RIP, Esquire

More or less indistinguishable from GQ, though the fashion and consumer advice sounds more douchey. They're trying to be more transgender? Pretty sure Vanity Fair already has that hill staked out, but happy hunting. VF is terrific. Picked up the latest issue with Chris Pratt on the cover. Chock full of good, interesting articles about the Trump kids, some art world scandal involving Peggy Guggenheim's estate, and a piece on a cherished London bookstore that will design personal libraries for rich fuckers. Also a piece on that longtime gossip columnist, Suzy. Subscription is only $12 for a year, so I signed up.

 

Swank is terrific, too.
A great look every month.

 

Oui!

 

Spree ... Tic-Toc ...

 

I like how we get this story about the fire that consumed his home, destroying 80% of his possessions, and how he learned an important lesson from it. "It was oddly freeing."

“It felt like Armageddon,” Mr. Fielden said, recalling the fire that ripped through his modernist Connecticut home in 2010. “It just sent this noxious smoke throughout the house. You close your eyes. You can’t breathe.”

Seated in a glassy Esquire conference room on the 21st floor of the Hearst Tower in Midtown Manhattan, Mr. Fielden described how the fire and smoke, which was like “exploding 50 cans of spray paint,” destroyed perhaps 80 percent of his family’s possessions.

“Your first response is, ‘All our stuff!’” he said. “But the point is, it was oddly freeing. Subliminally, we all do things to preserve the status quo. The major lesson that has helped me as an editor is to realize not to hang on to the things that would keep you from doing something dangerous.”

Yet, we're introduced to him wearing his Ferragamo suit:

Mr. Fielden, 48, sounding nostalgic as he reclined in a banquette, wearing a steel-bluel Ferragamo suit...

And, later he's wearing a Cifonelli suit:

On that pale winter afternoon, Mr. Fielden, wearing a blue windowpane Cifonelli suit, was reviewing the 102 editorial pages of the March issue, all taped on a wall before him.

So, either his Italian and French made suits were miraculously among the 20% of his possessions that survived, or he went right out and replaced them, which doesn't sound like he is as free as he'd like to think he is.

 

LOL. You sound like my wife. When we met she was doing typesetting, copy editing, and QC for Southern Living magazine and books. Nothing pushes her buttons faster than that kind of thing.

Of course, she was on a Murgenthaler typesetter that took up a whole room which had to be kept at 68 degrees or so. Yeah, we're old.

Now it's all on a Mac.

 

steel-blue ... blue windowpane ...

For the last 3 days I've tried to figure out what windowpane meant.

 

That's not what windowpane meant when I was in high school.

 

Outside pockets (except for the kerchief pocket) on pricey jackets are dumb.

 

This guy could use some scotch tape on the backside of his tie.