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GQ World dates people who don’t have penises. the power to help cis men unlearn says Katie. “We had an argument about Modern Love Or ‘unicorn hunting’, where a man and some of these harmful lessons instilled it. It wasn’t because I was dead set on woman with a similar agenda seek in them by toxic masculinity.” seeing this guy because I wasn’t, but a bisexual woman to have sex with. Tom was like, ‘You’re going to fall in W H E N K A T I E A N D T O M signed up for love with this guy and I’m never going These kinds of rules – usually insti- Feeld, they had two wildly different to see you.” At that point, Katie had gated by the men – in a newly open experiences. Katie was inundated only spoken to him twice on the phone. relationship, reveal a lot about societal with likes from men within the first 12 “It felt a little insulting. Of course, I’m pressures around penis size and sexual hours. She ended up making her profile not going to abruptly leave my part- performance that can damage men’s invisible. Tom, meanwhile, found it dif- ner and my daughter on a whim after self-worth, says Yau. It is also, she says, ficult to stand out. talking to someone twice.” toxic masculinity in action. “I think a lot of men who stipulate this think “I’ve had to deal with a lot of rejec- Being monogamous can shield you that [women’s] relationships with tion – mostly being ignored, not so from the more painful aspects of dat- women don’t count or that the sex they much active rejection – and lots of ing culture. For this reason, Tom’s CNM have isn’t real sex and so they aren’t as people reaching out to basically just try experience started off with more of threatened by it,” Yau says. When their and reach Katie, which is no fun,” Tom a murmur than a bang. “Of course girlfriend is sleeping with a man, they says. “I’ve not been on many repeat there are some obvious upsides, but feel slighted, or fear they’re going to be dates or had any lasting relation- having to deal with feelings of envy replaced. But, she says, “with time and ships.” On the occasions Tom has been and sometimes jealousy was tricky,” practice, polyamory really does have chatting to people, he has been asked he says. “It also brings back many of to verify that he is genuinely in an the insecurities around dating from “The conversations that open relationship. when I was single, which is not so fun.” non-monogamy forces you It can be easier to stick than spin. “One to have – about boundaries, “Tom is sometimes asked for ‘proof ’ of the perks of being in a monogamous other relationships, what that I’m aware of the situation,” Katie relationship is that you don’t have to you’re looking for – work says. “I have not been asked to do much deal with some of the insecurities well with my need to re: proving that I’m really in an open that come up when you’re on the dating have everything explicitly relationship, or arranging dates.” scene,” adds Katie. on the table.” —QUINN While Katie is not immune to jeal- If you do stick it out and move past ousy, so far she hasn’t been envious of the initial discomfort, the rewards can any of Tom’s hookups. But a connec- be life- and relationship-enriching. tion she made with a guy that wanted “A huge upside that I wasn’t expect- “more emotional involvement than ing is how much closer I feel to Katie I was able to give,” she says, created talking about sex in general,” says Tom. friction between them. “Tom was really “One thing I didn’t realise before was stressed out about him for a while,” that when we talked about what we wanted or desired, it was always muted by the implication that in a monoga- mous relationship, either we’d each have to do this for the other person or we’d never get to experience it – which was particularly difficult talking about things we’d tried or that the other person couldn’t possibly achieve, like experimenting with bisexuality.” Now they both feel freer to talk about their desires. “That’s improved our relation- ship and brought us closer,” he says. Seeing other people can help you to see yourselves. The course of polyamory doesn’t always run smoothly. “When you let go of the idea that you have the power to keep someone faithful to you for the rest of your life, there’s some scariness to that. In theory, Tom could leave me and I would be sad if he did,” says Katie. But opening up their rela- tionship has taken the pressure off. “There’s something freeing about not having to worry if he’s someone I’ll be sexually compatible with when we’re 60 years old,” Katie says, “because I’m like, well, we’ll get there when we get there.” Some names have been changed. rachel thompson is the author of rough (Vintage 2021) and features editor at Mashable. 98 GQ OCTOBER 2022

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You already know Pierce: legendary Irish American actor – a Bond. Possibly the most charming man alive. Now meet his model- musician-filmmaker sons Dylan and Paris, two of the only people on earth capable of resisting his charm. By ALEX PAPPADEMAS Photographs by DANIELLE LEVITT Styled by SIMON RASMUSSEN

OCTOBER 2022 GQ 101

A F E W Y E A R S ago, some of Dylan Brosnan’s experiences – Do you remember your friend, that guy who ←← closest friends showed up to his house in dressed funny and hung out by the movie theatre every Malibu for his 21st birthday party, and there day? – and only then would he learn that these enthusi- OPENING PAGES they met Dylan’s father, who turned out to be astic friends on the street were mostly fans, all of whom FROM LEFT (AND Pierce Brosnan. Dylan had never mentioned it. were strangers. OPPOSITE PAGE) Dylan laughs. “I don’t tell anybody that, Pierce Brosnan walks into the living room. “I was just All clothing by under any circumstances,” he says. getting the dog,” Brosnan says. “He popped away. Slipped Fear of God out of my back pocket.” It’s a hot but breezy Wednesday after- ON PIERCE noon in that same Malibu property, which He’s wearing khaki shorts and an old white T-shirt – a Dylan’s parents – Pierce and his sec- silver-haired dad with nothing on the agenda except this coat £2,385 ond wife, Keely Shaye Smith, who mar- conversation. When it’s over he plans to pour a cocktail jacket £2,000 ried in 2001 – have owned for more than and watch the pelicans squabble on the shoreline. Next trousers £1,430 20 years. Dylan is on a couch in the living year he will turn 70. Time has softened his face, blunted shoes £185 room, looking out of the window at a blue its severity. gradient of sky and sea, explaining what it ON PARIS was like to grow up in a place where everyone He’s still preposterously good-looking, though. Later I knew his father’s face. will feel obligated to ask him: Pierce, when did you know knit t-shirt £760 you were a very handsome man? He will laugh loud and trousers £905 “I always thought he had a lot of friends, long at this question and then politely decline to answer cummerbund £665 growing up,” Dylan says, “because people it, because, what could he say? This face is something he shoes £185 would come up to him in the street, and he’s was born with, like the birthmark on his left arm: “It was like the nicest guy, so he talks to everyone for a scarlet birthmark. My grandmother always said, He’s a ON DYLAN a really long time.” lucky boy. He’s a lucky son.” blazer £2,625 Dylan is 25, born in 1997. His early child- Brosnan shrugs. “So far, so good.” jacket £1,620 hood coincided with the peak of Pierce’s box Dylan went to high school and college in LA – but before t-shirt £1,050 office mojo – the years of 007 and Thomas that he and his brother Paris, 21, bounced back and forth trousers £1,690 Crown. Later he’d talk to his father about these between here and the family’s house on Kauai’s Hanalei 102 GQ OCTOBER 2022





ON PARIS coat £3,500 jacket £2,550 turtleneck £825 trousers £1,100 Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses £230 Gentle Monster ON DYLAN coat £5,100 turtleneck £470 trousers £920 belt £260 glove £565 for pair Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello ON PIERCE suit £3,750 shirt £925 Dolce & Gabbana OCTOBER 2022 GQ 105

“It’s fucking hard work. It’s a cross to bear. You’re constructing and destroying yourself.” jacket £2,970 Bay. Hawaii afforded them a comparatively “Just because it’s fucking hard turtleneck £1,140 normal-ish existence that Dylan compares to work,” Brosnan says with a shrug. trousers £920 Stand By Me. “It’s a cross to bear. You’re construct- pocket square ing and destroying yourself.” £135 “A bunch of kids running around a for- Tom Ford est, looking for something to do, riding So far the Brosnan boys have bicycles down the street, going to caves and taken their father’s advice and pur- sunglasses £280 swimming and surfing and stuff,” he says. sued less existentially risky forms of Gentle Monster “I would be there and then come here for a creative endeavour. Paris – the one few days.” He says all that shuttling made him with the bee-stung lips – paints and watch £17,000 a transpacific man of mystery at school: “Kids surfs and has walked runways as a Jaeger-LeCoultre would be like, ‘Oh, yeah – you’re that guy. I model for Balmain, Dolce & Gabbana, went to fifth grade with you for, like, one week and Moschino. ring £3,750 and then you left.’ ” David Yurman Dylan – the tall one with the long Dylan and Paris also spent time on their hair – posts psychedelic demos to father’s sets when they were younger – Dylan SoundCloud, pitches in whenever remembers exploring the ice palace from Die someone’s band needs a bassist, and Another Day – and as adults they’ve both plays every instrument on a record worked behind the scenes on his films. But that he’ll put out one of these days. Brosnan has always advised them against (He lists Chet Baker and Scott Walker careers in acting. as key influences, and still can’t quite believe that his dad saw Nick Drake play live in London in the ’70s; he seems way more impressed by this than by the whole Bond thing.) In 2020, Dylan and Paris did make headlines (“Meet Dylan and Paris Brosnan, Pierce Brosnan’s Hunky Sons”) when they helped pass out hardware as “ambassadors” on the Golden Globes broadcast, a job that’s been a spring- board to the big screen for second-generation stars from Laura Dern to Dakota Johnson. But the younger Brosnans seem more drawn to the parts of filmmaking that happen behind the camera. Dylan has worked with Thom Zimny, the director of documenta- ries on Willie Nelson, Elvis, and Springsteen; Paris is an environmental activist who’s made shorts on voting and world hunger. Dylan and Paris say they’ve learned a lot from their father’s example – lessons about preparation, passion, confi- dence, showing up on time. And humour, Dylan says: “Don’t be afraid to make fun of yourself.” That in-on-the-joke quality comes through in the elder Brosnan’s self-deprecating responses any time the conversation veers into craft talk. It’s always been key to his appeal. He’s there when the movies need a 106 GQ OCTOBER 2022

blazer £2,070 trousers £800 Brunello Cucinelli sweater £850 Brioni shoes £120 G.H. Bass Originals sunglasses £820 Fred watch £7,600 Jaeger-LeCoultre



→ Pierce Brosnan type to put on a tux, but he also meets “My late wife was in her second year of our need to see a Pierce Brosnan type be made to look ovarian cancer,” he says evenly. “Dealing with ON DYLAN silly (traversing a hotel lobby in The Matador wear- that disease.” ing nothing but boots, a moustache, and a pair of shirt £610 Speedo’s). He’s been pelted with fruit by Robin Williams, His wife was Cassandra Harris, also an actor. Brioni transformed into a disembodied head by Martians, and They met in the late ’70s. Brosnan was just out once sang Abba’s “SOS” to Meryl Streep. of acting school then – a working-class kid from tank top £590 the banks of the River Boyne in County Meath, Tom Ford Judging by the trailer, he appears to be having Ireland, who’d moved to London and found more campy fun in his first comic book movie. It a creative life at south London’s Oval House trousers £510 arrives in October, and he’s allowed to say very little Theatre (where he occasionally worked the Ralph Lauren about it: “Black Adam, Dwayne Johnson, DC Comics. spotlight at plays and dance performances put Purple Label I play Dr. Fate.” on by the British Black Panthers). He and Harris were married in 1980, the same year Brosnan sunglasses £535 In the comics, Black Adam is a once-enslaved Egyptian made his film debut in John Mackenzie’s The Dita turned semi-immortal antihero – think Superman as a Long Good Friday as Irishman #1, an IRA thug brooding Middle Eastern head of state – and Fate is a sor- who holds a gun on Bob Hoskins. bracelet (top) £750 cerer in a mystical gold helmet. Brosnan did the whole David Yurman superhero-movie routine, motion capture suit included, and Brosnan soon booked a lead on The found it all “humorously and delightfully rewarding.” Manions of America, an ABC miniseries about bracelet migrating to the United States during the Irish (bottom) £840 They shot in Atlanta – you haven’t lived until you’ve potato famine. He and Harris took out a sec- Tiffany & Co. heard Pierce Brosnan say “Atlanta,” as if savouring the ond mortgage on their house in Wimbledon word’s rich terroir – and he spent his downtime painting and moved to Los Angeles to be closer to what- ON PIERCE “renditions of helmets.” When Brosnan is working, the ever opportunities Brosnan’s big American TV pages of his scripts end up filled with drawings and art- job opened up. overshirt £195 work. “Repetitions of symbols, self-portraits. Emblems of Lessless some Celtic past,” he says, with a self-puncturing chuckle. He’s told this story a million times. He rents a lime green AMC Pacer for 50 bucks a week shirt £340 The drawings usually find their way into paintings. He’s and is driving to his first LA audition when Brioni painted for years. the car craps out somewhere in Laurel Canyon. Brosnan walks down the hill in his good jacket trousers £880 “It assuages,” he says, “ the kind of solitary and slacks, makes the meeting, and books Giorgio Armani life that you lead as an actor making films – sitting in trail- the job: Remington Steele, which makes him ers, sitting in parking lots, sitting in fields. Up a mountain, a star. belt £310 down a mountain. Waiting in the wings. Ralph Lauren So I create studios wherever I go.” Critics saw the show as longer on style than Purple Label T H E O V E R S I Z E D P A I N T I N G on the back wall of the room “Carrying the weight, ON PARIS we’re in – a four-panel Pop art-style blowup of the instruc- pain and fear of that illness, tions from a package of disposable foam earplugs – is his I took out the paints. jacket £2,820 from 1995, painted between setups on GoldenEye, which And started painting. shirt £425 was six months of loud gunshots and explosions. With my fingers. trousers £960 With my hands.” Louis Vuitton Men’s Brosnan tends to paint abstract human faces in buzzing psychedelic colours. But he’s also intrigued by substance, but its style holds up; the show is a sunglasses £575 vernacular images, like the illustrations on aeroplane perfect retro-’80s stream, a Champagne bub- Dita safety cards. “The hieroglyphics of our day,” he muses. “The ble bath for your brain. Ratings were good and woman changing the baby’s nappy. How to escape, how to the gig ran for five seasons. Brosnan splurged put your mask on. There’s a vocabulary and a silent diction on art supplies, which went into a cupboard. “I there that lends itself to this type of art.” was on American TV and I was earning a lovely wage and I thought, now is the time to paint. He trained to be a commercial artist, before acting And all I did was work.” derailed him. He likes Warhol and Lichtenstein but also Surrealism. He says it was his idea to have Thomas Crown Harris got sick around 1986. One night the rob the Metropolitan Museum of Art – the original script following year, Brosnan says, “Carrying the called for him to hit the Guggenheim. weight and pain and the fear of that illness, “The first night we got to New York, I had this beautiful apartment,” he says. “Dylan was a little baby. There was a book on the table. René Magritte. Raining men in bowler hats.” He called director John McTiernan and suggested that having Crown wear a bowler in tribute to The Son of Man, Magritte’s image of homme obscured by pomme, would be perfect for the character. “The visible in the invis- ible. What you see, what you don’t see.” His first real gallery show is scheduled for spring 2023 at Seasons LA. Ear Plugs will be in it, although that one’s already been sold to an undisclosed buyer. The show will be a true retrospective, Brosnan says; the earliest works in it will be from 1987, when he first started painting. I ask what brought that on. The answer snaps us back into real life. OCTOBER 2022 GQ 109



← OPPOSITE PAGE ON PIERCE suit £3,750 shirt £925 Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses £320 Bottega Veneta THIS PAGE jacket £2,990 shirt £475 trousers £1,140 Gucci sunglasses £620 Matsuda bracelet (top) £750 David Yurman bracelet (bottom) £840 Tiffany & Co. OCTOBER 2022 GQ 111

I took out the paints. And started painting. Paris had come bounding into the room, fresh from → With my fingers. With my hands, actually.” a fashion fitting for this story, wearing immense furry boots that could be Flintstones props. End of Bond talk, to ON PIERCE That canvas will be in the show. “That’s how Pierce’s obvious relief. we start – heavy. But beautiful, beautiful.” jacket £2,250 Brosnan tells Paris about a movie he’ll be shooting shirt £1,150 R E M I N G T O N S T E E L E G O T the attention of in September. Dior Men the legendary James Bond producer Albert Broccoli, who, the story goes, saw Brosnan’s “You could get a job on the movie,” he says. ON PARIS photo and said, “If he can act, he’s my guy.” US “I’ll be another PA,” Paris says. “The lunch runner.” network NBC got wind of this and kept Brosnan It’s a joke, but it sounds like he might make it happen, jacket £2,540 under contract for another curtailed season; just so he can go off to make a film without say- shirt £475 the next Bond would be Timothy Dalton. But ing goodbye to his son again. Brosnan never knew Gucci Brosnan would be the next next Bond – he took his father, a carpenter who left the family not long over the role, starting with 1995’s GoldenEye. after Pierce was born; his sons have lived a very ON DYLAN different life, personally as well as socio-economi- For the record, Brosnan has never had cally. Brosnan has a painting studio in the garage, and jacket £2,100 a few drinks and played the Nintendo 64 sometimes he and Paris go in there and paint together – shirt £1,030 game GoldenEye 007 – has never played it at Paris likes to work with an oil stick, homaging Basquiat. Versace all, in fact, except once, on TV, with Jimmy “He just devours these canvases,” Brosnan says. Fallon. The game might be the most fondly “It just fills me with the greatest pride, fatherly pride, earrings remembered aspect of the Brosnan Bond era, to be painting alongside him, just to be quiet in the garage (throughout), but the movies get a bad rap – they’re the last or wherever we’ve painted. It’s a really beautiful experience.” Bonds with a touch of camp, an echo of Roger Paris and Dylan have grown up watching their father his own Moore’s arched eyebrow. make art on any available surface – drawing on tablets, paint- ing on their shoes, on Paris’s surfboards. They’re excited to Around 2004, the Bond producers rang him see his work on view in a gallery after all these years. in the Bahamas to let him know they were “He’s, like, evolving into a legit artist,” Paris says, with going another way. He was briefly pissed off – zero irony, “and taking it to the top.” “It’s bloody frustrating that the fuckers pulled His father laughs and, with more than a little irony, says, the rug when they did,” he told Playboy in 2005 “Thank you.” – and then relieved to be free. His successor, Daniel Craig, glowered through five films, a “I thought he had haunted-badass Bond for increasingly dismal a lot of friends. geopolitical times. Now Craig’s time is over, People come up to and another reinvention is imminent. Brosnan him in the street and... answers the question he knows is coming: he talks to everyone.” “Who should do it? I don’t care,” he says. “It’ll be interesting to see who they get, who the man shall be,” Brosnan continues, in a tone that indicates it’s maybe not actually that inter- esting. “Whoever he be, I wish him well.” “I saw the last one,” he says, “and I saw Skyfall. I love Skyfall. I’m not too sure about the last one.” A pause. “Daniel always gives of his heart. Very courageous, very strong. But…” he says. The thought goes unfinished. for pierce brosnan: For now there’s still the day job. Brosnan gets up, grooming by david cox grabs a wooden cane with silver accents, an old Tod’s brief- using kevin murphy. case, and takes a few steps, dropping into the stooped posture for dylan and paris of an 89-year-old. He’s about to go to Belfast and Normandy to brosnan: grooming by film The Last Rifleman, based on the true story of an octoge- heather‑rae bang using narian Royal Navy veteran who escaped an old people’s home balmain hair couture. and legged it from East Sussex to northern France for the 70th set design by brian anniversary of D-Day. The cane and the grip are his tools for crumley for rob strauss this performance, along with “a lot of prosthetics.” studio. produced by isaac féria. “I found a wonderful company ,” Brosnan says. “They do great work. They just made Kenneth Branagh look like Boris 112 GQ OCTOBER 2022 Johnson – it’s unbelievable.” He whips out his phone, scrolls through photos, then finds it: a tight headshot, resembling a smiling weathered potato with the sharp, bright blue eyes of Pierce Brosnan. He makes quite a charming old man. alex pappademas is a longtime gq contributor and host of the podcast The Big Hit Show.



Almost four years after her improbable arrival in Washington, CONGRESSWOMAN ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ has become the political voice of a generation – and a cultural star whose power transcends politics. Now, as the United States hurtles toward the midterm elections, AOC opens up about the battle over abortion, her own shot at the presidency, and why it’s urgent that men step up now. BY WESLEY LOWERY PHOTOGRAPHS BY CRUZ VALDEZ STYLED BY DARA



Ocasio-Cortez on the steps of the Capitol with the U.S. Supreme Court in the background. in Washington, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez I’d arrived at the Supreme Court a few min- T H R E E W E E K S L A T E R I found myself sitting on PREVIOUS PAGE: SWEATSHIRT (THROUGHOUT), STYLIST’S OWN; EARRINGS AND NECKLACE (THROUGHOUT) BY walked the few blocks from her apartment to utes before Ocasio-Cortez to interview pro- the couch in her congressional office, beneath LAURA LOMBARDI. OPPOSITE PAGE: DRESS BY VICTOR GLEMAUD; WATCH AND RING (THROUGHOUT), HER OWN her congressional office nearly every morning, a testers, and watched as she manoeuvred in a wallful of framed photos and across from routine she felt forced to change after a treason- her plaid pink trousersuit past a small circle of the small bed where her French bulldog, ous mob stormed the Capitol Building. Now she antiabortion demonstrators and then waded Deco, hangs out when he spends the day at drives most days – a comically short commute into the sea of women and men who’d gathered work with Ocasio-Cortez. I sipped at the coffee she considers a necessary safety precaution. But to mourn. she’d brewed for us as we began a series of for some reason – she’s not quite sure why – the wide-ranging conversations – about abortion, congresswoman decided to walk to work on Soon, she was speaking into a borrowed the upcoming midterms and 2024 presiden- what would become Washington’s most tumul- megaphone, helping to lead the call-and- tial race, and the future: for the progressive tuous morning since the insurrection. response. “Into the streets!” Ocasio-Cortez movement she helps lead, the Democratic shouted, pumping a clenched fist in the air. Party in which she is perhaps the most polar- As she reached the Capitol grounds on June Within minutes, a sobbing young woman ising member, and for herself, both politically 24, a group of men stopped her for a photo. found the congresswoman and threw herself and personally. We discussed her three years “I said ‘Hello’ and ‘How are you all doing?’ ” into her arms. “I’m so scared,” she wept. “I’m in Washington, the hostile reception she says she’d later recall. “They’re like, ‘Well, you so scared.” she still receives from colleagues, the misog- know… We’ve definitely been a lot better, given yny and the abuse she endures. Days earlier, a this morning.’ ” For a fleeting moment in front of the conservative comedian had sexually harassed Supreme Court, it was possible to see the full, her on the steps of the Capitol Building, and This was how the congresswoman learned complicated public totality of the woman as we spoke, his leering video of the confron- that the United States Supreme Court had we’ve come to know as “AOC”: a 32-year-old tation was still bouncing around the internet. gutted the constitutional right to abortion second-term congresswoman representing established by Roe v. Wade – a bellwether for one of the country’s most diverse districts. A Our conversations came as the fallout from the reproductive rights of people globally. The certified celebrity. Arguably more famous than the Supreme Court decision and the looming ruling had been anticipated for weeks – after a any other person in American politics with- likelihood of another Donald Trump presi- draft opinion from the court’s conservative fac- out the last name Obama or Trump; beloved dential campaign had Democrats, including tion leaked – but somehow much of Washington and loathed at competing ends of the political the congresswoman, wondering if they might still managed to appear blindsided. Democrats spectrum. Constitutionally opposed to sitting actually find a way to hold onto Congress in had expected to spend the afternoon celebrating down, shutting up, and conforming to the November. In those weeks after Roe’s demise, the passage of a new gun control law. Now their patriotic play-theatre of Washington. The right Ocasio-Cortez was ubiquitous: at rallies and on day had morphed into a wake. wing’s night terror in the flesh. To many foot television, demanding that her colleagues move soldiers of the fractured, contradictory coali- with urgency to protect access to reproductive Out on the steps of the Capitol, a group of law- tion that is the progressive left, she represents health services and calling on men in particular makers gathered to sing “God Bless America,” something singular: the future. A revolution- to share their stories of how they had benefited a preplanned photo op that now read as hope- ary on the rise. The clear heir to an ascendant from decades of legally protected abortion. The lessly out of touch: Angry Americans were spill- progressive movement. The best and possibly battle for bodily autonomy and human dignity, ing into the streets and elected Democrats were last – depending on how quickly some combi- she said, will only be won if men themselves singing campfire songs. Ocasio-Cortez knew nation of fascism, religious fundamentalism, join in the fight. where she needed to be. It wasn’t at a sing-along. and climate change comes for us all – chance; a source of hope that things can get better in “For almost every woman that has gotten “Sometimes people ask, ‘Oh, what’s the point their lifetimes. an abortion, there’s a man who has either been of protest?’ ” she told me later, recalling that affected or liberated by that abortion too,” she day. The act of protest, she said, creates com- “A lot of that was about a human need,” told me. “In this moment it’s really only going munity. And participation by political leaders Ocasio-Cortez said, of why she took to the to be the vulnerability of men, and men talking sends a message. “It’s really important for peo- streets that day. “About providing just a very to other men, that gives us the greatest hope of ple to feel like their elected officials give a shit real position that this is not over and we’re shifting things the fastest, soonest.” about them,” she said. “Not from on high, but not giving up.” from the same level.” We’d agreed at the onset of our conversation that day to lean into difficult questions about gender – with a specific focus on what men need to be doing to combat misogyny – and so I asked the congresswoman why she believes men so often opt out. Certainly some guys are just jerks. But what about men who are more introspective? The call for men to step up and speak out is neither new nor novel, yet still seems unheard. “I think there’s plenty of well-meaning rea- sons why men may feel like it’s not appropri- ate for them to talk about it,” she continued. “I think sometimes the way white folks don’t like to talk about race and they say, ‘We just 116 GQ OCTOBER 2022



“My everyday lived experience here is as a personwho isdespised.Imagine workingajob and your bosses don’t like you – and the competing company is trying to kill you.” want to centre the person who’s most impacted, her social media channels, for example, to active with, who forced themselves upon me,” OPPOSITE PAGE: JACKET BY CONNOR MCKNIGHT; SHIRT BY SAINT SINTRA; TIE BY so it’s not my role to do anything or take a space explain policy in one moment and then share she told me. When she later confronted him, the SPORTMAX. FOLLOWING PAGES: JACKET BY SPORTMAX; TURTLENECK BY WOLFORD and speak up.’ But we know that when white her struggles building Ikea furniture the next. conversation did not go well. “The insistence folks take up space and say the right thing in Still, there are many aspects of her private life on a denial of what happened that very, very rooms of other white people, that is the most that she has historically guarded. When the clearly happened is also a through line with shifting activity that can happen, more some- insurrectionists stormed the Capitol, however, other women’s experiences, friends that I’ve times than any protest or any person writing a she says that something changed. She spent had, or just a pretending that what very clearly letter to the editor or anything like that. And we much of that day crouched in the corners of var- happened, did not happen,” she said. “That, too, need men to be speaking up in that way as well. ious congressional offices, convinced she was is also an assertion of power, and so this asser- But I think men, sometimes they think, I’m not going to die. Weeks later, she took to Instagram tion of power and dominance over others is a woman. This doesn’t affect me the most.” to describe her experiences on January 6, not limited to the actual physical fact, but how explaining that the day had stirred the rem- things are treated afterwards.” But men also keep quiet, Ocasio-Cortez nants of a past trauma. She publicly revealed pointed out, because of the burdens and anti- for the first time that years earlier she had been Eventually she confided in two of her col- quated expectations of masculinity. Feminist sexually assaulted. leagues at the restaurant and learned that her writers and thinkers have raised this notion experience had not been unique. “It was like for decades, pointing out how men themselves “I could not talk about that day without dis- everyone had been sexually assaulted that I had are victimised by toxic societal constructs. closing it, because it was such a central part of worked with,” she said. “Men suffer from being under patriarchy,” the my experience,” Ocasio-Cortez explained to me. congresswoman said. “They don’t go to the “I felt like I could not really adequately commu- Ocasio-Cortez never reported her assault, a doctor. They suffer from much higher rates of nicate what that experience was without giving choice she knows is familiar for many women completed suicides. Even though they report people the context of what I had lived through and one she said she’d make the same way lower levels of depression, that doesn’t mean and what was being echoed, because so much of today. “If the vast majority of sexual assaults that they suffer from it less. Just a couple years it was about resonance and fear of a thing that happen by a familiar person, the last thing ago the American Psychological Association was not theoretical but a fear of a thing that I you’re going to want to do is throw someone in released a very deep paper and a campaign had experienced.” jail,” she said. “There is an intersection with the about how these traditional cultural markers work of abolition and healing and contending of masculinity – stoicism, competition, domina- Until that point, Ocasio-Cortez had told with the fact that we as people are capable of tion, dominance – are leading to mental health only three or four people of the assault. Now doing harm, but we are also capable of healing issues for men. There’s a stigma around men friends, acquaintances, and strangers were from harm.” being vulnerable.” sharing with her their own stories. She had no intention of offering additional details publicly. Part of that healing, though, is the acknowl- The key to combating that stigma, she said, is But the night after Roe fell, she was addressing edgment and accountability that she was for men to talk directly with other men. “I think protesters who’d gathered at New York’s Union denied. “Whatever the given circumstances of something that’s really powerful for men is to Square, not far from the restaurant where she a situation, if a person is hurt or harmed it’s share their stories of growth.” had worked at the time she was assaulted. She important to hold space for it, and it’s very, told the crowd of the incident. “When I was very, very difficult to hold space for a hurt I asked her about men who may be angered about 22 or 23 years old I was raped,” she said. person when you are the one they are saying by the conservative attacks on bodily auton- “I was completely alone. I felt completely alone. hurt them,” she replied when I asked how she’d omy and committed to personal change but In fact, I felt so alone that I had to take a preg- advise a man in her life to respond were he carry shame about past behaviour. They, too, nancy test in a public bathroom in midtown confronted with an allegation of assault. “A lot should speak up, she replied. It’s not about Manhattan. And when I sat there waiting for of these people are not having these conversa- men posturing in public as if they are perfect, what the result would be, all I could think of tions with a pitchfork. These are people that she said, rather explicitly noting that they are was, Thank God I have at least a choice.” very often are trying to heal, and they’re saying, not. “There are amazing men in this world, and ‘Did what happened, happen?’ It’s not How do not men as a final product. There are men on Ocasio-Cortez told me later that she had we punish? but How do we process, and how do incredible journeys, internal journeys, jour- carefully weighed her decision to talk more we heal, and how do we change?” neys of transcending beyond just anger as the openly about her assault. Since entering public acceptable masculine emotion,” she would tell life, her opponents on both the left and right O C A S I O - C O R T E Z D I D N ’ T register it at the me in a subsequent conversation. “Men who have gleefully dissected her every utterance, moment, but looking back she realises that the dive into their compassion, into their sadness, hunting for ways to dismiss and ridicule her. incident helped propel her into public service. into their insecurity and explore it and work She had no expectation the disclosure of her “My sexual assault was a pivotal event in the through it.” assault would be treated any more kindly or trajectory that led me to run for office,” she told fairly. “One major trauma that a lot of sur- me. “I can say that in retrospect, but obviously “The most powerful and persuasive things a vivors of assault deal with is a struggle with I didn’t know that at the time.” person can say on any given issue,” she told me being believed,” she told me, adding, “There are that first day we met in her office, “is sharing aspects of it that I may never share because of The story of the bartender who improb- their personal experience and personal story.” the trauma of having that experience litigated ably swept into Congress is by now legend: in public.” how she spent her early adulthood navigating O C A S I O - C O R T E Z K N O W S well the power of the financial downturn and the U.S. health personal testimony. She’s become the most Nevertheless, there was value, she felt, in care system as her father battled cancer; how talented political communicator of her gen- sharing what she had endured. “It was some- she campaigned for the democratic socialist eration by being frank and relatable – using one that I was dating that I was not sexually Bernie Sanders and road-tripped to protest 118 GQ OCTOBER 2022

the Dakota Access Pipeline; and how she took from your parents, but just from the culture of Sanders devotees launched service-worker shifts to support her family that you live in. My experience with assault an effort to recruit like-minded after college in the wake of her father’s death. forced me to confront all of these things that I progressives to run for Congress. Now we know about the personal trauma she was taught about my self-worth as a woman.” Though hesitant at first, Ocasio- was also navigating. “I didn’t grow up in an Cortez ultimately decided to explicitly ideological household,” she said of Like many young progressives, her politics become a candidate. The impetus her upbringing. “I grew up in a household that fuse the movements of her time: the climate and for her run was largely frustration. was very conscientious of the world, and cared antiwar efforts of the Bush years, the boisterous about what was going on, and paid attention, street protests against unchecked capitalism For nearly 20 years her dis- and my parents voted, but we weren’t like, and racial injustice that dominated the Obama trict had been represented by Joe ‘We’re left,’ or ‘We’re right,’ or whatever that is. years, the insurgent Sanders campaign and its Crowley, a Wall Street–friendly con- I grew up in a very socially conservative and demand that we reconsider the limits of what gressman who served in the House very deeply religious household with very pre- government can do for its citizens, the revital- leadership and was a presumed scriptive messages about women. And it’s not ised women’s movement that followed Donald Speaker of the House–in–waiting. even sometimes that they’re just handed down Trump’s election. Crowley, she said, was out of touch with the needs of his district. “I With the 2018 midterms approaching, a team think I can get a lot of Trump voters to vote for me,” Waleed Shahid, a progressive operative who worked with Ocasio-Cortez early in her primary campaign remembers Ocasio-Cortez saying, describing a path to victory that was at once a spot-on assessment of the depths of antiestablishment discontent across the political spectrum and also an insane electoral strategy for a Democratic primary in the Bronx and Queens. She called for fundamental changes to immigration enforce- ment, a higher minimum wage, national health insurance cover- age, and urgent action on climate. Her message was electrifying even as her chances seemed nonexistent. “I felt so sad at those fundraisers. She is firing up all of these people. All of these young people, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Colombians,” recalled Shahid. “There’s some- thing kind of dangerous and sad about giving people false hope.” Of course, we know what hap- pened next. The bartender turned candidate pulled off a stunning 13.5 percentage-point victory in the primary and instantly became one of the most prominent people in American politics: a democrat- ic-socialist David standing atop her Establishment Goliath, hoop earrings and a bold red lip in place of a shepherd’s sling. Crowley’s longtime col- league Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House, reportedly “sounded distraught” that night after hearing the news, according to Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer’s book The Hill to Die On. “Holy shit!” Sanders exclaimed across town, according to a recent book by one of his aides. “Can you get me her number?” I N O N E O F the few interviews she’s ever done about her daughter, Blanca Ocasio-Cortez told the Daily Mail about how her daughter got her name. It had been her husband’s suggestion they call her Alexandria. “I thought about it for a while and I said, ‘Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,’ ” OCTOBER 2022 GQ 119

she recalled. “ ‘That sounds very powerful. That’ll be her name.’ ” Three decades later, I asked the congress- woman whom that newborn grew into whether she currently believes that she is powerful. “That’s a good question,” Ocasio-Cortez replied, pausing to consider her response. She said she doesn’t define power as dominance over oth- ers, but that she does feel power over her own choices. “Sometimes I don’t feel powerful. Sometimes I feel very diminished, and some- times I feel the least powerful here.” I asked dif- ferently. Does she feel politically powerful? “There’s the political power of public opin- ion,” she told me. “There’s the political power of social movements. There’s a political power of platform, and in those ways I feel powerful. But since I got here, literally day one, even before day one, I’ve experienced a lot of targeting diminish- ment from my party. And the pervasiveness of that diminishment, it was all-encompassing at times. I feel a little more steady on my own two feet now. But would I say that I have the power to shift the elected federal Democratic Party? No.” Indeed, upon her arrival, the response from parts of the Democratic Party establishment was undiluted spite. “It was open hostility, open hostility to my presence, my existence,” Ocasio- Cortez recalled. Her first days in Congress were destined to be awkward. Crowley still chaired the Democratic caucus, meaning he was present for new-mem- ber orientation. Each newly elected Democrat was presented to their colleagues with music and a stadium-style introduction. “From the first district of this state and that state,” the congress- woman said, mimicking a booming announcer’s voice. “It would just be like these huge claps and whatnot. And then it came to me. And it was very clear that the reception was not the same, just a smattering of applause.” At one point when Crowley was onstage, Ocasio-Cortez recalled that an older male mem- ber of Congress sat down next to her, gestured up at Crowley, and, apparently not aware of who he was talking to, said, It’s a real shame that that girl won. “I turned and I said, ‘You know that’s me, right?’ ” she recalled. “And obviously, his face turns pale.” Crowley had been a revered figure, and his defeat amounted to a traumatic event for many elected Democrats. If he could be beaten, by a mouthy bartender no less, were any of them safe? Ocasio-Cortez soon became a symbol – a proxy, more than a fully realised person – whose every utterance could be mined for implications about the Democratic Party’s ideological divides and the state of politics during the tumultuous Trump era. Her every move prompted a breaking-news banner. President Trump soon seized on Ocasio- Cortez and the rest of “The Squad” – then an alliance of four progressive congresswomen of colour all elected in 2018 – as a foil, levelling racist attacks against them in tweets and at his rallies. The women were all inundated with death threats. 120 GQ OCTOBER 2022

Ocasio-Cortez in the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.. OCTOBER 2022 GQ 121

A M O N T H A F T E R her election, in December was viewed in Washington.” it,” she quipped, dismissing the 2018, Ocasio-Cortez had a two-hour lunch in Ocasio-Cortez took eight pages of notes that plan. “Nobody knows what it is, the Senate Dining Room with Ed Markey, the but they’re for it, right?” Massachusetts senator involved in nearly every day, and for the next two months worked with significant effort at climate and environmental Markey and his team as well as advocates to Little during Ocasio-Cortez’s legislation for decades. His then most recent craft legislation they would call the Green New time in Washington has prompted attempt, in 2010, had passed the House but Deal. They would deploy an inside-outside as much media flurry as a series not the Senate. That bill had been 1,400 pages. strategy – using protests and activists to force of perceived clashes early in Now, together, they wanted to try again – and the Democratic leadership to push climate to her first term between her and with legislation that was just 14 pages long. the top of the priorities list. Pelosi. Ocasio-Cortez says it was Markey was instantly impressed. “It was clear overblown – the media’s obsession to me that her knowledge was matched only by Days after her election, the congresswoman with pitting successful women her clarity of purpose,” Markey told me. “We had joined a climate protest outside of House against each other – and described needed a movement. She was the generational Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. Now, on the day their relationship as professional. leader to spark a revolution that would change Ocasio-Cortez and Markey introduced their “I wouldn’t say it’s personal,” the political dynamic of how climate change Green New Deal, Pelosi seemingly decided she said. to remind the young congresswoman of her place. “The green dream, or whatever they call Various lawmakers and aides reminded me that clashes between leadership and factions of the caucus are commonplace. And Pelosi, it needs to be acknowl- edged, directly paved the path for someone like Ocasio-Cortez. Yet that history makes it even more difficult not to note that the first woman Speaker – to date the most consequential woman in the his- tory of American politics – chose, repeatedly, to publicly diminish the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. As we discussed generational splits across movements – specifi- cally the now geriatric women and Black officials who, decades after being elected as historic firsts, can’t seem to stop throwing themselves in front of television cameras to undermine the aims of the younger activists attempting to ascend behind them – Ocasio-Cortez recalled the story of women’s suf- frage, as depicted in Suffs, a play she’d seen recently. The movement was rife with tension between more seasoned suffragists who advocated a state-by-state strategy and younger activists uninterested in moving so slowly. “The 19th Amendment was passed by that younger guard,” Ocasio-Cortez noted. “It wasn’t out of defiance of the older guard, but it was in incorporation of those gains in an attempt to accelerate them.” “This generational tension has existed among virtually every single social movement in American history, in labour, in suffrage, in civil rights, in marriage equality,” the congress- woman said. “And it is a tension between history and the present moment. It’s a tension between inside and outside. It’s a tension between what we can learn and what we don’t know. Any sort of criticism of the Democratic Party is imme- diately cast as helping the right or ‘You’re dis- respectful’ or ‘Don’t you know everything that these people have done?’ And we do, but we are also allowed to learn from the outcomes of those victories and the unique dynamics of the present 122 GQ OCTOBER 2022

moment, to also say that we have to change tack election, and it felt like after that election second visit to her office. “Imagine working a and we can’t just do the same thing for 30 years.” was the first time that more broadly the party job and your bosses don’t like you and folks on started treating me like a member of Congress your team are suspicious of you. And then the T H O U G H S H E M A Y wonder how much power and not an accident.” competing company is trying to kill you.” she really has, Ocasio-Cortez unquestionably has influence. “I have always felt that the true Once she’d been reelected, the congress- WITH THE 2024 presidential election fast power, and true power in the United States, woman began enjoying the fruits of her labour approaching and the question of whether or relies in mass movements and social move- in Washington. Biden named her co-chair of his not President Joe Biden will run again loom- ments,” Ocasio-Cortez told me. “And there are climate task force, along with John Kerry. Both ing, progressives are weighing the future of many people who will not do something until Kerry, whom Biden would ultimately name his their movement. Sanders has signaled he’d they are forced, until their hand is absolutely climate czar, and another White House official support Biden for reelection but hasn’t ruled and utterly forced, whether that be for deci- described her as a solutions-orientated team out another run in the event of an open race. sions of self-preservation or otherwise. And so player. In just two years, she’d gone from a sit-in Still, operatives across the movement have sug- there have been moments where I feel like I at the House Speaker’s office to charting the cli- gested that the 81-year-old Sanders is ready to have been part of influencing an outcome or a mate blueprint for a Democratic Party that now hand off the reins. The top advisor to another decision by the party.” controlled both the White House and Congress. leading progressive official told me that Ocasio- Cortez seems “destined to inherit the leader- Among those moments, she said, was early The congresswoman recalled a “bittersweet ship of the movement.” 2019, when she was one of the first elected moment” last year when President Biden vis- Democrats to call for Trump’s impeach- ited her district with Senator Chuck Schumer Whatever Ocasio-Cortez decides to do, ment. Then, in 2020, Ocasio-Cortez and after Hurricane Ida and the two gave speeches another top progressive operative added, will Representative Rashida Tlaib, from Michigan, about climate change. “Here were these two be “consequential for every single person who voiced criticism of the COVID economic stim- very powerful individuals, very powerful men, cares about the future of the country.” All of ulus. The legislation had provided for $600 delivering speeches that were basically in their the progressive political operatives that I spoke (£520) cheques to some Americans. But the content and in their substance just complete with said they were heartened by the number of congresswomen said the payouts should be Green New Deal framing,” she said. “I’m listen- leaders their movement has produced in recent even bigger – introducing legislation to send ing and I literally know that if I say and read years. Yet they all agree, when granted the abil- out $2,000 (£1,735) cheques. “The whole party that same exact speech, it is treated not just ity to speak freely, that there is something spe- kind of chastised us and said that we were by the right but by my own party as radical, cial about the congresswoman. being wrong, and unproductive, and bad chil- impossible, flippant, uninformed. But now the dren, all that,” Ocasio-Cortez recalled. “And president of the United States is saying it. And When I spoke with John Kerry, one of a hand- then the next morning, Trump came out in so it feels very powerful because I wrote a lot ful of people with experience as a major party favor of it. And then the Democratic Party at of those words. That he wouldn’t be invoking nominee, he wouldn’t speculate about Ocasio- that point, in that moment, found themselves these frames if it wasn’t for the work of move- Cortez’s political future but was unequivocal to the right of Trump on this issue. And so they ments and what we pushed.” that he believed someone like her – an outspo- took the drafted legislation that Rashida Tlaib ken progressive woman of colour – could be and I had introduced, they took it, they made The biggest win came in early August when elected nationally. “In America, anybody can it part of the American Rescue Plan. Of course, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, grow up to be president,” Kerry told me. “I do without credit.” an omnibus budget bill that included $369 believe that.” billion (£320 billion) toward reducing green- There is nowhere in which Ocasio-Cortez’s house gas emissions. “The only reason this is Ocasio-Cortez used to believe that too. Then influence has been more apparent than in the happening,” said Lori Lodes, a longtime pro- she became a congresswoman. urgency with which large swaths of the party gressive operative and executive director of now treat the need to address climate change. Climate Power, “is directly because of AOC and “Sometimes little girls will say, ‘Oh, I want During the 2016 presidential campaign, climate young people rising up and speaking out and you to be president,’ or things like that,” she told change was barely discussed in the debates. By demanding.” me when I asked about whether she believed 2020, every single Democratic campaign put that she or someone like her could ever lead out its own version of the Green New Deal, even None of that is to say that the political estab- our country. “It’s very difficult for me to talk if some of them called it something else. lishment has become any more fair or her about because it provokes a lot of inner conflict existence in Washington any more fun. In July in that I never want to tell a little girl what she After backing Sanders in the primary, the 2020, Republican Representative Ted Yoho can’t do. And I don’t want to tell young peo- congresswoman became an outspoken surro- passed the congresswoman on the Capitol steps ple what is not possible. I’ve never been in the gate for Biden, helping unite the party in its and reportedly told her she was “disgusting” business of doing that. But at the same time…” efforts to oust Trump. Even so, party elders while later referring to her as a “fucking bitch.” gave more time at the party’s convention to (Yoho apologised but denied that he ever said Over the course of our conversations, the literal Republicans than they did to Ocasio- the “offensive name-calling words.”) In May congresswoman typically answered in a confi- Cortez. The slight was no surprise to the con- 2021, Ocasio-Cortez was confronted outside of dent, fast-paced patter – each sentence closely gresswoman, who had spent much of the year the House Chamber by Marjorie Taylor Greene, chasing the tail of the last. But now her speech defending herself against a primary challenger a far-right member of the Republican caucus, slowed to a crawl and, for the first time in the who had behind-the-scenes support from who ran up to her and demanded she explain hours we had spent speaking, she broke eye parts of the Democratic establishment in both why she supports “terrorist groups” like Black contact, burying her gaze in the arm of her Washington and New York, according to some- Lives Matter and insisted Ocasio-Cortez chair. Tears pooled in the corners of her eyes. one with direct knowledge of the campaign’s debate her “radical socialist beliefs” with her, inner workings. according to two Washington Post reporters “I hold two contradictory things [in mind] at who were present. Last November, Arizona the same time. One is just the relentless belief “I feel like everybody treated me like a one- Republican Paul Gosar posted an online anime that anything is possible,” she said. “But at the term member of Congress, and they worked video that depicted him using swords to kill same time, my experience here has given me a to make me a one-term member of Congress.” Ocasio-Cortez. front-row seat to how deeply and unconsciously, Ocasio-Cortez said. “There was a very con- as well as consciously, so many people in this certed effort from the Democratic side to “Others may see a person who is admired, country hate women. And they hate women of unseat me. And I felt a shift after my primary but my everyday lived experience here is as a colour. People ask me questions about the future. person who is despised,” she told me during my And realistically, I can’t even tell you if I’m going to be alive in September. And that weighs very OCTOBER 2022 GQ 123

“The world that we’re fighting for is alreadyhere.Itmaynotbe allhere,it may not be the majority of what’s here, but it is undeniably here.” heavily on me. And it’s not just the right wing. she told me, she avoids appearing in places for her. And then there was the fact that their OPPOSITE PAGE: DRESS BY VICTOR GLEMAUD Misogyny transcends political ideology: left, where she’s forced to play her part; where she lives had changed so much, so fast. A lot of men, right, centre. This grip of patriarchy affects all of can’t just be herself. She’s adopted a rule that she told me, only believe that they want to be us, not just women; men, as I mentioned before, she says her father deployed, back when they with an independent, successful woman. “The but also, ideologically, there’s an extraordinary lived in rougher parts of New York City: Once moment you start being yourself, they kind of lack of self-awareness in so many places. And so she’s home for the night, she’s in for the night. freak out,” she said. “I think it causes a conflict those are two very conflicting things. I admit to She leans most heavily on the relationships within them that they didn’t even anticipate. sometimes believing that I live in a country that she’s had the longest, the people who knew her It’s not even a deception. It’s just, they uncover would never let that happen.” before she became AOC. insecurities that they didn’t know were there.” There would be other impediments – obsta- “I work very hard at trying to cultivate a non- When she first ran for office, Ocasio-Cortez cles about which Ocasio-Cortez is practical, attachment to all of this,” she said. “I try to nur- wondered if that was destined to become the if not exactly optimistic. “Could Obama have ture nonattachment, so that – I think a lot of it story of herself and Roberts. “In fact, the oppo- gotten elected without the kind of financial is accepting that if all of this goes away tomor- site happened,” she said. “He has been so sup- support that he had?” she asked, noting that row, I will not have an identity crisis [over the portive and willing and deeply engaging. He’s her opposition to Wall Street would be a major idea] that who I am to me is separate from the not a witness to this. He dives into the fray hurdle to any further rise. “I don’t know.” Even material trappings of this work.” for himself in that he uses what we go through were she theoretically to become president, as opportunities for personal growth. And then what? She’d face a system – from the She met her partner, Riley Roberts, when it’s incredible.” Senate to the Supreme Court – both empow- they were both 19 and undergrads at Boston ered and inclined to thwart her most sweeping University. When they started dating later In April they got engaged while on a vacation ambitions. “There are still plenty of limita- in their 20s, neither of them suspected what in Puerto Rico. “I feel like I won the men lottery tions,” she said, playing out the hypothetical. they’d eventually be swept up in. “For him to in my life,” she went on, answering a question “It’s tough, it’s really tough.” experience us dating when I was still working I hadn’t asked, listing off men in her life whose as a waitress and a bartender through now and examples she admires: the father who set the But so, too, is the current gig – serving in an seeing how the world responds [to me], I think gold standard; the cousins she grew up with institution loaded with structural and dispo- has been a very eye-opening experience for him in the South Bronx, who overcame a lifetime’s sitional limitations. “Congress does not move as well,” she said. worth of adversity and are now raising chil- first, it does not move early, it moves last. That dren of their own; and even her chief of staff, is why we have never codified the right to bodily Roberts has largely avoided the public eye Gerardo Bonilla Chavez, who leads her team autonomy. It’s why we have never legislatively as he and Ocasio-Cortez have adjusted to with grace. “It is the presence of good men that codified same-sex marriage or marriage equal- shuttling, these past few years, between New has shown me what kind of men are possible in ity, and a whole bunch of other things, contra- York and Washington, D.C. Just prior to the this world,” she told me at the end of one of our ception, none of that. Because it’s easier to just pandemic, after a long lobbying campaign conversations. let the courts do it,” she said. “We’re going to from Ocasio-Cortez, the pair added Deco, the need robust mass movements that have already aforementioned French bulldog, to the mix. “I It was hard not to hear in these remarks an started. We’ve seen it in the labour movement, have very few dreams – like straight-up dreams expression of the core belief at the base of her we’ve seen it in racial justice, and we’re going to – in my life,” she told me. “Since I was a child, broader political ideology and outlook: The need to continue to build that while also ensur- I dreamed about having my very own dog.” reality we wish for may be closer than we think. ing that we are staving off the very real threat of When she spoke of Deco, she displayed more fascism in losing the House or Senate.” earnest excitement than at any other point in Sure, Ocasio-Cortez’s political project would our conversations. “Dogs have a way of evening fundamentally restructure American society. I pointed out to her that she had just made an out the lows. It’s kind of like a hard floor, and But is that any less realistic than the hope that excellent argument for why she shouldn’t be in I definitely felt like my lows would be lower we’ll one day eradicate misogyny, racism, or Congress at all and could possibly accomplish before him.” homophobia? Are America’s progressive fan- more elsewhere – in a different elected office, or tasie about replacing its guns and capitalistic as an outside movement leader. “I try to think Late last year, Ocasio-Cortez and Roberts greed with guaranteed jobs and health care any about how I can be most effective and, honestly, found themselves discussing their New Year’s more far-fetched than the abolitionist’s vision to this point, I have not come up with an alterna- resolutions. Roberts had a particular priority in of an America without slavery or the suffrag- tive that I have found more effective than what mind. “It’s my resolution that perhaps we can ist’s dream of a democracy in which her vote I’m doing at the present moment,” she told me. be engaged by the end of the year,” she recalled is counted? The fight always seems less impos- “But this is something that I routinely revisit.” him telling her. “And I said, ‘Oh, really? Well, sible, the congresswoman reminded me, once you’re going to have to woo me. You’re going to you realise that we’re not starting from scratch. I N T H E W H I R L W I N D of the past three years, as have to convince me, after all this time, why I she’s grown from being a well-recognised pol- should.’ ” Ocasio-Cortez told me that she never “The world that we’re fighting for is already itician to a bona fide culture celebrity, Ocasio- considered marriage inevitable. Her relation- here,” Ocasio-Cortez told me. “It may not be all Cortez, who friends say has always been more ship with Roberts, who is white, raised its own here, it may not be the majority of what’s here, introverted than she lets on, has, in under- particular questions about identity and belong- but it is undeniably here.” standable ways, grown even more. These days, ing: She wasn’t positive that an intercultural, interracial relationship would be the right fit wesley lowery is a gq correspondent and a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter. 124 GQ OCTOBER 2022

Ocasio-Cortez beneath the dome of the Capitol.



A growing BY CHRIS GAYOMALI number PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROGER KISBY of men are undergoing OCTOBER 2022 GQ 127 a radical and expensive surgery to grow anywhere from three to six inches. The catch: It requires having both your femurs broken. GQ goes inside the booming world of leg lengthening.

TODAY WAS A GOOD DAY not like he was particularly short, at just shy of the average height of an American man (5ft 9in). But the opportunity to be above average was John Lovedale is feeling pretty good, despite the fact that he too good to pass up. “I noticed that taller people just seem to have it eas- should not be walking right now. It’s a little after 9am on a ier,” John says, laughing. He shrugs. “The world seems to bend for them.” hot Saturday morning in Las Vegas and he’s ambling through the Aria Resort & Casino with a pronounced limp, wincing as It was last summer when, after a Google search, John was first he throws his hips into wide semicircles and dragging his feet swarmed by Facebook ads for the LimbplastX Institute, a clinic in Las exactly where they need to be. The effect is like a Grand Theft Vegas founded in 2016 by Kevin Debiparshad – Dr. D, if you’re nasty Auto extra who’s just been sniped in the ass. – one of only a handful of surgeons in North America who perform cos- John is in his mid-40s and stands 5ft 111/2in. Big-hearted laugh. Built metic leg lengthening, and among the leading experts in the procedure. like a saguaro cactus. If you squint he kind of resembles a brolic Neil deGrasse Tyson. He’s in town to see his orthopaedic surgeon, having When I first called up Dr. D, he told me that business has been arrived last night from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where he works as a booming: Since the onset of the pandemic’s work-from-home era, network engineer for the government. He almost missed his flight and the LimbplastX Institute has been seeing twice its normal number of was in such a rush he forgot to bring the crutches he’s supposed to be patients, and sometimes as many as 50 new people a month. That claim using, but, again, he’s been feeling pretty good. is backed up by a BBC report suggesting that hundreds of men in the That John is on his feet at all is impressive – and probably foolish U.S. are now undergoing the procedure every year. – considering that only eight months prior, he was 5ft 81/2in. Back in September, he paid $75,000 (£64,000) for the agonising privilege of hav- On paper it makes sense. Stigmas around cosmetic surgery are fad- ing his legs surgically lengthened. That entailed having both his femurs ing, especially for men. According to the American Society of Plastic broken, and adjustable metal nails inserted down their centres. Each Surgeons, in 2019, male cosmetic procedures were up 29 per cent from nail is made of titanium, which is both flexible and sturdy, like bone, and two decades prior. about the size of a piccolo. The nails were extended one millimetre every day for about 90 days via a magnetic remote control. Once the broken But male height, particularly the absence of it, is one of the last social bones heal, ta-da: a newer, taller John. stigmas, as if the new rules of body positivity fail to apply vertically. Short With a procedure like this, there are, of course, some caveats. All the guys aren’t so much discriminated against as they are precluded from height gain obviously comes from your legs, so your proportions can look stuff: like dating certain taller people, or making your high school basket- a little weird, especially when you’re naked. Also, the recovery can be ball team. According to a 2009 study of Australian men, short guys make long and taxing. When we meet, the bones in John’s legs are not yet fully less money than their taller peers (about $500 (£425) a year per inch); healed, and a small section of his right femur is still a little soft, like al are less likely to climb the corporate ladder (according to one survey, the dente spaghetti; the smallest stumble could snap a bone in two. And it’s average height of a male Fortune 500 CEO is 6ft); and, for the cis and especially dangerous since he’s a big guy, over 90kg. straight among us, have fewer romantic opportunities with women (a Then there’s the pain, which is relentless, ambient. The extension of 2013 study conducted in the Netherlands found that women were taller the nails in his legs stretched the nerves and tissue around the bones – than their male partners in just 7.5 per cent of cases). I’m 5ft 6in on a good especially the thick, meaty muscles like the hamstrings – to an almost day, and I’ve found that being short is great for flying economy class – and excruciating degree. He couldn’t walk for months. “They fill you with not much else. enough painkillers that it’s bearable,” John explains, but his biggest fear was becoming addicted to the drugs, so he weaned himself off the The promise of Dr. D’s institute is that, for a price, you too can increase regimen earlier than he should have. your odds of becoming a Fortune 500 CEO. And people are willing to Why would someone like John – handsome, confident, funny, pay. Most patients will fork over from $70,000 to $150,000 (£60,000 to a father to three – shell out for a procedure that costs more than £130,000), depending on how many inches they want to gain. The major- a Tesla and results in months of agony for a couple of extra inches? It’s ity opt for the standard three inches, which can be expected if you get only your femurs done – a process that takes about a year – but six inches is pos- sible if doctors later do your tibias as well. You then have to get the nails THESE PAGES: ROGER KISBY/REDUX PICTURES. surgically removed, which costs an additional $14,000 to $20,000 (£12,000 to £17,000). Money an issue? Personal financing is available through SoFi, an online bank. John took out a loan for his femurs – $1,200 (£1,025) a month for the next five years. It’s nothing short of a miracle that we can change something in the human body that was once unchangeable. A short king can transform himself into just a king – as long as he’s willing to subject himself to the kind of horrifying, life-altering injury traditionally associated with getting hit by a bus. It’s as if we’re playing God to appear slightly more boneable on Tinder. On some level it’s grotesque. It’s also a medical wonder. And it raises all kinds of thorny existential questions, like whether creations as fragile as us should be playing God at all. Dr. Kevin Debiparshad points out the amount by which he was able to lengthen one of his patients’ ADJUSTMENTS legs by severing his femur and inserting a titanium nail through the centre of the broken bone. Like most cosmetic surgeries designed to make you a hotter version of yourself, leg lengthening was orig- inally intended to help patients with real and some- times dire conditions. The procedure was developed in the 1950s by a Soviet orthopaedic surgeon named Gavriil Ilizarov, who wanted to treat complex bone fractures and deformities like limb discrepancies. The process is, to put it lightly, really fucking gnarly. It involves a medieval-sounding device called 128 GQ OCTOBER 2022

Before-and-after X-rays of a patient who had both their femurs and tibias lengthened, increasing their height by six inches. the Ilizarov frame, an adjustable apparatus that is wrapped around, diamond. “I looked at him like, ‘You’re lengthening this bone? You’re say, the lower part of a patient’s leg, ankle to knee, like scaffolding fixing this two-inch discrepancy in this patient? It seems like magic.’ ” erected around a townhome. The patient’s leg is then broken, and the apparatus’s series of pins pierce the leg, jamming through skin and Dr. D’s patients don’t fit into any one phylum, except that most are muscle until they are fixed to the bone itself, where they remain for loaded: physicians, finance guys, actors, CEOs. A news anchor. Even col- months – holding the severed bones in place, slightly farther apart lege basketball players looking for a few more statistical inches, though than they’d naturally be positioned, so that new bone tissue grows to Dr. D doesn’t recommend this. “It’s hard to predict what the athletic out- fill the gap. After spending months bedridden, a patient with, say, a come is going to be,” he says. “What I generally tell patients is, look, if shorter left leg could miraculously find himself with two legs of more your paycheck depends on you being faster than the guy next to you by or less the same size. milliseconds to get that position, then this may not be the procedure for you because it can decrease your athletic ability.” The Ilizarov frame is still in use; what’s relatively new is the alter- native form of leg lengthening that Dr. D performs, which has rapidly There are trans men, who often just want that extra stature to feel evolved over the past five years. Dr. D compares the procedure to getting more like themselves. (Dr. D sometimes does leg shortening for trans your boobs done: “If you want to change this characteristic about your- women.) I talked to a Filipina nurse who was under 5ft – and now she’s self, I’m not changing who you are. You’re still who you are. This is just not. One patient, a popular YouTuber in Asia, apparently paid for the one [thing] that you want to change about yourself.” One of the main procedure by selling a few Bitcoin. innovations at Dr. D’s clinic is the extendable titanium nails that can be inserted directly into the bone, meaning patients no longer have to deal And of course there are tech bros – a whole gaggle of tech bros. with open sores from the Ilizarov frame’s pins. “I joke that I could open a tech company,” says Dr D. “I got, like, 20 soft- ware engineers doing this procedure right now who are here in Vegas. Now surgeons are looking for other ways to streamline the process. There was a girl” – because girls can be tech bros too – “yesterday from From 2019 to 2021, there existed a load-bearing nail constructed out PayPal. I’ve got patients from Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft. I’ve of stainless steel, which is stronger than titanium – an innovation had multiple patients from Microsoft.” that enabled patients to walk almost immediately after surgery. Those weight-bearing nails were recalled after evidence emerged that the steel What all the patients I spoke to have in common is that leg length- might corrode, but Dr. D says that a new nail is awaiting FDA approval ening helps them feel like a more complete version of who they think and should be available in 2023. they are. “A lot of patients see it as an investment in themselves, and not necessarily romantically,” says Dr. D. “Stature is such an important As I would discover, Dr. D is always trying to find new and better ways part, I think, of who you are and how you perceive the world and how to lengthen legs. When I meet him in Las Vegas, I quickly notice how fast the world perceives you. Being able to alter that is so impactful.” he talks, like his work calendar is an infinite block of Google blue. If you were to ask him what he loves most, he would likely include his wife and John remembers the first time he realised he had actually become a two young daughters; the HBO show Entourage; and bone, which he calls taller person. He was standing over the toilet to pee when the trajectory “the most exciting tissue in the world.” “It repairs itself!” he exclaims. of his stream felt off. “And I’m pissing all over the place!” he tells me. “You die and it’s the only thing that’s around when you’re gone.” “I’m not used to peeing being dangerous. I’m used to it going right there. I’m having to adjust for those three inches.” We’re eating dinner inside Catch Las Vegas, a trendy seafood joint where all the servers look softly VSCO filtered. Despite the evening’s To explain his change in height, he told everyone outside of his imme- oppressive heat, Dr. D, who is 5ft 10in, is wearing Diesel jeans and a diate family – including his supervisor – that he fell in the bath and black button-up shirt with polka dots underneath a black vest. Originally needed surgery to fix a broken hip, even though he’d never even broken from Ontario, Canada, he studied medicine at McGill, with a postgrad a bone before. These days, John has been working out a bit: upper-body fellowship at Harvard, and initially thought he’d work in a more boring weights, some walks on the treadmill. “I’m not walking as fast as I could specialism – like internal medicine – until he did a rotation in orthopae- be once I’m fully healed,” he says, “but every day is more encouraging.” dics with a famous surgeon from Montreal named Ken Brown. Even though it’s been an ordeal, he likes being in public now. “People just look at you differently when you’re tall. I’m not even lying,” he says, Brown ran a centre called the Lizzy Clinic, which focused on fixing laughing. “I already get a lot more looks at the gym.” bone deformities in children. “Lengthening bone, correcting club- foot deformity, tibial deformities, that sort of thing,” Dr. D explains. T R A N S F O R M AT I O N S Working for Brown, he was captivated by the idea of using devices like the Ilizarov frame to stretch and distort bones and heal injuries. “We’re There’s no single reason anyone opts for leg- actually creating this bone in this space,” he recalls a fellow explain- lengthening surgery, but often at least one of those reasons has to do ing, as he squinches his thumb and index finger like he’s appraising a with impressing girls. Take Alan, 23, a sweet, lanky software engineer OCTOBER 2022 GQ 129

One popular Vietnamese YouTuber went from 5ft 4in to 5ft 7in after Dr. D extended his femurs. from Chicago. (Some of these names have been changed.) Originally just That he appears slightly dehumanised is maybe to my benefit. under 5ft 6in, Alan never really thought of himself as short until a girl he Because the drilling is about to commence. had “a super big crush on, like, roasted me for it” in college. This instilled in him a deep insecurity that ultimately prompted him to get his femurs Dr. D inserts a small drill in one of two inch-long incisions he’s made done in February. Now, after spending the last three months alone in his in the upper right thigh, to get the break started. He then calls for a apartment eating delivery food, he’s 5ft 9in. device called the reamer and everyone moves with the choreographed efficiency of an F1 pit crew. The reamer materialises in his hand. It’s basi- Or Bryan, a handsome Chinese American guy from New York who cally a handheld cordless drill, only the actual bit is 2ft long. The reamer made a lot of money option trading. He’s 27. His voice is slow and is used to hollow out the bone so that the nail can be placed snugly. dudely, and he’s something of a player. But he always thought that his batting average with women could be better. “A lot of times I would get Dr. D gives the reamer a few whirs and then jams the pointy part into rejected,” he says. “I was, like, swinging 100 and, like, [connecting with] the other incision and down into the patient’s leg. With the aid of X-rays four or five.” That was when Bryan was 5ft 7in. Now he’s 5ft 10in and and a guide wire, he begins to drill a hole down the centre of the femur. itching to get back to the clubs. The sound of hot spinning metal pulpifying bone isn’t unlike the sound of installing drywall anchors. There are also guys like Chad, formerly 5ft 5in, a CFO who did his rehab in El Paso. He’s 53 and a little aggro, the type of shorter guy who’ll Actually severing the femur takes only a few seconds. What he’s remind you again and again that he’s good at jiujitsu. The kind of guy started already with the drill is followed by deployment of the osteo- who gets mad when he has to stand on his tiptoes to wave down bar- tome, basically a razor-sharp chisel. Dr. D inserts the tool into the inci- tenders. “I’d go to a bar and literally try to order a drink. Some freaking sion along the patient’s thigh and starts whacking away with a mallet. goon, standing a head taller than me, comes over behind me,” says Chad. “And the bartender looks up to him, like, ‘What can I get you?’ I’m like, “Sometimes it’s one tap,” Dr. D shouts while casually hammering, as ‘Motherfucker, I’m right here!’ ” if he’s hanging a picture frame. “Other times it’s 10 taps.” Clink, clink, clink, clink – CLANK. One time Chad had his ego shattered by a taller woman (5ft 10in) he was dating. They were walking down the street together, holding hands, When Dr. D pulls the reamer out of the incision – the effect is kind when someone passing by gave them a look. She dropped his hand. “And of like Jack Nicholson’s Joker pulling a comically long pistol out of his I was like, ‘All right, you want to be like that? If you think you could do trousers – a warm, bloody slurry of liquefied bone and marrow and fat better, you go do better. See you later.’ ” Chad got the procedure done begins to ooze out of the hole with horrifying speed and volume. back in December and now he’s almost 5ft 8in. Once the nail is finally set in the now-severed bone, Dr. D makes a At one point during dinner, Dr. D casually reveals that 90 per cent of few more tiny incisions along the leg and drills a few screws in to hold his patients don’t ever tell anyone they’ve had the surgery. everything together. On the X-ray screen it looks like the patient’s thigh is pregnant with a weather vane. The revelation causes my brain to short circuit. How can you keep something like that secret? All in all, the right leg is completed in 38 minutes. The left will take more or less the same amount of time. But it’s only when the patient “I just told everyone I was in a ski accident,” says Alan. wakes up two hours later – with five to six new holes in each of his legs “Yeah, my mom’s pretty oblivious,” says Bryan. – that the real work can begin. “I’m just going to tell everyone that they put so many things in the vaccine,” says a patient named Johan, who got his femurs and his tibias PROTECT YOUR INVESTMENT done, and went from 5ft 4in to 5ft 10in. Dr. D understands why his patients would opt to play the procedure When John and I show up at the LimbplastX Institute on the morning close to their chests. “I don’t think women are like, ‘Oh, I got breast aug- of his appointment, Dr. D is a little frosty, a few degrees removed from mentation,’ like they’re proud of it,” he says. “You know what I mean?” his usual self. (Which is to say he’s still extremely pleasant, like an angry He thinks that’s beginning to change, though. When some people get Kenneth from 30 Rock.) cosmetic surgery now, “it’s like having a Birkin or having a fancy car or whatever. They brag about it, because it’s like a sign of this elite status in some ways.” As dinner wraps up, we skip dessert and call it an early night, because Dr. D has to get up at 5 a.m. He has a leg lengthening to perform in the morning, and I’m invited to watch. UNDER THE KNIFE Should you find yourself a guest observer in Dr. D’s operating room at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center, you’ll be escorted by a relentlessly upbeat representative, who will take you past the self-playing piano in the lobby, the infirmary, the employee locker room, and into the heart of the hospital, where you will trade your street clothes for scrubs. And there, in the bedlam of the operating room, is Dr. D, cheery as ever, like he never went to bed, surrounded today by a phalanx of guys wearing Hokas and Salomons. Usher’s “My Way” booms through the O.R.’s speakers. “We usually listen to Britney!” someone jokes. In the middle of the room, his top half covered with a tarp, lies the patient, unconscious. Today he’s getting two nails implanted into his femurs. Even though he’s only visible from the waist down (his junk is taped off ), I can see that he has an athletic build, which makes him look like a mannequin that got dumped into the back of a garbage truck. 130 GQ OCTOBER 2022

“Peoplejustlookat youdifferently when you’re tall. I already get a lot more looks at the gym.”– JOHN LOVEDALE The problem is that John doesn’t have his crutches, and he hasn’t yet feel like a dick for having said that. been cleared to go without them, even though he isn’t feeling any pain. And so the fact that these guys are so willing to throw down six figures This, according to Dr. D, is a huge no-no. “John’s been a bad boy ever since he came here,” he says. “I always tell patients that when they stop lengthen- and endure months of pain makes all kinds of cosmic sense to me. It’s ing, that’s when they get into trouble. Because they feel good. They got their not like you wake up one day and realise that you’re short. It’s more of a new height and they have no pain. They get impatient.” slow-onset neurosis. In high school you watch as all your peers shoot up a few inches while you keep hoping that your growth spurt is imminent… As Dr. D explains, John’s femurs aren’t fully consolidated. He’s 95 per But then it never happens. The hope doesn’t fade so much as it calcifies cent healed on his left side but only 80 per cent healed on his right. within you. For some people it weighs them down. Maybe it makes them Meaning the bone tissue is still forming, still pliant and a little squishy. angry, like Chad. For most short people, there’s always a part of us that If the nail were damaged in a fall, they’d have to replace it with a new feels like a physically incomplete version of who we were supposed to be. one, and the whole process would have to begin again. (This has only You, but at 90 per cent scale. happened in his practice a handful of times, says Dr. D.) One night a few months after I got back from Vegas, at home in “So, yeah, protect your investment,” Dr. D tells John in the register of Brooklyn, I asked my wife what she would think if I were to miracu- a disappointed grade school teacher. “It’s just three more weeks, okay? lously find a spare hundred thousand to get the surgery myself. You’ve already gone this long and then you can have the whole summer to move around, all right?” “I mean, if you wanted to get the surgery, I wouldn’t be like, no,” she replied. “But that money would do very nicely in [our son’s] John is apologetic. He was just so eager to be the newer, taller him college savings.” already. “There’s a mental discipline that you have to have,” Dr. D would tell me in private. “It’s like training for the marathon.” Then I told her I had a confession: That I felt bad for having said, early on, that we’d probably be together already if I were taller WOULDN’T IT BE COOL?… than her. I first discovered leg lengthening almost 15 years ago, when I was She paused. “But you shouldn’t,” she said. “It’s funny! I thought just out of college. Like a lot of short guys, I simply googled the phrase you meant it as a joke, so I took it as a joke, mostly. And I don’t think “How to grow taller as an adult?” At the time, part of me conflated it was true.” being short with being less desirable. Sometimes I’d fantasise about winning the lottery, getting the procedure, and disappearing for a year. In what way? Truth be told, my height is maybe the one thing I’ve ever felt regularly “I knew that deep down, eventually, I came around to the fact we insecure about. The only times when it really bothers me are when could be 80 years old and still together. And at that point, we’d just be it precludes me from doing stuff: like dating a taller woman I had feel- hunched over, wrinkly, droopy. Having that longer-term perspective… ings for years ago. Or making my high school basketball team when it was easy.” I was 5ft 3in and all my friends seemed to have grown six inches What do you think it was that made you get over my being short? overnight. Or, even now, fetching the Instant Pot tucked away in the “I guess there’s no one thing. It’s just changing a mindset. There high cabinet without a stool. are some annoying little life adjustments. But am I mad that, like, I can’t wear heels to a wedding again? That my feet don’t hurt whenever Then there’s my wife – cool, beautiful, confident, smarter than I’ll I go out? That’s fine.” ever be – who towers over me at 5ft 9in. We were old friends who And in that moment, I felt 6ft 4in. became more than that, and now we’ve been together for over a decade. Perhaps our spiritual heights are more important than reality, any- Before we got together, I once quasi-drunkenly blurted out, “If I was way. During our dinner, I asked Dr. D whether he’d ever consider getting taller we’d probably be together already, ha-ha,” and to this day, I still the procedure himself. “No,” he said. But then he hedged. Maybe if his kids were grown up, and if the load-bearing nail gets approved by the FDA, and if there were someone he trusted enough to insert said nail, then… maybe? Surgeons from all over the country are interested in learning how to perform the procedure, he said, and a few of them would love to franchise the LimbplastX brand. He noted that his wife, who’s 5ft 4in, sometimes teases him about getting her legs done. “She’s like, ‘Wouldn’t that be cool if I was a little bit taller?’ ” There are some minor annoyances worth noting should you suddenly find yourself a taller person. John has to get the height on his driving licence changed, for example. His knees graze the seat in front of him when he flies economy. And his own kids all clown on him. They even gave him a nickname: Inspector Gadget. Now other people are starting to notice something different about him. Recently he ran into his cousin, a friend, and their dates at din- ner. It had been six months since he’d seen them. His excuse was that he’d broken his hip. They went back to the friend’s apartment, and John found himself in the kitchen, alone with his friend, who is about 6ft. “He leaned in to me,” says John. “He says, ‘Look, man, I’ve known you for three years. Never have you been able to look me eye to eye. What’s up?’ ” John looked him up and down – and started laughing. “To this day, I still haven’t told him,” John says mischievously. “I’ve just been like, Maaan, you’ve gotten shorter.” chris gayomali is a gq articles editor. OCTOBER 2022 GQ 131

What happens when two Hollywood actors who know nothing about football buy a middling pro team in Wales? GQ spent nearly a year with football’s newest fans to find out.

BY TOM LAMONT PHOTOGRAPHS BY PATRICK McELHENNEY

R Y A N R E Y N O L D S , R E S T L E S S as a trapped site in some form or another since the 1860s. As for the story-sodden locals themselves, PHOTOGRAPHS PATRICK McELHENNEY/FX. cat, broke off his pacing and stooped to peer Wrexham AFC had been founded shortly after- those I met were confused or perhaps only through plate-glass balcony doors. He was in ward, making it one of the oldest sports teams indifferent about a docuseries pointing global an owners’ lounge, high to one side of a football in the world. So the smell of tired and mould- attention Wrexham’s way. This was a humble stadium in Wrexham. From here, Reynolds ering concrete delighted the new owners. The place. A one-team town. More than anything, could watch as hundreds, then thousands, of shabby signage, the peeling surfaces – it was everybody wanted to get uncomplicatedly expectant fans took their seats. It was October all proof of a long-running story they’d bought excited about a fresh chapter for Wrexham 2021. The Canadian actor and entrepreneur, into. Since acquiring the club six months prior, AFC. They wanted to watch their team ascend figurehead of the Deadpool movie franchise they’d been following their team’s progress from its position in the middle reaches of a and an investor with a sprawling list of finan- from afar, on computers, Reynolds explained. middling league – maybe even win a champion- cial commitments to his name, had been in “You’re watching games for the better part of ship. They had no idea on the week of Reynolds Wrexham for three days, having never set a year on a shitty YouTube feed,” he said. “Then and McElhenney’s visit just how exciting things foot in the city before. With his friend Rob you walk in here. The place is bigger than it would get before the end of the season in May. McElhenney, the American actor and creator of looked on screen, and I mean that figuratively. the sitcom It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, You feel a history, a legacy woven into the Now the strains of a song drifted in through he had taken over the local football team – stands and the rusting bars.” the doors of the owners’ lounge. It was ancient, lowly, and success-starved. They were a Britpop-like ballad, written by a musician about to watch their first home game as own- Tall and tanned at the age of 45, Reynolds from the city to commemorate Reynolds ers: Wrexham AFC vs. Torquay Utd. kept putting his hands in the pockets of his and McElhenney’s takeover. “Bring on the trousers, where he’d squirrelled away a fistful Deadpool,” went the flattering, singalong cho- “Ner vous,” Reynolds confessed, as of grass from the pitch for luck. McElhenney, rus, “and Rob MACK-er-LAY-nee.” The two McElhenney joined him by the balcony also 45, attractive in a shorter, toothier way, owners stepped onto the balcony to cheers. doors. “Nervous,” McElhenney agreed. That fiddled with his baseball cap. There had been In the opposite stand, there was a fan wearing two Hollywood stars should act on a curious a rush to get everything shipshape before this a tight scarlet jumpsuit that paid homage to impulse (more than a whim, less than a life- visit of theirs. Unbeknownst to Reynolds and Reynolds in his superhero movies. Someone’s long ambition) and invest millions in Wrexham McElhenney, a painter-decorator had moved handmade sign read, not so truthfully, “It’s had perplexed almost everybody inside the city into the owners’ lounge, sleeping in a leather- always sunny in Wrexham.” In their Hollywood limits. It had perplexed almost everybody who ette booth by night as he raced by day to install guises, McElhenney was about to debut paid attention to sport. As they stared out of oak panels, pendant lights, and beer taps. Time a record-breaking 18th season of It’s Always their lounge, Reynolds and McElhenney might ran out. Those pumps didn’t yet produce beer; Sunny in Philadelphia. Reynolds, having have been having a few doubts themselves. Sun in fact, on closer inspection, they were only recently finished shooting a musical version of gleamed off battered folding chairs, showing cut-out photographs of pumps. An en suite a Dickens novel, had a comedy costarring Gal stains and scratches. An enormous concrete bathroom was still unplumbed. On arrival, Gadot and Dwayne Johnson ready to premiere. terrace had been condemned before they took Reynolds and McElhenney were told, however But here the two men stood, beside a billboard over here, and now sprouting brown weeds, it anxious you get, do not use that toilet. that advertised asbestos removal. Reynolds and was hidden under tarp. Pipes leaked. The sta- McElhenney’s to-do list at Wrexham was long dium had no permanent scoreboard. Wherever they went in this city, an unblink- and various. They had to try to revive the for- ing scrutiny was directed at them, with cam- tunes of a team adrift, while persuading a city But like parents who try to see the best in eras and crowds trailing them around as they to trust them. They had to fix this one weird their complicated offspring, Reynolds and juggled obligations, crouching for selfies with door, deep in the bowels of the stadium, that McElhenney were alive to the charm and detail starstruck residents, delivering pep talks for inexplicably oozed grease. in things. A sporting venue had stood on this the athletes and coaches now on their pay- roll, answering questions about their motives, All such concerns were forgotten when their expectations, about the uncanny and the game kicked off to roars and chanting. coincidental similarities between this fish- Encouraged, Wrexham’s players dashed around out-of-water endeavour of theirs and the fic- the sun-slapped turf beneath the balcony. With tional premise of the popular sitcom Ted Lasso. gratifying speed, they scored an early goal. Trying hard to satisfy everybody, the pair were The noise was deafening. What a boost for the especially careful to avoid Lasso-esque gaffes new regime! Reynolds and McElhenney had of protocol and language. They had to keep enough room on their perch to leap into a flying reminding themselves that, in this part of the embrace, without careening over the asbestos world, the ties are known as draws, the games sign, without tumbling into the crowd below. might be matches but never match-ups, and football is never, ever called soccer. T H I S A L L S T A R T E D in spring 2019, thousands of miles away from Wrexham in an office in The scrum that followed Reynolds and Los Angeles. It was McElhenny’s brainwave at McElhenney everywhere around Wrexham that first. Reynolds came aboard later. McElhenney week in October included a sizable film crew was working on a new comedy for Apple, and who were present, at the owners’ invitation, to with collaborators that included his It’s Always document their takeover. Welcome to Wrexham Sunny colleague Megan Ganz, he had cooked had been commissioned for two seasons by the up an idea about a group of computer game American network FX. As two of its produc- designers. (Eventually titled Mythic Quest, this ers, Reynolds and McElhenney were adamant sitcom would air in 2020.) On a slow Tuesday that the series should foreground the stories in their writers’ room, Ganz’s husband, English of local people as much as their own. “It’s rain- screenwriter Humphrey Ker, suggested they ing stories, this town,” Reynolds told me at one watch some football. Liverpool and Barcelona point, launching into a flight of surreal patter were going toe to toe to reach the Champions to describe his excitement about the narrative League final. It was a thriller. McElhenney potential. “We need a titanium umbrella,” he turned to Ker after and said, “This is pretty said, “because there are people hitting it.” 134 GQ OCTOBER 2022

cool.” He was then about a year off from decid- a shortlist of possible purchases. Tall and (Deadpool personified, husband of Blake ing to buy a team for himself, and entirely clue- shaggy, with a habit of droll self-deprecation so Lively, father of three daughters, part-owner less about the sport. pronounced it is almost sadistic, Ker conceded of a multimillion-dollar gin brand called to me that his was half-baked research, based Aviation, co-executive of his own marketing Philadelphia born, McElhenney grew up on trawls through Wikipedia and hours in the firm, Maximum Effort) might be willing to add under the sky-blotting sporting totems of the statistics section of Football Manager. Later, one more wrinkle in his life. Reynolds told me, NFL, the NBA, and MLB. Plenty of Americans, a New York consultancy, Inner Circle Sports, “We’d never met physically. I admired Rob for raised on the same diet, come to the world of was hired to assist in the research. In admiring what he’d accomplished and built in the televi- football later in life and find charm in its dif- emulation of the Sunderland documentary, sion world. I remember once seeing an episode ferences. No walled-in divisions, no owners and in homage to the hardscrabble city from of Sunny that blew me away and I slid into his concocting protocols to suit themselves, no which he hailed, McElhenney made it a search DMs to tell him.” Theirs was a breezy, distant, status-protected franchises. criteria that his money be invested somewhere online-only bromance when McElhenney sent unflashy and overlooked. He wanted to find Reynolds a late-night email in 2020. He pitched McElhenney began to comprehend this a town or city so intent on a centrifugal sports him on why they should go halves on Wrexham in 2020, when COVID halted useful work on team that it might be lifted, wholesale, by that AFC. Reynolds later told me he might have Mythic Quest. Ker suggested that he watch team’s improving results. He was urged toward politely declined the offer had McElhenney not Sunderland ’Til I Die, a docuseries that tracks Wrexham. After some depressing ownership explained how the leagues were arranged, in the decline of Sunderland AFC. In Sunderland sagas, this team had been taken over in 2011 terms of promotion and relegation. ’Til I Die, the shocking mobility of one football by a trust of about 1,300 of its fans who were team was put on full display. Sunderland, in empowered to endorse a sale as long as there Reynolds was a Hollywood lifer. He surely the space of about 13 months, tumbled from was majority agreement. This approval was recognised these terms: the incremental the Premier League to the Championship, then granted in autumn 2020. gathering of credit and respect, the patience tumbled again into League One. necessary for success, the dread with rivals Wrexham was the place. How McElhenney everywhere and threats to your spot. Back in After watching ’Til I Die, McElhenney turned settled on a co-owner was more random by 2011, Reynolds had starred in a blockbuster to his wife, the actor Kaitlin Olson, and told her far. As McElhenney tells it, he simply guessed called Green Lantern that flopped. Afterwards, he was going to buy a team like Sunderland. that the globally renowned Ryan Reynolds it seemed he was reputationally relegated to Ker, temporarily relieved from his writing gig on Mythic Quest, was told to come up with Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney on their first visit to see their team play in Wrexham, October 2021. OCTOBER 2022 GQ 135

the lower tiers of movie making until Deadpool was how Reynolds and McElhenney tracked a wall. There was a life-size bust, hewn from was released in 2016, reviving him, promoting their team’s development, with half an eye on wood, that depicted Reynolds in the team kit. him. “It’s easy to look at Ryan now and say, other work, thumbing each other ecstatic or His likeness loomed beside us as we chatted. ‘Oh, he’s always been this mega movie star,’” miserable messages every Saturday. “Rob can McElhenney told me. “But I know he was trying get hot,” Reynolds said to me of these written Why wasn’t there more local cynicism to make Deadpool for, like, seven years.” At this, exchanges. McElhenney agreed. “I tend to go directed at Reynolds and McElhenney, I won- Reynolds put a fist to his mouth and coughed: zero to 10. Abject despair when we go 1-0 down. dered? You could find snatches of scepticism “Ten.” McElhenney corrected himself. “Ten Then we score and I’m, like, ‘WE MIGHT GET on a message board called Red Passion, but years! Begging people to make that movie.” PROMOTED TO THE PREMIER LEAGUE IN not a lot of it, not what you’d expect consid- He’d meant to praise his friend’s tenacity and FOUR YEARS!’” ering Wrexham’s history of flighty, disappoint- suggest the spirit they’d import to Wrexham. It ing owners. Reynolds and McElhenney, while was a Green Lantern situation from which they That afternoon in October 2021, as they conceding that they wouldn’t be around for- meant to fashion a Deadpool. leaped into an embrace on their stadium bal- ever, had said they were determined to leave cony, they witnessed each other’s up-and-down this institution in better condition than they Without consulting his wife, Reynolds said passions in the flesh. Wrexham led 1-0 for much found it. Still, Hett had songs in his repertoire yes to McElhenney’s scheme. Both men were in of the game, but gave away a late goal, at which about similar abandoned promises, betrayals their mid-40s, if not quite in midlife crisis, as point the buoyant atmosphere in the stadium from owners past. “It’s a working-class town,” McElhenney put it, then at moments of “mid- flattened out. When it finished 1-1, Reynolds Hett said, after considering my question, life inflection.” For years, Wrexham had been hurried off to catch a nighttime flight, while “and working-class towns respond to people stuck in the scrappy, hard-to-escape National McElhenney descended to the changing room putting their money where their mouth is.” League four rungs below the Premier League. and consoled his players. Crossing the grassy He mentioned donations by Reynolds and In a giddy dream scenario, by securing back- pitch, he was heckled by hundreds of Torquay McElhenney to a food bank in the city, as well to-back-to-back-to-back promotions, Reynolds fans, all of whom were thrilled to have pooped as their support of a disabled fan down on his and McElhenney might get Wrexham all the Wrexham’s party, all of whom sang in unison luck. Since their takeover, the pitch had been way to the top by 2025. McElhenney told me at McElhenney, quite cheerfully, “You can stick relaid. Walls and railings were repainted. It was he was already used to sceptics dismissing the your fucking Deadpool up your arse.” a matter of their attitude, Legless said. They’d idea of them ever reaching the Premier League, brought along a mood people liked. regardless of the timeline. “But I truly don’t O N E C H I L L Y D A Y that autumn, I went for understand, based on the way the system is a drink in Wrexham with Michael Hett, the Hett swung his pint in the direction of the set up, why wouldn’t we go for all of it? Why musician who’d written that catchy “Bring on bar, where a sign read, “Nobody Leaves Here wouldn’t that be our goal?” As he saw it, there the Deadpool” song. He took me to his favou- Sober.” He’d been in for a drink one night when was little difference between “pragmatism and rite pub, the Turf, which was tucked under Reynolds and McElhenney stood under that an acceptance of stasis.” the stadium walls like a lean-to. At the bar, sign, knocking back shots with the Turf ’s land- we met a figure from the community called lord. The actors had told me about this episode They were able to buy the team by agreeing Johnny Legless, so called because, well, he themselves, “doing fireballs like we’re on spring to invest £1 million each in non-redeemable didn’t always make it to the end of matchdays break,” McElhenney said, to which Reynolds shares. This cleared organisational debts, leav- on two feet. Legless was the guy who’d been added, “One of the best nights out I’ve had in ing some money left over to spend on player wearing that faux leather Deadpool costume years.” So the two hadn’t held their noses, Hett acquisitions and stadium renovations. The to games. Fifty quid on eBay, he told me. Mask explained. When Reynolds posted a TikTok sale was finalised in February 2021, becoming included. We took our pints to a part of the pub during his visit, he soundtracked it with an worldwide news. The creators of Ted Lasso that had been turned into a shrine to Reynolds excerpt from Hett’s song. This musician, who snuck a gag about the improbable deal into and McElhenney. Their signatures were on played pub gigs for about 50 people a week, saw a scene. McElhenney replied with a jokey his song streamed 8 million times. cease-and-desist message. As a long-distance owner, he now had a two-faced clock, a gift Reynolds had never met McElhenney when the two began hashing plans to buy Wrexham AFC. from his wife, that told the time in Wrexham and (eight hours behind) in L.A. He was wak- ing before dawn on Saturdays to watch games via pixelated feed on his kitchen counter, while Reynolds, three hours ahead in New York, chap- eroned his daughters at their Saturday sports clubs. Reynolds told me he would slyly check his phone for the latest scores as his newfound passion for his football team turned him into “that schmuck in the corner, only pretending to watch my children grow and play and thrive.” In Wrexham, a new staff was hired that included the experienced football CEO Fleur Robinson, as well as a new head coach, Phil Parkinson. Ker was installed as the team’s executive director, tasked to travel back and forth between Wales and America, acting as capo and lingo translator for Reynolds and McElhenney. He set up a group text “meant for strategic conversations,” Ker said, “although it quickly devolved into a ‘general football she- nanigans’ message thread, filled with exple- tives on matchdays.” For months prior to their first visit to the stadium in October 2021, this 136 GQ OCTOBER 2022

Walking across the pitch, Mullin watched on from the side, Reynolds McElhenney was heckled jogged out onto the grass to take part in some by hundreds of Torquay fans. drills. In no apparent expectation of break- Thrilled to have pooped ing a sweat, oozing Obama-grade composure Wrexham’s party, they sang even as he miscontrolled the occasional ball, cheerfully: “You can stick your Reynolds wore chinos and an elegant raincoat. fucking Deadpool up your arse.” Soon he was joined by McElhenney, who had ducked into one of the locker rooms to swap his PHOTOGRAPHS PATRICK McELHENNEY/FX. In common with a lot of Wrexham fans, Hett when it came to football knowledge. Reynolds street clothes for a Wrexham-red training top, and Legless were not so thoroughly sold on wondered, “as someone who’s forgotten more baggy shorts, and flat-soled trainers. A member this documentary that was being made about about football than I’ll ever know,” whether of the documentary crew murmured, sympa- Reynolds and McElhenney’s escapades as team I believed this project of theirs would suc- thetically, as McElhenney trotted by, “He looks owners. To me, the logic of the project made ceed. “Maybe we don’t make it all the way to like he’s wearing ballet flats.” While he was out sense. Ours is the era of Michael Jordan’s The the Premier League,” Reynolds allowed, “but if on the pitch and trying some kick-ups, a vet- Last Dance, Tom Brady’s Man in the Arena, this club is promoted, once, twice, that’s epic, eran coach wondered in a thick Welsh accent: of every celebrity’s lightly flattering Netflix right? That’s history.” Why shouldn’t it happen “Who’s going to be the first to kick him?” Soon, or Amazon doc. If we assume that at any one for Wrexham, where people had waited so long an impromptu penalty shoot-out was arranged. time there will be 100 shows being made by for positive news? Owners against goalkeepers. After a goal, the famous about themselves, then at least Reynolds abandoned any regard for his chinos, Reynolds and McElhenney were candid about Why? I hardly knew where to start. Silently, sinking to the turf to celebrate. their aims. Welcome to Wrexham would expose my bones answered Reynolds’ question before the team to a worldwide streaming audience, my mouth did. Because deservedness in foot- I watched from the sidelines, analysing ideally growing the fan base of merch buyers ball never quite translates into enough wins the shoot-out with Mullin. A plainspoken and matchday attendees. Presumably, what- (I thought). Because balls sometimes careen 27-year-old who grew up just over the border ever Reynolds and McElhenney made from the off ankles, pitch divots, goalposts, goalies’ on Merseyside, he had caused a stir when he show would take some sting out of their invest- backsides, and roll frustratingly into your net. agreed to sign for Wrexham from Cambridge ment in the club, which had grown consider- Because crappy single goals secure games. United. A phone call from Hollywood seemed ably since their initial outlay. I sensed as well Because crappy single games spoil seasons. to help him make this decision, but the gam- an attitude of waste not, want not. Cameras Because (I thought) if you live and breathe ble was paying off for Mullin, an instant sen- already followed them everywhere on their vis- what the rest of the world calls football, you sation at this level, already on track to become its to Wrexham. If they were going to become know that only a tiny fraction of teams can a historic scorer for Wrexham. He had the content, why not own the content? Hett and see through a dream season, that disap- patient, singular focus that most goal poach- Legless reserved judgement for now, waiting pointment prevails, that Cinderella stories ers do. When I asked him about the curious to see how their beloved city came over on TV. occur once in a generation, that the rest of us workplace politics that seemed to underlie this continually sweep ash. penalty shoot-out – should the goalkeepers let We ordered more beers. Leaning beside the their famous employers score? – Mullin raised Reynolds bust, Hett was counting the games But I expressed just a fraction of this to an eyebrow. For a moment, I thought he was left before the end of the season in May. About Reynolds, telling him that I appreciated his going to hit me. 30, he figured. If Wrexham were to overtake the brio, anyhow. He said he appreciated my scep- best teams in the National League, including ticism. We left it at that. There were 30-some- “It’s still footie, isn’t it? You’re not gonna the leaders, Stockport, they would need to win thing games of the season left to play. let anyone score.” He shook his head. “I know about 25 of their remaining games. As things there’s been a lot of bother around the club. stood, Wrexham weren’t performing well W R E X H A M ’ S B E S T P L A Y E R , Paul Mullin, was But I think I speak for a lot of the lads when enough for that. Hett and I touched pint glasses taking a break on the sidelines during a team I say, these two owners are successful in their in wordless commiseration. Same as me, same practice. Under come-and-go drizzle and business, they’re famous all over the world. as a billion other devotees of this sport, Hett continual barking by their coaches, Mullin But they’re in football now. And if they want had started ingesting football at about the same and his teammates had been dashing between to be successful in football, it doesn’t matter age as solid food. He knew it in his bones. There plastic cones for an hour, passing to each what’s gone before.” America’s longest-run- were so many teams. Only so many opportu- other in tight triangular formations, popping ning live-action sitcom for McElhenney? Film nities for glory. As he pensively sipped a pint, off shots at the goalkeepers. There was a lot grosses in excess of £1.7 billion for Reynolds? I thought back to an exchange I’d had with of work to be done if Wrexham were going Trivia, in the insular world of lower-rung Reynolds next door, in the owners’ lounge. to become championship contenders, and football. These glamorous owners would be in order to speed up a turnaround, Reynolds remembered in Wrexham according to one Members of the documentary crew had been and McElhenney had signed off on an organ- metric: how far up the leagues they were able swirling around us at the time. A runner ferried isational expansion: hiring extra medical and to propel a glamour-starved team. in to-go bags of barbecue chicken. Reynolds support staff, bringing in newer and starrier fixed me with a look and said, “Tom, you’re from players, Paul Mullin among them. Mullin would do what he could to assist the U.K., right?” The room was otherwise full them by scoring. Goals, goals, goals. There of Americans, many of them candidly sketchy While shots zipped around the training were times in November and December 2021 field at head height, lethal as stray bullets, and when Mullin’s opponents did not seem able to contain him. The coach Phil Parkinson had whipped Wrexham into an energetic smash- mouth unit, inelegant but increasingly effec- tive as they won 5-0, 6-2, 5-0 in the weeks before Christmas. They jumped from eighth in the league to sixth, from sixth to fourth. In January, Reynolds and McElhenney paid for a new striker to partner with Mullin, a veteran called Ollie Palmer, bearded and corsair-like, with a wide rascally smile. Reynolds expressed OCTOBER 2022 GQ 137

particular delight about the acquisition, might be mediated at a later date, the footage to Wales to watch a game that almost finished because Palmer looked like a visual mash-up of sweated down and edited, then put before goalless. Mullin scored in the dying moments, himself and McElhenney. “Like someone boiled a new audience who might only ever see the keeping Wrexham’s latest streak alive – at you both down and poured the results into manipulated version of reality. This alters which point Reynolds turned to a colleague a mould,” Ker agreed. stakes. It invites new risk. When Sunderland beside him and burst into tears. Here was the AFC brought in a film crew to capture its antici- recipient of a Canadian medal of honour, an I had presumed their antic approach to team pated rise, the team fell. Steadicams that circled investor whose portfolio was so diverse, I once ownership would become stiffer and more seri- the Wrexham staff all season were preventers heard McElhenney mistakenly accept that ous when the stressful final months of the sea- against complacency, reminders to the younger Reynolds owned a piece of an actual moun- son rolled around. Nope. One day in February players especially that nobody wanted to lose tain (instead of the advertising tech company 2022, a printed sheet of office paper appeared on Netflix (or on Disney+, wherever) because it MNTN). With all he had, with all he’d done, on the bulletin board at the Turf, brass-tacked was then that the cruellest memes were crafted. Reynolds described that Mullin winner as between scorecards for pub quizzes, announc- “a top-10 life moment.” ing that the owners had put 365 free drinks Into March, Wrexham kept winning. Mullin behind the bar to celebrate the one-year anni- maintained his form, and his partner Ollie When Wrexham thrashed the best team in versary of their takeover. That month, Reynolds Palmer was just as prolific. Spurred by Mullin the league, Stockport, and leaped over them attended the Super Bowl in Los Angeles, hours and Palmer, Wrexham routinely ran up tallies into first place, a championship seemed not after which he boarded a private jet and flew to Wrexham again, looking in at the Turf to say McElhenney gamely joins a team practice as Dior Angus, left, and Tyler French, right, look on. yo to the landlord. During that visit, he per- suaded several players, the unsmiling Mullin of four, five, six goals in a game. At one point Wrexham PHOTOGRAPHS PATRICK McELHENNEY/FX. among them, to appear in an advert he was (a feat almost as improbable on paper as scored in the shooting at the stadium. It was for a cyber secu- Leicester City’s championship run), modest dying moments, rity company, 1password. Reynolds, portraying Wrexham had scored more goals in 2022 than keeping their a more tyrannical employer than he really was, most of the giants of Europe, Liverpool, and winning streak mushed his nose against Mullin’s, threatening Barcelona included. “Deadpool, Deadpool, alive – at which to stick a yellow card up the striker’s backside what’s the score?” 3-0, 2-1, 2-0, 4-1, 2-0. On point Reynolds for insubordination. a hot streak, Wrexham climbed to second place turned to a in the league. When it won a sixth game in colleague and It is sometimes said of elite athletes that succession, McElhenney was watching from burst into tears. they perform better with a chip on their a back lot in Studio City, headphones around shoulder. The accepted wisdom is not the his neck, halfway through directing an episode same in football. Happier players play better. of Mystic Quest. Meanwhile, in Wales, the musi- In 2016, at odds of 5,000 to 1, Leicester City cian Michael Hett immortalised Wrexham’s became Premier League champions against six-game streak in song. Quickly his lyrics were better-staffed opposition by riding a wave of outdated. Wrexham won a seventh. joyful swashbuckler camaraderie. Today, the finest footballer in the world is Liverpool’s They drew their next game, then went on Mo Salah. He plays grinning. Vibes seem to another run of victories. The players seemed count in this sport, and vibes were some- to have imbibed from their owners a talent for thing that career entertainers like Reynolds the dramatic. In early April, Reynolds jetted and McElhenney knew how to manipulate. I had seen this in person, how they laboured to win over a scrum of British journalists, even- tually reducing these suspicious and cynical beings to admiring sighs. When Reynolds used an F-word during a live BBC broadcast, he received no serious rebuke. So of course they could put Salah-like smiles on the faces of their employees. Those staffers whose contracts predated the takeover told me that working at Wrexham had become fun, and funny, for the first time. Players I spoke to did not seem bothered by the extra scrutiny that came with having well-known owners, insisting that they were elevated by insults thrown at them on the pitch. They repeated to me some of the better jibes they’d heard. “Deadpool, Deadpool, what’s the score?” “Go back to Philadelphia!” “Put that on Netflix.” This last insult missed the mark a bit. Welcome to Wrexham will air on Disney+. One player, a midfielder named Kwame Thomas, told me that the presence of a film crew at Wrexham’s games had upped levels of compet- itiveness. “Other players see the cameras and think, I’m not losing on Netflix.” As sports doc- umentaries proliferate, it has become second nature to pro athletes that their performances 138 GQ OCTOBER 2022

only possible but probable. There was one week experimentally taken up smoking, operating received the season’s final gut punch – left of the regular season left to play. Why not on the belief that it brought goals. McElhenney a Grimsby goal. That was it. Hopes of promo- Wrexham AFC? was pale. Reynolds paced. He once estimated tion would be deferred a year. Thousands of that he averaged about three miles per game fans stayed inside the stadium to cheer off the B E C A U S E T H I S S P O R T , the most popular on in that lounge. They tried to be positive, star- players and sing buck-up songs. Michael Hett the planet, one of the oldest, purest, most ing off the balcony into a stadium they’d over- was out there somewhere, joining in with his accessible pursuits we have, can be a mean hauled, hearing the roars of a fan base they’d own chorus of “Bring on the Deadpool.” Johnny and contrary bastard too. Because football given permission to believe. “A huge reason Rob Legless was well on his way to leglessness. seems to defer its traps, keeping back twists wanted to do this in the first place was to find until late in a season to maximise heartbreak. somewhere that was deserving of some good Up on the balcony, McElhenney asked Because that round chequered ball might look news and a good time,” Ker told me. “I think he Ker to translate some of the chanting. Ker innocent, but do not be fooled – it knows when gave them that.” tuned his ear to the great guttural choruses, you’ve come to believe, it knows when you’ve let explaining that the Wrexham fans were tell- down your guard, it remembers weaknesses, it The referee blew his whistle. During a match ing the Grimsby fans (who after all, came from is The Count of Monte Cristo, it is Arnie’s first a week earlier, Reynolds and McElhenney were a coastal town) that they stank of fish. The Terminator, it is Leo’s Revenant, and it will get made to look like football novices all over again, Grimsby fans had taken this on board, com- when they were filmed celebrating a would-be ing up with a response that seemed to capture football in all its brilliant, wounded, contrary McElhenney shows how much he loves his new Welsh team in full public view. strangeness: “We stink of fish! We stink of fish!” McElhenney nodded. Back in the autumn, he you. Because Ryan Reynolds shed tears of love goal – long after a referee’s assistant had waved and Reynolds had been asked in a press scrum for his team in full public view, and by doing so his flag to signal that this goal did not count. how far they might take Wrexham. Their he showed football how much he cared. Their loyal capo Ker had taken pains to remind answer was brisk and funny. “Space,” they said. his bosses to look out for any such flags today, In fact, what transpired over the season was That May, Boreham Wood – technically but still McElhenney was distraught early in almost as far-fetched. For a moment, Wrexham inferior to Wrexham and further reduced by the Grimsby game when it seemed to him that stood among the biggest scorers in Europe. It a red card – somehow rallied late in a game to Wrexham had conceded. Ker politely nudged had rushed so fast and so far up the league, its score a penalty. Had Wrexham held on a few him. The learning curve for these two would own bard could not keep pace. minutes more, they would likely have gone on carry on for years, for as long as they stayed at to win the league. As it happened, no. The fatal Wrexham. “Right, right, gotta look at the flag,” The team had not managed to get promoted. turning point came with a bit of carelessness McElhenney said, apologetically acknowledg- But as long as it started ascending through on a week night in Boreham Wood, as Reynolds ing that Grimsby’s goal had been disallowed. the leagues the following May, there was still was dressing for the Met Gala in New York and enough time for Reynolds and McElhenney to McElhenney followed the game via laptop in Soon there were goals that did stand. Paul take Wrexham to the Premier League by 2026, L.A. Stockport were soon confirmed as league Mullin scored. Grimsby replied with two of its just shy of their 50th birthdays. They didn’t champions. Second-place finishers, Wrexham own, then Wrexham went ahead again, 3-2. It own a mountain together, instead, a moun- had a chance to join it in promotion, but only if was another of the team’s drama-filled specta- tain of a task. McElhenney had long been con- it could fight its way out of a playoff. cles. It fell behind 4-3. It equalised, 4-4. This vinced they could do this. The first time I met was a playoff and there had to be a winner, him, he was merrily teasing Reynolds about At the end of May, Reynolds and McElhenney so into extra time they went. With two min- notable duds from the actor’s filmography. were in Wales to watch Wrexham play Grimsby utes remaining, Reynolds and McElhenney “Hey, what was your character in that Sandra Town. Nerves abounded in the lounge. Ker had Bullock movie?” asked McElhenney, in refer- ence to 2009’s The Proposal. Reynolds bowed his head and pretended not to remember. “How about the Jason Bateman movie, the one where you switched bodies?” He meant 2011’s The Change-Up. Reynolds feigned cluelessness again. At that, McElhenney turned to me and said when he saw those movies, he didn’t see an actor on a bad run. He saw an actor surviv- ing a bad run. “I saw somebody resilient. And those are the people you want to spend your life working with.” Anyone who’d been in show business as long as these two understood how to take a hum- bling, ultra-conspicuous defeat – and weather it, continuing on. After the Grimsby game, Reynolds and McElhenney departed Wrexham by taxi, already putting questions about the future of their team to the group text, spit- balling ideas, making plans. Permissions had been sought to demolish that condemned and weedy terrace. A permanent scoreboard was coming. And that mysterious door, the one that oozed grease? A stadium employee had fixed it. Things were looking okay. There were 70 days before the start of the new season. tom lamont is a writer based in London. OCTOBER 2022 GQ 139

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early December of last year, about 10 weeks to find Lil Uzi Vert waiting for him. A$AP Instead, the designer traded pure invention after taking over as artistic director at the Rocky soon followed. Then came the record for reinvention at the helm of an iconic Paris French luxury brand Kenzo, the Japanese fash- label executive Steven Victor, who summoned fashion house that is older than him by several ion designer Nigo flew by private jet from Paris a film crew for an impromptu music video months. Kenzo Takada, the brand’s founder, to New York, where he headed straight for the shoot to promote the album I Know Nigo, a remains a guiding light at 18 rue Vivienne, Midtown Manhattan town house of upscale jew- pandemic project that would blossom into despite having retired from the company in eller Jacob & Co. It was a familiar pilgrimage for one of the more interesting hip-hop records of 1999. Takada’s recent death, in October 2020, the streetwear icon, whose appetite for custom 2022. The album features 11 songs, all curated has made Nigo especially mindful of the need chains with diamond-encrusted pendants has by Nigo, with new music by Pusha T; Kid Cudi; to balance his own creative vision with a degree made Jacob “The Jeweler” Arabo his informal Tyler, the Creator; and several other rappers of fealty to his late countryman. biographer. This chronicle of Nigo’s career whose association with the streetwear icon began with necklaces with fist-size ape heads became a kind of hip-hop flex. The ultimate “It is legitimate to say that Nigo is the first inspired by A Bathing Ape, the culture-shifting flex, though, belonged to Nigo, who demon- streetwear designer that’s taken on this kind of streetwear brand Nigo founded in Tokyo’s strated real clout by using the occasion of his brand,” said Toby Feltwell, a cofounder and cre- Harajuku neighbourhood in 1993. Then came new album to reunite, for the first time since ative director at streetwear label Cav Empt, who the bejewelled dollar signs commemorating 2009, Clipse and the Neptunes – a defunct rap worked with Nigo at both Bape and Billionaire the Billionaire Boys Club brand he cofounded duo and a seldom active production team, Boys Club. (“I would say that Virgil was a kind with superstar producer Pharrell Williams a brought together again by their favourite fash- of post-streetwear designer,” he added, not to decade later. In celebration of Human Made, ion designer. diminish Virgil Abloh’s historic turn at Louis the subdued, hypebeast-casual clothing line he Vuitton, but to correct a common misappre- launched in 2010, Arabo crafted an assortment “Nigo is the master curator and tastemaker,” hension about streetwear’s current relationship of polar bears, ducks, and other cartoonish Pusha T told me in an email. “His ability to be with runway fashion.) characters cast in diamonds and white gold. so influential for so long is unprecedented and speaks to his appreciation and love for the A month after the shoot at Jacob & Co, As Nigo strolled the length of Jacob & Co’s culture.” Nigo would return to the international stage tunnel-like showroom, bathed in lighting pow- to present his debut Kenzo collection – the erful enough to reveal the flaws in any gem, it Balancing music video shoots with his work autumn 2022 line, which is in stores now. It was clear why LVMH, Kenzo’s parent company, for Kenzo brought back a familiar sensation was a parade of colourful workwear, suits, and had such confidence in the youth appeal of a – one that first struck Nigo two decades ago, knits, replete with archival prints, styled with 50-year-old designer. Dressed in jeans, a white when A Bathing Ape exploded in America. It berets and letterman jackets, all crafted from hoodie, and a denim jacket, Nigo had arrived was instantly embraced by hip-hop luminaries the simple fabrics (denim, cotton, wool) Nigo like Jay-Z, Pharrell, Busta Rhymes, and Kanye knows best. West, who, in turn, sought out the designer when visiting Tokyo. “I thought, Oh, here we The show was a reminder of Nigo’s talent for go again,” Nigo said. outsourcing showmanship – Ye sat with actress Julia Fox at the unveiling of the Kenzo collec- Of course, the Kenzo role presents a novel tion inside Paris’s Galerie Vivienne, flanked by challenge. For the first time in his long career, Pharrell; Pusha T; and Tyler, the Creator. Asked the brand that would rise or fall on his creative by a journalist why he was there, Ye uttered just decisions was not one that he built himself. two syllables before walking away: “Nigo.” Runway looks from Nigo’s first two Kenzo collections, autumn 2022 and spring 2023, made use W H E N I A R R I V E D at Kenzo’s Paris headquar- COURTESY OF KENZO (4). of a few things he knows well – crisp denim, graphic prints, and statement hats. ters in early June, Nigo was busy working on the follow-up to his first collection in a large sun-drenched office situated at the back of the stately compound at 18 rue Vivienne – a build- ing that could easily pass as the headquarters of a European bank. Nigo’s outfit was similarly understated: Dressed in a simple grey sweat- shirt and jeans, without the sunglasses and hat that so often serve as his uniform, he looked like a poster boy for Japan’s late-20th-century obsession with American casual clothing. Nigo’s office is as spare as the empty court- yard beneath it. In the centre of the room, pho- tographs of the collection in progress sat in neat piles on the long table Nigo uses instead of a desk. To the right of that table were a row of cabinets, an espresso machine, and a small refrigerator, and to its left, floor-to-ceiling win- dows facing the quiet courtyard. Behind it was a foldable partition that serves as a makeshift changing room, with a single hook for hanging Nigo’s ubiquitous denim jacket. “I’m here for about a week each month,” Nigo told me. During these sojourns from his 142 GQ OCTOBER 2022

“I realised I’d done pretty much everything you can do in the world of streetwear. I realised I needed a new challenge.” Nigo at Kenzo’s headquarters in Paris, where the designer works on upcoming collections suits over turtlenecks. But in a few he seemed when not at his home base in Tokyo. taken with the same American casual clothing that would later fascinate Nigo – jeans with home in Tokyo, he rises with the sun to keep up weeks left before showtime, his focus was on thick leather belts, plaid dress shirts, and sweat- with business back in Japan, which includes achieving “a degree of consistency” by connect- ers draped over the shoulders like some sort of overseeing operations at Human Made. Later ing his first Kenzo collection to his second. Ivy League cosplay. “I always thought Western on in the morning, as Paris comes alive, he things were so much cooler,” Nigo said. “To the goes about the business of creating his latest “I’m not into the idea of a brand moving faster extent that I started hating Japanese culture.” collection for Kenzo, which involves a lot more than the customers,” Nigo said, describing the This hatred has faded, but Nigo’s genuine affin- collaboration than Nigo is accustomed to – or current system by which most fashion brands ity for Kenzo’s founder does seem to be rooted at least a lot more people than he’s used to col- work, a system that he does not intend to fall in in their shared fascination with the sartorial laborating with. line with: “You do a show to get people excited mythologies of the West. by the clothes, and then by the time those clothes “My way of working is not like a top-down are in the store you’ve already moved on to Nigo’s fascination with Amerikaji, or dictator, but like a director,” Nigo told me. something completely different.” American casual, started with a popular “Rather than very defined instructions, I bring Japanese boy band from the 1980s called The the team images and reference pieces that I On the table between us sat a vintage Checkers. “They dressed like 1950s rockers, hope will inspire them.” Initially, this meant Japanese fashion magazine, which he opened which I really loved,” Nigo told me. “I started using specific references from his own per- to reveal several pages filled with black-and- wearing Levi’s 501 jeans and Adidas T-shirts sonal collection, feeling that “it was essential white photos of Kenzo Takada, who’s become and a bomber jacket I got at a store specialis- to look at actual garments in order to avoid an object of intense study for Nigo. Flipping ing in American casualwear.” Next came Run- producing something that seems artificial, through the magazine, his Buddha-like detach- DMC, who helped connect Nigo’s Amerikaji which is always a danger in streetwear, espe- ment dissolved into giddy fascination. obsession to American culture, just as it was cially in Europe.” For spring 2023, he was able becoming increasingly synonymous with hip- to make better use of references from Kenzo’s “My work for Kenzo reflects my personal hop culture. But Nigo’s success would depend own extensive archives, which fuelled his connection to the brand, so I place the empha- as much on his emerging sense of taste as on his appetite for “compiling, editing, and trusting sis on where it was in the ’80s, because that’s studies at a top Tokyo fashion institute called that the things I want to connect together will when I was first becoming interested in fash- Bunka Fukus¯o Gakuin, where he graduated be right.” In early June, with just over three ion,” Nigo told me. from a program for aspiring magazine editors in 1991. His inspiration was Hiroshi Fujiwara, In most of the magazine photos, Takada wore founder of the seminal Japanese streetwear distinctly European coats and double-breasted brand Goodenough, who was touted as Japan’s original street-culture seer. In those days, he wasn’t yet known as Nigo, but went still by his given name, Tomoaki Nagao. He bore such a close resemblance to Hiroshi Fujiwara, though, that friends began referring to him as Hiroshi Fujiwara Nigo, meaning Hiroshi Fujiwara number two. A stint as Fujiwara’s per- sonal assistant cemented the nickname, which was soon shortened to Nigo. That proximity to Fujiwara also put him at the centre of the bur- geoning Harajuku streetwear scene. He landed a job at the taste-making menswear magazine Popeye – with the slogan “magazine for city boys” – and in 1993, Nigo and his Bunka Fukus¯o Gakuin schoolmate Jun Takahashi opened a small shop called Nowhere, located in what were then the quiet back streets of Harajuku. Takahashi sold clothing under his own label, OCTOBER 2022 GQ 143



Undercover, while Nigo dealt in streetwear “My way of working produces by conceptualising songs, samples, brands imported from America. (Fujiwara had is not like a top- and beats that are then realised through a broad long been the de facto Stüssy representative in down dictator. array of collaborators: His genre-bending debut Japan.) Before the year was over, Nigo began I bring the team album, Ape Sounds, released on the British Mo’ making his own limited edition T-shirts and images that I hope Wax label in 2000, blended psychedelic pop jackets, adorned with simian imagery cribbed will inspire them.” and trip-hop and featured Money Mark and from Planet of the Apes. The brand’s ape logo Cornelius. Five years later, with his Japanese was designed by Shinichiro Nakamura, an artist about this guy who would come in with post- hip-hop group Teriyaki Boyz, Nigo’s producers better known as Sk8thing, who also gave Nigo’s ers of me and the jewellery I was making with included DJ Premier, Just Blaze, the Neptunes, clothing line its oddly poetic name: A Bathing Jacob, saying he would want jewellery made Ad Rock from the Beastie Boys, and Mark Ape in Lukewarm Water. This nod to the aim- just like it. So Jacob would make it for him, but if Ronson. What happened in the interim was less, tolerably comfortable lives of Nigo’s gener- I got it in yellow gold, Nigo would get it in yellow explained to me by Feltwell, who was studying ation, who entered adulthood amid Japan’s first gold and white gold and rose gold.” Eventually, law and working as an A&R representative for postwar economic downturn, was shortened to they met in Tokyo, where Nigo invited Pharrell Mo’ Wax when Nigo hired him to work at Bape. A Bathing Ape, and, eventually, Bape. to use his recording studio while he was in town for a concert. “And when I worked at his studio, I “We recognised that there was a big shift com- Over the course of the next decade, Bape realised it was a whole world,” Pharrell told me. ing in global popular culture, and that we kind exploded, first in Japan, then abroad. Its stun- “One floor was a studio, another was a show- of fitted into that in a symbiotic kind of way,” ning success was partly due to the strategy room for apparel, the next was a showroom for Feltwell told me. “We could see it coming, and of boosting demand by keeping supply low, a footwear, and the next floor was a photography we could see that there needed to be a new look notion that was already working for Stüssy in studio where he shot all his campaigns.” that fit with that cultural movement.” Japan. That brand’s founder, Shawn Stüssy, had initially made clothes for surfers, but they In the years that followed, Nigo and Pharrell With Feltwell acting as his interpreter, Nigo caught on with skateboarders as well. “Shawn became like Vivienne Westwood and the Sex spent more time in New York, where both men was focused on the people he made the clothes Pistols – and because Pharrell was synonymous grew increasingly convinced that American for,” Fujiwara told me. “His priorities didn’t with hip-hop, so too was Nigo. This evolution hip-hop would become the dominant cultural change overnight when Stüssy became pop- is most evident in Nigo’s own music, which he force in the decade to come. Japan’s rising cul- ular with people who weren’t surfers.” That tural relevance in America, meanwhile, was focus made an impression on Fujiwara, who evident by the turn of the century – Hayao deployed a similar strategy with Goodenough. Miyazaki won an Oscar for Spirited Away, Nigo then followed the Goodenough example Takashi Murakami became a Pop art sensa- and limited production and restricted sales tion, and sales of Hello Kitty merchandise pre- to his own stores, which cultivated an aura of saged what would later happen with Pokémon. exclusivity around Bape T-shirts and jackets made with ordinary, inexpen- Left: Nigo observes a poppy mural at Kenzo’s headquarters in Paris while wearing his own design sive materials. T-shirt; Below: Colourful purses and handbags from the Kenzo spring 2023 collection. His connections at important mag- azines like Popeye and Hot Dog, and his insider understanding of Japan’s fashion press, meanwhile, assured the kind of coverage that helped spot- light the cult clothing brand. Scenes foretelling streetwear’s global future unfolded outside the tiny shop, where rabid fans lined up by the hundreds for a chance to buy one of 50 new Bape T-shirts. This went on for several years before Nigo finally embraced the key difference between himself and his mentor: Unlike Fujiwara, who never wanted a big company with an army of employees, Nigo craved more. In 1998, he opened several new shops across Japan, each designed to project a sense of luxury, and he started mak- ing enough T-shirts to sell to everyone. Bape soon transcended exclusivity and became, arguably, the world’s first streetwear label capable of masquer- ading as a luxury brand. Nigo’s profile went global around 2003, when he became friends with Pharrell. They met through Jacob, who, Pharrell told me, “was talking OCTOBER 2022 GQ 145

By 2003, American pop culture was awash in he has adopted; one that is in tension with imagine anyone actually wearing.” visions of Japan through Sofia Coppola’s Lost his belief that “the real joy of collecting things Freedom can be its own kind of trap, though, in Translation, which was filmed on location is knowing that your collection will never even if this didn’t occur to Nigo until he was in Tokyo for a budget of $4 million and earned be complete.” asked to take over at Kenzo. “I realised I’d $118 million at the box office. (Hiroshi Fujiwara At the time of the auction, three years had done pretty much everything you can do in had a cameo.) A year later, with her song passed since Nigo had sold Bape’s parent com- the world of streetwear,” he said. “I realised “Harajuku Girls,” Gwen Stefani paid tribute pany, Nowhere Co. Ltd, for just a little more I needed a new challenge.” to the neighbourhood that Fujiwara and Nigo than $2 million – a sum that reflected the com- helped build. All of this was in Nigo’s favour, as pany’s sizable debts rather than its revenue, W I T H T H R E E W E E K S left to prepare his sopho- was his broad curiosity about America and his which remained above $60 million annually. more collection, Nigo joined me for lunch at malleable sense of what American culture was Aside from its mounting debt, the sale seemed a favourite Italian restaurant in Paris’s 2nd supposed to look like. Then, of course, there to be partly motivated by Nigo’s desire to move arrondissement. Over white wine and an was his fortuitous friendship with the hip-hop on creatively, rather than staying tethered to antipasti of creamy burrata, he told me he’d world’s favourite jeweller. the same hoodies and Bapesta sneakers that never imagined his work schedule might one In time, Nigo’s penchant for collecting osten- kept his simian colossus going from one season day revolve around runway shows. “I don’t see tatious jewellery, modern art, and vintage fur- to the next. “In some ways I felt limited by the that part of the fashion business as especially niture led him to buy a reportedly $30-million success of Bape, because it forced me to spend romantic,” he said. “But having spent my career home with its own warehouse in central Tokyo. a lot of time making things I didn’t necessarily in another part of the fashion world, taking “It got pretty out of hand, which is part of why I want to make,” Nigo said. “Every season had this job at Kenzo was attractive in part because decided to sell some of my collection a few years to have its own shark hoodies or camouflage it gives me the chance to experience what ago,” Nigo told me. He did this through a 2014 pieces – the parts of the brand that were most might be considered mainstream fashion.” Sotheby’s auction, which was presented as an successful just ended up weighing me down.” The learning curve was steep. While build- estate sale. It included artwork by Andy Warhol, Human Made, which Nigo founded in 2010, ing his debut collection, Nigo had to adapt to KAWS, and Hajime Sorayama; furniture by Jean was an attempt at reconnecting with his fashion an entirely different work culture. His staff Prouvé and Charles and Ray Eames; and luxury roots, and for years its smaller profile has been a was on edge at first, because it’s not uncom- goods ranging from Richard Mille watches to kind of refuge for the designer, who revelled in mon for new creative directors to bring their trunks from Maison Goyard, Louis Vuitton, and his post-Bape freedom to indulge in Amerikaji own people with them. “I think a lot of them Fendi. Auctioning off part of his collection, he understatement and to focus on making “some- expected to be fired,” he told me. The arrival told me, was an opportunity to witness some- thing real”. “Things right now are so shocking of CEO Sylvain Blanc eased the transition, but thing like his own funeral – the auction was and so loud. My approach is to make something it took weeks for tensions to pass. “The group called Nigo Only Lives Twice. That desire spoke so grounded in reality that it contrasts with the doesn’t change the CEO and the designer of a to the profoundly object-orientated worldview insanity of all these clothes that you can’t really brand at the same time because things have been going fantastically well,” Feltwell A Kenzo employee fits a model leading up to the spring 2023 show; a range of embellishments from the said. “There was a reason that there collection, including the Japanese boke flower Nigo introduced as a new motif for the brand. had to be changes.” Other challenges proved more attractive. For the first collection, Nigo embraced the opportunity to design a line of womenswear, which was well received. He also dialled back the streetwear aesthetic that the brand had spent part of the previous decade leaning into, offering up colourful suits, overcoats, and simple workwear in place of graphic hoodies and bold logos. Now in sync with the staff at Kenzo, Nigo found that his challenge, as a vet- eran tastemaker, was to look further into the future than the streetwear business requires. At Human Made, a small on-site factory makes it possible to swiftly transform ideas into proto- types and prototypes into products. “Creating that sense of desire, that feeling that you have to have something for yourself,” Nigo said, requires not only an ability to “see ahead of everybody else, but also match their feelings.” One of the challenges presented by his work for Kenzo, then, is imagining how peo- ple might feel about a piece of clothing in several months, rather than several weeks. “Coming from a background 146 GQ OCTOBER 2022