The best part of working at GQ? Everyone sitting to the right and left of you is the flyest person you’ve ever met. The worst part of working at GQ? Everyone sitting to the right and left of you…is the flyest person you’ve ever met. In our offices, getting dressed is an olympic-level pursuit, and the competition is fiercer than the Challengers climax.
So we asked four of the most ferocious dressers at GQ HQ—senior fashion writer Samuel Hine; fashion editor Brandon Tan; style editor Yang-Yi Goh; and senior commerce editor Avidan Grossman—to spend a couple of hours doing what they do best: online shopping. The result is a galaxy-brain overview of the state of menswear today, sourced directly from the brains that determined what you’ll be wearing this summer—and six months from now, too.
You can shop the lot of it at our first-ever Editor Wishlist boutique, an all-killer, no-filler assortment that spans new arrivals, perennial go-tos, and personal grails—owned, coveted, and painstakingly curated by us. Keep scrolling for a sneak peek at the inaugural round of selects, and check back here throughout the season as more of our colleagues get in on the action.
With summer getting underway on the East Coast, I’m thinking—as always!—about casual elegance, which I’m finding in beachy anoraks, lightweight knits, long, lean denim, and leather sandals. I also find myself drawn to hero accessories as the weather gets warmer. Summer is all about dressing simply and letting a beautiful watch or a new pair of sunglasses do the talking.
I tend to build my wardrobe around a solid mix of staple and statement pieces. So no matter what time of year it is, I’m thinking about everyday, seasonally-agnostic hits—a great pair of jeans, a trusted office-to-airport tote—and more situation-specific fare, like a summer wedding-ready necktie or color-blocked satin Bermuda shorts. Ask any virtuosic conductor: The key is knowing when to let each one sing.
Summer is all about ping-ponging relentlessly from place to place—a coffee meeting to a backyard BBQ to a beach hang to your cousin’s destination wedding—without succumbing to heat stroke or swaglessness in the process. I made these picks with that caustic, ready-for-anything energy in mind: the stuff is all versatile and crisp enough to keep you feeling fresh in any situation, while also remaining just offbeat and freaky enough to help you not lose your edge.
The first secret to looking really cool when it’s really hot? Embrace the sweat: it’s inevitable, and everyone looks better—younger, sexier, happier—with a thin glaze of hard-earned dewiness. The second secret: figure out how to do more with less. Chasing the louche elegance of ‘80s-era Armani? Tuck a breezy linen work shirt into pavement-skimming silk trousers—and nix the boots for barely-there sandals. Yearning to conjure the sun-kissed ease of ‘90s-era J.Crew? Try a faded polo and thrashed jeans, anchored by rich-dad boat shoes. Both of those references are on my mood board right now, and I’ll be living in variations on the theme all summer long.
