Table of contents for December 2017/January 2018 in Esquire

the Big Bite: A Cultural Guide to Just Enough of Everything Matty Matheson remembers when the rich people showed him the way. They had taken him to dine at Le Bernardin in New York City. Matheson, a thirtysomething, tattoo-swaddled Toronto chef and Vice video star, has spent much of his life around feral excess. This is a guy who had a heart attack at the age of 29. But that evening, he witnessed an approach to indulgence that was new to him: Each person at the table was treated to an “ice cream scoop of caviar,” Matheson recalls. It moved him, seeing all those tiny pearls. “When you eat caviar, you should eat a lot,” he now believes. “I want to eat spoonfuls of caviar. I don’t want to eat…

A few years ago, I mentioned to my wife that I might try wearing a signet ring. Used to my recurring idiocy, she indulged this bout and let me try a few on, at which point I quickly came to my senses. A guy who grew up riding a Schwinn on the mean streets of suburban Chicago can’t pull this off, I thought. Rings like those are meant only for the very posh, or the very tough. But that was then. And that was me. Lately, the signet ring has become the most rebellious piece of jewelry just about any guy can wear—a way to discreetly show off your individuality. Best way to do it: Get your first or last initial inscribed. Or, if you can, unleash your inner rock…

Thirty-nine years ago, director Michael Cimino gave us The Deer Hunter. With the passing of time, it has revealed itself as perhaps the singular document of late-20th-century America, a movie that told us where we were headed: Tight-knit male friendships and values-centered communities are shredded by economic collapse and the ravages of war. So it almost feels lame to talk about the wardrobe. But as with any great film, there’s the story and there are the visuals. The Deer Hunter is loaded with style, including a scene in which a young Robert De Niro (above), Christopher Walken, and John Cazale go hunting in the Alleghenies. Yes, Cazale is wearing a ruffled tuxedo shirt. Yes, Walken is wearing a fur hat with a bike reflector on it. And then there is…

On August 25, 1835, residents of New York City woke to the sound of newsboys howling about an astonishing discovery. According to The New York Sun, a British astronomer had discovered life on the moon. Using a giant telescope outfitted with an ingenious “hydro-oxygen” mechanism, the newspaper said, Sir John Herschel had “affirmatively settled” the question of whether the moon was inhabited. The Sun narrated its account of Herschel’s discoveries over six days. Among the astronomer’s findings were “not less than thirty-eight species of forest trees,” horned bears, and beavers walking on two legs. On the fourth day, the paper reported the discovery of humanoid creatures with batlike wings and faces that were “a slight improvement upon that of the large orang outang.” On the sixth day, two more races…

Over the past four decades, Brunello Cucinelli has built one of the world’s leading fashion brands. He grew up in Italy without running water, gave up engineering to teach himself philosophy, and then began making cashmere sweaters. Today, he is a billionaire—not to mention one of Esquire’s best-dressed men—and he donates 20 percent of his company’s profits to charity. Grace Cormier and Adam Grant: You once said that you focus on “craftsmanship, quality, and, hopefully, creativity.” Why did you say “hopefully”? How often do you doubt your own creativity? Brunello Cucinelli: When I started my business, I had no money in my pocket. I wanted to manufacture something that wouldn’t go to waste—to be a guardian of creation. I say “hopefully” because you cannot budget for creativity. You can’t be…

1. DIRTY HABIT On a blue-sky Sunday in September, John McCain sat down for brunch at Dirty Habit, a sleek hotel restaurant in Washington, D. C. Dressed in a charcoal suit with a blue shirt and gold tie, he launched into a funny story. Back in 2008, he said, when he was running for president the second time, he was at a meet-and-greet on primary day in Michigan. The race came at a crucial time: Though McCain had won New Hampshire, he’d lost Iowa and Wyoming and was far from a clear front-runner for the GOP nomination. The only man who had come to see him at the event was a Mike Huckabee supporter. Someone suggested McCain try his luck at one of the stately houses across the way. “So…

Payne’s movies are all about men realizing they’re not going to get what they’ve always believed was coming to them. have been on the record for just under ten minutes when Alexander Payne stops and says, “I just want to tell you, my brain’s working a little slowly today. I’ve had a very long week. Got a little drunk last night. Got a little bit of a headache today. So I’m not in top form.” We’re out on the deck at the Inn of the Seventh Ray in Topanga, California. It’s a Saturday in mid-July, the morning is blue and mild, and over the railing behind us a little creek sparkles in its bed. The setting is so perfect I feel like we should be tasting different kinds of wedding…

Hometown: MERRICK, NEW YORK • Age: 58 Michael Kors doesn’t think you need to suffer to look good. You could tell from his Fall ’17 runway show, in which he dressed the models in full-pleated trousers and big, billowing wool coats. The clothes were elegant, but they were also comfortable, a rarity on the catwalk. “After years of too tight, I wanted to ease up on the coats, the trousers,” he says. “The foundation of American style has always been about easiness, comfort, and movement.” Kors would know. Long before his Project Runway quips made him a household name, he spent his boyhood studying American fashion codes. His mother was a former Revlon model, his father an Easy Rider-esque rebel. His grandmother trawled the racks at Loehmann’s daily, and his…

Hometown: DONCASTER, ENGLAND • Age: 44 There were skeptics at first. How could a young British designer helm Coach, an American leather-goods titan? But those who knew Vevers knew better. He had already revived two European houses, he had a hunger for brands in a “moment of change,” and he needed a new project. And Coach needed him. After decades of market dominance, it had begun to lose its shine. Vevers came in with a bold pitch. What if Coach got into the clothing game? Based on that idea (and some very good sketches of baseball jackets), the man was hired. But how do you design clothes for a label that’s never made them? Vevers started with vintage—a source of inspiration since his design- school days. “I had to imagine…

A BRIEF MONTHLY EXPANSION ON A TOPIC EXPLORED ELSEWHERE IN THE ISSUE (SEE PAGE 60) Poetry is an imaginative style of writing that is considered essential to read, but only after the writer has died. Words used in a poem form pleasing sound patterns and are symbolic of greater themes. For example, “night” represents the poet’s depression, “the moon” represents the poet’s depression, and “dick” represents the Man from Nantucket’s penis. Poems may follow differing rules for rhyme and structure; the only requirement is that the author be insufferable. The first known poems in Western culture were called epic, even though they contained no avocado. They were long stories that were read out loud as a way for wisdom to be passed down to future generations and then ignored. Written…

• • • It’s the time of year when we grow thirsty for red wines that go well with roast meats and root vegetables, but that doesn’t mean we necessarily want something all heavy and Goth. In our quest for the perfect bottle, we went to Michael Diamond, better known as Mike D of the Beastie Boys, who has let his wine obsession bloom into a professional reinvention. This fall, he is making his debut as a wine guru at the Hearth & Hound, a new restaurant in Los Angeles from April Bloomfield and Ken Friedman. Diamond’s pick for the holiday season is a classic: Lapierre Morgon, a natural wine from Beaujolais. “You don’t have to be too precious about it,” he says. There’s a festive lightness that’s typical of…

“Retail isn’t dead, it’s just boring,” Robin Standefer says. She and her husband, Stephen Alesch, make up Roman and Williams, the design firm that has rebuffed slick minimalism in favor of architectural detail, layered tactile surfaces, and witty historical references. It’s a diverse style that’s still easy to recognize. In New York, you’ll find it in places like the Standard High Line (sexy, retro-futuristic), Ace Hotel (warm, patinaed), and Le Coucou (restrained, airy). If you’re lucky enough to be invited, you’ll also find it in the homes of celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Ben Stiller. Now they’re bringing that same approach to the storefront. The team is opening the Guild on Howard Street in New York’s SoHo, a sort of all-service emporium for those who want to live well. The…

Late one night a few weeks before the last election, an aspiring screenwriter named Liz Hannah got a call from producer Amy Pascal. Pascal had read The Post, a screenplay Hannah had written on spec about Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham’s decision to print the Pentagon Papers, and she wanted to buy it. “Amy saw that it was important to tell a story about a woman standing up,” Hannah says. “As the months progressed, it became very important to tell a story about the press standing up.” In March 2016, Steven Spielberg agreed to direct. He brought in Meryl Streep to play Graham and Tom Hanks to play the Post’s executive editor, Ben Bradlee, and hired Oscar-winning screenwriter Josh Singer to work with Hannah on the shooting script. “It’s like…

• • • Back in 1969, when Esquire tossed Andy Warhol into a can of Campbell’s tomato soup, it’s safe to say we didn’t spring for a sterling-silver vessel like this one. But lately, we’ve been into the idea of everyday items with added polish. And the same goes for Tiffany: The famous jewelers, under the new creative direction of Reed Krakoff, have expanded from their familiar charm bracelets and engagement rings to a new collection of simple, good-looking pieces you can actually use. This can works as a vase, a pencil cup, anything you can dream up, really. Though you may want to consider something a little less precious for your soup.…

• • • “Renaissance man” is a term that’s used all too quickly in Fashionland. Only Jean Touitou of A. P.C. has earned it. Since starting his line in Paris 30 years ago, he’s become the Ralph Lauren of post-midcentury style, influencing a generation of designers with the power of minimalism. It’s no wonder everyone from Wes Anderson to Jay-Z seeks his counsel when in France. Now you can access him too—just get his monograph, A. P.C. Transmission (Phaidon; $80 on Amazon). It’s like sitting in his Paris atelier for a master class in creativity: He shows you that the best creations begin with “What if...”…

When you have money, you can do anything. You can make a few billion dollars, do penance, and resurrect your reputation. What was Bill Gates but a bully and impostor pawning off a second-rate product on the American public and the world, under investigation by the government before he departed the arena and fashioned himself into a holy saint? You don’t even have to go to jail. You can buy the jail. The 1980s represented the time in our history when any other competing value besides money—because there have been other competing values—disappeared, and that’s why I’m writing about that era [in Junk]. The personal freedom to make as much money as I want, to buy whatever I want, became the only national value. And these liber- tarian ideals were…

Ascents CAREER Tiffany Haddish is funny. Really funny. Scene-stealingly funny. (Watch her breakout performance in July’s Girls Trip. Trust us.) Which is all the more remarkable given her tough childhood: father gone, mother with a brain injury, four siblings to care for until they were all placed in foster care. Comedy offered first an emotional, then a financial escape, and the world is a funnier place as a result. Check out her current Showtime special, then get excited for her upcoming roles on Tracy Morgan’s show The Last O.G. and alongside Kevin Hart in Night School. Assists Maria, the tenth-most-intense Atlantic hurricane in recorded history, made landfall on Puerto Rico on September 20 and carved an estimated $90 billion path of destruction. More than a month after the storm, 75…

Hometown: ELMIRA, NEW YORK • Age: 66 You can, in fact, become too successful. Just ask Tommy Hilfiger. He sent shock waves through the fashion establishment in 1985, starting with a brash advertising campaign that suggested he was in a league with Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, and Perry Ellis (on a billboard in Times Square, no less). He delivered on that promise with a line of preppy basics updated for the dressed-down, youth-obsessed 1990s: Think oversized, logocentric pieces in a patriotic palette of red, white, and blue. He sponsored tours with pop and rock royalty like Britney Spears and Lenny Kravitz and won a following with hiphop heavyweights, too. In 1994, Snoop Dogg wore one of his rugby shirts for an SNL performance. The company reported a $94 million increase…

Sometime in the mere eight days between Hugh Hefner’s unironic death from a fecal-bacteria infection and Harvey Weinstein’s rebirth as the most loathed male on the planet, a new age seems to have dawned, one in which men who are outraged by the sordid legacies of these two degenerates are being called to help stamp out the behavior of others like them. “Everybody knew” and “open secret,” the two refrains we’ve heard in the wake of Weinstein’s downfall, may not be literally true, but they’re a bracing reminder of how many people—studio executives, actors, lawyers, publicists, agents, and journalists—were complicit in the scandal. It’s not difficult to understand why the complicity was widespread. Faced with a hard choice, one that might cause friction in a career, a friendship, or even…

Is there anything more preposterous than a Hollywood actor announcing his retirement? Yet when the news dropped this past June that Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread (December 25) would be Daniel Day-Lewis’s final film, we got the sinking feeling that he really meant it. “We all probably have a shelf life,” Day-Lewis, now 60, confided in the recent HBO documentary Spielberg. “We probably go past that shelf life, most of us, without even knowing it.” Don’t expect a victory lap or any coy talk-show confessionals. There will likely be just one last majestic performance and then goodnight. He won’t be hanging around to play Batman’s butler. Day-Lewis, the son of Cecil Day-Lewis, a poet laureate of England, and the son-in-law of the playwright Arthur Miller, is the foremost Method actor…

the Code: Because Style Is Always Personal The power move now is to stop giving a crap. And we don’t mean let yourself go—we mean let loose. It’s a bit like graduating from high school. You don’t need to fit in anymore. You don’t need anyone’s approval. You can look at the gold cheetahs on these velvet slippers and admit—out loud, unironically—that they look boss. In a season of long nights, late parties, and indoor extracurriculars, you want a shoe like this, something equal parts regal and rock ’n’ roll. So find the right ones for you (everyone from Brooks Brothers to Dolce & Gabbana is making them) and wear them with the take-no-shit confidence of a pair of combat boots. It’s about time you started dressing for yourself.…

The Vikings loved mythmaking as much as they did pillaging, but even they would balk at stories tracing “Nordic” knitwear all the way back to Erik the Red. Nordic knits do indeed look similar, and yes, the Vikings did hang out in all these places. But chain mail was more their speed. Instead, these iconic patterns emerged as late as the 20th century as a canny solution for blighted rural economies. Not as sexy as Norsemen, perhaps. Still, a manly sweater is its own reward. Here’s a brief (and accurate!) breakdown of the ruggedest knits around. 1. ARAN ISLANDS True Aran sweaters come from three windy islands off the west coast of Ireland. Their cabling resembles Celtic knots, but it’s likely they originated on the English island of Guernsey. (Clue:…

JERRY LORENZO 40, Los Angeles California king: I’m trying to perfect this California lifestyle. Meetings just happen, and you squeeze the gym in whenever you can, and you want to be appropriate for all different things. I go for the same thing with Fear of God—a masculine, American approach to fashion. Father knows best: As a dad, you’re too busy to be concerned with how you look, so you figure out what works and do that every day. Investment sneaks: I bought these Rick Owens dunks in 2006. I think I had, like, $1,400 in the bank and I spent $1,200 on them. I was like, “Wow, someone has been able to take a basketball sneaker that’s giving me ’90s vibes and put it through a luxury lens, and it’s…

If, N. Y. C. This place consistently has amazing pieces from Dries and Margiela, and it has the feel of old, pregentrification SoHo, which isn’t easy to find anymore. —Matthew Marden Mackintosh, N. Y. C. Almost 200 years ago, it invented the perfect all-weather, windand rain-resistant coat. Now the British-based king of outerwear opens its first U.S. doors. —M.H. Tortoise General Store, L.A. Whether it’s a machined brass key chain or a brightly patterned tenugui (a Japanese hand towel that doubles as a bandanna), Tortoise General is packed with stuff you never knew you needed. —J.R. Drake’s, N. Y. C. The renowned English haberdashers are celebrating 40 years with their first New York store and a capsule collection called Easyday, a surprisingly affordable range of tailoring. —N.S. Imogene + Willie,…

Esquire honored the 2017 Mavericks of Style — culture’s inspiring and daring style leaders and risk takers—with an intimate dinner at Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, in partnership with Hugo Boss.…

“He GAVE UP EVERYTHING, literally everything, THAT MADE HIM A MAN,” the actor says about PRINCE PHILIP, whom he plays on THE CROWN. “But he has a LION’S PRIDE about him, so there were a lot of interesting CONFLICTS to play.” THE ARTIST CURRENTLY KNOWN AS PRINCE “They’re both aliens,” the actor Matt Smith says of Dr. Who and Prince Philip, his biggest parts to date. The Doctor, the hero of England’s longest-running science-fiction series, is literally an extraterrestrial— specifically, a rogue Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey. In 2009, Smith was cast as the Eleventh Doctor. (The character magically takes a new form whenever the previous incarnation tires of the role.) He was an unexpected choice, first because he was then a relative unknown, and second because Smith was a…

Hometown: THE BRONX • Age: 78 As a teenager, Ralph Lauren spent his high school summers working at Camp Roosevelt, in the hills north of New York City. “I started as a waiter in the dining hall,” he told me over dinner. “Then I worked my way up to become a head counselor. I played sports outside every day. Tennis. Swimming. Baseball. You name it. I loved it. I never wanted to leave. It was the best time of my life.” Barely ten years later, at the age of twenty-eight, Lauren, after knocking around the fashion world, selling ties or working at Brooks Brothers, found himself drawn back to those summer days. He took a small office in the Empire State Building and proceeded to take many of the elements…

Hometown: ALLENTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA • Age: 52 We sometimes forget that we are living in a golden age of men’s style. But think back, if you can (or dare), fifteen or so years ago, to the dark ages. Back when men wore suits that were big enough for two. When jackets skimmed our knees and pant legs billowed like sails. When suits were, truly, sad sacks. What brought us into the light wasn’t evolution so much as a much-needed revolution, largely thanks to the modest, soft-spoken man in gray from Allentown, Pennsylvania. Inspired by the suits his father wore in the sixties, Thom Browne brought definition and clear thinking to the cut of the garment. Like any revolutionary, he blasted away the waste and the excess of a previous generation, instead…