GQ Style Summer 2016

Can I set a quick scene for you? Photographer Pari Dukovic is shooting Robert Downey Jr. for the cover of this, the first issue of GQ Style. We’re in the Downey world headquarters on the Westside of L.A. Pari’s camera is flashing away, but he and Downey haven’t yet found their groove, partly because the music isn’t quite right. So I start playing reggae from my iPhone through a portable speaker to keep the energy up. After a while, Downey’s constant companion Jimmy commandeers my iPhone and fires up the soundtrack to The Harder They Come. As the tune “Pressure Drop” starts to fade out, Downey looks over and asks, “Hey, is that Toots?” Yep. “If you play ‘Funky Kingston,’ I’ll get this thing going.” Jimmy plays the song. And…

NO.1 The Complete Luggage Wardrobe • You know a man is thorough about matters of taste and style when his luggage is on point. Here, we present the ultimate four-piece setup. You’ll be prepared for any trip, from a two-night staycation to a threemonth sabbatical—and you’ll cut a pretty clean figure at the airport, too. SEVEN OTHER PIECES WE ENDORSE If you crave more variety in your luggage, we’ve got you. Check out how the bags here mirror the aesthetic of the fashion houses that made them: Hermès began as a French saddlemaker, so its bags are made from aristocratic heritage leather. The Berluti is handburnished, just like the brand’s elegant dress shoes. Gucci incorporates two signatures from the house’s archive— the monogram logo and the redgreen ribbon— for a…

For years now, Japanese designers have re-invigorated and improved classic American styles with a fanatical attention to detail and historical accuracy. At the moment, the Osaka label Ring Jacket, with its take on Neapolitan tailoring, is the one that has American suit nerds all worked up. But it turns out this white-hot label was actually founded 60-plus years ago. Here’s the story: Way back in 1954, Jhoichi Fukushima (call him Fukushima-san) was an insurance salaryman, disappointed that his ready-to-wear suits couldn’t hang with his clotheshorse father’s bespoke goods. So he decided to solve the problem himself, opening a factory and hiring veteran tailors to create exacting reproductions of the Kennedy-era Ivy-style suits that were then so popular in Japan. By the 1980s, though, Italian tailoring had exploded— so Fukushima-san and…

Our Legacy started as a punk band—but one that makes clothes instead of music. Jockum Hallin and Cristopher Nying met as kids in Jönköping, Sweden, where they worked at what Jockum calls “the best clothing store in our little town.” In 2005 they opened a distribution agency in Stockholm and soon started selling their own line of graphic tees. They called the fledgling project Our Legacy. According to Hallin, the name “was something we wouldn’t get bored of, and we liked that it sort of sounds like a punk or hardcore band.” What started as a side project quickly grew into a full collection of shirts, pants, outerwear, and suits. At first glance, Our Legacy might evoke classic Scandinavian minimalism (see: razor-sharp topcoats, smart tailoring, slim black jeans, white tees…

When it comes to iconic product design, there’s Dieter Rams’s appliances. Eero Saarinen’s seating. Steve Jobs’s hardware. So…are you ready for the Girolami-Poopat sneaker? Because, at the risk of sounding hyperbolic, it’s beginning to look like the Common Projects Achilles will stand the test of time. In some ways, it already has. Flavio Girolami and Peter Poopat’s silhouettes are now as recognizable as the biggest styles from Nike or Adidas. And the duo’s cult following has grown into a full-blown religion thanks to highwattage boosts from Kanye West, Drake, Alexander Skarsgård, and Aziz Ansari, among many others. “We’re always on the hunt for the perfect thing,” Poopat says. For the designers, that hunt has turned into a way of life that goes far beyond peerless sneaker-stitching. Girolami recently completed a…

A decade ago, I stood in a department store trying to decide between two button-down shirts. One was made in China and cost $188. The other was made in Italy, and the tag read $120. Considering the disparity in wages between Europe and China, the prices should have been reversed. Even as someone who has worked around the apparel industry my whole life, I was baffled. But the moment led me down a road that has shaped not only the majority of my purchases since but also my whole philosophy on what it means to buy for value. When I was a kid growing up in Cleveland, I was fascinated by factories and the complexity and scale of what goes into manufacturing the things we use. The preoccupation intensified when…