Indholdsfortegnelse for June/July 2022 i GQ

MATTHEW HENSON Stylist Matthew Henson has styled plenty of stars—Jonah Hill, Kid Cudi, A$AP Rocky—but for GQ’s profile of Dominic Fike, he had a new challenge: Imagining what the Euphoria star would wear while visiting the metaverse. The result: a distinctly Web3 interpretation of cool. “Styling can make the most audacious items from the runway seem realistic,” he says. “I think it’s where meta and IRL collide.” Office Grails NORIAKI MORIGUCHI Studio creative director, GQ Japan “I really, really love this vintage Levi’s denim from the ’40s.” KYLE HODGE Associate commerce director, GQ U.S. “These shoes from Aurora for Drake’s are luxe slippers for work.” ZAK MAOUI Style editor, British GQ “When Harry Styles drops tees, making sure one is in your wardrobe is the done thing.”…

BAD BUNNY IS in a good place. Fresh off a long-delayed 25-city tour for his third solo album, the most streamed artist of 2021 on Spotify is comfortably ensconced in a waterfront house in North Miami, just across Biscayne Bay from flashier Miami Beach, finishing his latest record. Built out of shipping containers arranged around a patio that looks onto a pool and a dock, this temporary residence is teeming with friends who are also collaborators—his creative director, his photographer, his producer, his jack-of-all-trades. The sliding glass doors are open, but the breeze barely cuts through the humidity and the heat. A chef is at work in the open kitchen, filling the room with the aroma of pork and onions, and a spring break vibe hangs in the air. Someone…

THERE ARE AN estimated 400,000 Elvis Presley impersonators worldwide, who devote themselves to shimmying into rhinestone jumpsuits and slicking their hair back and swiveling their hips. Who, night after night, croon “Hound Dog” and “Love Me Tender,” and pronounce you man and wife and put on their best Southern drawl to thank you, thank you very much. There is perhaps no other person in human history who has been imitated and idolized as much as Elvis. In the face of the King’s omnipresence, how can a performer who is met with the task of portraying Elvis make it feel… real? After all, even footage of the actual man can feel uncanny, as if he, too, is yet another impersonator playing up the tropes. Now, Austin Butler is taking on the challenge…

THE MOTIVATION to launch GQ’s first Metaverse issue started back in December. I was in Miami, hosting a GQ party during Art Basel, and whether you were walking on the beach, browsing the fair, sitting in a meeting, or art-partying under the winter moon, all anybody seemed to be talking about was cryptocurrency, NFTs, and Web3. One afternoon at the fair, I overheard a gallerist implore friends who had stopped by her booth to ask her about anything on earth except goddamn NFTs. (She was selling paintings.) I sat in on a meeting where an executive at one of the big emergent metaverse platforms pitched his vision to a world-famous musician. Meanwhile, I ran into another guy who works in the music business—but was expanding. “Will,” he said, with bitcoins…

FAQ 22 questions about the insanely lucrative, uniquely confusing, distressingly scammy, and quite possibly revolutionary world of non-fungible tokens. SECTION 1 THE BASICS 1 SO WHAT ARE NFTS, ANYWAY? In essence, an NFT, ornonfungible token, is just a record that someone owns something. That record lives on the Ethereum blockchain—an ongoing, impossible-to-fake public ledgerthat shows everyone who’s ever owned the thing in question. (So even if someone can copy and paste your cartoon of an ape, the real one—the only real one—is clearly and incontrovertibly yours.) Of course, NFTs aren't just small artworks—they can serve as contracts or tickets to events or memberships in clubs. And, in some cases, they're shockingly valuable: It’s not unheard of for certain NFTs to run to six figures. And, uh, people spent around $20…

MEET OMAR APOLLO With rare endorsements from Pharrell and Tyler, the Creator, the 25-year-old singersongwriter’s debut album, Ivory, has only cemented his destined stardom. “Songs are like fantasies,” Apollo says. “I write about everything. Nothing’s off-limits.”…

(With a Little Help From Matt Damon and LeBron James) LIKE MOST PEOPLE, I first heard of Crypto.com when Matt Damon popped up on my TV screen and suggested I was a coward. I’ve followed cryptocurrencies for over a decade, but I’ve never invested in them—beyond money laundering, I’d never been able to understand what they were good for. Seeing Damon, though, I understood that the public perception of the technology had reached a new phase. And, yes, I felt in danger of being left behind. ¶ Damon’s commercial is part of a larger, sports-focused marketing push by Crypto.com: The cryptocurrency exchange’s lion-head logo appears on the ice of the NHL, in the octagon of the UFC, and on the jerseys of the Philadelphia 76ers. Last November, the company announced…