The New Macho – The New York Times

“We will connect with a smart, engaged, diverse, and gender-nonspecific audience.” Will Welch, then editor in chief of GQ, 2019.

“GQ will be a magazine for and about men,” Adam Baidawi, GQ’s global editorial director, 2026.

This week, GQ released its first issue under Baidawi, an Australian who was named editor in February after leading the magazine’s Middle East and British properties. Jeremy Strong is on the cover, glowering like Voldemort recast as a tech overlord, in a Loro Piana zip-up hoodie and an oversize wool suit. He holds something peculiar: a weighty-looking steel crossbow and arrow, like a gadget out of a Sharper Image catalog.

When I read Baidawi’s introductory editor’s letter, the phrase “for and about men” instantly burrowed into my brain. It was such unambiguous language, swerving sharply from how the magazine packaged itself just seven years ago under his predecessor. It also felt like a big flashing red sign of the times.

Baidawi’s words compelled me to revisit one of Welch’s first issues as editor. Billed “The New Masculinity” and released in October 2019, it featured Pharrell Williams on the cover in a lemon-yellow Moncler gown (a precursor to Harry Styles in a Gucci dress on the front of Vogue a year later).

In his own note to readers, Welch defined his vision. Some of what he wrote was tender (the issue is “intended as an exploration of how we can all become more generous, honest, open, and loving humans”), while some of it flashed with the wooden language of H.R. inclusivity training (“this issue is the beginning of an open-ended conversation”). Today, Welch’s words read like a hand-over-the-heart promise to “do the work.”

They’re the words of an editor endeavoring to meet a cultural moment. In 2019,#MeToo still reverberated in American life — Welch waved to this, calling it the “Shut Up and Listen moment” — and searching questions about gender animated our everyday life. Welch wrote that a friend had remarked to him that it was a “hell of a time to be in charge of a men’s magazine.”

The same could be said now. People are still tussling, as ever, with what it means to be a man, but the consensus has landed on a narrower, more traditional definition.

I can’t think of the last time Pharrell wore anything close to a gown. Harry Styles is back to performing in pants rather than sequined jumpsuits. Much of our culture has tilted toward manosphere podcasters, U.F.C. fights (on the White House lawn and elsewhere) and politicians with family values platforms.

I want to return, though, to that cover image of Strong, because it does reflect something about how we think of men today. Strong stands alone, a mountain at his back and a sort of weapon in his hand. The tableau befits an actor whose next role is as a corporate titan: Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Reckoning.”

It’s easy to picture Zuckerberg swapping in for Strong. You’ve got the exorbitant cazsh-clashing-with-formal ensemble. The world-conquering stare, the “man going it alone” setting, the he-man hobby. In this singular image, we get a clear packaging of how so many men — in tech, Hollywood and beyond — strive for people to see them now. Serious and stern, with work on their mind. Smitten by fancy toys, quiet luxury clothes and remote locales, far away from the unwashed masses. It’s not the new masculinity. It’s the new macho.

On the other September covers:

Vogue’s September cover is fine enough, if flat. It shows Homer Gere and Kaia Gerber, stars of the new FX show “The Shards” and, yes, scions of two famous parents who once were married. He of Richard Gere. She of Cindy Crawford.

These are two actors — still in their mid 20s, trailed by their famous last names — who are just cresting into stardom. The cover can’t really play into or against our preconceptions about them because, well, we don’t really have any yet. So we get an unvarnished image of two pretty, smiling people. They’re both in new-look Chanel — she in a shimmery scrub-up of a granny plaid suit, he in a blazer, jeans and a prep-school tie. The cover has about as much electricity as a J.C. Penney back-to-school catalog.

Vogue appeared to acknowledge that the pair’s respective genealogy was, perhaps, the cover’s raison d’être. On its website on Tuesday, promoted the Kaia/Homer cover image alongside its 1992 cover featuring their parents.

It’s almost unfair. How could we not compare these striving scions with their more famous progenitors? It was as if Vogue was saying: “Hey, remember these folks? They’re back … but not quite!” Not quite indeed.

Esquire dropped its cover online this week as well, showing Brad Pitt in a cherry-red Louis Vuitton shirt. If the relative low-wattage of Gere and Gerber on Vogue proved how difficult it is for Hollywood to mint new stars now, Esquire’s cover seemed to affirm that Pitt, 62, remains a draw nearly four decades into his career.

Yet it couldn’t avoid feeling of another time. Or maybe of another publication? Pitt graced the cover of GQ no less than four times during Welch’s run. The Esquire cover was also styled by George Cortina, who styled Pitt’s last GQ cover. You could even say that the pink neckerchief tucked under Pitt’s chin reverberated with the softer-side pluck that used to course through issues of GQ.

I am curious about the re-emergence of shirtdresses, an article of clothing I associate with the 1950s. I began to notice them among many of the young mothers I see outside schools and then all over the media. What is behind this trend? — Pamela, Swansea, Mass.

Calling the shirtdress a trend is a little like calling arugula a hot lettuce. The garment, like the greens, may wax and wane in popularity, but as a slightly more elevated staple, it never really goes away. Read more…