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Home , John Varvatos, Tom Ford

Styling by Matthew

Marden Jacket ($4,995), shirt ($450), trousers ($695), and tie ($235) by .

FOR ALL PEOPLE TALK ABOUT EUROPEAN , IT’S THE AMERICANS WHO HAVE SET THE TONE OF MODERN MEN’S WEAR: COOL, CASUAL, AND ALWAYS REBELLIOUS. SO TO SURVEY THE CURRENT STATE OF STYLE, WE GATHERED LOOKS Ralph Lauren, photographed FROM OUR FAVORITE U. S. DESIGNERS on the steps of Lake Como’s Villa d’Este in 1977. (AND ONE EXPAT BRIT). TURNS OUT AMERICAN GUYS DON’T HAVE TO LOOK FAR TO LOOK GREAT.

Photographs BY TONY

KIM Dec + Jan 2018_Esquire 119 , pictured Anorak ($798), sweater here on his way to ($398), and jeans ($148) junior prom with his Afghan hound, Kabul. by Michael Kors.

RALPH Michael Kors doesn’t think you need to suffer to look good. You could tell from his Fall ’17 runway show, in which he dressed the models in LAUREN full-pleated trousers and big, billowing wool coats. The clothes were elegant, but they were also comfortable, a rarity FIFTY years ago, he started AN EMPIRE on the catwalk. “After years of too tight, I wanted to ease up on the coats, the on the strength of a single tie. Now trousers,” he says. “The foundation of he’s the GODFATHER of AMERICAN STYLE. American style has always been about easiness, comfort, and movement.” Kors would know. Long before his Project Runway quips made him a household name, he spent his boyhood studying American fashion codes. His Hometown: THE BRONX • Age: 78 mother was a former Revlon model, his father an Easy Rider-esque rebel. As a teenager, Ralph Fifty years. Think about it. Ralph His grandmother trawled the racks Lauren spent his high Lauren has been around so long, at Loehmann’s daily, and his grandfa- school summers work- it’s easy to think that the worldview ther was a dandy. “A lot of seven-year- ing at Camp Roos- he created has simply always olds wouldn’t think it was thrilling to evelt, in the hills north of New existed. He’s made his success go with their grandfather to the tai- York City. “I started as a waiter appear like his style: effortless. lor,” Kors remembers, but he did. By in the dining hall,” he told me But think for a moment what a eleven, he was running a boutique in over dinner. “Then I worked my world without Lauren’s vision his mother’s basement; by seventeen, way up to become a head coun- would be. Ralph Lauren has not he was enrolled in fashion school; and selor. I played sports outside just shaped American style in these by twenty-one, he had dropped out and every day. Tennis. Swimming. fifty years—he’s also godfathered debuted a women’s-wear collection at Baseball. You name it. I loved it. most of the designers in America, Bergdorf’s. I never wanted to leave. It was many of whom came through his The Kors style is about approach- the best time of my life.” design studio, everyone from able minimalism, rich textures, and a Barely ten years later, at the Thom Browne to luxe, jet-set sensibility that never feels age of twenty-eight, Lauren, to Todd Snyder. Perhaps more elitist. It has translated into lines after knocking around the fashion important, he also has set his mark at every price point, fragrances and world, selling ties or working at firmly on global style. Ralph Lauren MICHAEL handbags, ten seasons of Project Run- Brooks Brothers, found himself has always been about sunny way, and a 2010 CFDA Geoffrey drawn back to those summer optimism, about achieving the life Beene Lifetime Achievement award. days. He took a small office in one envisions for oneself. He took In 2011, when his company went the Empire State Building and the basic elements of the American public, it was one of the highest-val- proceeded to take many of the man’s midcentury wardrobe— KORS ued American fashion companies ever elements of those formative button-down shirts; gray flannels; to do so. years—the sun-drenched after- thick herringbone weaves; chalk- Kors only started designing men’s noons spent on the courts; the stripe —and made us all re- wear in 2002, more than two decades long, golden evenings in the see them as something bigger. He The man who brought into his career. When he finally did, company of good friends; a style injected a vitality into them that plenty of men found a new way of dress- that was elegant by force of its has made the Ralph Lauren style COOL, CASUAL clothes to ing. The clothes were understated, easy effortlessness, a mix of casual and the benchmark look for success a nation always to wear, and flattering—the same piec- formal—and use them as the core around the world. ON THE MOVE es Kors himself looks for. So why the DNA of a billion-dollar empire “I was just a kid pursuing my long wait? “Men finally started to say that is now celebrating its fiftieth dream,” Lauren says. “Life is they were interested in fashion,” Kors anniversary. amazing.” —Michael Hainey Hometown: MERRICK, NEW YORK • Age: 58 says. “They realized they didn’t have to wear the same things their fathers did.” Then again, our fathers didn’t have Kors showing them how to pull it off. —Jon Roth

120 Dec + Jan 2018_Esquire Leather jacket ($1,290), bomber jacket ($330), trousers M ($230), and shoes TO FORD ($270) by Hilfiger Edition; shirt ($100) and belt ($60) How do you balance a FASHION HOUSE and a FILM CAREER? by . Start with SKY-HIGH STANDARDS, then AIM HIGHER.

Hometown: AUSTIN • Age: 56

Tommy Hilfiger in 1970 (obviously), photographed in , trying to hitch a ride to Stonehenge.

and rock royalty like Britney Spears and Lenny Kravitz and won a following with hip- hop heavyweights, too. In 1994, Snoop Dogg wore one of his rugby shirts for an SNL per- formance. The company reported a $94 mil- lion increase in sales that year. Then the bottom fell out. “On every street corner, on every person, you saw Tommy Hilfiger,” the designer says. The brand had overreached, and sales began to plummet. The cool kids who gave him ca- chet didn’t want to look like everyone else. So he course-corrected using his greatest talent—knowing what those cool kids want TOMMY before they do. In Europe, sales remained strong (Americana remains a national ex- port), so he took cues from the Continent, HILFIGER pulling back the design to a “simplified, so- Ford in the phisticated, muted look” and closing some days of yore. He REINVENTED prep for stores to regain the Hilfiger halo. He weighed a NEW GENERATION—and now he’s millennial tastes and enlisted influencers like and created runway spec- doing it ALL OVER AGAIN tacles—a pier carnival in N. Y. C., a Ven- There are a few adjectives we Americans So he started his own company, realizing his ice Beach pseudo-music-fest—to attract like to use to describe ourselves. We’re casual. vision outside the bounds of an old-school Euro- Hometown: ELMIRA, NEW YORK • Age: 66 new, Instagram-happy converts. “When did We’re comfortable. We’re nice. doesn’t pean fashion house. He took the go-go hedonism Tommy Hilfiger become cool again?” The care about any of that. He’d rather give us what we of his days and then restrained it—made it Jacket ($5,290), green henley shirt ($1,590), New York Times asked. lack: glamour. For men, it’s the swagger of a young more sophisticated, more posh. He also became white henley shirt ($990), “We’re early adopters of whatever is rele- tycoon or a movie star. It’s charisma and polish and sober, which aided the transition: “I could not trousers ($1,140), loafers vant and cool with youth,” Hilfiger says. He’s a little darkness. Whatever it is, it feels powerful. juggle all of the things that I do now if I were still ($6,990), and belt by referring to American style, but he might as He’s been chasing that feeling since he was a boy. drinking,” he says. “Clarity in the mornings was Tom Ford. You can, in fact, become too success- well be describing his own company, which is “I was always in a and tie,” Ford says of his child- a great surprise.” ful. Just ask Tommy Hilfiger. He sent shock back on track, to the tune of $6.6 billion, and hood. “I was teased a bit. I thought a backpack was With one business taking off, Ford began a sec- waves through the fashion establishment in now working with electro-pop heartthrobs sloppy, and carried my books to school in an attaché ond career as a director, first with , a 1985, starting with a brash cam- the Chainsmokers. case instead.” He got a degree in architecture, but by lush meditation on sex and death in sixties L. A., paign that suggested he was in a league with The new collections are selling, but so is 1990 he was designing women’s wear at Gucci, then then with , a thriller by turns icily Ralph Lauren, , and the old stuff. A 1990s Hilfiger a down-at-heel, overlicensed property. He remade remote and searingly violent. Both films roil with (on a billboard in Times Square, no less). He goes for $350 on eBay (listed under “Vin- the brand, introducing louche seventies sex appeal emotional depth, but the surfaces are stunning, too: delivered on that promise with a line of prep- tage”). But Hilfiger doesn’t mind competing with velvet suits, jewel tones, and flared, low-rise the pitch of shadows across the Texas scrubland, the py basics updated for the dressed-down, against himself. “Fashion is cyclical. I knew pants. He did so well at Gucci that they made him blur of a body fighting through the surf, the wing youth-obsessed 1990s: Think oversized, logo- at some point it would come back,” he says. creative director at Yves Saint Laurent, too. When of a woman’s eyeliner. For decades, Ford’s exact- centric pieces in a patriotic palette of red, Hang around awhile and your first success he left both positions (somewhat acrimoniously) in ing eye has made the fashion world a richer place. white, and blue. He sponsored tours with pop could set off your second act. —J. R. 2004, they had to hire four people to replace him. Now he’s just starting to widen the lens. —J. R.

122 Dec + Jan 2018_Esquire Dec + Jan 2018_Esquire 123 Alexander Wang, shot this Sep- tember during Left: Sweatshirt ($650) STUART and track pants ($495) his traveling New York show. by Alexander Wang. Right: Jacket ($695), sweatshirt ($395), VEVERS and track pants ($595) by Alexander Wang. The OUTSIDER who showed us what AMERICAN STYLE is all about

Hometown: DONCASTER, ENGLAND • Age: 44

There were skeptics at first. How Jacket, shirt, trousers, Alexander could a young British designer helm Coach, and boots ($595) by an American leather-goods titan? But those Coach 1941. who knew Vevers knew better. He had al- WANG ready revived two European houses, he had a hunger for brands in a “moment of change,” Fashion’s COOL KID is always and he needed a new project. And Coach needed him. After decades of thinking ONE STEP AHEAD market dominance, it had begun to lose its Hometown: SAN FRANCISCO • Age: 33 shine. Vevers came in with a bold pitch. What if Coach got into the clothing game? Based on that idea (and some very good sketches of baseball jackets), the man was hired. But how do you design clothes for a label “I didn’t really have another job,” Alexander that’s never made them? Vevers started with Wang says. “I went into this straight from col- vintage—a source of inspiration since his de- lege.” The designer dropped out of Parsons to launch sign-school days. “I had to imagine a history his own line at twenty-one, starting with a collec- for the clothes, because they’re not in the ar- tion of six unisex sweaters. Twelve years later, he’s chive,” he says. “I asked myself, What could still young enough to be the boy genius of Ameri- those things have been?” can fashion. His outsider’s eye did the rest. Vevers’s His clothes are rooted in the dressed-down, casu- Americana is filtered through the films of al approach of the generation that killed the dress Terrence Malick and Gus Van Sant, and code. Think sport- and streetwear-inspired sweats, pop-culture touchstones like Peanuts and tees, and jackets in black and gray. The Alexander Disney. It’s a dizzy reimagining of our na- Wang woman is often described as an “off-duty tional identity you’d never get from a native model”—sexy, unstudied—and his guys are even son. His latest show, for example, tapped into less polished. “I like them a little rough around the early-eighties grit, a fresh-off- edges,” Wang says with a laugh. the-bus mash-up of Western shirts, prairie And he doesn’t believe in fashion that’s too pre- quiltwork, and twisted Hawaiian prints. cious—surprising from a guy who did a three-year “What I love about American style is that stint at French fashion house Balenciaga, less so from it’s been created in the modern period,” the businessman who offers Wang products at price Vevers says. “The counterculture move- points from $80 to $5,000. “The most luxurious ments of the fifties, sixties, seventies—they item in your closet could be a T-shirt,” he says. “It’s reflect how we continue to live our lives. It’s about sentiment.” still vital for dressing today.” So while his collections still inspire album-drop Wait a minute. Did he just sell us on the excitement from the cool kids in the “Wang Gang,” American Dream? —J. R. the designer also creates experiences that add extra emotional depth to the clothes. His last runway show, for example, took place at three locations in New York, where models like Kendall Jenner and strutted off a tour bus to the shouts of fans who’d been tipped off to the address. “Giving context to the lifestyle is important to me,” he says. If that all sounds a bit “disruptive,” well, it is. The designer sees the fashion industry at a crossroads. “Do you need clothes? Probably not. Do people want to shop? Yes,” he says. It’s a puzzle, and a golden ticket for the designer nimble enough to solve it. So Stuart Vevers, photographed in he asks: Spain in 2008. “How do we think differently?” —J. R. DecMonth + Jan 2018_Esquire2017_Esquire 125 Thom Browne and Halloween, THOM his partner, Andrew 2011—Varvatos Bolton, photo- (apparently a graphed in Central Gene Simmons Park with their dog, fan) pays tribute BROWNE Hector, in 2016. to Kiss.

Who knew a GRAY SUIT could make everything BLACK We sometimes forget that we are living in a golden age of men’s and WHITE? This guy. style. But think back, if you can (or dare), fifteen or so years ago, to the Hometown: ALLENTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA • Age: 52 dark ages. Back when men wore suits that were big enough for two. When jackets skimmed our knees and pant legs billowed like sails. When suits were, truly, sad sacks. What brought us into the light wasn’t evolution so much as a much-needed revolution, largely thanks to the mod- est, soft-spoken man in gray from Al- lentown, Pennsylvania. Inspired by the suits his father wore in the sixties, Thom Browne brought definition and Suede jacket ($2,198), clear thinking to the cut of the gar- jacket ($1,298), vest ment. Like any revolutionary, he blast- ($498), shirt ($248), ed away the waste and the excess of a and jeans ($328) by previous generation, instead focusing John Varvatos. on what he knew to be essential. Suddenly, there was a time be- fore Thom Browne and a time after Thom Browne. The suit—nearly pronounced dead from the stylistic excesses of the seventies and the de- wasn’t the only guy who wanted to look like signer sagginess of the nineties—was a rock star. The clothes are snugly tailored, revived to become the chicest and with lots of leather. He riffs on familiar piec- most rebellious weapon in a man’s es the way Hendrix reworked the national an- wardrobe. It was trim and taut. And them. It’s a style that won him three CFDA it was because of Browne, who made awards (the fashion Oscars) and stores around the world rethink proportion. JOHN VARVATOS the world. (When we spoke, he was prepar- “I’ve always seen the suit as the foun- ing for openings in Dubai and a second store dation of a man’s success,” Browne The man with a KNACK for making REGULAR GUYS in Moscow.) told me as we sat in his gray-marbled look like ROCK STARS But you’ve got to figure his greatest pride office. (What else would you expect?) may come from the boyhood idols who’ve be- An athlete at the University of Notre Hometown: • Age: 63 come friends. It’s common knowledge that a Dame—he was on the swim team— Varvatos ad will feature headlining musical Browne considers the suit something talent, whether it’s rock gods like that offers possibilities to every man. or buzzy newcomers like Cleveland rapper “I see the suit as your uniform. You It started with a jean jacket. Red ep- working in men’s-wear stores, he cofounded Machine Gun Kelly. Varvatos likes to recall suit up every day. And there’s noth- aulets. A couple stars. (This was in the seven- his own. Then Ralph Lauren came knocking, a secret concert he held at his New York flag- ing that makes you feel better going ties.) John Varvatos bought it with his own and he set himself up in N. Y. C., an avid stu- ship (which he opened in 2008, in the for- out into the world than a suit that’s money when he was sixteen, and at school dent of what he calls “Polo University.” “No- mer CBGB). “There was just a pin light on a winner.” —M. H. the next day he learned that girls will actual- body does lifestyle like Ralph,” Varvatos says. the stage, and then Kiss walked out and I to- ly talk to a guy with cool clothes. So he bought “I was working with the best.” And then he tally lost it,” he says. A few months later, the more—taking his style cues from the musi- switched poles, moving to Calvin Klein, the band appeared in his runway show in . cians he’d catch in concert in his native De- skinny, sexy inverse of Lauren’s wholesome “These aren’t just guys who come in asking troit. “I didn’t want to be Keith Richards, but Americana. He was there for four years, took for free clothes,” he says. “They really like to Jacket ($1,590), cardigan I wanted Keith Richards’s scarf, or Jimmy a detour back to Lauren, then decided it was wear my stuff.” Imagine spending your child- ($1,750), shirt ($395), trousers ($650), tie Page’s boots,” he says. time to break out. hood copying rock stars, then growing up to ($190), and pocket square He majored in education, but he couldn’t Varvatos launched his own line in 2000, be the guy who dresses them. —J. R. by Thom Browne. shake the fashion thing. After a few years partly on the well-founded assumption that he

126 Dec + Jan 2018_Esquire For store information see page 135. Casting by Edward Kim @ the Edit Desk. Grooming by Hiro Yonemoto for Atelier Management. Dec + Jan 2018_Esquire 127