GQ Style Spring 2017

One day back in January, I put on my favorite suit and went to meet Tom Ford. It was during Fashion Week in Milan at his showroom—a muffled hall of plush carpet and smoked glass. I was there to preview Ford’s fall collection, and as we shook hands, he asked me what GQ Style is all about. I told him that we’re a magazine about advanced personal style—a source of inspiration and new ideas for the kind of guy who already has style and doesn’t want any hand-holding. For men who feel like the world is small and intend to run circles around it. Speaking of running circles, Ford was in the middle of an intense Oscar campaign for the second film he’s directed, Nocturnal Animals, yet here he was…

1. Real-Deal Rain Shields Advanced style means having the right tool for every situation, including the proper gear for a downpour. Graduate forever from lame drugstore emergency umbrellas that flip inside out at the slightest gale and invest in one you’ll carry for life. The best have deep canopies, solid frames, wood or leather handles—and are heavy enough to use in a street fight. Fox started out making umbrellas with hardwood handles and whalebone frames in 1868 and continues to produce some of the most solid umbrellas in the world today at its factory in England. WHO’S THE DUDE IN THE FLY TIE-DYE? It’s smart-mouth Long Beach rapper Vince Staples. You can see him wearing spring’s coolest gear throughout this section—and read about his upcoming tour, inspired by Wes Anderson’s The…

When designer Kim Jones landed at Louis Vuitton in 2011, he was already a cult figure in the men’s fashion world but not a household name. Known for his elegant, street-inflected eponymous line and ahead-of-its-time collaboration with Umbro, he began his rise to fame with a stint as creative director at the British luxury brand Dunhill, which lasted from 2008 to 2011. Then it all went turbo when LV brought him on to transform its men’s ready-to-wear arm into one of the most consistently cool collections in the luxury market. Jones was born a global explorer—few designers travel farther or more frequently for inspiration (he’s got the Instagram account to prove it). Having split his childhood among London, Kenya, and Botswana, he ventures to remote parts of the globe where…

“A really simple cashmere T-shirt can change the whole attitude of a wardrobe,” says Massimo Alba. He’s right. Slip into one of his cashmere tees and consider it your gateway drug into Alba’s sprezzy universe of band collars, deconstructed jackets, wide-leg pants, and sun-faded knits. These are clothes you could just as easily wear to bed as you could to the beach or the theater. And that’s exactly the way he wants them to be. “Nothing that I design is too loud,” Alba says. “It’s just a matter of feeling comfortable.” Comfort is a big reason why Alba is fond of cashmere, but the real secret to perfecting his casual-luxury formula is the wash. Every garment, from the knits to the shirts to the overcoats, is washed after being constructed…

“MP Massimo Piombo is about pleasure,” says the Italian fashion-industry vet, who launched his new label in 2012. Declaring that your clothes will bring pleasure is easy; what’s hard is actually designing a collection that tickles the reptilian reward center in the back of the modern man’s brain. But that goal is fully realized in Piombo’s spring-summer 2017 line: It makes you want to jump into his jaunty, colorful, deeply pleasurable world. The collection features relaxed repp-stripe jackets with kneelength tunics and casual suits that look just as good with ties as without—all made the way they were a century ago. Piombo sources fabrics that reflect his extremely well-traveled life, from Scandinavia to Scotland to Belgium and beyond. Burnt orange, bright yellow, and fire-engine red are prominent. Shaken together in a…

Vans has been making the quintessential shoe for skaters since Jeff Spicoli wore the checkered slip-ons in Fast Times at Ridgemont High in 1982. Today it’s a $2.2 billion business with over 600 retail stores in the U.S. But even more remarkable for a brand that’s been around since 1966, it’s still cool. In fact, thanks to a merger of cultural streams from skate and pop, plus a grip of next-level collaborations, Vans is cooler now than it’s ever been. Vans’s director of footwear design, Nathaniel Iott, says that the spirit of collaboration has been there all along. The first partnership was in 1966, when Vans collaborated with legendary surfer Duke Kahanamoku on a run of floral-print sneakers. In 1996 it began an ongoing collab with Supreme and later took the concept…