Innehållsförteckning för March 2025 från Esquire

LAST OCTOBER, I WAS IN LOS ANGELES ON BUSINESS AND TOOK Esquire’s food and drinks man, Jeff Gordinier, out for breakfast at République on La Brea Avenue. The restaurant has a bright, airy, optimistic California vibe. The food reflects the multicultural range of the city. We dined on the patio, bathing in the bright autumn sun as we talked. Los Angeles can be a magical place, and this was one of those magical L. A. mornings. Gordinier grew up in Pasadena and had just moved his family back to L. A. after decades in New York. I had never seen him so happy. “If someone offered me another thirty years of life in New York or another ten years in L. A., I’d take L. A.,” he said, not a hint…

WALK DOWN ONE FLIGHT OF stairs to enter Ye’s Apothecary—a Szechuan-inspired cocktail bar located on the border between Chinatown and Manhattan’s Lower East Side—and it feels like you’ve stepped into a Wong Kar-wai film. Tasseled lamps hang like lanterns from the ceiling, and wooden drawers are stacked to the roof behind the bar, evoking the inside of a Chinese pharmacy. There is also an intoxicating scent in the air of something herbal and intense. This is baijiu (pronounced bye-joe), a liquor with thousands of years of history. And here at Ye’s, they’re mixing it up in potent and delicious combinations. I grab a seat and ask for my favorite cocktail, the Fallen Angel, which also happens to be the most popular drink on the menu. Beverage director Jake Babich created…

I’M A SUCKER FOR A RED HOODIE, ESPEcially when it’s been washed a thousand times and the bright red gets knocked down to this perfectly muted color. I found this at a flea market, which is great. Finding something in the wild just makes it sweeter. And it’s been lived in. There’s distressing around the collar, the cuffs are a little threadbare, the pocket has been torn from having hands in and out of it a million times. It’s Champion Reverse Weave, 1970s era, and that classic Champion fit is a little wonky—very full across the chest and shoulders and then it tapers down. The fullness up top gives it this vintage jock feeling that’s appealing to me for God knows what reason. It reminds me of something that the…

CONTRARY TO WHAT YOU SEE IN THE MIRROR, YOUR skin is not one entity. It is your body’s largest organ, but skin comprises a complex system of layers that must work together to function properly. Chief among them is the skin barrier, which keeps everything in balance. When it’s working well, you don’t notice it. When it’s not? That’s a different story. Nearly every skin issue—from acne to sensitivity—can be addressed by improving your skin barrier, which is why companies are eager to tout their barrier-improving prowess. But what is it exactly? And what should you be doing to help it out? Technically speaking, your skin barrier is the outermost layer of your skin, called the stratum corneum (or “horned layer,” which is a pretty badass name). According to New York–based…

IT’S EASY TO ROMANTICIZE the good old days. Back when men wore suits and we didn’t know red meat was bad for us and there were trout in all the rivers. Yes, everything was better in this mythical past we never knew. But let’s acknowledge one thing that is true: There’s a crisis in the modern drinking world. Where are the good bars? It’s more complicated to get a drink than it should be. And I live in New York, where bars mean something. I don’t ask for much: a dark room without much going on. I can take it from there. Today, bars are themed; they’re kitschy; they’re tourist magnets. Others installed TVs for the World Series or World Cup and never turned them off. Now they’re on cable news,…

AT THIS STAGE OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE, WE HAVE EXPORTED just about all the culture we are going to export. The apple pie is available globally. Cities around the globe have hosted and endured Major League Baseball games. There is a jazz festival in Moldova later this year, and experts have not reached a consensus as to whether Moldova is a fictional country. The tank is nearly empty. But there is one strictly American art form left in the world, and we are keeping it just for ourselves, which works out pretty well because nobody else wants it. The last piece of real American culture is the television pharmaceutical advertisement. Big Pharma spends about $6 billion a year on direct-to-consumer broadcast ads, and the U. S. is one of two countries…

MEDITATION IS A SIMPLE, FREE, AND TIME-honored practice that focuses the mind, reduces stress, and sits menacingly on my daily to-do list like a terrible chore. Oh, I want to meditate, and I know I’ll feel better after I’ve done it, but the notion of spending quiet time alone with my thoughts has an appeal just under cleaning the gutters. The effects of meditation are profound and positive, but they are also slow and gradual, which is why I say no thanks. I want a monastic level of inner peace, and I want it with the speed of a DoorDash delivery. I am American, after all. So you can imagine my relief when I found out about 40 Years of Zen, a brain-optimization retreat that promises all the benefits of…

COLUM MCCANN, THE NATIONAL BOOK Award–winning novelist, stands in the art deco lobby of the old Western Union headquarters in lower Manhattan. The building is a hub in the infrastructure of the Internet, housing a warren of fiber-optic cables and wires through which zooms human communication—TikToks, texts, secret data, emojis, emails, all of Wall Street—on its way to cables the width of garden hoses crisscrossing the ocean floor. McCann’s mesmerizing new novel, Twist, transpires among a crew that repairs undersea cables—the same kinds of cables that the governments of Russia and China stand accused of damaging to disrupt the flow of information to their adversaries. Twist is a novel for our time. The only souls in the lobby are the guards; the elevators are silent. It’s like Kubrick, or Severance. McCann…

IN 1999, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY MATHEMATICIANS Thomas Fink and Yong Mao published a book describing 85 different ways to tie a tie. The tome, jammed with diagrams and formulae, was based on two mathematics papers they had published in Nature and Physica A while they were research fellows. We can’t help feeling the tie died a little on publication day. It was already on a downward trajectory. Apart from the occasional dandy uptick, over the past 15 years the tie has, for most of us, languished in the closet, neglected and all but forgotten in the era of casual luxury. Which, in our minds, makes it a prime candidate for reevaluation. If everyone else is suiting up in cashmere sweatpants and overshirts, what better way to defy contemporary convention than by putting…

Robbie Williams Singer-songwriter, 50, Los Angeles I DID A RESIDENCY at the Wynn in Vegas, and because North America is not acquainted with what I do pervasively, I had to sell myself to the people who book the acts. I was like: Mate, I’m a swear-y Frank Sinatra with tattoos. I’m in these stadiums doing these massive shows, but people at dinner parties are asking me if I still do music. I FEEL AS IF I’m a brand-new artist again, and I’m about to experience my business in a way I didn’t the first time around because of mental illness and drugs and shit. I PLAYED the Artful Dodger in a play when I was younger and got a standing ovation every night when I came on. It was intoxicating.…

WHAT DOES A FUTURE FASHION DESIGNer study in college? To make clothes, you don’t need to pass a test the way a lawyer does to practice law or a doctor must to treat patients. You could study … anything. Tom Ford got his diploma in architecture; Ralph Lauren spent a couple years studying business before enlisting in the Army; Cristóbal Balenciaga didn’t go to college. Then there’s Brett Johnson, the cerebral owner and creative director of his eponymous label. He studied sociology at the University of Michigan. “People’s actions and reactions to the way something is—that has always sparked my curiosity,” says Johnson, 35. “I love how you watch a movie with ten people and you get ten different reactions to that one film.” To study sociology is to learn…

THERE ARE FEW GARMENTS IN THE PANTHEON of the classic wardrobe more storied than the navy-blue, gold-button blazer. A proper blazer (only in America does blazer mean just any orphaned jacket) says you belong somewhere. Or it used to. All of which might make it tricky to wear in a modern context. Unless, of course, you take your cues from these two pages. But first, the background. The blazer originates, according to one of many legends, with a British ship called the HMS Blazer in 1837. The captain, convinced that his scrofulous crew were in no fit state to welcome Queen Victoria onboard for an impending visit, fitted them out at his own expense with short blue-and-white-striped “reefer” jackets with gold anchor buttons. The blazer as we understand it has been…

IT TAKES GUSTO TO NAME YOUR clothing brand after the very thing it’s made from. Luckily, the cofounders of Stòffa—Italian for “fabric” or “cloth”—have the chops to back it up. Agyesh Madan and Nicholas Ragosta met while working at the venerable Neapolitan tailoring label Isaia before starting Stòffa in 2014, selling hats and scarves to #menswear-brained fans who nerded out about the benefits of rabbit-fur felt and gauzy, lighter-than-air wools. These days, it’s not just the nerds. In a dressed-down world, droves of style-conscious guys are seeking out the kind of unfussy refinement that Stòffa offers. “Fabric always comes first,” explains Madan. “Everything else is a way of deciding how to respect that fabric and reinterpret it in silhouettes and bring it to people. Starting with accessories helped, because both those…

IN 2017, I SAT WITH A FEW journo pals below the podium on the west front of the Capitol and watched Donald Trump be sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. After taking the oath of office, which he took approximately as seriously as he did contracts he’d signed with workmen in Atlantic City, he delivered what is unquestionably the weirdest inaugural address in American history—the now infamous “American Carnage” speech. Former President George W. Bush, seated nearby, reputedly called Trump’s remarks “some weird shit,” which I believe he actually did say because that’s what all of us in my little slice of the audience said, too. In retrospect, I have come to believe that this bit of comic-opera boogedy-boogedy gave a lot of people permission to…

STORE INFORMATION For the items featured in Esquire, please consult the website or call the phone number provided. Blueprint, pp. 36-37: Brunello Cucinelli belt, brunellocucinelli.com. Ralph Lauren Purple Label belt, ralphlauren.com. Gap belt, gap.com. Clint Orms belt, clintorms.com. P. 41: Extreme Cashmere sweater, extreme-cashmere.com. Luis Morais bracelets, luismorais.com. Chan Luu bracelets, chanluu.com. P. 42: Golden Goose jacket, goldengoose.com. Market T-shirt, marketstudios.com. Levi’s vintage jeans, secondhand.levi.com. Santoni sneakers, santonishoes.com. Shinola watch, shinola.com. John Hardy bracelets, johnhardy.com. Lili Claspe ring, liliclaspe.com. Stance socks, stance.com. P. 43: Polo Ralph Lauren jacket and shirt, ralphlauren.com. Connor McKnight trousers, connormcknight.com. John Hardy earring, johnhardy.com. Thom Browne jacket, shirt, tie, shorts, shoes, and socks, thombrowne.com. P. 46: Drake’s tie, drakes.com. Hermès tie, hermes.com. Brooks Brothers tie, brooksbrothers.com. P. 48: J. Press shirt, jpressonline.com. Polo Ralph Lauren…