Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2025 i Esquire

“It creates a desire to just be more honest and not WASTE YOUR TIME. YOU HAVE TO BE MORE UPFRONT. It’s almost a responsibility.” —LEONARDODI CAPRIO ON TURNING 50 (PAGE 62) PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON: This is not me talking; this is Esquire: “You give so much to every role you play, once filming wraps, what do you do to come down from it?” LEONARDO DICAPRIO: Sheesh. ANDERSON: How do you recover? What does a jet-setter like yourself do? DICAPRIO: Ironic, because I’m on a yacht off Croatia right now. ANDERSON: I’d expect nothing less. (PAGE 62)…

THE GOOD NEWS: NEW PRODUCTS ARE COMING out every second that promise to help us groom more effectively, effciently, and easily. The bad news: New products are coming out every damn second. How do you know which really work? You could rely on influencers, but you never really know when they might be on the take. Which is why you have us. Every year, we try hundreds of products—and spend just as many hours in our showers, over our sinks, and everywhere else you can imagine test-driving them in real life—so we can recommend only the very best. Whether you’re a grooming obsessive or just want to look and feel better, these picks are the ones that truly make a difference. Fragrance PERFUMEHEAD 1272 What’s a “coltrait,” you ask? Linguistically, it’s…

FOR THE BETTER PART of the past twenty-odd years, I’ve begun most of my classes with a prompted freewrite. A statement by 20th-century Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein is not only a go-to prompt but an oh-so-apt declaration for our times: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” Wittgenstein’s words stress how language defines what we can and can’t think, tantamount to shaping our reality. And the man should know, as he lived during the Third Reich, a regime that achieved its cruel success in no small part by controlling German discourse. The American regime in power for a precipitous second reign is working overtime to not only disappear words but to pervert their meaning—no less than a hallmark of authoritarian rule. Within the first 100 days of…

A LEONARDO DICAPRIO PERFORMance is always an intense experience: Howard Hughes losing his mind, Jordan Belfort debasing himself, Hugh Glass surviving against all odds. We are watching one of Hollywood’s greatest of all time at work. His latest film, One Battle After Another, is no exception. DiCaprio plays Bob Ferguson, a washed-up revolutionary and dad to a teenage daughter, Willa, played by Chase Infiniti in her first film role. Opposite him are Teyana Taylor as the absent mom, Benicio Del Toro as the ally, and Sean Penn as the villain. One Battle After Another is a big movie—an action film with car chases, a spycraft yarn with a clandestine agent who’s drunk and stoned, and a political thriller with reverberations for our interesting times. But at its core, the movie…

CHRIS COOPER WAS THE TALK OF THE Upper East Side. When he first moved to Manhattan in the mid-1970s to pursue acting, he brought his tools with him. And between auditions, he began to pick up home-renovation and handyman jobs—installing custom shelves, building a wet bar, putting in a kitchen, wallpapering, painting. Soon the quiet young man from Missouri with carpentry skills and a toolbox on wheels was a hot commodity in one of New York’s toniest neighborhoods. “The thing that worked was I did one job at a time, from beginning to end, right to their satisfaction,” says Cooper, pointing his finger at me for emphasis. “And my name spread like wildfire. Wildfire.” In the decades since, the now-seventy-fouryear-old Cooper has built his career in much the same way—as a…

SHE STILL SEEMS OUT OF BREATH AS SHE enters the room. She’s a tornado of energy—bright energy. She apologizes for being late even though she’s right on time. She’s spent every minute of this gorgeously sunny Los Angeles afternoon in a dark, air-conditioned editing suite. Her eyes are eager and alert behind stylish wire-rimmed frames. She is dressed in a white linen shirt unbuttoned just enough to show off a funky, chunky necklace. She’s wearing a brown fedora. She pulls it off. She is forty-eight years old. She tells me to ask her anything. “What you see is what you get.” She exudes the warmth and sincerity and excitement of someone who is finally seeing a distant, long-held dream—one that seemed as unlikely to a kid growing up in Osaka, Japan,…

SINGING WAS THE ONLY THING that got me good attention. Anything else might be bad attention or no attention at all—which is horrible, because I’m a show dog. MAMA TAUGHT ALL OF US KIDS how to sing. We didn’t have a radio in the car, so that’s the way we passed the time, learning to sing three-part harmony on the road to the rodeo. I WAS ALWAYS AFRAID if I didn’t use my gift, God would take it away from me and give it to somebody else. I GREW UP ON A WORKING CATTLE RANCH, eight thousand acres. Alice, Susie, and I were expected to do the work Pake, our brother, did. The only difference was when we got through with our chores, we had to go and do the…

STORE INFORMATION For the items featured in Esquire, please consult the website or call the phone number provided. Blueprint, p. 40: Prada boots, prada.com. P. 45: Tudor watch, tudorwatch.com. P. 46: Bode jacket, sweater, trousers, and scarf, bode.com. Fortela shirt, fortela.it. P. 47: Quaker Marine Supply Co. jacket, quaker.com. Guess sweater, guess.com. Seven Continents trousers, thesevencontinents.com. Longines watch, longines.com. Margaret Howell jacket, margarethowell.com. Rag & Bone shirt and jeans, rag-bone.com. Timberland boots, timberland.com. P. 52: Gabriela Hearst jacket, sweater, trousers, and shoes, gabrielahearst.com. IVI Los Angeles bracelet, ivilosangeles.com. Mavericks of Hollywood, p. 73: Ralph Lauren Purple Label suit, shirt, and tie, ralphlauren.com. P. 75: McQueen dress, alexandermcqueen.com. Gianvito Rossi pumps, gianvitorossi.com. Cartier bracelet, cartier.com. P. 76: Prada coat, knit, trousers, and shoes, prada.com. P. 77: Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello…

IN EARLY JUNE, I SPENT A SURREAL DAY INSIDE A HOUSE IN THE San Fernando Valley. Talk around the living room was that the previous owners built the house in the 1950s and hadn’t updated it since the early seventies. The current owner has barely touched the place. Wood paneling covers most of the walls, except for the kitchen, where flowery wallpaper envelops every inch, including the ceiling. There’s no air-conditioning. A small pool in the back offers a panoramic view of the L. A. sprawl. Even the details were period specific: eclectic art, expressive lamps, ashtrays. The house looks like a movie set—if the set smelled like a vintage shop. This begins to make sense once you know the house’s owner: writer and director Paul Thomas Anderson. A hallmark of…

THE NBA DRAFT IS EVERY COLLEGE BASKETBALL PLAYER’S DREAM. One minute you’re a teenage hopeful, and the next you’re an overnight millionaire—poised to match up against perennial All-Stars like LeBron James and Kevin Durant. Cooper Flagg, this year’s consensus top prospect, leads a 2025 draft class full of hungry athletes ready to make a name for themselves. “I don’t think it’s really hit me yet,” said Carter Bryant, the number-14 pick, just a few hours before hearing his name called on live TV. “When it does, it’s gonna hit me like a train.” Though the soon-to-be pros were clearly nervous—often dribbling a basketball backstage just to reach some state of Zen—they were more than happy to show off their big chains, big personalities, and custom suits. Soon we’ll find out who…

THERE’S SOMETHING CHARMINGLY ECLECTIC ABOUT GABRIELA Hearst’s approach to fashion. The things that inspire her, for instance, include modern art, ancient anthropology, the sweeping 17,000-acre ranch in Uruguay where she grew up, and her adoptive New York City. Her collections offer an easy, wearable style that occasionally earns it the misnomer of “quiet luxury.” It’s sophisticated, sure, but it’s far from quiet. For Hearst, color and feel are everything. This fall, her men’s collection features plush sweaters, bomber jackets, jeans, and overcoats in hues ranging from faded indigo to chocolate brown and rusty orange. They’re the sorts of pieces you want to wear every day. And they seem simple—until, of course, they reveal themselves to be anything but. Take Hearst’s mind-boggling riff on the classic cable-knit sweater made with hand-braided shearling…

MARLON WAYANS HAS DONE COMEDY, drama, horror, comedy-horror, drama-parody, and whiteface. He’s stepped out of the shadow of perhaps the most famous family in American comedy while still working with them. Now he’s the star of the Jordan Peele–produced movie HIM. After nearly thirty years of steady, often wildly popular work, 2025 might be the year of Marlon Wayans. So how did he get here, now? “I don’t know, man,” he says. “I just work hard.” HIM is the story of Cameron Cade (Tyriq Williams), a young man raised on football, now in the position of replacing his idol, the legendary quarterback Isaiah “Ze” White. In a desert training facility that evokes an Equinox built into James Turrell’s Roden Crater, the two test their bodies, bare their souls, and maybe go…

“I REALIZE THE THEME THAT I’VE GIVEN you in this interview is that I just keep bumbling around, but I feel like I lucked into it,” says Lee Pace. The forty-six-year-old star of Apple’s ambitious Foundation adaptation—which returned for its third season in July—is talking about finding his way into high school drama during his Texas youth, but it’s a sentiment he repeats frequently during our time together: good fortune. Ear problems ended his swim career; theater provided a social lifeline. Curiosity soon turned to passion, which led to acting school at Juilliard and then to his first TV-movie role in Soldier’s Girl in 2003. Offer by offer, in the twenty-plus years since, the six-foot-five actor stitched together one of the most dynamic, category-defying onscreen careers of his generation. It hasn’t…

THERE’S A REASON JOVAN ADEPO DOESN’T mind a little discomfort nowadays. Back in the late aughts, the now-thirty-six-year-old actor notso-secretly harbored dreams of making it to the NFL. Adepo made the roster at Bowie State University in Maryland as a running back, but he hardly saw the football field. “I was good enough to make the team, not good enough to get significant playing time,” he tells me. “My junior year, I’m like, Shit, I need to do something.” Adepo had the drive—but where could he go? The arts, it turned out. “Telling stories came natural to me,” he says. “I enjoyed exploring different realities in my head.” Fifteen years later, Adepo’s resiliency has taken him from Bowie State to Budapest, where he’s shooting season 2 of the brainy Netflix sci-fi…

HERE IN AMERICA, WE DO THINGS BIG AND lethal. Big Tobacco could have arisen only from North Carolina soil, the U. S. government’s generous price-support programs, and Americans’ mile-wide self-destructive streak. The development of the interstate highway system in the 1950s surely helped the Big Three automotive companies—GM, Ford, and Chrysler, which is now Stellantis—and our aversion to high-speed rail continues to work to their advantage. Massive government grants have allowed Big Pharma to become a trillion-dollar industry, though not a nimble enough one to have called dibs on “Stellantis” for the name of an erectile-dysfunction medication. But these are times of austerity in the wealthiest country the world has ever known, and we’re cutting back. Not on defense contracts or presidential golf outings, of course; those are vital to national…

CONSIDER THE COWBOY BOOT. Where are you? The American West. Honky-tonk bar. Line-dancing night at the school fundraiser. You didn’t think … Italy, did you? Prada is working to change that. The luxury label’s spin on western footwear seems subdued at first glance, with a supple brown upper and tonal leather sole. Then you get to the toe. Upturned and exaggerated, it gives these boots an edge. So although you can—and should!—wear them with bootcut jeans and snap-button shirts, don’t be afraid to mix it up. Try drainpipe trousers and a pin-sharp double-breasted jacket. Or straightleg chinos and an offeat sweater. Playing against expectations is, after all, the fun part. Just think one part Riviera, one part rodeo—plus a healthy helping of attitude—and you can’t go wrong.…

IN MENSWEAR, A GOOD STORY GOES A long way—and waxed cotton has a damn good story. In the 1500s, sailors realized that sailcloth caught the wind better when wet. But laden with water, it was too heavy. So they applied grease and fish oil to boost performance while keeping weight down. When sails wore out, they cut capes from them to wear on board. Boom: the earliest known ancestor of the waxed jackets we know today, with an origin tale steeped in nautical adventure, human ingenuity, and good old grit. Not bad, right? Outdoorsmen and motorcyclists seemed to think so, adopting styles from brands like Barbour and Belstaff to bring about the waxed-jacket boom times of the early-to-mid 20th century. By then, the tech had improved. Paraffn wax and mineral oils…

“I’M GOING TO END MY I life by the end of the year,” he said over a call one morning, as casually as if discussing weekend plans. I was sitting on my sofa, the same place I’d been while we shared countless conversations about faith, doubt, and the meaning of it all. But this wasn’t philosophy. It was a declaration. The autumn light suddenly felt colder, as if the season itself had paused to listen. I waited for the qualifier—the “just kidding.” Instead he added, “Please don’t try to convince me otherwise. Everyone else is. I just need one person who can be with me, without trying to fix me. Someone who can witness this. If you can’t, I understand. But I won’t take this trip with anyone who won’t honor…

THEY DON’T FOLLOW FORMULAS. THEY DON’T ASK for permission. And they sure as hell don’t follow anyone else’s lead. In an industry built on franchises and focus groups, the Mavericks of Hollywood are those who push the boundaries of creativity—the Cuban-Dominican kid from Miami who reinvigorated SNL with viral humor, the talk-show host willing to eat an astounding number of hot wings, and the high school dropout who became one of the world’s biggest stars. These are the outliers, the iconoclasts, the ones bending the system to their will. They’re an inspiration, and a helluva lot of fun to watch.…

“THIS HOUR IS MY WHOLE LIFE, YOU KNOW?” Marcello Hernández is not talking about our hour-long Zoom interview, which the twenty-eight-year-old comedian does almost entirely off camera. (“After I do an interview, I try to immediately forget that I did it,” he deadpans.) No, he’s referring to his new stand-up routine, which—at the time of our chat in early July—he’s touring around the country. The goal? See what works, see what doesn’t, and shape the material into a Netflix special that will tape later this fall. He’s more than a little obsessed. “It’s my baby,” he says. “It’s my wedding.” If it’s Hernández’s big day, expect an incredibly fun ceremony. Almost as soon as the Cuban-Dominican American performer joined Saturday Night Live in 2022, it became obvious that he…

IT’S A HOT ONE. I’M MEETING SEAN EVANS during, of all things, a record New York City heat wave, and I am soaked in sweat when I arrive for our interview. Yet the Hot Ones host is (surprise, surprise) sitting comfortably. After all, the thirty-nine-year-old host spends time on his viral YouTube show grilling celebrities—with, as the slogan goes, “hot questions and even hotter wings”—as they both eat their way through a slate of progressively spicier chicken. He doesn’t overheat easily. My plan to make him sweat? Some probing questions about his interview techniques. But that doesn’t work either. Although Evans isn’t used to getting questions about his craft from the other side, he welcomes it. “It’s funny how many interviews I do, and no one really talks to me about…