Innehållsförteckning för Summer 2025 från Esquire

For nearly two decades, Esquire’s Big Black Book has been the guide to living, eating, drinking, and dressing with the very best of ’em. This summer, we’re doling out even more indispensable advice in a digital edition you don’t want to miss. From profiles of six women shaping the way men dress to a bevy of tips for a stylish life from the most interesting people we know—not to mention a roundup of the coolest suits of the season—it’s got everything you need to look and feel like a million bucks during the warmer months. See the whole thing at ESQUIRE.COM/BIG-BLACK-SUMMER-2025…

A FEW WEEKS BEFORE THE PUBLICATION of Ocean Vuong’s first novel, 2019’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, his mother died from cancer. She had only just moved into the house that Vuong bought her with proceeds from the book. “I was a zombie,” the 36-year-old tells me over a video call, in a tone that suggests, while the shock is no longer fresh, disbelief lingers. We are speaking a month out from the publication of his second novel, and this time round, he is just doing his best to pay attention. “I’m not an author that really understands my work clearly while I make it,” he warns me at the very top of our conversation. “And so it’s like I’m waking up from a dream, and now I have to…

TOO OFTEN, DESIGNER EYEWEAR IS MORE ABOUT LOGOS THAN about materials and quality. Akoni is the real deal. The Swiss company makes its glasses in Lombardy, Italy, and the Fukui region of Japan, employing skilled local craftspeople. They are adept at shaping materials like cellulose-derived acetate and high-grade titanium into luxury frames. Their latest challenge is the Cosmo, a made-to-order design carved from ethically sourced natural horn. A single pair requires more than 30 hours of work. For hundreds of years, horn was the standard for spectacles, but shaping horn is diffcult work, and by the 20th century plastic superseded it. The Cosmo, with its classic good looks and modernized construction—those hinges are ultralight, ultradurable titanium—is one of the best arguments we’ve seen for bringing (ethically sourced) horn back into…

THERE WAS A MOMENT, NOT long ago, when sneaker consumption hit a fever pitch. People lined up for hyped releases, traded elbows with fellow enthusiasts for a shot at a limited edition, joined digital queues with tens of thousands of others. It was fun! Until it wasn’t. Exhausted by chasing the next new thing—not to mention demoralized by walking away emptyhanded—we shifted our gaze to classic loafers and lace-ups. Those aren’t going anywhere. But it’s summertime. Which means relaxing in a pair of worry-free knock-around shoes. Which means sneakers. But now, instead of grasping for ultra-rare grails, the smart move is to reach for the ones that started it all. We’re talking about the simple, canvas-and-rubber lace-ups that appeared more than a century ago and persist to this day. The…

To see even more elevated summer fashion—and get indispensable style advice you can use any time—check out the spring/summer edition of ESQUIRE’S BIG BLACK BOOK at esquire.com/big-black-summer-2025.…

WHEN YOU SUMMON MEMORIES OF YOUR favorite bar, what comes to mind? Is it the dexterity with which the bartender chiseled a block of ice into a gleaming sphere? Is it the way eyedropper pools of herbed oil floated on the surface of your martini like skimmed stones? Is it how you got to watch your $30 cocktail emerging from a dome of smoke? Maybe, maybe. But … probably not. Neat tricks those are, but if we’re really, actually talking about your favorite bar, we’re talking about gathering along a counter or around a table with people you’d die for. We’re talking about a place where you can loosen up and be yourself and incinerate all that world-gone-mad stress before it incinerates you. We’re talking about a bar whose very…

THIS JACKET CAME INTO MY LIFE after I mentioned to a good friend how much I liked it. Flash forward to my birthday and he surprised me with it. I never thought someone would give me such an expensive piece of clothing. It was completely out of the blue. I love C. P. Company. I’m an aficionado of anything from Massimo Osti, the founder of C. P. Company and Stone Island. It’s partly because I love football. Soccer. If you look into the story of those Italian designers like Osti, you learn European football hooligans adopted them. Those brands also developed their own fabrics and created something timeless. The cut, the pattern, the colors of this jacket—they all stood out to me. It’s kind of an old-school, timeless piece. A…

BY THE TIME I CAUGHT UP WITH MY TEAMMATES AT AN ELEVATION OF SEVENTEEN THOUSAND FEET, the call had already been made to stop and set up camp. That decision saved my life. We’d spent most of the day inching our way up the slopes of Lenin Peak, a 23,406-foot mountain in what was then the Soviet Union, and were still a few hundred yards short of Camp 2, our intended destination. Progress from Camp 1, around three thousand feet below, had been slow in part because we were struggling to breathe in the thin mountain air, but also because it had been snowing for several days, and making headway in the soft snow was hard work. It was late in the afternoon, and we’d reached a spot where the…

For the items featured in Esquire, please consult the website or call the phone number provided. The Blueprint, p. 21: Akoni sunglasses, akoni.com. P. 25: Louis Vuitton watch, available at louisvuitton.com. P. 26: Sperry x Beams Plus sneakers, sperry.com. Vowels cardigan sweater and shirt, vowels.net. Missoma earring, missoma.com. P. 27: Noah jacket and trousers, noahny.com. Bonobos shirt and tie, bonobos.com. Moonstar x Buck Mason sneakers, buckmason.com. American Trench socks, americantrench.com. Aimé Leon Dore jacket and hat, aimeleondore.com. Ambush sweatshirt, ambushdesign.com. Levi’s jeans, levi.com. Mr Fliks sneakers, mrfliks.com. P. 28: Montblanc notebook, fountain pen, and pen pouch, montblanc.com. Métier notebook cover, metier.com. Hermès notebook, hermes.com. Cartier pen and tray, cartier.com. Christofle bookmark, christofle.com. Arzberger Stationers notecard and envelope, arzbergerstationers.com. L’Objet magnifying glass, l-objet.com. Faber-Castell pens, faber-castell.com. Dear Annabelle notecard, dearannabelle.com. Pineider…

WE ARE JUST ONE LEG INTO THE RELAY RACE OF THIS EXCITING CENTURY, and I have to say: It’s going great. (I actually do have to say this. The gulag awaits those who do not.) It has been a real rollercoaster ride, specifically on a roller coaster from a county fair, where you saw who put it together and there’s no way they put all the bolts and screws in. If it feels like we’re getting dumber every day, that’s because we are, and actually that is fine, because sentience has proven to be a real pain in the ass. But just because our brains are objectively worse than they were last century doesn’t mean we haven’t learned anything. The more innocent 1999 versions of ourselves would never believe these…

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, PHOTOGRAPHY involved wooden cameras, metal tripods, and glass plates. Then along came the Leica 1(A), a device that repurposed 35mm movie-film negative for a camera that was portable and lightweight and allowed users to take more than one shot without changing the film. It was dismissed as a toy. “Professional photographers didn’t trust it,” says Stefan Daniel, executive vice president of technology and operations at Leica, from the company’s headquarters in the city of Wetzlar, near Frankfurt, Germany. “It’s the typical reaction when something revolutionary comes up. But it really made photography much more mobile, much more agile than before.” Early adopters—including street photographers, explorers, and members of the Bauhaus movement—did trust it, seeing the potential after it launched at the 1925 Leipzig Spring Fair. The…

IN RECENT YEARS, LOUIS VUITTON, THE FRENCH FASHION house known for its iconic bags and splashy menswear collections, has reestablished itself in the world of serious watchmaking. The brand’s first salvo came in 2023 with the relaunch of its flagship Tambour watch. This year, it delivered something exceptional in the form of six—count ’em, six!—new riffs on its signature Spin Time complication. Introduced in 2009, Spin Time does pretty much what it says. The watch doesn’t have an hour hand. Instead, the dial is outfitted with 12 cubes, one of which rotates to reveal a different color, indicating the hour. As this happens, the cube that had previously marked the hour spins back to match the color of the other cubes on the dial. The minute hand shows the time…

WHEN THE CHORE JACKET SHUFFLED INTO THE STYLE SPOTlight somewhere in the late 2000s, it offered men the ideal way to feel sufficiently dressed without wearing a blazer. The tipping point was the 2010 documentary Bill Cunningham New York, about the then-80-year-old New York street-style photographer, who went everywhere in his trademark French worker’s jacket. Whether your inspiration was military grunts, Japanese factory workers, or, like Cunningham, French mechanics, those threeor four-pocket pieces had a no-nonsense vibe and a functional appeal that led to widespread adoption by normal guys and fashion aficionados alike. Perhaps it’s a sign of the times, but 15 years later a little escapism has crept into the chore jacket. Instead of the reek of engine oil and cordite, the fragrance of choice is English roses and…

BOY, I DO NOT HAVE worldly wisdom to give anyone. IT’S A STRANGE MOMENT FOR ME. I feel more uncertain than I have in a long time about who I am and what I’m trying to do. I’ve been out of my element for about fifteen years now, starting with Better Call Saul. I had to lead this dramatic show, and I had to learn on the job. And then I did an action movie called Nobody. I’M COMING TO THE END of a chapter where I redefined myself. But I’m still not sure what it means. Was it a bit of a lark? ONE OF MY QUALITIES ONSCREEN is that I’m strangely earnest. My earnestness weirdly doesn’t lend itself as well to comedy, which is what I’ve done for…