THE 2023

ISSUE

` 200

December-January

For GQ’s 2023 Men of the Year, see page 78.
On Alia Bhatt: Blazer by Rimzim Dadu; top by Ura.

ON THE COVER

ON THE COVER

ON THE COVER

ON THE COVER

THE 2023

ISSUE

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G Q

THE 2023

ISSUE

THE 2023

ISSUE

ALIA BHATT

SUNNY DEOL

SHAHID KAPOOR

KARAN JOHAR

Photograph by Avani
Rai. Styled by Rahul
Vijay. Blazer and shirt,
Gaurav Gupta. Brooch,
Beg Borrow Steal
Studio.

Photograph by Manasi
Sawant. Styled by Gagan
Oberoi. Jacket, Song For
The Mute. Watch, Audemars
Piguet. Sunglasses,
Jacques Marie Mage.

Photograph by
Vaishnav Praveen.
Styled by Selman Fazil,
Chandani Mehta. Blazer
and shirt, Helen
Anthony.

Photograph by
Sahil Behal.
Styled by Selman Fazil.
Blazer, Dhruv Kapoor.
Turtleneck and eyewear,
his own.

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ST Y L I ST: R A H U L V I J AY.

THE 2023

ISSUE

R A I

For GQ’s 2023 Men of the Year, see page 74.
On Rahul Mishra: Tuxedo, shirt, bow tie, and pocket square by Troy Costa; eyewear, his own.

P H O T O G R A P H

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CONTENTS

ST YLIST: SELMAN FAZIL.

December-January

For GQ’s 2023 Men of the Year, see page 92.
On Ayushmann Khurrana: Coat, jumper, and trousers by Rohit Gandhi + Rahul Khanna.

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ST YLIST: SELMAN FAZIL.

For GQ’s 2023 Men of the Year, see page 96.
On Prateek Sadhu: Blazer by Massimo Dutti; T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, his own.

P H O T O G R A P H

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CONTENTS

ST YLIST: SELMAN FAZIL.

December-January

For GQ’s 2023 Men of the Year, see page 84.
On Aditya Roy Kapur: Turtleneck by Zegna.

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Toasting Time
GQ Men of the Year event, way back in 2009,
I decided to present the Lifetime Achievement award to
Naseeruddin Shah. The legendary actor was fresh off the
success of A Wednesday! When the time came to announce
Naseer, I walked onto the stage, gave my speech, announced
his name, shook his hand—and then walked away with the
trophy! I had one job that day: to give him that trophy. But my
nervousness got the better of me. Who hasn’t experienced
something like this? We are all fallible. But what we can hope
for is to do better the next time around.
This 15th Men of the Year issue is filled with inspirational
stories of individuals who have overcome adversity and
failure, and—crucially—learnt how to manage success. When I
congratulated MOTY 2023 honouree Sunny Deol on this year’s
wholly unexpected monster hit Gadar 2, the 66-year-old star
smiled and spoke ever so softly. “I’ve seen it all—highs, lows,
people changing around me. And here I am again today—
relaxed, easy.” Four decades after Deol first broke through with
Betaab, and 22 years after the original Gadar, Deol’s latest
success underscores the visceral connection that an older
generation of actors continues to have with their audience.
An emotional bond that is unique, rare and steadfast.
What is equally unique, rare and steadfast is GQ Men of the
Year’s 15-year partnership with Chivas—an association that
was born with the India launch of the MOTY programme in
2009: to steward a relationship of this nature for a decade and
a half, and find value for each other through changing times,
platforms, and formats; to innovate rigorously, evolve, and
challenge ourselves to push boundaries. All while operating
with mutual respect, understanding and shared values.
Congratulations to all involved, past and present.
Here’s wishing you a safe and happy new year.
SUNNY DEOL: MANASI SAWANT.

AT THE VERY FIRST

@chekurriengq

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WHAT A MAN'S GOT TO DO

PHOTO: R BURMAN/GQ INDIA

The superstar rapper’s journey from Tadiwala Road to Times Square has been an eventful one, from
weekend gigs in his home town to beefing with Indian hip-hop’s biggest stars to a season-winning
performance on Bigg Boss. But through it all, MC Stan has kept his music at the forefront, setting his
sights on building not just his rep, but an empire. B y B H A N U J K A P PA L
streak
that runs through MC Stan’s
music and public persona, a
tendency to zig when everyone else is zagging. In 2018,
when Mumbai’s Divine and Emiway Bantai
were absolutely dominating Indian hiphop, the Pune rapper came out swinging
for the fences with “Samajh Meri Baat Ko”,
taking potshots at both and igniting a redhot beef that simmers till this day. A couple
of years later, when everyone in the game
was rushing to replicate Migos’ triplet
flow and bass-heavy beats, he took a leftfield turn into the mumble-and-autotune
style of SoundCloud rap with “Snake”. The
song earned him plenty of brickbats from
the gatekeepers of Indian rap, but also
110 million views on YouTube and legions
of adoring fans.
His recent stint on season 16 of Bigg Boss
oozed with so much “I don’t give a fuck”
energy (including asking to be evicted
multiple times) that regular fans flooded
the Bigg Boss subreddit with threads complaining about him, digging up his past
controversies in an effort to discredit him.
But when the season ended, it was Stan
HERE’S A CONTRARIAN

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who walked away with the crown. MC Stan,
it turns out, just cannot stop winning.
“If you do anything, there will be some
backlash,” he says when I bring up his
haters, peering at me from behind a pair
of dark shades, a massive gold rupee sign
hanging off a chain around his neck. “You
make one person happy, and someone else
will get angry. It will happen regardless, so
I’ve stopped caring about it.”
To be fair, a bunch of angry people on the
internet is small fry compared to the challenges that Stan—born as Altaf Tadavi—has
already overcome in his short life. He grew
up dirt poor in one of the 20-odd slums
spread across Pune’s Tadiwala Road area,
the son of a bus driver turned cop and a
housewife. When he wasn’t in school, he
spent most of his time out on the streets
with his friends. “There was a tree that my
friend’s dad had planted,” he remembers
fondly. “We would hang out there
and chill, eat some jamun,
play street games like
ghoda ghodi.”

Jacket and jeans
KGL
Sneakers,
sunglasses,
and jewellery
His own

GQ World
Music

Such happy memories are at a premium when you grow up in Tadiwala
Road, where urban poverty and
gang violence reign supreme. As he
grew older, he fell in with a group of
friends who were up to no good. At
night, they’d sneak out to steal petrol from parked vehicles for kicks
(and presumably, pocket money). His
friends would gang up on working
class Bihari immigrants, essentially extorting money in the name
of donations for Ganpati. Even his
policeman father couldn’t keep Stan
out of trouble. “People in my neighbourhood talk all the time about
going to jail, because at least you’ll
get three meals a day when you’re inside,” he says. “It wasn’t the thug life;
it was fucked life.”
of the few escapes
he had from the misery around him.
When he was 12, he got into qawwali music, performing songs like
“Chadhta Suraj Dheere Dheere” and
“Udd Jayega Ek Din Panchi” at local
events. “These songs talk about mortality and what happens after you die,
and those things wake you up,” he
says. “When you’re young, you think
you’re immortal. But that’s a delusion.
Anyone can die anytime.”
A couple of years later, his elder
brother—a rare good influence on
Stan—introduced him to the music
of Eminem and 50 Cent. Their gritty, hard-edged representation of life
in America’s violent inner cities resonated with Stan, who found solace
in their shared lived experience. “The
things they were rapping about are
happening in my life,” he says. “It felt
good to know that other people are
also struggling with the same things.
That I’m not alone.”
Soon, he was writing his own
songs, adopting the moniker
MC Stan in tribute to Eminem’s iconic hit about an obsessed, mentally ill
fan. In class 9, he shifted to a CBSE
school, where the curriculum was
much tougher than the SSC board
schools he’d studied in until that
point. He struggled to keep up, and
ended up failing and being asked to
repeat a year. Instead, he gave up on
education, spending all his time on
music instead. “I figured that I had
already learnt everything that I needed to know, that would be useful in
life,” he says. “From then on, the plan
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was music. I didn’t leave myself any
backup options. I told myself that
I wasn’t going to become a rapper. I
was already one.”
Stan began performing at parties
for Nigerian students and expats in
Pune, where a friend already had a
gig. He’d earn `3,000 over a weekend
of rapping, and spend that money
on studio time and to finance his
early music videos. The first song he
recorded, an unreleased cut about
Tadiwala Road street life called
“Bhalti Public”, went viral in Pune’s
small hip-hop scene, spreading via
WhatsApp and Bluetooth transfers.
Soon after came “Samajh Meri Baat
Ko”, the diss track where he took on

Emiway, after feeling like he was disrespected at a Mumbai cypher. Diss
tracks—where artists verbally attack
the rivals they’re feuding with—are
a cornerstone of American hip-hop,
but it was Stan who really brought
that culture to Indian shores.
“Samajh Meri Baat Ko” racked
up nearly a million views, but it also
incensed fans of Emiway Bantai and
Divine. Not long after, his YouTube
account got taken down. He started
a new channel and re-uploaded the
track, only for it to be taken down
again. A few months later, Emiway
took the bait, responding to Stan
on his song “Kadak Ban”, kicking off
a series of tit-for-tat releases. Stan

PHOTO: SIGNE VILSTRUP/VOGUE INDIA

BEFORE IT’S IN FASHION,
IT’S IN VOGUE!

GQ World
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dropped “Vata”, and then Emiway went
nuclear on “Samajh Mein Aaya Kya”, taking aim at Stan, Divine, and former Mafia
Mundeer Raftaar.
Suddenly, it seemed like the whole scene
was beefing with each other, an orgy of
rhetorical violence. Outsiders looked on in
amusement—and bemusement—and fans
of the more established artists filled the
comment sections on Stan’s videos with
abuse and derogatory comments. But he
didn’t care. He was doing serious numbers.
“Khuja Mat”, his foul-mouthed scorchedearth rejoinder to “Samajh Mein Aaya Kya”,
racked up 52 million views and established
him as a name to reckon with.
“Emiway did something I didn’t like, so
I was messing with him. That’s basically it,”
says Stan, quite taciturn about this phase
of his career. Regardless, it turned out to
be a shrewd business decision, keeping him
in the headlines and significantly raising
his profile. But with fame came other problems. People in his neighbourhood started
threatening him, trying to pick fights in the
hope that some of that glamour rubbed off
on them too. “I’ve had people chasing me
with swords and had to run for my life,” he
says, attributing the violence to jealousy
and the desperation of life in Tadiwala
Road. “There have been many times when
I just escaped death.”
Stan’s friends too were getting deeper
into trouble. He claims that he kept his
hands clean, but his friends kept doing
more and more of what he calls “gangsta
shit”, bringing them to the attention of the
local police. There was plenty of harassment
by cops, even a charge sheet or two. Some
of the strain he was under—and the second thoughts he was having about repping
the “gangsta” life—can be heard on 2019’s
“Astaghfirullah”, a song about asking Allah
and his mother to forgive him for his sins.
Rapping over a mournful woodwind sample, Stan dug deep for the lyrics, displaying
an emotional vulnerability that was at odds
with his in-your-face persona. The song
earned him plenty of new fans, including
rueful U-turns by many of his detractors.
I N 2 0 2 0 , H E released his debut album
Tadipaar, an autobiographical account of
his exile from Pune to Mumbai, after he
was implicated in an attempt-to-murder
case. Over beats that blended Indian flute
and traditional instrumentation with 808s
and blown-out bass, Stan painted a grim
portrait of life in Tadiwala Road, with gritty
portrayals of police brutality and internecine violence. Hailed as one of the year’s best
Indian rap albums, Tadipaar established

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“The plan was
music. I didn’t
leave myself any
backup options.
I told myself that
I wasn’t going to
become a rapper.
I was already one.”
—MC STAN

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Stan as not just a rapper par excellence,
but also one of Indian hip-hop’s most
innovative producers.
He followed Tadipaar up with a
string of experimental mumble-rap
videos, channelling the work of Atlanta
trailblazers Young Thug and Future.
His 2022 sophomore album Insaan
incorporated autotuned melodies and
cinematic soundscapes, with lyrics that
alternated between deep, dark confessions and bawdy braggadocio. The
album’s 11 tracks paint a portrait of a
supremely confident young man, but

also a lonely one, licking the wounds
left by those he loved and trusted. “If
anyone tells me to trust them, I just
walk away,” he tells me. “I have experienced plenty of betrayals in my life
and my music. The word ‘trust’ doesn’t
exist in my dictionary anymore.”
There’s something deeply sad
about that sentiment, but Stan has
no time for self-pity. Late last year,
when the producers of Bigg Boss
approached him to take part in the
16th season of the show, he surprised many Indian hip-hop fans by
saying yes. Stan says he saw it as an
opportunity to spread knowledge
about hip-hop, and change how people thought about rappers like him.
“I wanted to show people that I’m a
rapper, but I’m also just like you,” he
says. “We’re normal people, we don’t
just do gangsta shit all day. I’m an
artist, not a gangster.”
Despite the fact that he won,
walking away with a new car and a
cool `31 lakh, you get the sense that
it wasn’t a great experience for Stan.
“People like us can’t go on that show,”
he says. “It’s for people who really
want to be famous, they love getting
exposure for a hundred days straight.
But I’m quite camera-shy. So when
I found out that the show is on for
24 hours on Voot, I got really anxious.”
But he also acknowledges that
Bigg Boss catapulted him to a level of
fame that even he hadn’t imagined.
He can no longer go to the kirana
store to buy groceries without getting
mobbed. Offers for big money partnerships and brand endorsements
keep rolling in. Earlier this year, the
boy from Tadiwala Road featured on a
billboard in New York’s Times Square,
to promote his single with Indian
American producer KSHMR and New
Delhi rapper-producer Phenom. He
hints at even bigger collaborations
to come on his upcoming album,
though it’s too early to name names.
He’s got big plans for his own record
label Hindi Records, as well as two
other businesses he’s in the process
of bringing to the market. Like Jay-Z,
Stan isn’t content to be a rap star, he
also wants to be a business mogul, to
build his own empire.
“I’m all about making money, because people will only respect you if
you have money,” he signs off. “I’ve
seen it. I came from the bottom, and
I saw how people treat you when
you’re down. But now I have fame
and money, and nobody messes with
me anymore.”

HAIR AND MAKE-UP: KINCHANGTHUI BARIAMTAK. MANAGING EDITOR: PRIYADARSHINI PAT WA. PRODUCTION: SHIVANJANA NIGAM, SHUBHR A SHUKL A.

Music

PHOTO: ATHUL PRASAD/CONDÉ NAST TRAVELLER INDIA

THE LAST WORD IN TRAVEL

40
Holiday
Gifts for
the Most
Stylish
Person
You
Know
(You)
B y YA N G -Y I G O H

P H O T O G R A P H
K E N Y O N

B Y

A N D E R S O N

GQ World
Drops

POPPY PURSE
In his younger days,
Pharrell Williams taught
himself about luxury
fashion by surveying the
counterfeit wares hawked
along Manhattan’s
Canal Street. One of the
first fakes he copped
back then? The tubular
Louis Vuitton Men’s
Speedy bag, which
he’s now revived in a
slew of sizes and florid
Canal-esque colourways:
the first official drop
of his reign as LV Men’s
creative director.

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STUDDED
SLIP-ONS
By dotting the smooth
suede outer with tiny
gold baubles, Ernest
W. Baker inflected the
consummate prep loafer
with a punk flair.

RADIANT
RECEPTACLES
The wavy contours
on Yew Yew’s jazzy,
stackable glass
ashtrays aren’t merely
aesthetically pleasing—
they’re designed to
hold your joints in place
between puffs.

WAVY WALLET
Your wallet should be
efficient, yes—big
enough to hold a few
cards and some cash,
slim enough to not bulge
repulsively in your
pocket—but that doesn’t
mean it has to be boring.
This swoopy, two-toned
calfskin number from
Ferragamo is right on
the money.

BLACKJACK
BOMBER
The playing card suits
stitched on to the pockets
of this Bode suede
jacket might conjure
gambling, but any fit
you pair it with will be a
guaranteed winner.

FACIAL
FURNITURE
Give your living room
a playful jolt via this
MoMA Design Store
oak side table, dreamed
up by Singaporean
designer Nathan Yong,
which’ll keep a watchful
eye on all your game nights
and NFL Sundays.

SMASH-HIT SCENT
Ever wondered what Troye
Sivan finds attractive? A
spritz of Luca—the earthy
fragrance from the pop
star’s new lifestyle brand
Tsu Lange Yor—should
get you in the ballpark.
“Luca,” Sivan recently
told Vogue, “is so hot to
me when I imagine anyone
wearing it.”

FLASHY FUR
How do you make a
sumptuous shearling
coat feel even more
opulent? If you’re
Coach, you accent the
shaggy exterior with a
smooth leather collar that
drapes alluringly across
the shoulders.

RIGHTEOUS
ROLLIE
With one of Hulken’s
mammoth roller bags
in tow—beloved by
fashion-industry pros
for their prodigious
hauling capacity and
utilitarian good looks—
your laundry days and
grocery runs won’t know
what hit ’em.

HARDY HOOD
When the winter temps
hit blistering lows,
Chopova Lowena’s
fiery fleece hood will
keep your ears from
freezing and your fits
from failing.

RADIANT WRIST
CANDY
Most onlookers will
be taken aback by the
530 diamonds on this
Bulgari stunner; true
connoisseurs will be more
smitten with the exposed
movement.

BLING BOOK
Pharrell: Carbon,
Pressure & Time:
A Book of Jewels
documents the
polymath’s epic jewellery
collection through
interviews with the likes
of Tyler, the Creator
(Rizzoli New York).
CRISP CARRYALL
Freshened up in wintry
white, Prada’s stalwart
Brique crossbody is the
handsomest way to ease
yourself into carrying
a handbag.

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SOUPED-UP
SNEAKERS
These techy runners
are riddled with shrewd
details—fishnet uppers,
crisscrossed soles—that
only Bottega Veneta
could deliver.
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P H O T O G R A P H S

B Y

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F E R N I E

P R E V I O U S PA G E : S E T D E S I G N , E LYS I A B E L I LO V E AT 1 1 T H H O U S E A G E N C Y. T H I S PA G E : R I Z ZO L I , E R I K I A N / C O U RT E SY O F R I Z ZO L I .
PR ADA: COURTESY OF THE BR AND. ALL OTHER PHOTOGR APHS: BOWEN FERNIE. PROP ST YLIST: FIT Z FIT ZGER ALD AT MARK EDWARD INC.

CHOMPIN’
CHOKER
Not sure you can pull
off grills? This toothy
Medea necklace—
plated in gold and
platinum and riddled
with gems—is a freaky
next best.

PHOTO: JIGNESH JHAVERI/AD INDIA

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL HOMES IN THE WORLD

TIDY TUX
From the rakishly trim
lapels to the hidden
front placket, this
Givenchy dinner jacket
is about as clean and
concise as black-tie
attire can get .

TWO-WAY TOTE
This Loewe calfskin bag
can house a carry-on’s
worth of gear; fold in
its geometric panels,
however, and you’ve got
a flat, compact package
you can stash just
about anywhere.

GQ World
Drops

CHOPPY CHAIN
The glossy sterling
silver oozes pure
Tiffany & Co.
polish, but the jagged
heavyweight links
lend this necklace an
edge you don’t typically
find in the jeweller’s
blue boxes.

CRAGGY CERAMIC
The rough-hewn surface
of this handmade
Editions Milano vase
is meant to replicate the
eroding effects of water
and wind on rock.

RIGHT-NOW
NECKWEAR
Juiced up with a shot of
Moschino’s graphic
chutzpah, the age-old
floral tie suddenly feels
brand new.

GRIPPING
GLASSES
London upstart
Kimeze’s architectural
shades pair fine Italian
craftsmanship with
fresh shapes and
vibey hues.

CRISP
CHRONOMETER
With its complicated
movement and platinum
case, this Omega
Globemaster Annual
Calendar—made in
an edition of 52—is an
understated grail.

LUSH LUGGAGE
Rimowa’s aluminium
trunks have long been
the most covetable and
luxurious suitcases
on the planet. Now the
German brand has upped
the ante with a version
stealthily coated in
rich leather.

TINY TICKER
Teensy watches have
never been hotter.
Longines’s refreshed
Mini DolceVita, with
its Art Deco bracelet
and less-than-an-inchwide case, is one of the
absolute teensiest out.

TRENDY
TUPPERWARE
Resolved to finally bring
your own lunches to work
in 2024? This Supreme
Pyrex bowl set will help
make meal prep feel
a little bit cooler.

SWERVY
SNEAKERS
Streetwear kids can’t
get enough of Brain
Dead and Oakley’s
gorpy, sci-fi footwear
collabs—and these
chunky-sole wonders,
with Mary Janes–esque
exposed panels across
the uppers, are easily
the sickest kicks the duo
have dropped yet.

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TORQUED-UP
TRUCKER
Two iconic American
outerwear styles—the
rugged trucker jacket and
the bodacious shearling
coat—fused together with
characteristic panache
by Dior Men designer
Kim Jones.

DESIRABLE
DEVICE
Not since Steve Jobs
announced the OG model
in 2007 has a new iPhone
felt as pulse-raisingly
irresistible as Apple’s
titanium 15 Pro.

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SUPREME, EDITIONS MILANO, IPHONE: COURTESY OF THE BRANDS.

FUNKY FLUTES
Anna Karlin’s scenestealing glassware is
blown entirely by hand
in New York, so no
two of the loopy stems
are exactly alike.

PHOTO: TARUN KHIWAL/GQ INDIA

LOOK SHARP. LIVE SMART.

BLAZING BAND
Orange sapphires and
brushed gold combine
to make this 42 Suns
eternity ring look
every bit as scorching
as the label’s name
would suggest.

TOASTY TOPPER
A man can’t survive
the winter on beanies
alone. Let this cosy
flannel Isabel Marant
bucket liven up your
headwear rotation.

SHOWY SET
Leave the ugly sweaters
to everyone else—
these jauntily striped
4SDesigns chore coat
and trousers, tailored
from a luminous cottonsilk blend, are the kind of
festive dressing we can
get behind.

WARPED WATCH
Fourteen years after their
first linkup, Movado
has tagged in pop art
legend Kenny Scharf
for another round of slick
timepieces emblazoned
with the painter’s twisted
surrealist visions.

COSMONAUT
COAT
Thom Browne’s
signature flannel
suiting tends to invoke
buttoned-up 1950s office
life; this gleaming down
parka feels more akin
to the retro-futuristic
glamour of the spacecrazed ’60s.

BRASH BUCKET
Balenciaga Skiwear
Collection teamed
with Italian ski savants
Briko on a helmet
worthy of black diamond
speed demons, luxing
up the dome with an
inky sheen and louche
leather accents.
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SHARP SPIRIT
Nothing gets a holiday
party jumping quite like a
bottle of Lalo, the stylish
tequila launched by the
grandson of the actual
Don Julio.

FLUID FOOTWEAR
New York’s Stòffa
has earned a cult
following for its soft
tailoring and drapey
knits, and this supple,
Italian-crafted spin on
the classic suede desert
boot slides seamlessly
into the label’s
effortless universe.

SPARKLY SHADES
Most sunglasses shield
you from blinding
glare. T Henri’s oneof-one pair—encrusted
with over 100 handset diamonds—actually
creates it.

MELLOW MULES
Fashioned from realdeal calfhair, these
Dries Van Noten
house shoes are a sizable
step-up from the fuzzy
slippers your sister
gave you for Christmas
in 1995.

MOVADO, BALENCIAGA: COURTESY OF THE BRANDS. 42 SUNS: COURTESY OF MR. PORTER.

SUNNY SPEAKER
In stark contrast to
Saint Laurent Rive
Droite’s dark, moody
menswear, this splashproof rubber Bluetooth
radio—a collaboration
between the house
and Lexon—radiates
nothing but joy.

PHOTO: BIKRAMJIT BOSE/VOGUE INDIA

BEFORE IT’S IN FASHION, IT’S IN VOGUE!

THE LAST WORD IN TRAVEL
PHOTO: ATHUL PRASAD/CONDÉ NAST TRAVELLER INDIA

H A I R : E B O N Y L A DY LO C K Z W R I G H T. G R O O M I N G : J O S H U A M E E K I N S U S I N G D I O R B E AU T Y. TA I LO R I N G : A L B E RTO R I V E R A AT L A R S N O R D ST U D I O.

RELAUNCH
OF THE YEAR

GQ World
Drops

Please allow the Migos
rapper to formally
reintroduce himself as,

10 years into his career,
he bets it all on
a solo breakout.
By FRAZIER
THARPE

P H O T O G R A P H S
B Y

J U L I U S

F R A Z E R

S T Y L E D
M O B O L A J I

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T H I S PA G E

Jacket and
cardigan
by Louis
Vuitton Men’s.
Shirt by
Ferragamo.
Pants by
Alexander
McQueen. Tie
by Boss.
Shoes by
Valentino
Garavani.
Watch,
earring, and
bracelet, his
own. Ring by
David Yurman.

GQ World
Drops

O F years ago,
when Offset began work
on what would become
his new solo album,
things didn’t exactly
come easily. It took him almost two
months to make a song he felt was
even halfway decent.
As far as creative dry spells go,
that might sound brief, but to the
Atlanta rapper, who pumped out hits
as one-third of the rap group Migos—
alongside Quavo and the late Takeoff—
for over 10 years, it felt like an eternity.
COUPLE

A

P R E V I O U S PA G E

Vest and
pants by
Gucci. Boots
by Christian
Louboutin.
Sunglasses by
Akila. Watch
and jewellery,
his own.

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He had just kicked his lean habit and,
being done with codeine, instantly
bettered his marriage, family life, business relationships. But progress in the
studio was a different story. “I had a
little creative block,” Offset says. “My
own mind was telling me the lean was
the potion.” It’s an understandable
fear, considering what Offset accomplished while under that particular
influence, like writing the hook to
“Bad and Boujee”, which cemented his
group’s rise to the stratosphere.
So he prayed on it, realizing that

tethering his God-given talent to
drugs was just an excuse to indulge.
He kept making music until he
finally produced tracks worthy of his
pedigree. Then he trashed those and
went harder.
The result is the recently released
Set It Off. It could just as easily have
been called Reset. That word, and
synonyms like “reinvention” or “from
scratch”, recurred often during the
conversation I shared with Offset
on a fall evening in New York. He’s
inhaling joints and flicking the butts

“I didn’t do nothing similar,”
Offset tells me when I ask if he wrote
his own letter to himself, “but mentally I’m trying to take it all the way
there and just show people that I’m
an all-around star instead of just a
rap star. That’s why I’m shooting
my own videos. I’m doing my own
merch designs, dancing in videos,
dancing onstage with choreo and
with dancers because I just want
to do something that separates me
from everybody.”
This act of seizing total control
stands in stark contrast to the taciturn, often monosyllabic Offset of
the past, who ceded interview point
guard duties to Quavo and seemed to
approach his music with a light “if it
ain’t broke” mentality. The switch up
to go Michael mode came via inspiration from a contemporary artist:
Tyler, the Creator, one of the last rappers you’d expect to find common
ground with a Migo. “It was a year
ago, at the Roc Nation Brunch, and I
was telling [Tyler] my vision of being
a standout artist and a solo artist and
reinventing myself. I was glorifying
him, telling him, ‘I respect how you
stay in character [for each album],’ ”
Offset recalls. “He was like, ‘You
should do it, too. N-ggas ain’t going to
fuck with it at first, but n-ggas never
fuck with the good shit first. They
always sleep on it, and then you show
them throughout the process.’ I really
took that shit to head.”

ABOVE

Coat, pants,
and shoes
by Ferragamo.
Turtleneck
by Uniqlo.
Jewellery,
his own.
RIG HT

Vest by
Gucci.
Sunglasses
by Akila.
Jewellery,
his own.

off a balcony as he tells me that he
sees this project as a grand reintroduction. He’s palpably amped with
excited energy.
For at least a year now, Offset’s
public attire has been deeply, unmistakably Michael Jackson–coded:
white gloves, sequinned coats, varsity
jackets with the curls, the works. But
it’s deeper than one man’s dedicated
homage to his favourite artist. This
is Offset willing his own Jackson-5to-solo-superstar moment. Think
of the outfits less as a costume and
more of a character. “This character,
it’s bold, a little selfish, a little arrogant, very confident, talking shit, and
fearless to creativity,” Offset explains.
These are all elements the brash rapper—once misconstrued, he says now,
as “the rowdy Migo”—contains in
earnest, but this is a specific cocktail
created to embrace a mindset of pure
showmanship. He cites the infamous
letter that Michael wrote to himself in
the late ’70s that predicts and promises all the career milestones he’d go
on to achieve.

GQ World
Drops

Coat by
Coach. Shirt
and pants
by Bottega
Veneta. Belt
and earrings,
his own.
Sunglasses
by Gentle
Monster.

One would be forgiven for assuming the last year or two Offset has
had—splitting from Migos’ home
label QC, suffering the shocking
death of Takeoff in 2022—would portend a darker project. Instead, Offset
wanted to escape. “It’s way more fun,”
he says of Set It Off. “I didn’t want to
talk about tragedy and talk about….”
He trails off.
Talking about—or around—
Takeoff ’s death last year is the only
time Offset’s light dims. He breaks
eye contact and fixes his gaze
straight ahead as he forces the words
out. “I ain’t ready to talk about that
shit yet, first and foremost,” he says
before admitting he doesn’t have the
answers, yet. “I don’t know how to
do it, but I didn’t want to just be
making an album about bad shit,

and dissing and putting that type
of energy on the project, because it
was going to make my mind be in a
different place mentally.”
He tried to make a song that dealt
with the tragedy directly, a tribute.
“The world is not ready for it, because
[everyone] is so judgmental,” he
explains. “They want you to make a
song pouring your heart out that’s
[also] a hit. There is a song on there
that’s kind of expressing that shit,
though, which is ‘Upside Down’. It’s
feeling confident I’m going to go up
with the music, but I’m down every
day. It’s the challenge of trying to be
the best at your worst times.”
Earlier in 2023, Offset captioned
a picture of himself on social media
with the decidedly dark line “I’m cold
hearted and unhealed.” Is the album’s

outro title, “Healthy”, a sign that
things are at least veering towards
a better direction? “It’s like me talking to myself, because I ain’t used to
doing [this] shit by myself. But it’s
[me telling myself ] I’m still going to
win.” A pronouncement, I point out,
that’s not unlike those contained in a
certain letter that his idol once wrote.
Offset offers a different metaphor,
telling me that he’s thinking about his
life as a series of chapters in “a long
book”. At this stage, we’re still early in
the story, but the plot is shifting. “It’s
like a reinvention,” he says, before
smiling mischievously and making
dead-on eye contact. “I can’t wait till
you see the finished product.”
FRAZIER THARPE

associate editor.

is GQ ’s senior

PHOTO: BIKRAMJIT BOSE/AD INDIA

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL HOMES IN THE WORLD

THE
2023
GQ

BREAKTHROUGH
DESIGNER
OF THE YEAR

ABHISHEK
SHARMA
This year, fashion’s
unfiltered freaky era met
traditional menswear
in a spectacular head-on
collision. These are the
designers, brands, and trends
that rose above the rest in
the sublime wreckage.
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Abhishek Sharma is one of India’s
buzziest new designers. He has
a flair for playing with contemporary
textiles and silhouettes and turning
them into visual delights. The Delhibased designer’s recent reef-inspired
collection dived into the underwater
world, interpreted through prints on
men’s co-ord jacket sets and textures
created by laser-cutting, couching,
and adding embellishments dipped
in the tones of coral, aqua, and shell
white. Sharma is one to keep an eye on.
—SALONI DHRUV

GQ World

PHOTOGRAPHE BY SAHIL BEHAL

Fashion Awards

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GQ World
Fashion Awards

FASHION
INNOVATOR
OF THE YEAR

RIMZIM
DADU
For her critically
acclaimed show
this year, Rimzim Dadu
re-engineered the
traditional patola weave
with metallic cords, lace,
and mesh to replicate
the ripples of water. This
extraordinary innovation
was only the latest move by
the Delhi-based designer,
who has woven a niche for
herself by experimenting
with textiles, techniques,
and form. Well known for
recasting silhouettes by
mixing materials like steel
wire and cord, and turning
them into structural
saris, tuxedos, and
bomber jackets, Dadu
also opened up her first
menswear store in Delhi
earlier this year. — S . D .

BEST COUTURE SHOW OF THE YEAR

ANAMIKA
KHANNA

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MENSWEAR ICON OF THE YEAR

ASHISH SONI
For more than three decades, Ashish Soni has
been one of India’s pre-eminent menswear
designers, with a unique ability to see around corners
while retaining a classic touch. Soni has had a
busy year. His latest show was a retro take on dark
academia; the collection combined suits with shoulder
pads, checked jackets, velvet bell-bottoms, and
plaid trench coats with playful floral and fruity prints,
including bananas, oranges, and cherries on checked
blazers. —S.D.

PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY OF THE BRANDS

“Love” was the underlying
theme of Anamika Khanna’s couture
show, with the designer converting the
Durbar Hall at the Taj Palace, Delhi, into
a mysterious space reminiscent of a
dark, mossy forest. The collection itself
fused heritage and modernity by mixing
traditional textiles with layers of textures
to create contemporary silhouettes in the
celebrated designer’s signature egg-shell
colour palette. Khanna also worked with
her son Viraj, who is an artist, to transform
his abstract works into patchwork jackets,
capes, and bandhgala sets. — S . D .

INDIAN MENSWEAR SHOW
OF THE YEAR

KUNAL RAWAL

LEFT IMAGE: PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAHIL BEHAL, RIGHT IMAGE: COURTESY OF THE BRAND

Kunal Rawal is an eternal GQ
favourite for his steadfast focus on
high-quality menswear. In 2022 he won
GQ India’s Designer of the Year award.
This year, Rawal presented a collection
that was a reflection of his 17-year journey
as a designer, which included phulkari
embroidered-corded bandhgala sets,
plant-beaded kurtas, and tailcoat jackets
that were styled together with tailored
pants, lungis, and even flared bottoms,
showing versatility without conforming to a
particular gender. Nailed it again. — S . D .

BEST STREETWEAR LABEL
OF THE YEAR

BLUORNG
Amid the slew of streetwear
labels cropping up across the
country, Bluorng stands out.
Pronounced “blue-orange”, it was
founded by Delhi-based Siddhant
Sabharwal and Mokam Singh
during the pandemic. Since then,
their accessible range of oversized
T-shirts, 12-pocket cargo pants that
can be turned into shorts, and mini
rectangular leather sling bags have
become a staple for hypebeasts.
—S. D.

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GQ World
Fashion Awards

DESIGNER OF THE YEAR

JONATHAN
ANDERSON
A N D E R S O N has our full
attention. In 2023, the creative director of Loewe and JW Anderson set men’s
fashion off on a bold, new trajectory by
flexing his unique capacity for reinvention.
At a moment when industry trends continued toward endlessly iterative products,
Anderson instead revelled in the weirdness
and comedy of clothing, and closed out a
string of sensational runway shows by tapping into a beguiling and novel attitude
for menswear.
Anderson swept into his 10th year at
Loewe—an unusually lengthy tenure these
days—driven by the conviction that the
fashion world is in dire need of fresh ideas.
“There was a moment where fashion was
really finding a new kind of ground,” he tells
me recently. “Now, it’s become a bit jaded.”
He likens what’s happening in the industry
to a once-great television series that’s in the
late-season doldrums. In fashion, he says,
“I feel like we’re at this extended episode
of something that made a lot of money and
that we’re going to try to keep going—and
then realize that the audience is no longer
there for it.”
Even the self-critical Anderson will
allow that this year was rewarding and
unexpected. His milestone spring-summer
’24 menswear show, he says, “will probably
be in my top-five collections I’ve ever done”.
He also dressed Rihanna for the Super
Bowl half-time show and Beyoncé for her
blockbuster world tour, costumed the forthcoming Luca Guadagnino film Queer, and
collaborated with enough cultural luminaries to fill a crossword, including Roger
Federer, Lynda Benglis, and Wellipets.
“I always felt like he understands people
who have a very clear vision, in a creative
sense, and I think it’s because he has that,”
the actor Josh O’Connor, a Loewe campaign fixture, tells me.
It’s early October and I’m chatting with
Anderson via Zoom from the JW Anderson
studio in London. He’s dressed in an argyle
knit from his most recent Loewe collection.
Anderson has a bit of a phobia of wearing
clothes of his own design, and practically
never did until this year. “I’m very judgmental, I think, on everything,” he says. Why the
change? “I’m turning 40 soon, so I’m kind of
like, it’s now or never.”
JONATHAN

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The Northern Ireland native founded
JW Anderson in 2008 at the age of 24, and
made a name for himself in London with
work that pioneered the gender deconstruction that now permeates culture. One
collection, featuring ruffled leather shorts,
was slammed by the Daily Mail. Like many
of Anderson’s ahead-of-their-time designs,
the shorts, he has said, were a hit.
In 2013, the luxury conglomerate LVMH
tapped him to turn around Loewe, a quiet
Spanish leather goods house with 19thcentury roots that the group acquired in
1996. Back then, most people didn’t even
know how to pronounce it. (It’s lo-weh-vay.
O’Connor: “It definitely took me a whole
year to get that down.”)
Anderson arrived with a brave idea and a
wrecking ball. “I wanted to try to work out:
How do you eradicate the idea of luxury?”
he says. He conceived of Loewe as a cultural

brand, where concepts would come from
outside the archives, driven by his insatiable appetite for art and craft and film and
television and music. “I don’t know if you
can even imagine what this man’s camera
roll looks like,” says the actor Greta Lee,
who appeared in a recent Loewe campaign.
“It is like crawling into his brain. It’s exceptional. It’s image after image of painting,
sculptures, colour studies, textures. It’s like
a musical language that is so clearly innate.”
As he found his voice at Loewe,
Anderson’s collections were filled to the
brim with references to the art and artists
moving him in the moment, executed using
artisanal craft techniques. One season, the
creative brief for his design team was an
image of an altarpiece by Pontormo. “I
said, ‘You can only use this one image,’ ” he
recalls. “Everything I do in both brands is
a reflection of what I’m into. In real time.”

P H O T O G R A P H

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one of his
addictions. “It’s not something that’s about
optics for him, his proximity to art,” says the
photographer Tyler Mitchell, a regular collaborator. “It really is profoundly his taste,
his love, his obsessive need to be constantly
collecting and in conversation with artists,
creating new combinations through his
work and other people’s work.”
By 2021, it was apparent that Anderson’s
idiosyncratic approach to running a heritage house was working. He had an It bag
with the softly sculptural Puzzle, and celebrities like Frank Ocean in his front rows.
LVMH does not disclose numbers, but
Loewe, according to a 2022 article in The
Cut, is thought to be a $1 billion brand.
JW Anderson, too, was hitting a major hot
streak. In 2020, when knitters on TikTok
began trying to recreate a patchwork JW
Anderson cardigan worn by Harry Styles,
the brand put the pattern on its website. It
felt like the single-most talked-about garment that year.
Anderson’s work has a way of going
viral but never stoops to gimmicks. “What
Jonathan has is this bold, strong sensibility,” says the actor Taylor Russell, a Loewe

P H OTO G R A P H S , F R O M L E F T: P E T E R W H I T E / G E T T Y I M A G E S , K U B A D A B R OW S K I / G E T T Y I M A G E S , I S I D O R E M O N TA G / G O R U N WAY.C O M , G E T T Y
IMAGES, DARREN GERRISH/COURTESY OF LOEWE.

ANDERSON CALLS BUYING ART

ambassador. “And I think people want to
feel challenged in what they look at now,
and they want to feel creatively satiated
and inspired, and that they’re questioning
something possibly within themselves, too,
and what they like.”
As he grew more confident in his role,
Anderson’s one-man war on boring fashion
continued. Starting in 2021, Loewe became
mind-bendingly strange, referencing surrealism in response to what Anderson calls
the “abstract” moment of the lockdown. One
collection featured grass sprouting out of
sweaters and sneakers, alongside coats covered in iPads. “There has to be fun within
it,” he says of these avant-garde showpieces.
“My job is to ultimately make clothing for
people for life. And in life, there needs to
be humour.”
This past June, Anderson once again
seized the opportunity to pivot his approach
with a collection firmly led by his superlative
taste. At the Paris runway show for Loewe’s
spring-summer ’24 collection, he made
mischief out of the traditional American
wardrobe, with models in button-downs,
polos, and military jackets. But the waistbands of their khakis and jeans reached

halfway up their torsos, as if you were looking
at them through a fish-eye lens.
Anderson loves designing clothing that,
through exaggeration, suggests the idea of
a character. “I find there is nearly more newness happening within attitude than there
is within product itself,” he says. Elbows
out, the models walked with a quiet determination. It was funny but also strangely
profound, perfect for our anxious moment,
thanks to a designer who deftly exploits
the anxieties in menswear. It was, recalls
Mitchell, “deeply playful and in touch with
itself, which I think is a great gesture and
[much-needed] space for men’s clothes and
masculinity in general”.
Going into his next decade, Anderson
wants to keep springing new plot twists.
“In a 10-year period, you can never just
keep going,” he says. “There has to be this
kind of wave. Because if it is just one lateral
move, then you get really bored, the viewer
becomes really bored, and then they already
expect what the next episode is. So sometimes you have to let them have the next
episode, and sometimes you don’t.”
SAMUEL HINE

is GQ ’s fashion writer.

Anderson is known
for humorous and
striking showpieces.
From left: Three
looks from Loewe’s
surrealism period;
JW Anderson’s
ruffle shorts; the
epic high-waist
trousers; Taylor
Russell in a Loewe
coat—or is it
a sculpture?

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MOST STYLISH PERSON OF THE YEAR
Fashion Awards

In the three years since
Emma Corrin’s breakout
performance as the
eternally stylish Princess Diana
in the fourth season of Netflix’s
The Crown, the actor followed
in Lady Di’s path, becoming
a boundary-clearing British
fashion darling—which, of
course, Corrin achieved by
punking the very notion of
“boundaries” to begin with.
Corrin thrives in the middle
of every possible style Venn
diagram: laddish and femme,

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classic and playful, gamine and
grungy. One of Corrin’s best
experiments yet was the wheathued Ralph Lauren shorts suit
with dapper brown derbies—
expertly offset by a grown-out
bleached blond buzz cut—that
they wore to Wimbledon back
in July. Pulling up to a famously
stodgy occasion in one of the
coolest outfits of the year is a
feat of style worth celebrating.
— E I L E E N CA RT T E R

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When are classic
British style
moves—cardigans,
blazers, big ol’
khakis—emblems
of cool? When
Corrin wears them.

PHOTOGRAPHS, FROM LEFT: RICKY VIGIL M./GETTY IMAGES, JACOPO RAULE/GETTY IMAGES, DARREN GERRISH/GETTY
IMAGES, FRANCO ORIGLIA/GET TY IMAGES, VICTOR BOYKO/GET TY IMAGES.

EMMA
CORRIN

GQ World

Lemaire’s
ultrachic
clothing
suggests a life
surrounded
by beautiful
design
and mindexpanding art.
The brand’s
store brings
that world
to distinct
fruition.

TREND OF THE YEAR: MADS MIKKELSEN, KRIST Y SPAROW; BRUNELLO CUCINELLI, JACOPO RAULE; DONALD GLOVER, TOMMASO BODDI;
EDGAR R AMIREZ , DIMITRIOS K AMBOURIS. ALL: GE T T Y IMAGES. JEREMY STRONG: MACALL B. P OL AY/COURTESY OF HBO. STORE OF THE
YEAR: CHRISTOPHE COËNON/COURTESY OF LEMAIRE (2).

STORE OF THE YEAR

LEMAIRE PARIS
C R E A T I V E D I R E C T O R S Christophe
Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran have
established Lemaire as the go-to label for the
kind of elegant, durable fashion that make
creative, stylish folks go gaga. And now they
have a flagship to shop at that is just as tasteful and tactile as the clothes. The boutique’s
hand-cut Moroccan bejmat clay-tile floor and
modernist wooden Enzo Mari furniture are

TREND OF THE YEAR

THE
ITALIAN
LOOK
Yes, Succession had a lot to
do with it. Kendall Roy’s
never-ending procession
of Loro Piana overcoats and
Ermenegildo Zegna suits
turned those elusive uppercrust labels into household
names and minted “stealth
wealth” and “quiet luxury”
as the style buzzwords du
jour. But there’s something
else in the air that’s made
the graceful, understated
aesthetics of elite Italian
houses like Zegna, LP, and
Brunello Cucinelli stick around
in the public consciousness

worth the visit alone. Opened
in March in the Marais, the
two-floor, 3,680-square-foot
store isn’t jam-packed with
clothes—each rack is given
its space. Shopping here
is like taking a nice stroll, allowing you to
notice things, whether it’s the details of the
clothes or the hand-knotted rugs on the floor.

and wardrobes of both actual
and aspirant billionaires
everywhere. After several
years of freaky, off-the-wall,
no-rules fashion dominating
the streets, it was only a matter
of time before something
a touch more refined took
hold again—and the soft
tailoring, pleasing palettes,
and exquisite textiles of Italy’s
finest were there to fill the
void. —YA N G -Y I G O H
Mads Mikkelsen and
Donald Glover looked
rich and relaxed in
Zegna; the harmonious
cult of Brunello Cucinelli
(centre left) gained a
new member in Edgar
Ramirez; Jeremy Strong
(as Kendall Roy) turned
Loro Piana into a
household name.

It’s bright and breezy and as pleasant as a
quiet Parisian garden—a tranquil vibe for
our frenetic world. — N O A H J O H N S O N

ASICS GEL-KAYANO 14
Last year, the Montreal
design studio JJJJound
dropped a collaborative spin
on the Asics Gel-Kayano 14, a
performance running shoe from
2008 whose techy design was
suddenly a perfect match for the
current sneaker climate. It sold
out in seconds and still regularly
moves for upwards of $500
(`40,000) on StockX. It wasn’t
long before sneakerheads
realized that JJJJound’s take on

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the Gel-Kayano 14 wasn’t all
that different from the widely
available regular version. And
Asics, of course, was all too
happy to keep pumping the
model out in a slew of sick
colourways. Fast-forward to
today, and metallic retro runners
have emerged as the dominant
kicks of the moment—and
the Asics Gel-Kayano 14 still
reigns supreme at the heart of
it all. —Y. G .

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S E T D E S I G N : WAYO U T ST U D I O AT 1 1 T H H O U S E A G E N C Y.

SNEAKER OF THE YEAR

GQ World

A C C E S S O RY O F T H E Y E A R , F R O M L E F T: A L B E RT L . O RT E G A / G E T T Y I M A G E S ; R AY M O N D H A L L / G E T T Y I M A G E S ; I S I D O R E M O N TA G / G O R U N WAY.C O M ;
GUS STEWART/GET T Y IMAGES; BACKGRID; LEON BENNET T/GET T Y IMAGES. SHOW OF THE YEAR, FROM LEF T: GIOVANNI GIANNONI/GET T Y IMAGES;
AURELIEN MEUNIER/GETTY IMAGES.

Fashion Awards

SHOW OF THE YEAR

LOUIS VUITTON
inevitable that Pharrell
Williams’s debut show as the new men’s
creative director of Louis Vuitton would be
one of the biggest fashion events of all time.
He is, after all, the biggest celebrity to ever
hold the top design position at a global luxury
brand. But the spectacle on Paris’s historic
Pont Neuf, the oldest-standing bridge over the
River Seine, surpassed all expectations. The
gold runway was lined with first-name-only
MAYBE IT WAS

ACCESSORY OF THE YEAR

THE
NECKTIE
Neckties were everywhere
this year. You saw them on
fashion insiders on the streets of
Paris, on club kids at damp New
York parties, on your co-worker at
the office on a random Tuesday
morning. And unlike in times
past, when it was all about
your tie being the right width,
now all conventions are out the
door. These folks aren’t wearing
ties only in deference to some
antiquated formal tradition,
they’re doing it because they
want to—because it looks fly and
feels uniquely novel in these very
dressed-down times. —Y.G.

celebs—Rocky and Rihanna, Jay and Beyoncé,
Zendaya, LeBron, Kim. The collection was
opulent and cool and full of surprises—including a stack of “Damouflage” trunks being
hauled by a golf cart. And the party was lit.
Hov himself performed a tribute to the new
king of high fashion. With Pharrell onstage
beside him, Hov told the crowd what they
already knew: “This young man tonight did
something extraordinary.” — N . J .

Knotheads (from
left): Billie Eilish,
Offset, a Botter
model, Phoebe
Bridgers, A$AP
Rocky, and Lil
Uzi Vert.

LOOK OF THE YEAR

PRADA S/S ’24
LOOK NO. 12

If Prada’s trendsetting history is
any indication, the
reporter vest—realized
here in panama
cotton—is about to
be everywhere.

You don’t have to be a
wildlife photographer
on safari to appreciate the glory
of a vest bedecked in tactical
pockets. But the sublime
essence of this look from Prada
designers Miuccia Prada and
Raf Simons’s most recent
collection is in the underlying
simplicity—a crisp white shirt
and pair of blue jeans. It’s an
undefeated combo, elevated
to the max by two of the great
designers in fashion history.
Here, in their own words, is what
the designers had in mind:
“We start with the white
shirt—the most simple. And
from that base, from a base
of the most basic and normal,
you can do whatever you like.
It allows transformation, and
individuality. Talking about
bodies, you speak about
individuals—the individuality
of people, and therefore about
an individuality of thinking.”
—MIUCCIA PRADA

These Japanese denim
jeans, worn-in with a
regular straight cut,
speak to the designers’
sense of restraint.

Mrs. Prada, who
has long found style
in ugliness, has
practically singlehandedly brought the
square-toe dress shoe
back into fashion.
These derbies in black
brushed leather are
quintessential Prada.

PHOTOGRAPH: COURTESY OF PRADA.

“We began everything from the
idea of shirting, its structure,
its lightness. We were thinking
a lot about the body—to give
freedom to the body, even if our
interest is to show references
to archetypes and architecture
in fashion, which is usually
restrictive. So we applied the
structure to a whole spectrum
of masculine garments, giving
them all lightness, an ease and
comfort.” — R A F S I M O N S

Miuccia Prada and
Raf Simons love to
mess with ideas of
formality. Paired with
the vest and jeans,
this white poplin
maxi-cuff tuxedo
shirt is completely
recontextualized.

GQ World
Fashion Awards

MAVERICK OF THE YEAR

JERRY
LORENZO
decade, Fear of God
founder and creative director
Jerry Lorenzo has steadily built an
American luxury empire by playing his own game. No fashion
shows, no FOG retail stores.
Rather than abiding by the
industry’s traditional seasonal
churn, Lorenzo releases his collections when they’re ready—
sometimes six months apart,
sometimes years. He has resisted the
lure of outside money, preferring to grow
the brand himself, a business plan he
compares to Nipsey Hussle’s “double
up” mantra, and one that affords him
complete creative freedom. “I’m not in
this,” Lorenzo says, “to ever have to answer
to someone else.”
In April, for the brand’s 10th year,
Lorenzo finally held a Fear of God runway
show. An expensive landmark event at the
Hollywood Bowl, it was the type of audacious production that might have given investors a heart attack. Thousands of fans pulled
up, including Tinseltown heavyweights and
regular customers who just love his hoodies.
And practically every single person was draped
in Fear of God’s comfy oversized blazers and
fancy sweats, which have suddenly become the
foundation of contemporary American style.
The show was a total validation of Lorenzo’s
unorthodox methods, a crystal-clear statement
that drew the crowd to its feet. The self-taught
designer founded the brand with a sense of deep
conviction. He designed clothes of effortless
sophistication for his own closet, which changed
as his tastes did, from elevated streetwear to
made-in-Italy tailoring. He launched the lowerpriced Essentials line, but didn’t dumb it down.
It’s now a runaway commercial success, one that
matches his lofty intentions: “How,” he asks, are
these clothes “making the customer become the
best version of who they are?”
Lorenzo’s maverick spirit doesn’t take a backseat in big boardrooms either. He signed a deal
with Adidas in 2020, and the first pieces of that
long-anticipated collaboration finally hit the
runway at the Bowl, and are just now rolling
out. The wait was, of course, intentional. “I find
my peace in the product,” he says. “There’s nothing else that’s directing us.” — S . H .

PHOTOGRAPH: COURTESY OF FEAR OF GOD.

FOR THE PAST

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GQ World
Fashion Awards

WATCH OF THE YEAR

TAG
HEUER
CARRERA

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S E T D E S I G N : WAYO U T ST U D I O AT 1 1 T H H O U S E A G E N C Y.

In 1963, the Carrera
Chronograph entered
the world as a watch for
auto-racing enthusiasts
with a taste for good
design. This year, TAG
Heuer celebrated the 60th
anniversary of its flagship
watch with a radical new
design for the brand—the
gorgeous Carrera Glassbox,
with its internal bezel—and
a major pop culture cameo,
courtesy of Ryan Gosling
as Ken in Barbie. At the
same time, TAG released a
suite of grail-level vintage
models, like the yachtworthy Skipper and the
Gold Carrera Chronograph,
made after a watch that
was beloved by Ferrari
drivers in the ’70s, allowing
the Carrera to assert itself
as one of the all-time great
sport watches. — C A M W O L F

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P H O T O G R A P H

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F E R N I E

GQ World
Style

of 2023
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KENDRICK
LAMAR
NYC, May
While most attendees
at the Met Gala took
this year’s Karl
Lagerfeld theme
literally, sporting high
collars, leather gloves,
and big shades,
Kendrick chose
instead to bend it to
his will. The Pulitzer
Prize winner pulled up
in a boxy Chanel
leather jacket with a
Chanel silk scarf tied
around his waist—
accented by the
house’s double-C logo
stitched on his fitted
hat and encrusted in
diamonds on his
tooth—winning
fashion’s biggest night
handily in the process.

DAVID CABRERA.

From the
picket line
to the
courtroom
to the Super
Bowl, the
year’s finest
fashion
moments
were all about
uninhibited
personal
style—and
the uncanny
expression of
artificial
intelligence.

THE LAST WORD IN TRAVEL

GQ World
Style

DONALD GLOVER

GWYNETH
PALTROW

LA, January

Park City, March

STEVE LACY

AUSTIN BUTLER &
KAIA GERBER

LA, February

LA, May

This was the year
of sick leather
statement pieces.
So leave it to drip lord
Lacy to rock out at the
Grammys in
an all-leather Saint
Laurent look, with
a pair of stiletto-heel
boots thrown in to
make it clear the “Bad
Habit” singer isn’t
playing games.

Not since JFK Jr. and
Carolyn BessetteKennedy has a couple’s
dog-walking style been
so perfectly dialled.

MALIA OBAMA
LA, October
“Nothing beats watching your children
become smarter and cooler than you are,”
Barack Obama told GQ US in 2015. Here, his
eldest daughter—a writer in Hollywood—
proves him absolutely correct.
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Paltrow remains
undefeated when it
comes to low-key
luxury, even under the
most unglamorous
circumstances. In
court this year for a
trial related to a 2016
ski accident, the queen
of quiet opulence was
a vision of good taste
in a flawlessly tailored
blazer from The
Row and a big bottle
of Mountain Valley.
ST E V E L ACY: F R A Z E R H A R R I S O N . D O N A L D G LOV E R : K E V I N M A ZU R. G W Y N E T H PA LT ROW : J E F F S W I N G E R.
ALL: GET TY IMAGES. AUSTIN BUTLER AND KAIA GERBER, MALIA OBAMA: BACKGRID.

Now this is how you
do “creative black tie”.
Glover strutted the
Golden Globes red
carpet in a louche
satin robe and flowy
matching trousers
from Saint Laurent,
with one of the
Parisian label’s iconic
wide-lapel dinner
jackets adding the
formal finish.

TYLER, THE
CREATOR &
PHARRELL
WILLIAMS

SANSHO SCOT T/BFA.

Paris, June
Two fashion
iconoclasts and two
generations
of rap royalty. Tyler
and Pharrell went to
Paris and took a
besties fit
pic for the ages.

JUSTIN AND HAILEY BIEBER, K ATIE HOLMES: GE T T Y IMAGES. CILLIAN MURPHY: COURTESY OF UNIVERSAL PICTURES.
JEREMY ALLEN WHITE, DANIEL DAY-LEWIS, A$AP ROCKY: BACKGRID. JAY-Z: KEVIN MA ZUR/GET T Y IMAGES. A.I. POPE
FR ANCIS: IMAGE GENER ATED BY PABLO X AVIER. COLIN FARRELL: GE T T Y IMAGES. JEREMY STRONG: ANTONIO DE MASI
FOR GQ. BAD BUNNY: FRONT, MIKE COPPOL A/GET T Y IMAGES; BACK, ANGEL A WEISS/GET T Y IMAGES.

JAY-Z

GQ World

LA, February

Style

Nobody wears a tux better than Hov, and he
looked especially debonair supporting
Beyoncé at the Grammys in a shimmering
silk two-piece, an enormous velvet bow tie,
and a blinding Patek Philippe.

A.I. POPE
FRANCIS
March
The fabricated drip
seen round the world:
A Midjourneygenerated image of
Pope Francis, the
86-year-old pontiff,
wearing a swagged-out
puffer jacket fooled
social media users
around the globe and
kicked off a viral online
discourse about the
implications of
artificial fit-telligence.

JEREMY ALLEN
WHITE
LA, July
White proves that when
you’ve got bazookas
for arms, no sleeves
are necessary for
an incandescent fit.

KATIE HOLMES
NYC, August

CILLIAN MURPHY
Oppenheimer
As J. Robert Oppenheimer in Christopher
Nolan’s historical epic, Murphy looked
so damn dapper in his ’40s-era tailoring
that it forced us to consider: Are fedoras
actually good?
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Holmes is one of New
York City’s great
dressers. Who
else could make a
textbook errand-run
ensemble—slouchy
Alo Yoga sweatpants,
white tube socks,
and ubiquitous black
Adidas Sambas—
look this elegant?

JUSTIN & HAILEY
BIEBER
NYC, January
The Biebers may
notoriously dress
most days like they’re
headed to events
on two different
planets, but when their
tastes do align—
as was the case with
this harmonious
tonal-brown winter
layering and
his-and-hers oversized
pants—it’s a cosmic
couple’s-style event.

A$AP ROCKY
Phoenix, February
As Rihanna rocked the
Super Bowl halftime
show, A$AP Rocky
looked every bit the
proud partner (and
patriot) in a custom
Jeff Hamilton NFL
jacket, embroidered on
the back with a graphic
of his beloved’s
tattooed hand holding
a football.

JEREMY STRONG
Milan, June
Artisanal fashion’s
number one boy
took his tastes to the
Mediterranean, going
full Loro Piana from
his sneakers to
the bucket hat at
GQ’s Milan Fashion
Week dinner.

BAD BUNNY
NYC, May
Wearing a backless Jacquemus at the Met Gala,
Bad Bunny reminded us that a full dorsal view is the
menswear celebrity’s secret weapon.

DANIEL
DAY-LEWIS
NYC, May
Dressing like a
deranged Gen Z mall
rat was not on our
bingo card this year
for Day-Lewis.
He may be retired
from Hollywood,
but the three-time
Oscar winner is
still getting off
envelope-pushing
fits—just of a
very different order.
Consider this
distinctly post-swag
ensemble: a
Yoshimura-branded
trucker hat, black
Hokas, and butter
yellow Swooshie pants
from the Boston skate
brand One Gig.

COLIN FARRELL
Los Angeles, July
The picket line may not be the place to get a
fit off, but the sleeveless Irishman caused
a scene on the Hollywood streets during the
SAG-AFTRA strikes in this kit.
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GQ World
New Launch

India now has some of the most exciting retail
experiences in the world. B y S A L O N I D H R U V
this era reflect more than just a retail
experience; they provide brands an opportunity to tell a story.
From travelling to an era of opulence in a heritage bungalow to
sipping a cup of coffee while trying out the latest kicks, store
experiences are increasingly being used by brands to engage, or even seduce,
their customers in unique ways, moving away from the generic store formats
of the past to something unexpected and exciting. Here’s a guide to the finest
stores to open this year that are worth visiting.
HYSICAL STORES IN

Louis Vuitton
Jio World Plaza, Mumbai

PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY OF THE BRANDS.

Almost Gods
Dhan Mill, Delhi
What’s the vibe? Founder Dhruv Khurana
draws from brutalist architecture
characterized by minimalist construction
and strips the space down to its bare
bones. The exposed concrete and
monochrome colour palette evoke a sense
of intrigue and power, especially with the
ginormous winged lion—an iteration of the
Lion of Saint Mark, towering over you.
What’s in stock? A gothic take on
streetwear with prints inspired by the
Renaissance period, Norse mythology,
fourth-century medieval European mosaic,
and Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.
Why visit? To dig through some one-ofa-kind streetwear pieces that double as
wearable art.

What’s the vibe? Louis Vuitton’s
flagship India store occupying
7,500 square feet has been
designed by architect Rooshad
Shroff, who has balanced the
maison’s global sensibilities with an
injection of local design language.
For instance, the wallpaper was
handcrafted in Jaipur and developed
by Shroff in collaboration with
French textile and embroidery
entrepreneur Maximiliano Modesti.
What’s in stock? Accessories
including crossbody and duffel
bags, travel trunks, chunky
silver statement jewellery, and
sunglasses—including a pair of
Virgil Abloh x Pharrell Williams
“Millionaire” sunglasses. You’ll
also find classic monogrammed
LV trainers in multiple colourways,
and the denim trainers originally
designed by the late Virgil Abloh.
Why visit? To hand-pick the
flyest pieces from Pharrell
Williams’s spring-summer 2024
collection, which is slated to arrive
in March 2024.

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GQ World

Antar-Agni
Sarat Bose Road, Kolkata

Gucci
Jio World Plaza, Mumbai

What’s the vibe? For his first flagship
store in Kolkata, designer Ujjawal Dubey
juxtaposes the old-world charm of the
City of Joy with a 21st-century minimalist
aesthetic, retaining the original mosaic
tiles from the previous structure and
contrasting them with an origami snake
lamp that runs along the ceiling.
What’s in stock? Jackets, shirts, kurtas,
and trousers in nonconformist and
ungendered silhouettes that have been
synonymous with the brand since its
inception a decade ago.
Why visit? This store has a special madefor-Kolkata collection in moody monotones
of black, white, and grey that you won’t find
anywhere else.

What’s the vibe? Spanning nearly
6,000 square feet, the brand’s
fifth store in the country is part
of the gleaming new Jio World
Plaza. Geometry is the underlying
theme that runs through the store with
hand-painted wood flooring featuring
decorative motifs drawn from the brand’s
ready-to-wear collections and brass
display racks that are inspired by oldschool bellboy trolleys. The store also has
a separate walk-in salon for menswear with
velvet armchairs and sofas that create a
cosy living-room atmosphere.
What’s in stock? An extensive selection
of resortwear and fall-winter 2023
ready-to-wear collections for men and

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women. Expect the spring-summer 2024
collection, designed by the brand’s new
creative director Sabato De Sarno, to hit
the shelves by March 2024. You’ll also find
Gucci handbags, jewellery, travel gear, and
home decor pieces at the store.
Why visit? It’s the first time that the iconic
Florentine label has brought in made-toorder and made-to-measure services for
menswear in India, with the assurance
of getting a custom-made outfit within
a fortnight.

PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY OF THE BRANDS.

Antar-Agni’s new
store in Kolkata
has a minimalist
aesthetic while
preserving the
old-world colonial
vibe of the space.

New Launch

Sabyasachi
Horniman Circle, Mumbai

SABYASACHI: PHOTOGR APH, BJÖRN WALL ANDER; INTERIORS AND OVER ALL CREATIVE DIRECTION, SABYASACHI MUKHER JEE. TARUN TAHILIANI: COURTESY OF THE BR AND.

What’s the vibe? Stepping inside this
26,000-square-foot store in a heritage
building located within the city’s historic
precinct takes you back in time to an era
of grandeur and opulence. Inspired by the
romanticism of old Calcutta, the designer
has reimagined this store as a museum
housing objects of taste and beauty—from
clothing and textiles to one-of-a-kind art
pieces and artefacts.
What’s in stock? Sabyasachi’s flagship
store occupies an entire heritage
building, where you’ll find the designer’s
bridal and occasion wear on the ground

Tarun Tahiliani
Raja Ram Mohan Roy Road,
Bengaluru
What’s the vibe? The iconic
designer teamed up with close
friend and interior decorator
Vinita Chaitanya to turn a heritage
bungalow into a colonial cottage–
style flagship store in Bengaluru.
From the white exterior with
rusty-orange monkey tops (domed
roofs) to the interiors laced with
embroidered wallpapers—dotted
with hand-cut abalone and a
smattering of Swarovski crystals—
and the custom-made carpets
crafted by Obeetee and designed by
Tahiliani himself, the once-derelict
mansion shows off the bohemianluxe identity that the designer is
renowned for.
What’s in stock? A selection of
occasion wear for men and bridal
attire for women, alongside a
section curated for jewellery and
accessories.
Why visit? It’s a change from the
glass-and-steel corporate aesthetic
that can be seen across the city. The
store offers a regal experience once
you step into the opulent world of
Tarun Tahiliani.

floor, jewellery—ranging from fine to
heritage pieces—on the first floor,
while womenswear, menswear, his
international ready-to-wear collections,
and accessories occupy the rest.
Why visit? Apart from clothes, every
corner of the store is filled with art,
antique furniture, silverware, and
glassware, as well as rare lithographs,
Mughal miniatures, vintage photographs,
19th-century Company paintings, over
150 works of art by the Sabyasachi
Foundation, Canton vases, 18th-century
Venetian handcrafted chairs, French art
nouveau cabinets, over 3,000 books, 100
chandeliers, and 275 carpets.

GQ World
New Launch

Free Society
Hauz Khas, New Delhi
What’s the vibe? Modern and industrial,
the store’s minimal grey aesthetic
highlights the wall of holy grails.
What’s in stock? Streetwear gems from
Travis Scott’s merch label Cactus Jack,
Drake’s lifestyle brand October’s Very
Own (OVO), Justin Beiber’s clothing label
Drew, and Learn to Forget—a clothing
label established by musicians from
Night Verses, The Adolescents, and
Death by Stereo.
Why visit? Apart from all-time favourites
like Jordans and Air Maxes, their sneaker
wall includes the LeBron James x Fruity
Pebbles x Dunk Low collab, Lanvin curb
sneakers, and Louis Vuitton’s monogram
denim mules.

Extra Butter
Lower Parel, Mumbai
What’s the vibe? Located in the fastevolving Worli–Lower Parel stretch, the
brand’s first international outpost in
Mumbai brings a bit of their NYC DNA with
a clean and minimal aesthetic.
What’s in stock? A wide range of kicks
from New Balance, Asics, and Adidas. As
well as streetwear gems from A Bathing
Ape, Carhartt WIP, Dhruv Kapoor, Drôle
de Monsieur, Gramicci, John Elliott, and
Neighborhood.
Why visit? One word: Sambas. Lots
of them. You can also get your dose of
caffeine while you shop there from their
in-house cafe, curated by restaurateur
Aditi Dugar’s TwentySeven Bakehouse.

Mumbai welcomes two new
streetwear multi-stores with Extra
Butter (left) and Capsul (above).

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What’s the vibe? Started by two
ex-Puma employees, Bhavisha Dave
and Meenakshi Singh, in Bengaluru
in 2018, this marks the first extension
of the multi-brand streetwear store
outside the tech capital of India.
The new store is also located—no
surprises here—in Bandra.
What’s in stock? Graphic T-shirts
from Market, co-ord sets from
Staple, iconic Thrasher hoodies and
sweatshirts, triple-hem shorts from
Bristol Studio, logo T-shirts from
Champion, and accessories like
skateboards, collectables, and even
books and magazines from HUF,
Icecream, Chinatown Market, and
Ripndip.
Why visit? It’s the place to find the
latest fits from some of the coolest
global streetwear brands, as well as
home-grown heroes like Almost Gods,
IMWIP, and Biskit.

PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY OF THE BRANDS.

Capsul
Bandra, Mumbai

PHOTO: ASHISH SAHI/AD INDIA

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL HOMES IN THE WORLD

GQ World
Watch

The Art of
Space & Time
Japanese artist Takashi Murakami speaks about his design for Hublot’s
MP-15, a luminous, playful sapphire creation of his “smiling flower”
motif—and also fills us in on his upcoming plans. B y S A L O N I D H R U V

walks
into the boardroom of the Raffles
Hotel, a 136-year-old heritage bungalow turned hotel in Singapore,
everyone is buzzing with the
expectation that the Japanese artist will resemble his iconic smiling flower motif, which is
eccentric, colourful, and to state the obvious,
smiling. But the 61-year-old rushes in the room
trailed by hushed tones and wearing a neutral
outfit that echoes the essence of his latest collaboration with Hublot—a watch that recreates
Murakami’s iconic flower motif with 12 petals
made entirely of sapphire.
Later, when I hold the watch in my hand, I
examine its transparent contours. The floral
shape of the limited-edition MP-15 is not just
playful and quirky but also a luminous display of
the Swiss luxury watchmaker’s craft, fusing the
case, movement, and dial in a unique arrangement. Devoid of any colour, a challenge that
got Murakami excited about exploring the idea
of absolute transparency, the watch features a
novel interpretation of the visual effects of sapphire. It is also Hublot’s first series-produced
central flying tourbillon.
Back in the boardroom, Murakami settles
in front of a room full of journalists and fans
before he shares his existential idea of time,
leaving everyone amused. “When you go to an
art museum, all the pieces hanging up have been
made by dead people. My relationship with time
is about making pieces for a future audience,” he
says, switching between English and Japanese.
For Murakami, the world is not in three
dimensions, but is more of a multiverse. The
storied founder and president of Kaikai Kiki—
an art production company—confesses that he’s
a physics geek with a keen interest in quantum
mechanics, digging into the theories of the
flow of time. When he’s not creating works of
art or collaborating with cultural icons like
Billie Eilish, Lewis Hamilton, or Kanye West,
the artist spends his time watching YouTube
videos that get into complex theories of the
physics of time, space, and the universe. “I
see time as not linear but multifaceted,” he
says. “It makes me think how we can transcend all possibilities,” he explains, adding
that his favourite movie is Christopher Nolan’s
Interstellar—a film that explores time dilation
when a crew of space explorers travel through a
mysterious wormhole.
According to the Japanese artist, the complexities of watchmaking are similar to the complexities of the universe. In a candid conversation,
EFORE TAKASHI MURAKAMI

B

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Murakami talks about what went into the process of creating this new watch, how he incorporates technology
into his art, and his next collaborations. Hint: it involves
a massive K-pop girl band.
Your signature “smiling flower” is on the new MP-15
watch. What’s the origin of this now iconic motif?
A recurring theme of traditional Japanese paintings are
snow, the moon, and flowers, or flowers, birds, and the
moon. It intrigued me that it’s always the natural
elements and never any human beings. I realized
that if I was to make it likeable for the West, I
would need to make a human being the protagonist of my art. That’s why I added a face
to the flower and it’s how it became my
character.
Earlier this year you released a dozen
watches and NFTs in collaboration
with Hublot. How is this collection
different from the last one?
Creating this new collection has been a
dream come true for me. Before I even saw
the watch in my own hands, there were so
many things I wanted to say about it. But now
after seeing it I am speechless. That can only happen when something is so wonderful and so beautiful that you are left with no words as the piece
talks for itself.

PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY OF THE BRAND.

In your previous collection, you recreated the smiling
flower using rubies, sapphires, amethysts, tsavorites,
and topazes. What went into the watchmaking process
this time around?
When I first visited the Hublot factory, I was intrigued
by the kind of machines they used and was impressed by
the whole watchmaking process. I spent hours around
these industrial machines, just watching the way they
worked, so much so that everyone at the factory would
be like: Hey, Takashi, hurry up! [Laughs.] This watch is
more complicated in its design despite being compact.
At first glance, people may not immediately recognize it
as a watch—you may consider it as a piece of jewellery or
an accessory. This watch has a very conceptual story that
time is a fantasy and that everything is possible. When I
wore it for the first time, it gave me a sense of zero gravity,
it felt like magic.
You’ve been associated with Hublot for a few years
now. What drew you to the brand?
It was mostly because of Miwa [Sakai, the president of the
Asia Pacific region for Hublot]; she offered me the opportunity to collaborate many times. Her persistence made
me say yes! [Laughs.] When Hublot first approached me,
I refused the offer because I didn’t want to collaborate and
produce a kind of “cover” design. That would have been
very boring to me. When Miwa asked me to get onboard,
she was able to guarantee that I was free to do whatever I
wanted. I went to the Hublot factory in January 2019 and
saw how impressive it was—the quality and the potential
of it. Soon after that I met Ricardo [Guadalupe, CEO of
Hublot] and we were able to accept the conditions of the
partnership. That was about four years ago. Since then,
everything has been done one step at a time as we wanted
to collaborate on projects that were more complex, like
this new watch, which shows what a good partnership
can result in.

“This watch has a very
conceptual story that
time is a fantasy and that
everything is possible.”
In your recent show in San Francisco, there have been
references drawn from natural disasters and even
the pandemic. How did the pandemic affect you as
an artist?
I had some tough times during the pandemic; my company was on the brink of bankruptcy, I couldn’t pay my
taxes. But we managed to survive. During that time, we
invited younger generations to the studio in a bid to get
new and fresh ideas. It gave us this new lease of life.

Left: Only 50
pieces are
available of
this limitededition watch.
Above: The
launch party at
the Raffles Hotel
in Singapore.

Since the pandemic, technology has advanced to
another level of sorts—artists and designers got on the
bandwagon of NFTs and crypto currencies which have
slowly died down. And now there’s an uproar about
AI. As an artist, how have you incorporated modern
technology in your art?
About one and a half year ago, NFTs were very popular,
especially in the art scene. Facebook became Meta, and
everyone thought that the metaverse was going to be the
talk of town. I truly believed in the metaverse and part of
that is because I had a child who was 10 years old at the
time and saw how he communicated online with all his
gaming friends. That’s how significant the metaverse was
and I felt that sometimes artists stick too much to their
core values, which can be very uncompromising. I think
you should always be ready for change, to adapt to it and
fuse it with the style you’ve already acquired. I like the
fusion of combining what I believe in with what’s on trend
at the moment.
You’ve collaborated with some of the biggest names in
fashion and pop culture, including Louis Vuitton, Issey
Miyake, Kanye West, Billie Eilish, and most recently,
British F1 driver Lewis Hamilton. What’s the next thing
you’re working on?
My next project is with BLACKPINK. It’s refreshing to
work with a K-pop band because this collaboration goes
beyond the scope of a visual production, which is something I’m excited about.

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The Watch Party Rages On
An emoji Rolex, a neon Blancpain, a Spider-Man Audemars Piguet:
Old-school watchmakers are entering a wild new era. B y C A M W O L F
T T H I S Y E A R ’ S edition of Watches and
Wonders, the massive
Geneva trade show
where many of the
world’s finest brands debut their
novelties, nearly every conversation I had took the same detour:
So, someone would lean in conspiratorially, what do you think of the
Emoji Rolex? The watch, which adds
positive affirmations and exclusive
emojis to the Crown’s prestigious
Day-Date, was so out of left field for
the staid Rolex that many people
reacted just as Max Büsser, founder
of the Swiss luxury watchmaker
MB&F, did on a recent call. “Did
they all take acid?!” But it turned out
that what’s officially known as the
Puzzle Dial Day-Date was only the
beginning of the watch industry’s
new-vibes era. Even super-collectors
like John Mayer are feeling the wave.
As he recently told me, “We’re in a
golden era of watches that I’m having a really fun time wearing.”
Sometimes it can feel like appreciating the latest and greatest in
the watch world requires a loupe,
a fat history book, and a PhD in
jargonology. But you don’t have to
understand microscopic millimetre
shifts to enjoy many of 2023’s best
new releases. Audemars Piguet put
its most talented designers to work

A

From left:
H. Moser x MB&F
Streamliner
Pandamonium,
Audemars
Piguet x Marvel’s
Royal Oak Concept
Tourbillon
Spider-Man,
Blancpain x
Swatch’s Scuba
Fifty Fathoms
Arctic Ocean,
Oris’s ProPilot x
Kermit Edition, the
Hermès Slim
d’Hermès Minuit
au Faubourg, and
Rolex’s Day-Date
Puzzle Dial.

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on a watch with Spider-Man on its
open-worked dial; in addition to
its emoji Day-Date, Rolex released
a delightful confection of a watch
titled Celebration. One of Hermès’s
very limited editions features the
house’s trademark horse in a cape
and mask, moonlighting as a superhero. Blancpain and Swatch took
inspiration from neon sea slugs,
while Oris partnered with Kermit on
a froggy green number. MB&F and
H. Moser, for their part, collaborated
on an elaborate chiming mechanism
with a DJ’ing panda.
Audemars Piguet is proof that fun
doesn’t come at the expense of worldclass watchmaking. It takes a team of
artisans 50 hours to complete the
Spider-Man figurine of the watch, of
which 250 were made. “At Audemars
Piguet, we always say we are a serious brand, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously,” François-Henry
Bennahmias, the company’s CEO,
told me. “Watches should be fun!”
Brands finding their fun side is
a natural result of the watch industry’s massive growth over the past
few years. Ruediger Albers, the US
president of the international watch
retailer Wempe Jewelers, credits a
younger generation of enthusiasts
with pushing watchmakers in this
direction. According to Albers, this
emerging new class of collectors

likes to have “a watch that is aesthetically pleasing and not the one
everybody else is wearing”.
While many of these pieces are controversial among more conservative
collectors, most have been immediate hits. AP sold out of Spider-Mans
long ago, and Blancpain’s colourful
take on its typically sombre diver had
people lining up in droves. When the
Rolex pieces were announced, Albers
told me his phone “sounded like a
pinball machine”. Those timepieces,
in particular, immediately caught
on with such influential collectors as
John Mayer, Tom Brady, and Lionel
Messi. “I am happy that [the makers]
are taking a few more risks,” Büsser
told me. “If you ask them, they will
tell you they’re really shocked at how
many pieces they actually sell.”
As this new era of watches shows
us, transcending mere functionality is liberating. I hardly bother to
set my watches most of the time, let
alone depend on them as a kitchen
timer. This shift allows me to
broaden the type of watches I collect.
And many watchmakers themselves
are now intent on not just helping
collectors keep time but to totally
reconsider it. As Philippe Delhotal,
artistic director of Hermès’s watch
division, explained to me, “Hermès
watches offer a different interpretation of time: time that is full of
fanciful touches, time that is friendly,
lasting, playful, and recreational.”
You might say they’ve found a higher
purpose. Büsser put it more plainly:
“We’re creating things that make a
lot of people smile.”

BALLOONS AND CONFE T TI: GE T T Y IMAGES. WATCHES: COURTESY OF THE BR ANDS.

Watches

PHOTO: TARUN VISHWA/GQ INDIA

WHAT A MAN’S GOT TO DO

Panjim-based
writer, and
dad to three
boys, Vivek
Menezes
explores the
dynamics
of modern
fatherhood.
boys as beloved as can be, my wife
and I assumed the next one would be a girl. Everyone
expected it: our parents and siblings, the cross-cultural
web of community that enfolds us in Goa, and every
far-flung relative in our close-knit global families. It’s
what I wanted most sincerely too, because a younger
brother is my sole sibling and my mother only had
three brothers, while my father is one of another five
boys (with two sisters far outnumbered among them).
When we were expecting again, this entire tide of
heaving masculinity anticipated what we assumed was
inevitable, which is when our youngest son emerged
into the world. My first reaction was shock and disappointment, and then another unexpected jolt when
my entire being seemingly involuntarily flooded with
relief. I was hoping for a daughter, but that possibility had obviously caused some pent-up anxieties deep
inside me, which disappeared like magic at the appearance of my son. A bit later, there was some guilt as
well. Is the patriarchy alive in me as well? Am I part
of the problem?
Let’s face it, these are questions that no previous
generation has been compelled to confront, but they’re
unavoidable now that all of us have become painfully
aware of the accumulated perils that accompany testosterone. The data is stark, copious, and undeniable:
It is us guys who perpetrate almost all the violence in
the world including 98 percent of murders. We man
up—literally—the overwhelming majority of every
lynch mob and hateful assault, wherever it happens on
the planet, in an incredibly ugly track record that has
justifiably turned contemporary discourse against our
gender. The very language has soured as a result: paternalism, mansplaining, toxic masculinity. As a result, in
many complex ways, this new paradigm of understanding poses an existential challenge to human civilization
as we’ve practised it from the dawn of time, leaving men
like me in an uneasy state of limbo.
Patriarchy must fall, fully agreed, but how do we
put that principle into action among the fathers and
grandfathers we love, and the sons we’re responsible for
raising into men? Make no mistake, I am not making any
kind of plea for the boy child, let alone my own privileged
progeny. We are all well aware that the simple fact of
being male in India comes with unassailable advantages
that are impossible to justify, and can never be reconciled

TC H
R E SD EI T P CA RG EE DS I: T I LCLRUESDTI RT A CT RI OE ND ,I TG EC TR TE YD I ITM CA RG E D
S ;I TB C
O RO EK D CI TO VCERRE DP IHTO T O G R A P H , C O U R T E S Y O F V I V E K M E N E Z E S .

AFTER TWO BABY

Above: Fathers
and Sons by
Russian author
Ivan Turgenev
was published
in 1862.

in comparison to what girls and women have to endure.
The 2023 Global Gender Gap Report from the World
Economic Forum, where India is ranked an abysmal 127
out of 146 nations, painfully delineates how women in
this country eat far less than their husbands, brothers,
and sons, and suffer greatly reduced access to education
and employment (which has actually declined steeply
even as the economy has supposedly expanded). Unicef
reports that “globally girls have higher survival rates at
birth, are more likely to be developmentally on track, and
just as likely to participate in preschool, but India is the
only large country where more girls die than boys [and
are] also more likely to drop out of school”.
All these urgent realities demand immediate redress,
and we can all accept that the first step is awareness.
Ironically however, turning on that light bulb results in
considerable murkiness about the road ahead for men
like me, with the responsibility of fathering three boys
to thrive and prosper in our admittedly unequal world.
Is there still anything at all that is useful, and relevant,
about the way I was raised that remains essential to
pass onwards to the burgeoning new generations? And,
of course, what should be jettisoned entirely? Another
more difficult question: How do I empower my sons
to recognize and distrust the many different systems
of discrimination that perch them atop by accident of
birth, and then work to dismantle their own privileges,
which they know perfectly well have been ostentatiously
enjoyed by every previous male in our lineage?
One important thing I’ve learned about fatherhood
over nearly 25 years is some biological imperatives
are simply impossible to control. For just one obvious
example, I definitely want to be friends with my sons,
and cherish that intermittent aspect of our relationships, but they also keep on butting heads with me
relentlessly, and never cease measuring themselves
against their old man in an utterly exhausting pattern
of behaviour that is as old as time. That is why the annals
of scripture and greatest works of literature are full of
tragically bad dads—from Sophocles to Shakespeare,
and on to Homer Simpson. What’s more, we all root for
the kids, in the deeply embedded archetype that Freud
summarizes most pithily: “A hero is a man who stands
up manfully against his father and in the end victoriously overcomes him.”
Is there any possible relief in this pattern? Can it
be different for my sons, and their own children (God
willing, let there be some girls in the next generation)?
I think so, because my second big lesson from over two
decades of 21st-century fatherhood is that they’re on the
right track already. Far beyond any parental efforts or
role models, my sons have become reflexive feminists
of the new school because none of the young women
they’re growing up with will tolerate anything different.
We are all witness to how their ebullient generation of
digital natives is being led by icons like Greta Thunberg
and Malala Yousafzai, whose core values are fairness,
equity, inclusion, collective empowerment, and the realistic possibility of paradigmatic change. Who wouldn’t
be inspired by that? Which leads me to my ultimate conclusion, arrived at after much close observation of this
Generation Z: The best path of action for guys like me is
to generally get out of their way.

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“The world is what it is;
men who are nothing,
who allow themselves to
become nothing, have
no place in it.”
P A T R I A R C H Y W A S assumed to be universal,”
says Dr Alice Evans, the dynamic UK-based economist whose non-stop analysis about “10,000 years of
patriarchy” is my favourite Twitter feed. She says that,
“Until the 1960s, the social sciences were dominated by
men, who typically ignored women. Grand claims went
unchecked…. [The male position in most societies was]
often attributed to biology and women’s confinement as
care-givers. Susan Brownmiller emphasized worldwide
male violence. Simone de Beauvoir proclaimed ‘This
has always been a man’s world.’ Others like Marija
Gimbutas posited ancient matriarchies and goddess
worship.” But then, increasingly rapidly over the past
50 years, “as empirical studies burgeoned, assumptions
of universal male dominance were debunked and discarded. Gender relations were increasingly shown to be
globally heterogenous.”
Evans trawls through mountains of data to reach
some fascinating conclusions: “The Great Gender
Divergence really occurred in the 20th century. While
female seclusion persists in poor, patrilineal countries, gender revolutions have occurred in countries
undergoing rapid job-creating economic growth,
democratization, secular enlightenment, and feminist
activism. For the first time in human history, women
entered the labour market en masse, organized politically, and collectively eroded patriarchal dominance.
“And yet, in every single country and company
boardroom, men remain at the top. Their first mover
advantage has been entrenched through 21st-century
organizational practices (lucrative long hours and unaffordable childcare), homosocial schmoozing (between
male bosses and juniors), and near impunity for sexual
harassment. Since men are better able to capitalize on
(high-paying) jobs with longer hours, they leapfrog up
the corporate ladder, and then favour male cronies.”
The bottom line: “Global progress is contingent upon
job-creating economic growth and feminist activism.”
Crystal clear as those conclusions appear—more
jobs and freedom for all girls and women—they only
address part of the problem. I’m fully down with that
agenda, and you can be assured my sons are too, but
what about the even more deleterious effects of toxic
masculinity on ourselves? Is it now possible to parse my
own privileges to reveal, understand, and perhaps rectify the wreckage within, so the same toll is not enacted
“THE

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from my still relatively undamaged boys? Here is where
it gets uncomfortably real in ways I would much prefer
to cover up: Our generational advantages are founded
on gender and caste oppression amounting to slavery.
Our “revered ancestors” exercised considerable cruelty
in the unshakable belief that might makes right. For my
part, I was relatively lucky my mother was different, but
the voices around me definitely clamoured the familiar
refrain that “boys don’t cry” with its inevitable corollary
to “be a man”.
Looking back, the way we grew up in 1970s’ Bombay
was still comparatively gentle in contrast to the brutal ways of men that my brother and I would go on to
encounter at high school and college in the US. We
moved to Queens, New York, the same exact milieu
that produced Donald Trump, where physical and verbal violence were standard rules of the road, and the
only options were “suck it up” or become stereotyped
as a “wimp”. School and college in Reagan’s America,
followed by graduate school in Margaret Thatcher’s
UK, was an entirely Darwinian exercise of both “kill
or be killed” and “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you
stronger”. The latter maxim turned out to be true for
me, but at what cost? With how much time wasted? Is
there no relief in the human condition from this pointless spear-waving? “The world is what it is,” wrote VS
Naipaul in his classic novel A Bend in the River, “men
who are nothing, who allow themselves to become
nothing, have no place in it.” No one likes to hear it put
quite that plainly, but the fact is the Nobelist’s line is
often cited as an essential truth. Here’s what Barack
Obama told The New York Times about it: “I always think
about that line, and I think about his novels when I’m
thinking about the hardness of the world sometimes,
particularly in foreign policy, and I resist and fight
against sometimes that very cynical, more realistic view
of the world. And yet, there are times where it feels as if
that may be true.”
I share those sentiments somewhat, but we do
have good reason to suspect any American president’s
musings about “realistic” foreign policy because toxic
bellicosity is an important part of their job description.
Nonetheless, there is another possibility offered in what
Abraham Lincoln aptly described as “the better angels
of our nature”. Contra the implicit swagger of Naipaul
and Obama, we actually make and remake the world

THESE PAGES: BOOK COVER PHOTOGRAPH, SHUBHRA SHUKL A; VIVEK MENEZES AND SONS, COURTESY OF VIVEK MENEZES.

—VS NAIPAUL

into different versions of what it is, and here the Jungian
maxim applies in full: “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the
darkness conscious.” Ignoring fear, insecurities, and
negative emotions does nothing to change our lives,
but acknowledging and understanding those inner
shadows—integrating both the light and dark aspects
of our individual psyches—does achieve wholeness
and inner peace. The way I understand fatherhood is
to encourage that probing self-awareness in my sons,
and demonstrate it as much as possible in my own life.
This too is deeply embedded in the human condition.
Many years ago, while still in high school, I was moved
by Ivan Turgenev’s magnificent 1862 novel Fathers and
Sons, with its visceral portrayal of misunderstanding
across generations in a time of great change just like

ours. At that time, my sympathies lay with the sons (two
self-defined “nihilists” bent on changing the world) but
more recent readings revealed my more permanent
position with piercing clarity: “Nikolai Petrovich was
overtaken with melancholy thoughts. For the first time
he realized clearly the distance between him and his
son: he foresaw that every day it would grow wider and
wider. In vain, then, had he spent whole days [reading]
the newest books; in vain had he listened to the talk of
the young men; in vain had he rejoiced in putting in
his word too.” He concludes, like so many fathers have
before and after him, “apart from all vanity, I do think
myself that they are further from the truth than we are,
though at the same time I feel there is something behind
them we have not got, some superiority over us”. It is a
hopeful direction. The kids are alright.

Below: Rohan, Arjun,
and Nayan Menezes
with their dad at
Jantar Mantar in
New Delhi in 2009.
Opposite page: A
Bend in the River by
VS Naipaul was
published in 1979.

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Mercedes-Benz’s most
pedigreed roadster returns
with a new form, chassis,
and intent.
BY PARTH CHARAN

grand tourer and, incidentally, a ’90s
Bollywood movie fixture, the Mercedes-Benz SL now
stands rapidly transformed. In fact, one look at its scowling face, teeth-baring grille, and razor-sharp air-intakes
and it’s practically impossible to join the dots all the way
back to the SL of 20 years ago, whose sole purpose was to
breathe joy into long road trips in a way only a drop-top
can. The kind that is accompanied by main character
epiphanies and the forging of unbreakable bonds. From
the Saab convertible in As Good As It Gets to the Goabound SL600 in Dil Chahta Hai—a plush, front-engined
roadster can be quite an effective plot device.
This is, however, the SL55 AMG—a V8-powered,
Affalterbach-made sledgehammer of a grand tourer
that’s part AMG GT lite and part Porsche 911 rival. It’s
a big, fire-breathing, do-it-all, sub-supercar with massive flared wheel arches and styling so aggressive you
don’t even have to look under the hood to find AMG’s
fingerprints all over it; it is, after all, the first SL to be
developed by AMG. Should you pop the hood—and you
absolutely should—you’ll find a hand-built 4.0-litre
twin-turbo V8. The kind that’s heading for extinction
faster than the white rhino. Still, the SL55 AMG doesn’t
signify a terminal point in Merc’s R&D, but rather a
starting one. With an all-new aluminium monocoque
and all-new underpinnings, it is one of the brand’s most
contemporary supercars and will even share bits with
the upcoming AMG GT.
It’s hard not to approach this car with some
trepidation. For starters, the now discontinued
Mercedes-Benz S63 AMG has, for the longest time,
been my favourite Mercedes-Benz grand tourer. It possessed the sheer jaw-dropping momentum of an AMG,
without the overly stiff ride quality, henceforth referred
to as “AMGitis”. All the drama, none of the drawbacks.
On paper, the SL is still a more gentrified GT than the
uncompromising, Nürburgring-bred AMG GT, but can
it be as plush and comfort-oriented as the S63? Which
side is it likely to lean towards? Then there’s the fact
that I formed a digital relationship with the SL long
before I actually drove one. The posh, V12-powered
SL loomed large in the imagination of anyone born in
the ’90s, especially those who grew up playing arcadestyle video games. Can this SL match the one that’s
been nurtured by my imagination for over 20 years?
None of those considerations seem to matter as soon as
you put the roof down. This car oozes power and trackoriented mannerisms with every design element. The
rear is compact and round with slender tail lamps and
rip-snorting exhaust pipes singing the AMG anthem on
full blast seconds after you’ve turned on the ignition.
Headroom for miles and a V8 up front—this is the most
winsome combination since cream cheese and bagels.
Sure enough, the engine roars to life with all the
drama and panache of an AMG. With two turbos, there’s
pretty much no trace of lag, with the SL55 having been
converted into a proper point-and-shoot device. The

PHOTOGRAPHS: PARTH CHARAN.

ONCE A GENTEEL

real hero here is Merc’s nine-speed automatic gearbox,
with its imperceptibly quick shifts. For a V8, a power
output of 469bhp isn’t earth-shattering, considering
this is a brand that can squeeze out over 400 horsepower from a four-cylinder engine. But it gives the SL
enough power to make the performance exciting and
not overwhelming. Internationally, there is an SL63 version that makes an extra 110bhp, but the Indian market
only gets the top-spec SL55. What surprises me is how
well-damped the suspension feels on our roads. Sure,
some level of stiffness creeps in every now and then,
but it isn’t symptomatic of AMGitis by any measure—
the SL55 takes its touring duties very seriously, eagerly
swallowing up miles like Pac-Man after a few edibles.
Thanks to AMG’s influence, the SL has 4Matic all-wheel
drive for the first time, along with rear-wheel steering,
which allows you to power through curves on the road
with total abandon.
The interiors borrow bits from the Merc family, with
a large vertical touchscreen in the centre that’s angled
towards the driver to reduce reflections when the fabric
roof is down. The steering wheel is sufficiently contoured and flat-bottomed to convey sportiness, but it
isn’t the Alcantara-bathed affair that’s in the AMG GT.
Think Ferrari Roma and you’re close. In fact the cabin
is the most cosy and nurturing aspect of the new SL,
with the S-Class-style, touchscreen-oriented, top-of-theline MBUX. This is a relatively button-free environment,
with the fabric roof also opening and closing via the
touchscreen. It’s an odd sensation, but it gets the job
done, as long as you’re driving under 60kph. The SL55
AMG isn’t drop-top supercar theatre at its most dramatic, but it’s a car that lets you enjoy the moment, even
at low speeds.
From a post-war, gull-winged marvel of a racing car
derivative to a prominent-nosed, V12-powered aristocrat, the SL has seen more drastic transformations than
any continuously manufactured sub-brand in Merc’s
history. As the first car to feature fuel-injection, it can be
argued that the original 300SL Gullwing was the world’s
first modern supercar, and although previous iterations
weren’t developed from scratch by AMG, they did carry
the AMG suffix accompanied by typically ballistic levels
of power. So linear performance isn’t new to the SL. But
the SL55 does a fine job of straddling the roles of easily
tameable mile muncher and red-hot AMG. It may not
possess the singularity of purpose like its predecessors,
but it’s a far more wholesome GT as a result.

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The SL55’s V8
engine makes
700Nm of
torque.

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10th anniversary SPECIAL
INDIA

INDIA

INDIA

“IF I COULD, I
WOULD ERASE
THIS CONCRETE
JUNGLE AND
REPLACE IT
WITH GREEN
COVER”

OCTOBER 2018 `200

MEN OF THE
YEAR AWARDS

SEPTEMBER 2018 `150

FEBRUARY 2019 `150

ALL NEW
MENSWEAR

NAWAZUDDIN SIDDIQUI
PHOTOGRAPHED BY BIKRAMJIT BOSE

INSIDE
INDIA’S
NIPPON
CRAZE

RANVEER

VARUN DHAWAN
PHOTOGRAPHED BY TARUN KHIWAL

VA R U N D H AWA N

NAWAZUDDIN SIDDIQUI

EFFORTLESSLY
COOL

AC TO R O F T H E Y E A R

CULTURE TRIP:
WHY WOODSTOCK
STILL MATTERS
THE BEST
WATCHES
OF 2019
FOOTBALL
FOCUS
RAHEEM
STERLING

S H A H I D

STRIKES

OCTOBER 2019 `200

THE AQUA ISSUE

“RAINWATER
HARVESTING
IS THE
SOLUTION”

Ayushmann
ACTOR

OF THE YEAR

SUM THE
FASHMER
IO
ISSUN
E

INDIA

MARCH 2019 `15 0
P H OTO G R A P H E D B Y TA R U N V I S H WA

AUGUST 2019 ` 150

MEN OF
THE YEAR
AWARDS
2019

INDIA

AYUSHMANN KHURRANA
PHOTOGRAPHED BY ERRIKOS ANDREOU

PHOTOGRAPHED BY PRASAD NAIK

PHOTOGRAPHED BY R BURMAN

KAU
KY
VIC

SHA

P
SHA

L

E

TE
F
I
H
S

R

PHOTOS: BIKRAMJIT BOSE (OCTOBER 2018); TARUN KHIWAL (SEPTEMBER 2018); R BURMAN (FEBRUARY 2019); PRASAD NAIK (AUGUST 2019); ERRIKOS ANDREOU (OCTOBER 2019); TARUN VISHWA (MARCH 2019); ALL COURTESY OF GQ INDIA

IT'S WHAT'S NEW NOW

For the past 15 years, GQ India’s Men of the Year programme
has been a marker of individual achievement across industries
and professions. The class of 2023 includes a three-time
Grammy winning musician; a culinary wizard with an audacious plan
to put Himalayan cooking on the global map; as well as
a set of actors who have pushed boundaries, riveting audiences
with their performances on screen. These winners not only reflect
this country’s boundless creative talent and energy but also serve
to inspire a new generation of Indians who are coming of age.

PARTNERS

CELEBRATING

YEARS WITH

LEADING MAN

At a time when the box office power of
Hindi cinema’s legacy stars has been under scrutiny,
Sunny Deol’s riposte is emphatic: delivering
the most unexpected monster hit of the year.
It has been exactly four decades since Deol
first broke through with Betaab. What the incredible success
of Gadar 2—which released an incredible 22 years
after the original—underscores is the visceral connection
that an older generation of actors continues
to have with their audience. An emotional bond
that is unique, rare, and steadfast.

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Suit and shirt
Giorgio Armani

CELEBRATING

Bundi, kurta,
and trousers
Rahul Mishra
Watch and
eyewear
His own

YEARS WITH

FASHION PERSONALITY

Few have done more to put Indian fashion on the global map.
By elevating local artisanship and placing it at the centre
of his Paris haute couture collections, Rahul Mishra has
won over some of the fashion world’s most discerning,
influential individuals. Yet along with his renowned embroidery,
what is equally impressive is Mishra’s progressive attitude
towards the craftspeople he works with.

D E C

2 0 2 3 - J A N

2 0 2 4

G Q

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CELEBRATING

YEARS WITH

These pages:
Tuxedo, shirt,
bow tie, and
pocket square
Troy Costa
Watch and
eyewear
His own

D E C

2 0 2 3 - J A N

2 0 2 4

G Q

7 7

Suit
Rimzim Dadu
Top
Ura

CELEBRATING

YEARS WITH

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT

From being named Gucci’s first Indian
global ambassador to foraying into the global arena
with her first international Netflix project,
and then delivering a stellar performance in
the hit film Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani,
2023 has belonged to Alia Bhatt.

D E C

2 0 2 3 - J A N

2 0 2 4

G Q

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CELEBRATING

YEARS WITH

ACTOR OF THE YEAR

Throughout his career, Shahid Kapoor has
embraced nuanced, morally grey characters—an
impulse that is rare among stars, and one
that has paid off handsomely. This year,
he’s taken things up several notches: In the
superhit series Farzi, Kapoor delivered the
performance of his career—displaying
both immaculate control and volcanic
volatility— a breakout role that fittingly marks
his 20 years in cinema.

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2 0 2 4

Blazer, shirt,
and trousers
Rohit Gandhi +
Rahul Khanna

CELEBRATING

YEARS WITH

CHIVAS GLASSWARE PRESENTS

GLOBAL INDIAN

The towering Bengaluru-based musician and
composer won his third Grammy Award in 2023,
and was named a goodwill ambassador by
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Earlier this year in London, Ricky Kej conducted
the 100-member Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
in a stirring rendition of the Indian national anthem
on the occasion of our independence day.
Kej’s growing body of work is consistently building
Indian soft power across the globe.

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2 0 2 4

Suit, shirt, and tie
His own

Coat
Ashish Soni
Turtleneck
and trousers
Hermès
Sneakers
Christian
Louboutin

CELEBRATING

YEARS WITH

EXCELLENCE IN ACTING

It’s been a strong year for Aditya Roy Kapur,
one filled with praise for his double role in Gumraah,
an intriguing whodunnit murder mystery.
But it was in the hit streaming show
The Night Manager that Kapur truly soared,
cutting a distinctive figure as a vulnerable spy,
delivering a powerful performance packed
with action, drama, and an ill-fated romance.

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G Q

8 5

CELEBRATING

YEARS WITH

Suit
Ashish Soni
Boots
Hermès
←
Jumper
Zegna

D E C

2 0 2 3 - J A N

2 0 2 4

G Q

8 7

Jacket
Zara
T-shirt and
trousers
Khanijo

CELEBRATING

YEARS WITH

CULTURAL FORCE

Multi-hyphenate creative Reema Kagti helped create
and deliver some of this year’s most high-impact
cultural moments in the streaming arena:
critically acclaimed Dahaad was the first Indian web
series to premiere at Berlinale, and the follow-up
season of Made in Heaven created buzz
across the globe. Kagti’s professional partnership
with Zoya Akhtar continues to be one of the most
fruitful in the entertainment industry,
with her work increasingly becoming a reflection of
her personality: assertive and progressive.

D E C

2 0 2 3 - J A N

2 0 2 4

G Q

8 9

CELEBRATING

YEARS WITH

SPORTS LEGEND

He is the torchbearer of an illustrious Indian tennis tradition
that traces its line back to Ramanathan Krishnan.
Remarkably, Rohan Bopanna is still going strong
at the age of 43, with 2023 being his best year yet:
He started as a runner-up in mixed doubles
at the Australian Open, reached the men’s doubles semis
at Wimbledon, and finished the Grand Slam circuit
as men’s doubles runner-up at the US Open.
Bopanna proves the adage: Age is just a number.

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Suit
Selected Homme
Jumper
Polo Ralph Lauren
available at The
Collective
Watch
Omega

CELEBRATING

YEARS WITH

PROGRESSIVE POWERHOUSE

Ever since he started in the business,
Ayushmann Khurrana has been using cinema
as a tool to kick-start and drive positive conversations
around taboo subjects in a bid to reduce
societal prejudice. In this year’s Dream Girl 2,
the light-hearted narrative is layered with
a serious message about cross-dressing
and acceptance. That the film was a
commercial success is yet another feather
in the cap of this talented actor who, earlier this year,
was also appointed a national ambassador
for India by Unicef to support and enhance
his advocacy work in the arena of children’s rights.

9 2

G Q

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2 0 2 3 - J A N

2 0 2 4

Bandhgala
and trousers
Anamika
Khanna

Coat, jumper,
and trousers
Rohit Gandhi +
Rahul Khanna
→
Coat, waistcoat,
and trousers
Anamika Khanna

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2 0 2 4

CELEBRATING

YEARS WITH

CULINARY PIONEER

CELEBRATING

YEARS WITH

Apron, T-shirt,
jeans, and sneakers
His own

D E C

2 0 2 3 - J A N

2 0 2 4

G Q

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These pages:
Blazer
Massimo Dutti
T-shirt, jeans,
and sneakers
His own

Endowed with restless energy and searing ambition, 36-year-old
Prateek Sadhu likes to take the road less travelled. The former
executive chef of the path-breaking, critically acclaimed Masque
in Mumbai, he has now risked it all by opening his own restaurant,
Naar, nestled amid the Himalayan peaks near Kasauli. Like some
of the world’s greatest restaurants—Mirazur and El Bulli come
to mind—Sadhu has conceived his 18-seater as a global hotspot
that will stand alone as a culinary destination.
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2 0 2 4

CELEBRATING

YEARS WITH

Jumpsuit
Rajesh Pratap
Singh
Loafers
Charles & Keith
Earrings
Radhika Agrawal

1 0 0

G Q

D E C

2 0 2 3 - J A N

2 0 2 4

CELEBRATING

YEARS WITH

CHIVAS GLASSWARE PRESENTS

CREATIVE MAVERICK

She is one of India’s most talented film-makers,
as displayed by “The Mirror”, widely considered
the standout segment in Lust Stories 2.
But Konkona Sen Sharma is equally gifted in front
of the camera as well. The actor’s standout performance
in the second season of Mumbai Diaries underscores
not only her talent but also her commitment
to using her craft as a tool for social reform.

D E C

2 0 2 3 - J A N

2 0 2 4

G Q

1 0 1

CELEBRATING

YEARS WITH

Coat, waistcoat,
and skirt
Mannat Gupta
Boots
A&S
Earrings
Ishhaara
←
Jumpsuit
Rajesh Pratap
Singh
Earrings
Radhika Agrawal

D E C

2 0 2 3 - J A N

2 0 2 4

G Q

1 0 3

CELEBRATING

YEARS WITH

DIRECTOR OF THE YEAR

With Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani, Karan Johar
delivered a critical and commercial success—a movie
that stands to usher in a new era of mainstream Hindi cinema.
In a single sweep, the director addressed issues of
parochial patriarchy, body shaming, and male entitlement,
while keeping an endearing, hilarious love story
at the heart of it. All this while remaining arguably
the most energetic, prolific individual in the
Indian entertainment business.

1 0 4

G Q

D E C

2 0 2 3 - J A N

2 0 2 4

Jacket
Loewe
Turtleneck,
eyewear, and
jewellery
His own

CELEBRATING

YEARS WITH

Blazer
Dhruv Kapoor
Eyewear and
jewellery
His own
←
Blazer
Balenciaga
Tie
Tom Ford
Shirt and eyewear
His own

LEADING MAN

SPORTS LEGEND

At a time when the box office power of
Hindi cinema’s legacy stars has been under scrutiny,
Sunny Deol’s riposte is emphatic: delivering
the most unexpected monster hit of the year.
It has been exactly four decades since Deol
first broke through with Betaab. What the incredible success
of Gadar 2—which released an incredible 22 years
after the original—underscores is the visceral connection
that an older generation of actors continues
to have with their audience. An emotional bond
that is unique, rare, and steadfast.

He is the torchbearer of an illustrious Indian tennis tradition
that traces its line back to Ramanathan Krishnan.
Remarkably, Rohan Bopanna is still going strong
at the age of 43, with 2023 being his best year yet:
He started as a runner-up in mixed doubles
at the Australian Open, reached the men’s doubles semis
at Wimbledon, and finished the Grand Slam circuit
as men’s doubles runner-up at the US Open.
Bopanna proves the adage: Age is just a number.

SUNNY DEOL

ROHAN BOPANNA

PHOTOGRAPH: MANASI SAWANT
STYLING: GAGAN OBEROI
HAIR: ALFAHAD FROM TEAM AALIM HAKIM
MAKE-UP: HEMANT
ENTERTAINMENT DIRECTOR: MEGHA MEHTA
CONSULTING EDITOR: PRIYADARSHINI PATWA
PRODUCTION: ANOMALY PRODUCTION,
SHUBHRA SHUKLA

PHOTOGRAPHS: NEHA CHANDRAKANT
STYLING: SELMAN FAZIL
HAIR AND MAKE-UP: ANURADHA RAMAN
ENTERTAINMENT DIRECTOR: MEGHA MEHTA
PRODUCTION: SHUBHRA SHUKLA

PROGRESSIVE POWERHOUSE

Ever since he started in the business,
Ayushmann Khurrana has been using cinema
as a tool to kick-start and drive positive conversations
around taboo subjects in a bid to reduce
societal prejudice. In this year’s Dream Girl 2,
the light-hearted narrative is layered with
a serious message about cross-dressing
and acceptance. That the film was a
commercial success is yet another feather
in the cap of this talented actor who, earlier this year,
was also appointed a national ambassador
for India by Unicef to support and enhance
his advocacy work in the arena of children’s rights.
FASHION PERSONALITY

Few have done more to put Indian fashion on the global map.
By elevating local artisanship and placing it at the centre
of his Paris haute couture collections, Rahul Mishra has
won over some of the fashion world’s most discerning,
influential individuals. Yet along with his renowned embroidery,
what is equally impressive is Mishra’s progressive attitude
towards the craftspeople he works with.

AYUSHMANN KHURRANA
PHOTOGRAPHS: SAHIL BEHAL
STYLING: SELMAN FAZIL
HAIR: MOHD JAVED
MAKE-UP: SANJAY YADAV
ENTERTAINMENT DIRECTOR: MEGHA MEHTA
PRODUCTION: ANOMALY PRODUCTION,
SHUBHRA SHUKLA

RAHUL MISHRA
PHOTOGRAPHS: ABHISHEK BALI
HAIR AND MAKE-UP: SONAM KAPOOR
ENTERTAINMENT DIRECTOR: MEGHA MEHTA
PRODUCTION: SHUBHRA SHUKLA

CELEBRATING

YEARS WITH

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT

From being named Gucci’s first Indian
global ambassador to foraying into the global arena
with her first international Netflix project,
and then delivering a stellar performance in
the hit film Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani,
2023 has belonged to Alia Bhatt.

CULINARY PIONEER

ALIA BHATT

PRATEEK SADHU

PHOTOGRAPH: AVANI RAI
STYLING: RAHUL VIJAY
HAIR: AMIT THAKUR
MAKE-UP: PUNEET SAINI
ENTERTAINMENT DIRECTOR: MEGHA MEHTA
CONSULTING EDITOR: PRIYADARSHINI PATWA
PRODUCTION: ANOMALY PRODUCTION,
SHIVANJANA NIGAM, SHUBHRA SHUKLA

PHOTOGRAPHS: ABHISHEK BALI
STYLING: SELMAN FAZIL
ENTERTAINMENT DIRECTOR: MEGHA MEHTA
PRODUCTION: SHUBHRA SHUKLA

EXCELLENCE IN ACTING

CREATIVE MAVERICK

ACTOR OF THE YEAR

It’s been a strong year for Aditya Roy Kapur,
one filled with praise for his double role in Gumraah,
an intriguing whodunnit murder mystery.
But it was in the hit streaming show
The Night Manager that Kapur truly soared,
cutting a distinctive figure as a vulnerable spy,
delivering a powerful performance packed
with action, drama, and an ill-fated romance.

She is one of India’s most talented film-makers,
as displayed by “The Mirror”, widely considered
the standout segment in Lust Stories 2.
But Konkona Sen Sharma is equally gifted in front
of the camera as well. The actor’s standout performance
in the second season of Mumbai Diaries underscores
not only her talent but also her commitment
to using her craft as a tool for social reform.

Throughout his career, Shahid Kapoor has
embraced nuanced, morally grey characters—an
impulse that is rare among stars, and one
that has paid off handsomely. This year,
he’s taken things up several notches: In the
superhit series Farzi, Kapoor delivered the
performance of his career—displaying
both immaculate control and volcanic
volatility— a breakout role that fittingly marks
his 20 years in cinema.

ADITYA ROY KAPUR

SHAHID KAPOOR
PHOTOGRAPH: VAISHNAV PRAVEEN
STYLING: SELMAN FAZIL, CHANDANI MEHTA
HAIR: SHAHRUKH FROM TEAM AALIM HAKIM
MAKE-UP: GLADWIN JAMES
ENTERTAINMENT DIRECTOR: MEGHA MEHTA
PRODUCTION: ANOMALY PRODUCTION,
SHUBHRA SHUKLA

PHOTOGRAPHS: MANASI SAWANT
STYLING: SELMAN FAZIL
HAIR: RAGHU FROM TEAM AALIM HAKIM
MAKE-UP: STEPHEN
ENTERTAINMENT DIRECTOR: MEGHA MEHTA
PRODUCTION: ANOMALY PRODUCTION,
SHUBHRA SHUKLA

CULTURAL FORCE

GLOBAL INDIAN

Multi-hyphenate creative Reema Kagti helped create
and deliver some of this year’s most high-impact
cultural moments in the streaming arena:
critically acclaimed Dahaad was the first Indian web
series to premiere at Berlinale, and the follow-up
season of Made in Heaven created buzz
across the globe. Kagti’s professional partnership
with Zoya Akhtar continues to be one of the most
fruitful in the entertainment industry,
with her work increasingly becoming a reflection of
her personality: assertive and progressive.

KONKONA SEN SHARMA
PHOTOGRAPHS: MANASI SAWANT
STYLING: DAMINI DAS
HAIR AND MAKE-UP: SAHER GANDHI
ENTERTAINMENT DIRECTOR: MEGHA MEHTA
CONSULTING EDITOR: PRIYADARSHINI PATWA
PRODUCTION: ANOMALY PRODUCTION,
SHUBHRA SHUKLA

DIRECTOR OF THE YEAR

With Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani, Karan Johar
delivered a critical and commercial success—a movie
that stands to usher in a new era of mainstream Hindi cinema.
In a single sweep, the director addressed issues of
parochial patriarchy, body shaming, and male entitlement,
while keeping an endearing, hilarious love story
at the heart of it. All this while remaining arguably
the most energetic, prolific individual in the
Indian entertainment business.

The towering Bengaluru-based musician and
composer won his third Grammy Award in 2023,
and was named a goodwill ambassador by
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Earlier this year in London, Ricky Kej conducted
the 100-member Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
in a stirring rendition of the Indian national anthem
on the occasion of our independence day.
Kej’s growing body of work is consistently building
Indian soft power across the globe.

RICKY KEJ
PHOTOGRAPH: MANASI SAWANT
STYLING: SELMAN FAZIL
HAIR AND MAKE-UP: APOORVA AGNES
ENTERTAINMENT DIRECTOR: MEGHA MEHTA
PRODUCTION: SHUBHRA SHUKLA

REEMA KAGTI

KARAN JOHAR

PHOTOGRAPH: SAHIL BEHAL
STYLING: BHAWNA SHARMA
FASHION ASSISTANT: NAISHA SINGHVI
HAIR: SUNITA PAL (BBLUNT)
MAKE-UP: ANISHA CHAWLA
ENTERTAINMENT DIRECTOR: MEGHA MEHTA
PRODUCTION: SHUBHRA SHUKLA

PHOTOGRAPHS: SAHIL BEHAL
STYLING: SELMAN FAZIL
HAIR: AALIM HAKIM
MAKE-UP: PARESH KALGUTKAR
ENTERTAINMENT DIRECTOR: MEGHA MEHTA
PRODUCTION: ANOMALY PRODUCTION,
SHUBHRA SHUKLA

PHOTO: BIKRAMJIT BOSE/AD INDIA

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL HOMES IN THE WORLD

Garden City. Cantonment town. Epicentre of global tech. Bengaluru has been
called many things, but never an art hotspot. That’s quickly changing as the city
unleashes a new creative impetus that matches its energy and ambition.

OPPOSITE PAGE: PHOTOGRAPH, MIHIR SHAH.

BY VIVEK MENEZES
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MANISH MANSINH

A curious paradox has reigned in Bengaluru since it
began boiling with money after liberalization in 1991,
and the famously bucolic “Garden City” became
the epicentre of India’s globalization story. Now the
fastest-growing city in the entire Asia-Pacific region,
its population has tripled in the greatest urban
economic boom in the subcontinent since 1947. Yet,
even while defining the country’s future prospects
in many different crucial areas, all that limitless
ambition seemingly stopped short when it comes to
art and culture, which continued to languish underinstitutionalized and incongruously informal. Now,
all in a rush in the post-pandemic era, that too is
being rapidly transformed, as a host of independent
ventures are rising up to fill the vacuum. Trailblazing this bold new direction is the Museum of Art
& Photography (MAP), which opened in February
earlier this year, and has already galvanized the art
world with its impressive tech-forward online and
physical avatars. Intrigued by what it has achieved
in just a few months, I recently visited MAP to better
understand how this cultural start-up is navigating
an expanding set of international ambitions
alongside its home city’s rooted identity.

“The native and the global are always in conflict in Bangalore, it is part of our evolution,” says
Suresh Jayaram, an integral bridge figure between
the colonial-era cantonment city and its 21stcentury ambitions, whose studio-gallery-residence
1Shanthiroad has functioned as an influential creative crossroads since he built it on family property in
2003. I have been an admirer since he attended the
Goa Arts and Literature Festival many years ago—
where I am a cocurator along with the Jnanpith
Award winner Damodar Mauzo—and last year thoroughly enjoyed his self-published labour of love
Bangalore’s Lalbagh: A Chronicle of the Garden and
the City, which “grounds itself in local histories and
presents”. The evening before venturing to MAP, we
spent pleasant hours talking together in the shaded
courtyard of 1Shanthiroad, which was hosting an
excellent exhibition by Kapila Nahender, where the
artist statement explained: “I have access to an eclectic iconography and various traditional practices,
juxtaposed and living side by side in the Halasuru
neighbourhood, and surrounding areas of Fraser
Town and Shivajinagar where I live in Bengaluru.
[They] inspire me to create works of art that afford
a certain acceptance and ambiguity. It helps me in
understanding this urban energy, its vibrant mishmash of a lovely, pulsating and hopeful way of life.”
Perhaps more than anyone else in constantly shapeshifting Bengaluru, Jayaram has experienced the city’s
diverse art scenes up close, and singularly embodies
both its Kannadiga roots and 21st-century international networks. It is his life’s work and his life itself:
1Shanthiroad is home, where he extends “radical
hospitality” to everyone who enters, in an intentionally disarming way of being that generates instant
familiarity and friendship. This one-man lifeline
for artists has made a huge difference all by himself,
recounting that “the 1990s were unmistakably a paradigm shift, where Bangalore was caught in the global
climb of IT, but this new economy was not reflected
in the arts, and was more seen in rampant unplanned
urban growth that changed the city and the mindset
of people. The ‘art boom’ in Mumbai and Delhi hardly
mattered to the local scene, which has diverse forms
of regional modernism and subversive art and experimentation. My way of addressing this problem has
been ‘solidarity economics’. A space with zero administrative and bureaucratic designs, which adapts in
accordance to the possible. Over 20 years after it came
into existence, 1Shanthiroad continues to present the
‘alternative’ as an institutional critique.”
There is important context here, in the Indian art
world’s ever-present existential anxieties following
the shocking collapse of the still-nascent modern
and contemporary art marketplace in 2008, followed
by the consistent mismanagement of most of the

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Top: Kanasu Kannadi
(Dream Mirror), by
Payana in
collaboration with
Maraa, Falana Films,
and Joe Panicker,
part of Visible/
Invisible:
Representation of
Women in Art
Through the MAP
Collection. Above
left: Abhishek
Poddar, founder of
the Museum of Art &
Photography (MAP).
Above right: Kamini
Sawhney, director
of MAP. Opening
pages: Suresh
Jayaram (left),
founder of
1ShanthiRoad;
visitors at a digital
exhibition at the
Sasken Multimedia
Gallery on the first
floor of MAP.

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country’s museums. Almost everything of value has
withered disgracefully over the past decade, and
while there’s still considerable hype it is not at all
backed by numbers. The comparison to countries like
China, which were exactly in the same place just one
generation past, could not be more painfully stark.
They have thousands of museums, and keep building more, while our few dozen crumble from neglect.
Their collectors drive a huge portion of global trade,
while ours don’t even add up to 0.5 per cent. Here in
India, it’s a shameful fact that most people can’t ever
see our own greatest masterpieces in person, with my
home state the ultimate example. Vasudeo Gaitonde
and Francis Newton Souza of the seminal Progressive
Artists Group share deep ancestral roots in North
Goan villages, but it’s impossible to see their paintings
in their own homeland, in the depressing pattern of
apathy and incompetence that characterizes attitudes
towards the arts across the country.
Things could turn around with Bengaluru leading the way, and spending time with Suresh Jayaram

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to understand his milieu better was an important
reminder that his hometown cannot easily be compared to Mumbai or Kolkata—or New York and
London either—because this city on the move is still
very evidently embroiled in becoming whatever it’s
eventually going to be. Not only the start-up capital
of the country—and perhaps even the world—it’s also
very much itself a start-up, spilling over with millions
of young migrants who are swiftly reprogramming
what it means to be Indian even as they do the same
to the apps on your mobile device. Here, the speed
and scale of change is genuinely mind-boggling.
A few years ago, I walked my young sons around
Cubbon Park and pointed out Vijay Mallya’s colonial-era mansion, but this time I found that landmark
was no longer on the ground. It has been hoisted atop
an astonishing skyscraper over 30 storeys high, and
crowned by a vast helipad. Hard by is another giant
building with its own helipad, and in between these
monuments to excess is MAP, which is comparatively
modest in size, but references the same visual language of glass and steel.
“Cubbon Park is the soul of this city,” said Suresh
Jayaram, who was kind enough to walk me to MAP
on the morning of my first visit. He told me his new
book is about this lovely “public space that
has changed down the years from being
native farmland to a colonial garden to
the most contested social, political, and
cultural space that defines the city’s urban
planning and concern for nature. It is not
just a public park, but reflects dreams
and aspirations about the city like the
collective botanical diversity of the trees
that grow there. It is part of the network
of local and global transactions of human
minds that work to nurture the cosmopolitan nature of this global city.” Many
of the most important institutions of the
city and state are here: the Karnataka
High Court; the Seshadri Iyer Memorial
Library; the Government Museum; and
the Venkatappa Art Gallery.
This is the storied cultural landscape onto which
MAP opens its doors, directly across from the
Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum,
in what is surely one of the most desirable locations
in Bengaluru. From the moment I entered, it was clear
this new institution is working hard on openness and
accessibility, to live up to the mission statement outlined on its website: “At MAP we believe that art is
for all and have a range of accessibility services and
features to make your visit as seamless as possible.
The Museum is designed with mobility in mind, with
accessible parking, pathing and bathrooms for ease
of access. We have also developed audio guides and
tactile artworks for a holistic experience of our exhibitions.” This must be the first and most important
principle for all art and culture start-ups in a country
like India, as private entities joust to take the place of
what the state should be doing, and equally impressive is the online emphasis via mapacademy.io, where
huge resources are being made freely available.
“The pandemic changed the way we approached

Below: The MAP
team observing an
artwork at the
conservation
lab—from left,
Arnika Ahldag, head
of exhibitions; Shilpa
Vijayakrishnan, head
of education and
outreach; and Shibu
Narayan, head of
collections.

our audiences,” says Kamini Sawhney, director
of MAP, who previously headed the outstanding
Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation in Mumbai. I met
this distinguished art world insider—she became
the first-ever Indian elected to the International
Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern
Art board last year—at her light-filled office, surrounded by attractive open-plan suites, filled with
young people (they seemed 80 per cent women) visibly engaged in their work assignments. She told me,
“Our initial idea was to build a strong base within the
community in Bengaluru, and then move outwards
across the country and internationally. But the lockdown encouraged us to innovate, and reach out to
audiences online. It turned things on their heads in a
way, because we were connecting with people across
the world alongside local audiences.” Now, there’s an
equal emphasis on the physical: “If MAP is to have
any impact in Bengaluru then it has to be relevant to
the people in the city. It is only when the people who
live here have a sense of ownership over the museum
that it will become the vibrant cultural hub that we
want it to be. Art has always flourished in different

pockets in the city but what it has lacked are more
formal institutions that provide organized experiences and points of contact and exchange. Along with
other similar institutions like Bangalore International
Centre, Indian Music Experience, and the [upcoming] Science Gallery, our plan is to work together to
change that.”
I noted many fascinating aspects to MAP on my
visit, but one I did not expect was the conspicuous
absence of the names of its founders: Abhishek and
Radhika Poddar. Every major donor is listed on panels
by the entrance except them, despite their spearheading and seeding the entire project from its contested
genesis—when public outcry prevented the museum
from being transplanted onto the public Venkatappa
Gallery—and bringing in the great majority of the
artworks in its permanent collection. It was both
refreshing and surprising when Sawhney told me,
“One man did buy these works, but they don’t belong
to him. We believe they belong to the city and its people. Also, museum collections tend to be structured,
but because this grew out of a collector’s passion, it
wanders in all sorts of directions with often delightful

O P P O S I T E PA G E : K A M I N I S AW H N E Y, O R A N G E & T E A L .

“The lockdown encouraged us to innovate, and reach
out to audiences online. We were connecting with people
across the world alongside local audiences.” —KAMINI SAWHNEY

“We could have moved out of
the city and built much more
on far bigger land, but our
goal was to be right here, and
we want to have the same
connection to the citizens as
the Visvesvaraya museum right
opposite our doors.” —ABHISHEK PODDAR

Left: Gurjeet Singh,
Sile Bolna (Stitched
Lips), 2022. Top
left: Indu Antony,
Uncle had Hairy Legs
(Vincent Uncle series),
2017. Top right: The
head of conservation
Rajeev Kumar
Choudhary with the
team of conservators
and restorers. Above
right: Visitors at MAP.

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surprises. I often say MAP’s collection is a curator’s
delight even if it can be an archivist’s nightmare,
including premodern, modern, and contemporary art,
textiles, indigenous art, photography, and popular culture. It allows us to collapse the hierarchies between
what is perceived as high and low art and draw interesting connections across the collection.”
MAP is very good in several ways: It’s free to enter
(although more signage to that effect would help to
welcome more people) and you can explore some of its
collection without paying anything. On its first floor,
there is an ingenious interactive display on which you
can mount any one of several collections on walls of
screens, the first of its kind anywhere in the world; it
struck me as an ideal example of art-related innovation
that IT-forward Bengaluru can contribute for the rest
of us (although, by contrast, the so-called virtual reality
exhibition in the basement was sorely disappointing).
There is an affordable cafe downstairs and a restaurant on the roof, as well as an unusually well-conceived
merchandise collection in the museum shop. More
than any other existing art institution in the rest of the
country, this new venture struck me as having its act
together, with a comprehensive vision that is likely to
result in the broad-based achievement of its goals.
“Our success is going to be determined solely by
the people of Bangalore,” says Abhishek Poddar, “We
could have moved out of the city and built much more
on far bigger land for the same kind of money we
have spent, but our goal was to be right here, and we

want to have the same connection to the citizens as
the Visvesvaraya museum right opposite our doors.”
Although we couldn’t meet at MAP, I was glad for a
video call to discuss his ideas for the city he moved to
from Kolkata just when the economic boom started to
take hold 30 years ago. “I came to the Garden City just
at the cusp of its change, and soon after my own journey in art had begun with gurus to show me the way
like Martand Singh, Jyotindra Jain, BN Goswamy, and
Dayanita Singh. It’s been an amazing journey of learning, and one that I am motivated to share. Bangalore
somehow didn’t have the kind of museums that it
needed, to instil pride and joy in Indian art amongst
the majority of young people who live here. MAP was
the right choice to address that,” he says.
This long-time art buyer has collected some standout works that make his museum an instantly essential
destination in which to view the best modern and
contemporary Indian art. Among a few others, I was
strongly drawn to Arpita Singh’s 1990 Devi
Pistol Wali as well as Bhupen Khakhar’s baleful 1965 Devi. Poddar says, “When I began, it
was more all over the place, as different people
guided me, but these days it’s about what gives
me joy. The most important question: Does
the work make you pause and wonder? It has
always amazed me, how art can take you back,
make you think and savour the moment. What
I’ve learned over the years is you don’t have to
be an expert, but just listen carefully to those
who are. When I’ve asked for help, I’ve always
received it in abundance. That wonderful
experience of sharing is what I want to help
inculcate in the city and its residents. I want
MAP to make a difference.”
That might well happen, but at the moment
MAP is a work in progress, exactly mirroring
Bengaluru. There is much to admire in this
supercharged South Indian city, as well as many
problems including some of the world’s worst
traffic. On my way out to the airport, I fought
through the gridlock to make a final pit stop at
Bengaluru Oota Company, which serves typical
Gowda and Mangalorean fare, and earlier this
year made an improbable leap into the top 50
restaurants in the country in the Condé Nast
Traveller India rankings (for which I am one
of many jurors). Here again is local and global,
unpretentious but extraordinary, in yet another
example of what the rest of the world can learn
from and emulate, from what’s happening in
the capital of Karnataka. To discuss that, I was
happy to be joined by Raghava KK, whose own
remarkable art journey maps that of his home
city. A self-taught prodigy with deep roots in
the old Bangalore, he’s now represented by the
Dubai-based Volte Art Projects—along with
global stars like William Kentridge and James
Turrell—as “the embodiment of the new India’s
global and digital aspirations”.
Raghava and I spent our lunchtime discussing the contradictions and congruences in the
sudden change of pace in the Bengaluru art
world. He told me his home town “has always
been open to change and new perspectives.

Having seen no major adversity in terms of wars
for many generations, the people of Karnataka
are very laid-back, warm, and open-minded. They
have the potential to imagine alternate realities,
and transcend hegemonic practices.” But there’s
also something important to consider here: “We
should be seeing more experimental, more openminded and inclusive art coming out of Bangalore
along with original solutions. Unfortunately, we as
a nation do not value original thought and experimentation and would rather adopt successful
models from the West and impose them on our people. Even venture capital has a long way to go, leave
alone the art world. I think that post pandemic,
one cannot think about activity merely in the digital world metaverse or in the physical world. We
need to think of how the two can come together
and dance. I believe that a new direction could and
should come out of here.”

Below: Renuka Rajiv,
shrine of soft ghosts,
2022.

ICON OF
THE YEAR

first questions, like:
What the hell are you doing in Palm Beach?”

“ISN’T ONE OF YOUR

Here is Tom Ford, the King of Sex, looking
still, at 62, very much like the King of Sex—if
not terribly Palm Beachy. He’s wearing heavily
distressed blue jeans and a blue denim shirt
with few enough pearl buttons fastened to
reveal an impressively muscular chest gilded
in hair, plus black Chelsea boots and a Texas
Timex—a gold Rolex Oyster Perpetual watch
that he bought on Place Vendôme in Paris during
his 10-year reign at Gucci.
Ford has agreed to an exit interview capping
his historic three-decade-long fashion and
beauty career, saying he is willing to discuss
anything and everything under the condition
that I come to Palm Beach, where he is
currently living with his 11-year-old son, Jack. Since stepping away from fashion
earlier this year, Ford has largely declined interviews—until this one. As we talk,
I find myself thinking that part of the reason he acquiesced is simply because
he’s lonely. “I’m not used to sitting around talking about myself anymore,”
Ford says. “It feels very bizarre. I have no mate, no partner, no adult in my life.
I talk about, you know, Minecraft, YouTube, Messi. So just having an adult
conversation at all is a bizarre thing for me.”
In November 2022, Estée Lauder, Ford’s partner in his juggernaut fragrance
and beauty business going back to its launch in 2005, announced that it had
agreed to buy the entirety of his namesake label for a total of $2.8 billion. The
deal made him, personally, a billionaire. It also signalled the end of Ford’s
unprecedented run in the luxury business. Starting with his electric, star-making
turn at a previously floundering Gucci, and continuing with the booming success
under his own name, Ford’s persona and very visage transcended the insular
world of fashion and became culturally synonymous with swagger, sex, and
luxury itself.
When I ask Ford why he sold his company and, yes, what the hell is he doing
in Palm Beach, the answer is the same: Richard’s death. Ford and fashion
journalist Richard Buckley met in an elevator at a fashion show in 1986. It was
love, Ford has said, by the time the elevator hit the ground floor. They were
together for 35 years, and married for nine, until Buckley’s death in September
2021, after complications stemming from an earlier cancer treatment.
In the wake of that loss, Ford and Jack moved here full-time, into a 1920s
mansion acquired in a house swap with a neighbour—a deal that reportedly
carried a total value of well over $100 million. As we sit in the living room, Ford’s
butler, Anthony, brings Ford a Diet Coke and me a glass of sparkling water.
Outside, there is an occasional arrhythmic thud, which turns out to be Jack, who
is running the length of the house pounding a soccer ball into a pair of nets.
This is an unusually quiet moment for Ford. We agree to call it the second
intermission in his career—a break before the third act as a full-time film-maker
begins. Ford still delivers heroic doses of all his most recognizable personality
traits: the impeccable old-world manners, the grandiloquent bombast, the
devastating charm, and the outrageous provocations. But over the course of
our time together, he also reveals a new sensitivity—and more than a little
heartbreak. “Maybe a year ago,” Ford tells me, “I had to have knee surgery from
tennis. So they had to put me under. When I went in, they said, ‘Who do we
contact in case of emergency?’ And I literally had no one. So I put my PA.”
Our interviews begin with a three-hour session in Ford’s living room and
continue over dinner in a corner booth at the nearby restaurant Le Bilboquet.
(Ford picked me up from my hotel in his black Range Rover Autobiography,
with Sirius XM’s Studio 54 channel playing.) They conclude several weeks later
over Zoom.

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I’ve been working on a joke. It goes,
How do you dress for Palm Beach
in September? And the answer is:
You shouldn’t be in Palm Beach
in September.
It’s true. It’s a weird ghost town and even
when it’s going, it’s a suburb of New York.
That’s how I think of it. Two hours and 20
minutes. No jet lag. We’re going to London
on Wednesday. Jack’s coming with me
because, since Richard died, he’s terrified
I’m gonna die.
Did he express that verbally? “Dad,
I’m scared you’re gonna die too.”
Oh, yeah. I said, Look, I can fly. “But you
could crash.” Yeah. I’m not gonna crash.
“You don’t know that.” Okay. I don’t know
that. So let’s say I go somewhere and a
plane crashes, you’re still alive. If you’re
with me, you’re dead. Which would you
rather be? And he said, “I’d rather be
with you.”
Oh my God. So, why Palm Beach?
Richard and I lived in London for 22 years.
Paris for 10, Milan for 4. But this time, we
moved back to LA from London because he
was sick. [The house in LA] was basically
Cedars-Sinai. And every contemporary
memory I have of it is not good. It was a sad
house. After Richard died, I was driving back
from a screening at CAA that Madonna
was having for, like, four people. The streets
were deserted everywhere. I was so used
to Richard being in the seat next to me.
And I felt so lonely. I just thought, This is
the loneliest place. I have to get out of here.
I thought, Where can I give Jack the life he’s
used to? Which is tennis every day. Soccer
every day. Warm weather, swimming pools.
A liberal grade school. I have a history with
Palm Beach going back to when I was at
Gucci. After shows, I would rent a little
place here, just come and do nothing. Lie
by the pool. You know, Anne Rice, in one
of her vampire books, wrote that every 150
years, vampires had to dig themselves down
into the ground in order to come back up
eventually and appreciate life again. That it
was all just too much. And that’s what I feel
this is—this is like a reset. I needed that to
figure out act three.
And so, now that you’ve sold your
company, how are you thinking about
act three?
There are several reasons I sold my
company. I felt, after 35 years, I had said
everything I could say with fashion. It’s
important to know when to get off the stage.
I loved making the two films that I made.
That was the most fun I’ve ever had in my
entire life. I’m 62. Hopefully, I’ll remain
somewhat together until 82. So I wanna
spend the next 20 years of my life making
films. And the clock is ticking. And so it

was time to say goodbye to fashion.
Fashion is a younger man’s game.
Designers rarely change the world
of fashion at 62. I did it at 35,
maybe until 45. Then I shifted into
the moment when you become a
household name and you make a
lot of money.
What were the other factors
that led you to the decision
to sell the business?
Richard’s death. Boy, talk about
mortality. When someone dies, their
eyes are open. You can’t close them.
It’s not like in the movies where they do
this [Ford passes his hand over his eyes]
and they stay closed. They pop open.
Wow. I spent two hours with him, talking
to him because I wasn’t expecting him to
die that particular day. You know, slipping
his wedding rings off. Taking off his watch.
Flipping his body over to take his wallet out
before they took him away. I felt like I
was robbing him. Talk about driving
home the idea of a limited time on
the planet. It was like, I really want to
make movies. Clock’s ticking.
Let’s go back to the beginning
of your fashion career. How
did you end up working at
Perry Ellis?
Marc [Jacobs] hired me.
At that time, he was creative
director of all Perry Ellis.
And I remember being very
jealous that he was younger
than I was, but somehow he was
more successful.
And before long you landed
a job at Gucci, and moved
to Milan, right?
I was pragmatic enough to
know, even at that time, that if
you become famous as a European
designer, you are global. If you become
famous as an American designer, you are
American. You know, Calvin Klein in Europe
meant nothing. Marc became a global brand
because he went to Vuitton. Had he not gone
to Vuitton, the rest of the world wouldn’t
know who Marc Jacobs was. So I knew that,
and I thought, If I’m gonna work hard and be
a success as a fashion designer, I need to go
to Europe.
So you’re the design director of Gucci at
age 30. But Gucci was in disrepair. The
task was to reanimate it. In the beginning,
did you think of it as a dream job or a
stepping stone that got you to Europe?
It was a stepping stone. Maurizio [Gucci’s]
dream was to make it an Italian Hermès.
Which it had been in his childhood. It was
a good dream and a good idea, but it wasn’t
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Looks from Tom
Ford’s Gucci
collections from
fall-winter 1995,
fall-winter 1996,
and springsummer 1997.

fashion. They didn’t really
make clothes like people
think, and they didn’t
really have big runway
shows. So I thought, Well,
if I learn all of the manufacturers,
and how everything works in
Europe, I’ll start my own brand.
And then I didn’t need to, because
once I became creative director, it
felt like my own brand. I grafted my
personality onto the Gucci brand.

I went back and watched your old
fashion shows on YouTube and
all I could think is, This collection
fucks, you know? So much
of the magic of your time there
was connected to sex.
I would give the models a talk right
before the show, and I would say with
my microphone—after I’d already had
the drinks—“When you walk down this
runway, everyone in this room should want
to fuck you. Everyone.” Now I didn’t do that
same speech for the last five years. I can’t
say that to models anymore, “Everyone
should want to fuck you”, but I used to
always say that. And it was important
even in the way they looked. In the
way they walked.
So let’s dig in on the Gucci years.
Do you remember where you
were when you got the call that
Maurizio Gucci had been shot
and killed?
Yes, absolutely. I was in Florence
at our factory. It was early in the
morning, 8.30am. Maurizio had
an office across the street from my
office, and from my window I could
see the steps where he was shot, but
I wasn’t there. I think everyone’s first
thought was that it was a Mafia hit.
Ridley [Scott] didn’t put this in the
movie [House of Gucci]: At one point
Maurizio had to cough up 40 million
bucks to Investcorp. He didn’t have
the money. No bank was going to loan
it to him. And he magically came up with it.
You assumed, well, the Mafia gave him the
money. You’re in Italy. Also, those scenes
in the Ridley Scott movie where I come in
and meet with Maurizio and say, “I see men

in thongs,” none of that ever
happened. I didn’t see men in
thongs at first. That came later
[laughs].

House of Gucci was a little condensed.
Your first show there was not a hit.
It was terrible. After that show, Richard
said, “You’ve gotta find a way to make
it sexy. The girls have to want to
wear the clothes. The girls don’t
want to wear those clothes.” That
was all he had to say. And it was
like, Yes!
So what was the
breakthrough?
It was with men’s. There was
a men’s show in Florence.
At that time I was young
enough to still actually
go out to clubs. And you
could feel this ’70s revival
starting up, so I went deep
into that. I took the Gucci loafer
for men, and I made it in patent
leather car finish. And I used
tons of velvet and colour, and
silk shirts open to here. And it
worked. And so I thought,
Okay, well I’m just going
to carry this through for
women. And I did. Although
it was the next show [fall
1996] for Gucci that was the
closest one to what is still my
own permanent taste—the
show with the white dresses
with the cutouts, and the
women in the tuxedos. It was
more understated in a way, but
it hit a chord in the room. I could
feel it. Back then people didn’t
have phones. You had 13 minutes to
introduce something that should jar
them. And then convince them of it,
and then make it so beautiful that
they would cry.
After you set the world on fire,
and your Gucci was the hottest thing
going, what was the pressure like?
Oh, I was so into it. Feeding off of it. To
really be successful at women’s fashion,
you have to live and breathe nothing else.

“Oh, I am half businessman. Half designer.
I always was. There’s an intuition that
comes with the kind of business brain I have.
You know what’s coming next. You feel it.”

Twenty-four hours a day. There
can be nothing else in your life.

OPPOSITE PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM LEF T: FIRST VIEW (3); DAN LECCA, VOGUE, 1995. THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEF T: GET T Y IMAGES; FIRST VIEW (4).

Once you capture the zeitgeist,
like with a run of three shows
at Gucci, how do you keep it
going?
It’s easy. You have to keep a
thread of yourself in it. People
used to say, “How do you make
everything so sexy? And why do
you make everything so sexy?”
I don’t start out saying we need to
make a sexy dress. I look at a dress
and I say, “I can’t see her waist.
I want to see that. I can’t see her
ass. I want to see—where are
her tits?”
We had dinner in LA once and
you said to me, “You give the
world your taste once. That’s it.”
It’s true.
To what extent was that 10 years at
Gucci your one time at the zeitgeist?
That was it. I kept finessing that for the
rest of my career. I had a 10-year run.
And I think that’s all you get. A PR person
would tell me not to say that. But that was
where I moved the needle culturally. I was
in my 30s and early 40s. How many years
will Taylor have it? I mean, the Beatles.
When you actually go back and look at
how long they existed, it was like seven
years, eight years. Nothing.
And from there you’re just moving
the pieces around the board.
I mean, if you get that much
time—that’s amazing.
Tell me about a wild moment
from the Gucci years.
Well, what’s the statute of
limitations? That’s a hard one.
When I wanted to show those
G-strings, it was hard to get a
really good male model. Finally,
one of them was like, “Yes, I’ll wear
the thong.” Thank God. At the show,
he was about to go down the runway
and I would check everyone, right?
I looked down and it was like Peter
Cottontail. So much hair sticking out
of his ass crack. I said, “Give me the
trimmers.” I bent him over and I literally
just went zip! And then I said, “Okay, you
can go out.” And out he went.
One thing I didn’t understand until
I started researching this piece is
what an instrumental role you played
in essentially creating the modern
fashion system, which is dominated by
[French luxury conglomerates] LVMH
and Kering. So in 1999, Bernard Arnault

and LVMH attempted a hostile
takeover of Gucci when you and
[Gucci Group CEO] Domenico
De Sole were at the height
of your powers.
It played out in the papers every
fucking day back when it was
happening. It was in the Financial
Times, in the Wall Street Journal.
It was everywhere.
The LVMH takeover was
ultimately thwarted through
an alliance you and Domenico
formed with François Pinault,
who had not previously been in
the luxury business. He became
majority shareholder in Gucci. And
that’s when the Gucci Group really
transformed into this multi-brand luxury
group. Which is now called Kering.
We created Kering. There was a name
change, but we created Kering.
Why build a group?
We had $3 billion to invest, courtesy of
our deal with François, and we needed
to grow. So the first acquisition was
Saint Laurent, and it was a billion dollars.
And it was done only if I would design
it. Because at that time, everything I
touched, worked. Not always the case,
but it was definitely the case then. We
had to deploy this cash, but my criteria
in figuring out who to invest in was: I’m
the only creative person here. In case
something happens, you can’t have a
company that big with one creative. Who
do I admire? Whoever those people
are that I admire and I’m jealous of,
we need to get. And so I went after
Lee McQueen.
Can you say more about what you
responded to about Alexander
McQueen as a designer?
I was a commercial fashion
designer. That doesn’t
mean there wasn’t an artistic
element to what I did. But I
was a commercial fashion
designer. Lee was an artist who
happened to use the medium
of clothing and fashion shows
to express himself. At that
moment in time, [current
Louis Vuitton artistic director
of womenswear] Nicolas
Ghesquière was hot. Absolutely
hot. And he did something totally
different than what I did. I wanted
him to start his own collection. He
didn’t want to do that. So we bought
Balenciaga and he was at Balenciaga.
Stella [McCartney] addressed a
totally different customer that we
did not have. She was onto all of this

environmental stuff, way ahead of
everybody else. And so that made
sense. With Bottega [Veneta],
I went after Tomas Maier. He
and Richard were best friends
back in the ’80s, and he had
the best taste. In assembling it,
you needed brands that didn’t
compete so that you could
have a very well-rounded
portfolio. And people that I
admired. So that’s what we did.
Does business success get
you off the way creative
success does?
Oh, I am half businessman.
Half designer. I always
was. I have a gift. My greatest
gift is, you can lay five pairs of shoes
down in front of me, and the one that
I pick will be the commercial one.
I have commercial taste. Maybe,
hopefully, at a high level. But
if you’re not making money,
you can’t do what you want.
There’s an intuition that comes
with the kind of business brain
I have. I have a certain feeling
about it, and I know that it’s
the right business decision,
even though it makes no
sense to someone who’s just
looking at the spreadsheets.
You know what’s coming next.
You feel it.
So as you step away from luxury
fashion, where do you think it’s
all headed?
I have no idea. And that’s one
reason I’m stepping away.
I don’t really believe you. You don’t
have that same intuitive feeling?
It’s gotten so far away from why I
got into the business, which was to
make a beautiful garment that made
a person stunning and incrediblelooking when they walked into a
room. That was why I became a
fashion designer. So this new—
what it has become is something
that maybe I understand, but I
don’t necessarily like.
You sent me a text the other
day about your successor at
Tom Ford, Peter Hawkings,
who worked for you for years.
You mentioned how displeased
you are by some of the things he’s
been saying as he gets started.
I have, since, calmed down a little bit.
But I read in a GQ blog or something
where Peter said he was given a blank
page to start Tom Ford menswear.
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Yes.
It really upset me because starting Tom Ford
menswear [in 2007] was one of the things
I’m probably the most proud of in my entire
career. I was used to being at Gucci and when
I wanted something, I just had it made. And
all of a sudden I couldn’t—I didn’t have any
clothes. So I brought in all the clothes from
my wardrobe. I had everything made in my
size. Luckily, I’m a 48 regular, which is the
fitting size. So I fit all the suits on myself.
Peter wasn’t able to start for a while. He
was still John Ray’s assistant at Gucci. So
those first few years, that collection was
built on me. It was enormously personal. I
literally sent my sofas out to be copied for
the stores. I loaned art from my house to the
stores. It was one of the things I’m the most
proud about because it was the foundation
of the company. So I got in touch with him
[recently]. I said, Pete, I don’t want to say
these things publicly and contradict you,
but it wasn’t exactly a blank page. I was very
worked up about it. I’m a lot less worked up
about it now. You know, when you sell your
company you’re prepared for anything. And
I really am prepared for anything. Whatever
direction they go, Peter’s blank page starts
now. But, you know, that’s my fashion legacy.
The Tom Ford company, the Tom at Gucci, the
Tom at Saint Laurent—that’s mine. It’s tied
up in two neat volumes with a bow.
Between Peter Hawking’s debut at Tom
Ford and Sabato De Sarno’s debut at
Gucci, all anyone seemed to be talking
about at Fashion Week in Milan was the
influence of Tom Ford at Gucci.
Well, it’s very nice, but I didn’t give it a lot of
thought. Fashion is cyclical. That was, God,
20 years ago. I’m glad that what I did has come
back again.
Of all the famous men that you dressed
over the years, who embodied the Tom
Ford man the most?
Oh, God. Who embodied the Tom Ford man?
I mean, me. I built it for myself. Brad [Pitt]
was the very first one [to wear the brand].
And at the beginning I had an exclusive
thing with Brad. I would only dress Brad.
Brad only wore me, or he wore me to his big
events. At Gucci we were sending clothes to
everybody, and it lost its cachet. So when I
launched Tom Ford, I went to Brad and that
was who I dressed.
Did you pay him?
No. I’ve never paid a single celebrity to wear
my clothes or come to a show, ever. Ever, ever,
ever. And now everyone does.
You mentioned to me that you’ve been
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sober for 14 years. When you stopped
drinking, did that cut off the drugs too?
The alcohol was a gateway to the drugs.
And, you know, my son hasn’t read any of
this stuff yet. He will. And I’ll need to talk
to him because he shares the same genetic
background that I do, which is English-Irish.
I think we’re predisposed. My father was a
heavy drinker. But the alcohol, you know,
was a gateway. [Cocaine] is very popular in
the fashion world. I realized it was a problem
when I started doing it in the mornings.
So how are you feeling about selling your
company, Tom Ford International?
I realized one day that I was gonna die. And
that I created something that will live on
past me, because there is too much money
involved. So whether it’s 50 years from now
or 5 years from now, a lot of stuff that I hate
will be generated. People are gonna do a
lot of shit with it that would make you turn
over in your grave. Why not let ’em do it
now? Just do it while you’re alive. I mean, do
you think Balenciaga or Givenchy—I mean,
Hubert de Givenchy would die if he saw,
and so would Cristóbal Balenciaga. So why
not have fun for the rest of my life and do
something I find really creatively exciting?
How do you plan for that?
Well, when we were gonna sell the
company, we went to Goldman Sachs,
and at the beginning they put together
a presentation, as you do when you’re
selling a company and going out to
multiple bidders. But they put together
a presentation that was very me-heavy.
I was like, Why would anyone buy this if
the business is so dependent on me? I said:
Put the presentation together as though
I’m dead. It still has my name on it [Ford
reaches inside the waist of his jeans and
pulls out his underwear to show the Tom
Ford waistband] but—
Um, wait—you’ve started wearing
underwear?
Yeah.
Why?
Well, especially with jeans, because these
have rips. And any minute another rip is
gonna happen. Probably 10 years ago—this
is true—before I was wearing underwear,
I looked down and an actual testicle was
completely out.
Let’s talk about directing movies. As
someone who’s used to the pace of
fashion and publishing, Hollywood
seems scary slow.
As a director, it takes three years to

make a movie. I have maybe time for five
more movies in my life. So they have to
be meaningful.
So you’re working on a few different
projects, at various stages of
development?
One is an original. An extremely personal
thing.
A Single Man (2009) and Nocturnal
Animals (2016) were both adaptations.
This is completely from scratch?
Completely from scratch. Then another is a
book from Anne Rice. We started the process
in 2004, while she was alive, obviously.
And what is your writing process?
It’s absolutely expository. I start every
morning at nine o’clock. I sit down and I
work from nine until one. Even if I don’t
think I have anything to say, I type. The
beauty really for me of film-making is the
writing. Because when you’re writing it, it’s
perfect. Nobody fucks up. The clothes are
perfect. Everyone’s saying it exactly the way
you want. It’s absolutely clear. The hard part
for me is shooting—because this didn’t work,
that didn’t work. You’ve got to keep moving.
You’ve got a schedule.
Where are you with your spirituality?
I had it for a little while, maybe about the
same time I stopped drinking. It was one
thing that compelled me to write A Single
Man, because Christopher Isherwood was
very spiritual, in an Eastern way. I was
reading the Tao Te Ching every night before
I’d go to bed. I’d read one of those very potent
sentences, and I was able to have it.
If you go back to the Tao now, has it lost
its potency?
I need to try again. I’m very pragmatic.
I can’t actually comprehend the science,
but the universe is so vast—our planet is
so insignificant. There was a film in the
1950s with Anne Francis that was so ahead
of its time. The idea is, maybe our purpose
in evolution was to create an AI being that
becomes a consciousness. It will be like God,
where we have created it in our image and
it will hold every bit of all of us. Ultimately,
we will be unnecessary. Maybe our purpose
in evolution is to end biological life, and
to figure out how to create the next level of
being—an electronic consciousness. What
was the movie called—Forbidden Planet? Or
Lost Planet? I don’t know. Anyway, whatever.
It’s not that interesting. Turn that recorder
off, let’s have dinner.
WILL WELCH

is GQ ’s global editorial director.

THE LAST WORD IN TRAVEL

PHOTO: ERRIKOS ANDREOU/CONDÉ NAST TRAVELLER INDIA

SURVIVOR
OF THE YEAR
Last year, Tremaine Emory was one of the fashion world’s most
prolific new superstars, juggling a high-profile position at Supreme
with his own brand, Denim Tears, when a serious vascular event almost
killed him. Now, the iconoclastic designer known for channelling
powerful histories of the Black experience is finally telling his own
story—and reuniting with the medical team who saved his life.
BY MIK AWAKE
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JASON NOCITO

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breakfast one morning earlier this year, Tremaine Emory moved
cautiously through his airy Tribeca loft to
put on a record. With each step towards the
turntable, the metallic clank of his Lofstrand
crutch echoed through the apartment. After
he dropped the needle and the music began
to play, he made his way to a big table in the
middle of the room and took a seat. Emory
was dressed cosy in a mostly unbuttoned
shirt, flannel pants, and a pair of all-black
Hokas. He wore a Martine Rose cap, bill to
the back.
“It’s been a fucking journey, man,” he said.
“It’s been a war. The second-hardest thing
I’ve ever dealt with, next to my mom dying.”
As the melodies of Art Blakey and the
Jazz Messengers drifted around us, Emory
told me about his year. It’s been a remarkable one. After a while, the music would fade
and the record would spin in silence, and
his words would continue, filling the space
between us with the story of his epic year
of struggle and triumph.
If you’ve read anything about Emory in
the last few months, chances are you might
be surprised to know that the war the celebrated fashion designer was describing had
little to do with the headlines he’d made
this year, or the discourse he’d sparked in
the worlds of fashion and art about systemic
racism. It had nothing to do with Supreme,
the streetwear behemoth, where he’d served
as its first-ever publicly confirmed creative director until a bitter split in August
ended his 18-month tenure—and nothing
to do with his public criticism of the company and the discourse that still circulates
online and offline about the gatekeeping of
Black creativity.
The war that Emory waged was more specific, more dangerous, and ultimately more
transformative than his time at Supreme. It’s
a battle he’ll likely keep waging for the rest of
his life. And it began on an otherwise pleasant fall night last year, with a sudden and
excruciating pain that he felt radiating along
an unfamiliar path within his body, directly
behind his heart.
BEFORE SITTING TO

A U T U M N I N N E W Y O R K is a time of aching
contradictions—a sweetness born of chill
and change. As the song goes, it’s a time
marked by the promise of new love, often
mingled with pain. In 2022, that dissonance
surrounded Emory’s first autumn back in
Lenape land after a dozen years away.

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His grassroots fashion journey had by
causing discourse, I’m gonna shut it down.”
then become the stuff of lore. After growing
By the looks of it, he may be a long way
from shutting anything down. An eerie
up in Jamaica, Queens, in the ’80s and ’90s,
he’d worked his way up at Marc Jacobs from
thing started to happen while I began meeta retail job in downtown Manhattan to a
ing with Emory this year: I started seeing
cotton wreaths everywhere. On a young
management position in London, where he
began to emcee parties with his DJ friend
brother on the train. On the rack of a Harlem
Acyde (AKA Ade Odunlami) and, later on,
boutique. On an Afrobeats star’s selfie.
Maybe I hadn’t been paying close enough
the music exec Brock Korsan, under the
attention before, or maybe 2023 was the
handle No Vacancy Inn—gatherings that
attracted the likes of Frank Ocean and the
year that Denim Tears, already enshrined in
late fashion trailblazer Virgil Abloh. In
the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume
2016, Kanye West hired him at Yeezy, where
Institute for a remix of Ralph Lauren and
collaborations with Ugg and Levi’s, was
he would become brand director.
All the while, a core component of Emory’s
becoming a staple of global fashion. As one
rise in fashion was his abiding interest in
recent meme put it, “Denim Tears done hit
sparking conversation with people—what he
the streets harder than crack in the 80s.”
often calls “locking in”. Whether it’s designIt was on account of the breakout success
ing a Black Jesus sweatshirt to re-create
of Denim Tears—as far as Emory underdiscussions he’d had on the streets of early
stands—that Supreme had sought him
out. When I asked him why he thought
’00s Queens or sharing an MF Doom lyric to
the streetwear giant, founded in 1994
spark debate at a function, Emory has long
by James Jebbia, had wanted him to be
been focused on the exchange of provocacreative director, he responded bluntly:
tive ideas, especially around Black history
and culture. His voice is slightly nasal, vow“Clout.” After being acquired in 2020 by the
els elongated by a New York childhood. He
North Face parent company VF Corp in an
sprinkles conversations with vintage bars
industry-shaking $2.1 billion deal, Supreme
from Nas, Yasiin Bey, and Jay-Z. He rememappointed Emory in February of 2022.
bers details about new acquaintances and,
“I came in very pragmatic,” he said of
unintentionally, surprises them with this.
his ambitions at Supreme. “The brand is
He’s often quick with a retort to strangers,
an important heritage brand. It’s not what
punctuating witty comebacks with a boomit once was to young people or to culture.
ing staccato laugh.
I came to bring it back to top of class. That’s
what I came to do with them.”
In 2019, he founded the cerebral Africandiaspora sportswear line Denim Tears, whose
While trying to steer Supreme forward in the fall of 2022, Emory found
most recent release of 30,000 cotton-wreathhimself more in the public eye than ever
adorned sweatsuits sold out in 15 minutes.
before—and busier than ever. There was
“I just want to see the cotton wreath, that
symbol, that form, spread as far as possithe rancour of a confrontation with Kanye
ble into popular culture,” Emory said of
West on Instagram that saw Emory standthe brand’s signature design, which was
ing up to his former Yeezy boss for West’s
inspired by a post on the artist Kara Walker’s
treatment of Abloh, their mutual friend, in
Instagram page. “Because every time somethe months before the designer succumbed
one wears it, there’s another chance for
to a mostly private battle with a rare form
conversation and discourse about the state
of heart cancer. Meanwhile, Denim Tears
was on the cusp of announcing a new
of Black people, the state of America, the
state of the world.”
collection with Dior, one of its biggest colBut Emory’s designs at Denim Tears avoid
laborations to date. The ambitious project,
overt messaging. The cotton wreaths are easDior Tears, would release in the summer
of 2023 and pay homage to 20th-century
ily mistaken for large flowers, and the indigo
handprints that highlighted its second colBlack American expatriates in France who
laboration with Levi’s were inspired by Julie
fled stateside racism, like Miles Davis and
Dash’s 1991 masterpiece, Daughters of the
James Baldwin. Emory commissioned a
Dust, a film that touches on the indigo trade.
sumptuous short film set in Egypt, reputed
To understand the thought and research
for its ancient history of cotton production,
behind Denim Tears clothing requires the
millennia before it became the foundation
kind of curiosity and bookishness that
of America’s 19th-century economy.
Emory, who studied film at community
The sweetness of new love was also
college before dropping out, layers onto
entering Emory’s life that fall. He had just
everything he releases. Denim Tears vibrates
begun dating a colleague at Supreme, Andee
with backstory, though not at the
McConnell. “Most people kind
expense of irreverent and soulful Opening pages: At the of pick up on that big, warm,
surfaces. “I wanna start uncom- Weill Cornell Medical fuzzy energy no matter who
Center, in Manhattan,
fortable conversations,” Emory
you are to him,” McConnell
Emory reunited with
says of their first meeting. The
explained of his aim for the label.
the team of doctors,
two clicked immediately—a
“I don’t agree with all the things
therapists, and
that people say or feel about the nurses who cared for conversation-oriented duo
brand, but I like that there’s dis- him after he suffered hoping to usher in a new era at
an aortic dissection.
course. When the brand stops
the company.

On matters personal and professional,
Emory and McConnell seemed to be in
lockstep, spending more time together
outside of the office in electric conversations about life and work, but keeping their
new love a secret at Supreme. “We always
used to say, It’s got to be our molecules or
something that are just fusing together,”
McConnell said. Within the larger miracle of love, there was a specific miracle in
the fact that McConnell and Emory were
together that autumn night when something terrible started to happen inside his
chest. They had just returned from listening to jazz at a nearby spot when, soon after
midnight, Emory doubled over in agony,
clutching at his back and short of breath. At
first, McConnell thought it might be a heart
attack, but when his breathing settled and
the pain in his upper back slightly relented,
she speculated that it might be a muscle
spasm from stress. She rubbed his back, ran
a hot shower over him, drew him a bath.
While he was still in the bath, his legs
went numb. McConnell recalled: “That’s
when we called 9-1-1.”
for what happened
in Emory’s body that night is an aortic dissection. It’s a medical nightmare, as rare as
it is lethal. Nineteen-eighties sitcom star
John Ritter died of one, as do an estimated
13,000 people in the United States each year.
Back in the day, doctors used to call it the
widow maker. The first hours after a tear in
the aorta’s inner lining are the most crucial
for survival.
The ambulance pulled to a stop outside
the Tribeca building, red lights dancing
against the darkness. Here was the promise of relief, answers—the hope of survival.
There was a tense moment when McConnell
accidentally locked herself out of the apartment with the paramedics, forcing Emory,
sopping wet with no feeling in his legs, to
crawl across the floor to open the door.
The EMTs began firing questions at him.
Was this his apartment? they asked. Had he
been doing drugs? Emory was rolled outside
to the waiting ambulance in a wheelchair,
and during his transfer from the chair to
the vehicle, he sustained an injury to his
toe. He couldn’t feel anything below his
waist, but blood was streaming from the
wound. In the hours ahead, the toe would
turn gangrenous from lack of blood flow,
and eventually its tip fell off.
Part of what makes an aortic tear so
lethal is that emergency room doctors
often fail to discern the condition, prioritizing more common ailments like heart
attack. Relatively young and healthy, Emory
was still conscious, still breathing. With
McConnell at his side, he waited as medical staff moved them from one hallway to
another. The hours passed, the couple lost
track of time. Meanwhile, the crisis inside
Emory’s body was worsening. According
THE TECHNICAL TERM

to Emory and McConnell, several hours
passed like this before the morning shift
rotated on and a Black doctor who saw
Emory became alarmed by the numbness
in his legs—and an increasing pain in his
lower abdomen. “She had a sense of urgency
that no one else did,” McConnell recalled.
“And the stomach pain seemed to really get
it on her radar that she needed to move fast
with this guy.”
When results of a CT angiogram returned,
highlighting the state of Emory’s vascular
system, the intricate weave of blood-carrying
arteries, capillaries, and veins, McConnell
vividly remembered the doctor’s reaction:
“The look on her face was panic inducing.”
Scans would reveal that the tear in Emory’s
aorta began in his chest and extended down
through his pelvis and femoral artery—
beyond the edge of the X-ray. What the
doctors didn’t say aloud, their actions—
suddenly urgent and decisive—filled in the
blanks. Within minutes, Emory was in an
emergency transport vehicle headed to Weill
Cornell Medical Center on the Upper East
Side for surgery.

It was at this point, alone in an ambulance racing toward the unknown, that
Emory took out his phone and began reaching out to everyone he loved for what he
assumed might be the last time.
One of the numbers that Emory texted
while racing in the ambulance for emergency surgery belonged to a younger
designer named Brick, who, along with
partner Du, cofounded the menswear
house Bstroy. Both men are close friends
and frequent collaborators of Emory’s—
up-and-coming leaders of what he and
Abloh would often refer to as “our tribe”.
Brick was unnerved by the message his
mentor sent that October morning. “CALL
ME” appeared in all caps. He called Emory
back immediately, and when Emory picked
up, the blare of an ambulance siren filled
the background. “He’s like, ‘Yo, I’m fucked
up,’ ” Brick recounted. “ ‘If I don’t make it,
y’all know what to do. I got y’all.’ And then
just hangs up the phone.”
As Brick remembered the details of that
day and the ensuing surgery that dragged
on into evening, making everyone begin to

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lose hope, he was overcome with emotion.
He, Du, and I were in a car zooming up the
West Side Highway. Brick leaned forward
on the seat, his head draped over his folded
arms. Du wrapped a consoling arm around
his friend and business partner.
Until now, neither had really spoken of
this at length.
“Pause, but he was somebody I waited
my whole life for, bro,” Brick said through
tears. “Tremaine is my friend, my brother,
my contemporary, all that type a shit, so
when it happened, it hurt in a different way,
my n-gga.”
towards Weill Cornell
hospital, Dr. Christopher Lau, the director of
endovascular surgery, was busy studying the
scans of Emory’s aortic dissection that had
been forwarded. A Brooklyn native and the
son of Chinese immigrants, Lau was responsible for making a series of rapid judgments
about how the next few hours would go. As
often is the case with emergency surgeries
like this, the doctor’s analyses had to be
impeccable: informed guesses on multiple
dimensions. And it all needed to happen
very quickly.
Since Lau mostly operates on vessel tears
closer to the heart, he knew he was not the
best person to handle the extensive tear down
Emory’s aorta: He would need the technological savvy of vascular surgeon Dr. Christopher
Agrusa, who, over the course of eight hours,
painstakingly repaired the inside of the
aorta and replaced Emory’s destroyed femoral artery with a Gore-Tex implant to shunt
blood across his pelvis.
And maybe most important of all, Lau’s
analysis also predicted the damage that
would be wreaked on Emory’s body once
Agrusa had successfully restored blood
flow. Lau could tell from bloodwork that the
muscles of Emory’s legs had already begun
to decompose—as though he’d actually
died—and would begin to poison his organs
AS EMORY RUSHED

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once blood flow was restored to the legs.
Attempting to process the polluted blood, his
kidneys would fail, and with them the rest of
his organs. For this, Lau readied an aggressive, taxing regimen of dialysis in the ICU
that Emory would endure for nearly a month
after surgery. The regimen saved both kidneys, although they remain compromised.
Those precious hours of waiting in a downtown ER had put his body in crisis mode. In
addition to dialysis, Emory underwent an
excruciating surgical procedure known as a
fasciotomy, in which deep and long incisions
create open wounds in both legs to relieve the
pressure as blood flow returns.
Over the course of the next three months
in the hospital, Emory would lose 70 pounds,
mostly from muscle that fell into disuse. He
spent the first five days on a ventilator and
the rest of the month hooked to drips and
dialysis machines in the ICU. He was in a
perpetual state of deep exhaustion, and a
bout of sepsis led to intense hallucinations.
“It was nuts,” he recalled. Once his condition
had stabilized, he was protected from work
obligations for over two months, a pause
unlike anything he’d experienced, at least
since a month-long period he spent recovering from his tenure at Yeezy, a period of rest
and reflection that would eventually birth
Denim Tears.
expressed interest in speaking with Emory’s father, who was by his side
in the ICU almost as much as McConnell,
Emory warned me to “clear your day”. Despite
an illustrious career as a TV cameraman with
multiple Emmy nominations, Tracy Emory
has fought to maintain a small-town Georgia
sensibility in himself and in his approach to
life. When he moved his family to Queens in
the early 1980s to become a cameraman for
CBS, he and his wife, Sheralyn, didn’t know
much about big city living. They’d been childhood sweethearts growing up in a small town
not too far outside of Augusta.
WHEN I FIRST

Segregated since the legal end of slavery,
their community was tied together—racially,
geographically, culturally—in a way that was
inescapable. “Everybody knew each other,
everybody grew up together,” said Tracy. With
Tracy and Sheralyn, there was no dating, no
meet-cute; they’d known each other their
whole lives. Sometime around high school,
the two just kind of paired off. “My brain was
stimulated by a lot of love,” Tracy told me.
When they moved to New York, that
approach to life, work, and spirituality was
something the couple made an effort to
maintain—only instead of fishing, they took
their children sledding, and museum-going,
and on excursions to the opera. “There was
literally no drama,” Tracy said of the atmosphere he and Sheralyn created at home. “In
America, that’s what you do, you take care
of your family. That’s it.”
Mostly, taking care of the family meant
keeping his three boys safe in New York City
during the crack era. Growing up in the rural
South, Stay off the chain gang had been the
mantra Tracy heard from his elders; it was an
ethos that he passed along to his sons in the
age of mass incarceration. “Basically,” he said,
“I wanted to keep them outta jail.”
Against the threat of police and drugworld violence, Emory and his brothers
were given strict curfews, but that could
only do so much. Too many of Emory’s
neighbourhood friends were shot to death.
His barber and close friend, Raheem Grays,
was killed during an attempted robbery
of his barbershop, unlocking a grief that
Emory still wears on his head. In the years
after Grays’s murder, Emory grew out his
hair, unable to sit in another barber’s chair,
eventually letting it loc. “He went through a
lot of suffering and pain,” his father said of
those early years.
For his part, Emory describes his early
adulthood with the language of asphyxiation—he felt like he was suffocating in
Jamaica. “I know n-ggas that work just as
hard as me and ain’t where I’m at,” Emory
said. “It ain’t ’cause I’m smarter or better.
I’m just luckier than them. And I had Tracy
and Sheralyn, and they didn’t.”
When Emory first began experimenting
with cotton-wreath designs, Tracy was worried that his son was floundering in fashion.
He’d been downsized at Marc Jacobs, then
fired as brand director of Yeezy by West—
who, Emory says, later asked him to return,
unsuccessfully. And he was still grieving the
death of his mother, Sheralyn, who passed
away from a heart attack just as Emory’s
star was beginning to rise in the fashion
firmament. “It kinda became the bane of
my existence to do something that mattered to honour her,” said Emory. When he
showed his father the first samples of the
cotton-wreath line, Tracy grew even more
worried for his son. “I did not like it,” Tracy
recalled. He also sensed that encouragement
was more important in that moment than

anything. “Tremaine!” Tracy exclaimed.
“What a beautiful design!” All the while, he
was thinking to himself, Lord, thankfully his
bedroom in Queens is still there.
Emory’s success in the fashion world has
amazed Tracy, though not as much as his
son’s ability to form genuine friendships
with people from all walks of life and backgrounds, many of whom Tracy met for the
first time in the hospital. “There’s no colour
barrier,” Tracy said of Emory’s relationships.
“He figured out a way to be friends with
the world.”
stabilizing in the ICU, overcoming a bout of pneumonia that filled
his lungs with fluid, Emory arrived to a
room of Weill Cornell’s Acute Inpatient
Rehabilitation unit, where a window overlooked the East River. Here, he would spend
the next two months in the care of Dr. Leroy
Lindsay and his team of rehabilitation
specialists. As a Black doctor in a field underpopulated by Black men—who make up
only 3 per cent of the doctors in America—
Lindsay was excited, if a bit intimidated, by
the prospect of caring for a peer. “It’s not
often that you get to treat someone so much
like yourself,” said Lindsay. “Especially here
on the Upper East Side. Both of our families
are from the South. We’re literally the same
age, same experiences, and we’re both rare
in the spaces that we occupy. So I knew he
had a long road ahead to recover functionally,
physically, and also the gruelling psychological road that was before him. And I wanted
to make sure that I was taking care of him on
all of those fronts.”
In between arduous sessions of physical therapy with Dr. Jaclyn Paler and long
stretches alone in a bed, Emory welcomed a
constant stream of visitors and well-wishers
to that nondescript space. There were artists, like Theaster Gates, a longtime admirer
and collaborator of Emory’s, who is designing the Denim Tears flagship space in SoHo,
which will feature a perusable collection of
rare African-art books.
There were his No Vacancy Inn partners, Acyde and Korsan, who broke away
from their hectic schedules to come to
his bedside. There was the actor Jordan
Masterson, who flew in amid the SAG-WGA
strikes. There was Ocean. There was Arthur
Jafa. There was the artist Chris Burrows,
AFTER A MONTH

Emory’s former flatmate in London who
had been there the night Ye appeared at
one of Emory’s parties, unannounced, to
preview Yeezus before an intimate crowd.
There was Guillaume Berg, the French DJ
who had been out listening to jazz with
Emory and McConnell that night before
his medical nightmare began.
There was Nigel Smart, who bonded with
Emory over a love of Ghostface Killah at a
mutual friend’s basement recording studio
in Queens, back when everyone called Emory
“Tre Deuce”. Smart has always admired his
younger friend’s ability to navigate new
spaces—like the exclusive Manhattan nightclubs that Emory was somehow able to get
Smart and their friends inside, despite being
barely of age. “We always trying to uplift each
other,” Smart said.
At the centre of Emory’s crisis, care, and
recovery was McConnell, sleeping in a chair
every night for the first weeks when his
life hung in the balance, keeping everyone
updated on a group-text thread, and finally
revealing their office romance to colleagues
at Supreme. “She held him down,” Smart
said. And she held the tribe down, too, keeping an upbeat and positive attitude despite
her dread, relaying good news over the group
thread. Like when his kidneys regained function after weeks of dialysis and Emory said to
her: “Tell the guys I peed.”
“She didn’t owe me anything,” Emory said,
his eyes going glassy. “And I still don’t know
what I did to deserve that.”
While he was still intubated, Emory had
a realization that caused him to ask for a
pen and paper. He began scribbling notes,
but neither McConnell nor any of the nurses
could make them out. A friend who was able
to decipher Emory’s handwriting came to
the rescue. Usually composed, the friend was
suddenly hyperventilating. “Oh, my God, oh,
my God,” he gasped, pacing with his hands
over his head. “I know what he’s trying to say.
I know what he’s trying to say!” McConnell
stared at the slip of paper again. Soon the
scribbles took shape. Four words formed into
a question: Will you marry me?

A U T U M N I N New York was
beginning. Having officially resigned
from Supreme, Emory was refocused on
a new Denim Tears collaboration with

ANOTHER

Emory doubled over in agony, clutching at
his back. Andee McConnell ran a hot
shower over him, drew him a bath. Then
his legs went numb. McConnell recalled:
“That’s when we called 9-1-1.”

Dr. Martens, drawing inspiration from the
history of Caribbean immigrants to the
United Kingdom after World War II, commonly known as the Windrush generation.
McConnell had just resigned from Supreme
after the company released a statement
about Emory’s departure that she found
dishonest. When Emory walked into the
restaurant for our last interview, I noticed
he’d made even more progress with his
mobility. The Lofstrand crutch had been
replaced by a hiking stick. He also seemed to
be moving faster and with more surety than
only a couple months before, a testament to
his ongoing PT sessions with Paler. He and
McConnell were in the middle of planning
their wedding, which was only a few days
away. Emory’s new reality of life with a disability has even begun to find its way—subtly,
of course—into Denim Tears’ storytelling,
with Paralympic athlete Garrison Redd
serving as the brand’s newest look book
model. Although his kidneys still aren’t
100 per cent, they have improved. Feeling in
his right foot hasn’t returned, but he’s been
starting to wiggle most of the toes on his left.
“I’m a lucky bum, nah mean,” said Emory.
“Unfortunately, I can’t thank everyone all
the time, every time, but there’s nothing
I’ve done that I’ve done on my own. I’ve had
so much support from luck and life—and
support from people.” He got misty again
thinking about all the friends who came from
far and near to spend time by his side in the
hospital and all the medical workers, from
janitors to surgeons, who helped him win
his life back. Despite the unfortunate outcome of his time at Supreme, Emory said,
“I’d do it all over again if it meant that I’d
meet Andee.”
It was a miraculous convergence of luck
and competence that kept Emory on this side
of life. It was love—for McConnell, for his
family, for the dream of a family of his own,
for what he’s put into his work, for the work
still left to do, for his creative tribe, for the
struggle and spirit of the Black diaspora—
that seems to fuel him.
“One of the aides said, ‘Always look back
to remember how far you’ve come.’ That was
a bar,” Emory said, recalling a rehabilitation
session when he was starting to walk again.
“Even now, it’s like I live in pain, bro. But
I remember when I didn’t know if I could
walk again. I didn’t know if I was gonna live,
if I was gonna get off dialysis, if I was gonna
be able to make it out the hospitals, see my
little brother grow up, marry Andee, take a
walk with Andee holding hands, go down
to Georgia and see my grandma. So I gotta
remember that, when I’m going through
stuff in the present. I gotta remember what
I’ve come through.”
is the coauthor of ‘Dapper
Dan: Made in Harlem’ and author of the
forthcoming ‘Playground Moves: The Story
of Rucker Park & Basketball’s Reinvention’.

MIK AWAKE

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RICHARD MILLE
RM 07-04 AUTOMATIC
WINDING SPORT
Still pining for anything
Succession-related?
Feed the lust with Jeremy
Strong’s favourite new bit
of wrist candy, featuring
a skeletonized automatic
winding movement with
hours, minutes, and
function selector.

The watch world
has never been
so unpredictable—
Rolex dropping emoji
date windows?
Richard Mille’s candycoloured flexes?
Pixelated dials?
Rather than leaning on
the archive, watchmakers
are embracing an influx
of fresh ideas and targeting
a younger collector.
And that “why the fuck not?”
mentality has birthed
some insanely
covetable pieces.

OMEGA X SWATCH
MOONSWATCH
MOONSHINE 42MM
At 18 months and
counting, come rain or
shine, the queues are
still very real for this
quartz internet-breaker.
This one has pink
Super-LumiNova
detailing—a nod to the
pink full moon of April.
MONTBLANC 1858
GEOSPHERE 0 OXYGEN
THE 8000 42MM
The ability to withstand
fogging and oxidization
at the summit of the
Alps is not something
we knew we needed in
a watch. But Montblanc’s
latest is bringing out the
mountaineer in us, with
a titanium case it claims
to be totally devoid
of oxygen.
TUDOR BLACK BAY 54
Why splurge seven digits
on a dial when you can
drop six on the most
highly regarded watch
of 2023? Nodding to
yesteryear, the 37mm case
holds a MT5400 calibre
and a depth of 200m—
dive right in.

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TAG HEUER CARRERA
CHRONOGRAPH 39MM
Ryan Gosling attempted
to steal a Carrera in
the brand’s recent viral
ad; in the case of its
new 60th-anniversary
tribute, complete
with an automatic
chrono and an 80-hour
power reserve, we can
empathize.

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GRAND SEIKO
MAJESTIC WHITE
BIRCH PLATINUM
SPRING DRIVE 38.5MM
Grand Seiko, now
a separate, luxuryleaning arm of Japanese
brand Seiko, produces
artisanal creations to
match the world’s best,
and this particular
masterpiece boasts a
manual Spring Drive
Calibre 9R02 that keeps
ticking for days.

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IWC SCHAFFHAUSEN
INGENIEUR AUTOMATIC
AQUA DIAL 40MM
Using the shape of the
all-new stainless steel
Ingenieur, IWC brings
an oldie-but-goodie
out of retirement with a
refreshed aqua dial that’s
destined to conquer
the zeitgeist.

PATEK PHILIPPE
CALATRAVA 6119G 39MM
There’s a hot new Patek
in town, and Calatrava
connoisseurs are eating
up the charcoal-grey dial.
What’s housed inside that
crisp white-gold case?
A brand-new hand-wound
movement that makes it
an immediate addition to
every collector’s cop list.
AUDEMARS PIGUET
ROYAL OAK CONCEPT
FLYING TOURBILLON
GMT 4 4MM
Taking bets on who’ll
be first to be seen
courtside sporting AP’s
hautest new GMT tourby?
Our money’s on celebrity
collectors queuing for
the brand’s tasty new
44mm titanium grail.

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ROLEX OYSTER
PERPETUAL
CELEBRATION 41MM
The poppy, bubble-filled
aesthetic of this new
Rolex—a model the
watch world thought
had been discontinued—
feels almost perfectly
targeted at West Ham
fans, but is equally
suited to any
occasion.

OMEGA SEAMASTER
AQUA TERRA SHADES
CO-AXIAL MASTER
CHRONOMETER 38MM
Throwing new shades on
a 38mm GOAT is bound to
steal horological hearts.
Especially when there’s a
lacquered bay-green dial
in the picture.

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ORIENT MECHANICAL
CLASSIC WATCH
38.4MM
For the Japanese fine
watchmakers, simplicity
is a trademark of
genius. A domed glass
face, enveloped in a
steel case, shines the
spotlight on Roman
numeral indices in
six positions. Simple.
Genius.

PANERAI RADIOMIR
OT TO GIORNI E 45MM
E is for: ever thought
recycling could look so
good? Grails are going
green with Panerai’s
45mm Italian stallion
watch made from
Brunito steel, or e-steel,
which is 98.6 per cent
recycled material.

D E C

BLANCPAIN
FIF TY FATHOMS
AUTOMATIQUE 45MM
The 70th anniversary
of the OG divers’ watch—
hat tip to the 300m
water-resistance
and date window—is
as essential for your dive
holiday as your wet suit
and snorkel.

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HERMÈS H08 39MM
An Hermès hallmark
alongside the Birkin and
the Kelly since 2021, the
H08’s unique shape has
carved out a new-age
cult following for itself.
The chunky rubber strap
makes it feel sporty and
sleek all at once.

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GUCCI 25H
TOURBILLON 40MM

CHANEL J12
CYBERNETIC 38MM

Gucci has been making
haute horology for 51
years, and the 25H
collection is a cult
favourite. This 18-caratgold number packs a
gorgeous tourbillon
movement into a crazily
slim 40mm case.

The pixelated, Tron-era
aesthetic of Chanel’s
new Cybernetic feels like
it’s been ripped from
(or to) the metaverse—
but trust us, the sapphire
crystal bezel and
ceramic-steel case has
to be seen IRL.

BREMONT JAGUAR
C-TYPE 43MM
Much like Bagheera
in Rudyard Kipling’s
seminal hit, Bremont’s
jibe at the Jag will provide
you with a friend and
accomplice—but this
one has a bi-directional
rotating tachymeter
and scratch-resistant
case too.

ALPINA ALPINER
EXTREME AUTOMATIC
41MM

ZENITH PILOT
AUTOMATIC STEEL
42MM

Explorers have inspired
a lot of watches over the
years, and Alpina’s new
adventurer hits the spot
again. Plus, there’s a
36-hour power reserve in
case you get stranded.

Zenith holds a legitimate
claim to being at the
forefront of pilot watches
and with a steel case,
oversized crown, and
black corrugated dial,
this clean new-era model
does its rich aviation
history proud.

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REVERSO TRIBUTE
MONOFACE SMALL
SECONDS
The Jekyll and Hyde of
the watch world, this
reversible must-have
is ready to match your
mood—and it’s never
been better than its new
iteration in a slender
7.56mm case.
GERALD CHARLES
GC SPORT CLAY
Watchmaking deity
Gerald Genta simply
can’t stop giving, even
beyond the grave.
Cue another gamechanging dial shape with
Maestro edges, this time
with a sporty number
in sepia shades and
lightweight titanium.

VACHERON
CONSTANTIN
OVERSEAS
PERPETUAL
CALENDAR
ULTRA-THIN
41.5MM
Whom do we
need to speak
to about a 2024
wall calendar in
honour of this
new VC? It’s just
8.1 millimetres
thick, and it’ll
show you the
correct date until
2100. Museumworthy.

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CARTIER PRIVÉ
TANK NORMALE
Trust the discreet maison
of Cartier to downplay
the seismic launch of
this beautiful boxy bezel,
with a cabochon on
the winding crown and
bevelled sapphire
crystal. Normale?
We think not.
BREITLING
PREMIER B01
CHRONOGRAPH
42MM
Breitling has always
had serious game in
the air, but the original
Premier from 1943
turned pilot watches from
functional workhorses
to style icons. The
new cream-dial
version only enhances
its reputation.

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It’s been years since the rap legend released new music. Now, on his own creative terms,
he’s unveiling his first solo project—and talking candidly about where he’s been,
how he’s changed, and why he made an album that nobody could have expected.
BY ZACH BARON PHOTOGRAPHS BY RENELL MEDRANO

FREE SPIRIT
OF THE YEAR

was a kid, he used to get
on his knees and recite what he called the
Rapper’s Prayer, which was what it sounds
like it was: Lord, we just want to be good
rappers. Then he grew up a little and, with
his friend Big Boi, who used to kneel and
pray beside him, formed OutKast. OutKast
turned out to be more than good—the
group was great, among the greatest of all
time. This year, the duo’s fifth album, 2003’s
Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, was certified
platinum for the 13th time, making it the
best-selling rap album in history. André has
been wrestling with the consequences of that
childhood prayer ever since it was answered.
“That’s life: You want what you want until
you don’t want it,” he says, laughing a little.
“I don’t regret any of that, but it’s kind of like
now that I’m at a certain level, I miss certain
things about normalcy.”
That’s why he comes here, to this laundromat on the Westside of Los Angeles, not
far from his house in Venice. One of the reasons, anyway. “It gives me a chance to be
out in the world,” he says. (Another reason:
The industrial washers and dryers are faster
than the ones he has at home.) The other
customers notice him but don’t recognize
him, usually. “I’m older now, so a lot of people, they see me: ‘You look like him, but nah,
that ain’t 3000.’ ”
I am less than sure about this—very few
people in human history have looked like
André 3000, who at 48 still has the handsome face and lean-closer voice that he did
when he was 19, and though his present
daily uniform of overalls over a camouflage
shirt is perhaps less flamboyant than what
he wore during the height of his fame, it’s
still overalls over a camouflage shirt. Plus,
he usually carries a flute with him, to play
in the alley out back while he waits. “I play
everywhere,” he says. “If I’m waiting on a
cup of coffee, if I’m just outside of my car—
I take my flute pretty much everywhere
I go.” Perhaps you’ve seen videos: André
wandering an airport, or the streets of
WHEN ANDRÉ 3000

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Philadelphia, coaxing out eerie melodies
from a variety of wooden instruments.
In November, André will release his first
new record since the last OutKast one,
2006’s Idlewild. It is called New Blue Sun.
There is no rapping on it. There are, in fact,
no identifiable vocals at all: It is a record
built almost entirely around woodwind
instruments, full of long, winding songs with
long, winding titles. It’s a delicate, whimsical
document—New Age music for an age that
hasn’t quite dawned yet. André recorded
it here in Venice, at a few different studios
with a handful of other session musicians,
last year. The recordings you hear are more
or less improvisations: everyone’s first time
through the song.
Ask him why a woodwind album—and
people do—and André 3000 will respond,
characteristically, by asking, “Why anything? Why did we record these albums
before in my career? It is just kind of: Those

GROOMING: IMAN THOMAS/DION PERONNEAU. PRODUCED
BY ANNEE ELLIOT PRODUCTIONS, LOS ANGELES. LOCATION:
WASH & DRY L AUNDROMAT, LOS ANGELES.

are the things that came.” He is aware that
people expect something else from him. Or:
don’t expect. They want. Millions of people,
in fact. They would like to hear him rap. It’s
right there, acknowledged in the title of the
first song on the record: “I swear, I Really
Wanted To Make A ‘Rap’ Album But This
Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me
This Time”.
And he did try, he says. “I’ve worked with
some of the newest, freshest, youngest, and
old-school producers. I get beats all the
time. I try to write all the time.” But rap is
not what comes. “Even now people think,
Oh, man, he’s just sitting on raps, or he’s just
holding these raps hostage. I ain’t got no
raps like that. It actually feels…sometimes

it feels inauthentic for me to rap because
I don’t have anything to talk about in that
way. I’m 48 years old. And not to say that
age is a thing that dictates what you rap
about, but in a way it does. And things that
happen in my life, like, what are you talking about? ‘I got to go get a colonoscopy.’
What are you rapping about? ‘My eyesight
is going bad.’ You can find cool ways to say
it, but….”
In his life, André 3000 has lost both parents. He’s sent a son off to college. He’s known
loss and love and fame. He has a partner, in
Big Boi, who would get back onstage with
him tomorrow, to continue where OutKast
left off, and every day André decides again
not to do that. “And those are real subject

matters. I jot down what’s going on in my
life. But to make it into an entertaining song
to where it’s just not self-serving or it’s not
just—like there’s a part of entertaining someone else too.” He tries, but it’s not there when
he looks for it. “And what’s that saying with
recovering addicts? They say, ‘The longer I’m
out of it, the better chances I have of staying
out of it.’ ”
In theory, André says, yes, the genre is big
enough to encompass old age. To encompass
colonoscopies and eye exams and grief and
everything else. OutKast made their name
expanding the possibilities of the genre,
talking honestly about everything in their
lives, good, bad, or indifferent. “But look at
the greatest boxers now,” André says. “What

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do they do? They do exhibition
fights every now and then, but
they’re not stepping in the ring.
You know what I mean?”
T H E R E I S A kind of mythic air
that sometimes floats around
André 3000, an affectionate but
slightly dehumanizing impression that he is a whimsical sprite
who emerges from time to time
to practise mischief. Perhaps it’s
worth saying that this is not at
all how he sees himself. What he
is, is sincere: He cannot help but
do whatever he is compelled to
do, even if it doesn’t make sense
to anyone else. For instance:
Why does he play his flute in
public? Because he prefers practising to checking his phone. But
then people film him, and those
videos go viral, and it becomes
something else, a competition
to find and document whatever

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André 3000
photographed
at the Los Angeles
laundromat
he frequents.
He’s come to
appreciate the
speed of the
industrial dryers,
plus, he says,
“It gives me
a chance to be
out in the world.”

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he’s up to in public. “It kind of
made me more self-conscious,”
he says. “Because it became kind
of like a game.”
But it is awesome, in any number of expected and unexpected
ways, to spend time around the
guy. In the laundromat, after his
clothes are loaded in the washing machine, he hefts his flute,
invites me to come hear him play
it in the California sun, and so
I spend a dazzling 15 minutes
outside in an alley, listening to
the quiet rush of nearby traffic
and the hollow, playful sound of
André finding his way through
something new.
On his overalls is a small
drawing that he did of ants
spiralling around a flute. This
turns out to be the logo of the
workwear brand he is developing, which he has decided to
call From Now On, They Will

Have No Choice But to Call Us The Ants.
Increasingly, André says after we’ve gone
back inside, this is what he’s up to: doing
anything but making rap music. He is planning a store called A Myriad of Pyramids,
which will sell clothes and artwork. Having
built one immortal legacy with OutKast,
he’s begun to think about others. “I’d like to
make things that when I’m dead and gone
3,000 years from now, people may dig up
and find. So if that’s sculpting, if that’s actually physical artwork, painting, designing
instruments, that’s where I’m at right now.”
In some ways, it was OutKast, in retrospect, that was the aberration in André
3000’s life, he says. “I’m almost going back
and digging up something that I kind of
abandoned before. Right before OutKast,
I was supposed to go to art school.”
André is compulsively honest, and eager
to talk about just about anything; OutKast
is the one subject that occasionally leaves
him short of words. He thinks warmly about
the early days of the group and has more
complicated, harder to express thoughts
about its pinnacle. What happened to him
and Big Boi is still mostly a blur. “It happened so fast,” André says. “Sometimes I
don’t even remember what cities we performed in.” At some point, the duo stopped
playing shows, and then they stopped putting out records. In 2014, OutKast reunited
for Coachella and an ensuing tour—André
can still recall the first night, how strange
it was, being back onstage, in front of
thousands of people, not to mention Paul
McCartney and Prince, who called the next
day to reprimand André for checking out
of the show, halfway through. “ ‘You know
what your problem is?’ Prince asked. And
I’m like, Fuck. He said, ‘You don’t realize
how big y’all are.’ And then he was like, ‘You
got to remind people who you are.’ And
from that point on, I was like, Okay.” The
shows went notably better from there.
Still, OutKast hasn’t played a concert
or released a song since. “There’s a certain
chemistry that me and Big Boi had and
have,” he says. “I think over time, people
don’t understand that chemistry changes.”
After the reunion, André went back to doing
what he was comfortable doing, which was
being on his own. Some people might struggle to figure out who they are, outside the
group that made them famous, but it was
more or less the opposite for André. “I mean,
there’s been so many times in my mind
where I thought I was done. So it wasn’t
even a struggle. It wasn’t like, ‘What am I
going to do now?’ Even during all of this,
I remember a couple weeks ago talking to
my manager and publicist, I really had to
ask myself, ‘Do I want to be famous again?’ ”
The answer was: no. “But at the same time,
I want to promote the music.”

In the past, André 3000 has spoken
openly about having social anxiety. “And it
never goes away. It’s not like a cure-all kind
of thing. It just becomes a part of life and
you just have to take a deep breath, smile a
little bit, and just get through it for tomorrow. That’s the best I can say.” But it’s also
safe to say that fame and attention exacerbate the condition for him. He has never
quite known what to do with the attention,
with people filming him, coming up to him
on the street.
He has talked about this with a therapist, at times, how his gift lives so close to
the thing that makes him unhappy. “He was
like, ‘Well, son, the thing that makes your
art what it is, is the thing that you don’t like
either.’ So it’s like, Fuck, what am I going
to do?”
What are you going to do?

“I don’t have a choice. It’s not like I can
change it. Just kind of rock with it.”
Well, I mean, I guess the dramatic version
would be, “Oh, I’d give up the gift to get free.”
“I’ve been through that too. But it’s not
up to me.”
New Blue Sun is many things, but one of
those things is maybe an attempt to change
the terms of the conversation. To—in a very
André way—turn the game into an entirely
different game. “I just think it’s a stepping
stone,” he says. When expectations become
suffocating, defy expectations. “I’ve played
it for certain friends,” André says, “and
depending on who they are, you get certain
reactions. So I know that’s how the world
will react too. But it’s all positive. It’s kind
of like: You may get someone that cries. You
may get someone that immediately starts
to do yoga. You may get someone that goes

“I get beats all the time. I try to write all
the time. People think, Oh, man, he’s just
sitting on raps, or he’s just holding these
raps hostage. I ain’t got no raps like that.”

to sleep. Then you got the homie that be
like, ‘Y’all gon’ put some beats on that
shit?’ You get it all, man.”
André says he is used to his friends not
always liking his music. Once, he says, he
played “Hey Ya” for someone close to him.
“He said, ‘Man, if you put that out, your
career is over.’ In my mind, I’m like, ‘Damn.
But I like this shit!’ So I like to get different
opinions. I’m never unaware. I’m never
oblivious. And I’m always aware of how
people will take it.”
But he also can’t help but do what he
wants to do, even if it’s not what other people want him to do. New Blue Sun is not
intended to be a provocation—if anything,
it’s the opposite; it’s an attempt to connect,
to narrow the distance between the massive, abstract legacy of OutKast and the
more humble, daily reality of André 3000.
But it’s certainly not what people are anticipating. “It could end right here,” André
says. “But then that might be a blessing
too. I’d be all right. I’d know that, man, you
put your time in and did what you wanted
to do. That’s all you can ask for. It’s like, I’m
not tripping. I mean, I’ll go and draw and
paint or something.”
ZACH BARON is GQ ’s senior special
projects editor.

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The products featured editorially have been ordered
from the following stores. Prices and availability were
checked at the time of going to press.
#
42 Suns mrporter.com
4SDesigns 4sdesigns.com
A
A&S aands.co.in
Akila akila.la
Anamika Khanna
Mumbai, 85910 02932;
Delhi, 95603 37744
Anna Karlin annakarlin.com
Apple Mumbai, 80004 04504;
Delhi, 80000 404503
Ashish Soni Delhi,
DLF Emporio, 011-4606 0955
Audemars Piguet Delhi, Kapoor
Watch Co, 011-4134 5678
B
Balenciaga Mumbai, 022-3516 8704
Bode bodenewyork.com
Boss Mumbai, Palladium,
022-2491 2210; Delhi, DLF Emporio,
011-4604 0773; Bengaluru, UB City,
080-4122 1802
Bottega Veneta Mumbai, Palladium
022-6615 2291; Delhi, DLF Emporio,
011-4609 8262
Bulgari Mumbai, 022-3550 3323;
Delhi, DLF Emporio, 011-4053 8624
C
Charles & Keith Mumbai,
74200 20352; Delhi, 74200 20339;
Bangalore, 74200 20347
Chopova Lowena
chopovalowena.com
Christian Louboutin
Mumbai, 022-4347 1787; Delhi,
DLF Emporio, 011-4101 7111
Coach Mumbai, Palladium
022-2491 2210; Delhi, DLF Emporio,
011-4927 0626; Bengaluru,
080-48651744
Countrymade countrymade.in
D
David Yurman davidyurman.com
Dhruv Kapoor dhruvkapoor.com
Dior Men Mumbai, 80005 03807;
Delhi, DLF Emporio, 011-4600 5900
Dries Van Noten driesvannoten.be
E
Editions Milano editionsmilano.com
Ernest W Baker
ernest-w-baker.com
F
Ferragamo Mumbai, 022-3062 1018;
Delhi, DLF Emporio, 011-4660 9084;
Bengaluru, UB City, 080-4302 0456

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G
Gentle Monster gentlemonster.com
Givenchy givenchy.com
Gucci Mumbai, 022-6747 7060;
Delhi, DLF Emporio, 011-4647 1111
H
Hermès Mumbai, 022-2271 7400;
Delhi, 011-2688 5501
Hulken hulkenbag.com
I
Isabel Marant isabelmarant.com
Ishhaara ishhaara.com
K
KGL Delhi, 011-6555 7775
Khanijo Delhi, 011-4054 6546
Kimeze kimeze.com
L
Lalo lalo.com
Loewe loewe.com
Longines Mumbai, Watches of
Switzerland, 022-2640 2511;
Delhi, 011-4359 2848; Bengaluru,
Ethos, 080-4113 0611
Louis Vuitton Mumbai,
022-6664 4134; Delhi, DLF Emporio,
011-4669 0000; Bengaluru,
UB City, 080-4246 0000
M
Mannat Gupta mannatgupta.com
MARGN margn.in
Massimo Dutti Mumbai, Palladium,
022-6237 0731; Delhi, DLF Emporio,
011-0259 5333
Medea medea.world
Mercedes-Benz Mumbai, MB Auto
Hangar, 022-6612 3800; Delhi,
T&T Motors, 011-4005 8300;
Bengaluru, Akshaya Motors,
91085 35297
MoMa Design Store
store.moma.org
Moschino moschino.com
Movado movado.com
O
Omega Mumbai, 022-6655 0351;
Delhi, 011-4151 3255; Bengaluru,
080-4098 2106
P
Polo Ralph Lauren
Available at The Collective
Prada prada.com
R
Radhika Agrawal
rajewels.in

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Rahul Mishra Delhi, 96500 39960;
Mumbai, 93267 88526
Rajesh Pratap Singh
Mumbai, 022-6638 5480; Delhi,
011-2463 8788
Rimowa Mumbai, 022-3500 2907
Rimzim Dadu Delhi, 97179 45460
Rohit Gandhi + Rahul Khanna
Delhi, 011-4663 2636

Thom Browne
thombrowne.com
Tiffany & Co. Delhi, 93548 47531
Tom Ford Delhi, DLF Emporio,
011-4103 3059
Troy Costa
Mumbai, 98200 71069
Tsu Lange Yor
tsu-lange-yor.com

S
Saint Laurent by Anthony
Vaccarello Delhi, The Chanakya,
78771 23123
Selected Homme Mumbai,
Palladium, 022-4333 9994;
Delhi, 011-4152 3006; Bengaluru,
080-4204 3753
Song For The Mute
songforthemute.com
Stóffa stoffa.co
Supreme
us.supreme.com

U
Uniqlo Delhi, 011-4087 0760;
Mumbai, 022-6925 3800
Ura wearura.com

T
T.Henri thenri.com
The Collective Mumbai,
Palladium, 022-4023 4414; Delhi,
011-4087 0544; Bengaluru, UB City,
080-4120 7331

V
Valentino Delhi, DLF Emporio,
011-4446 8659
Y
Yew Yew yewyewshop.com
Z
Zara Mumbai, 022-4542 1800;
Delhi, DLF Promenade,
011-4513 7124; Bengaluru,
Phoenix Marketcity, 080-6726 6121
Zegna Mumbai, Palladium,
022-4347 1263; Delhi,
DLF Emporio, 011-4606 0999

Coat,
waistcoat,
and trousers
by Anamika
Khanna.

PHOTOGR APH: SAHIL BEHAL . ST YLING: SELMAN FA ZIL . HAIR: MOHD JAVED. MAKE-UP: SANJAY YADAV. ENTERTAINMENT DIRECTOR: MEGHA MEHTA. PRODUCTION: ANOMALY PRODUCTION, SHUBHR A SHUKL A.

WHERE TO BUY

PHOTO: BIKRAMJIT BOSE/VOGUE INDIA

BEFORE IT’S IN FASHION, IT’S IN VOGUE!

GQ Top Shelf
Fashion, Grooming and Luxury in standout style

Elevating Your Bath Space

In Pursuit Of Excellence

A tasteful blend of form and function, Rainbeam by Artize is a tiltable shower head
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As the official sponsor of the Italian Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli
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Conquering Frizz

Sky Is The Limit

Banking At Your Fingertips

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Redefining The Art Of Travel

Symphony Of Luxe Workmanship

Samsonite unveils ‘Destination Samsonite: Voyage Through
Time’. Launched in Singapore in the presence of notable guests
including CEO Kyle Francis Gendreau, this exhibition paid
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transition to smart travel solutions and their iconic products.
Samsonite also released three new products – Evoa Z, SBL
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Indulge in the timeless beauty of elegant craftsmanship of fine writing and luxury
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houses a removable bifold with mesh ID windows and card slots. The wallet is crafted
from exquisite leather and draws inspiration from sfumato, the Renaissance technique,
where hand-painted edges are used to create a dual tone that gradually darkens,
showing imperceptible transition between shades.

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For more information, visit lapisbard.com

A Celestial
Masterpiece
Inspired by the lifecycle of a star, Titan’s
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limited edition watches that combine
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For more information,
visit titan.co.in

The Connoisseurs
Of Leather

No More Cleaning Woes

In the realm of men’s fashion, the
significance of footwear cannot be
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For more information, visit presstoindia.com
or call 9167188355

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GQ World
Humour

Dating Prospects
as Insects
B y ARIELL A ELOVIC

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IT'S WHAT'S NEW NOW
PHOTO: TARUN VISHWA/GQ INDIA

WHAT A MAN'S GOT TO DO

PHOTO: R BURMAN/GQ INDIA