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  • What on Earth Is Going On With the Timberwolves Brazilian X Account?

    What on Earth Is Going On With the Timberwolves Brazilian X Account?

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    Over the weekend, a seemingly innocuous 106-90 win by the Minnesota Timberwolves over the Miami Heat inspired one of the most attention-grabbing moments of the young NBA season. We will refrain from embedding it here due to its extremely NSFW nature. But if you missed it, the now-infamous tweet from @TWolvesBrasil—a Wolves news account unaffiliated with the team or NBA—can be found here. In the least-freaky way we can describe it, the post showed a cartoon wolf devouring—going to town, really—on some poor, unidentifiable creature in a deeply suggestive way. Let’s just say it was very throat-forward. The caption read, simply, “1-1 VOLTAMOS.” There was also a wolf emoji, for good measure.

    Voltamos translates roughly to “we’re back”, and the 1-1 was the T-Wolves record after this early-season victory. That much all makes perfect sense—par for the course from a basketball account. The content itself, however, is unlike anything we’d ever see from an American team account. Like so many unsuspecting scrollers, I had a mountain of questions that needed answering. One of them was taken care of right there in Timberwolves Brasil’s bio. “Not affiliated with @Timberwolves and/or @NBA.” That’s probably for the best.

    But some curiosity lingered about the larger ecosystem here. Turns out there’s lots of accounts like this, purporting to represent and/or serve NBA fans of Brazilian heritage by posting equally risqué videos. Lots of them have blue checks. Suns Brasil even took the liberty of creating an AI image of Devin Booker and Luka Doncic (neither of whom look at all like their real-life form) engaged in a smooch. It’s all very horny.

    In search of an explanation, I went to Francisco Attié, who works in GQ’s fact-checking department and happens to be Brazilian himself. My first question was: why are these accounts like this? My second was whether he had seen this type of post before. “I don’t know if I’ve often run into ‘horny’ posts,” Attié said. “But Brazilians are notorious for their web engagement with memes and catchphrases. Like the Timberwolves’ post was referencing the phrase ‘o lobo come’/‘the wolf eats,’ that they seem to use on posts after wins.”

    Okay, but why did the Timberwolves Brasil account go so hard after the team’s first win? “I think what often happens is that Brazilian accounts mock the other team after winning, give themselves pats on the back as if they’ve just accomplished the unthinkable, and every celebration almost alludes to them being the best to ever do it,” Attié explained. “This is especially true of Brazilians who support teams that aren’t likely to win, or even make the playoffs sometimes. If this win is all there is, let’s celebrate it like a championship.”

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    Matthew Roberson

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  • 19 Ways to Dress Like a GQ Editor for Less

    19 Ways to Dress Like a GQ Editor for Less

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    This week, GQ Recommends introduced our first-ever All-Stars class, a who’s who of menswear grails, cutting-edge tech, game-raising home goods, and grooming solutions, handpicked by our crack team of shopping experts. The 88 items on the list represent some of the most rigorously vetted, highly endorsed goods in the Recommends universe, and each and every one is guaranteed to make your life a whole lot more stylish.

    In fact, we’re so proud of our debut All-Stars class we secured a flurry of exclusive discounts on 19 of its members, including the swim trunks we can’t quit, the striped shirts we swear by, and the trail-ready kicks we rely on to conquer the outdoors. If you see something you like below, we’d suggest acting fast to secure it. These discounts won’t stick around long—in some cases, they’re valid for the next 24 hours only—so when your copping finger starts twitching, smash the ‘add to cart’ button expeditiously.

    Scroll through the full list of newly-minted All-Stars here, or pick up a copy of GQ’s November issue to ogle them in print (it’s the one with a little-known talent named Timothée Chalamet on the cover—we think he’s going to be big).

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    Todd Snyder has a knack for predicting what fellas want long before they’re able to articulate it themselves. So when the ex-J.Crew honcho proposes a new tailoring silhouette inspired by the excesses of the ’80s—low-slung double-breasted jacket, voluminous pleated trousers—it’s futile to resist. Break the news to your slim suits gently.

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    To dub a shoe the “Mother of All Boots” is audacious. To follow that shoe with a new-and-improved silhouette that’s even freakier than its predecessor isn’t merely audacious—it’s a throwing of the gauntlet. The Moab 3 lives up to its name and then some, updating the rugged all-terrain stomper for the next generation of Merrell acolytes.

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    The kind of slightly rumpled, always attractive button-up you can—and should!—wear every day of the week.

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    When your hair reaches Einsteinian levels of frizz, Olaplex’s rescue formula will restore shine, minimizing flyaways in the process.

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    Industry of All Nations Exclusive Deal

    Everything you could ask for in a beanie: impossibly soft, incomparably warm, and just the right balance of structure and slouch.

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    Thunders Love Exclusive Deal

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    Standard Issue Exclusive Deal

    There’s perhaps no layer more effortlessly flattering than a waffle-knit thermal, and Standard Issue’s drapey, hefty take is best in class.

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    J.Press Exclusive Deal

    Few knits pack as serious a punch as this enduring Ivy League classic, beloved for its fuzzy Shetland wool texture and roomy crewneck silhouette.

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    Use exclusive code GQ10 for 10% off the entire J.Press site from October 30th to November 2nd.

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    The Editors of GQ

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  • With its Kang Phase in Peril, Marvel (Reportedly) Considers an Outside-the-Box Idea: Robert Downey, Jr. As Iron Man

    With its Kang Phase in Peril, Marvel (Reportedly) Considers an Outside-the-Box Idea: Robert Downey, Jr. As Iron Man

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    The days of Total Marvel Hegemony are long gone. While the MCU’s footprint in pop culture remains enormous, Kevin Feige and co. appear to be at a crossroads about the future of their still-expansive superhero slate. A new reported feature by Variety’s Tatiana Siegel unpacks the behind-the-scenes turmoil at the until-recently-Teflon studio. According to Siegel, when Feige and Marvel’s creative brain trust gathered for a creative retreat in Palm Springs this past September, the “most pressing issue” on the table was the problem of Jonathan Majors, who was tapped to play the franchise’s new central villain across multiple films before he was accused of domestic violence earlier this year.

    But the idea that Marvel might be on the hunt for a new actor to play Kang the Conqueror—or a retooled story that doesn’t involve him—isn’t the most eyebrow-raising nugget in Variety’s piece. According to Siegel’s sources, “there have been talks to bring back the original gang for an Avengers movie,” meaning Iron Man (Downey, Jr.) and Black Widow (Johansson) could return to the fold despite dying valiantly in 2019’s Endgame. Downey has played things close to the vest when asked about a possible Marvel return, while Johnson told Gwyneth Paltrow, in reference to the Black Widow character, “[That] chapter is over. I did all that I had to do.” (She will be producing a project at Marvel, though details about it are scant.)

    But what Marvel does about Majors is most critical, and clearly a cloud hanging over the studio. When Marvel selected Majors to join the universe in 2020, he was an ascendant young star fresh off well-received performances in The Last Black Man in San Francisco and Lovecraft Country. Majors debuted as Kang in the Loki series, and played the character in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, but was clearly positioned as the new Thanos for 2026’s Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and 2027’s Avengers: Secret Wars. Everything changed with his arrest, in late March, on assault and harassment charges, which he has denied. On October 25, a judge denied his appeal to have the case dismissed; the controversy has led to Majors being dropped by his management and losing several lucrative brand deals, as well as at least one starring film role.

    Back in April, Deadline reported that there was “zero conversation in the Marvel camp to drop Majors from the MCU,” and he appears as a nerdy Kang variant, “Victor Timely,” in the second season of Loki, whose finale airs November 9th and will reportedly feed directly into Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. An industry insider told Variety, “Marvel is truly fucked with the whole Kang angle. And they haven’t had an opportunity to rewrite until very recently [because of the WGA strike]. But I don’t see a path to how they move forward with him.” In the Variety piece, Siegel wrote that Marvel has considered switching from Kang to “another comic book adversary, like Dr. Doom.”

    Despite the success of recent films like Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the MCU is no longer the critical and commercial juggernaut it was throughout the 2010s. Criticism of both visual effects quality and the working conditions for their VFX artists have led to public scrutiny. In a unanimous September vote, Marvel’s effects team will be unionizing with IATSE, a move that could signal a paradigm shift in the industry.

    Apart from the actual quality, the torrent of Disney+ TV shows led to a high level of viewer fatigue. Eight new Marvel shows launched between January 2021 and August 2022 as part of the MCU’s “Phase Four,” while more recent programs like She-Hulk and Secret Invasion received more mixed reviews. Variety’s story includes a quote from Bob Iger saying that the gold rush of Marvel series “diluted focus and attention” from the universe at large. The uncertainty at Marvel also comes while rival DC is revamping its approach to film and television under Guardians of the Galaxy mastermind James Gunn and Peter Safran.

    The next Marvel project to hit theaters is The Marvels, which features a terrific director in Nia DaCosta and an appealing cast headlined by Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris, and Iman Vellani, though Variety noted that the film earned “middling reviews” at a June public screening.

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    Grant Rindner

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  • ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Author David Grann Picks the Three Best Movies Based on Nonfiction Books (That He Didn’t Write)

    ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Author David Grann Picks the Three Best Movies Based on Nonfiction Books (That He Didn’t Write)

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    Anyone who reads a lot of popular non-fiction is accustomed to the inevitable disappointment of the movie version. Stinkers like Unbroken, In The Heart of the Sea, and He’s Just Not That Into You… (and the list goes on) are barely-remembered for a reason, but even relatively-successful, positively-reviewed films like The Blind Side, Moneyball, or Into The Wild still pale in comparison to the books that spawned them, at least for those of us who read them. “The book was better” isn’t just something book readers say to be pedantic; most of the time, it’s true.

    That’s part of what makes Martin Scorsese’s take on David Grann’s 2017 best-seller Killers of the Flower Moon stand out. While it’s certainly a different story than the book, as all good non-fiction movie adaptations necessarily should be, Scorsese still gets to the heart of its most important themes (the banality of evil and the lawlessness of frontier capitalism especially) and lends them an emotional gravity and visual power beyond words that books can’t. This is especially true of the movie’s ending, which condenses hundreds of pages of often dense (and brilliant) historical exposition into a single, invented scene that somehow captures perfectly the commoditization of the Osage Reign of Terror without repeating any of the details, imbuing them with the added thump of Scorsese acknowledging his own mortality.

    Simply put, it’s hard to remember a non-fiction movie adaptation as successful as Killers of the Flower Moon. (In this writer’s opinion, even the previous film based on a David Grann book—2016’s The Lost City of Z, by the much-loved director James Gray—doesn’t measure up.)

    To help us remember some nonfiction-to-movie adaptations that did work, we turned to someone who’s both an expert at researching the recent past and someone who might have some opinions about book-to-movie adaptations: David Grann himself, who agreed to share a few of his favorites.

    Zodiac

    “I’ve grown a bit exhausted by films about serial killers, but this adaptation is about so much more. It is a deep exploration of the nature of obsession—of the killer’s fixations and our fixations with unraveling the mystery of the killer. And the movie grapples with a question that has always haunted me as a reporter: What happens when the facts we frantically seek to make sense of murderous evil—including the identity of the perpetrator—elude us?”

    All the President’s Men

    “I recently rewatched this film and I found it no less gripping than when I first saw it decades ago. The movie manages to capture not only the historic Watergate conspiracy but also the deep, unsettling paranoia that can eat away at society when institutions are unstable—something that feels unnervingly familiar today. Plus, the film helped to unleash a whole new generation of investigative reporters—though none of them looked quite like Robert Redford.”

    Adaptation

    “This ‘adaptation,’ if you can call it that, of Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief brilliantly and hysterically gets at the essential conundrum of transforming a work of facticity into a work of cinema. They are such wildly different mediums. One is bound by the literal truth, the author’s decisions dictated by the underlying source materials; the other is visual and elastic, with invented scenes and dialogue, illuminating realms inaccessible to a reporter or a historian. In the case of Adaptation, the screenwriter Charlie Kaufman madly shows what happens when these two equally passionate art forms collide.”

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    Vince Mancini

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  • How ‘Priscilla’ Built its Graceland, A Cage As Pretty as a Wedding Cake

    How ‘Priscilla’ Built its Graceland, A Cage As Pretty as a Wedding Cake

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    Sofia Coppola was determined to get the clock right.

    This wasn’t just any clock. It was an imposing starburst clock, a grander version of the kind that became popular in the 1950s, with a black face and shimmery gold spokes. And it needed to dominate a mirrored wall surrounding the mantle in the living room at Graceland. Buying a replica would have been costly. When Priscilla set decorator Patricia Cuccia showed Coppola what her team had come up with instead, the director felt it was too small. Not enough pizzazz. So the art department extended the clock’s diameter using—of all things—painted cardboard. Looking at it onscreen, you’d never sense it’s not authentic.

    Priscilla went to great lengths to recreate Graceland. That didn’t usually require baroque paper products, but hey: whatever’s fit for the King. Or, rather, his bride. In adapting Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir Elvis and Me, Coppola’s new biopic focuses solely on its eponymous subject’s perspective. While living in West Germany with her military family, a teenage Priscilla (Cailee Spaeny) meets one of Elvis’ friends, who invites her to meet Elvis (Jacob Elordi), who sweeps her into his gilded inner sanctum. Eventually, she moves to Graceland, the 13.8-acre Memphis property that Elvis bought in 1957.

    Coppola told Cuccia the film’s aesthetics should align with Marie Antoinette and The Beguiled, her other two movies about women living unfulfilled lives in beautiful homes. Cuccia and production designer Tamara Deverell studied the relatively few snapshots they could find of Graceland from the time Priscilla lived there (1963 to 1972), as well as floor plans, original interior-design sketches, and additional photographs Coppola cited, particularly those of Americana legend William Eggleston. Most of the interiors, constructed on a soundstage in Toronto, grew from that research. Elvis’ decorator used furniture made by midcentury designer T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings, which gave Cuccia a foundation to build off of. The rest of the house was embellished. Elvis outfitted the home for his beloved mother, so a feminine touch was essential. Coppola wanted the whole thing to look like a wedding cake, soft and creamy.

    “I didn’t want to be bogged down with reality,” Deverell says. “We’re making a movie about a person who is still alive, and this really was more about Priscilla’s memory. We took little Easter eggs from different Graceland images.”

    That starburst clock, for example, was really there. (You can spot one in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, too.) So were the animal statues, including the porcelain tiger in Elvis’ bedroom and the lifesize ceramic Afghan hound in his office. Elvis would buy lamps for his mom while traveling, and some of those exact models are on display. The drapes—blue velvet in the dining room, buttery-yellow sateen in the music room, red during Christmastime—were dyed to look as close to what hung in Graceland as the movie’s lighting design would allow. On Elvis’ bedside table? Books he read during his mind-opening spiritual phase, like Autobiography of a Yogi and Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet. (The pickleball court that Coppola had built on the soundstage for lunch tournaments was an anachronistic addition.)

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    Matthew Jacobs

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  • Meet The Scorpion Kings Who Still Wear the Jacket From ‘Drive’

    Meet The Scorpion Kings Who Still Wear the Jacket From ‘Drive’

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    “It kind of started around when Barbie came out. I watched it and fell in love with Ryan Gosling, so I made my way through his movies. Drive really stuck out to me. I tend to get hyperfixated to things very quickly, so I’ve been building my collection over the past few months.” Including, of course, the jacket, which Mikey wore to the cinema the day before we speak. “I’m planning on wearing it for Halloween as my costume, too, once I get some fake blood.”

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    One of the great (and few) advantages of the digital age is that there’s a community to be found for anything, even such niche obsessions as mid-budget Gosling movies from the 2010s. Given I found Mikey on Twitter, I’m curious: is there a wider Drive fandom to which he belongs? “It’s more of a general Ryan Gosling fandom I am a part of, but I’m the person I see mostly talking about Drive, so I guess you could say I’m the Drive Guy,” he says. “It’s also where I met my now girlfriend, which is really funny.” No prizes for guessing which movie they bonded over.

    Kaia, 20, from Blackpool, England, saw the film a year or so ago. “There was something about Gosling’s character I related to heavily. He’s sort of this loner guy who nobody really understands. I felt a connection with this unnamed character and instantly knew I needed the scorpion jacket for myself.” He didn’t want to settle for a cheapo reproduction; after a lot of legwork, he managed to find an original 2012 replica from Steady Clothing on Facebook Marketplace, bought from a guy who vacationed in California when the movie came out.

    He wears the jacket often, but he mostly saves it for movie nights. “I mainly wear it while watching the film,” Kaia says. “It makes me feel more connected with the character and the film, I guess.”

    As to whether the Drive jacket is going to soon fade into obscurity, riding off into the horizon like an unspeaking yearner with a knife in his gut, Kaia is skeptical. “There is this sort of aura around the Driver and the jacket,” he says. “I don’t see it dying in popularity any time soon.”

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    Jack King

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  • The Gambling Life of Ja Rule, Who Once Made $100,000 at the Craps Table

    The Gambling Life of Ja Rule, Who Once Made $100,000 at the Craps Table

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    What’s the most you ever made gambling?

    Oh, man, a couple of hundred grand.

    What was it on?

    A couple of things: Basketball, Super Bowl, stuff like that.

    When you win big like that, how does it happen? Is it a parlay? Moneyline?

    Betting the spread, moneyline, parlays, all the above. But usually when I win big like that, I bet big and I usually take the moneyline or take the spread. I don’t usually play parlays for big money. I play small money on parlays and shit and hope to the gambling gods we win.

    Is there one bet in particular that you can remember winning big?

    One time I was in, I want to say Australia, and I made maybe 100 grand at a craps table. That was a good time. I was shaking them things all day. And the crazy thing— I had to do a TV interview, and I completely blew it off. You never leave the table on a heater.

    How about losses?

    I remember a time when me and [Irv] Gotti, we bet, like, a couple of hundred grand on a basketball game, and Gilbert Arenas killed us on the spread. We was fucking with him, heckling them. At the end of the game, he took this shot in hopes and desperation to backdoor cover the spread—because they couldn’t win the game—but he took a half court shot just to fucking destroy us, and we lost our money. I’ll never forget that ever in my life. He fucking punished us that day, man. Big shout out to the Hibachi.

    That’s the up and down flow of gambling. You go through that shit time and time again. Gamblers, we got all kinds of ways to try to get it back. Once we lose it, it’s a slippery slope. That’s why I don’t gamble as much as I used to.

    What are you into these days then?

    I like fantasy football. I’m big on that. We play fantasy football for big money. I play with a really cool group of guys like CC Sabathia, Michael Rapaport, Joe Budden, Bun B. I won this fucking year, just to let you know.

    What’s the buy in for the league?

    I think we’re at maybe like 10, 15 grand? Something like that. We went up a few times.

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    Abe Beame

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  • Matthew Perry’s Best Movie is a More-Heartfelt-Than-Usual ‘90s Rom-com

    Matthew Perry’s Best Movie is a More-Heartfelt-Than-Usual ‘90s Rom-com

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    This past Monday, Salma Hayek Pinault posted a tribute to Matthew Perry, who died over the weekend at the age of 54. “I was very moved last year when Matthew shared on his Instagram stories how much he loved ‘Fools Rush In,’ and how he thought that that film we did together was probably his best movie,” she wrote. “Throughout the years, he and I found ourselves reminiscing about that meaningful time in our lives with a deep sense of nostalgia and gratitude. My friend, you are gone much too soon, but I will continue to cherish your silliness, your perseverance, and your lovely heart.”

    Most of the eulogies for Perry have focused on his performance as the nervy, sarcastic Chandler Bing in ten seasons of the megahit NBC series Friends, while acknowledging that his non-Friends work never reached those heights—in part because of his well-documented struggles with addiction and in part because Friends was such a titanic, overwhelming cultural force it could be hard to break free from its shadow.

    But Pinault’s lovely remembrance centers instead on their collaboration, which was one of Perry’s notable film performances and also represents something of a road not taken for the actor. When you watch Fools Rush In, you can see a universe where Perry’s movie stardom as a rom-com leading man continued to rise.

    Fools Rush In was not the only rom-com that Perry starred in, but in retrospect it’s by far the best regarded, even though at the time of its release it was seen as a disappointment by some critics. Roger Ebert, however, was a fan. “Yes, the movie is a cornball romance,” he wrote in 1997. “Yes, it manufactures a lot of standard plot twists. But there is also a level of observation and human comedy here; the movie sees how its two cultures are different and yet share so many of the same values, and in Perry and Hayek it finds a chemistry that isn’t immediately apparent.”

    Watching it now, you can see that Fools Rush In maybe wasn’t the best of its genre—Jerry Maguire had come out just months earlier—but is the kind of movie you wish people today would make more often. Directed by Andy Tennant, it sticks to its formulas, but does them well, and brings an amount of insight to its culture-clash elements that is more thoughtful than one would necessarily expect for the mid-90s.

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    Esther Zuckerman

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  • Quin Snyder Is Single-Handedly Reviving NBA Coach Fashion

    Quin Snyder Is Single-Handedly Reviving NBA Coach Fashion

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    In recent years, we have lamented the fact that NBA coaches are not getting dressed up for work anymore. It’s not that every sideline general looked straight out of a menswear catalog—some coaches desperately needed a tailor, and even a tailor couldn’t help a few of them. But the guys wore suits, and that was good. Now, thanks to the pandemic sending everyone into casual mode, you will find zero coaches in a suit and tie, nary a cufflink or pocket square in sight. We’ve entered a world of lazy, unimaginative coach style. This year, though, it seems like one man can inspire change: Quin Snyder, head coach of the Atlanta Hawks, is bringing some technicolor to an otherwise dreary world.

    Snyder, 57, coached the Utah Jazz from 2014 to 2022. And in that time, he earned a reputation (perhaps only in our minds) for wearing high-end watches and designer belts while yelling out pick-and-roll coverages. After resigning from his perch in Salt Lake City and taking last season off, he’s back this year with a flair fitting for the vibrant city he now inhabits. In his first season helming the Hawks, Snyder is embracing the team’s vivacious red hues. He’s only four games in, but the former Duke Blue Devil has shown a devotion to getting fits off, and a pair of snazzy little red glasses are really stealing the show. (Update: We have confirmed that they are indeed the Percey frames from Warby Parker, specifically the raspberry color.) Even as he and his coaching brethren are dressing down, he’s found ways to fit in while still standing out.

    Snyder and Dejounte Murray both showcasing great basketball aesthetics.

    Nathaniel S. Butler/Getty Images

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    Matthew Roberson

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  • ‘The Holdovers’ is the Highlight of a Very Good Year for Paul Giamatti

    ‘The Holdovers’ is the Highlight of a Very Good Year for Paul Giamatti

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    At first, Paul and Angus are at each other’s throats. Paul would rather be spending his time alone, reading Marcus Aurelius; Angus would rather be hanging out in Saint Kitts. Their animosity comes to a head when Angus goes on a spree throughout the school’s halls with Paul chasing after him. It’s a perfect example of Giamatti physical comedy. A perpetually tipsy pipe smoker, Paul is not in the best of shape, and he lags behind Angus, bellowing and puffing.

    Angus’s heedlessness results in an unfortunate incident in the school gym that lands him in the hospital, but it also marks a melting of the ice between him and Paul. As Paul softens, Giamatti doesn’t change his personality. Instead, his long held resentments just boil to the surface. We learn that Paul was a scholarship student, and while he has a chip on his shoulder, he also prizes the education he got at Barton and the home it has provided him when he was rejected elsewhere. That makes him furious at the children who don’t take the opportunity seriously, which yields the bad grades.

    Payne always had Giamatti in mind for the role of Paul, even before the script by David Hemingson was written—hence the character’s name. And Giamatti is uniquely equipped for the part. As the son of onetime Yale University president A. Bartlett Giamatti, he grew up around both academia and East Coast snobbery. It’s clear he knows the rules of this world, and all its injustices, intimately, even if he had the kind of privilege that might make the fictional Paul turn up his nose.

    At the same time, it feels like Payne, going back to the days of Sideways, has always understood how there’s a heart underneath the bitterness that Giamatti is so good at projecting. His character in that movie is another intelligent yet unaccomplished man, who numbs his pain with booze as well as the knowledge that he’s smarter than everyone around him.

    The easy thing to do is to cast Giamatti as a sneering villain, and he can do that very well. Call it the Big Fat Liar conundrum: Not a good movie, but it sure is fun to see Giamatti blue and screaming, just like it’s extremely enjoyable to watch Giamatti channel his dogged verve into a character with real power, like prosecutor Chuck Rhoades on Billions. But The Holdovers reminds us that Giamatti is best when he’s getting to the root of sad sacks— people who feel life has essentially let them down. You can pity these guys, but they don’t want your pity. They want your respect.

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    Esther Zuckerman

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  • Aaron Rodgers Tells Us Why He Designed a $12,800 Swiss Watch

    Aaron Rodgers Tells Us Why He Designed a $12,800 Swiss Watch

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    So was it the process of like, okay, you know that you’re going to do this colored bezel; now you have to pick which numerals to use or what are the hands going to look like?

    So we started with color. Then we went, first, different types of numbers, a bigger number here, the shading on the numbers. Are we going to put a little color on the second hand and the timer as well? Are we going to leave that blank? We’re going to go do something with that. And then there was the signature.

    Actually, the entire caseback. It was, what were we going to do with the back? Are we going to make it see-through? Are we going to cover it up? Where are we at with the autographs? Big, small, middle, side. So there were a lot of different options. It was a back-and-forth process for a while.

    You are into classy and classic watches. Did you have something specific in mind for what you wanted this watch to feel like?

    I think classy, timeless, wearable for every day. Something different than they’ve done for a while, and then at the same time something you can wear every day. So you could wear it with different colors, different outfits, more casual, more dressed up. I think we accomplished that.

    The watch is very green. Is that a nod to the Jets? Or is it just a shade that you just happened to like?

    Well, we all liked green, and most of the conversations happened when I was still a Packer, and I still thought I was going to be a Packer or retire. So there wasn’t any Jets conversation in it, but I’m going from green to green.

    I was going to say.

    But it works for honoring the old 18 years in Green Bay and also excitement about the future in New York.

    Did you intend for that? Or it just works out that you like green, you’re comfortable in green?

    Yeah, it totally just worked out. I mean, I think green is a color you can wear with light colors and also dark colors. So that’s why we all felt like it could be an everyday watch. And they hadn’t really done green ever in that collection. So they really brought that to the table early, and I was like, “Yeah, for sure. That’d be great.”

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    Cam Wolf

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  • The New Apple MacBook Pro Offers More Bang for Fewer Bucks

    The New Apple MacBook Pro Offers More Bang for Fewer Bucks

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    Having used plenty of both new MacBook Pros in recent years, we’d say it’s worth spending the extra this time around. Not least because those new M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max chips carry some serious heft. Although they scale up in computing oomph from “monumental” to “frankly a bit much,” even the base level M3 chip that comes in the MacBook Pro 14-inch carries all the muscle of Arnie Schwarzenegger in his heyday. It’s capable of delivering the same CPU performance as 2020’s M1 chip while using half the power, and still offering up to 22 hours of battery life.

    How this performance actually shows up in practice will depend on how you use these Pros, but keen gamers will be pleased by support for PS5-esque support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading. This is a nice touch given the recent influx of titles such as Resident Evil 4 Remake, Death Stranding Director’s Cut, and Baldur’s Gate 3 for Mac. Another neat addition for Apple die-hards? The new Space Black colorway that looks delightfully sleek and has been formulated so it doesn’t pick up anywhere near as many fingerprints as before.

    Both the new MacBook Pro 14-inch and 16-inch models are available to order today, and will begin shipping from next week onwards.

    iMac. Upgraded.

    Since its sumptuous, pastel-colored redesign two years ago the iMac has been left in a casual sort of stasis befitting its status as “the fun one” in Apple’s computing roster. Much like that cousin you’ll see at Christmas, weddings, and the local dive bar, it’s here for a good time, not necessarily a work-filled one. Still, the addition of the all-new M3 means it’s more than capable of getting its hands dirty should the occasion arise. With a performance that’s twice as fast as the M1-powered iMac—and 2.5-times faster than Apple’s most popular Intel iMac of old, it’ll make mincemeat of Excel spreadsheets, presentation work, and the odd bit of social video editing.

    In most other respects, this is the same computer you may have seen a couple of years ago. Its 24-inch screen is ample, bright, and packed full of color. Its six-speaker sound system is surprisingly immersive when used to fill out your workspace with the lilting tones of the latest Sufjan Stevens LP, and you get a mouse and Touch ID-enabled keyboard in the box that both match up to your chosen iMac colourway (the mint green is best, IMO). Annoyingly, Apple hasn’t taken the opportunity to redesign its oft-maligned Magic Mouse, which you’ll still have to charge via a Lightning port that’s on its belly. As such, you can’t charge and use the thing at the same time. In most other respects, the iMac with M3 silicon is as easygoing as you could reasonably hope for.

    The new iMac is available to order today from $1,499 and starts shipping next week.

    This story was originally published on British GQ with the headline, “Apple’s new MacBook Pro gets a superfast upgrade (and a major price cut)”.

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    Robert Leedham

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  • What to Read and Watch to Understand the Death (and Life) of Tupac Shakur

    What to Read and Watch to Understand the Death (and Life) of Tupac Shakur

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    The September 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur was so seismic, tragic, and culture-shifting that it’s never really left the public consciousness. But the September arrest of a 60-year-old Las Vegas man named Duane “Keefe D” Davis, a key suspect and one of the last living eyewitnesses to Shakur’s killing, has brought renewed attention to one of the most infamous unsolved crimes of the 1990s.

    An entire cottage industry of books and films has grown up around Tupac in the thirty years since his death, from deeply reported investigative journalism and thoughtful portrayals of the rapper and poet to salacious true-crime tales that lose sight of the very real 25-year-old man who lost his life. (Many of the works covering Tupac’s death are intertwined with the March 1997 murder of friend-turned-rival The Notorious B.I.G., and the animosity between Bad Boy and Death Row Records.)

    Earlier this month, Davis’ arraignment was delayed for a second time, but a resolution to this decades-long saga still seems closer than it’s ever been. With that in mind, we’ve put together a short list of what to watch and read in order to understand both Tupac’s mysterious death and his remarkable life.

    Dear Mama

    Allen Hughes’ acclaimed FX docuseries about Tupac and his mother, the political activist Afeni Shakur, isn’t as focused on the mystery of Pac’s death, but it’s crucial viewing if you want to understand both the man Tupac became and the most important person that shaped him. Shakur’s social consciousness—and his fiery temperament—were directly influenced by Afeni, a member of the Black Panthers and a fierce advocate for racial and economic equality. Hughes had a contentious history with Tupac during the MC’s life, and this five-part series doesn’t gloss over the details of that relationship, including a 1993 incident in which a group of ‘Pac associates assaulted Hughes after he passed the rapper over for a role in Menace II Society. Essential, whether you’ve loved Pac for decades or are just learning about his life and times.

    Murder Rap

    Mike Dorsey’s feature documentary– largely shaped by a 2011 book of the same name by former Los Angeles police detective Greg Kading, who headed an LAPD task force investigating the murder of The Notorious B.I.G.—explores the deaths of the two rap legends in the context of the East Coast-West Coast rap feud, with a specific focus on the rumored involvement of Sean “Diddy” Combs in the death of Tupac. “The confession that alleged Puffy was involved in Tupac’s murder was and still is the most surprising element in all of this. It’s difficult to believe, really, except that Keffe, the confessor, could have easily left Puff out of it and just said Tupac’s murder was just revenge for the beatdown of Keffe’s nephew, Orlando Anderson, and nothing more—the investigators would have probably believed it,” Dorsey wrote in a Reddit AMA.

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    Grant Rindner

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  • The Ultimate GQ Shopping Guide for a Smarter, Sharper Life

    The Ultimate GQ Shopping Guide for a Smarter, Sharper Life

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    To dub a shoe the “Mother of All Boots” is audacious. To follow that shoe with a new-and-improved silhouette that’s even freakier than its predecessor isn’t merely audacious—it’s a throwing of the gauntlet. The Moab 3 lives up to its name and then some, updating the rugged all-terrain stomper for the next generation of Merrell acolytes.

    Just for GQ readers, we scored a slew of discounts on the inaugural Recommends All-Stars class, including Merrell’s hero product. Use code GQMOAB25 for 25% off the Moab 3, from now until midnight on November 30th.

    The Best Paste Pomade

    Pomade gets a bad rap, but the inaugural product from celebrity hairstylist Kristan Serafino, the scissors wizard behind Ryan Reynolds’ razor-fresh cuts, reimagines the greaser staple with a firm hold and natural shine.

    Just for GQ readers, we scored a slew of discounts on the inaugural Recommends All-Stars class, including the Best Paste’s hero product. Use code GQALLSTARS for 15% off the brand’s pomade, from now until midnight on November 2nd. (Excludes the Michael J. Fox Foundation products)

    Bathing Culture Cosmic Rainbow Towel

    The Ultimate GQ Shopping Guide for a Smarter Sharper Life

    Bathing Culture’s cozy, colorful towel is the fastest way to make your grimy shower feel like an oasis of zen. Come for the plush organic cotton, stay for the psychedelic pattern—good for the planet, great for your self-care routine.

    Just for GQ readers, we scored a slew of discounts on the inaugural Recommends All-Stars class, including Bathing Culture’s hero product. Use code GQ20 for 20% off its entire site for a limited time only.

    A version of this story originally appeared in the November 2023 issue of GQ with the title “The GQ Recommends All-Stars”

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    Yang-Yi Goh, Avidan Grossman

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  • ‘The Gilded Age’ is a Shining Example of ‘Mid TV’

    ‘The Gilded Age’ is a Shining Example of ‘Mid TV’

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    Before the writers’ and actors’ strikes shut down the promotional-tour circuit, it seemed like you couldn’t read three entertainment headlines without coming across some showrunner proudly proclaiming their television show to be “like a 10-hour movie.” The line has long since become the peak-TV-age equivalent of old press-tour chestnuts like At its heart, it’s really about family, and the message behind this invocation of a “higher” artform is clear: Our show isn’t a beach read, it’s literature. The discourse around television and the promotional apparatus on which that discourse feeds both exist to convince you that shows aren’t just shows– that they should be important, impactful, zeitgeist-defining, episodic pseudo-movies you need to watch.

    The trouble with being a necessity is that it makes it so hard to be a frivolity. The marketplace for must-see TV has become so crowded that more and more I’ve come to appreciate shows that feel less like cultural homework and more like procrastination. The Gilded Age, whose second season premieres this Sunday on Max, is that kind of show—a transporting lark about 19th century snobs and their petty squabbles, where the barrier for entry never feels very high. It’s debatable whether it’s inherently mind-expanding or pure escapism, but watching it always feels like leisure.

    It’s not that The Gilded Age’s storylines are simplistic or that its continuity isn’t important—the Peggy Scott’s (Deneé Benton) deep dark secret, teased in the pilot, took almost the entire first season to play out. It’s that The Gilded Age takes such delight in the detail work and such pleasure in every turn of phrase that watching it feels more like a tennis match than a scavenger hunt. You don’t have to understand every nuance of the backstory to know when a character has scored a point. And in The Gilded Age, someone’s always firing a topspin winner down the line.

    Christine Baranski plays Agnes Van Rhijn, the widowed leader of New York’s “old money” establishment, with delicious imperiousness. In the pilot episode, she demands that her newly-arrived niece, Marian Brook (played by Meryl Streep’s daughter, Louisa Jacobson) stop dressing in mourning black– she’s discovered that her aristocratic father has died broke and left her penniless—so that Marian can enter society and find a husband. “I won’t have you hanging about the edge of things like a lonely crow,” Agnes stage-snarls, in the politest way possible, as her spinster sister, played by Cynthia Nixon, looks on.

    Ever watched two Thai boxers spar? Their trainers are always shouting Ohhh and Ahhh when somebody lands a kick or an elbow. I find myself watching The Gilded Age in much the same way.

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    Vince Mancini

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  • Behold, the Most Diesel Air Jordan 1 Ever

    Behold, the Most Diesel Air Jordan 1 Ever

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    The best bit though is the ridiculously chunky platform sole. Aggressively designed and slightly brutalist, it’s etched with a grid-like pattern and updated with a toothier outsole for extra grip and traction. It’s absurdly tall too, so those dreaming of a 6’1″ Tinder stat can finally live out the fantasy.

    Despite looking completely different, the Air Jordan 1 Brooklyn still has all of the same features that make its sneaker counterpart so recognizable. From the Swoosh that glides across the lateral and medial sidewalls to the perforations dotted along the toebox. Even the midsole, as outrageously gigantic as it is, is infused with Air tech for extra comfort.

    Nike

    This isn’t the first time that the Air Jordan 1 has undergone the high fashion treatment. In 2020, Jordan Brand teamed up with Kim Jones for the Dior x Air Jordan 1 High OG. Only 13,000 pairs of these were made globally, and on the day of launch, over 5 million very hopeful sneakerheads tried to cop.

    Behold the Most Diesel Air Jordan 1 Ever

    Nike

    The Air Jordan 1 Brooklyn is expected to release via Nike, the SNKRS app, and select stockists worldwide in January for $165. If you’re looking to cop a pair, hopefully your feet are on the smaller side—the current intel is that these will run in women’s sizing only.

    This story originally appeared on British GQ with the title “Nike’s dropping the maddest Air Jordan 1 yet (and it’s not even a sneaker)”

    Read More

    The Definitive Air Jordan Ranking

    From the stone-cold classic to the low-key underrated to the…well, less-than-GOAT, we’re ranking the greatest basketball sneaker line in history.

    Three Jordans on a podium in front of a multicolored background

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    Adam Cheung

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  • Diddy Wore the Most Expensive Rolex on the Menu

    Diddy Wore the Most Expensive Rolex on the Menu

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    Want more insider watch coverage? Get Box + Papers, GQ’s newsletter devoted to the watch world, sent to your inbox every Friday. Sign up here.

    Some homecomings bang harder than others, and Sean “Diddy” Combs helped Howard University’s festivities get extra loose this week with a surprise performance accompanied by a $1 million donation. Following the September drop of his latest opus, The Love Album: Off the Grid, Sean Combs (aka Puff Daddy, formerly P.Diddy, and also known for a time as simply “Love”) is in the midst of a long-awaited return to form. Diddy’s giant check wasn’t the only flex he brought to his alma mater, however. In addition to an appropriate amount of XXL diamond jewelry for a man who helped create modern hip-hop, the Bad Boy Records founder flaunted one of the most coveted timepieces on the planet: the Rolex Cosmograph Daytona “Rainbow.”

    Thaddaeus McAdams

    Diddy Wore the Most Expensive Rolex on the Menu

    The Rolex Cosmograph Daytona is one of the world’s favorite—and most collectible—chronographs. It was also, for a time, the most expensive watch ever auctioned thanks to the 2017 sale of Paul Newman’s legendary ticker for $17 million. The rainbow bezel variant, however, is among the most exclusive pieces in the Swiss watchmaker’s catalog, with a murky application process, a long waiting list, and a six-figure price to buy one at retail. Despite these hurdles (and also because of them), the rainbow Daytona has become a must-have accessory for bust-down-loving collectors in search of the ultimate flex, from John Mayer to Post Malone to Pat Mahomes. Diddy’s is the Everose gold version released in 2018, with a case made from Rolex’s proprietary blend of 18 K pink gold, copper, and platinum, a bezel featuring 36 baguette-cut sapphires, and a case set with 56 diamonds.

    Diddy Wore the Most Expensive Rolex on the Menu

    Hot Ones

    Diddy Wore the Most Expensive Rolex on the Menu

    Flea’s F.P. Journe Octa Lune

    Watching Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist (and avowed Stüssy fan) Flea eat hot wings and talk about music is a great way to spend 20 minutes any day of the week. For anyone who loves watches, however, the experience is enhanced by the knowledge (thanks to @niccoloy) that he’s wearing an F.P. Journe Octa Lune, an incredibly tasteful choice from one of the world’s most fascinating watchmakers. The Octa Lune is a beauty to behold, with an asymmetrical dial including a large date, a power reserve indicator, and a moon phase rendered in 18-karat white gold. The real star, however, is Journe’s Octa caliber, one of the most advanced automatic movements ever made, which can run for nearly a week while maintaining exceptional accuracy—just like Flea himself.

    Diddy Wore the Most Expensive Rolex on the Menu

    Noah Graham/Getty Images

    Diddy Wore the Most Expensive Rolex on the Menu

    Steph Curry’s Patek Philippe Aquanaut

    For most of us, simply being the best shooter in the NBA would be enough of an accomplishment to keep busy. Steph Curry, on the other hand, continues to expand his resume by earning accolades as a singer, a golfer, and one of the best-dressed dudes in the league. He’s also earned kudos as a god-tier watch collector, a reputation he burnished this week when he arrived for Golden State’s matchup with the Phoenix Suns wearing a Patek Philippe Aquanaut 5167A. Not to be confused with the Nautilus, the brand’s legendary 1970s sports watch, the Aquanaut arrived in the late 1990s as a sporty modern addition to the Swiss watchmaker’s conservative lineup. Distinguished by a checkerboard dial, big Arabic numerals and the first rubber strap in the brand’s history, the Aquanaut pushed Patek into the 21st century while earning it a place on discerning wrists like Curry’s.

    Diddy Wore the Most Expensive Rolex on the Menu

    Chris Graythen/Getty Images

    Diddy Wore the Most Expensive Rolex on the Menu

    Rory McIlroy’s World Time Flyback Chronograph 5930P ‘Green’

    Last weekend’s Formula 1 Lenovo United States Grand Prix 2023 in Austin, Texas, was an all-out battle royale between Max Verstappen (who scored his 50th win) and Lewis Hamilton, Carlos Sainz, and Lando Norris, each of whom continues to nip at his heels. Irish PGA champ Rory McIlroy kept things spicy off-track, strolling the starting grid wearing a Patek Philippe World Time Flyback Chronograph 5930P. Featuring two of Patek’s most-loved complications, it makes the perfect accessory for a guy who has won pretty much every title except the Masters, thanks to a hypnotic guilloche-engraved dial and matching alligator strap in Augusta green.

    Diddy Wore the Most Expensive Rolex on the Menu
    Diddy Wore the Most Expensive Rolex on the Menu

    Hailey Bieber’s Patek Philippe Nautilus

    Among the many things we learned about Hailey Bieber this week: She has excellent taste in accessories. In addition to never going wheels-up without her Saint Laurent shades and Drew House slippers, the Rhode founder is partial to a mini-sized yellow gold Audemars Piguet, dubbed a TTRO (teeny tiny Royal Oak) by Dimepiece’s Brynn Wallner. In keeping with the Biebers’ ongoing dominance of #couplegoals fits, Hailey’s TTRO is a similar model to the one the Biebs bought himself as a wedding present in 2019.

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    Jeremy Freed

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  • Why We Can’t Leave Britney Spears Alone

    Why We Can’t Leave Britney Spears Alone

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    When teen Spears is questioned by Daly about her sexy schoolgirl outfits (wholesome, when you consider how routinely other interviewers asked her about her tits), she sounds like any normal teen whose parents don’t want them to leave the house wearing eyeliner. “All I did was tie up my shirt!” she says. “I’m wearing a sports bra under it. Sure, I’m wearing thigh-highs, but kids wear those—it’s the style. Have you seen MTV—all those [women] in thongs?”

    Even though her brand was endorsed by adult male record executives, it was also adult men who then punished her for it. “I was never quite sure,” she writes, “what all these critics thought I was supposed to be doing—a Bob Dylan impression? I was a teenage girl from the south. I signed my name with a heart, I liked looking cute. Why did everyone treat me, even when I was a teenager, like I was dangerous?”

    We tend to think she lost that All American Girl status when she started losing her mind, but from my seat, after reading The Woman In Me, that part of her story makes her more like us than ever. What woman wouldn’t go insane, given the circumstances? All of the harmful gender dynamics that defined the early aughts happened to not-famous girls and women too. I’ll never forget the first time I was sexualized by an adult man as a child; it wasn’t pleasant, but it also wasn’t recorded on TV and presented as cute. In The Woman in Me, Spears remembers appearing on Star Search, where host Ed MacMahon asked her, “You have the most adorable, pretty eyes—do you have a boyfriend?” She was ten at the time.

    The inability to be free, to be yourself, to feel like you’re enough, is the great feminine problem. It’s humbling to know that the most famous pop star of her generation doesn’t get to rise above that, either. Even her dating history is somewhat sympathetic—an older guy with a girlfriend creepily sneaks into her house to kiss her when she’s in high school; another guy cheats on her (Justin Timberlake) and then makes critically-acclaimed art about how actually he was wronged; a predatory scumbag (Kevin Federline) cons her when she needs love most.

    The best and most devastating parts of the book come when Spears pulls back from the details of what happened, diving into her emotions and taking her power back. It’s strongest when she explains the female rage behind the decision to shave her head, a move that was mocked and ridiculed in pop culture for decades.

    “Shaving my head was a way of saying to the world: Fuck You. You want me to be pretty for you? Fuck you. You want me to be good for you? Fuck you. You want me to be your dream girl? Fuck you. I’d been the good girl for years, I’d smiled politely while TV show hosts leered at my breasts, while American parents said I was destroying their children by wearing a crop top, while executives patted my hand condescendingly and second guessed my career choices even though I’d sold millions of records, while my family acted like I was evil. I was sick of it.”

    We’re fucking sick of it too, Britney. That’s why we’re buying your book.

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    Alana Hope Levinson

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  • Leonardo DiCaprio is 2023’s Most Promising New Character Actor

    Leonardo DiCaprio is 2023’s Most Promising New Character Actor

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    Before his solemn turn in The Revenant, DiCaprio had been on a run of playing doomed titans. In 2013, he starred in both The Great Gatsby and The Wolf of Wall Street, respectively playing literary icon Jay Gatsby and disgraced stockbroker Jordan Belfort. Gatsby and Belfort are, if nothing else, smooth operators, and DiCaprio tackles them with a twinkle in his eye. While Gatsby is mysterious and Belfort is a little stinker, DiCaprio leans hard into their charm. Both characters throw the sickest parties ever and lord over them like bacchanalian gods.

    The biggest criticism of The Wolf of Wall Street was that Scorsese and DiCaprio weren’t hard enough on Belfort, that an uncritical eye could still read him, despite it all, as a Dude Who Rocks. Both Gatsby and Belfort obtain their wealth and status through nefarious means, but they’re also cool. And this is a mode in which DiCaprio is extremely comfortable. It’s one he deploys in Catch Me If You Can, way back in 2002—the first post-Titanic movie to really test what he could do. There he plays con artist Frank Abagnale Jr., who uses his boyish good looks and gift for sweet-talk to cash forged checks and pose as a doctor or an airline pilot.

    Time and time again, DiCaprio has played guys who experience monumental highs and even greater lows. The lows were what made the work dramatically stirring, but having been one of the most-desired celebrities who ever lived, he could also channel the feeling of having the world at your feet, only to lose it all. As Howard Hughes in 2004’s The Aviator, his second collaboration with Scorsese, he starts out palling around with movie stars and ends up an emaciated recluse peeing into jars in his screening room. Frank is finally caught, the feds catch up to Belfort, and Gatsby is shot by his pool. And yet at certain points in all of these films, these guys are living out some sort of dream.

    Ernest Burkhart in Killers of the Flower Moon never does that. From the outset, it’s clear he’s pretty dumb, and people around him treat him as such. In the very first scene they share, Ernest’s uncle, William Hale (Robert De Niro), repeats questions to emphasize how slow on the uptake Ernest is. This is a grim movie about the systematic genocide of the Osage people, but there’s a pitch-black humor to the way Hale and his lackeys berate Ernest throughout the film. The character has all the greed and ambition of a Gatsby or a Belfort, but none of the savvy, and DiCaprio, with his mouth near-permanently downturned, leans into Ernest’s confusion and his worthlessness. He plays the fool extremely well, and it’s to the movie’s benefit—for this story to work, you have to believe that Ernest is dim enough to convince himself he still loves his wife Mollie (Lily Gladstone) even as he orchestrates the murder of her family members. In turn, Mollie seems to love him because of his naivete.

    Ernest and Rick feel like echoes of one another. They’re both trying to emulate others they perceive as successes; they’re both their own worst enemies. (In between these movies, DiCaprio played an astronomer in Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up, channeling his earnest passion for the environment into a self-deprecating performance as a nerd who everyone ignores.) In both parts, you can see DiCaprio wrestling with the limits of being Leonardo DiCaprio. For years, no matter how hard he tried to subvert it in his work, DiCaprio was defined by his beauty—as tragic as they are, Gatsby and Belfort are still desirable. Now, at 48– past the point where he can play with a Super Soaker in public without looking goofy—he’s embracing the character actor he’s clearly always longed to be, exploring what it feels like to get older and feel unwanted, allowing himself to be a punching bag, fully debasing himself and his image to the needs of the film he’s in. It’s utterly captivating.

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    Esther Zuckerman

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  • This Ultralight Watch Just Set a New Record

    This Ultralight Watch Just Set a New Record

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    The Ming LW.01 is interesting on a few levels aside from its ethereal weight. For one thing, when a tiny brand that’s been around for less time than This is Us can command as much clout as august Swiss makers with centuries of heritage, it’s confirmation that we are now living in a golden era of indie watchmaking. With pieces by niche makers like F.P. Journe sharing top billing with Rolex and Patek Philippe at auction, and Louis Vuitton putting its money behind little-known names like Daniel Roth and Rexhep Rexhepi, it’s apparent that a major shift is underway in the world of high-end watches.

    Enter Ming, a brand founded in 2017 by Ming Thien, a Malaysian child physics prodigy-turned-professional photographer with a longstanding timepiece obsession. Ming and a group of like-minded pals started the brand as an antithesis to the elitism and exorbitant prices they found in the upper tiers of the watch-collecting world. Ming aimed to create watches that were as interesting as they were (relatively) accessible, and over the last six years, he has amassed a loyal following of collectors who are eager to snap up each new limited-edition release. Unlike the big Swiss brands with eight-figure marketing budgets and state-of-the-art production facilities, Ming doesn’t make any of its components in-house and doesn’t operate a single retail store, but that hasn’t stopped the brand from conceiving and executing some of the most interesting watches of recent years—including the superlative-grabbing Ming LW.01.

    MING THEIN | MINGTHEIN.COM

    This Ultralight Watch Just Set a New Record

    MING THEIN | MINGTHEIN.COM

    The Ming LW.01 is limited to just 200 pieces (100 in manual-wind and 100 in automatic) and available exclusively on Ming’s website as of 1 pm GMT today. Given the popularity of Ming watches in general and the hype around this one in particular, it is guaranteed to sell out faster than Taylor Swift tickets despite its roughly $22,000 price. If the past is any indication, however, other watch brands are paying close attention, and it won’t be long before another ultralight ticker comes for Ming’s crown.

    *Probably. As with any superlative, the closer you look at the nitty-gritty details, the more difficult it becomes to make a definitive ruling. For example, at just 1.75mm thick, Richard Mille’s RM UP-01 holds the title as the world’s thinnest watch. Because it requires a separate key to wind the mechanism, however, some folks (including, perhaps, the makers of the 2mm thick Piaget Altiplano Ultimate Concept) see it as a bit of a cheat. In light of this, there’s no arguing that the Ming LW.01 is one of the lightest watches ever made, but without weighing every other watch ever made, how can you be sure? For that reason, and being the good sports they are, Ming Thien and his compatriots are leaving it an open question for now.

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    Jeremy Freed

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