Innehållsförteckning för Winter 2018 från GQ Style

Personal style doesn’t always begin with a watch, but when it does, it can be immensely powerful. This is hardly news at Wempe, the ultimate destination for exquisite watches and a specialist in fine timepieces since 1878. In the market for a luxury German or Swiss watch? Carrying over 20 of the finest watch brands, the family-owned company’s Fifth Avenue flagship has incredible offerings that will last a lifetime—and elevate any look. Expert, on-site watchmakers also provide distinguished service on all timepieces. In fact, here are three examples. Each style profile is paired with a timepiece collection from Wempe that classes it up ever more. All watches are by Glashütte Original, German-made since 1845 and available at Wempe—a partnership that has endured for over two generations. The Elegant Executive Bespoke…

YG LEANS INTO A DOUBLE-WIDE makeup mirror, big round bulbs illuminating him. He ties the red bandanna covering his scalp, the ends meeting at his hairline. He unties it, reties it, unties and reties again, until it’s just how he wants it. The Compton rapper is generally boisterous, but for a moment he’s quiet, concentrating on just this, making sure it holds. It’s equal parts art and science. “You gotta make it right!” he explains. This is how he works. In an era dominated on the one hand by chart-topping rappers with Gucci addictions and on the other by teenage rappers with face tattoos, YG—28, born Keenon Jackson in what he’ll call the Bompton section of Los Angeles—likes things his own way. That means super-skinny cat-eye sunglasses, a 2018 update…

THEY WERE ORIGINALLY known as brothel creepers because the soft, dense, wedge-shaped rubber bottoms allowed inconspicuous johns to walk soundlessly through unsavory places. Or maybe it was simply that transposing “crepe” (as in crepe sole) to “creep” was an easy one-letter swap that gave the shoes their name. Whatever it was, says Adam Waterfield, the fourth-generation owner of the original creepers brand, George Cox, “like a lot of things in fashion, it was a slow evolution.” Crepe-soled footwear was initially army-issued for U.K. soldiers in Africa and the Middle East. The shoes were so much more comfortable than leather-bottomed boots that vets kept wearing them after being demobilized, and that gave crepe soles life on the streets. Since then, creepers have been adopted by nearly every British countercultural movement since…

JOSHUA VOGEL DOES some unusual things with his hands when he speaks. Not like the gesticulations of an exuberant Italian or the aggressive chops of a battle rapper. Vogel, a highly skilled woodworker, appears to sculpt the air around him. When describing the peculiar shape of a bowl he’s turned out of a beech burl, or what makes a mortise and tenon the strongest way to join two pieces of wood, he gestures forms that hang there in a fog of sawdust. He finds the shapes of things that don’t yet exist. In a 10,000-square-foot factory in Kingston, New York, Vogel and his team of 11 employees make expertly crafted, impossibly simple, stunningly beautiful furniture under the name Blackcreek Mercantile & Trading Co. He and his partner, Kelly Zaneto, have…

IF I COULD FUCK A MOUNTAIN, Lord, I would fuck a mountain, Will Oldham once sang, long ago, when the question of whether or not he was for real was a more wide-open one. Now that line’s been pressed between hard covers and claimed for literature, along with the words to over 200 other Oldham compositions, in Songs of Love and Horror: Collected Lyrics of Will Oldham, available in better bookstores by the time you read this. When I visit Oldham in September at one of two houses he owns in Louisville, Kentucky, there’s a box of advance copies from W. W. Norton in the hallway and another one on a table in the living room, under an old cowboy hat. Oldham doesn’t quite know what to say about the…

FOR A GUY WHO runs an independent leather-shoe company in an era when fashion is completely obsessed with sneakers, Yuki Matsuda keeps a pretty level head about the whole thing. “I’m like, ‘Okay, I need to make something much cooler than the sneaker,’” Matsuda says. In the years since founding Yuketen, in 1995, he’s designed hundreds of hand-sewn moccasins, cordovan leather hard-bottoms, preppy loafers and boat shoes, fancy cowboy boots, and rugged hikers, all made using old-world methods. Sometimes his quest to improve upon the sneaker means remixing the North American shoe canon like he’s been given the keys to a Hollywood-country-western costume shop: Yuketen loafers get western-belt-buckle straps. A dressy chukka is punched up with snakeskin leather. The brand’s most recognizable silhouette, the Maine Guide Boot, merges a Native…

EZRA MILLER SAYS he is not interested in being famous. The 26-year-old actor, who broke out in his late teens with roles in We Need to Talk About Kevin and The Perks of Being a Wallflower, doesn’t pose for the paparazzi, doesn’t live in L.A., and definitely doesn’t use social media. “I find the presence of cell phones bad for my mood,” he tells me, sitting in a booth at a brightly lit restaurant in a Midtown Manhattan hotel. “I can feel cell phones when they’re around.” When he’s not working, he lives on a farm in Vermont, where he grows his own saffron and hemp. If he had his way, he wouldn’t even get credit for his movies. “Art makes art,” he says, waving his arms around. “We are…

01 Velvet Tracksuit Compton rapper YG has been hailed as the second coming of California gangsta-rap greatness. And with the release of his third studio album, Stay Dangerous, in 2018, he’s proved himself to be a worthy successor to West Coast legends N.W.A and Snoop Dogg. Here the “Still Brazy” MC lends his personal style to some of the best fashions of the season. Whether you’re stretched out in a private jet or crammed into coach, can you imagine tackling holiday travel in anything but this slouchy velvet suit? 02 DICE SET Don’t bother breaking out the dice at your holiday party unless they come in a bridle leather case and are made from inlaid maple. 03 Blue Leather Boots A French New Wave–era original, Carvil’s sleek boots were Bob Dylan’s favorite…

IN THE FANTASTICAL universe of Santoni, a shoe is not just a shoe—it is an object of desire, according to the label’s CEO, Giuseppe Santoni. The tradition of handmade shoes and the skillful artisans in the brand’s workshop are guided not by corporate responsibility or nine-to-five obligation but by a watchful genie. An energy that maintains the quality of the label’s shoes, so says Santoni. The brand is headquartered in the Italian region of Marche—what appears to be a paradise hundreds of miles from the country’s fashion capital. And of course Santoni tells his family’s tale in an Italian accent that’s as thick and comforting as a good red sauce. “Growing up surrounded by beauty, you get affected by this influence,” he says. His English is near perfect. When Santoni…

Robert Nava BROOKLYN b. 1985 NAVA’S PAINTINGS OF PRIMORDIAL MONSTERS and myths balance ceremonial seriousness with childlike play. Originally from East Chicago, Indiana, he received an M.F.A. from Yale University before moving to Brooklyn, where we caught up with him while at work in his studio. GQ STYLE: How did you arrive at your painting style? What factors influenced your development most? ROBERT NAVA: Drawing every morning, trying to keep up with my imagination. Looking at a lot of ancient art, mainly Sumerian, Egyptian, Mayan. The mandala. Cave painting. The older artworks have a big impact, and I’m able to see the amount of work put into them, and they feel like they are timeless to a degree. But also they contain so much mystery. There’s another level of mindfulness…