GQ India

MOTY IS GQ’s most powerful cultural moment on the calendar, and this year has seen its greatest transformation since inception. The 2022 edition has been wholly recast into a programme that feels fresh, vital, and global in form, while retaining its unique local character. This year’s event, which took place on 10 November, was shorn of the frippery of the traditional awards-show format, with the emphasis on a blitzing social media plan and a super-glam vibe. We also had three incredible DJs setting the tempo, each playing a different genre; a sustainability lens through which we produced the event; and a diverse guest list that reflected our audiences today. The result: magic. Yet what hasn’t changed is the brilliance of the winners, a new guard of outstanding, industrious individuals who are…

Diego Calva’s Very Big Debut AFTER PRODUCTION wrapped on Babylon, a 1920s Hollywood epic, Diego Calva received some advice from the film’s director, Damien Chazelle. “Go travel the world. Walk in your town with no problem. Your life is really about to change. I know you love movies, but sometimes I feel guilty because I am literally going to make it so you won’t be able to walk down the street,” he recalls Chazelle telling him. “And I was like, ‘Come on, Damien. What are you saying?’ But maybe it’s going to be true.” Such is the scale of Babylon, and of Calva’s role in it. He stars as Manny Torres, a movie obsessive from Mexico. Trying to make it in Hollywood, he finds mischief and camaraderie in the company of two…

ACE DESIGNER Nikhil Mehra was in a car with Saif Ali Khan when the topic turned to the late legendary Mansur Ali Khan, the Nawab of Pataudi before his son took on the mantle, and one of India’s best cricket captains. Some of the most important things he picked up from his father, Khan told Nikhil, were the old-world virtues of discipline, resilience, and tenacity. Shantanu and Nikhil Mehra’s new sports line, SNCC, too, finds inspiration in everything old world, embodied by the nawab with his rakish style on and off the pitch, the heritage of the Lord’s cricket ground, and the atmosphere of varsity competitions with their unique regalia and the ever-present Pimm’s and strawberries and cream. This new collection has been constructed under the S&N pret label that…

AFEW YEARS AGO, Jeremy Allen White was hanging out at a party in Malibu hosted by Julia Roberts. Sean Penn, one of White’s idols, was also in attendance. The two actors had never met before. But White and Penn were the only two people smoking at the party, so every time the former would head out for a cigarette, the latter would ask to tag along. For most aspiring young stars, this would be a dream come true: one-on-one face time with a legend whose career you want to model your own after. “He’s, like, my hero,” White tells me. But when it came time to actually make small talk, White…blew it. Just completely froze up. “I couldn’t think of one word,” he admits, curling his fingers to make a zero.…

I WANTED THE SORT OF OMEGA I could wrap around my fist and punch someone on the nose with,” said a tuxedoed Daniel Craig, standing in an old railway tunnel, surrounded by paraphernalia not unlike the sort found inside the brick-laden confines of Q branch. The event, the venue, and the set had been designed by Omega which chose to celebrate 60 years of James Bond in a very Omega way: filled with pageantry and glamour. Twenty-seven years ago, Craig’s request may have seemed unusual to the brand. But given that Omega’s watches in Bond films have done everything from shoot grappling hooks to emit lasers, having one double as a knuckleduster shouldn’t have proven too tall an order. With Craig, the Bond franchise was entering a new era of…

WITH A FAMOUS mountain serving as its namesake, it’s evident that Montblanc—in its capacity as a maker of bags, trunks, pens, or watches—is all about the great outdoors. And in keeping with its freewheeling, gather-no-moss philosophy comes its latest “On the Move” collection of luxury accessories that collectively take a croquet mallet to the notion of domesticity and rootedness. For Montblanc, much like in every romcom from the ’90s, life happens when on the move. Pair an exquisite pen with a finely crafted leather bag, throw on a world timer–inspired smartwatch and you have the perfect starter kit for the modern-day troubadour. To give us a taste of this travelling poet lifestyle, Montblanc decided to book out an entire monorail station in Dubai. If not as the patron city of public…