you’ve secured
every project it works on. the best possible deal for your next proper ty.
For more information, contact MBoles@spf.co.uk or call 020 7330 8568

REACHING THE TOP

A shor t stroll from the shops and cafes of Marylebone lies
West End Gate, a new development by Berkeley Group. The
stand-out proper ties are the two penthouses, set 29 storeys
high and offering bird’s-eye views of the London skyline. Both
the Regent and the Hanover penthouses span over 4,660
square feet, and have grand entrance spaces, high ceilings, four
bedroom suites, multiple balconies and spacious kitchens fitted
with Gaggenau appliances. These sleek penthouses are the
perfect homes for high flyers. £12.75 million.

LIVING THE FRENCH DREAM

Escape to rural France – Chateau de Monviel is a beautifully
renovated chateau in a quiet rural setting with far-reaching
views. The chateau includes a large entrance hall, three
reception rooms and seven en-suite bedrooms, as well as a
three-bedroom staff annexe. Adjacent to the main house is a
separate three-bedroom guest house with its own swimming
pool and further ancillary accommodation. The property is
situated 30 minutes south of Bergerac and has been home to
an English family for over 20 years.
Emile Garcin: 00 33 559 015 959
AWARD-WINNING LUXURY HOMES
IN STUNNING DORSET, HAMPSHIRE, AND SOMERSET COUNTRYSIDE

AT WYATT HOMES, WE HAVE A REPUTATION

FOR DEVELOPING HOMES OF OUTSTANDING QUALITY
IN EXCEPTIONAL SETTINGS, PROVIDING
THE OPPORTUNITY TO LIVE THE COUNTRY LIFE
YOU HAVE ALWAYS WANTED.

C O N T A C T U S T O D A Y
T O M A K E Y O U R D R E A M M O V E

SCAN FOR OUR WEBSITE

 FINAL SHOT

ST YLED BY ANGELO MITAKOS. GROOMING BY JOSH KNIGHT. TAILORING BY FAYE OAKENFULL. SE T DESIGN BY STEFANIA LUCCHESI.

Nineteen-year-old Joe Locke

is Netflix’s new poster boy,
alongside his Heartstopper
co-star Kit Connor. Read their
joint interview in this issue.
Jacket, £1,980, shirt,
£430, trousers, £640, by
Alexander McQueen.
Shoes, £65, by Vans at
Liberty. Tie, belt,
stylist’s own.

P H O T O G R A P H B Y B R E N D A N F R E E M A N
 “ I’ve a lways tru ste d
We l l m a n - my we l l b e i n g
i s a to p p ri o rity.”

David Gandy
British entrepreneur
& supermodel

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BOSS THE SCENT
EAU DE TOILETTE
Please turn the page to view Supplement
449 OXFORD STREET, LONDON
TAGHEUER.COM
“ O N C E I D R E A M E D TO B E CO M E
T H E FA S T E S T D R I V E R .
TO DAY, I A M A D R I V E R O F C H A N G E .
I A M A B I G P I LOT.”

L E W I S H A M I LT O N , 7 T I M E F O R M U L A 1 T M WO R L D C H A M P I O N
THE BIG PILOT.

B I G P I L O T ’ S WAT C H 4 3

Bold, iconic and genuine: The Big Pilot’s Watch is the timepiece
of choice for individuals driven by passion, purpose and a desire to create.
For the first time, IWC’s most essential aviator’s watch is available in a
43-millimetre case, combining the purity of the original cockpit instrument
design with superior ergonomics and pronounced versatility.

I W C B O U T I Q U E · 1 3 8 N E W B O N D S T, L O N D O N W 1 S 2 TJ , U N I T E D K I N G D O M
Erling Haaland
Pro footballer,
member of the all-star squad
 L E T T E R F R O M T H E E D I T O R

NINE MONTHS ON AND THE

W queues to get a Swatch
A version of an iconic
Omega remain. Watch
T collectors might call
C blasphemy, but has the
H MoonSwatch somehow
become the most pivotal
watch of the century?
deput y global editorial director
I’ve never experienced a moment
Adam Baidawi
european lifest yle editor quite like this one. A week ahead of
Mike Christensen its release, Nick Hayek Jr and Raynald
design director Aeschlimann (Swatch and Omega big
Kevin Fay
dogs respectively) flew me blind into
e d i t o r i a l o p e r at i o n s d i r e c t o r
Emma King their Biel HQ in Switzerland to unveil
executive & managing editor the much-hyped collaboration. In what
Holly Ross ended up being a globally exclusive
f e at u r e s e d i t o r
teaser, I wrote that “this joint mission…
Oliver Franklin-Wallis
fa s h i o n e d i t o r will break the internet”. I knew it would
Angelo Mitakos be big news – but not that big.
v i s ua l s d i r e c t o r What struck me most was the sheer
Robin Key
volume of non-watch nerd friends
v i s ua l s e d i t o r
Annie Jones reaching out about it. People Googling “Omega Speedmaster” to work out
deput y group production director what all the fuss was all about were suddenly careening down a previously
Aaron Callow unexplored rabbit hole of watchmaking excellence.
senior copy manager
Such an “it” moment has been brewing, but this mass interest in watches
Andrew Saxton
sub-editors has since peaked like never before. As someone who’s always been keen
Mia Bleach, Caren Gibson to show that the weird and wonderful world of horology can be accessible,
l e a d c o m m e r c i a l d i r e c t o r , wat c h e s I’m stoked to add this new-look GQ Watch to the conversation – every page
Vikki Theo
is testament to an exciting period of flux in the industry.
a c c o u n t m a n a g e r , wat c h e s
Dawid Matkowski
a c c o u n t e x e c u t i v e , wat c h e s Enjoy.
Charlotte Hearth
commercial director, jewellery Mike Christensen
Ana-Karina De Paula Allen
european lifest yle editor
a s s o c i at e c o m m e r c i a l d i r e c t o r , fa s h i o n
Alexis Williams
s e n i o r a c c o u n t d i r e c t o r , fa s h i o n & j e w e l l e r y
Charlotte Pennington
s e n i o r a c c o u n t d i r e c t o r , b e au t y
Jess Purdue G Q WATCH C ONTRIBUTORS
a c c o u n t d i r e c t o r , fa s h i o n & j e w e l l e r y And their favourite watch recollections of 2022...
Emily Goodwin
a c c o u n t e x e c u t i v e , fa s h i o n
Ellé Butcher
b u s i n e s s m a n a g e r , c u lt u r e
Ellen Garlick

ROBIN BRYNN SIMON DE LAURA ALFRED TONG

SWITHINBANK WALLNER BURTON McCREDDIE- “Ride or Die: How
“How Rolex’s “The Other Tick “GQ’s Ultimate DOAK Richard Mille
Long Game Tock” (p56) Watch Guide” “Your Favourite Turbo-Charged
Helped Golf Get (p68) Timepiece is Now Haute Horology”
Cool” (p45) “Attending Guilt-Free” (p19) (p64)
Watches and “Adrian
“Bulgari Wonders in Hailwood of “This year’s wow “Tyler, the
smashing the Geneva – it was watchcollecting. moment was Creator’s
record for like Disney World com gave me this a private tour of collection of
world’s thinnest for the watch excellent piece of Patek Philippe’s increasingly
mechanical industry. I’m advice regarding new PP6 facility. unusual Cartiers.
watch in March, simply shook both new and Incredible space, The fact that
only for Richard that I was there vintage watches: and so top secret he wears these
Mille to go even and have been ‘Don’t look at the that we weren’t watches means
lower in July. able to pivot into name on the dial. even allowed to a whole new
The race for this budding, Look at what you take pictures.” generation of
thinnification fulfilling career in are getting for younger men
went into luxury watches.” your money.’” can discover the
On the cover, from left: Tank Must £2,750;
Tank Square Incurvée Price upon request.
overdrive.” amazing back
catalogue of
P h o to g r a p h b y Tai s Si r o te unusual remixes
S et d e si g n b y P e n ny Mi l l s of Cartier’s Tank.”

G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3 1 5
 W
AF TER 36 YEARS , THE TAG HEUER
Formula 1 is still one of the best all-
rounder, entry-level sports watches in

A
the game – and you don’t have to be into fast
cars to flex one.

T
Given its birth date, there is plenty of his-
torical significance to this watch. In 1986,
as the watch world was recovering from the
near-fatal quartz crisis that had threatened
a major demise in mechanical watchmaking,
C
H
the purpose of Swiss sports watches was to
be serious, monochrome tools. But the F1 had
other ideas, adding ’80s pizzazz and colour to
the genre, defining an era in the process.

NEWS
“It made its debut at the time watchmaking was
re-establishing itself as a field of interest, and its
significance in the UK was tremendous,” says GQ’s
own watch expert, Nick Foulkes. “It also marked an
important turnaround in fortunes for Heuer.”
While many traditional brands’ CEOs turned up their
noses at affordability in the ’80s and ’90s, Heuer’s then-
CEO, Jack Heuer, effectively did the opposite. In doing so
he duly nailed the zeitgeist with the accessible, colourful,
and simple Formula 1, which set the stage for an unrivalled
reign over this particular sector of the market. “The F1
combined the excitement of motorsport with an attractive
price point and eye-catching design. Looking back on that
time, it is possible to describe the F1 as a gateway to the
wider world of watch collecting,” adds Foulkes.
Ayrton Senna’s first ’88 TAG Heuer sparked a
long-standing collaboration clearly visible in the
S/EL-inspired organic bracelet. Now, the year is 2022 and
the hits keep coming. The core range has grown with hot
drops such as the Formula 1 Senna Special Edition and
the brash TAG Heuer Red Bull Racing models. Fans will
recognise the double-S Senna logo and understated pops
of red, while Red Bull’s special edition came out in two fresh
liveries. As a contemporary chronograph, it made the most
of the team’s dark navy blue, searing red, and yellow, result-
ing in a vibrant and brash take on the now-classic Formula 1.
The brand new 43 mm red, green, and yellow chrono-
graphs present a return to the roots of the range. With a
solid Swiss quartz movement behind three colourful dials,
the design nails the “belongs on your wrist 24/7” remit.
Broad black PVD bezels and registers sit in contrast to the
bold dials and matching rubber straps. Each of the trio has Why TAG Heuer’s Formula 1
its own take on what made the Formula 1 a roaring ’80s deserves all the plaudits it gets.
success while announcing itself to a new audience – one B y T h o r Sv a b o e

THIS ’80s ICON STILL TAKES POLE

Above: TAG Heuer Formula 1 Chronograph £1,550.
Main: The 2022 TAG Heuer Formula 1 X Red Bull Racing Special Edition (top) joins a stable of watches that
have leaned into colour since 1986.
that will include fans of Olympic medallist and skateboard-
ing sensation Sky Brown, the brand’s newest ambassador.
“One of my earliest watch memories was the TAG F1
with a luminous dial and amazing bezel,” says British
watchmaker and perennial disruptor George Bamford.
“It was such a strong answer to the Swatch hype, and I
love what it’s done for the watch world.” When looking
at the popsicle orange of the early REF 373.513, with its
light fibreglass case and matching rubber strap, it’s hard
to disagree. The Formula 1 continued to capture minds
and hearts with the inclusion of quartz chronographs, and
firsts, such as a diver’s watch with an electronic alarm.
“The vintage ones should be appreciated and need to
be part of any watch lover’s collection,” adds Bamford.
Today its core range boasts more than 40 references,
from monochrome to two-tone glamour. And thanks to its
continuous evolution, the timeline of accessible sports
watches remains unbroken and stronger than ever. l

G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3 1 7
 N E W S

YOUR FAVOURITE TIMEPIECE

IS NOW GUILT-FREE
Compared to luxury fashion, watches have been ahead of the game with their
sustainability initiatives. Now, houses such as Blancpain, Zenith, Oris, and Panerai
are leading the industry’s green revolution. B y L a u r a M c C r e d d i e - D o a k

IN LUXURY, SUSTAINABILITY IS
a loaded word. Often brands are
accused of greenwashing when
talk of preservation appears performative.
However, with a sustainability revolution
happening throughout the luxury world,
many brands are committed to making
a positive impact on the planet. Watch
brands have been at the vanguard –
working, as they often do, at the world’s
extremes, from Arctic ice to deep ocean.
Blancpain is a clear OG. The Swiss
house has been involved in raising marine
awareness through ocean exploration for
more than 60 years, supporting initiatives
such as the Pristine Seas expeditions,
led by National Geographic explorer-
in-residence Dr Enric Sala, and Laurent
Below: Blancpain Ballesta’s Gombessa project, which stud-
backs vital ocean ies some of the rarest marine creatures
research undertaken
by the Pristine Seas and phenomena. Blancpain also partners
expeditions. with the Ocean Photography Awards and
Inset: Zenith Defy
Extreme E Copper X
Festisub (the Swiss festival of underwater
Prix £22,700. images, in no way NSFW).
The ocean is where Panerai plays,
too. With UNESCO’s Intergovernmental
Oceanographic Commission, it has devel-
oped an ocean literacy programme that’ll
be implemented globally over the next
nine years. The goal, it says, is to find more
ocean stewards and agents of change.
Says CEO Jean-Marc Pontroué: “As the
very first watch brand to come forward
with a sustainable approach not limited
to straps or packaging, we take pride in
being a pioneer. We were also the first ever
brand to create a watch that was made of
98 per cent recycled materials.”
Oris’s commitment to sustainabil-
ity also goes beyond straps. In 2021, it
became climate neutral and is now ded-
icated to reducing its carbon emissions
by 10 per cent for the next three
years. “Sustainability is more
than a mission statement
for us,” says corporate
sustainability ambas-
sador Sven Mostögl.
This 360-degree approach is impor-
tant to Zenith as well. “We’d been doing
a lot of work behind the scenes – banning
single-use plastics, implementing car
shares – before we launched our public
initiatives,” says Julien Tornare, Zenith’s
CEO. It has partnered with LVMH’s dead-
stock online resale platform Nona Source
to create straps for its Defy Midnight and
Chronomaster collections. There are also
Zenith Icons – timepieces from its back
catalogue that have been refurbished.
And another thing: it’s a proud sponsor of
Extreme E, the electric racing car champi-
onship. “We refuse to partner with any car
brand that isn’t sustainable,” says Tornare.
The realisation it wasn’t aligning with
sustainability started Chopard on its
“Journey to Sustainable Luxury”. In
the past 10 years, it has over-
hauled production, now
only using 100 per cent
ethical gold. All gems
are traceable thanks
to its partnership
with Gemfields, and
it has reduced water
consumption by 53 per
cent, while switching 80
per cent of its electricity to
renewable sources.
IWC is no stranger to sustaina-
bility – it was the first Swiss watch brand to
take Global Reporting Initiative standards
as a benchmark for its debut sustainabil-
ity report in 2018. This summer, the brand
appointed supermodel and environmen-
talist Gisele Bündchen as its first environ-
mental and community projects advisor.
It’s no longer tenable to be a watch
brand without addressing climate change.
Finally, a universal movement in the indus-
try that isn’t complicated. l

L AUR A M c CREDDIE-D OAK IS A

FREEL ANCE WRITER AND EDITOR.

Get a (Gucci) Grip

There was a time when fashion brands used to cash in on a watch line
by slapping a logo on a dial and popping a quartz movement in there – job
done. But what’s this? Its name inspired by the way the rider’s trainers
stick to the grip tape on a skateboard, the Gucci Grip Sapphire (price
upon request) – with a strap and case hewn entirely out of the precious
rock – is a watch as bonkers and OTT as creative director Alessandro
Michele’s clothes. What’s more, the jumping-hours display mechanism
means that it plays home to some legitimate watchmaking. Welcome to
the new age of haute horological high-fashion timepieces. A L F R E D T O N G

G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3 1 9
 Time
travels the world.
ARCE AU LE TEMPS VOYAGEUR

TIME, A HERMÈS OBJECT.

N E W S
WHERE DOES MARK STRONG FIND THE
time? One of Britain’s most in-demand
actors – he currently has no fewer than
six new projects in the pipeline – the Kingsman star
is known as one of Hollywood’s most reliable men.
Perfect, then, for his latest role as ambassador for
fellow countrymen Bremont. Strong takes some
time out from filming in British Columbia to chat to
us about his not-so-secret love of watches.
What first got you into watches?
If I remember correctly, it was seeing a Casio
called a Casiotron. I thought the LED display
and the fact that you didn’t wind it and that it
ran on a quartz crystal was very futuristic – it
could have been from Star Trek. As a teenager,
I was impressed by that and thought it could be
a watch I could wear because it didn’t look like
one my parents would own.
What’s your grail watch?
I particularly love Bremont’s limited edition
collections, which incorporate historic artefacts
into the designs – from fragments of Stephen
Hawking’s desk to parts from HMS Victory, you
carry an incredible moment of history on your
wrist. There are a few other watches that have a
history that I find fascinating too, but probably,
if pushed, I would say a vintage Rolex Daytona.
The kind that Paul Newman wore, as I am a great
fan of his.
Do you have a favourite watch that you
wear the most?
I have diver’s watches, dress watches, and
different kinds that I wear according to what the
occasion is. I’ll try and wear them in rotation as
well, so they all get an outing.
Describe what a tourbillon is to someone
who’s not into watches.
I would have to go deep into the education of
From ogling over Casios as
a teenager to deciding on
his ultimate grail watch,
the British actor and
newly appointed Bremont
ambassador is grilled by
GQ on all things horology.
B y Mi ke C h ri s te n s e n
MARK
STRONG
KNOWS
HIS
WATCHES
2 2 G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3
how watches work and why. A tourbillon
is something that is in the mechanics of
a watch, which keeps it running and helps
prevent any interference by gravity, if my
memory serves me correctly.
Did you ever think you’d see the day when
watches were being made on British soil?
It’s amazing. [Co-founders] Nick and Giles
English at Bremont have built a fantastic, state-
of-the-art factory called The Wing, which I found
incredibly impressive. Everybody was working A LIMITED EDITION
very hard on making the most beautifully OF BULGARI’S
designed watches, and the fact that so many YOUNG CLASSIC
parts are engineered and made in Britain on-site, When a classic acquires
and the watches are assembled there is truly icon status that means only
unique in the British watchmaking world. No one thing: time for a crazy
matter how much or how little you understand remix. Less of the David
about watches you cannot fail to catch the Guetta, Eiffel 65 “Blue”
horology bug when you go there. type, and more in the form
of this dazzling Bulgari
Any advice for people getting into watches? Octo Finissimo Sejima
Go for something you love the look of that feels Edition (£12,100). The highly
comfortable on your wrist, a face that you can look polished, mirrored surfaces
at countless times a day and that has practical by the Pritzker Prize-winning
elements of making sure you can tell the time. Japanese architect Kazuyo
Don’t necessarily go for a watch brand that’s Sejima bling and glisten as
famous because you think you should. There are though there’s a disco ball
so many watches out there it’s important to wear strapped to your wrist. It’s a
something on your wrist that you really love. wild and welcome departure
from the textured matte
What’s your favourite time-related line surfaces of the first Bulgari
from literature? Octo, which turned 10 this
The one I’m thinking of comes from Macbeth, year. But be warned: don’t
when he says, “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and try looking at it in the sun. AT
tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day
to day to the last syllable of recorded time.”
Essentially, that’s Shakespeare’s incredibly BUY VINTAGE WITH
insightful view of the feeling that life is NO WORRIES
meaningless and empty; every day just creeps The market for pre-owned
by like every other day. Quite a doom-laden watches is set to be worth
sentence, but beautifully observed. l £28 billion by 2025,
according to McKinsey.
Actor Mark
Strong wearing That’s a lot of watches.
a Bremont But which sellers can you
Supernova
Midnight. trust? And what should you
buy? Enter a blossoming
partnership between Mr
Porter and vintage timepiece
experts Watch Brothers
London. In September they
unveiled a selection of 10
watches that were fully
serviced, authenticated
with one-year warranties,
and came with a no-hassle
returns policy. In short, all the
groundwork was done for you.
Pieces included a 35 mm off-
beat tantalum and 18 kt pink-
gold AP Royal Oak, as well as
an even more unusual Rolex
King Midas beloved of Elvis.
Bad news: the collection sold
out fast. Good news: other
collections are imminent.
All in all, this is the online
vintage offering you were
looking for, which means you
can flex like a connoisseur
collector with confidence. AT
N E W S

BOOKSHELF GOALS

THE MAN When a legend such as the

Audemars Piguet Royal Oak

CARRYING
turns 50, there are grounds
for a definitive book to be
written about it. GQ alumnus

LOUIS Bill Prince did just that,

exploring everything about

VUITTON
the now-iconic watch that
horological deity Gérald
Genta once called the
masterpiece of his career;
Under legendary horologist Michel Navas, LV’s
a watch beloved of
watchmaking has found its place at the table – producing
megastars Ed Sheeran and
some of the winningest, most covetable pieces around.
Jay-Z. Royal Oak: From
B y Mi ke C h ri s te n s e n Iconoclast to Icon packs
some serious intellectual
and physical clout. Chunky
oak coffee table to show it
off on optional. AT

Clockwise from
top: Michel
Navas, master
watchmaker at
La Fabrique du
Temps; Louis
Vuitton Tambour
Twenty £12,700;
Royal Oak:
From Iconoclast
to Icon by GQ
alumnus Bill GET THE SKINNY
Prince; Piaget
Altiplano The battle for the world’s
Ultimate thinnest watch ratcheted
Concept (price
upon request).
up (or should that be
down?) a notch thanks to
THE SUM OF MARC JACOBS, KIM JONES, its watches were often not regarded as true collec- Richard Mille’s 1.75 mm
and Virgil Abloh’s influence on men’s style tors’ items. “But more and more, they consider we RM UP-01. But while that
over the last two decades is unfathomable. are the real deal,” says Navas. “We made the min- watch represents an
And yet, though the trio have been at the helm ute repeater a few years ago, we are in Geneva, we acquired taste for all but
of Louis Vuitton for the entire lifespan of its High have La Fabrique du Temps watchmaking facility, the most ardent fan, the
Watchmaking department, their creative energies we have the Geneva seal, we have tourbillions – we decoration on the Piaget
have never fed into LV watches. have a mysterious watch.” Altiplano Ultimate Concept’s
That honour has largely been bestowed upon The buzz is building. Last year, LV won the Super-LumiNova’s 2 mm
LV’s master watchmaker, Michel Navas, a man Diver’s Watch Prize for its Tambour Street Diver case charms and beguiles.
who’s had a hand in Patek Philippe’s Nautilus, and the Audacity Prize for its Tambour Carpe Diem Piaget more than makes up
and one of the world’s first ever tourbillons at at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève Awards – for the extra 0.25 mm bulk
Audemars Piguet, as well as the Crazy Hours from the Oscars of watchmaking. “So everyone respects in elegance and – let’s not
Franck Muller. Navas learnt his trade from watch Louis Vuitton,” Navas says, proudly. forget – legibility: an oft
god Gérald Genta (the brains behind AP’s Royal Much of the renewed hype around Louis Vuitton overlooked challenge
Oak, Patek’s Nautilus and the Cartier Pasha de watches is centred on the Tambour collection, when competing for
Cartier to name a few) but in many respects, Navas’ which stands out for its distinctive shape. There thinness. It’s the kind of
achievements are just as notable – quietly honing are as many letters in Louis Vuitton as there are delicate beauty you’d want
horological wizardry since the ’80s. hour indexes – handy – and the brown colour on the to slip under the cuff of your
LV may be a giant in the luxury goods industry dial, rare in watchmaking, is immediately recognis- Turnbull & Asser silk shirt
but the watch department is like a small startup, able as the colour of LV’s iconic trunks. and tuxedo before heading
a company within the company. Indeed, watches The Tambour marks the 20th anniversary with to your own yacht party. AT
are the only product category not directly linked a limited-edition Tambour Twenty, which boasts
to the men’s or women’s studio. “We are very new some trademark LV-isms alongside an LV 277
in the watch industry, so we can make something movement based on the first ever automatic chron-
other brands cannot,” says Navas. ograph (Zenith’s El Primero). The watch – already
LV’s watchmaking division turned 20 this year. approved and modelled by Bradley Cooper – is
Like anyone that age, the brand toys with a cer- cementing the Tambour as among the best all-
tain liberty and freedom to be audacious. “Other time LV designs.
traditional brands would love to be more fun, but LV watches might be 20, but Navas is just get-
they cannot because they have to respect their ting started. “We are ready to win other prizes in the
traditional legacy,” Navas says. Historically, the future,” he concludes, and given his record so far,
perception of LV being a fashion company meant you wouldn’t bet against him doing exactly that. l

2 4 G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3
 T I M E TO R E AC H YO U R S TA R

Z E N I T H - W AT C H E S . C O M

CHRONOMASTER
SPORT
T H E F U T U R E O F S W I S S WATC H M A K I N G S I N C E 18 6 5
N E W S

IN CASE YOU’VE SOMEHOW MISSED THE
big “Hublot” atop the fourth officials’
injury time boards, the Swiss watchmaker
is the official timekeeping partner of the FIFA
World Cup. Just as Omega times the Olympics and
Rolex rules Wimbledon, Hublot has been clock-
ing up World Cup minutes since 2010, and is very
much a familiar fixture across other major foot-
balling events such as the Champions League and
Premier League.
An official ambassador and regular wearer of
Hublot watches, Gareth Southgate is the man all
Three Lions fans have pinned their hopes on to try
and mastermind an England victory. Ahead of his
fourth World Cup as a player or coach, we catch up
with him to chat about watches, winning, and how
football can bring communities together.
Your favourite World Cup memory of all time.
England vs Colombia 2018 – our first tournament
knockout win for 10 years and a penalty shoot-
out win as well. It was a night of high emotion.
The biggest gift football has given you.
I’ve been able to do something I love nearly
every day for 35 years and fulfil many dreams
I had as a boy.
The best World Cup tournament of all time.
For England, it would be 1966, but for me 1982
was the first tournament I truly remember.
I used to run home from school to watch every MONTBLANC
England game – but also the Brazil of Zico, Eder, ACTIVATES
Socrates and Falcao. NINJA MODE
A World Cup’s greater significance. Noughties ninja anime
Football has the ability to cross all barriers series Naruto has been
that might exist between people, including earning props in the fashion
race, religion, and gender. Bringing people world lately, with hypey
together for the carnival of a World Cup is collaborations from the likes

TIME TO
very special for building relationships and of Coach and Champion. The
understanding other cultures. latest is a crossover with
When the injury time boards go up... Swiss brand Montblanc,

WIN THE
As a player, I knew it meant I didn’t have a collection of “writing
too long to physically and mentally survive! instruments” (a.k.a. pens),

WORLD
As a manager, I’m still making decisions on leather accessories, and a
what is needed to help the team through smart watch (£1,285). With
the remaining period of the match. bold comic swooshes and

CUP
Your go-to watch for the World Cup. dynamic lines emblazoned
Main: Gareth
I will wear the new Hublot Big Bang E, which Southgate will on leather goods and used
is dedicated to the FIFA World Cup. Hublot be sporting a Big as graphics on its Summit 3
Waistcoats or watches, what brings precision to the game and a modern,
Bang E (inset) at
the World Cup
smart watch, it’s a collection
Gareth Southgate wears goes. exciting approach to timepieces. l this winter. worthy of a Hokage. AT

B y Mi ke C h ri s te n s e n

TUDOR’S BIGGEST
FLEX FOR THE
BIGGEST WAVES
Tudor, the brand famous for
the elegant functionality,
value for money, and vintage
styling of its diver watches
– in particular the Black Bay
range – sponsors the World
Surf League’s two major Big
Wave Season events: the
Tudor Nazaré Tow Surfing
Challenge in Portugal, and
the Quiksilver Jaws Big Wave
What the Referees are Wearing Challenge in Hawaii. With
Hublot’s limited-edition Big Bang E 44 mm FIFA an oversized crown, rotating
World Cup Qatar 2022 (£5,000) is the official watch bezels in a multitude of
for all refs, linesmen, and fourth officials (and you’ll likely spot Southgate colours, snowflake hands,
wearing one too). The “E” marks it as a connected watch – we’re talking GPS, and a naval heritage that
Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi, and NFC Payment. It comes in black ceramic, has an all- stretches back to the ’60s,
P H OTO G R A P H , G E T T Y.

day battery life, and takes two hours to be fully juiced. During each game, the both the latest BB watch
watch is synced up to provide all the latest updates. As well as keeping track (the Black Bay Pro, £3,170)
of the full 90 minutes, it also indicates how much extra time will be played and these competitions
each half; and will alert the wearer when a goal is scored. The same goes for are the living, breathing
yellow and red cards, as well as (please no) any penalties, so you won’t miss a embodiment of the brand
moment – even if you can’t bear the tension of actually watching. M C motto: “Born to Dare”. AT

2 6 G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3
N E W S
TRY SOME
ALTERNATIVES
With a number of certified classic models
practically unattainable due to their own rarity
and soaring prices on the second-hand market,
we get the goss from those in the know about the
less obvious options out there. B y S i m o n d e B u r t o n
ANYONE WHO’S RECENTLY TAKEN a more serious peek behind the
horological curtain to the world of watches beyond, the chances
are you’re already discovering it isn’t just a world – it’s a universe.
Despite the myriad makes and models on offer, certain watches consistently
rise to the surface as the most talked about, the most written about, and
consequently the most coveted bought and sold.
For anyone who lives life by not following the crowd – or who wants a
watch they can actually get hold of – what should be on the radar? We chose
five “legend” pieces and asked five leading watch professionals to suggest
a more imaginative alternative.
SILAS WALTON, FOUNDER OF PRE-OWNED
WATCH E-TAILER A COLLECTED MAN
If You Like: Patek Philippe Reference 1518
Introduced in 1941, the 1518 was the first
perpetual calendar wrist chronograph
ever produced in series. Just 281 were
made during a 14-year run, during which
(in 1951) the model was replaced by the
Reference 2499. In 2016, one of only four
steel-cased 1518s made sold for £9.7
million at Phillips, Geneva.
Then Buy: F.P. Journe Astronomic
Souveraine
“In the ’40s and ’50s, a perpetual calendar
chronograph was a pretty impressive piece
of watch-making. Today there are certainly
more expensive new watches, but for my
money nothing impresses more than the
Astronomic Souveraine. At £796,000 it’s
almost ‘affordable’ compared with some
1518s and is almost as rare. If you have to
dream, dream big.”
ADRIAN HAILWOOD, HEAD OF WATCHES AT
WATCHCOLLECTING.COM
If You Like: TAG Heuer Monaco
Launched in 1969 as the world’s first water-
resistant square-cased chronograph, the
Monaco was meant for more sophisticated
buyers than purely sports-orientated
Heuers. Initially a flop, it became legendary
after LVMH bought TAG Heuer in 1999 and
capitalised on the Monaco’s link with Steve
McQueen and his 1971 film Le Mans.
Then Buy: Certina DS Podium Square
Chrono Automatic
“If you like the squared-off case of the
Monaco but wish the bezel channelled
more of an Omega Speedmaster vibe,
take a look at this Certina. It offers an
automatic movement with day and date
indication, but also adds a tachymeter
scale to the square bezel. It’s definitely
quirky, but in my opinion there’s something
undeniably cool about it.”
2 8 G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3
DAVID DUGGAN, FOUNDER
OF DAVID DUGGAN WATCHES
If You Like: Rolex Submariner
Since its debut in 1954, the Submariner has
been regarded as the benchmark among
steel-cased dive watches. Although millions
have been sold during almost 70 years of
production, it remains coveted the world
over – and, as with several other Rolex
models, is virtually unobtainable as new,
pushing resale prices way above retail.
Then Buy: Tudor Black Bay 58
“One of the most popular Submariner
references among vintage enthusiasts
is currently the Reference 6538 version,
known as the ‘James Bond’ because Sean
Connery wore one in his first four 007
movies. Good examples are hard to find
and values are high – but a little more than
£3,000 will get you a brand new Tudor Black
Bay 58 that looks very similar and is perhaps
more practical to wear on a daily basis.”
CHRIS YOUE, SPECIALIST AT PHILLIPS
PERPETUAL LONDON
If You Like: Audemars Piguet Royal Oak
Penned by watch design genius Gérald
Genta in 1971, the RO was dubbed “the
world’s first luxury watch to be made from
steel”. Initially aimed at the Italian market,
it was championed by late Fiat boss
Gianni Agnelli. Today, vintage models can
command six-figure sums. And if you want
a new one, stand in line.
Then Buy: Bulgari Octo Finissimo
“I can’t help thinking that this is what the
Royal Oak might have looked like had
Genta created it today. There’s something
about Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani’s
design that speaks of the thinking behind
the original Reference 5402; a bit of the
‘DNA’ of which can definitely be seen
in the Octo Finissimo. There are many
versions of the Finissimo available, but
I would go for the 40 mm titanium model.”
BENOÎT COLSON, WATCH SPECIALIST AT
SOTHEBY’S PARIS
If You Like: Omega Speedmaster
The Omega Speedmaster was intended
for sports car drivers to make speed and
distance calculations. Its fame, however,
arises from the fact that Buzz Aldrin had
one around the cuff of his spacesuit on his
moonwalk in 1969.
Then Buy: Kurono Tokyo Chronograph 2
“Kurono Tokyo makes attractive, excellent-
quality pieces and offers a great opportunity
to buy an affordable watch designed by its
founder, Hajime Asaoka, who is famous for
producing rare, expensive pieces. The case
and movement are straight from the golden
era of vintage steel chronographs. The
38 mm diameter is comfortable and the
wheel movement is well made and reliable.
The downside is that availability is limited,
but the watch can be found on the pre-
owned market and really keeps its value.” l
extend your international limited warranty
for up to 8 years on panerai.com
Anti-magnetic.
5-day power reserve.
10-year warranty.

The new ProPilot X

is powered by Oris Calibre 400.

Play & Win

V I B I E S T W A T C H M O M E N T S

3 2 G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3
From Rihanna rocking a rare Rolex while debuting her pregnancy bump to
Lewis Hamilton wearing three IWCs in protest against F1’s no-jewellery policy,
2022 has fired watch culture deeper into the zeitgeist. B y B r y n n W al l n e r a n d Fi nl ay R e n w i c k

THE WEIRD AND WONDERFUL WATCH

universe can sometimes feel
like a vortex spinning with
technical info and IYKYK
details impenetrable to an
outsider. You’d be forgiven
for having little interest in
disappearing down said
whirlpool, but recently
celebrity watch spotting
has brought horology into
the mainstream. Clocking
a major piece – Jay-Z wore
what? – has become a minor
celeb-watching pastime, as
well as a gateway into the world
of serious collecting. And it
doesn’t have to be expensive,
or difficult to fathom (see
Andrew Garfield wearing an
Omega De Ville Prestige to the
SAG Awards). Indeed, 2022 has
been the year in which watches
have embedded themselves
in society’s consciousness.
Name a major cultural moment
when watches weren’t present
(we’ll wait). Here, for your
reading pleasure, are some
of the most significant.

G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3 3 3
V I B I E S T W A T C H
ONE OF
PATEK’S FIRST
RODEOS
This Patek Philippe “Rodeo”
Calatrava is a total oddball,
yee-hawing proudly apart
from the rarefied sensibility
the Swiss brand is known for.
Still, it’s exactly the kind of
grail piece you’d hope to find
at the Kairos Collection, a
Christie’s auction that pays
homage to the Swiss brand’s
exceptional timepieces.
Created in a limited-edition
of 10 by a wood marquetry
master in 2008, the Rodeo
illustration consists of 318
pieces of wood achieving the
highly detailed illustration
of an American cowboy.
Rihanna’s Custom
Rolex King Midas
When Rihanna’s pregnancy was announced
in January of this year, fans justifiably lost
their minds over the prospect of a Bal Gal Riri
x A$AP Rocky collab – but we lost it over her
watch. The photo that broke the news/internet
showed Queen Rih glowing in
a 1996 Chanel pink puffer,
opened to reveal the baby
bump, and an 18K Rolex
King Midas, customised
by jeweller Patcharavipa
Bodiratnangkura. As with
King Midas, everything
Rihanna touches turns to
gold, so it’s only appropriate
that she’d choose this
’60s-era piece, audaciously
yet delicately modified to meet
the mood of the moment.
3 4 G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3
M O M E N T S
An Extremely Rare
Pierre Cardin Espace
Wristwatch
In the words of Frank Costanza, “Look
George, it’s a Pierre Cardin.” Famous for
designing collarless suits for the Beatles
in the ’60s, Cardin took to the stars the
next decade, creating Nasa spacesuits
in 1970. The following year, the Italian-
French fashion designer launched
a limited Espace watch line, with future-
forward silhouettes and hand-wound
Jaeger movements. While this merge
of fashion and haute horology attracted
F1 driver Chris Amon (before F1 drivers
wore Richard Mille), next to nothing
has been said about this cuff-like piece
until May this year, when one of them
was resurfaced by vintage watch
connoisseur John Goldberger. In
Kodi Smit-McPhee unearthing the Espace, he rendered
Goes Ice, it an underrated grail for those with
their eyes on the sky.
Ice Baby at
the Oscars
Although Kodi Smit-
McPhee didn’t win the best
P H OTO G R A P H S ( I N C LU D I N G P R E V I O U S PA G E ) , A L A M Y, C H R I S T I E ’ S , G E T T Y, J O H N G O L D B E R G E R , R O L E X .
supporting actor Oscar Of Course in the world right now,
for his role in The Power Leonardo the Patek Philippe
of the Dog, he won our Nautilus Tiffany-blue
DiCaprio
hearts with his red carpet dial 5711. It’s so rare
fit. Shining against the
has a Tiffany that the first edition
backdrop of his baby-blue
Patek sold for $6.5 million
Bottega Veneta suit were Leo showed up (around £5.8 million)
Cartier high jewellery courtside at the at auction. So rare
pieces, and on his wrist Lakers, as he does, that only Leo, Jay-Z
a Cartier Révélation d’une wearing a signature and a handful of other
Panthère, shimmering with black I Am Famous hugely dedicated
diamonds weighing a grand Cap and perhaps the (and rich) clients are
total of nearly 20 carats. most coveted watch in possession of one.
Jacob Elordi Channels
Steve McQueen
Euphoria star Jacob Elordi has
been known to pal around
town with a leather-strapped
Cartier Tank, but in the
past year, he swapped it out
for another classic: the TAG
CRAZY MOONSWATCH QUEUES Heuer Monaco. Worn in an
The Supreme-ification of watches has earlier iteration by Steve
been happening for a while now. But the McQueen in Le Mans,
Omega x Swatch MoonSwatch collection? Elordi has breathed
A luxury brand releasing a spin on a classic new life into the piece,
with an affordable partner and price point? forever immortalised
Unheard of. The result was watches’ biggest by the vision of him on
breakout moment in years. Check out footage the run from flashing
of the scrum outside the Swatch shop on cameras, baby
Carnaby Street in March. Eight months later, Bottega in hand. He’s
the queues remain. Will this spiral into a now signed with
trend of more intriguing crossovers in the TAG as their latest
future? Patek x Timex, we’re looking at you. brand ambassador.
 RADO.COM
MASTER OF MATERIALS

TRUE SQUARE OPEN HEART

V I B I E S T W A T C H M O M E N T S

CHARLES LECLERC’S MICHAEL JORDAN

REAL-LIFE GRAND
THEFT AUTO MOMENT
The rise of high-end watch theft makes sense.
For a dexterous – or just plain brazen – thief,
it’s easier to snatch a £265,000 Richard Mille
from a wrist than to hold up a bank, or set up a
multi-level NFT scam. There’s
even a cottage industry
of viral videos showing
people being jacked for
their expensive pieces.
Unfortunately, Ferrari
speedster Leclerc found
this out the hard way, when
his RM was snagged
off his wrist while
greeting fans
in Tuscany
over the
summer. The
story made
headline
DANCES TO
URWERK’S
BONKERS TUNE
Jordan has always been a big-hoop-
Patek Philippe earring, cigar-in-the-mouth-and-
a-fistful-of-championship-rings guy
Electronic Clock who loves his watches, but at
This summer, vintage watch dealers the Nascar in Nashville in
Collectability and Analog:Shift did the July, his ultra rare and
honourable thing of presenting the world’s peculiar Urwerk UR-220
largest collection of Patek Philippe RG was proof that
electronic clocks. All under one roof, they any great American
were set up to dramatically tick as one in tycoon worth their
midtown Manhattan. Given what Patek is dizzying investment
now renowned for, it’s difficult to imagine portfolio also
the brand had an electronic clock division, needs a look-at-
but in the ’60s (up until the ’90s, when me piece. With
the division eventually shuttered), this just 10 made
state-of-the-art tech dutifully kept time and a design
for institutions from Lufthansa to the CIA. inspired by
Patek didn’t have to bother with electronics Miami Vice, the
– but they did, and they did it right. Urwerk fits the bill.

WHO KNEW THOM BROWNE

A LEFT-HANDED SEWS UP
ROLEX DESTRO A STORM
WOULD CAUSE In Paris this past June,
SUCH A STIR? Thom Browne presented his
SS23 menswear line with
Rolex did, it turns out. a sprinkling of details we
Unveiling the new GMT- won’t soon forget: jockstraps,
Master II 126720VTNR miniskirts, and a codpiece
“Destro” at the annual with a Prince Albert piercing.
Watches and Wonders trade Irreverent yet elevated
fair was definitely Big News. (each of the looks comes
The green and black ceramic in a French tweed from the

and stainless-steel Destro
(meaning ‘right’ in Italian) is
made for southpaws, with an
inverted crown and date (on
the left, not right). Big deal?
In the world of rare Rolexes,
where one small detail
can mean astronomical
differences in after-market
price, you bet. This lefty
GMT is guaranteed to be an
ultra-covetable collector’s
Who Wore it Best – piece, with Roger Federer
P H OTO G R A P H S , A N A LO G U E : S H I F T, B A C KG R I D, G E T T Y, R O L E X , S P L A S H N E W S , T H O M B R OW N E .
same maker as Chanel),
we also can’t forget the
Tom Wambsgans’ thread watches resembling
Royal Succession Cartier Tanks, painstakingly
A big part of the draw of embroidered into the wrists
Succession is how subtle of a select few shirts. Crisp.
gestures and symbols
represent status shifts. A
Lanvin trainer, a Loro Piana
baseball cap – these things
say something about how
the wealthy Roy clan wish
to present themselves.

Ryan Reynolds seen wearing one before

his retirement sobfest.
Tom Wambsgans (played
by Matthew MacFadyen),
or Donald Glover? will have his just reward
in series four for doing the
By it, we mean the Apple Watch, which dodgy over his wife with his
might just be the ideal LA timepiece. Looks father-in-law – not like that
good and lets you count your steps while – with a new watch. Spotted
you’re walking for a chai at Go Get Em Tiger. while shooting in NYC, it
Worn in two very different ways by two big appears he’s upgraded his
names, there aren’t many watches that can Cartier to a shiny new AP
equally match Ryan Reynolds in a Bode Royal Oak Chrono. Perhaps
shirt before a late night taping, and Donald this power watch hints at
Glover, shirtless, yellow short shorts, a new-found position atop
pensive. Next year’s must have? The Ultra. the greasy Waystar pole.

3 6 G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3
 MAESTRO 8.0 SQUELETTE
Ref. GC8.0-SQ-A-00

Every watch created by the Maison Gerald Charles comes from Mr. Genta’s
original designs. Each piece is produced without compromise according to
the finest traditions of Swiss mechanical watchmaking. It took two years
of R&D in our Swiss Atelier to develop the new open-work micro-rotor
architecture of the new Maestro 8.0 Squelette.

Maison founded by Monsieur Gérald Charles Genta.

www.geraldcharles.com contact@geraldcharles.com +41 (0) 91 682 02 42

V I B I E S T W A T C H
JAY-Z’S VINTAGE DIAMOND
SUPER BOWL FLEX
The Super Bowl is not exactly renowned
for its subtlety or style, but these are the
qualities that describe the Patek Philippe
Nautilus Jay-Z wore for the occasion. This
40-year-old reference 3800 in 18K yellow
gold clocks in at a comfortable
37 mm, graced with factory-set
diamonds that sparkle
ever so gracefully
compared to the range
of diamond-set modern
watches he could have
chosen. Seeing photos of
HOV chilling on the field
with his daughter, tossing
around a Tiffany-blue
football whilst wearing
this exceptional
vintage watch...
It’s enough to
bring a tear to a
watch nerd’s eye.
Major Audemars
Piguet Royal Oak
Under the Hammer
AP’s RO hit the big 5-0 this
year and duly celebrated
with numerous releases,
events and tributes, such as
the Phillips auction house
sale dedicated to the iconic
watch. Among the lots was
a 1994 white-gold Royal
Oak (66746BC) graced with
pavé dial and diamond- and
emerald-set bracelet in
a style one could hardly
imagine coming out of the AP
factory today. At 26 mm, this
watch is nearly 10 mm less in
diameter than the smallest
Royal Oak currently offered
by the brand and speaks to
the growing tiny watch trend.
3 8 G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3
M O M E N T S
Lewis
Hamilton’s
Ultimate “No
Jewellery”
Protest
At the Miami Grand Prix,
Lewis Hamilton took the
concept of a conspicuous
athlete and watch brand
partnership to bold new
heights when he rocked not
one, not two, but three IWC
pieces at once. The move was
part of a protest against the
FIA’s proposed ban on drivers
wearing jewellery while
racing. Whatever the intended
effect, Hamilton and his trio
of great watches – a mix of
Pilot Chronographs – were the
talk of the paddock, and the
FIA came away looking stuffy
and out of touch.
TYLER, THE CREATOR’S RIP Issey Miyake
TINY CARTIERS
Disclaimer: Cartier’s most Issey Miyake’s transcendent
impactful ambassador creations graced the cover of
in 2022 is not on the Artforum and the halls of the
payroll. He’s not even MoMA, as well as the figures
officially affiliated with of icons such as Steve Jobs
the brand. Tyler, the (that black turtleneck is
Creator has independently a Miyake). At the time of his
amassed a collection passing in August, an image
of tiny vintage Cartier resurfaced of him wearing
watches and in doing so, the Audemars Piguet Royal
has inserted the maison Oak, tastefully sized down to
into the contemporary fit his wrist, indicating a true
zeitgeist. Worn by the likes understanding of an object’s
of Muhammad Ali and synchronicity with the body.
Andy Warhol, Cartier has
always managed to meet
the moment; but Tyler
has made the moment his
own, going for underrated
“ladies” pieces, including AP’s Complications TOM HOLLAND AND ZENDAYA
the coveted Cartier Crash. King Gets a Kendrick ARE WATCH COUPLE GOALS
Tom Holland and Zendaya’s complementing
Shout-Out Patek Philippes – Aquanaut (him) and rose-
P H OTO G R A P H S , C L AU D E C H A R L I E R , G E T T Y, P H I L L I P S ,
Kendrick Lamar’s song gold Nautilus (her) –
“Rich Spirit” includes a real shows that true young,
IYKYK verse: “AP, Michael cool and wealthy love
Friedman, my friends cooler. isn’t about raiding
Primary, so the resale value each other’s
stupid.” For those not in the wardrobes. It’s
know, Michael Friedman is actually about
AP’s head of complications raiding each
– an absolute visionary with other’s watch
a reach that transcends the collections.
niche watch industry and Next time, Tom,
his slew of celebrity friends. let’s see you
I mean, what corporate watch donning one
brand employee gets a name of Zendaya’s Cartier
drop on a Kendrick album? Panthères please. l

In five years as CEO,
Georges Kern has
injected new impetus into
Breitling – doubling the
company’s turnover in the
process and turning its
iconic collections into
some of the most sought-
after watches out there.
B y Mi ke C h ri s te n s e n
Georges Kern
surfing at Wheels
& Waves, a music, art,
and street culture
festival held in
Biarritz this summer.
I N S I D E R
THE TIME IS 9:30AM ON A STORMY MORNING IN BIARRITZ
and Georges Kern is looking out of a rain-speckled car window. Hiding
behind the peak of an orange Deus Ex Machina cap that matches
the Outerknown watch strap of his new Breitling Superocean, he seems
a little nervous.
The last time I was with Kern, he had just announced himself to a busy
departure lounge in Zurich airport by descending an escalator alone – dressed
as a pilot. Though the outfit was for effect, he proceeded to board a plane
to Geneva with several hundred journalists and Breitling collectors. The
occasion? To celebrate the 70th anniversary of Breitling’s aviation-inspired
Navitimer. How? By unveiling the new collection in midair, of course.
Today, we are on our way to a group surfing session to mark another of
Breitling’s icons – a new surf-orientated Superocean collection. Kern’s choice
of attire this time is a wetsuit. “People want experiences,” Kern tells us shortly
after a fun morning larking around on surfboards in the Atlantic Ocean. What
people want, Kern has a knack of finding.
Kern has been steering Breitling’s ship since 2017, after a successful 15-year
G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3 4 1
I N S I D E R
stint in the top job at IWC Schaffhausen.
Breitling has since doubled its turnover and
now has 160-odd boutiques worldwide –
with 40 more in the offing. He fast-tracked
the launch of Breitling’s e-commerce in
2018, which now makes up 10 per cent of
the brand’s total sales. Part of that is down
to Kern launching a number of “Squads”
made up of celebrity ambassadors such as
Adam Driver and Kelly Slater who are help-
ing to bring the brand to a wider audience.
Kern’s idol is “probably Warren Buffett”,
he says. He loves the way Jürgen Klopp
manages Liverpool FC and admires Elon
Musk (“He’s on the edge of being a genius
or totally crazy”). Over a warm cup of tea, we
caught up with him to discuss five years at
the helm and what he’s learnt along the way.
Given where we are today, I take it
you’re not the desk-bound type.
“Thank God I’m the CEO, so I don’t
have to work in an office. But I’m always
working, because everything I see – a
car, a colour – I always relate to it and
send pictures to my design team. I
work 24 hours but it’s not a tiring way
of working. There still needs to be a
balance, though, because life is so short
and the world is so screwed that you
should enjoy life. So I take my free time;
I like cycling holidays and weekends.”
What do you need to be successful
in your position?
“As CEO you need to bring courage
where others would be too prudent. You
take risks, calculated risks. Constant
creativity and inspiration from outside,
constant encouragement to say, ‘Let’s
go. Let’s do it.’ But any idea I have to
ask myself, ‘Do they fit the brand?’ A
successful brand – like Hermès, Chanel,
Louis Vuitton – is a compact one where
all the elements of the puzzle work and
everything fits.”
When you started out at Breitling,
did you have a plan? And have you
stuck to it?
“I would say 60 per cent yes. We knew
what we wanted to do with the squad
idea and more or less the fact that we
wanted to have three segments [land, air,
sea]. The other 40 per cent has allowed
us to be reactive. I’m an optimist by
character, though, and I knew after six
months that we would be successful
because I realised how strong our back
catalogue was. That is what our whole
strategy has come from. Even in the
best days of my previous roles, I never
had that speed of success, so it was
a surprise, but it’s a snowball effect.
There’s a dynamism about Breitling that
overtakes everything.”
Do you know about the inner workings
and mechanisms of watches?
“I understand more or less how the
4 2 G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3
“As CEO you need to bring
courage where others
would be too prudent. You
take risks, calculated risks.
It’s constant creativity.”
technique works, but I’ve never been
a watchmaker. What you need is a
sense when a technician comes to your
office... He may have a great idea but is
it sellable? Twenty-five years ago, I was
more brand oriented than movement
or technology oriented. Today, people
are buying a brand and a design, then
a technology; but when I started out,
it was the other way round. But for
my whole career, because I didn’t
understand the technical side as well,
I focused more on the brand and thank
God the priorities of the consumers
have brought the change today, because
people are now buying a lifestyle. You
need to have the quality. You need to
be a manufacturer, but it’s a condition
to be a lifestyle brand.”
Nowadays, does narrative trump the
technical aspects of a watch?
“You need both. You have to have the
movements but I wouldn’t launch a
beautiful product without a narrative.
If I have a narrative, I will do everything
to find the right product. Someone
told me at the launch of the Navitimer
that the brand reminds him of happy
days. I thought this was a phenomenal
compliment because we want to be
happy. We want to have fun. With a
beautiful product, what does it bring to
you? It’s not to read time – it is to have a
feeling, to feel good.”
What is your greatest success to date?
“Our success is that we can sell
everything and people are buying
everything. I don’t know one single
person who doesn’t like at least one
line in our collection. The beauty is we
have the electronic professional tools up
to the super-classic Premier collection,
as well as an icon such as the Navitimer
and something more colourful with
the Superocean. The difficult part is
to bring [it all] together in a coherent
way, [through] design, storytelling, and
history. A brand is a planet and you have
satellites flying around the planet so
you have to choose the right satellites
to make the brand grow.”
And the biggest challenge you face in
growing Breitling?
“For us, our only problem is that not
everyone knows where we are today.
I would say that five or 10 per cent
know how beautiful the products are,
how great the brand is, so this takes
time. Changing a strategy is one thing;
bringing it to your target group is a totally
different ballgame. For this, you need a
sprint and a marathon.”
Any advice you were given that’s
worth passing on...
“I had really good mentors in my life and
everybody told me to go slow. I never
listened to them. When I was younger,
like Formula 1 drivers, I was too quick
and sometimes drove into a wall. Today,
I drive quickly but I stay on the track –
that’s experience. But I never wanted to
drive slowly.” l
Georges Kern at
Breitling’s Navitimer
launch in Zurich,
MIKE CHRISTENSEN IS GQ’S
29 March. EUROPEAN LIFEST YLE EDITOR.
 I N S I D E R

In a year when the Open celebrated its

150th anniversary, Rolex is at the white-hot
epicentre of a whole new era for the sport.

OL
B y R o b i n S w it hi n b a n k

G ET C O
GOLF. A GAME FOR FLAGON-EARED OLD MEN. In terrible trousers. Who drink
warm ale and aren’t shy to voice an overripe opinion or two. When I first picked up
a club as a boy in the mid-’80s, encouraged by my Pringle jumper-wearing father,
this was the general view of golf, and, to be fair, it wasn’t far off the mark.
Throughout my teenage years, my local club became two places: the course where
I learned the love of the game with my peers; and the clubhouse where I realised just how
many rules these dull-eyed men in their ill-fitted troos had concocted for us juniors to

G OLF
learn – and break. Golf was a great game, but it had a personality problem.
Three decades later, those times still echo in some of golf’s ossifying corners, yet so
much has changed. Golf is losing its daft feudal formalities in place of a far more attrac-
tive – and consumable – spirit. Golf is actually becoming cool.
In 2020, a report produced by Sports Marketing Surveys for Britain and Ireland on behalf
of a group led by the Royal and Ancient, the sport’s preeminent governing body, found that
since the pandemic, the average age of a golfer had dropped by five years to 41. That’s not

PE D
young – but then eight-year-olds and 80-year-olds can play. Alongside one another, too.
Participation has also shot up. The report calculated there were 2.3 million more adults
playing golf than before Covid – such as Declan Rice, Marcus Smith, Ben Stokes, and
nearly every other professional football, rugby, and cricket player. More compelling still,

HE L
a third of new adult golfers were under 25. This crew doesn’t drink, they vape – and thanks
to an influx of buzz and vibe around the sport, the trousers look considerably cooler.
Golf is getting younger and more popular, but it’s not entirely obvious why. “There’s not
one specific reason for it,” says Keith Pelley, chief executive of the DP World Tour, formerly
the PGA European Tour, citing factors as diverse as a growing awareness of the physical

ME
GA
NG
LO

Australia’s
Cameron Smith
on his way to
victory at the
150th Open,
17 July.

HO X’ S
W RO L E
P H OTO G R A P H , G E T T Y.

G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3 4 5
I N S I D E R
and mental health benefits of playing, as
well as the emergence of the popcorn-
and-beer range game Topgolf. “But golf is
definitely getting younger, and growing,
and getting cooler,” he adds.
It’s also box office. This year, the emer-
gence of the breakaway LIV Golf tour and
the defection to it of some of the world’s
top golfers – such as Open Championship
winner Cameron Smith and Ryder Cup stal-
warts Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter – has
driven golf into the headlines. But Pelley
dismisses the idea that the turbulence has
been in any way good for the game.
Far more significant, Pelley says, is
that golf is lightening up. The golf culture
defined by those territorial spike-bar stiffs?
“That’s all going away,” says the energetic
Canadian. “And it’s going away because if
you’re not prepared to modify your busi-
ness, you’ll fall away. To those people in golf
who say, ‘This is how we’ve always done it,’
I say, ‘Change, change, change.’”
It’s a law of economics that growing
consumer interest spurs commercial
investment. Golf has rarely struggled for
sponsorship, but its rejuvenated profile is
attracting brands from all walks, whether
it’s banks, data companies, car makers, or
buzzy streetwear brands. Nike, John Deere
and BMW all have previous in golf, now
joined by the likes of Puma and vibey start-
ups such as PXG and Vice Golf.
Also inside the ropes are the world’s
most powerful watch companies. Omega,
Audemars Piguet, TAG Heuer and Hublot
have all attached their wagons to golf’s
charging horse. But one name transcends
them all, irrespective of sector: Rolex.
The Crown’s first grip on the game came
in 1967, when it signed the charismatic
Arnold Palmer, then the game’s undis-
puted superstar. He was swiftly followed
by a swashbuckling Jack Nicklaus and the
whip-smart Gary Player. Together the “Big
Three”, as the trio became known, would
go on to define not just their sport, but also
the symbiotic concept of a “brand ambas-
sador”: someone whose achievements and
values reflected and enhanced those of
the brand they represented, and vice versa.
In the 55 years since, Rolex has become
the de facto first name in golf, a godfatherly
figure that serves as a custodian of the
game’s values through its work with play-
ers, tournaments, and tour organisers. Its
involvement runs deep. From the Ryder
Cup and the DP World Tour’s Rolex Series
to supporting amateur championships in
Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region,
the green and gold is ubiquitous.
Golf’s top brass are reverential when
reviewing Rolex’s impact on the game. “It’s
elevated golf,” says Ian Pattinson, who was
chairman of the Royal and Ancient until
September this year. “Rolex is the Tiger
Woods of watchmaking, and other watch-
makers have benefitted as a result of the
relationship [with golf].”
Talk to Gary Player, and the winner of
4 6 G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3
nine major championships remembers not
just a financial benefactor that enabled
him to travel the world, but “no doubt the
greatest sponsor I’ve had”. Player, who
signed a 10-year extension to his deal with
Rolex in 2017, says his and Rolex’s rela-
tionship was always about “more than just
money – it was like a family”.
He goes on: “What amazed me about
Rolex was the vision they had,” he says,
speaking ahead of the 150th Open
Championship, of which Rolex is a patron.
“Rolex had this vision of a sport. They
could see a sport that was played by all.”
Tom Watson, winner of five Open
Championships and a Rolex Testimonee
(as the brand calls its ambassadors), picks
up the inclusivity theme. “That’s where we
have it over every other sport,” he says,
his eyes misting. “I can go out and play
“Rolex is the Tiger Woods
of watchmaking, and
other watchmakers have
benefitted as a result of
the relationship with golf.”
it with you. That’s the beauty of our
game and why golf is so successful from
a sponsorship point of view.”
Pelley, who joined the DP
World Tour seven years ago and
launched the Rolex Series in 2017,
is privy to Rolex’s exacting
standards. “They chal-
lenge everything you do
for a level of perfection,”
he says. “When we cre-
ated the Rolex Series
events, we had to raise
the level of everything,
from hospitality to trans-
portation. Everything is
done with meticulous
detail.” Why? “Because
of the reverence of their
own brand,” he says.
Clockwise from left:
Scottie Scheffler
sports the Green
Jacket and “Root
Beer” Rolex, 10 April;
Rolex “Testimonee”
Tom Watson at
the Masters, 1981;
footballer Declan
Rice, alongside golfer
Billy Horschel, wears
a Rolex Daytona
at Wentworth, 12
September 2021.
Watson, now 73, remembers entering
the pro ranks and seeing Palmer, Nicklaus
and Player wearing their Presidential
Rolexes, the name often given to the
yellow-gold version of the iconic Day-Date
after it was worn by several US presidents.
“I thought it was beautiful and that
maybe one day, if I made enough money,
I’d be able to buy one,” he says. “In 1978, for
my birthday, my [ex-] wife Linda presented
me with a green Rolex box. And there it was.
A gold Presidential Rolex. And the back of
it was inscribed: ‘To my million dollar baby’.
Because I’d just surpassed a million dollars
in lifetime earnings.”
These watches capture the essence of
the link between Rolex and golf. Nicklaus
sold his three years ago to raise money
for a children’s charity he founded with
his wife. It hammered for $1.2 million
(£1.1 million).
And the link continues. When world
number one Scottie Scheffler won the
Masters at Augusta this year, he slipped
into the famous Green Jacket wearing a
bimetal Rolex GMT-Master II with a brown
and black bezel, known as “Root Beer”.
Rolex, with typical restraint, would
never come close to saying as much,
but it’s in some way the throughline that
runs through the sport’s modern history.
Consistent. Ever-present. Quietly pushing
the culture forward. As golf enters its next
P H OTO G R A P H S , G E T T Y.
chapter – younger, more stylish, more, well,
open – it’s only right that Rolex is there too,
keeping with the time. l
ROBIN SWITHINBANK IS A
FREEL ANCE WRITER AND EDITOR.

The Big
Watches
for 2023
From tough-wearing timepieces
to statement watches, Ernest Jones
is the place to go for a gift that
will stand the test of time.
HETHER YOU'RE BUYING
W
a timepiece for yourself
or someone else, a watch
is a major investment.
And not just in terms
of money. Watches are an emotional
purchase and one that you’ve got to
get right, as they’re one of those rare
objects worn daily. So it’s a decision that
shouldn’t be rushed. You want to spend
time with a watch before you buy it,
feel the weight of it in your hand, and
that’s why you should do it in person.
This is where Ernest Jones comes
in. The company opened its first shop
in Oxford Street in 1949 and now has
180 stores across the country, each with
specialist staff. Let’s take a look at the
watches that have just dropped.
Casio has upgraded its G-SHOCK
2100 series with the GM-B2100D-1AER.
You want to spend time with
a watch before you buy it.
GQ ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE
Ernest Jones has Innovative because it connects to your
more than 70 years’
smartphone via Bluetooth, this watch
experience of is crafted in stainless steel, a handsome
selling the
update that loses none of the toughness
finest watches.
but adds a welcome touch of class.
Emporio Armani has produced
another classic, this time with a hand-
some green dial that makes it so ver-
satile – managing to be both dressy
and sporty at the same time. It’s envi-
ronmentally friendly, too: the bracelet
and case are both made from at least
50 per cent recycled stainless steel.
And then there’s Citizen, which has
released a Red Arrows Limited Edition
Skyhawk A.T. These sought-after
watches come with individually num-
bered case backs, and Citizen’s Eco-
Drive technology allows the watch to
be powered from any light source – it
will never need a battery.
Bulova is also having a big year with
its new limited-edition design that
pays tribute to its classic 1973 “parking
meter” chronograph. The handsome
fascia resembles an old-school parking
meter and just 5,000 of these beauties
have been made.
Swiss watchmaker Raymond Weil
is doing what it does best with the
Freelancer, a classic-looking timepiece
powered by tri-compax automatic
winding, that ensures a 56-hour power
reserve. It’s a lovely, versatile watch
that you can dress up or down.
Divers will have their heads turned
by Seiko’s Save the Ocean collection,
which takes its inspiration from their
1970 Diver’s watch. Water-resistant up
to 200m, these handsome watches fea-
ture a textured silver tone dial – and a
portion of each sale helps marine con-
servation initiatives around the world.
Last, but very much not least, is
Hamilton, whose updated Khaki
Navy Frogman Automatic is one of the
watches of the season. Precision engi-
neered and handsomely designed, with
a unique crown protector, this watch is
exclusive to Ernest Jones.
ernestjones.com
R U B R I C

How the
 Took
the
World’s
Most
Stylish
Wrists
B y R a c h el Fel d e r
P h o to g r a p h s b y Tai s Si r o te
S et d e si g n b y P e n ny Mi l l s

Unburdened by
heritage and spurred
on by youth culture,
From left:
Tank Must £2,750;
Tank Louis
Cartier is making
Cartier £11,300;
Tank Square
a classic sexy – and
Incurvée Price
upon request; claiming peak “It”
Santos-Dumont
£5,150. watch status.
G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3 5 1
C A R T I E R T A N K

THE WATCH-COLLECTING WORLD HAS

always had its favourites. The Audemars
Piguet Royal Oak and the Patek Philippe
Nautilus, for instance, have for some time been
firmly established as the go-to for understated
elegance – having a heritage and history that’s
distinctive without being OTT. But lately, another
classic that shares those prerequisite qualities
has grown majorly in popularity: the Cartier Tank.
“People are beginning to recognise that these
Cartier watches have been thematic throughout
the 20th century,” says Harry Fane, a London-
based dealer who specialises in vintage Cartier
watches and jewellery. “They’ve been iconic, and
they are fundamentally beautiful and elegant.”
The Tank was first introduced in 1918, its sleek
shape inspired by the physique of a First World
War combat vehicle. It resonated with customers
from day one – although it was made in extremely
limited quantities for decades – but, until recently,
the Tank hasn’t really been an “It” watch. Now, it’s
becoming exactly that, with a new-found popu-
larity echoed by another classic Cartier design,
the Santos, which Louis Cartier, a grandson of the
brand’s co-founder Louis-François Cartier, cre-
ated in 1904 for his friend Alberto Santos-Dumont,
an acclaimed pilot of the era.
As vintage and neo-vintage Cartier timepieces
have become more popular, their prices have
been rising accordingly, especially at auction.
Last year, a stainless-steel Tank from 1935 was
sold by Sotheby’s for more than £200,000. A few
months ago, Phillips sold a rare skeletonised 2014
Tank for more than £60,000.
That surge in interest in Cartier watches Over time, the Tank’s design has been tweaked
applies to less-expensive previously owned in many ways: stretched out and narrowed on
Cartier watches as well, which are arguably more a Tank Américaine, accessorised with a metal strap
aesthetically consistent with older versions than on a Tank Française, solar powered and with vegan
watches from other brands. On the resale website strap on the SolarBeat. Still, whatever version,
Watchfinder, for example, Cartier now sits among a Tank is immediately recognisable. “Every iter-
its top-five most-searched-for brands, ahead of ation or variation revolves firmly around the
the likes of Patek Philippe. There, a simple steel iconicity of this unique watch,” says Franco
Tank starts at about £2,395; prices for a Santos Cologni, who’s written The Cartier Tank Watch, an
begin at around £2,150. updated version of which is coming out in February
Since their inception over a century ago, the 2023. “More inclined to fashion, or more intended
look of the Tank, like the Santos, has stayed to resist the test of time, these variations – like in
steady, anchored by key design elements such a cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach – reinforce
as their distinctive silhouettes, sapphire crowns, the main theme.”
and arrow-shaped hands. “If you’re looking for That even applies to timepieces such as the
classic watches that have really stood the test Square Incurvée, an interpretation of the Tank with
of time, Cartier is pretty hard to beat,” says Jack curved vertical sides that was first created in the
Forster, author of Cartier Time Art: Mechanics of ’60s. Although its silhouette is a bit different to
Passion, and editorial director of resale experts that of a typical Tank – softer and a bit less quiet –
WatchBox. “The sheer longevity of the design, vir- it’s still undeniably a Tank, and linked immutably
tually unchanged for over 100 years, has a lot to do in design to the style’s 1919 OG.
with the attraction the Tank is enjoying right now.” For Cartier, deciding how to update or rein-
troduce a heritage watch is a question of clients’
From top: Silver- tastes and the zeitgeist. Pierre Rainero, Cartier’s
screen legend Cary
director of image, style and heritage explains how
“Since inception, Grant and novelist
Truman Capote both the house asks itself, “Do we have a feeling that
the Tank has wore Cartier Tanks.
it’s possible to create a variation from that original
shape that could be even more relevant than the
been anchored
P H OTO G R A P H S , A L A M Y, G E T T Y.

previous one?”

by distinctive The Santos, for instance, originally came on

a leather strap, and that remained the case until
silhouettes, the ’70s. “We realised that people didn’t have the
same life,” Rainero says. “They wanted the same
sapphire crowns, watch from the morning to the evening, with an
and arrow- idea of elegance in all the different circumstances:
at work, at lunch, or even playing tennis, during
shaped hands.” a cocktail, and also in the evening. That’s how we

5 2 G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3
 For some masterpieces,
it’s all in the name.

Since the 1930s the finest watches of the company have borne the Meister
appellation. They continue to feature a skilful blend of the fascination with
watchmaking and aesthetic design. Junghans Meister Chronoscope: Self-winding
movement, stopp function, water-resistant up to 5 bar. www.junghans.de

All Junghans models are available with sapphire crystal.

www.junghans.co.uk · info@thebluecompanylondon.co.uk
C A R T I E R T A N K
had the idea to combine that original case with
a metal bracelet inspired by the case itself.”
The Panthère, which was first introduced in
1983 and discontinued in 2004, was re-released
in 2017 with minor changes. “We just re-engineered
the bracelet to make it even more solid, even more
fluid, with techniques we didn’t have at the begin-
ning of the ’80s,” Rainero explains.
And then there’s the Crash, a quirky Cartier
watch that was first introduced in 1967 by
Cartier London, during a period in the late ’60s and
early ’70s when the brand’s Bond Street location
spearheaded watches of its own design instead of
just simply carrying Paris-born creations. Cartier
London’s watches are certainly different – in many
cases, like the Crash, the designs look like classic
timepieces reinterpreted by a Surrealist – but they
are also, somehow, unmistakably Cartier.
“I don’t think it’s by chance that they were
born there,” Rainero says. “They are born in a
context that is very specific: there’s a specific
“There is a Tank
for everyone...
The design codes
are instantly
Cartier, but there
is such space
for personal
expression.”
5 4 G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3
attention to elegance among men in Britain.
Also, let’s not forget that period was a very spe-
cific time for the world in general but for London
in particular.”
Prices of the Crash have been soaring recently.
Earlier this year, one from 1967 sold at auction on
the site Loupe This for £1.32 million.
Cartier recently dropped an updated take
on another watch that was created by Cartier
London, the Pebble. Originally introduced in
1972, the watch shares the Crash’s far-out vibe,
with Roman numerals that look like they’re being
viewed through a kaleidoscope. Issued in a lim-
ited edition of 150, the Pebble has been updated
with a new movement – the Manufacture 430 MC
mechanical movement, one of Cartier’s thinnest.
THROUGHOUT ITS HISTORY, THE TANK HAS HAD
plenty of high-profile fans: from actors such as
Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart to writers includ-
ing Truman Capote to the fashion designer Tom
Ford, before he launched his own watch brand.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis famously wore a
Tank, which has always been marketed as uni-
sex. And since turning 100, the brand’s watches
have been red-carpet mainstays too: current
brand ambassadors include Paul Mescal and Rami
Malek, as well as Troye Sivan and Jackson Wang.
The Tank’s many current iterations have helped
expand its appeal.
“There is a Tank for everyone,” says Beth
Hannaway, head of fine watches and jewellery
at Harrods, “from the artfully simple Tank Must
to the iconic Tank Louis Cartier and the famous
’90s Tank Française creation. The design codes
From top: Current are instantly Cartier, but there is such space for
Tank advocates
include Rami Malek
personal expression.”
and Paul Mescal. That applies to Cartier’s least-expensive Tanks
– which start at £2,400 for a basic steel quartz
timepiece – as much as it does to the pricier
options. “You feel like you’re getting something
that has had as much thought put into it as a more
expensive mechanical precious metal model,”
Forster says. “You’re getting a lot of what the Tank
has to offer, but you don’t feel like you’re being
condescended to.”
The Tank’s growing success might well have
to do with a shift in consumers’ tastes towards
timepieces that are more refined. “In terms of
watchmaking, the sporty look has been so strong,
but the new generation wants something else,”
Rainero says.
Accordingly, the brand has focused on offer-
ing watches that embrace the trend for the
understated and unexpected, whether that’s
the dark-green face on a recent Tank, or, this year,
bringing back the metal front grille on the Pasha De
Cartier. Those designs have helped Cartier appeal
to what Rainero calls “the new generation” – the
younger collectors and celebrities discovering its
legacy and unique style for the first time.
“They really have a keen understanding of the
interests of customers, in shaping this new brand
image,” says Arjen van de Vall, Watchfinder & Co.’s
CEO. “They’ve made some good decisions over
P H OTO G R A P H S , G E T T Y.
the past few years about what lines to build and
where to invest,” he adds. “They’ve revamped and
repositioned themselves in the market – and that’s
been embraced wildly.” l
R ACHEL FELDER IS A FREEL ANCE JOURNALIST.
5 6 G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3
 O N T H E G R A M

HOW THE WEIRD AND WONDERFUL WORLD OF SOCIAL

MEDIA PUT ROCKET FUEL INTO THE WATCH WORLD.
B y B r y n n W al l n e r

G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3 5 7
O N T H E G R A M

LAST AUTUMN, I POSTED A VIDEO ON MY INSTAGRAM image of tropical dials and chunky bezels triggered the pleasure
account of Cardi B flashing her iced-out Patek Philippe receptors in enthusiasts’ brains far quicker than a lengthy forum
Nautilus. Cardi was full of her usual brash joy: “I’m gonna post ever could.” No idea what a tropical dial is? You’re not in
show off this shit ’til the day I die.” Her selfie clip represented deep enough.
everything I love about watch culture right now: timepieces feel Massena acknowledges social media’s benefits in garnering a
cooler, sexier, and more expressive than they ever have before. new audience and fostering more seamless conversation between
It’s part of the reason I launched @dimepiece, a community for watchmaker and consumer, but it’s not all dandy. “Social media
the growing collective of female watch enthusiasts. platforms favour instantaneous, instinctual responses – a user
Posting the video to my account lured a predictable band of can choose to click the like button or to keep scrolling past,” says
haters to criticise the fact that Cardi’s watch was customised Massena. “Occasionally, a user leaves a comment, and if so, it is
with aftermarket diamonds – certain purists have a knee-jerk usually short. Comments can be critical or full of adoring emojis,
urge to scoff at the mere sight of customised watches. It’s a fact but they are rarely nuanced. Instagram is typically not the place
that aftermarket anything will detract from the value and form for long, healthy debate.”
of a watch, yes, but the issue transcends mere fact – and the Rather, it can serve as a jumping off point for bigger conversations
comments missed the point. The response led to me writing a had among anyone – irrespective of age, race, sex, or knowledge
deeply researched piece on why people get so upset about cus- – that would otherwise not formally be had on cocooned forums.
tomised watches (hint: there is a racist undercurrent to the vitriol “Social media has revealed that the watch world is actually
against all things bust down). more diverse than we realised,” says Perri Dash, retail director
When I posted the article on Instagram, it attracted more than
100 comments – loud agreement, grumpy disagreement. Plenty
of people added accounts of their own personal experience:
“Connectivity via these platforms
“I actually quit a popular watch forum over a watchspotting is directly responsible for the
thread where some members very aggressively insisted that
Pharrell [Williams] couldn’t possibly own a Richard Mille,” wrote
amplification of the under-
one. “If he were another shade and style, there would’ve been no represented voices.”
questions asked.”
The ideal of social media as a utopian tool for connectivity at Watches of Switzerland and co-host of Wrist Check Pod.
is pretty laughable in 2022. With cyberbullying, misinformation, “Connectivity via these platforms is directly responsible for the
destructively addictive algorithms, over-aestheticised brunch amplification of the under-represented voices of people who were
photos and Fortune 500 companies tweeting like 16-year-old clout already participating.”
chasers, it feels like we’re far beyond what could have been. And Women, long ignored in this dick-swinging industry, have also
yet the notoriously stoic watch industry – with the exclusion of found support on IG. I, for one, have benefited dramatically; you
a few trolls – exists in a sweet spot, bound by no season and would not be reading this article today if it weren’t for that. In the
immune to fickle cultural movements. Historically confined to a cursed summer of 2020, I started dimepiece.co,
privileged sliver of the population, only recently has the lust for dedicated to women and watches, inspired
high-end timepieces been more widely shared. For too long the by my brief work at the watches depart-
narrative around watches and watch wearing has been overseen ment at Sotheby’s. What I’d learned,
by a homogenous group of people, which can be best described in addition to the pronunciation of
as “straight”, “white”, and “male.” But social media doesn’t care Audemars Piguet – aw-duh-maaz-
about who’s in charge. Instead it gives a platform to voices veering pee-gay – was that women were
from this norm and bringing forth a wave of new perspectives and nowhere near central to the watch
trends that have shaken up the industry. story. So, I thought, let’s manip-
ulate the narrative and post a
“ IN THE EARLY DAYS , YO U C O U LD N OT EVE N U PLOAD A photo of, say, Baby Spice and
photograph of a watch,” says William Massena, founder of her gold Cartier Tank Française
Massena Lab and formerly the managing director of the forum (the watch also worn by Lady
TimeZone. Back in the early noughties, watch lovers flocked to Diana... taste!).
such online forums to voice opinions, flaunt collections, and It’s shocking to realise that
dissect releases. They became a rich universe for collectors and this sort of watch identifica-
enthusiasts to earnestly review new drops and share diamond-
in-the-rough vintage pieces – using only the descriptive power
From left:
of words. Roger Federer
“I remembered the first image that appeared on TimeZone, that has been Rolex
ambassador since
wasn’t sent to us from a retailer, was from a user who uploaded 2001; Cindy Crawford
a scanned image of his Royal Oak Offshore,” says Massena. wears Omega;
photographer
“Eventually, as technology improved, so did the website, but the Martin Parr’s recent
discussion-led approach of the forum community remained.” Gucci campaign.
Discussions were moderated to ward
off trolls and bad players, creating a
sense of true community. Even today,
as more accessible watch publica-
tions such as Hodinkee emerge, the
OGs remain a detailed source of insight
and inspiration – however specialised and
inside-baseball the conversations are.
Of course, visually led platforms such as
Instagram now democratise what it means to adore
timepieces, nudging the door open for a whole new
breed of enthusiast – and flinging it open for
the day ones. Or as A Collected Man, an online
watch platform, puts it: “The instantly digestible

5 8 G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3

tion was groundbreaking within the insular watch community –
before this, it was unlikely that “Baby Spice” and “watch world”
shared the centre of a Venn diagram. And yet celeb photos and
my daily observations, delivered with a bit of personality and a
disregard for the self-serious tone of many watch enthusiasts,
generated an audience that eventually led to several writing jobs,
relationships with most of the major watchmakers (although…
Patek Philippe still hasn’t banged my line), my first trip to Geneva
(watch Mecca) and a podcast.
It’s not like women weren’t in the industry before me – there
are many, enthusiastically engaged from both the consumer and
industry side. But frustrated by the lack of consideration and
thoughtful direction for female consumers on behalf of major
watchmakers, these women have taken to social media to unite
and voice their opinions, resulting in tangible change. Audemars
Piguet hired Ginny Wright in 2019 as CEO of the Americas, making
her one of the few female executives (really, you can count them
on one hand) in the watch industry. Vacheron Constantin has
released its first perpetual calendar watch for women in its
250-plus year history, citing the female collector’s increasing
desire for sophisticated mechanical timepieces (contemporary
ladies’ watches are predominantly fitted with quartz movements).
These developments are occurring because women are genuinely
becoming prioritised within this rigid industry – and the
soapboxes lent to us via Instagram are certainly, in part, to thank
for this.
SINCE THE ’60S, WHEN WATCH ADVERTISING GOT THE MAD MEN
treatment, it has stuck somewhere between hunky adventurer,
charming athlete, glossy A-lister, and cultured gentleman vibes.
Such archetypes have evolved over the years into high-profile
brand ambassadors. Roger Federer wears Rolex, and before him,
Paul Newman wore his eponymous Daytona. Cindy Crawford
wears Omega, as does her daughter Kaia Gerber. The big players
rely on these figures to convey the spirit of the brand and who
they’d like us to think of as the wearer.
“Way before certain models became household names and
were near-impossible to get hold of, it’s safe to say brands had a
customer profile in mind,” says Nick Federowicz aka @adpatina,
who sources and sells vintage watch adverts. “Rolex often chose
men in positions of power to embody the Day-Date. Through many
effective campaigns over the years, the solid yellow-gold Rolex
‘President’ became not just a status symbol, but an element of
style donning the wrists of powerful and successful men.”
Such names resulted in greater recognition of watch models,
but the ads today don’t always hit the spot. Sure, the likes of Gucci
O N T H E G R A M
and Tiffany & Co. have flipped the script on the format of luxury
advertising, but generally speaking, watch ads feature unattain-
able, isolated images of product, or black and white photos of
ambassadors flaunting their best wrist pose. Adverts that were
once inspiring (Rolex’s “If you were” series from the ’60s and ’70s
is iconic) don’t cut through the noise like they used to. Instead,
they lean on an “if you know, you know” message: if you were born
into the hobby via your father who wore an X, you know just how
exciting and deep X watches can be.
Thankfully, social media has democratised the way watches
are positioned, inspiring creators and scrollers alike to surpass
the paid messaging and, in the process, open up the watch world
to a more diverse set of fans. “With the broader fanbase, and
ultimately market, it’s only a matter of time before traditional
advertising changes to reflect a new reality and the latest fashion,”
believes Federowicz.
Even the hallowed world of auction houses – institutions as con-
servative and change-averse as any – have caught on to the new
way of doing things. Arthur Touchot, specialist and international
head of digital strategy at Phillips Watches, says IG has gone from
a “nice to have to a must-have” aid in sourcing rare and important
watches – and then finding buyers for those very watches.
“A significant number of new bidders discover us on social
media,” says Touchot, whose employer is partly responsible for
the new wave of enthusiasts at-large with its record-breaking
figures, starting in 2020. Last year, Phillips achieved the highest
annual sale total for any auction house in history at £180 million – a
57 per cent increase from 2020. Contributing to that astonishing
figure was the £5 million sale of the first publicly available Patek
Philippe Nautilus Ref 5711T made in collaboration with Tiffany &
Co., marked by its signature blue dial.
Phillips dropped news of the lot on the grid. “I remember pub-
lishing that announcement at Geneva Airport, minutes before
boarding my plane to New York for the auction,” recalled Touchot.
“When I landed six hours later and turned my phone back on, the
whole watch world was aware that we were going to auction
the watch. It was quite surreal.” This sale transcended the watch
world, with fashion Twitter and podcasters aflutter with chatter of
the limited edition grail. Buzzy moments such as these contribute
“Social media has democratised
the way watches are positioned,
inspiring creators and scrollers
alike to surpass paid messaging.”
to non-endemic interest, which had already
been growing since the 2017 sale of Paul
Newman’s “Paul Newman” Rolex Daytona,
which fetched an unprecedented £16
million at auction (also hosted by Phillips).
If watch web 1.0 was all about discussion,
the new world is predominantly a source of
information and inspiration for people new
to the hobby, looking to expand their collec-
tion, buy their first watch, or simply window
shop. Celebrity wrist spotting has become
essential to this ecosystem. The account
@superwatchman, for example, has built
650,000 followers by posting photos of
Formula 1 drivers with their Richard Milles
and includes the eye-watering prices of
the timepieces in the captions to rev up
the hype. Writer Nick Gould, who also
identifies celebrity watches on his personal
Instagram account @niccoloy, does so with
more subtlety and style, selecting imagery
that rises above the hype du jour, such as
a film still from the ’70s of Dustin Hoffman
wearing a two-tone Rolex GMT-Master.
G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3 5 9
O N T H E G R A M

“Steve McQueen and Paul Newman kicked off the trend of

people noticing a particular watch on someone’s wrist,” says
Gould. “McQueen wearing the Heuer Monaco in the racing film
Le Mans gave the square-cased chronograph an extra level of cool
and raised its profile.” And, sure, paid celebrity ambassadors have
been eternally influential – but famous fans paying full price are
moving the needle (or, dare I say, the hand) in louder ways.
Over the past few years American rapper and record producer
Tyler, the Creator has amassed a killer collection of vintage Cartier
timepieces – wrist candy we’re only aware of because hawk-eyes
dutifully covered it on social media. More often than not, Tyler’s
hottest pieces were shopped from the “ladies” category – kick-
starting a trend towards genderless watches. Of course, women
have been wearing men’s watches for decades, but Tyler rep-
resents a fashion-forward approach to watch collecting that’s
spreading like wildfire in influential circles. He picks out watches
like an accessory – considered with the same regard as a Goyard
wallet or a Globe-Trotter suitcase. In an industry hyper-focused
on the wrist, Tyler helped zoom out and reframe watches as an
extension of personal style. In a similar vein, comedian and entre-
preneur Kareem Rahma bought a vintage steel midsize Cartier
“A phenomenon that was
Santos because “Jerry Seinfeld and Lou Reed are two of my idols. unthinkable 10 or 20 years ago
I wanted it because they rocked it.”
Reference is essential to the watch world – but it’s no longer is that people can reach out to
just James Bond, Paul Newman, and hired talent conveying an
image – it’s people who may have always worn watches, but have
a CEO and get a response.”
been historically marginalised from the community and left out A younger-leaning, more representative group of people
of the narrative. Even watch forums, although moderated, were getting into the space simply fosters more creativity – even
not the friendliest place for women or people of colour – or, really, beyond the bounds of the Swiss marquee brands. Thai designer
anyone who didn’t fit the traditional mould. Patcharavipa Bodiratnangkura, who rose to niche fame within
the watch and jewellery community when Rihanna was spotted
ROBERT-JAN BROER, FOUNDER AND EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF THE wearing her hand-altered Rolex King Midas earlier this year,
popular watch site Fratello Watches, states that there is now a appreciates this wave of openness. “The new generation really
direct correlation between watchmaker and consumer thanks to excites me to continue to explore watches as a form of art,” says
social media platforms. “An interesting phenomenon that was Bodiratnangkura, positioning the practice of customisation as
unthinkable 10 or 20 years ago is that today people can reach out augmenting, rather than detracting from the original timepiece.
to the CEO of a watch company using Instagram or by DM, ask “They are much more open to investing in watches for their artistic
a question, and get a response,” says Mr Broer. “Before social designs, rather than just for their time-keeping functionality.”
media, there was no way a customer had access to the big boss Social media doesn’t just nurture the relationship between
in such an easy way.” brand or designer and fan, but also the relationship between client
Sliding into your favourite watch CEO’s DMs may result in a and watch dealer. Buying a luxury timepiece online can be a chaotic
response... or even impact product creation. Last year, Swiss experience – google “Rolex Datejust” and thousands of results
watchmaker Girard-Perregaux posted a photo on Instagram of a will pop up, inspiring an anxiety attack for a novice consumer.
digital watch called the Casquette. The watch, which had been But professional dealers have taken to Instagram to share their
discontinued following its debut in 1976, unearthed an outpouring wares, along with thoughtful captions and custom imagery, using
of praise and starry-eyed emojis. The femme, funky, almost sleazy the “story” and direct messaging features to spark conversation
’70s-era style has been back in fashion for quite some time now, Top left: This Patek with potential buyers. Of course, there are grey market sharks
and the Casquette scratched the itch for the watch heads. The con- Philippe Nautilus swimming about in the aether and scams aplenty, but certain
fetched £5 million at
tagious excitement for the vintage piece resulted in a one-of-one auction last year. dealers have emerged as benevolent sources towards making your
edition for a charity auction and, eventually, an official re-release. Top right: Paul vintage and pre-owned watch dreams come true. Alan Bedwell,
Newman’s Rolex
And now, Girard-Perregaux, which just celebrated its 231st anni- Daytona went for
aka @foundwell, whose clients range from private collectors to
versary, continues to look to Instagram to inform product design. £16 million. Rihanna to Harrods, is one of the best. “Instagram has evolved

6 0 G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3
Embrace performance with the iconic Newport collection,
inspired by yachting spirit.
Travel through time with elegance, power and precision.

Available at exclusive retailers around the country

O N T H E G R A M

into an important, global tool for sharing knowledge, selling Right: Lee Candela’s
@brodinkee Instagram
and for creating a more personal relationship with each client,” account breaches
he says. When you buy a watch from someone such as Bedwell, the watch world’s
“stoic” landscape.
you’re buying from a human being who provides a personalised
Below: Tyler,
touch and is at the ready to answer questions – which is espe- the Creator
cially important for vintage watches, a particularly quirky and high experimentation
with “ladies” watches,
maintenance category. sparked demand
“Before Instagram, dealers only had platforms such as eBay for genderless
timepieces.
and Chrono24 or their own websites, but these outlets are all very
transactional,” says luxury watch dealer Zoe Abelson. In the past
year, Abelson peeled off from her corporate job at an authorised
dealer and founded her own business, Graal (which, according to
the New York Times, grossed £4 million in sales during its first six
months). “Instagram allows for a great mix of fun and business,”
she adds. Yes, watches are serious in that many of them cost the
equivalent of many people’s annual salary, but ultimately, how

“TikTok is a powerful vehicle for serious can this be? We’re talking about luxury items that are
deeply desired but not exactly needed.
the next generation involved in This is where accounts such as @brodinkee – whose name is a
collecting. Kids can get bite- satirical play on Hodinkee – come in. Yes, even horology is not safe
from memes. It’s the brainchild of Lee Candela, whose content
sized information with ease.” comes from years of experience and who has found a footing in
the watch world that didn’t always feel like home, despite his
relentless enthusiasm. Cracking jokes, often at his own expense,
has been a source of happiness and a way to level with what can
be a very uptight watch industry.
“Stoic is a very appropriate word for the way that the landscape
can feel in the watch industry,” says Candela. “It’s not particularly

P H OTO G R A P H S , O P E N I N G S P R E A D, A L L @ D I M E P I E C E .C O, OT H E R PA G E S , @ B R O D I N K E E , G E T T Y, G U C C I / M A RT I N PA R R , P H I L L I P S AU CT I O N S , R O L E X .
cold or harsh, but it can definitely feel lonely if you’re experiencing
it solo. I’ve always strived to make others feel included and give
a sense of belonging to the members of this niche community.”

THOUGH THE AVERAGE GEN Z INDIVIDUAL DOES NOT HAVE

the money to purchase a luxury watch, according to a 2021
Bloomberg report, the segment commands a total of £320 billion
in disposable income. And where is this monied demographic
getting their information? Social media, of course. Specifically,
TikTok, a platform that to date has been largely brushed aside (and
maybe even feared) by the industry.
Creative consultant and content creator Nolan White shares
videos with his 170,000+ followers on TikTok about fashion,
lifestyle, and watches. I discovered him through an educational
clip he created about the vintage, underrated Universal Genève
Polerouter and was instantly convinced of the platform’s potential
influence over a nascent watch consumer.
“TikTok is an incredibly powerful vehicle for getting the next
generation involved in the collecting community,” says White.
“Young kids are able to get bite-sized bits of valuable informa-
tion with ease.” Some of White’s best performing content is about
watches, garnering interest from both seasoned collectors and
younger newcomers. “Whether someone has the funds to buy their
dream watch right now or they’re establishing their aspirational
goal to own a certain piece down the line, TikTok has made it very
easy for people to find what they like and learn how to go about
procuring it.”
Critics of social media’s impact on the watch world will lament
a lack of focus, fact-checked information and a homogenisation of
tastes. This has, after all, been its impact on every other industry
that has opened Pandora’s box and embraced its mind-numbing
control. However flawed platforms may be, and whatever eventual
destruction they may lead to, social media remains productive
to an industry that progresses at a glacial pace. The boundless
creativity that has arisen in presentation and product, the wide
inclusion of dedicated enthusiasts, and the launch of a thousand
new collections is something to be celebrated. So for now, let’s
blissfully scroll... before it all goes to hell. l

B R Y N N W A L L N E R I S F O U N D E R A N D C R E AT I V E D I R E C T O R
O F D I M E P I E C E . C O , W H I C H I S D E D I C AT E D T O A L L T H I N G S
W O M E N A N D W AT C H E S .

6 2 G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3
 The relationship between
watches and motorsport
is more than just a Drive to
Survive PR stunt – and it’s just
as high octane as the sport, too.
B y A lfr e d To n g

6 4 G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3
R I C H A R D M I L L E X F O R M U L A 1

G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3 6 5
 “FUCK!” IS THE LAST WORD the commentator could be
heard saying before Romain Grosjean crashed his Haas
VF-20 into a steel bollard at 119 mph at the 2020 Bahrain
Grand Prix. Registering 67 G at the point of maximum impact,
the car split in two, causing the fuel tank to explode. “He was
in the flames for 27 seconds,” says Timothy Malachard, marketing
director of Richard Mille, over a Zoom call from the brand’s Paris
office. “Afterwards, I sent him a message just to say, ‘Look, I hope
you’re OK.’” But Grosjean, who could still see the skin bubbling
on his hands, wasn’t able to text back because every finger was
wrapped in bandages. Instead, he sent Malachard a voice note
along with a picture of the Richard Mille watch he was wearing in
the cockpit. “He said, ‘It’s really kind of you. I’m a bit burnt, but look
at how the watch survived 27 seconds in the flames.’”
The history of motorsport and watchmaking are intertwined like
two cogs in a chronograph. Fast cars and the maniacs who drive
them inspire watchmakers to ever-greater heights of mechanical
beauty and engineering innovation. Heuer (the TAG wasn’t added
until later) was one of the first big brands to get seriously involved in
motor racing in the ’30s – its dash-mounted rally timers eventually
migrated onto the wrists of drivers. Race chronographs with pared-
back, easily readable dials, such as the Carrera (named after the
deadly Carrera Panamericana race in Mexico) were popular with
drivers such as Pedro Rodríguez and Juan
Manuel Fangio during the ’50s and ’60s.
Another Heuer model, the Monaco, which
was famously rocked by Steve McQueen
in the movie Le Mans, further fortified the
brand’s racing credentials.
Rolex also got involved in racing in the
’30s, supplying the Rolex Oyster that Sir
Malcolm Campbell wore while driving the
Bluebird to break the land speed record
in 1935. Campbell went on to introduce
the watch to his racer friends and in
1963, Rolex gave birth to the Cosmograph
Daytona famously worn by another actor
who loved to race, Paul Newman. The ’60s was an era of great Opening spread:
Ferrari’s Charles
glamour and great danger, with daredevil racers risking everything
Leclerc at the 2022
on the track and living like there was no tomorrow off it. “This was Italian Grand Prix.
the golden age of motorsport and the backbone for everything we Clockwise from top:
Romain Grosjean’s car
do with F1 today,“ says Malachard. in flames at the 2020
Born in Draguignan in southeastern France, the teenage Bahrain Grand Prix;
Paul Newman at
Richard Mille used to get a train to Monaco for the Grand Prix the Kendall Cup
and sleep overnight by the track so he could carve out a good spot Nationals in 1982;
Pedro Rodríguez
to see his heroes Jackie Stewart, Jim Clark and Graham Hill whizz
shows off his new
by from a couple of metres away. “He told me he was actually track- Rolex at the Daytona
side when one of the Ferrari drivers, I think it was Lorenzo Bandini, Continental in 1963.

crashed his car and burst into flames. He saw one of the wheels
spinning right in front of him and thought about taking it home.”
In 2006, Felipe Massa was the first Formula 1 driver to wear
a Richard Mille watch while racing. The RM11 features plenty of
the signatures that have come to define Richard Mille’s way-out
futuristic aesthetic: ultra-lightweight titanium movements – in this
case a flyback chronograph with variable geometry motor – housed
inside a curved tonneau-shaped case made out of the brand’s
proprietary Carbon TPT, a substance that combines incredible
Fast cars, planes and a love of all things mechanical is what
inspired Mille, a former luxury industry executive, to found his
namesake brand in 2001 as a kind of present to himself when turning
the big five-oh. With a clear no-holds-barred, no-expense-spared
strategy, the company has since become one of the most suc-
cessful independent watch brands on the planet. “In Formula 1, it
costs what it costs to win,” says Malachard. “And that’s the same
approach we have. Richard has always said that a true luxury brand
does not cut corners or make any compromises.” Traditionally,
PHOTOGRAPHS, GETTY AND RICHARD MILLE.

strength and durability while remaining ridiculously light. When it
first crash-landed onto an unsuspecting watch world, it looked as
though it had been beamed in from another planet. In the process,
it helped create a whole new category of ultra-technical watches
that retail at six figures.
“Our partnerships have always been about adding substance
to the products we develop in conjunction with drivers,” says
Malachard. “So when we partnered with Felipe on the RM11, we
wanted him to wear the watch while racing. Richard says that
we’re always prepared to go into battle and take risks. Most watch
brands would say no to a driver wearing a watch in a race but for
us, it’s amazing to have it returned to the factory and see how it
performs under pressure unscathed.”
in the watch industry, designers and craftsmen are given a brief
by the marketing department to create a watch that will retail at
a certain price point in order to satisfy a particular segment of
the market. Mille’s revolutionary approach is to make the watch
first without any regard for cost in the belief that there is always
a market for record-breaking innovation and brain-spinning tech-
nical complexity. For instance, at the launch of the world’s thinnest
watch this year, the RM UP-01 collaboration with Ferrari, which
costs a cool €1.75 million (£1.5 million), one of the brand’s sales
executives told me simply, ‘You cannot put a price on first.’”
Richard Mille’s debut collaboration with an automotive team
was in 2016, when the brand signed a 10-year deal with McLaren-
Honda. The result was the RM 50-03 Tourbillon Split Seconds

6 6 G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3

Chronograph Ultralight McLaren F1. “Our work with McLaren is
always a true collaboration between their engineers and designers
and ours,” says Malachard. “The difficulty is that we already use
a lot of the same materials that they do. When you look at the sus-
pension arms of a Formula 1 car, it’s a mix of carbon and titanium,
which is what we already use.”
In the same way race drivers chase down the fastest lap times,
Richard Mille is laser-focused on claiming technical records.
“We’re always saying to them, ‘If you have any new materials, we
want to see if we can use them in our watches.’” In the case of the
RM 50-03 from 2017, a brand new substance called Graphene,
first used in McLaren car parts, enabled the team to create
the world’s lightest tourbillon – weighing just under 40 grams.
Graphene, which was first isolated in 2010 by two researchers
at the University of Manchester, is a molecular structure of crazy
lightness and strength, and totally new to watchmaking. “There’s
such a perfect match between Formula 1 technology and what we
do at Richard Mille. That’s what sets us apart from other brands.”
More recently, the RM 40-01 self-winding tourbillon blends the
McLaren Speedtail Hyper GT’s teardrop shape with Richard Mille’s
signature tonneau case to house another hyper-complex move-
ment. Constructing the 603-part movement, including a curved
crystal of just 0.2 mm in thickness, requires 8,600 hours of work.
Usually this mind-boggling complexity and fine craftsmanship
means that such a watch has to be handled with great care, yet
the RM 40-01 is water resistant at up to 50 metres. At £900,000,
the price not only reflects the materials and craftsmanship used
but also a rigorous testing process under extreme conditions in
which 35 to 40 per cent of the assembled watches are rejected.
“When we do a collaboration it’s a fine line,” explains Malachard.
“Firstly, it has to be instantaneously recognisable as a Richard
Mille watch and then it has to have that McLaren feel to it, hence
the teardrop shape. We never just put the name of the McLaren
brand on a watch and that’s it. It goes so much deeper than that.”
In the summer of this year, the brand unveiled the RM UP-01, the
fruit of its first collaboration with Ferrari, to literally audible gasps
from the crowd of journalists and buyers. The handbrake turn
of a watch – which measures just 1.75 mm – has taken the Bauhaus
maxim of “less is more” into the outer, stratospheric limits of what’s
possible in the manufacture of wristwatches. It also took the title
of world’s thinnest watch from Bulgari’s 1.8 mm Octo Finissimo
Ultra. “Lots of people were just like, ‘How on Earth did you do
that?’” says Malachard.
Richard Mille watches, while surprisingly easy to wear due to
the carefully considered curve of the tonneau case, are usually
pretty chunky and substantial, like a spare part for a Transformer.
R I C H A R D M I L L E X F O R M U L A 1
“With a movement or complication, we’re usually layering parts
RM 50-03 on top of one another,” says Malachard, explaining the watch’s
unusually awkward shape. “What we did with this watch was to
take the parts and flatten them out by putting them side by side.
You’ve got 210 components in a case that is 1.75 mm thick. The
form was dictated by the function.”
The incredibly fine movement developed in conjunction with
Audemars Piguet has been totally integrated into its Grade 5 tita-
nium case. All kinds of insanely complex watchmaking wizardry
has gone into creating the thinnest watch in the world, including
a patented ultra-flat escapement. Yet despite an almost-nothing
profile, the watch is robust enough to be water resistant up to 10
metres, withstand accelerations of over 5,000 G (handy for any
turbulence on the private jet), and has a power reserve of 45 hours.
It’s as though it has been conceived as an everyday beater for the
billionaire who lives life in reckless opulence.
Lots of questions were asked about Ferrari’s actual involvement
in the design of the piece: that involvement was limited to the
groove inserts for the strap, dial designs, and graphic flourishes
on the face of the watch. “The actual format of the watch being as
thin as it is, there’s not so much that could actually change phys-
ically,” says Malachard, who insists that while the RM UP-01 was
already in development by the time the two brands were working
together, future collaborations will be built
from scratch, similarly to how the brand
“In Formula 1, works with McLaren. “So when I say to the
it costs what it factory, ‘Guys, we’re going to Ferrari and
we’re gonna spend a day there to speak to
costs to win. the designers,’” says Malachard, “for them
And Richard it’s like, ‘Wow, we’re not just going to Ferrari,
we’re going to learn from this. We’re going
has always to partake in lots of opportunities for new
materials and talk about design features
said that a true on their latest cars.’ And that’s what’s really
luxury brand exciting in this partnership. The idea is to
work with Ferrari designers and engineers,
does not cut who make some of the most beautiful cars
corners.” in the world, and for our engineers and
designers to work closely with theirs to
create exciting new products.”
So how does this most forward-looking
of watch brands see the future of motor-
sport – particularly in an era that demands
not just innovation, but a whole new set of
priorities? Malachard cites environmen-
tal concerns as the number-one source
of innovation for motorsport, especially
when it comes to the phenomenal waste
involved in building the infrastructure for
races and also the vehicles themselves,
which are increasingly powered by a V6
power unit with a turbo charge and bat-
tery pack. “I think that car manufacturers
like Mercedes and Ferrari will use that
Above: RM UP-01 technology to adapt in their road cars,”
Below: RM 40-01 says Malachard. “Formula 1 racing has to
stay at the forefront of the future. Will it
be fully electric in 10 years time? Nobody
could say at this stage. Will it be powered
by synthetic fuels? It probably will. Will it be
hydrogen powered? Who knows? But what
we like is being associated with a sport
which is constantly evolving, and always
pushing the limits.”
What this means for the future of
watches remains highly secretive. But this
much is destined: Richard Mille’s future
will be fast, complex – and expensive. l
ALFRED TONG IS A GQ CONTRIBUTOR.
G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3 6 7
W A T C H G U I D E
↙HERMÈS ARCEAU LE TEMPS VOYAGEUR
The asymmetrically lugged Arceau has been adapted
in many ways since it appeared in 1978 – but this time-
travel version is one of the best iterations. The luxury
house teamed with Jean-François Mojon to create this
piece – press a button and the dial jumps from one time
zone to another. Local time is displayed through an
aperture at 12 o’clock. £17,550. hermes.com

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←GERALD
CHARLES
MAESTRO 8.0
SQUELETTE
The Gerald Charles dial
name was founded by the
late and legendary watch
designer Gerald (Charles)
Genta, but is now run
by youthful CEO Federico
Ziviani. Contemporary
Gerald Charles watches
retain Genta’s “Maestro”
case shape, with the
most complex piece to
date being the Squelette,
designed by Audemars
Piguet’s Octavio Garcia.
Just 100 of these will be
made per year. £49,880.
geraldcharles.com

6 8 G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3
 W A T C H G U I D E

STATEMENT PIECES
→BELL & ROSS BR-05 ↙A. LANGE & SÖHNE
When the BR-05 was 1815 RATTRAPANTE
unveiled in 2019 it was If there’s a six-figure lump
dissed by some as a poor of cash burning a hole in
man’s Patek Philippe your pocket, stop right
Nautilus – but it has gone on here: the new platinum
to carve its own furrow as a version of Lange’s split-
successful line that includes seconds chronograph is
automatic, chronograph, a horological artwork that
and GMT models. No one combines an understated
could accuse this latest, dial and an exquisitely
Artline, of lacking originality. decorated movement
Inspired by the streamliner with bridges and plates of
period of the ’30s, the case German silver. At a sensible
and bracelet are decorated 41.2 mm in diameter, the
with the “gadroon” pattern. only reason you’ll want to
£4,800. bellross.com take it off is to gaze at its
mechanism through the
transparent caseback.
£125,000 (estimate).
alange-soehne.com

↓THOMAS SABO ELEMENTS OF NATURE

As the name implies, German jewellery house Thomas
Sabo has set out to evoke the elements of nature in
this 42 mm watch that’s powered by a trusty Japanese
Miyota movement. Fire, water, air, and earth offer
the design cues, with a few signs of the zodiac and a
polished onyx crown tip thrown in for good measure.
£339. thomassabo.com

→CHOPARD L.U.C.
FULL STRIKE
SAPPHIRE
Chopard marked 25 years
of its L.U.C. manufacture
with three new watches,
the star of which is the Full
Strike Sapphire. Its case,
crown and dial are cut from
corundum crystal , giving
a 360-degree view of the
movement. The chiming
mechanism has a special
clutch that enables it to
sound the most energy-
sapping moment (12:59)
up to a dozen times on a
single winding. Just five
are out there. £405,000.
↑CHAUMET DANDY chopard.com ↓CHANEL J12
Chaumet might be known for its jewellery, but it has Ever wondered what the
been in the watch game for 240 years. In terms of significance of J12 is in
modern-day men’s watches the brand has cultivated the name of this ground-
but one model for decades, the cushion-cased Dandy, breaking watch designed
the shape of which is said to have been inspired by the by Chanel’s late artistic
140-carat Regent Diamond (on display in the Louvre). director Jacques Helleu?
The 38 mm model, with rich blue dial, is hard to beat The answer is boats –
for elegance. £6,240. chaumet.com Helleu took the name
from the 12-feet long
J-class America’s Cup
racing yachts of the ’30s.
The watch has often
been remade, but we
recommend the 38 mm or
↙GIRARD- 41 mm in black ceramic –
PERREGAUX closest to Helleu’s original.
LAUREATO GREEN From £5,700.
The Laureato luxury chanel.com
sports watch deserves to
be bracketed with those
other ’70s classics – AP’s
Royal Oak and Patek’s
Nautilus – but is often
overlooked. This latest
42 mm version should
attract ample attention:
with the distinctive
shape, polished and satin
finishes, and those baton
indexes on a lacquered
green dial. £11,100.
IF THE PLAN girard-perregaux.com

IS TO INITIATE
CONVERSATION ↗RESSENCE TYPE 8 COBALT BLUE
Ressence is the go-to name for anyone bored with
ABOUT WATCH conventional watch design. The Feather Light 8C model
FLEXES, START is the Belgian brand’s most affordable offering – despite
its beautifully crafted titanium case and cobalt-blue dial.
WITH THESE. With its UFO-style domed body it’s no less eye-catching
than pricier models, and there’s also that mad dial that
orbits the perimeter of the case. Clockwork, but not as we
know it. £12,000. ressencewatches.com
 ←ORIS COULSON
Now is the time to
bag yourself a red hot
Oris. The Swiss maker
of mechanical-only
watches has teamed up
with Canada’s Coulson
Aviation, the world’s
leading aerial firefighting
company, to create
this version of its Big
Crown ProPilot with a
fiery orange dial and
a 3-D-printed carbon
fibre case topped with
a DLC-coated titanium
bezel. Weighing just 65g,
the watch is powered
by the brand’s five-day
automatic movement
and will be made in just
1,000 examples.
£3,400. oris.ch
↓RAYMOND WEIL FREELANCER BI-COMPAX
It’s not unusual for Swiss brands to up their cachet by
commissioning bespoke motorcycles for display use.
Raymond Weil is the latest to do so, and details from the
black and bronze Triumph Bonneville it ordered from
Geneva custom house Meister Engineering have inspired
this new chronograph. The watch can be had in full bronze
or a combination of bronze and titanium, each paired with
a black dial in smoke-effect finish. Just 300 of these will
be available. £3,495. raymond-weil.co.uk
LEGIBILITY
EQUALS
TELLING THE
TIME QUICKER,
THOUGH YOU
DON’T NEED
A PILOT’S
LICENCE
FOR THAT.

TOP GUNS
↙CITIZEN
→AVI-8 HAWKER SKYHAWK A-T
HURRICANE If you don’t mind having
“CLOWES” your mind boggled every
Avi-8’s new Hawker Hurricane time you look at your
model pays tribute to Battle watch, the Skyhawk A-T
of Britain pilot Arthur “Taffy” pilot piece honouring
Clowes, who scored a dozen the RAF’s Red Arrows
Second World War kills with the display team could
RAF’s Cambridgeshire-based be for you. Radio
number one squadron. All the synchronisation means
classic pilot watch features are perfect timekeeping,
there (onion crown, 46 mm while those subdials,
case, “Type B” Flieger markings), scales, and screens are
but Avi-8 has also marked it aided by a 1/100-second
with Clowes’s aircraft code chronograph, time in 43
at six o’clock. From £295. cities, a calendar, alarms,
avi-8.co.uk and timer. And “eco-drive”
technology means it never
needs a battery. £699. At
ernestjones.co.uk
↓BLANCPAIN
AIR COMMAND
It’s common knowledge that
Blancpain’s 50 Fathoms
dive watch was made for
the French navy – but who
knew they also had a crack
at producing one for the
US Air Force? Cue the Air
Command, a mere dozen
or so prototypes of which
were made in the late ’50s.
Three years ago Blancpain
re-created it in a period-
correct 42.5 mm size and
now the model has a new,
36.2 mm case – that’s more
authentically vintage
than its bigger brother.
From £15,600.
blancpain.com

↑ROTARY GS05450/05
Rotary seldom fails to impress in the value-for-money
stakes and this new 40 mm chronograph is no
exception. How it makes such a complex and well-
finished case with 100 metre water resistance at this
price is beyond our ken – especially when it’s topped
with a sapphire crystal, contains a decent quality dial
with applied (not printed) hour markers, and hangs on
a custom-made integrated leather strap. Purists might
eschew it for its quartz movement. But as a daily wear?
Hard to beat. £259. rotarywatches.com
7 0 G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3
↑BOSS ONE
Were the people at Boss more imaginative in naming
their watches, this mean and moody number might
well be dubbed “Triple Black” rather than “One”
thanks to its black dial, black case, and black
bracelet. At 44 mm in diameter and weighing more
than a generously trimmed quarter-pound burger, the
One is certainly not for the weak of wrist – but the use
of a quartz movement means the price is light (and you
get a two-year guarantee). £399. hugoboss.com
 W A T C H G U I D E

↖↓IWC BIG PILOT’S WATCH TOP GUN EDITION

MOJAVE DESERT AND LAKE TAHOE
IWC has gone potty for ceramic this season, introducing five
new designs in a range created in partnership with the US
Navy’s strike fighter tactics instructor programme – better
known (thanks to Tom Cruise) as Topgun. As well as a 41 mm
piece in black ceratanium, our favourites are the 46 mm beige
case and dial Mojave Desert above, inspired by the pilots’ flight
suits, and the one we’re really gunning for, the white-cased
44.5 mm effort below with matching rubber strap, a colour
scheme based on the winter landscape of the Lake Tahoe
training area. From £9,450. iwc.com

G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3 7 1
W A T C H G U I D E

↗TAG HEUER
CONNECTED
CALIBRE E4
Seven years on from
the New York launch of
its original Connected
watch, TAG Heuer’s
latest Calibre E4
version is, well, smarter
than anyone could
have imagined back
in 2015. Not only do
the myriad available
face displays make it
look like an analogue
watch, the Connected’s
functionality enables
it to be used for
everything from tracking
performance in your fave
sport (both in and out of
the water) to serving as
a mobile gallery for that
budding NFT collection
you’re suddenly obsessed
with. The battery lasts all
day, too. From £1,500.
tagheuer.com

7 2 G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3
 →TIMEX T80 ↓BRISTON STREAMLINER
Horological milestones don’t ADVENTURE SWING ACETATE BLUE
usually come cheap – but that’s not Correct us if we’re wrong (and we’re sure
the case with the landmark T80 you will) but French brand Briston seems to
LCD from Timex. Launched in the be the only significant watchmaker to offer
late ’70s, it went on to become a cases made from acetate, the material most
#firstwatch for millions around the often associated with frames of spectacles.
world and, after its revival in 2019, is This version of the Streamliner Adventure
once again selling by the bucketload digi-analogue model gets a 44 mm blue case
as the brand releases variations and a jazzy pop-art dial with a Super-LumiNova
on the theme. This classic has got coating that helps it to carry on standing out
1980s written all over it, and is after dark. £345. briston-watches.com
probably less expensive now than it
was then. £49.99. timex.co.uk
THE SMART ONES

↑HAMILTON AMERICAN
CLASSIC PSR
When the Hamilton Pulsar was
launched in 1972 as the world’s
first quartz-digital wristwatch,
it cost $2,100 – enough to buy 10
Rolex Submariners. Fortunately
deflation has taken its toll on
the watch, which Hamilton now
calls the American Classic PSR
and you can take your wrist back
to the future for a fraction of the
original price. The re-issue is
↙GOOGLE PIXEL better made and has a clearer
It may have been a long time hybrid LED/OLED display. What’s
coming, but Google’s very own that about the good old days?
smartwatch has finally arrived. £675. hamiltonwatch.com
Smooth, round, and tactile,
it features a touch-sensitive
display as well as a crown that
can be used both for scrolling
and to launch features. The
high-res screen is as crisp as
it gets, and because Google
owns Fitbit you get the latter’s
fitness tracker functions, too.
A flush-fit button can be
pressed to summon the voice-
activated Google assistant.
From £339. store.google.com
↑CASIO G-SHOCK GM-B2100
If you still think a G-Shock has to be
plastic, you haven’t seen the GM-B2100
– the first model in the digi-analogue
2100 line to wear a “full metal jacket”
thanks to its case, back, and bracelet
all being hewn from stainless steel.
The watch can be paired with an app,
offers 200 metre water resistance,
and is powered purely by light. Early
adopters include G-Shock ambassador
Steven Bartlett, the Dragon’s Den star
and multi-millionaire founder of social
media marketing agency Social Chain.
From £449 . g-shock.co.uk

↑APPLE WATCH ULTRA

↑GARMIN MARQ
A WATCH COLLECTION IS Many consider Garmin’s Marq series to be the finest
smartwatch on the market. In terms of functionality
INCOMPLETE WITHOUT and finish, each model looks and feels super-
A DIGITAL SOMETHING premium, thanks to the use of luxe materials such
as titanium and sapphire crystal. Since Garmin was
TICKING IN YOUR BOX. a satellite navigation pioneer, the GPS functionality
is superb. It has great battery life, too (up to 12 days).
Choose from Driver, Aviation, Captain, Commander,
Golfer, and Athlete models. £1,600. garmin.com
Apple’s latest aims to compete with the toughest
sports-orientated wristwear from specialist
manufacturers such as Garmin. Measuring a mighty
49 mm, the Ultra is said to be “the most rugged, durable,
and extreme” Apple Watch to date, thanks in part to
a touchscreen of sapphire crystal – which the test-
to-destruction YouTubers at TechRax only managed to
break after repeatedly hitting with a hammer. Oh,
to be a social media influencer. £849. apple.com
G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3 7 3
 ←VERTEX M60 AQUALION ↓BAMFORD LONDON X SECONDE
Six years after reviving the Vertex dial name SECONDE “BAD FORM”
founded by his grandfather, Don Cochrane has As well as being the official customising
launched the brand’s first dive watch – and to house for LVMH-owned brands Zenith,
say it’s up to spec is an understatement. It’s an TAG Heuer, and Bulgari, George Bamford’s
absolute banger. Though officially rated to a depth Bamford Watch Department has blossomed
of 600 metres, the AquaLion has been tested to 750 into a dial name in its own right – and there
metres in accordance with professional dive watch is no shortage of collaborators who want to
standards. It features dial and bezel markings made join in the fun. The latest case of “X” marking
from ultimate “X1 Grade” Super-Luminova, has a the spot is seen in BWD’s partnership with
screw-down crown, and a unidirectional ceramic Parisian watch pimper Seconde Seconde,
bezel. From £2,850. vertex-watches.com who has enhanced the centre of the Bamford
GMT with the addition of a tiny, stylised hand
to create the “Bad Form” special edition.
£1,600. bamfordlondon.com

BRITISH-BORN
↓MARLOE WATCH
COMPANY PACIFIC 76
Since launching in 2015 as
a maker of British-designed
watches powered by Chinese
movements, Marloe has been
getting better and better.
The high quality of fit and
finish belies the price tags. ↖CHRISTOPHER WARD C60 TRIDENT PRO 300
This range of four watches One of Christopher Ward’s signature models has long been
honours the age of jet travel, the Trident Pro 600, a professional dive watch that over the
the Pacific 76 nodding to years has been incrementally improved to create the current
Concorde with its blue “MK3” version. The Trident Pro 300 is a slimmer, lighter, daily-
dial, white indexes and wear version of the 600 that, with a choice of 38 mm, 40 mm,
red seconds hand. £975. and 42 mm case sizes and four dial colours, is intended to bring
marloewatchcompany.com Trident style up to the surface and on to the street. From £695.
christopherward.com

↑ZERO WEST DB-2

LANCASTER PROOF THAT
→WILLIAM WOOD FEARLESS
Jonny Garrett founded this brand in 2016,
The fact that Zero West is based
in a Hampshire boathouse where
US BRITS ARE
naming it after his grandfather – a Newcastle bodywork for Vanwall racing cars EXPERTS IN
firefighter who inspired the collection. A
textured charcoal dial and a strap made of
and fuselages for Spitfires were
once made must figure in the MORE THAN
reclaimed firehose make the Fearless stand brand’s enthusiasm for producing JUST QUEUING
watches linked to cars and aviation.
AND TALKING
out. Brass from a fireman’s helmet is set into
the winding crown and it has a Seiko movement. The new DB-1 (three hand) and
Red, yellow, or orange straps are available. £895.
williamwoodwatches.com
DB-2 (chronograph) Lancaster
models pay tribute to the crews of
ABOUT THE
the celebrated 1943 Dambusters WEATHER.
raid, each containing a metal disc
salvaged from Dambuster ED825.
From £3,500. zerowest.watch
7 4 G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3
 W A T C H G U I D E

↖BREMONT AUDLEY
Bremont’s Audley brings the
resolutely British brand that bit
closer to its ambition of producing an
entire watch in-house at its high-tech
Henley-on-Thames facility. The 40
mm dress model has a case made at
the works and containing a version
of the ENG300 automatic movement
that debuted last year in the limited
edition Longitude watch. The in-house
“engines”, which are certified for
accuracy using Bremont’s H1 timing
tests, are said to be the first such
mechanisms to have been produced
to scale in the UK since the ’70s.
£14,995. bremont.com

↖FEARS BRUNSWICK
40 FLAMINGO
Founded in Bristol in 1846,
Fears lays claim to being
Britain’s oldest watchmaker.
There was a 50-year hiatus
in production before 2016
when the donnish Nicholas
Bowman-Scargill revived
the business established by
his great-grandfather Edwin
Fear, but who’s counting?
“Elegantly understated”
is the Fears mantra, with
the signature Brunswick
now available in this 40 mm
cushion case, as well as in
original 38 mm form. Solid
backs come as standard, but
a sapphire crystal display
version can be specified at
extra cost. And who doesn’t
like a flamingo-pink dial?
£3,750. fearswatches.com

↗FARER DURHAM
Farer watches are all about adventure, and the Brit-based
brand likes nothing better than to honour intrepid explorers
with new models. Such is the situ with the distinctive, copper-
dialled Durham that pays tribute to the eccentric artist and
anthropologist Mary Edith Durham, who travelled throughout
the Balkans during the early 1900s, writing a definitive guide
called High Albania. Farer’s 38.5 mm cushion-cased Durham
has a three-part case housing a tried and tested hand-wound
Sellita movement, so it should be up to the most arduous of
treks. Even a trip to Durham. £895. farer.com

G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3 7 5
W A T C H G U I D E

→RICHARD MILLE
RM 72-01
The RM 72-01 Lifestyle
Chronograph is the first
Richard Mille watch
to use the brand’s own
in-house movement –
a flyback chronograph
comprising a unique
clutch system and an
anti-shock suspension
developed so sports
stars such as Bubba
Watson and Rafael
Nadal can wear theirs
while driving down the
fairway or smashing aces
respectively. We suspect
“Lifestyle” is meant to
suggest this is a watch for
everyday wear – if you’re
the kind of person who
can afford to live the
RM lifestyle, that is.
From around £175,000.
richardmille.com

7 6 G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3
 W A T C H G U I D E
←HARRY WINSTON
ZALIUM VARIATION
YELLOW ←JACOB & CO. ASTRONOMIA
The Project Z series SOLAR PLANETS JEWELRY
(“Z” meaning Zalium, an This cosmic flex from Jacob & Co. depicts
ultra- light, non-corrosive the solar system using gemstone spheres
but super-tough material) that rotate on a trio of arms – with Earth
culminates in the 10, which doubling as a tourbillon. A backdrop of
features a skeleton dial diamonds encircles a sapphire crystal
based around a lattice-work window where the madly complicated
design said to be inspired mechanism can be seen. Not for the shy.
by the Manhattan Bridge Or skint. £761,000. jacobandco.com
close to HW’s New York
HQ. The original run of
300 in blue is followed
by 100-piece editions
in funky orange and this
mellow yellow. £19,900.
harrywinston.com

↘H. MOSER & CIE. STREAMLINER

TOURBILLON VANTABLACK
H. Moser’s latest is a black and gold take on
its svelte Streamliner. Its 40 mm case and
200 gram, 18 ct bracelet surround the darkest
dial you’ll ever see: it’s coated in Vantablack,
which is said to absorb more than 99 per cent
of light. That mysterious façade hides Moser’s
superb HMC 804 twin-hairspring tourbillon
movement – complete with solid gold rotor,
naturally. £109,000. h-moser.com
BONKERS

↑BULOVA
LIMITED EDITION
“PARKING METER”
Bulova’s parking meter-
inspired “bullhead”
chronograph from 1973
has been, bizarrely,
reproduced in a 5,000-
piece limited edition.
Unlike the mechanical
original, this one gets a
quartz movement (and
costs around a tenth of
↗ROGER DUBUIS EXCALIBUR the price of a genuine
SPIDER HURACÁN vintage version). £449.
MONOBALANCIER bulova.com
The Roger Dubuis-Lamborghini
partnership has proven to be fruitful –
probably because neither brand makes
objects for shy, retiring types. They
cleverly incorporate materials and
features seen on real Lambos, down to
the use of paint, carbon fibre, and NAC
coating. £49,200. rogerdubuis.com

↑GREUBEL FORSEY
GMT BALANCIER
CONVEXE
London dealer Marcus
Margulies believes Greubel
THE Forsey makes the best
↖URWERK UR-100V
RIDICULOUS ULTRAVIOLET
watches in the world –
and the GMT Balancier
END OF THE Martin Frei, the artist
who co-founded Urwerk
Convexe speaks for itself.
Just 66 of these titanium-
HOROLOGICAL with Felix Baumgartner cased wonders will be
SPECTRUM (the watchmaker, not the
skydiver), once said that he
released, each featuring
the exquisitely crafted
IS ALSO ↑MB&F LM SPLIT ESCAPEMENT EVO came up with one of their trademark globe, which
MB&F introduced this watch to mark the 50th anniversary early concepts after “filling
THE MOST of the UAE – and was only available from their M.A.D. Gallery pages of sketchbooks in
rotates in real time and is
encircled by local and world
TECHNICALLY in Dubai. This new version is available more widely – but
only 25 of the ice blue-dialled, titanium-cased editions
what was virtually a semi-
hypnotic trance”. Whatever
time markings. £330,000.
greubelforsey.com
GIFTED. will be made. Despite the exotic appearance, it’s intended he was on, it’s still working
for daily wear and is even expected to be used by sporting – as proven by this purple-
types – hence the FlexRing shock-absorbing case and hued version of the classic.
eight metre water resistance. £80,680. mbandf.com £62,400. urwerk.com
G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3 7 7
W A T C H G U I D E
↓JUNGHANS 1972 COMPETITION

↘PIAGET POLO
Junghans was once the largest producer of clocks in
the world, churning out three million per year at its
WANT TO MAKE
GREEN DATE peak. Back in 1972, the German brand also became YOUR NEW
After lying dormant for
years, Piaget’s slim dress
one of the official timekeepers of the Munich Olympic
Games, for which it made a decidedly of-the-era INVESTMENT
watch was revived in 2016 bullhead chronograph – and to mark the 50th
anniversary of the occasion it has created an edition
STAND OUT?
in 42 mm cushion-cased
form – and it has never of 1,972 new ones that are dead ringers of the original. DIAL UP THE
looked as good as this
version, which exploits the
£2,390. junghans.de
PANTONE.
winning combo of 18 ct rose

PICK A COLOUR
gold and a deep-green dial
highlighted by the Polo’s
signature horizontal lines.
Buy it and wear it like the
carefree playboy that you
are, because unlike you it
will only get better with age.
£25,300. piaget.com

↑MAURICE LACROIX
AIKON #TIDE
The Aikon #tide is among a
slew of eco-friendly watches
to have washed up of late.
Made almost exclusively
from recycled plastic and
glass fibre dredged from
the oceans, it is supplied in
a recycled, reusable coffee
cup of the same colour and
material as the watch. The
project was carried out in
partnership with #tide,
a young company that
specialises in upcycling
↓ VAN CLEEF AND waste. Five unisex designs
ARPELS LADY are available, with five more
ARPELS PAPILLON for women, and three special
AUTOMATE editions. From £630.
This insane watch from mauricelacroix.com
Van Cleef and Arpels
is a slightly different
↑GLASHÜTTE ORIGINAL SEVENTIES proposition – but still
When Glashütte Original’s home town came under a colourful one. That
Communist rule in 1949, funky-coloured dials were butterfly sitting on a flower
off the agenda. Free from tyrannical constraints for 30 flaps its wings faster as the
years, the now Swatch Group-owned manufacturer wearer moves. A white-gold ↑TATEOSSIAN PEZIOSO TIGER EYE
happily celebrates the joyful times that passed it by – as case with diamond-set Hardstone watch dials were first championed by luxury
demonstrated by the fizzing hues of its latest Seventies bezel and crown, and dial brands such as Bulgari and Piaget in the ’70s – but the
Chronograph Panorama Date models. Just 100 adorned with diamonds, cufflink kings at Tateossian have brought the look
examples of this orange limited edition will be made. blue, mauve, and violet into the 21st century and made it affordable with the
From £12,000. glashuette-original.com sapphires, mother-of- Pezioso range. One version has a blue lapis lazuli dial,
pearl, and enamel keeps but this one, featuring mirror-polished tiger eye, makes
the price high. £320,000. more of a roar. The ultra-slim 38 mm case contains a
vancleefarpels.com Japanese quartz movement. £445. tateossian.com

↖SPINNAKER
HASS
Spinnaker’s locker of
affordable dive watches
↑GUCCI 25H IRIDESCENT is diverse and impressive
It’s 50 years since Gucci Time launched, but only – but this version of the
recently has the fashion house begun equipping Hass automatic with
its watches with high quality, Swiss mechanical “safety-yellow” dial would
movements. Inside the integrated case of the 25H lurks have to be a standout.
a micro rotor-equipped automatic of the type used by It is both highly legible
Girard-Perregaux and Ulysse Nardin, with the latest and of great quality,
versions of the 38 mm 25H being given a lift with white with a tried-and-tested
dials topped by iridescent crystals tinted in pink, blue, Seiko movement and a
or mint green. £1,250. gucci.com 300 metre depth rating
that marks it out as a
true, fit-for-purpose tool
watch. £375. spinnaker-
watches.co.uk
7 8 G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3
 W A T C H G U I D E

↘BREITLING SUPEROCEAN
“KELLY SLATER”
Breitling has been making the most
of its rich archives lately, not least in
calling on the retro looks of its Slow
Motion dive watch of the ’60s to
create an all-new, vintage-inspired
Superocean line. And who better to
put his name to a limited edition
of a watch built to laugh in the
face of water than the king of
Breitling’s blazing Surf Squad,
11-times World Surf League champ
Kelly Slater? Just 1,000 of the 42 mm,
orange-dial Slater specials (right) will
be made. £3,900. breitling.com

G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3 7 9
W A T C H G U I D E

↘PATEK PHILIPPE
GOLDEN ELLIPSE
5738P-001
It’s quite an event when
Patek Philippe unveils an
entirely new watch model, so
a few jaws dropped when the
wraps came off the £61,910
Reference 5326G earlier in
the year. The vintage-looking
piece has an unprecedented
combination of annual
calendar and travel time
complications, while the
superb “hobnailed” band
of its white-gold case and
the grainy texture of its dial
are inspired by old camera
bodies. It has all the hallmarks
of becoming a classic, but if
you’re genuinely in the market
for a classic Patek that you
can actually get hold of, the
Golden Ellipse is your best
bet and this blue-dialled
platinum version is an
understated dreamboat.
£46,190. patek.com

8 0 G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3
 ↓BAUME & MERCIER RIVIERA 10701
For unusual features with a historic name, try B&M’s
latest Riviera model. The 12-sided case and four top-
loading screws are quirky, but its stand out feature is the
transparent smoked-blue sapphire, mesh-pattern dial,
hiding a Baumatic movement offering five days of power
reserve, supreme accuracy, and extreme resistance to
magnetism. £3,600. baume-et-mercier.com

↑PARMIGIANI
FLEURIER TONDA
PF MICRO-ROTOR
↖CARTIER TANK
OG’S REVISITED
This is Parmigiani’s
SANTOS DUMONT hottest watch right now.
Aviation has evolved since As well as its subtle
Louis Cartier first gave details (guilloche-pattern
Brazilian pilot Alberto dial, fine delta hands,
Santos-Dumont the first delicately fluted bezel)
wrist-worn watch back it’s an engineering pièce
in 1904 – but the basic de résistance – that
design of its namesake has micro rotor is hewn from
prevailed. Options range solid platinum and set
from a quartz-powered within the movement
“economy model” in rather than on top. This
steel with leather strap to keeps the height down
the Santos Dumont Box to 3 mm, making for a
limited edition, a platinum- watch that measures just
cased mechanical version 7.8 mm thick. £18,250.
offered with a pair of parmigiani.com
white-gold cufflinks. From
£3,250. cartier.com

→HERBELIN CAP
CAMARAT SQUARE
French brand Michel Herbelin
(now just Herbelin) was
launched in 1965 and to date
has made and sold 10 million-
plus watches. The Cap Camarat
harks back to a ’70s original
named after the celebrated
cape near St-Tropez famed
for its lighthouse. A revised,
three-hand version introduced ↑FREDERIQUE
in 2018 was extremely popular, CONSTANT
prompting the arrival of this SLIMLINE
39 mm watch with deck-like MONOLITHIC
lined dial. £539. herbelin.com MANUFACTURE
By ditching 26 traditional
components for a
minuscule oscillator
and a pair of teeny
balance weights, the
→BREGUET CLASSIQUE CALENDAR Monolithic movement
Abraham-Louis Breguet has a rep as the OG watchmaker ticks 10-times faster than
of all, er, time. His original pocket watches fetch regular clockwork. Its
millions, but the Breguet signatures of exceptional mechanism goes back
quality and exquisite finishing prevail at a fraction of the and forth 288,000 times
price in its modern-day wrist watches. The Classique every hour, for impressive
Calendar features the off-centre dial, engine-turned accuracy. Once available
↘NOMOS with only blue or silver
decoration and distinctive hands for which the great
GLASHÜTTE METRO dials, the watch can now
ALB was known. From £35,400. breguet.com
Founded in Glashütte, East be had in this snow-fresh
Germany, just after the fall white version. £4,150.
of the Berlin wall, Nomos frederiqueconstant.com
(meaning “rule” in Greek)
released its first watches
in 1992. The four original
models have since grown
to 13, the highlight being
this prize-winning Metro
range. The Silvercut version
features a textured dial with
hours marked by simple
↑JAEGER-
black or red dots, while the
LECOULTRE
hand shape (intentionally)
REVERSO CLASSIC
looks like the Empire State
Created in 1931 by
Building. £2,120. nomos-
Cesar de Trey for the
glashuette.com
polo players of India,
STORIED the Reverso could claim
PASTS to have been the first
purpose-built sports
THROUGH watch. The case, which ↑LONGINES MASTER COLLECTION
flips to protect the dial 190TH ANNIVERSARY
MODERN and crystal, was designed Auction reports might be dominated by big-money
DESIGN DON’T by French engineer Rene-
Alfred Chauvot – whose
bids for Rolexes and Patek Philippes, but serious
collectors will tell you that some of the finest vintage
NECESSARILY speciality was dentistry watches were made by Longines. The brand frequently
HAVE TO COST equipment. The Reverso
Classic can be had in more
dips into its rich archives to create modern reissues,
but it has designed a completely new model to mark
THE EARTH. than 20 variations and in its 190th anniversary – albeit one replete with classic
steel or precious metal. details. The 40 mm case contains an automatic
From £4,400. jaeger- movement and can be had in steel or a 190-run each
lecoultre.com of rose or yellow gold. From £2,050. longines.com
G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3 8 1

↗HUBLOT SPIRIT
OF BIG BANG
MAGIC SAPPHIRE
Baller watches don’t
come much more
statement-making than
this 42 mm chunk of icy
lab-grown sapphire.
Just 200 will be made,
each with a structured
rubber strap. Behind the
polished and sandblasted
glass case lies the brand’s
HUB4700 skeletonised,
self-winding chronograph
movement with 50 hours
power reserve.
£75,000. hublot.com
→GRAFF
ENDANGERED
SPECIES
Graff has highlighted the
plight of five endangered
animal species in this
limited-edition line
of GyroGraff watches.
There’s an elephant, tiger,
panda, gorilla, or rhino
on its dial, all made using
a new technique called
“diamond marquetry”
that combines as many as
139 separate components
made of polished metal
and precious stones set on
a background of dark-blue
aventurine. Price upon
request. graff.com
8 2 G Q W A T C H
↘ULYSSE NARDIN FREAK X AVENTURINE
Two decades ago, the new Freak spurned regular features
such as hands and a winding crown for an unconventional
carousel movement. The entire mechanism rotates
beneath the crystal, marking the time by simply pointing
to it. The Freak is still appealingly weird – and with that
dial hewn from aventurine, this version is the most elegant
yet. Just 99 will be made. £31,570. ulysse-nardin.com
THAT’S BALLER
↗VACHERON CONSTANTIN TRADITIONNELLE
PERPETUAL CALENDAR
As the oldest watchmaker to have remained in continuous
production, VC has become the quiet king of design and finish,
as well a master of complications. The hand-wound movement
contains 324 parts and is finished to the Nth degree. The
case is carved from solid platinum. Catch one if you can.
Price upon request. vacheron-constantin.com
↙CARL F. BUCHERER MANERO FLYBACK
The kind of watch your grandad would have worn in his
←PATEK PHILIPPE surprisingly fly younger years. The superbly executed
NAUTILUS 5711 X vintage-style chronograph comes in 13 different
TIFFANY & CO. designs and in cases of steel or gold, all containing the
Filthy rich? Horologically automatic flyback chronograph movement that can be
well connected? On trend? seen in all its glory through the sapphire crystal back.
This special-edition From £5,300. carl-f-bucherer.com
Nautilus with Tiffany-blue
dial has it all. Though it
retailed at £46,675, the
fact that only 170 were
made sent prices into
orbit, and number one
of the series was bid for
$6.5 million at Phillips
(although the bidder failed
to pay, leaving the watch
to be bought for a reported
$6.2 million). £46,675.
tiffany.co.uk
↑PANERAI
LUMINOR BITEMPO
The Luminor BiTempo uses
an additional hour hand
with a cerulean-blue arrow
tip to indicate a second
time zone. A smaller version
of the same keeps track of
the 72-hour power reserve,
with low-light visibility
being taken care of by the
maker’s classic “sandwich” WHAT CONOR
dial arrangement whereby
lume shines through the
McGREGOR’S
cut-outs. Choose from WISHLIST LOOKS
↗BULGARI OCTO FINISSIMO GOLD
LIKE, BECAUSE HE
sunray blue or matt black,
Bulgari chief designer Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani each with a matching
has put the Roman jeweller on the map with his record- alligator leather strap.
£8,800. panerai.com
KNOWS HIS STUFF
breaking iterations of the Octo Finissimo. The latest
variations mark the Octo’s 10th anniversary with pink- ABOUT WATCHES.
and yellow-gold versions of the automatic model, with
matching bracelets and dials in chocolate lacquer.
From £37,000. bulgari.com
2 0 2 3
 W A T C H G U I D E

↖ROLEX DATEJUST
The no-nonsense Rolex
Datejust has been around
since the end of the
Second World War and
has been made and sold
in the many millions – but
still makes a statement
like few others. You’ll
never tire of seeing that
fluted bezel and cyclops
date magnifier, and the
hip chronometer-certified
movement and Oyster
case are more than up to
the rigours of daily wear.
Interesting Datejust fact:
2022 marked 75 years
since brand founder Hans
Wilsdorf presented Sir
Winston Churchill with the
100,000th Rolex made. It
was a Datejust. £11,400.
rolex.com

G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3 8 3
W A T C H G U I D E

↑AUDEMARS PIGUET ROYAL OAK

PERPETUAL CALENDAR
It might be 50 years old, but the fact that the Royal
Oak remains one of the hottest watches on the market
confirms the truism that good design never goes
out of style. Most first-time buyers covet the basic
three-hander that’s the spit of Gérald Genta’s original
– but many hardened Oak collectors now judge this
perpetual calendar model in full blue ceramic to be
among the most covetable versions of the model ever
made. Ed Sheeran agrees, snapping one up instantly.
Around £125,000. audemarspiguet.com

8 4 G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3
 W A T C H G U I D E
↘MONTBLANC 1858 ICED SEA
Previous Montblanc adventure watches have been inspired by land
travel – but now the brand descends into the depths of the oceans ↙OMEGA
with its first diver, the 1858 Iced Sea. It takes its name from the Mer de X SWATCH
Glace, the largest glacier on Mont Blanc, which inspired the textured MOONSWATCH
dial pattern applied using an ancestral technique, gratté boisé (which MISSION TO
seems to mean wood shaving). It’s available in the same three colours NEPTUNE
as the dial – black, blue, or green. £2,785. montblanc.com The freshly released
MoonSwatch (a playful
bio-ceramic homage to
the Omega Speedmaster)
has been attracting bids
of more than £3,000 on
eBay. It’s still hard to find
a MoonSwatch in store,
but Swatch promises it
is working hard to churn
out the 11 designs in
↑VICTORINOX sufficient numbers and
I.N.O.X. CARBON satisfy global demand.
The original stainless- £218. swatch.com
steel I.N.O.X. can
withstand a 10 metre
fall onto concrete, attack
by sulphuric acid, and
temperatures from
-57C to 71C. This carbon
HYPE IS REAL

version is said to be
tougher. It’s fitted with an
automatic movement, a
rugged rubber strap, and
comes with a Spartan
knife in a matching finish.
£820. victorinox.com

→GRAND SEIKO EVOLUTION 9 GMT

Grand Seiko launched its Evolution 9 collection in
2021 to mark 60 years since its first high-end watches
were made. Aimed at younger buyers, they feature
more robust bracelets, and bolder hands and indexes.
The original textured-dial White Birch three-handers
have since been joined by dive, chronograph, and GMT
models. The latter features a titanium case and bracelet
and black or silver dials. £7,290. grand-seiko.com

←LOUIS VUITTON
TAMBOUR DAMIER
GRAPHITE RACE
Measuring 46 mm in diameter
(and deliciously deep in the
↓ZENITH DEFY SKYLINE Tambour tradition), this watch
Anyone dreaming of a great- has a dial decorated with
looking integrated bracelet the black and grey pattern
watch with a retro vibe, look found on LV’s Damier canvas,
to the Skyline. It’s rugged yet over the top of which is a “V”
elegant, bristles with nice shape in viper green – a colour
design features (check out the replicated around the crown
perforated dial), and offers and on the raised signature
the added appeal of a subdial stamped on the soft rubber
on which a hand rotates 360 strap. £5,940.
degrees every 10 seconds. The louisvuitton.com
automatic three-hander is
powered by the base of Zenith’s
revered tenth-of-a-second El ↑TISSOT PRX POWERMATIC 80
Primero chronograph movement. Fancy one of the ’70s watch world’s design icons but
£7,100. zenith-watches.com don’t want to pay Nautilus/Royal Oak/222 money?
Check out Tissot’s Powermatic 80. Based on a
model from 1978, it has all the features of its rivals
(integrated bracelet, textured dial, unconventional
case shape), but costs a fraction of the price. Plus, its
Powermatic 80 automatic movement lasts 80 hours
without winding. £535. tissotwatches.com

←MONDAINE EVO2
Mondaine is the official
timekeeper of the
punctual Schweizerische
Bundesbahnen – the
Swiss federal railway.
Since shrinking its
platform clocks down
AND WARRANTED. to wrist size in 1986, the
THESE ARE SOME ↗UNIFORM WARES M42 PRECIDRIVE
watch line has grown
faster than a runaway loco.
OF THE MOST Uniform Wares has left its dials unnamed since This latest addition to the
creating its first watch in 2009, allowing its
TALKED-ABOUT design and functionality to shine, with the M42
Evo2 line-up gets a 43 mm
steel case, black dial, and
WATCHES OF our new fave. The looks you can see for yourself;
the Swiss-made PreciDrive movement you can’t.
vegan leather strap. £269.
mondaine.com
THE YEAR. But it’s said to be the most accurate quartz
mechanism, losing or gaining no more than 10
seconds a year. That’s 0.02 of a second per day...
Good enough? From £650. uniformwares.com
 W A T C H G U I D E
↓SKAGEN GRENEN SOLAR
Scandinavians have always been good at being clean
and green, so it’s no surprise that Danish watchmaker
Skagen has come up with this eco watch. The Grenen,
named after a sandbar in Jutland, features a strap and
case made from at least 50 per cent recycled steel and
is powered by solar. Next year, the brand has pledged
to introduce a model made entirely from recycled
materials and says all its traditional watches will be
sustainable by 2025. £189. skagen.com

↑BALL WATCH
↑ORIENT NEO CO. ENGINEER III
CLASSIC SPORTS MARVELIGHT
Introducing the retro-fab Ball Watch Co.’s Engineer III
products of 72-year-old Marvelight stands out from
Japanese dial name Orient the crowd by dint of its robust
(wholly owned by Epson, build and the choice of a range
which is part of Seiko). The of sunray dials in funky colours
Neo Classic Sports has a such as green, red, and ice blue.
’70s-style block-pattern dial And, as with all Ball watches,

EVERYDAYER
dripping in lume, and features the Marvelight has a secret
a bizarre yet appealing bezel that’s only revealed after dark
with teeth on the inside in the form of 14 tiny tubes
edge. Add in a good-quality containing H3 (tritium) gas that
automatic movement, a causes the hands and indexes
screw-down caseback, and to glow in the gloom. £1,930.
20-bar water resistance ballwatch.ch
and… hang on. Surely there’s
a zero missing? £375.
orient-watch.com
→CERTINA DS+
The concept of the “watch
wardrobe” is taken to a new
→INSCRIPTION THREE-HAND DATE level with the DS+, which is
AMBER ECO LEATHER supplied in kit form and can be
Fossil’s Inscription watches make quite a statement morphed into dive, sport, urban,
with their 42 mm octagonal cases. This Amber Eco and heritage looks without
Three-Hand Date version gets a subtle gunmetal tools. Each of the three kits
finish that contrasts nicely with the combination of contains a modular watch head
a black dial and ultra-legible white indexes and hand that fits into either of the two
tips (all of which are luminous). The “Amber” in the cases supplied, which attach
name refers to the rich colour of the excellent-quality to a choice of quick-change
leather strap – which looks so good, we can’t help straps. The watch heads are
wondering whether the actual watch might be being held by a screw-in crown.
thrown in for free. £119. fossil.com From £875. certina.co.uk

↓DOXA ARMY
In the ’70s, Doxa supplied watches to the specialist
diving units of the Swiss Army. Specifics are as hazy ↓SEIKO PROSPEX
as the floor of Lac Leman but it seems dials were SAVE THE OCEAN
black and beige, hands were orange, and cases were Launched in 2018 and updated
blackened steel. Having launched a limited-edition annually, Seiko’s Prospex Save
reissue in black ceramic earlier this year (it sold out), the Ocean dive watches usually
Doxa has unveiled two new steel versions, one with feature sea creatures. This
a steel bezel with black ceramic inlay, the other with year, there’s a new trio inspired
a bronze bezel and green inlay. Choose from a steel by the ice of the North Pole
bracelet or rubber strap and get a camouflage NATO- and Antarctica. The white-dial
style band thrown in. £2,070. doxawatches.com model harks back to a 1970
watch worn by Naomi Uemura
during his two-year dog sled
trip from Greenland to Alaska.
Reinterpretations of 1965 and
1968 watches get dark-blue and
light-blue dials. From £1,110.
seikowatches.com

↑RADO DIASTAR ORIGINAL 60-YEAR

ANNIVERSARY EDITION
SET DESIGN, PENNY MILLS.

The 21st-century version of “the first scratchproof

watch in the world’s history” celebrates 60 years
of DiaStar, though it isn’t a slavish copy. Swiss
product designer Alfredo Häberli has given it
SO SECOND
a slightly different shape, finished it in shades NATURE THAT
YOUR WRIST
of grey and added a crystal with six facets (one
for each decade) instead of three. If unusual is
your vibe, we’ve just found your new Monday-
to-Friday watch. £1,770. rado.com
FEELS NAKED
WITHOUT IT.

8 6 G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3
 W A T C H G U I D E
↓OMEGA SPEEDMASTER ’57
They do say the original is always best, which is why Omega has
gone back to its OG Speedmaster, the CK2915, for the essential
styling cues of the new eight-model ’57 range (named after the
year of the Speedy’s launch). That means a broad-arrow hour
hand, dot-over-90 bezel, vintage lume, and manual winding.
But there are modern touches too, such as a twin-mainspring,
METAS-certified movement, a slimmed-down case, and a choice
of four dials: a black sandwich effort, and blue, burgundy, or
green with applied hour markers. George Clooney is a big fan,
in case that sways you. From £8,100. omegawatches.com

→TUDOR PELAGOS
Tudor is nibbling away at the market shares of its
coronetted big brother Rolex – and deservedly so.
Just like brand ambassador David Beckham, this
new Pelagos 39 mm is straight-talking and clean-cut.
From the brushed no-nonsense case to the big blocky
lume markers on the dark sunray dial, the Pelagos
absolutely nails it. Reduced to a Goldilocks 39 mm,
and stealthily released off-site, the response has
been huge and is another example of Tudor’s growing
hype in watch world. l £3,500. tudorwatch.com

G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3 8 7
F I N A L S H O T

Icons Only
Vacheron Constantin’s 222 is the new definition of
sexy, says GQ’s resident watch expert Nick Foulkes.

I AM NOT A BELIEVER IN THE HOLY TRINITY – the collective name for Patek
Philippe, Vacheron Constantin and Audemars Piguet – of watchmaking. But back
in the ’70s, there was a moment when the whole thing made a bit more sense.
After AP’s Royal Oak in 1972 and Patek’s Nautilus in 1976, 1977 saw Vacheron
celebrate its 222nd anniversary with the 222. It was an odd milestone to mark
and the 222 was a correspondingly unusual watch. While the Royal Oak and
Nautilus were sufficiently successful to remain in production ever since, the
222 lacked the staying power and was duly replaced by the Overseas.
When I stumbled across the 222 in about 2010, I went nuts: less
subtle than the RO and Nautilus, it was gloriously out of character
for a maison known for slender and discreet watches. Best
of all, nobody knew what it was – often misattributed
to Gérald Genta instead of the young Jörg Hysek. I
pestered executives at Vacheron to relaunch it
and still lose sleep over the time the line went
dead while I was bidding on one at auction
nearly a decade ago. It sold for £4,125.
The last time a similar watch crossed
the block at Christie’s, it fetched just
under £125,000. Finally, Vacheron
confirmed its trophy status by
reissuing the 222 in its Les
Historiques range this year.
I am delighted the
222 is finally getting the
recognition it deserves,
though am rather
less pleased this
recognition now places
it forever beyond
the pusillanimous
financial resources
at my disposal. l

Vacheron Constantin
Historiques 222
£66,500.

8 8 G Q W A T C H 2 0 2 3 P h o to g r a p h b y S c o tt S e m l e r
 freelancer collection
Limited to 310 pieces worldwide
.
www.raymond-weil.co.uk 0161 672 0700