Innehållsförteckning för November 2021 från GQ

WESLEY LOWERY Contributor Lowery is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who has profiled everyone from Machine Gun Kelly to Andrew Gillum to Trevor Noah for GQ. For his second cover story, he met up with Will Smith in Louisiana, where he waited out a thunderstorm with the actor in his trailer. “This is a fascinating moment in Will’s life and career,” Lowery said. “It was really great to be able to probe all that with him.” Office Grails COLIN GROUNDWATER Assistant to the global editorial director “You’re never too young for grandpa pants.” DARIA DI LELLO Visuals editor “I’m recovering from a childhood in which I was never required to wear a school uniform.” FRAZIER THARPE Senior associate editor “You call it walking the dog, I call it field-testing a fit.”…

BACK IN MARCH, right after getting vaccinated, I finally booked a tattoo appointment with Jenna Bouma (@Slowerblack), a Brooklyn-based stick-and-poke artist I’ve long admired. I reasoned that getting stabbed thousands of times with a tiny needle would be a perfectly acceptable antidote to the cloudy stupor of the past year. Why put it off any longer? When I finally met Bouma a few weeks later in downtown Brooklyn, she turned out to be a free spirit with a taste for wanderlust—which made for easy conversation. For three hours we talked about everything from Japanese hardcore bands to dabbling in ceramics to international locales that we’ve been fortunate enough to visit. The tattoo (a bulldog on my belly) came out sick. But it was the conversation that jolted my smooth brain…

Pages 18–19. Ozwald Boateng, Commission, Tom Ford, Homer, Schiaparelli, and Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello: courtesy of brands. Chanel, Fendi, Gucci, Tiffany & Co., Dunhill, Cartier, Prada, Thom Browne, Lindman NY, Giuseppe Zanotti, Hermès, Celine Homme by Hedi Slimane, Etro, and Martine Rose: photographs, Martin Brown; prop stylist, Sharon Ryan for Halley Resources. Pages 68–71. Photographs: Jan Thijs/2021 Amazon Content Services LLC and Sony Pictures Television Inc. Statement Required by 39 U.S.C. 3685 showing the Ownership, Management and Circulation of GQ-Gentlemen’s Quarterly, published monthly, except for combined issues in June/July and Dec/Jan (10 issues) for October 1, 2021. Publication No. 489-350. Annual subscription price $24.00. 1. Location of known office of Publication is One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. 2. Location of the Headquarters or General Business Offices…

What’s one thing you do every day? Stretch, shower, kiss my wife, feed my cats, cover my nakedness with clothes, eat vegetables, chew Nicorette, miss my mom, give thanks to God. What is being an editor in chief actually like? Dream job! You get to tell tons of people about all the cool, exciting shit that really matters.… And you get to ignore everything else. What is the most important factor when picking a cover star? The number one priority is to surprise you all. The choice of cover stars and the way we present them visually should make you say Oh, shit! and do that thing where you put your fist to your mouth. You know: Oh, shit, Frank Ocean! Oh, shit, Larry David! Oh, shit, the Fresh Prince!…

OVER THE YEARS, fate seemed to do all that it could to stop Joao Carlos Martins from playing the piano. It started in the 1950s, when he was 18. Something called focal dystonia—you probably know it as the yips. The brain misfires and causes involuntary muscle spasms, which was mighty inconvenient for a young Brazilian piano prodigy on the precipice of world fame. He managed to get it under control and, by his early 20s, landed in New York City. Martins had it made back then: a tony apartment across the street from the Met, celebrated performances at Carnegie Hall and virtually every other major theater around the globe. They even had a nickname for him, the Mailman, because he always delivered. To relax, Martins would take leisurely strolls around…

In an old granary on the southern edge of central Milan sits a marvel of fashion history, Armani/Silos—a museum that contains the life’s work of Giorgio Armani. Four decades’ worth of culture-shifting fashion is housed there, on display for the public to take in. You can wander the halls and study the fits, but what you can’t do is touch anything or try them on. Not unless you’re Ghali—seen here in a selection of looks, chosen and styled by GQ, from the Armani archive—the barrier-breaking Italian Tunisian trap star. The collision of Italy’s illustrious past with its red-hot future highlights the designer’s unique ability to withstand time and trends. Standing in a cool and hushed greige concrete gallery in Milan, I am about six inches from what I reckon to…

A WHILE BACK KUMAIL Nanjiani struck up a conversation with a stranger at his gym. Bonded by the shared agony of heavy lifting, they wondered aloud to each other: Why do we do this? They decided it was mostly because they’d grown up on the action movies of the 1980s, inhaling the work of stars like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger who projected a tightly coiled idea of manhood. “We saw these guys who were like Adonises and gods and we were like, ‘Oh, that’s what strong men look like,’” Nanjiani tells me. “Not that they can access their feelings, or cry, or say when they’re sad, or say when they’re scared. They have a sixpack up to their necks.” Nanjiani started working out as a scrawny teenager growing up…

IT has been a long, miserable day by the time Will Smith makes his way through the Louisiana mud past hundreds of extras. A positive (false, as it turned out) COVID test on set this morning meant a new round of nasal swabs for everyone. And a series of thunderstorms has delayed today’s shoot for hours—a 30-minute pause is mandated each and every time that lightning strikes, and there have already been dozens. Nothing has been easy about the making of Emancipation, an Apple TV+ project that tells the story of “Whipped Peter,” the Black man whose tattered back is depicted in one of the most famous photos of an enslaved American. The movie was originally slated to shoot in Georgia, but filming was relocated in response to the state’s…

Pretty much everyone in Italy knows Ghali. At least they think they do. And here in Milan, pretty much everyone loves Ghali. Ghali feels that. “Milan is my place,” he says. “I can never replace it.” I met Ghali Amdouni, the 28-year-old Italian Tunisian rapper, right in the heart of his city for a tour of the places that helped shape him, and that he in turn is now helping to reshape. It’s been five years since his breakout hit, “Ninna Nanna,” dropped, catapulting him into a position of fame and influence. Now, through his music and activism, Ghali is revitalizing culture in Italy, and having a profound impact on Italian life beyond the music. We started with coffee outside at Damm A Tra’ bar on Via Vittorio Veneto, close…