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Will Welch (Editor-In-Chief, GQ)

Published on Mon, 9 Mar 2020 10:00:13 +0000

We talk vintage Datejusts, fashion magazines, and why musicians are the coolest.

Synopsis

In this wide-ranging conversation, Stephen Pulvirent sits down with Will Welch, the editor-in-chief of GQ Magazine, to discuss his first year at the helm of the iconic publication and his personal passion for watches. Welch, who took over as EIC in early 2019, describes his approach to modernizing GQ while respecting its legacy—emphasizing that the magazine should be fun to make and should only feature things the team genuinely believes in. He explains how GQ has evolved from prescriptive menswear service journalism to a more expressive, fashion-forward publication that empowers readers to develop their own style rather than telling them exactly what to wear.

The conversation delves into Welch's background, including his formative years at The Fader music magazine from 2003 to 2007, where he learned the fundamentals of magazine-making in a scrappy, independent environment. This music journalism background continues to influence GQ's editorial direction, with musicians often featured prominently because of their authentic personal style and cultural relevance. Welch discusses the magazine's renewed focus on watches, bringing in artist Wes Lang as a columnist and writer Cam Wolf to cover watches regularly, carving out GQ's distinct lane in watch journalism. In the second half, Welch opens up about his personal watch collection and journey as a collector, from his first Tudor Black Bay Dark to vintage gold Rolex Date Justs and his current Daytona, sharing candid thoughts about what draws him to certain pieces and how watches fit into his personal style philosophy of constant evolution and self-expression.

Transcript

Speaker
Unknown It's essentially the golden rule. Yeah. Like do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I am trying every day to be honest. I'm also trying every day to like be cooler, you know? Yeah. To evolve my taste in ways. Some ways that are petty and some ways that are like really deeply felt. And I just ask for like respect and support in that process, and I promise I will offer the same thing to other people
Unknown . Hey everybody, I'm your host Stephen Polvern and this is Hodinky Radio. Uh we're going a bit old school this week. We've got one conversation that's gonna take up the full length of the episode, and that's because this is somebody I've wanted to talk to for quite a while. So once I got him into the studio, we ran a bit long. Uh this is my chat with Will Welch, the editor-in-chief of GQ. Will's been at the helm of GQ for a little over a year now, and with him leading the charge, the magazine has a new feel, it's a little bit different, and we get into how that happened, why it's happening, as well as some bigger conversations about the modern media business. Don't worry though, Will is a serious watch guy, and we spend the back half of the episode talking mostly about watches. We talk about how he got interested in watches, where his taste is, and also how watches fit into what he's doing at GQ. It's a really great conversation, and with that in mind, I'm not gonna take up any more of your time. Let's get into it. This week's episode is brought to you by the Hodinki app now available on Android. Stay tuned later in the show to learn more about how you can get the very best of Hodinky right on your smartphone. For more, visit hodinky.com
Unknown . Thanks for joining us. Good to have you here. No uh uh peers and we're within earshot. So I'm I'm really happy to be here. And it goes without saying that I am a uh big fan of everything that you guys are doing. Know several people on the team, all great people, so yeah, it's an honor and a pleasure. Thank you. That's uh that's good to hear. I'm everyb
Unknown ody says it's an honor and a pleasure, but I mean it. Damn it.. I I appreciate that Yeah, not everybody means it. You can tell people are blowing smoke. But uh yeah, no, I mean I'll I'll throw that right back at you. I mean, I've been a GQ reader a long time. GQ is one of the ways I I kind of got into writing about style and then ended up in the watch world. So uh I'm thrilled to hear that. For doing what you're doing. Yeah, absolutely. I I wanna I wanna start. I mean, I guess you you recently finished your first year as editor in chief of GQ. How how
Unknown do you feel a year into it? Oh I feel awesome. We were having so much fun and I firmly believe that with you know whether it's uh uh uh uh I never know what to say. I almost said a site like Hodinky, but you guys are so much more than a site and we're so much more than a magazine. But then the word brand. Yeah I feel like I'm not I don't hate the word brand. Some people love uh sometimes people love to say they hate the word brand. I'm not like like vehemently opposed to it, but it it does feel a little bit corporate for what each of us does. Um I just I really believe that if you're having fun making these things and and and Hodinki GQ are both like truly creative enterprises. Um that people, the audience readers, people who interact with what you're doing will have fun themselves. Yeah. And that is like principle number one for me. Um, the other thing I would say is that I truly believe in what we're doing, um, and have kind of uh thrown everything out that I didn't believe in and that my team didn't believe in. So we've just like gotten all that stuff out. I think when you inherit a legacy brand like GQ, which is, you know, 60 plus years old, am I doing my math right? Uh 57, 63 years old. Um, you there there can sometimes be a burden of the legacy of the brand. Yeah. And all the things that it represents. And it means so many different things to so many different people, and they all want those principles upheld. Um, and this might sound like blasé or something, but I really just did not take on that burden. I was like, I feel I've first of all I had been at GQ since two thousand and seven. So I had twelve years there under my belt before I became editor in chief. And I just felt like I have fully like processed and metabolized the principles of this brand and I feel completely free to modernize it, make it my own, um uh empower my team to make it theirs in every way imaginable. So um that has led to uh I think that's what makes it fun. I think we are clear about what we're doing when we get up in the morning. And it also helps with uh, you know, the uh what a lot mo myself and a lot of the people on the t team were called editors and it a big part of editing is knowing no what not to do. Yeah. Stories we're not trying to tell, kinds of pictures we do not take, ways that we aren't interested in styling people, people that we aren't interested in featuring in the magazine, even though they have 26.4 million Instagram followers. Like you have to know what you don't care about or what you're interested in, but just isn't in um the purview um of of of the voice of gq. And so we've just gotten like really, really clear about all that stuff. And that was priority number one for me upon becoming editor-in-chief. There was a funny um moment, one of the first like all-staff editorial meetings where I think it was on January 2nd, 2019. So top of the year, like really our first time gathering, free and clear with me as editor in chief. And I was just like, we're not going to do anything we don't believe in. And people were kind of looking at me like, yeah, right, dude. This is like a job they pay us every two weeks. Right. Like welcome, welcome to the top. Good luck making that call. Yeah. Yeah. But I I really think that we have um I really think that we've done it. I think everybody's on board with it
Unknown . Yeah. I mean it's funny that you mentioned it's funny you mentioned like knowing what not to do and kind of jettisoning things right up top because that's something I wanted to talk about. And I I wonder, you know, the whole idea of like uh a men's magazine, right, is a is a complicated thing in 2020, right? Like it's it's a thing you have to be aware of, what it means to be a men's magazine, what masculinity is, what sort of like culture you want to stand behind. Um I wonder what what are some of the things that despite whether they may or may not have worked in the past, what are some of those things that you were just like, Yeah, we're not we're not doing this anymore. Like this is not who we are now. Yeah. The bigg
Unknown est one, like at the one thing that I r put right back at the forefront, um, it was never not at the forefront, but I think I returned it to the forefront in a different way was just like we are a fashion magazine. I think of us as a fashion magazine before I think of us as a men's magazine. Like one really quick example is um the the writer Rachel Taschen, um who is on the GQ.com staff. She knows that she has free reign, she's a fashion writer and a and a really brilliant one. Like every time she puts up a post, it's like an event um online. And she knows that she has free reign to write about men's fashion or women's fashion or write about something culturally that she's seeing ining and br both men's and women's fashion examples, right about the history of women's fashion. So anyway, just like one example of how I think of us as a fashion magazine more than a men's magazine. Um and then but the the kind of fashion magazine I wanted us to be is I just felt like we have moved out of the era of like prescriptive service. So a hallmark of GQ traditionally in print was doing service packages and stories that were like, do this, don't do that. Here's how to get the GQ look, here's what shirt goes with, what tie, here's how a suit should fit. And when I started at GQ in 2007, I I was actually like hired to write that stuff. So I really lived it um all day, every day. Um, you know, over the course of my career there, I did a lot of different things, but that was a constant. Um, and I loved it. And there was a time where that was absolutely like um in step with the times and servicing our readers, but in 2019, 2020, that's no longer the case. That's not how uh you you know we, have all become really educated on fashion. I mean, y'all's site is an incredible example of that. Like if you come in telling somebody how to put on their watch, you know, they're just gonna like be like you don't get it. I'm gonna go somewhere else. Like I'm really trying to like get into it here. And um so we we like through the hashtag menswear era of the late aughts, we came into this time where we were all really well educated when it came to fashion and style and matters of taste. So while we still do some do this, don't do that prescriptive journalism on the website, it's no longer in the magazine at all. Um and that's just one example. You know, I I think like we don't really do trend reporting. We don't tell people what to wear, we don't tell people how to get the GQ look. It's more just like a um like our fashion shoots are just like expressions using the using the fashion of the season. And I think of it almost as like an idea board or like um a uh uh like the uh this moment of aspiration that you can hold and you can get new ideas. And ultimately what we're trying to do is encourage people to be themselves and to empower people, empower our readers to have confidence and to be themselves. And if you want to wear something that I think is stupid, but you want to wear it because that's who you are and you want to wear it, you should absolutely do it. And who am I and who is GQ to tell you not to? Yeah. You know, we're just not, I just like it's not how I live my life. It's not how I relate to my friends, it's not how I look at or buy or uh uh watch a fashion show go down the runway. I so um that has been a major change and uh is, you know a, big example of the kind of thing that we just don't do an
Unknown ymore. Yeah. I wonder do do you still think there is a GQ look? Like is that still a thing you guys think about internally or is that kind of a thing that you've you've kind of like banned from the the thought process? Um it's not somet
Unknown hing I like straight up banned from the thought process, but uh you know for the most part, there are definitely exceptions, but for the most part we use um celebrities to like express fashion. Yeah. We dress and shoot and photograph celebrities. What we try to do is find out something that we love about the personal style of the person we're dressing, and then like buttress that with fashion and push it in new directions and try to take that that subject someplace that would they wouldn't normally go. And frankly that we wouldn't go without them. So, you know, if we're dressing um the first one that we just had Larry David on the cover, but yeah, that that's not really an example that works. If we're addressing if we're addressing Tyler the Creator, it's like Tyler the Creator's fans, they don't want to see him go through like the GQ meat grinder and have a makeover. Right. They want Tyler the Creator to look like Tyler the Creator. Right. But at the same time, I don't want him to just like come to a GQ shoot and wear his own clothes. Like you can see that on Instagram all day every day. So it's like, what do we think is really interesting about the way Tyler looks and dresses and his personal style and he has his own fashion line and all that stuff? And then what can we bring to that? Like, what do we think he maybe hasn't thought of? And how can so that both of us wind up someplace new. Yeah. So it's
Unknown really interesting because that's that's such a departure from kind of how things and and maybe maybe I'm misremembering, tell me if I am, but uh it feels like a big departure from how things were in like 2007 when you started, like 2007 to 2000, you know, maybe twelve, thirteen, where it was like there was a particular kind of suit, the lapel had to be this width. You were wearing one of six ties with one of five tie bars, like it was it was really prescriptive and it was you could tell basically by how guys dressed, like did they read GQ or not? Because everybody was wearing the same thing. Totally. That's a that's a big departure
Unknown . It is a big departure and I want to say that the that is what GQ should have been doing in that era because that was a time where men were looking to us to tell them how to get dress and personal style, it was becoming not just okay, but kind of cool to be into fashion. And men just didn't have the knowledge or the tools to do it. And they were looking at us like, tell me how to get this right. I want to be cool. I want to be stylish. I want to be in step with the times. And so that was a very legitimate service then, but that is just not the moment that we're living in now. Yeah. Um, so I worked really hard on cre I was a big part of that era that you're talking about, and I'm very proud of that uh work. But also when I became editor-in-chief at the beginning of 2019, I just looked outside and was like, we are living in a very different world and it's time for something new. Yeah. And then that was an expression that we had started when we launched GQ Style at the beginning of 2016. So that was like the beginning stages and a cool, like a cool little lab where I was able to test a lot of this stuff.
Unknown Do you think some of the kind of like I guess the pressure that's been taken off of you guys to do the more the more basic service stuff. Do you think that's been kind of alleviated by like menswear blogs and kind of like the the just wealth of information out there? Because I I remember in, you know, I think I probably started reading GQ seriously in like 2005, maybe 2004. And like at that point, like there was nothing there was nothing to read about men's clothing on the internet. Like it didn't exist. I had to go get my monthly GQ and like that was my way of of learning. Yep. Um do you think that the kind of like wealth of information out there about what I'll say maybe are like the basics gives you guys more leeway now to kind of explore other things?
Unknown Uh I do, but what's interesting is that nobody's doing the basics anymore. But I'm not gonna do it just because nobody else is. Because I just don't think that that is like the crucial role of GQ right now. But when I started at GQ, it was like the hashtag menswear moment. Um and I give Michael Williams in a continuous lean. I mean there are a lot of people who deserve credit for that. You mentioned to me that Scott Schumann had been on the on the pod. He was doing something very different with the Sartorialist, but that was an incredibly influential website. Um and also became a GQ column which showed how GQ was like beginning to react to to what was going on online. Um, but the there were all these websites that um uh really educated men like what Michael was doing with the continuous lean was like really standing for classic Americana, you know, and teaching people what salvage salvage denim was and Philson and Quoti and all these different brands, you know. Um and that was like yeah, it was like the American man going through elementary, like elementary school. Yeah. For like style, taste. Yeah. You could call it fashion if you want. Sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn't, but it's all kind of a blend. Um the the what's funny is I don't know what you do right now if you're thirteen years old and you don't care about Supreme. Right. You know, like where do you go for your education on the difference between the like the kind of stuff I used to write at GQ was we would explain the difference in the like basic principles of Italian versus English versus American suiting. Yeah. Like other than finding the articles that I wrote in 2009. Like that's true, I don't know where I don't know where you would learn that now. Ask a friend. Like go to I mean you know what you could actually do is go to Sid Mashburn. That's true. You could go to Sid. And spend some time there and they will like they will break all that stuff down for you. But I I do think that that layer of service is missing, but I don't I don't think that that is the role that GQ in two thousand and twenty should be playing in the like yeah the the the menswear economy. Right. So if uh you know if a thirteen year old has to to get constructive, then that's on him. Yeah. Sorry, bro.
Unknown Get creative. Yeah. I've got a higher calling. It's it's funny you mention you mentioned Supreme, right? Like the the emergence of streetwear kind of came right at the tail end of that. Like hashtag mens where like it was it was like an arms race to see who could have a more technically constructed suit, right? Like it was it was all about suiting, it was all about super high-end tailoring. Um even like kind of the the what we think of maybe as more like fashion brands. I'm using scare quotes. Yeah. Uh almost. I can hear those scare quotes. Yeah. It's great. It's great for an audio medium. Yeah. Um, you can tell I'm really good at this. But um yeah, it's like that even the fashion brands had a hard time like keeping up because it was all about like these bespoke tailors and whatever, and now it's swung like so hard the other way. Totally. How do you guys think at GQ and how do you personally think about kind of balancing those two things, like keeping it from being this pendulum where like something is super in fashion, then it's super out of fashion, then it's super in, super out. How do you try to balance things so that hopefully what you're teaching your readers is like culturally relevant now, but also not something that they're gonna look at in five years and be like, what the hell was that? Ye
Unknown ah. One thing that I am really proud of, I think, is may maybe the right word, and really stand behind is that if you have a discerning eye and you look at what we've been doing, especially it's really a a uh uh in a lot of ways an expression of Mobalaji Dawadu, who is the fashion director of GQ. He was the fashion director of GQ Style with me first, and now he's like me as both GQ and GQ Style. Tailoring is still the foundation of everything that we do. What's funny is that I think he's doing it in such a new way that is really in step with the times that people kind of miss it. So when I became editor-inief-ch the, first like the kind of like announcement interview that I did was with Business of Fashion. And we did this whole interview, and um uh it was written by Chantal Fernandez, who I really love and I'm actually I I love the story, but they put the headline on it was GQ says goodbye to the suit, which I don't you know I know how it works. Like people people slap headlines on things. I was wearing a suit when I did the interview. So I was like, I mmm. Okay. And in a way, that um that headline has like stuck a little bit. And but if you actually look at what we've been doing, it's all really rooted in tailoring. But I think it's been respun in a really interesting new way. And by tailoring I don't mean a suit with a dress shirt and a tie and a pocket square and a tie bar and a pair of you know English benchmade shoes. It's like a very new way of using tailored suits and tailored jackets um and just styling them um just in kind of new, fresh, cool, exciting ways. Yeah. That um I wear suit almost every day or at least matching pants and jackets that um sometimes aren't like technically suits uh because I think it's like the easiest, quickest, most foolproof way to get dressed. Yeah. But I only on very rare occasions do I put on a dress shirt and a tie. And then never a tie bar or a pocket square. You know what I mean? Yeah. So it's like this this uh anyway, I think what we're doing feels on the on the styling front feels really new, but is kind of rooted in as rooted in tailoring as G
Unknown Q has always been. Yeah. I mean, one of one of the things, I mean, we've we've so far been talking mostly about fashion, but I think one of the interesting things is that you you don't actually come from a fashion background, although at this point you've been doing it so long to say like background. But like you you didn't set out like you didn't you know come out of school and go like I'm gonna be a m I'm gonna be a fashion journalist. Like that wasn't what you did. Um you came from the music world. Yep. And I think that's really interesting. And I think it's really telling that you know your first issue of GQ had Frank Ocean on the cover. Thank you, Frank. Yeah. Hopefully Frank's listening. If not, we we gotta find a way to get this to Frank. But uh yeah, I I wonder if you can talk about that jump in 2007 from from Vader over to GQ and then kind of how over over your career at GQ, how music has continued to be this kind of influence. Cause I think it's as an outsider, it it feels very visible. Like it feels obvious
Unknown to me in a good way. Totally. Um Yeah, so I went I was like two weeks before I graduated from college. Um I got an internship at the Fader magazine, which is the independent music magazine. I always actually think of it as a downtown music magazine. That's kind of like a um a little bit of a throwback way of thinking about New York, but the sensibility of the fader in the early 2000s was very downtown. Um and uh so yeah, I started there right before I graduated from college and then I was working, you know, I was an unpaid intern and I was bar backing um to pay my rent and ended up at the Fader for four and a half years. So from 2003 to to uh the spring of 2007. And that was an incredible education because at an independent music magazine in that era, um you everybody did everything. So you learn, you know, I was my own fact checker. I was we were all each other's copy editors. Yeah. Um, I was intimately I booked all if I was doing a story on somebody, I arranged everything with them. So I like did all the the talent booking. And you really have to to figure out how relate to to talent and publicists and that whole like industrial complex. Yeah. And then I also was going on assignment with photographers. That's usually not how GQ and a lot of the like larger magazines do things, but at a small magazine like the Fader, you just like roll out on assignment with a photographer. So I developed a lot of relationships with a phot with photographers at the time and also just got really into photography like as a mostly as a fan uh but also as like a collaborator with photographers um and then I also that was my first real experience understanding graphic design and we had a um kind of an OG British graphic designer named Phil Bicker who's at Instagram now and he like me thinks of photography first and graphic design as a way to um like meaningfully support and celebrate great photography, which is how I think of of GQ. I hope it's clear that that is not in any way I'm not putting photography above graphic design. It's just the the the way I think photography leads and and design supports in like a great visual magazine. Um there are there are a lot of great magazines that are less photographic than the fader was or than GQ is. And so I just learned about magazine making there and about storytelling and about writing, you know, the pieces of magazines are talent, writing, photography, graphic design, um, and then the production stuff. And so it was just this like cool little lab. I mean, it was an insane time in New York, like money was falling from the sky. It was the beginning of like corporate marketing into hipster culture. So there were just parties every night. I mean, I was so broke, but never needed any money um to just be out. Um and met so many people like I remember um uh meeting Ryan McGinley for the first time. I remember meeting Jason Nasito for the first time. A lot of these guys who uh are photographers that we w work with now, but they were also just um at the center of something really cool happening in downtown New York. Yeah. Um and th so those are and you know, those guys shoot covers for us now. So it's been really cool to kind of evolve with uh with a lot of the people I met in those days. But the fader was, yeah, it was an independent downtown music magazine. We were into like weird, like going down the rabbit hole of all sorts of different genres of music. And that was what was really groundbreaking at the Fader at the time. It seems so obvious now, but back then to have hip-hop and rock and everything in between, world music, jazz, I brought a lot of country music to the fader. To be doing that all in one magazine was just a new thing. Right. Like now, yeah, like that's how all of our playlists look and you know our Spotify algorithms feed us a diversity of music or whatever. But at the time there were rap magazines, there were rock magazines, right? There was Rolling Stone, which had become a pop magazine, and then the fader was just like put it all in a blender. Yeah. And added a bunch of weird
Unknown stuff. And it was this was also, I mean, you you mentioned it was Spotify, but like this is still the era where, like, if you wanted to listen to a record, you had to buy the records. CDs.
Unknown Yeah. Final records. Exactly. Yeah. Um, and I mean, I was there when we basically like started the website in a more serious way. We were like, we should get a guy to like just do like internet. Yeah. We should we should internet guys. His name was Nick Barrett, also known as Nick Catchtubs. He was an amazing DJ at the time, and he also was really active on a lot of uh music message boards that were the ones that the these music message boards were like coughing up a lot of the emerging artists that we would cover in the fader. And so my um the ed the editor at the time, Knox Robinson, like noticed this DJ who was like just amazing at message boards. And we hired him to be our first web editor. Um, so it yeah, it was really the birth of a lot of cool things. And then uh in 2007, I I knew Adam Rappaport, who at the time now he's the editor-in-chief of Bonapet, um, which is also a con and asked magazine, so we still work in the same building, but he was the style editor at GQ. Yeah. And we knew each other socially. Um, and he called me one day and was like, there's a opening for an associate editor, which is like very let's like lower mid-tier editor um at gq and I think you should come intern for the job and I remember really specifically saying what do I know about GQ and I was just kind of I didn't get it, and that was on a Friday, and then on Monday morning I called him back and I was like, Yeah, dude, I want that job. What do I have to do? Um, so and then uh to answer your question about music, when I got to GQ, I had I was going in, I was remember, I was going into my first story ideas meeting. It was my first week on the job, and I was trying to figure out like what how a story ideas meeting worked and what I could what ideas I could say out loud and what where I should just shut up and be the be the young new guy. And I was kind of like, can I pitch music ideas? And everybody was like, yeah. And I was like, well, who's the music editor? And they were like, nobody. Just we all kind of like everybody here likes music and we all just kind of do it. And so I f fairly quickly became my job was to to work on the fashion and style stuff officially. Yeah. Um, but I quickly kind of became the de facto music guy and have continued that since. And then I just, you know, the the bigger question about why there's still so much music in the version of GQ that we're making now is I I just think musicians. Um, I mean, it's partially probably my bias, which is I just see fashion and style through the perspective of music. I always have. Um, but I also think musicians are so interesting because they don't like Hollywood actors, um, some of them are incredibly compelling and sometimes their chameleon-like nature is really interesting and is amazing fodder for a magazine shoot shoot and storytelling but sometimes they're kind of like blank slates and if the GQ that we're making is all about personal style um I find that musicians are the ones who like really have point of view and originality and personal style. So we end up I I I do sometimes have to watch it. I'm like, this is this issue is like one assignment away from
Unknown Yeah, it's funny. I mean, I think you know, here we we end up with the same thing and I think it's it's a pretty common thing in the media world. So for people who aren't in the media world, this is like a kind of truism, I guess, in the in the industry, is like magazines that like they're made by people, right? So like our everybody's taste influences what's what's ending up in there. So it's I I I wonder to what ext like did you know when you got you know you you got the job, your editor in chief, they tell you this is your first issue, like were you like Frank Ocean? Like it has to be Frank, like did you know immediately or was this kind of a a uh negotiation
Unknown . What I didn't know is whether or not I could get him to do it. Okay. I knew that I knew right I knew the day that I got the job that that's what I wanted my first cover to be. Okay. And the first issue that I what was going to be what I what I then found out would be my first issue as editor in chief had sort of already been um earmarked as a music issue. And I just figured like, well that that that's like a safe place for me to start. Yeah. So why don't I just leave that? And then um Frank is somebody that I have known and worked with over the years, although, you know, only sporadically and um he he's very specific and and uh you just never know he you know frank ocean is nobody's fool he does things his way so uh it was definitely like a process to get there, but we we eventually did and I I'm just so grateful that I was able like my first idea for like what who is the person that would like say would perfectly express like a new era and my idea about a new GQ. It's him and we were lucky to start
Unknown that way. Yeah. That's real I mean, like what when when you have that magazine then in your hand, like you get the the samples back from the press, yeah, you've made this happen. Like what's what's that lead up to like, okay, like this is mine now. Like I'm responsible for this. I'm responsible for all the people who work here. Like for the the name of this magazine, for giving it this new kind of uh this new direction. Yeah. Like, all right, we're gonna put this out in the world. Let's see what people think of it. Like do you remember what that felt like? Yeah, you know, I it it's
Unknown interesting. It was is kind of a mind blower and an honor, and I'm hyper aware of how cliche of a thing this is to say, but like super humbling. Cause you're just like, wow, this is it's it's like a um it's like holding a powerful tool in your hands. Yeah. And and you're a little bit in awe of its robust nature. Yeah. I was like, damn, this is like heavy artillery. Yeah. And like I I'm I'm I'm holding it. I got a bunch of people holding it with me. We're all supporting each other. Like, um, but that I was like a little bit in awe of that, and it is a humbling experience. You're just like, I have to use this incredible tool for good. Yeah, like it this has to be a force of good in the world. Yeah. So there was that element was super present, but then the other aspect of it is I just really like doing the work. I love working and I love this work. So we were just like, there wasn't a whole lot of um let's let's all gather around the f the first bound of of the first issue of this new team has come back and let's gather around and like shed a tear together. Yeah. It was more like we're just on and churning. And you know, the speed of uh as you guys well know the speed of media right now and just like um all of the different platforms that we're operating across and it's just like it's always on and it's very intense so it was a com it was a combination of like trying to be present for this transition and to be excited about it and also just like we gotta get back
Unknown to work. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So the last thing I want to ask you before we talk about some watches, because we do we do do need to that, is uh you said you wanted to make this, you wanted to use this this power as a force for good. Yeah. What does that mean to you? Like what does it mean for you to use GQ as a vehicle for good in the world Yeah.
Unknown The ultimately I think there's like we're a fashion magazine and we're not embarrassed about that. We will talk about expensive watches and um fine socks and hosiery um which you know uh a a beautiful pair of shoes that costs more than you know they ever should um we're not like hesitant about we love going down all those rabbit holes. But at the end of the day, what gets me and the team up in the morning out of bed and excited to do this work is the idea that we can encourage people to be themselves, to be their best selves, to evolve as people. Like in a lot of ways, the steady churn of GQ is about constant freshness and newness and and and personal evolution. And sometimes that is like an more abstract mission kind of operating underneath it all. And then sometimes it comes out in more direct ways. And so the November issue of 2019 was the new masculinity issue. So that was like a big statement where we were like kind of turning this mission inside out and like fashion's taking a back seat and we have something um bigger to say uh and are suddenly gonna like address this idea of us being a men's magazine and look in a changing environment about how masculinity is evolving and try to use all the tools of magazine making to like surround that idea and to really try to push things forward. And for me, pushing things forward doesn't look one way or another. It is about something very simple that goes back to that thing that gets me out of bed this morning, which is that like I know who I am and I am in the process, the the the constantly changing, constantly evolving process of becoming my best self. And I ask you to respect that from me, and I'm gonna do you the same favor. It is essentially talk about I mean, I will happily we can actually sit here and shed a tear together if you want. I I really will. But it it it's essentially the golden rule. Yeah. Like, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Like, I am trying every day to be honest, to I'm also trying every day to like be cooler, you know? Yeah to evolve my taste in ways, some ways that are petty and some ways that are like really deeply felt. And um I just asked for like respect and support in that process and I promise I will offer that the same thing to other people. And I don't know, that is a that is a different way of thinking about like magazine making, that's a different way of thinking about you know what it means to be a man. Um and we try to keep that at the root of what we do, even as we do all these other things that maybe um it's not so clear how that how how all that could tie back. Yeah. Yeah that's a that's a different approach. It's amazing when you set that as the intention, what comes up. So Brad Pitt was on the cover um in for the October issue last year, and we the interview ended up being about like um how being emotionally vulnerable is the hallmark of becoming an adult and is the hallmark of being a man. And I was like, wow, this, you know, he's doing this to promote ad astra, right? That's what that's what he's doing here, but it turned out like he was if you get if you created a space where it was possible he was ready to have a very different kind of conversation and I think you know um it's interesting the extent to which our culture and GQ itself like fetishizes the difference between me and you having that conversation and a GQ writer having that conversation with Brad Pitt. Like as though Brad Pitt thinking about it somehow matters more. But in some ways, um, you know, celebrities are like uh markers of where we are as a culture and they are representative of something bigger and they do often have platforms that can influence people. And I think Brad Pitt talking about this stuff is actually more powerful than me talking about it. Yeah. And so, you know, we're we're aware of the the limitations of of that kind of work and the you know, some of the like dudes trying to be cool aspect of what we do with fashion and celebrity culture being a little bit monolithic sometimes but these are the tools we have at our disposal and like I said we we intend to use them for good
Unknown This week's episode is brought to you by the Hodinki app. Way back in 2015, we launched the Hodinki app for iOS. And just last week, we've now added the Hodinki app for Android to the mix. Now, no matter whether you're on an iPhone, a Pixel, a Galaxy, or something else entirely, you can get the very best of Hodinky right in the palm of your hand. Sure, you've always been able to go right to hodinky.com in your mobile browser of choice, but if that's your daily ritual, you're really missing out. The Hodinki app allows you to see all the incredible stories and videos being published daily by our editorial team, complemented by a powerful discover tab that lets you easily go back to the classic reference points, talking watches, or three on three that you really want to rewatch. You also have access to the full suite of Hodinky community features, letting you comment on articles, fill out your watch collection, and more, all while you're on the go. You can also use the detailed clock screen, which is synced to an atomic clock, of course, to set your watches down to the second, whether that's a three-hander or a perpetual calendar. Finally, you can browse the Hodinky shop to your heart's content, even utilizing a real size feature that lets you see the watch at its actual dimensions right on your phone screen. Hold it up to your wrist and you can get a pretty good sense of what 39.5mm actually looks like. And of course, you can purchase using Apple Pay and Android Pay, making it seamless and easy to order that next strap, book, or watch. If you truly want the best Hodinky experience, you need the Hodinky app. To learn more and to download the app for yourself, visit the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store and search for Hodinky. Alright, let's get back to Let's take a little bit of a pivot. Let's talk about watches for a little bit. All right. Um I know watches have always been for the first time now feel self-conscious, but I'm excited to go in. This is a safe space. It's a safe space. Watches have always been a part of of GQ. You know, I've been you know reading about watches in GQ forever. Uh back in the day I actually wrote a few things about watches for GQ.com. Um but I wonder sort of, you know, before we get into your personal collecting and taste journey, like how do you think about watches within the context of your GQ? Yeah. We
Unknown really did a total overhaul of the watch coverage. Yeah. Like basically I don't know the third day that I that I was editor in chief. Um and it basically started with me saying, I don't know if you guys have noticed, but men really care about watches more than ever before. They're like kind of a thing. It's kind of a thing. And it's a thing for me personally. It was a thing for uh some of my friends who were interested in in what we're what we were about to start doing at the magazine and there were some people on staff who were also interested in it as well. And I think I can say fairly that GQ's watch coverage up until that time wasn't that serious. There were there we would do it make a lot of beautiful pictures of like groupings of watches. Yeah. And that was kind of the extent of it. There's nothing wrong with that, but I don't think that was like really um in step with what is going on in the culture that you guys really um you know put a saddle on and have like rode into the rode into the future. So it was just a little bit uh uh like this is a real thing we are all there's a bunch of us who are personally into it so how can we how can we get involved you know and what's so cool about GQ is I just think we have like a clear lane. You know, and and we have a clear lane like in any category and watches was one of those. So we did a couple things. One, um, my uh close friend and the person who has like personally been my uh Sherpa through the watch world is Wes Lang, who's a artist in LA, a painter. Um uh I know that that uh well uh anyway let me let me start at the beginning. So yeah, Wes had personally guided me through watches and I spoke to him about having a a watch column in every issue of GQ. He was super stoked and into it. So we launched that. Uh Cam Wolfe, who is a writer for um GQ.com. He also writes in print, but but he does a lot of stuff for the website. Uh he's super passionate and knowledgeable about watches. And so he really ran at at like more daily dot com watch coverage. Um and a lot of that, I mean this goes back to what I was saying a minute ago, a lot of that is like sort of through the prism of what celebrities are wearing. And in a way that is like just um how that's how we approach a lot of things. It's like we can get people in the door through celebrity, and then we can have a larger conversation about watches and what we think is cool. Yeah. What's what's happening? You know, it's it's like just a an entry point to get into um the whole world of watches. Yeah. Um so Cam has really been tackling that. And then we've done um also, you know, anytime we make a move into a world we try to use all the all the different formats and tools at our disposal. So we've also done some long form um coverage. Cam wrote a great piece uh for print um about uh Oral Bax. I pronounced that right, didn't I? Oral Bax, yeah. About Oral Bax, the the watch auctioneer who has been so influential in the um really moving the vintage market in a new way. So we've just been yeah, we've tried to you know there's this print column there's constant online online digital coverage uh I really love the way that Wes's column gets flipped into to uh Instagram stories yeah um so bringing it to social media in a in a long way and then doing like you know five thousand world five thousand word reported features in the world as well. Yeah. And I mean the response has been amazing. It's good to hear. Yeah. The uh you know there's as you guys know better than anyone, there's an audience for it. Yeah. And I think we were able to like it it was all done actually out of um respect for Hodinki and what you guys have built and um trying to look at okay um I think you guys have carved carved out more than a lane you guys have carved out like a superhighway and watches and I was like it was kind of like where is there space for us. Um so that's what we were looking to articulate and it's been it's been great. Yeah. I mean I think it's always peop people always ask us all
Unknown the time like, oh did like do you think who do you think about as competitors? Is it GQ? Is it other watch blogs? Is it whatever? And like our our answer has always been like I still believe in this answer very deeply is like there's so much room here. Like there's no there's no competition. Like why the saturation in terms of watch knowledge and watch interest is so low, yeah, that like it can only benefit all of us. Like, we can only help you guys by writing about it. You can only help us by writing about it. Like all we can do is grow this thing. This isn't like you know, a market where it's way oversaturated, there's too many publications, there's too much being said, we need to kinda like call everything. Like this is the opposite. Totally. Uh I I think the more people we can get interested, the better it is for everybody. And like if that means that, you know, seeing a watch on Brad Pitt's wrist in a story that has nothing to do about watches gets people to say like, huh, what's that? And they like go and Google it. Great. If hearing Wes Lang say something cool and they know what they know who Wes is and they trust Wes, yep, great. That's awesome. Um and whether they ever want to read a you know ten thousand word deep dive on our website or not, like the fact that they thought about a watch for a minute is still a cool thing
Unknown . Yeah, totally. And is I I really believe in that idea, uh I mean just reflecting what you're saying back to you, but the a a strong ecosystem yeah is good. And you know the it's the whole media landscape is very difficult and I think we need we we need strength across the board, you know. Like uh I think even like a strong Esquire is good for GQ. Agree. A rocking like innovative hodinky is good for GQ. GQ having respectable on point watch coverage is great for Hodinky. And I thought the the you you know you guys have really um uh uh put your ones and zeros where your mouths are too. You know, I thought Ben writing about how great Wes's watch column was on Hodinky. Yeah was just like you know, that's the kind of thing that um that it was just an awesome moment. That's that's good to hear. You're like, you're like I you know, the uh so much of our world operates from like scarcity consciousness, yeah, and competitiveness. Speaking of new masculinity, totally like let's let's let's work from a place of abundance. You know what I mean? Totally agree. And Ben, when he wrote that piece, was really w thinking in that way. And that that's how I I try to think. And I just thought that was super rad. That's good to hear. And the first issue of GQ Style. Uh there were like my first ever issue of the as editor in chief of anything had a uh collaboration with Ben and Hodin. Oh yeah, yeah. Cars and watches feature. Yeah, back to the um we also started in yeah. It's a lot of Kumbaya moments on this pod. That's a good feeling. I like a morning this is I like a morning cry
Unknown . This is this is a podcast about positive vibe. We're just trying to make people happy. That's the other thing we say here all the time is like we are not here to be like hard hitting critical journalists trying to like poke holes in things. Like we're here because we love this shit. And like in the same way that I I think if I can speak for you guys, like I haven't seen a GQ column that was like the such and such spring summer show is trash. This designer is dead. Like if if something's bad, you just ignore it and you focus on the good stuff. Like there's enough good stuff out there. It's it's much uh it's much more productive to come at this from a place of of celebration and of happiness than to like wake up every day and come into work going like all right, who can I tear down today? Yeah, so that I feel bigger about myself. Yeah. Yeah. I don't have the energy for it. I don't either. I've worked with some reporters who do who like wake up every morning like some people feed on excited to like poke a hole in something. I just I just can't get excited about that
Unknown . And you know, that's just insecurity expressing itself. It always is. Any kind of bullying, any kind of like um unprovoked negativity is always comes from a place
Unknown of personal insecurity. Yeah. So I would agree. Uh so so was Wes who got you into watches in the first place or were you already interested and he kind of just like pushed you a little further? Yeah, he I was I
Unknown was interested. I got a Tudor Blackbait dark and I loved it. That was like my first watch. That's a killer first watch. Actually, I bought a um I got really interested in the first Hamilton electric watch. Oh, cool. There's the I think the pace, maybe it is a pace watch. Is it the Ventura? No, okay, it's the pacer. Okay. So the ventura is the one that has the the tail fins. Right. Like a vintage Cadillac. Yeah. The Ventura is very Elvis. Okay. And this is the pacer, which has the um the the it the dial is shaped like a shield. Oh yeah, yeah. And it's it's what's the word I'm looking for? It's it's not it's asymmetrical. Yeah. And very retrofuturistic because they wanted something that looked kind of Jetson Z because they were like, it's the battery operator, watch of the future. So I bought one of those, wore it a lot. It's tiny on my wrist, which I always liked. It's like about the size of a cardier tank. Um, but I could never keep it quite running. And so I kind of quit wearing that. I I I could never be the guy who wears a watch that doesn't run. Yeah. I I know people who are cool with that, but it's just not for me. Can't either. So I was back to being watchless and then I bought a black bay dark and absolutely loved it. Yeah. Um again, it's a vi it's not a visual medium, but you're wearing all black today. I do often wear all black and I had an all black watch and now it's like really beautiful. It's all jacked up. That's awesome. I'm really hard on everything that I have. I just like I wear s I w you know I I I'll wear the same suit three days in a row. You know, so I just beat stuff up and my black bay dark is is it looks like a war machine. It's awesome. Um so I had that was that was kind of my um my first move, and then then Wes started like I got that that got me hooked and Wes really started taking me through it. Um but what's so cool is that when you have a friend who is as knowledgeable as he is and he also has a a great collection, so I was just able to like put a lot of watches on. We just hang out. I a lot of we would hang out a lot at his house in LA and just like look at watches. Um and so you're able to develop your taste, but at the same time like my taste from the beginning just was different than his. So he has all these threads, but then I'm also kind of figuring out my own thing. Um and I bought a vintage I was is so funny like my instinct was to like start at the beginning in a in a lot of ways and I bought a vintage gold 36 millimeter date just with a black dial. It's an awesome watch. It is it's such an awesome watch. It took me a long time to find the exact right one, but just like a I have a hand tattoo and a gold wa thirty six mil I'm also six foot six, so I have big hands and thirty-six is here we go. Can we hear these scare quotes? Like too small for me. Totally. And I just thought it looked so sick. I'm five seven and I wear a lot of thirty six millimeter watches. Yeah. There you go. So and I always thought like a Cartier tank looks like great on a like bigger dude. Yeah. Whereas it's just like technically too small, but looks awesome. I agree. So I got really into date just and then um uh but then my real prized possession is a uh date a my you know a contemporary date just forty one which was a gift from a friend and it's got a really amazing subscription uh uh wow. I almost said subscription inscription. It's got a really amazing inscription on the back. And it just like um so those two watches are really special to me. Like the I don't know, you just always want like who doesn't want a gold R
Unknown olex? I mean it's like especially like a small gold Rolex with a black dial. It's like it's kind of under the radar, but it's also like to be crude about it's kind of a fuck you watch, but like a low-key one. I'm a big fan. Especially like again, you have tattoos, like it's a cool. Yeah, and you can put on a bunch
Unknown of gold jewelry with it. So when I wear my gold watch, I wear a gold bracelet and a gold ring and a gold chain around my neck, and it just gets a little bit grotesque. It's kind of awesome. And it feels awesome. Yeah. Not everybody's taste, but that's totally that's totally my taste. And you've got a you've got a Daytona on today. Yeah. Modern Daytona. Yeah. I um it was interesting because I started with um vintage Rolex, but uh and then I my my friend gave me that gift of a modern date just and I really love modern Rolex. Uh I'm I'd be curious to hear what you think about this. I really don't know any this is this is where I officially get out of my depth. All right, let's do it. I'm holding out hope that the Coke GMT that Rolex will do the a Coke this year. Um I know that I don't know whether it's likely because they did the Pepsi and then the Batman. Like, does that mean the Coke is coming or does that mean it's too obvious and the Cok
Unknown e is not coming? I have no idea, man. They're they're such a black box. Like I any time I make a prediction about Rolex, I'm like I'm just throwing darts in the dark. Like I have no idea here.
Unknown So well, uh as we've said, I love the color black, and I felt like the Coke Rolex. I mean the Coke GMT just looks like Atlanta, Georgia to me. Like black and red is Georgia Bulldogs, Atlanta Falcons, Coca-Cola. I mean, it's literally called the Coke, and I grew up in Atlanta, and I just um it's not like me projecting meaning onto that watch. I just like black and red more than I like red and blue. Okay. All day, every day. Yeah. Um, but I just felt like a deep connection to the Coke. So I bought a vintage um GMT, but I'm kind of hoping if they if they do bring back the Coke GMT, I would buy the new one and sell the vintage one.
Unknown All right, Rolex, if you're listening, if anyone at the Crown is listening, let's do it. Will Welch will buy one? You've got you've got one sold. You've got one pre-s
Unknown old. I will buy one. Yeah. Um, and then I'm still really into Tutor. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's all kinds of things I I would I would love to have, but um uh Wes the first Wes's first column for GQ was on um a Grand Seiko GMT. Yeah. I think that's a beautiful watch. Yeah. Um Longa One. Yeah. It's just somewhere on in the back of my head as like, wouldn't that be nice? It's a killer watch. Dude, the w how do you even talk about watches? Because it's all like um even when things are in reach, uh there's so much that's out of reach. I know. It kills. I guess that's the joy of it, right? That's kind of what like pulls you through the day is like it's a no matter what you have there's
Unknown so much you don't have. Yeah it's this weird mix of like wanting everything and also having to like there's something almost kind of zen about it. Like you have to come to this place where like you acknowledge the desire and then you just have to let it go. Yeah, because otherwise you just make yourself crazy. And but that's part
Unknown of um what we all do as editors too. Yeah. Is you get excited about things and you don't need to have them. Right. Like right I I when I sit at a fashion show and watch clothes go down the runway, so much of it is about oh that's really cool. We should shoot that. But right and it I don't even think about whether or not I would wear it. It just doesn't matter. Yeah. And I think it's fun. I mean that one of the joys of of of a deep dive onto Y'all's website is just this like I'm just like sponging information yeah and like turning things over in my head for a while and then like taking a deep breath and letting them go and moving on. Yeah
Unknown . You know? It's one of the things that got me into like wanting to be in the magazine media world in the first place was this idea that like through writing about things and photographing things and being an editor or like, you do get that experience of like you get to sort of possess things without actually having to like pay for them and store them in your apartment and like figure out what to do with them when you're done with them. Uh you get to kind of like, you know, we're planning a shoot for next week for the the next issue of our magazine. And like we're calling in twelve completely ridiculous watches. I'll get to spend, you know, three or four days like ridiculous. Uh we're calling in high end women's watches. Amazing. Um it's gonna be awesome. Um I'm working with Kara on it. It's gonna be really epic. Um but we're gonna get to spend a couple days like Will there be a lot of precious stones involved in that there'll be some. Not too many. Yeah. Uh some but uh it's fun that like these are watches I would never like I would never buy for me. They're not watches that I think are necessarily my wife's taste. Um but I could spend a couple days like really kind of like soaking in them and then like let them go. They can go back home. I've had the experience. It's all good. Absol
Unknown utely. Yeah. And for me, that's I mean, whether it's like um fashion or watch stuff at GQ or even cars and all that, it's like I kind of come to all the there's something fun about coming to all this stuff knowing at the end of the day it doesn't matter. Yeah. We all die. You can't take it with us. Agreed. Um and you know, I'm a I'm I'm a I'm a big believer in the principles of non-attachment. You know what I mean? But it's fun to just like embrace these things and then also with a with a sort of existential sense of humor about it. Yeah, I ag
Unknown ree. I mean, I think that's one of the things you've done really well with this version of GQ is like it's hard to balance that like taking things seriously but not being serious about them. Yeah. Like you have to be respectful that like, you know, when when it's a really beautiful piece of clothing. L itike's gone down the runway. There are dozens of people who have put uh hundreds in most cases of hours. Yep. There's a lot of money behind it. It's a big deal. But at the same time, like it's it's a jacket. Like it's it's not going to change the world. Just a a co coat. Yeah, justat. And like coats are awesome. Coats are awesome. And they can make you feel great. Go in for a while and then let's be like, yeah, anyways, just a coat. Yeah. And like that's a that's a good attitude. And I think it makes it more fun and I think it makes it more accessible for people. Like I think you're more likely to get some like 14-year-old kid who has only been wearing Supreme or coveting Supreme. You're more likely to get that kid interested in like a cool piece of tailoring if you present it in that way versus like putting it on a pedestal and being like oh you you can't breathe too heavy on it you can only wear it once a month like that kind of like really like weird reverential attitude that I think you know you brought up the hashtag menswear days. Like that kind of attitude I think was really prevalent back then. Yeah. We needed it then. We did. And we moved on from it. Yeah, right. Now it's like you buy a nice piece of tailoring and you like ball it up and you know, kind of treat it like shit and it's it's kind of cool, you know. Um yeah, I think that attitude's a a good thing, whether it's watches, fashion, cars, what whatever, you know? Do you guys talk much
Unknown about one thing I'm really interested in is inscribing watches? Yeah. Do you guys talk much about that around here? And like what is is there a is there a general take or what what's your take
Unknown ? Yeah, it's not something we've I don't think we've ever written a story like kind of about the idea of it. We've written stories about watches that have engravings on them, but uh I've read many of them, yeah. Yeah. I I don't think we've written any like official uh hodinky take on this, but I mean my personal take is I think it's I think it's super cool. I think if there's a watch that means something to you, um, I guess I only have one watch with an engraving on the back. Um, but it's it's for something meaningful, it's related to work. Yeah. Um, you know, and I I think I know a lot of my colleagues here have I'm looking around the room, I can see into the office right now. Uh I know a couple people who have them, whether they're gifts from significant others, uh marking, you know, one of my colleagues just had a had a kid and got a watch, had his kid's name engraved on the back. And when his kid turns 18 or 21, the watch will go to his son. Amazing. Like, that's a cool thing. Totally. Uh and I love my parents dearly. These were not things they were interested in at all. And they I'm very thankful that instead of putting their money into Rolexes they saved so I could go to college. That was very very nice of them. Thanks, mom and dad. But uh you know, there's there's that like fantasy of like
Unknown they probably if they had been putting their money into into Rolex however many years ago, they probably could have put you through college just fine. That's true. Forget for
Unknown get the Apple stock. Dad should have been buying Daytonas. But uh yeah, there's that like I think really cool kind of like fantasy of the like oh like I've got like my dad's old this or my mom's old whatever and there's a nice way that engraving something kind of marks it that way. Yeah. Um and I love some people when they buy vintage watches, don't like having engravings on them. Yep. I find it really charming. I don't personally own any watches with other engravings on them. But I've seen a couple and I've come close to buying a couple. And it's there's something cool that like it really underscores the idea that this thing had a life before you. And it had a meaningful life before. And it's gonna have one after you. Exactly. You know, you're you're just kinda like you're holding on to it for a little while. And should we just do the Patek campaign? We could, yeah. They make it hire us. So we'll shout out to Rolex. They should make you a Coke. And then Patek, if you want to hire us, we'll do uh we'll do some ads for you
Unknown . Yeah. Oh god, that'd be good. The the I can't quite see what you're wearing today because of the is that an explorer?
Unknown Yeah, I'm wearing an old like early sixties explorer that I'll take off my wrist. Yeah, of course. Yeah, so this is it's thirty-six millimeters. Uh it's on a stretch bracelet, which I love. It's one of those things that like until you handle the watch you can't even see. Um buttery loom.
Unknown Yeah, I'm real happy with this watch. There's something really frightening about putting on somebody else's watch. Really? I think we're kind of like desensitized to it here, which is probably a bad thing. But yeah, I'm just like a little jittery from the coffee, and then I have to like kind of push it over my giant hands. And then um, you know, we don't know each other that well. So I just got nervous. All right. It's all good. That is a beautiful explorer. Thank you, sir. I was uh I I have been fairly deep in some explorer research and it's amazing what has gone on with the the value of those watches. Yeah, I'm uh although I get it. I understand why so many people want them. I'm gl
Unknown ad I bought one a couple years ago, I'll put it that way. Yeah, nicely done. Um played. It's uh I I don't think I would own this watch today. Um yeah, I think for for a couple of years there, people really gravitated towards mostly the watches with with colored bezels. Yeah. Or with bigger bezels. You know, it was really subs, GMTs, Daytonas, obviously. Um I think the explorer in that like in the same way that like a date jest or a day date doesn't have like a colored bezel. You don't get that fading, whatever. For so many people, I think that's kind of like a the hallmark of a vintage Rolex is like, oh, you get this like gray or like faded blue and red bezel. Um especially right now, we're in like the tropical moment. Right. And I think people are are coming around. I think people finally realized and same with those those date just and day dates. Like prices are going up on those and I think rightfully so. I mean, I think gold vintage Rolex has long been like one of the best values you can get in
Unknown vintage watches. Yeah. It's interesting. Uh there was a mo there was a very funny moment. Um especially when I go abroad for the fashion shows, I usually bring I either just wear one watch or maybe bring a second watch. Um but w at one of the one of the trips over there, you see all the same people all the time. You're just going it's like a uh joining the circus. You're just traveling around with the various fashion journalists and and going and staring at the fashion shows together. And so I had on the the my my gold day just and uh Guy Trebay from the New York Times was like, I like your Texas time X. Oh and it took me a second, I was like, I was like, oh right, the gold Rolex. Yeah, the like Texas oil many kind of vibe. Had you ever heard that Texas? I haven't, but I love that. Yeah. I'm gonna start using that. I was like, thank you for that. I'm stealing that. I'm officially calling this my Texas Timex for the city. I'm from Texas. I think I need one now. Yeah. One thing um that I wear the Daytona less than I might otherwise because I I really miss having the date. Yeah. I I use my watch. I don't take out my phone. You know, some people say like that watches are just for show these days because we all have iPhones. I suppose that's true, but I look at my watch and um I'm always looking at the Daytona for the date and not finding it. And then, you know, it's a hard world for a man with a Daytona that doesn't have a date on it. You let out a loud sigh and then you reach into your pocket and you pull out your phone and you find the date Yeah. But I don't know, there
Unknown 's just something about a date just made. Yeah. I mean a lot of watch watch guy like purists hate date windows. Like we get shit in the comments all the time about people that go take the date window off. I get it. I I like having the date too
Unknown . I mean I I have uh from a from a design perspective, there are a lot of watches that are ruined by their date window. Agreed. So I understand that any watch that puts the date wind
Unknown ow at 4 30. Yeah. Like just stop. Totally. Just absolutely stop that. That's nonsense. But yeah, I think a
Unknown 36 millimeter Rolex date just I think it looks great. I agree. I I do understand the appeal of the no date sub. Yeah. I ag
Unknown ree. Um I like the explorer. I like that the explorer doesn't have a date. I like um I have an IWC, the one we did with them that that has no date that I love. Um, but like I wait, I've been wearing this vintage Grand Seiko a lot lately and has a date. And I originally when I bought it, I was looking for the version of this watch without the date. Yep. I found a nice one with the date and I said, you know what, I'll buy I'll buy this anyway. Super happy it has the date. Yeah. I wear it more because because it's it has. Yeah.
Unknown So can I ask you a question about like it maybe it's not for you, but for me, it feels like the elephant in the room. Yeah. Like how and and I'm curious about historically like what it feels like as you're doing the podcast, but like how much what is sort of like the etiquette or the sensibility about talking about watches that you have versus talking about watches in general and kind of like maybe you hint at what's in your collection, but you don't really let people know. Like how does it be? For me personally? Yeah. And in your experience with having
Unknown different guests on and stuff. It's funny. Like I, you know, for a while, most of the watches I wore were on my Instagram. Um and like most people like you could go backtrack and probably you could probably figure out pretty close what what my personal collection was. I try to keep it pretty small. Uh definitely under a dozen watches. Right. Try to keep it under ten. Yep. Uh and that includes things like swatches and and other things. Like I try to keep it reasonable. Um I'm one of those people I hate like the idea of having a whole bunch of like really nice things sitting in a box in the dark in my closet. Yeah. Like it bums me out and it stresses me out. Okay. Um, I want to use them, I want to enjoy them. I want them on my wrist. I don't want them like sitting in a safe. Yeah. Um, but I've actually have stopped putting a lot of stuff on Instagram. I've stopped sharing stuff and I've really gone to the like these things are for me kind of mentality. Is that's that's what's driven you to share less? Yeah, it's mostly just like it's for me. I don't have to tell anybody else. Um, you know, I think again, most people probably can figure it out. I'm happy to talk about it. I'm not like I'm trying to think if I own any watches that I like don't talk about. Uh no. I don't think there's anything I haven't talked about
Unknown . And then when guests come on, is it is there like a whole range of how like if you step back from the episode and you're like, okay, can I piece together that person's whole collection? Especially guess where you're really here to talk about wat
Unknown ches. Yeah, it depends. What's the etiquette, right? It depends. There's certain people who we've had on where like we talk in advance and they're like, all right, I know you know, I own these like six things. Yeah. I don't want to talk about it. Like I I don't want to be here talking about like all this expensive stuff I own. I'd rather not get robbed tomorrow. Yeah. It's a security thing and it's also like especially for some of our guests who are like super high profile people, whether it's in business or they're celebrities or whatever, like they don't necessarily need the possible PR blowback of like, oh, some reporter Somebody does some quick math. Yeah, somebody at variety reverse engineers it and realizes so-and-so who's currently promoting a new movie, uh, owns like, you know, $100,000 worth of whatever, $300,000 worth of whatever, or that so-and-so who's the you know, an executive at whatever company owns you know a million dollars worth of watches like right some people don't need that yeah we're respectful about it like my feeling is you can share whatever you want you don't have to share what you don't want to share right and you know the goal of the show and the goal of most of our coverage online and in print is like to kind of build passion for this stuff, not to give people a platform to be like, look at how many nice things I own. Which you know, talking watches is that a little bit, but even there, like, you know, we've done everything from we did the episode with Jack Nicholas where he owned he owned one watch. What a two John Mayer. And a great watch it is. It's an amazing watch. I guess it was because it's not his anymore, right? That's true. Yeah. The watch is still out there. It's just not his. But uh so everything from that up to like, you know, guys like John Mayer or Reza Rashidian who like, you know, these
Unknown guys have massive collections. Yeah. With like with the John talking watches, you know that he's like skim he's like bitten off a chunk of it. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is a stuntastical chunk.
Unknown It is insane. Um it's just a window. I've been at both of those shoots. Uh and the second one, the one we did, I guess, a little over a year ago, um, is one of the most incredible collections of watches I've seen like on a table all at once. And that includes covering auctions, covering people's collections. Like I've seen some pretty wild selections of watches on a table. Yeah. Um, this was like to be in his living room and have this like he's just like going back and forth to the safe, just like pulling stuff out for us. And it's like, oh shit. You're like, just let us go in a safe man. Man, uh it was it was wild. Yeah. And the best thing is like he genuinely loves the stuff. Like, you know, I've asked him for help when I'm researching stories before. Yeah. I've been like, you know, I've asked Ben, like, hey, do you know about this? And he's like, no, I'm telling you, man, music music people are the most interesting
Unknown . Musicians are awesome. That's my bias. Yeah. I can't. Musicians
Unknown , artists. Yeah. People who make stuff. Yeah. Absolutely. Really fascinating. Totally. Before I let you go, I know you gotta run because you have uh an issue with a magazine to uh ship today, but um the last thing I want to ask you is is what what's coming next? So you're you're a year in you know, we've talked a lot about like evolution today, about constant evolution. How do you see year two kind of being different or an evolution of year one
Unknown ? Yeah. So the um in a lot of ways I'm trying to think about the business of GQ as broadly as possible. And I take my co-ownership with Susan Plageman or um who is uh in the publisher role at at at GQ um really seriously and trying to think about in a lot of ways I feel like the editorial train we really set the new direction last year. Um and it's running down the track. And that's that will definitely be, you know, I'm nothing if not involved. I really believe in handmaking things. That's how they feel exciting and compelling. And yeah. That's how people know that you mean it. And when you can take something as like historic as GQ and make people feel like you handmade it for them, that's when there's a real connection there. I mean, not dissimilar to the feeling of picking up a watch or reading Hodinky, you know, it's just a bunch of smart, cool people who like made this thing for me to enjoy. Um, uh, so that we will continue to do that, and I'm super invested in just the like day-to-day editorial operations of GQ and that handmade sensibility. Um, but just trying to think about um what are the new opportunities for GQ that maybe expand that go outside of what um a magazine like ours has done before. And to be honest, you guys have um you guys are a real inspiration in that. I think the the the way that you guys have looked at what Hodinky could be, um it could be so much more than just a web platform. Um and I think there's there's opportunity for us to do a lot of that thinking as well. So I'm trying to like sort of remake my weekly schedule to to really have time to invest and that kind of thinking and and hopefully we can be successful at that. Um and then beyond that it's really just about pushing things forward. Like video is a new is a not new at all. Video is a big emphasis for us um this year, uh figuring out how to make our video offering feel like um just G2 GQ to its core and also just push it into new places. Um and then just continuing to like like where we started, just have fun with it, you know? Yeah. Like one of the first things that we launched um uh when I became editor last year was the Big Fit of the Day franchise on Instagram. Yep. Which is just like who had the wildest. You know, often it's like our favorite, but sometimes it has nothing to do with like good or bad. It's just like some unruly ass dressing. Yeah. And that thing has just been like this crazy juggernaut that just became like part of the the cultural language immediately. Um and that is just like our idea of a good time, you know? Um the other thing I think about a lot is again going back to that idea that GQ is just a it's just a bunch of cool people making something, is really making sure like how how uh to give an example, when we launched GQ Style, one of the first people I hired, there were just like four of us working um on GQ Style all the time, and Noah Johnson, um who was at style.com and when I hired him, he was writing a lot of style and style adjacent stuff for the New York Times he when he came on the team Noah grew up in Troy New York skateboarding and so I mean if if you like ask Noah who he is he's like a skater you know and so because of that there was just a lot of skate coverage in GQ style and like skate and style sometimes even skate and fashion are like all part of one swirl. And so it was just kind of like effortless and obvious. Yeah. And it's so exciting. Like uh GQ shouldn't just be an expression of my interests and tastes. It's an expression of the interests and tastes of everybody who works on it. And then constantly bringing in new people. So Wes Lang is a great example. Like he's a one of my favorite painters working right now. Also happens to have this deep interest in watches. So let's bring him in to do watches and we have a uh fitness and wellness columnist named Joe Holder, um a grooming c columnist and Phil Picardy. So it's just like who out there like do we really relate to and who can we bring into the fold? Yeah. So those are those are some of the things that that we're thinking about. And then just trying to continue to be awesome. That's a good goal, man. Continue to be awesome. That's a good that's gonna be my mantra today. If nothing else continue to be awesome.
Unknown If nothing else, may the awesomeness continue. Love it. Uh thanks so much for doing this. I feel like we could go like another hour or two, but I know you gotta run. Absolutely. And uh love to have you back on. We'll have to do this again. Abs
Unknown olutely. I would love that. It's really fun. Thanks for having us. Awesome. Thanks man. I'm gonna go back to my desk and just continue to read Hodinky. Perfect
Unknown . Dit week's episode was recorded at Hodinki HQ in New York City and was produced and edited by Grayson Korhonen. Please remember to subscribe and rate the show, it really does make a difference for us. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next weekenible nique.