Cruise Control

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For anyone looking to embrace the aesthetic without the guesswork, Macy's free personal stylus service makes it completely seamless; expert stylus are available in-store to help pull together the perfect touch-to-look tailored to any preference, head to Macy's today. A beautifully designed square space website is the difference between thinking about photography school and selling your portraits online. It's the difference between giving away those cookies you just made for free and running your cookie empire. A beautifully designed square space website is the difference between having a movie-reviewing hobby and a movie-reviewing career. Square space, because no matter what you're into, a website makes it real. Use offer code Difference for 50% off select plans, terms and conditions apply. Hello and welcome to Fashion People. I'm Lauren Sherman, writer of Puts Fashion and Beauty, memo line cheat, and today with me on the show is Adam Badawi, global editorial director for GQ. We're talking about his life in magazines, succeeding Will Welch, his big vision, and of course, that Tom Cruise cover. Before we get going, I wanted to remind you that if you like this podcast, you'll definitely love Puck, where I send an email called line cheat. If you're a fashion person, you get that reference. It's an original look at what's really going on inside the fashion and beauty industries. And she is scoopy, analytical, and above all, fun. Along with me, a subscription to Puck gains you access to an unmatched roster of experts reporting on powerful people and companies in entertainment media, sports, politics, finance, the art world, and much more. If you're interested, listeners of Fashion People get a discount. Just go to Puck.News/FashionPeople to join Puck or start a free trial. Be free to everyone, hope you had a great week. Mine was good. I would back in Paris, have been working, doing a lot of meetings, seeing friends, getting ready to go to London on Saturday, really quickly addressing a couple of things in the news. The Steven Cole stuff is really wild. As of Thursday, there were still some members of the CFDA Board who thought that Steven, the CEO of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, who was caught on tape getting physical with some pita pro testers at the caucho on Sunday, should be rehabilitated and be able to keep his job. Pretty much everyone I've spoke to elsewhere thinks it's time for him to resign. You decide anyway. This is a coming huge story. It was an entertainment tonight. I don't know. So watch his entertainment tonight, but a lot of people are talking about this. I guess the images are just so, we'll never forget it anyway. Other news, Daria Vitale was named Creative Director of Emporio Armani and Georgi Armani accessories. Obviously, we knew this was happening, but it's exciting that they went for it. And I thought the way they managed it was really good. Nobody denied anything when like I wrote and ran stories, other publications are in stories. It was originally reported by the platform, which is a very decent, very good, Milan-based publication run by a long term financial reporter and stuff really checks out when I do my reporting to back it up. So you should, you should read. If you're going to read one of these like independent publications, the salt puck platform is really, really good. Anyway, Daria comes from a very like a intellectual fashion school, the school of Prada, wherein Milan, you either work at Prada or you don't. Someone said that to me, which I thought was interesting. The person who said it sometimes listens to this, so I wonder if he'll notice, but anyway, Armani is basically anti-fashion, especially Emporio Armani. And I'm not saying that means it's bad or anti-design, it's just like anti-the idea fashion. It's like the same thing over and over again, and it's stylish, but it's not fashion in the intellectual sense or in the Protest sense for sure. And he grew up in that world and at Versace kind of was able to make his own thing, albeit for one season. Anyway, Emporio Armani, the thing he's going to mostly be doing was a licensing business for a long time. And it was really well-rounded, but it was still a licensing business. And the infrastructure at Armani is complicated, but he's dealt with that in the past. Versace has an incredibly complicated infrastructure. Obviously, there are a lot of really great people on the Armani board, who have a lot of like Marco Bazzare, who have a lot of experience running fashion businesses, and I'm sure they had a role in getting him to come. And now they have to sell, take in the company, and it would be, I would assume, easier when Dario is there. He has so much grit and confidence, and we love the clothes, we love the shoes. It's not going to be easy. That's for sure. But it's going to be very interesting. Something of interesting. Someone said, you always say interesting when you're trying to move a conversation is true. But in this case, both of these things are very interesting. My guest today, Adam, he has one of the hardest jobs in the media business, which is saying a lot since every job is hard. But succeeding, the universally beloved Will Welch, who was kind of a shining star at CondiNass, and felt like the only one who was kind of doing things right, Adam has gotten a lot of crap from me and other people, as in his first few months, a lot of criticism. But he was a real trooper through this conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. I said to him, you know what, I'll just let you hear it. Adam Bedally, welcome to Fashion People. Oh my God, Lauren Sherman, I could not be more thrilled to be here with you. The only thing I could beat this would have been doing it in person, but I will take what I can get. Yeah, next time, I've given you a lot of shit already. So I am very, first of all, very impressed that you decided to do this. You know, Will Welch never did it, and a win-tours never done it. I have not asked Anna, but I have asked Will, and he didn't, so why did you decide to, first of all, what did you have for breakfast this morning, and then I'll start grilling you? I actually just smashed an ice latte and kept it moving. I cycled to work and I kept it moving. I have not eaten yet in a minute fasting a little bit, and that's with the rest of it. Yes, I feel like there's been a healthy curiosity from you about me and about GQ, which I love. I think it's been really fun. And I don't know, like we were talking about it last week, and I was like, I feel like it's an incredibly Australian thing to do just to say hi and to get in there. And maybe you never know, like maybe this could be the catalyst for a whole new era of relationships between you and Condé, anything's possible. Adam, I don't think that's true, but I am very impressed by you. And I think honestly, it will be great for you and advertisers, so in that way, it will be helpful. Shout out to the DMO's listening. We're here for you. Yes, all of them. All of them. You know, one of them messaged me and said, I heard that Adam's coming on the podcast. We loved him. Oh, that's so sweet. You know, I was at the US Open men's final on Sunday. Minding my own business, I was a couple of those honeydews as deep. And then I saw a client in one of the suites, he's like, Adam, I'm like, hey, what's up? He's like, how'd you going on Lauren's podcast? I'm like, you knew about this? Oh, my God. So I feel like people are excited for like no one will see it coming. I feel like this is a pretty blockbuster episode, so you guys are very welcome. Yes. Thank you. This is definitely a conversion tool, if I ever did have one. You know, it's interesting. I will tell you that the first piece I did on you did not convert, but you know, the last one we did performed extremely well. So you are becoming a real line sheet and putt character in the best way, but in all serious I do. I want to talk about who you are, what your vision for GQ is and all that stuff. But we got to talk about Tom Cruise first because two hours ago, you released your new cover starring Tom Cruise who had not been interviewed for a magazine in 20 years or something. First GQ cover in 20 years. And I feel like it's been a little over a decade since he did something meaty-ish with a magazine. Certainly not a fashion shooter or anything like that. I think he was in character for a W shoot under Stefano, maybe 2011, something like that. It's been a while, by the way. So walk us through the process as much as you can. Why did you decide on him? How did you. convince them to say, yes, what were the sort of boundaries? I should also say, I mean, anyone who listens to this podcast who has a pair of social relationship with me or Amanda Dobbins knows that the writer of the profile and Q&A is Zach Barron, who is Amanda Dobbins' husband and Amanda is one of my best friends and I'm also friends with Zach. I think he would be okay with me saying that and our kids are friends and all that stuff. So I am compromised in many ways here. I'm gonna try to be as tough on you as possible but I'm really proud of Zach. It's a huge get to, but how did it happen? - Well, you know, I think it's reasonable to say that Tom Cruise is as consequential as complicated and as successful and artist as we've seen this century and for the latter half of the last century. He also represents a whole bunch of tension and complexity and one of the things when I peer out over the magazine landscape that you see is aside stepping or an avoidance of tension or complexity and not many magazines are particularly strong at that anymore. I think you said the word compromised. I think with the state of media, you're seeing more and more compromises being made to make momentous cultural moments happen, at least momentous cultural moments to reflect what we used to do back in the day, if you will. But, you know, it would have been really straightforward for me and the team, especially for my first two issues to go out and book like, who's the hottest guy that we can get in the best look from the biggest show shot by one of the photographers, Dijor, and that would be like the simplest, cleanest way to kick off my era of GQ. But one of my big priorities is actually just being able to start a conversation, spark a dialogue and I thought, if we did something with Tom, it's going to get people talking. This is a very complicated figure, beloved, billion dollar box office dough no doubt, but complicated. And I think the reason we assign Zach to this story is because he's comfortably, I would argue he's one of the most talented interviewers on the planet and you've got a subject who is very used to, well, not being asked questions. And I felt like sitting those two down together, particularly on camera, would yield at least the most complete portrait of Tom Cruise we'd seen on a long time. There were no conditions to the conversation or anything like that, hand on heart. But I'm obviously very cognizant, you spoke about parasocial relationships. We all have a parasocial relationship with Tom Cruise and I'm cognizant that some people have a relationship with him that really relates back to his private life, his dead in history, his faith in his being assigned to all just and all that. This is not the kind of story we wanted to tell. This is really a story about like, who is this guy that's continually topping the box office? We haven't heard him in a many years. Why is he choosing to work with an author like Inurudo for the first time in a long time? There's not a blockbuster action film. And I think that particularly in the video format, which I think is a great watch, you get to experience this beautiful game of cat and mouse between Tom and Zach. Zach, I think, does a brilliant job. It's a very compelling watch. And I'm really proud that GQ is the home of a story that I think people have been hungry for for a long time. And the fact that we're doing it in my second issue as an editor I think is really cool and really exciting. And hopefully a sign of things to come. - Yeah, on the Scientology bit, I mean, the first thing I did was look for that word. And I think people are gonna ask about that. And you said there were no conditions. I understand the point you're trying to make and I do think Zach is one of the few people who write these kinds of things that I read almost everything he writes. And he is able to get to like a real human place with these guys in a way that I don't think many people can. And I think that's also why they're comfortable with him because he's like, he doesn't fawn on them, but he also respects their space or whatever. Why did you all decide not to go there? Because it is the thing that everybody thinks about constantly, especially in the last 20 years of Tom Cruise's life and career. - Yeah, I think, I don't know. This really could have easily been a story that rehashes the greatest hits and the what and the why and say it again and get mad again. I get that, I get that. And I get that that would have been very kind of compelling viewing for a certain kind of person. But to anyone that feels, here's this and feels a bit cynical. I'd really encourage you to watch. Watch Zach ask follow-up questions. Watch Zach attempt to pin him down. Watch Zach ask about what he does in his off time. And I heard things, you know, I was there for the shoot and I was there for the video interview. And I learned a whole lot about Tom Cruise that I didn't know. I didn't know that Tom Cruise went to 15 schools in 16 years. I didn't know these details about his childhood. And ultimately, look, this is a very consequential artist. There has not been an entry in his song book in many years and I'm glad that GQ's added to that. I also will say like, not for nothing, the Mario Serenti photo shoot is an absolute showstopper. And I think just GQ operating at a higher scalaba. It's been a very long time also since Mario Serenti was in the pages of GQ. So it's another really proud moment for me. - Yeah, I thought that the photos, I think the front cover, one of the feedback that I've gotten so far on it, I mean, it doesn't feel like GQ. And I don't just mean Will's GQ, I think the Jim Nelson GQ too. Like having a shirtless guy on the cover, especially a 65 year old, even though he looks like he's about 27 or something. Why did you choose that photo over? 'Cause like for me, I like the other pictures better, I would say, but I'm not an editor. But why did you think that was the right sort of attitude to have? - Pretty remarkable moment. You won't believe this, but that moment was not preconceived and it happened about 20 minutes into the first shot. And I was like, what the, you just kind of watching like Jesus, okay. - Does he ever like take his shirt off in movies anymore? I don't know, I don't watch that. I feel like Top Gun Maverick, but that's basically the one- - I think in the last mission impossible, the last mission impossible, those are good subs. I don't know. - I don't know, that. - But you know, it just kind of happened to organic thing, like wow, what a, it's not just that we haven't seen this guy in this context in a long time, is that he just went for it. And I think that's really cool. And again, it goes back to tension and being provocative. Like I am aware that there's always a simpler, more straightforward way of doing things. And it would have been really easy for me to take one of those gorgeous, almost serene shots from the corner of Hollywood Boulevard in Highland. And like that would have made a great GQ cover. And he's gonna hand some coat, more entering fall and yada yada yada. But right now, in this particular moment in time, I'm inclined to lean towards the things that will get people talking. And by the way, you will smile, but exactly the same thing happened with our Jeremy Strong cover. And there was a shot, we built in Lake Missouri. We built like an underwater platform so that we could see Tim and have him appear to be floating in the water. And he was wearing this gorgeous, I think it was a pre-owny suit. Had his legs crossed, he looked super elegant. And it was just like this incredible image of high summer on one of the great Italian lakes. But I thought it was really calm. And I thought, well, do I want my first impression or my reintroduction or my introduction to my readers to be calm and polite? So you can actually, if you go to GQ, Germany's Instagram account, you'll see there's an alternate cover for Jeremy Strong. And in the case of Jeremy, and in the case of Tom, I felt, and it's not like a permanent thing, that in this moment, I just feel like leaning into things that will get people talking. It's such a privilege to be able to make a magazine in the year 2026 that I feel an urgency to be on the front foot. I would rather be people be talking about us than people think were polite and pretty and nice. And that's why I'm such a big fan of you, frankly. - Yeah, I mean, look, like the Jeremy Strong cover, to me, was like a bummer, but then the one thing I will give you is that there were tons of memes and people are like-- - You think you won. - Yeah, but like that was the thing I thought, well, you know, everybody is talking about this dumb cover. - And it's not like, I'm not trying to disrespect all the work you're doing. But you know what I mean, like you're right. - It's a beautiful cover. And by the way, like I have to give flowers to our mutual friend and someone who I know we both really respect. Jacob Gallagher, who I think came the closest to hitting the nail on the head to what we were trying to express with that cover. Which was, it's a bit of a provocation. It's a bit of like, is this cover meant to be an instruction manual for how to look or is it designed to be a mirror? And you know, sometimes when a magazine holds up a mirror, it's a little bit uncomfortable. And maybe a magazine like JQ can do that every so often. - Yeah, Jacob always so wise. - Clevver fellow. - Okay, so I wanna talk about like your plans for GQ and all that stuff. But let's go back to you. - Yeah. - Explain how you got out of Australia. 'Cause I just left L.A., which I always joke is like living in Australia. It's so far away from Europe. But explain your trajectory. I know a little bit from people talking about you by the time you got to British GQ. That guy Adam, you should look at that guy Adam blah blah blah. You got a lot of fans in Condé corporate, but um, how did you, how did you get where you are? Oh my god. Well, I would say I took the most secuitous route possible because I had to. My family of first generation Australian, my parents are both from a city called Nazaria, which is the 10th largest city in Iraq. And we are from this teensy tiny ethnic minority that was very persecuted. And anyway, long story short, they moved to Australia. They were the first in their family to leave Iraq. So I grew up first generation Australian. And um, my parents were really eager for us all, me and my two big sisters and eventually my little brother to assimilate. Um, and so they didn't even speak Arabic to us at the house. I never learned Arabic that I could Aussie go forth. And my sisters were like classic punks of the 90s. I like this mashing pumpkins. They're like Jeff Buckley that rode you ahead and they were really big on magazines and they'd bring home the face and whatnot. One day they brought home Australian GQ. Your laugh at this is the first GQ I got. Pharrell was on the cover. He was, he was, I can use any RD days. Wow. And it was a special music issue of GQ that had like folded in a bunch of different content from other like the American edition, I think. So it started in L.A. with Pharrell. And then I think there was a duff punk profile in Paris and there was saying them the strokes. Um, and I was like, wow, this is so cool. I get to go all around the world and like I'm learning all this stuff. And from that point on, I was kind of addicted. And once I finished high school, I became a freelance writer. Not a very good one at first, but I was very persistent. I pitched Australian GQ for the better part of two years until I like worked out that this new deputy editor was starting. Her name was Carrie David. I didn't picture on her first day. I pitched her on her second day. And I said, I love what you did at the other place. Can I work with you here? She commissioned me. And then I essentially just said yes to every assignment. So over the 10 or so years, I contributed to Australian GQ. I did everything from covering fashion to business to horse racing to politicians to cover stories. Everything because I I wanted to make a living in be just love GQ. Then towards the end of my uni days, I flew myself over to London. I saved up and I DMed the then editor of British GQ, Dylan Jones. And I said, can I come to work experience? He's like, okay. So I crashed with my cousin, did that for a few months. Eventually I took up a job with British Asquire. We're back to Australia after my visa ran out. More GQ spent a year. Oh, there's some fashion stuff here and there's some newsletters and copywriting. Then I spent a year with the New York Times. Is there Australia correspondent? Did hard news. And then eventually I still called in. That's cool. What was that like? Oh, like, rigorous Jesus Christ. Like it is such a different cadence pace. It was also a great moment to join the Times because they were just really getting on top of all things digital subscriptions and just seeing a publication that was like five to 10 years in the future. And I had seen that documentary, that, you know, that document, I think it was, I forget the name, but it has a lot of David Carr in it. And it was around the time where they thought they were going to have to sell the Times to Carlos Slim and basically was a moment right before they got this shit together. So it was a really aspirational and informative time to be working at the Times. And I did some really heavy reporting, but I wouldn't say it's my long-term passion. Then I still condemn us with a partner while launching GQ into the Middle East. And I figured there'd be very few people alive who both knew a lot about GQ and a lot about the Middle East. And I got the editor in Chief Job and I was 28 and I moved from Melbourne to Dubai on like two weeks notice. And I remember crying at the airport like, what am I doing? I just moved in with my, my then girlfriend. But 10 weeks later, we had built a team, we had launched a magazine, it was a crazy ride. And three years after that, I actually got a call from Anna. I've been like, oh, so what you've been doing over there, it's cool. Do you want to talk about GQ on a more global level? And then there's like wonderful sequence of events happened where I got partnered with the Great Will Welch and became his global deputy. I was moved to London. I took the reins at British GQ where I had done work experience all these years earlier. I had to face down entering a much bigger market, refreshing and rebuilding that title in my own vision and five years of that. And here we are today. So let's talk about that because Dylan Jones was very famous in. So in a way, in some ways, I think more famous in England than Jim Nelson was in America. If you want to do that sort of, because he was there for a really long time and he was just like a big name in media in the UK. How did you manage that? Because that had a very particular point of view. You changed it a lot. Like, I assume that prepped you for this project in more ways than the one. But how did you sort of go into a publication that had a very particular point of view and voice and make it your own? You just have to be incredibly decisive. And in some cases, like socially courageous. I think there's been a few times in my career where if I was too worried about what my peers thought instead of like serving some kind of a reader or a customer, I would have been screwed. And I won't lie the first few months in London was so tough. And you're addressing a team. It was just post-COVID, like who's this guy? Where's your network? Okay, you've spent a few months in England before? Okay, yeah, fine. And you're filling these huge shoes. But ultimately, it's just about repeating your vision. Sometimes it comes down to a body of work. You have to put out enough work for enough people to go, okay, fine. And there's never more attention and critique than at the very start. And people want to poke holes and the thing right away. And you really have to just be sure of yourself and remember why you set yourself a particular strategy. And so that first year was gnarly. And if I didn't know that at any moment, I could just go back to Australia and like, chill on the beach. I probably would have lost my mind. But in a way, you're like, so far away from home, you kind of feel fearless. Like, hey, if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. Luckily, it really did work out. And five years later, I really felt as though everything from the photography, to the journalism, to the events, like many of the year, or an event we did called Giki Heroes, were fully transformed into a vision that was both mine. But also very importantly, I had to fit into a global vision that was set by Will at a time. So it's written a beautiful needle. And I think we did a phenomenal job. Let's be honest, housing payments have always been painful to send off every month, which is why built is such a game changer. Joining built let you earn points on every housing payment rent or mortgage. So you finally get rewarded for where you live. Built points can be redeemed toward your next flight, hotel, lift rise, amazon.com purchases, or even student low balances. I use mine for the loans or towards the berries bootcamp class. I love that. One of the coolest features is the apps, Agentech, Neighborhood Concierge, which actually takes action for you across 50,000 merchant partners. 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Follow and listen to the woman in the woods wherever you get your podcasts. Can you kind of describe what Dylan's GQ British GQ was like and what yours was? How did it change? Obviously, I understand this. You're taking some cues from Will on what British GQ was under the global lens. Can you describe what Dylan's GQ was and then what you made you transformed it into? Dylan's was smart and rye and sometimes a little bit badly behaved but in a seductive way it lent into classic British luxury like Britain to me is the home of classic luxury and it lent into tradition. It was a thinking man's GQ. There was a lot of business coverage. There were big politicians like Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn on the cover, the men of the year event that was run for many years so powerfully, so successfully was really like almost like a high society gathering and if you didn't have a ticket to that event, like are you really on the party circuit in London? If you know what I mean? And one of the first things I did when I got to London was really connect with, I tried to connect with as many readers as possible what as many clients as possible just to understand how everyone thought about the state of affairs and one of the big things was CMOs were keenly aware it's like okay we know who our current generation of VICs are but we have this hunch that the people that are coming up that are entering VIC status that are entering their high earning high spending years have a really different set of values and there was some anxiety about oh god like how we're going to reach these people there's a lot of new money coming into London and that to me marred up perfectly with wills focus on culture, community, fashion, design, different set of values so the big shift I think we made was going from traditional luxury and everything that underpins that culturally into what we called new luxury and I hope was to bring in as many of the old guard as possible people that remain curious about where culture was heading and I think that you could see and fill that across everything from our casting to the set of photographers we use to the styling we tried to retain a very British sense of humour which is something big for me I came in as a foreigner and in that sense you have to really depend on a team to like calibrate tone to calibrate all sorts of micro details to make sure it's a resonant and cheeky and funny and all the good things and earlier this year we were nominated for a British Society of magazine editors awards the BSMEs and I think it's because we created a whole set of stories and platforms and events that were resonant. One quick question on the UK and since you've been there for a while or you were there for a while I've been spending more time there being in Paris and going over there and I've worked there. You're a star. Heaven. You're a star, yeah it's amazing and I worked for a UK public based publication for ten years and lived and lived in London for a couple years so like over the last 20 years I spent a lot of time there. I can really feel the effects of Brexit in Europe, post-COVID and then also the war, the multiple wars are just really really felt in London because of the fact that a lot of the real estate is owned by people who are affected by these wars. So I'm just curious like as you were leaving how did what was going on on the macro level effect or coverage or just how did you feel about London as you got up and moved to became a resident as you said of New York City. What years were you there? Like around what time? My God. I'm way older than you Adam, so I lived there from '05, I lived there from '04 to '06 and then I worked for a UK company from basically 2013 to 2023. Well okay so my first in the UK was pretty much the year of 2012 and I think that was an Olympic year and my takeaway was like oh my God the city of London in particular was like drunk on itself. It was so optimistic, fashion felt very lent in, there was money swirling around and I was like oh my God that's the greatest place in the world. This is the global capital, this is so tremendous and I remember feeling so energized and then so flat when I had to move back to Australia. And then coming back in 2021, like this is how 2021 it was when my wife and I landed at Heathrow, we had to do a hotel quarantine to be allowed into the country. That's how COVID it was. And when the country and the city eventually opened back up, I just did not resemble the place that I experienced a decade earlier. There was no doubt in my mind that Brexit was just an incredibly consequential mistake that maybe the country won't recover from this generation I don't know. But something has been lost for sure. What hasn't changed and what you know I loved living there, we really loved living there was so sad to leave, we had a great house, great neighborhood, it was awesome. But what keeps me bullish is that that country and London especially has a habit of producing some of the world's greatest creatives. And if you look at like how and why Hollywood productions are moving to the UK or the caliber of designers or fashion critics or any other kind of creative stylists that come out of the big schools there, it is a machine for producing some of the world's most talented and impactful creatives. And I think that they can win through culture. Obviously, you do note like yeah, a lot of the GCC folks who would probably fly in and spend a bunch of money, especially in the summers, I think that slowed down a lot. I think that retail needs a big injection on the arm, but we worked very close with Caroline Russia was the head of the BFC for a long time, it was fantastic and myself and now Marie Clark on you editor of British GQ will continue working very closely with Laura Weir to make sure that we can keep GQ needs to play a part in making sure that retail sector and the designer space is stimulated and supported. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, it's an interesting situation there and it feels like walking back 30 years in some ways, but then you know, all these amazing things came out of, have been coming out of that country long before that it was a part of the European Union. So we'll see. Totally. We go to fashion like this mom. Yes, yeah, I'll go to a few shows. I didn't for a long time because a business of fashion, it didn't make sense for me to go. I would mostly go to Paris, but yeah, I'll go for a couple of days and see. But yeah, the last time I was there for more than like a day, I really felt that there had been a change. But I do think that London has become the best eating city in the world. And I hope that that doesn't, but it has obviously had had a reputation in the 90s in particular, but it's the food. There's amazing like the town and oh my gosh, yeah, of course, okay, so oh my gosh, sorry, you got me hungry. I still have an egg. Yes, yeah. It's a lot of protein. River cafe. It's all amazing. It's so good. River cafe. Where we went to celebrate on the 17th of February, it's like no better place. That's amazing. Was that the day you got married or the day you were announced? There we go. Say a couple of jobs. I know you recently got married also. So dead. I did. That's fun. I mean, where else to celebrate, but the river cafe, that's amazing. That's cool. That's cool. Ruthy Rogers coming on the podcast soon. Sneak Pete. Hey, go ahead. Yeah, I'm excited. Okay, so you're there for a while. Will gets this rando job just kidding. This job with for all which makes sense, very excited for him. And you were immediately like, because you were in the mix, I don't know if you actually interviewed for Vanity Fair, but like, that was your name popped up for that. People were, we were, we were big fans of yours that I talked to a lot. When, when the opportunity came up and you, you realized like it could be yours, what did you, like, why did you want to do it? Why did you want to move to New York? Why did you want to try to make it work? First of all, I think it's like a tremendously huge honor and I feel very lucky. I'm privileged to have a job like this, but I can see what you're getting at. It's like, why go through all this? And frankly, for me, it's like, I told you about an odyssey that I started in Melbourne, Australia. I think I would have, I would have regretted it my whole life if I didn't put my hand up, put my best foot forward and give it a shot. And I think in those moments, you have to just go for it. And it was, I mean, I had an incredibly inconvenient start to the year. I've been back and forth to New York from London so many times before I got to move here. I had to get a visa. My wife had to get a visa. We had to get married. Thank God, we're already engaged. But they have to come back. It's like, it would be easier if you were married, like, okay. You know, it's like, it was a pain in the butt, but what else could I have possibly done? This is absolutely what I'm meant to be doing. So tell me what your big pitch to them was. My vision and my strategy was really built around three things. Number one, I felt strongly that GQ should be a magazine for and about men. Even though like a heap of other people will read it and love it or contribute to it or be featured in it, I think you should have the perspective of a men's publication. Number two, I felt no one can deny that GQ was incredible for the past decade at fashion and at celebrity. And in fact, I really think that one of Will's great gifts to GQ was to like electrify our reputation in Paris and in Milan and in Hollywood and in Atlanta and like all the big cultural hubs. Like, that was Will. However, like, we've been so good at fashion and celebrity, I want to GQ not just be the flagship of men's fashion, I want to GQ to be the flagship of what it means to be a guy. And so for me, that meant widening the aperture, keeping fashion and celebrity super strong, but adding in everything else that guy might care about. So money and wellness and love and sex and some politics or whatever else it might be. And doing those things and then. incredibly sophisticated way. And the hopes of giving many, many more men a pathway into the GQ universe. And part of one of the models I kind of lay down to the team has been big tent high taste. So we're not going mass to like water everything down and be dull. We need to maintain the tastes and the cool and all those things. But we have to be more appealing to more people. And third and finally, I felt strongly that GQ needs to have its strongest storytelling everywhere. You take Zach Barron, for example. Like if you're a Zach Barron super fan over the years, the most you could have hoped for in an average year from Zach was to read maybe one or two big print cover stories, maybe get an ad hoc video here or there. But effectively, you had one of your biggest and brightest talents kind of kept on the bench until he was required. And one of the things that was pitched to me when I first arrived was, oh, hey, I was like, when did this special five episode series of Zach sitting down with masters of their craft? I'm like, yeah, but why is it five episodes? I think we should hear from Zach every week. I think people should build a parasocial relationship with Zach and GQ. Yeah, they already have one with him via his wife. Exactly. And they should be coming to GQ habitually. And they should love Zach so much or get Zach so much that it's kind of a relevant who his guest might be on any given week. Like I'm listening for Zach. And that to me is like the first step in building a habit without audience that is not relying on like the paradigms of the past of like random referral traffic or Facebook traffic. Like this is how you build a habit in the year 2026. You could argue we're like way late, but better late than never. Okay, so wanna go back to your second point about making it. I understand that like broadened the. You specify those topics essentially, but keep the vibe the same across all of it. The thing that I would argue is that we live in a fragmented culture where the reason Will's GQ worked was because it was for fashion enthusiasts. The reason that like niche magazines work versus the broader magazines is because they are pretty narrow in their scope. Why do you think when you look at something like the Condé Portfolio, like a glamour or sell for whatever, those magazines some basically don't exist anymore because they were so broad. So how do you think in an age when we do have such a fragmented culture, how can you be broad but still address that fact? This is the core tension because we've been told over and over again and you'll have heard this a million times like we're living in the world of subcultures, everyone's on their own algorithm. You go go deep, not broad, and I completely, I've heard that advice over and over again. However, like even if I were to take, I just think you can get niche to the point of shrinking yourself, of letting your shoulders round. Here's the thing, GQ is older than ASPN. GQ is older than CNN. No one, like not many people know this, last year we had four billion global video views. And so for me, I'm like, why are we limiting ourselves or why are we pretending and whether it's uniquely downtown prospect when in fact we're this incredibly influential title now in 21 different territories that can do things that others simply cannot. And even when I follow you a newsletter and look at the launches we've had recently, like there is no shortage of big, thick, glossy, pretty sexy, polished, biannuals, quarterly, that go deep into the world of fashion. And all those exist and they exist in a paradigm of like communicating to a very small circle of people. And they thrive and maybe some of them are pipelines to landing big commercial projects or maybe some of them are like collaborations between photographers and stylists. But you know, we're a ginormous worldwide business with a huge audience. And I feel compelled to like, I feel crapped. And I lack the idea of us stretching our legs out a little bit and challenging ourselves to BGQ everywhere. Not to be vague, not to be plain. Some people might have seen last week we published one of our first four days back into capital P politics with a midterms package, but we really did it in the high low cheeky, but well-reported spirit that people might have remembered from GQ's past, from maybe our coupers or Jim Nelson's. And I don't know. I think we can play there. Maybe you and I will do three more podcasts. And in two years time, I'll be like, "Ah, now, didn't really resonate, I don't know." But right now, I feel like GQ needs to be big. - Well, one thing I would say when the job was, when you were going for the job, when that was happening, I do feel that there is a, I mean, there's obviously anti-woke sentiment, but there's just a desire with a lot of consumers to be a little more center of the. - Hey political. - Yes. And so, and I think that's in everything. And so this idea of moving, it's not about moving MAGA. It's more about just like acknowledging that things are not so binary. And I was curious, like Malik had this thing about JD Vance in the piece that you were going to try to, to shout out to Malik, try to get him to write an essay, which I think is interesting if you could have pulled it off, but I'm curious, like, maybe you don't want to talk about that specifically, but like, how do you think you can address these things? Because your reader isn't just a mom, Donnie, supporter, even though I'm sure many of those exist, but like, what was it thinking behind trying to have JD Vance do something? - Well, you know, I actually think that it's a huge risk for a publication. Now, it like, look at the six, I'm not blowing smoke up your house. Look at the success of your newsletter. You could say, Park got this $250 million-ish valuation and that maybe there are only a handful of gemstones that are really driving that, and you're one of them. You have a very clear and distinct voice and you're opinionated and you're sometimes divisive and sometimes people passionately disagree with you. But you say, hey, you're subscribing for me. This is what I think, if you don't like it, that's cool, you can keep it moving, but around here, we're gonna have a point of view. And maybe part of this is about an editor making a magazine or a media brand to their entase, but I just, I feel kind of like ill and unmoved when I see a polite, pretty magazine. I think you should kind of get in the arena and do it with cheek and charm and humor and a whole lot of reporting. And I think people will respect that and respond to it. It's kind of like, do I want a polite cover or do I want a cover that gets people talking? And isn't that a metric of success these days? Like, I would be horrified if I just pumped out something pretty and with the best look from Prada and I was just like, you know, the self-improvement issue. Like, no, if I can, no. - Yeah, I mean, you have a good point. And I think it kind of also speaks to, I'm curious to know more about what your plans are from like a staffing perspective because you mentioned Zach who has this big video series now. He's one of the only people left that I know who from the will era. Like a lot of them left right before you or were on their way out already, obviously Dan Riley, who is a big editor type who's been back and forth left. And then obviously, there were some columns that you canceled. - Which we don't need to go to that. - Oh, Lauren. - Bless you. - To have a friend like you. To have a friend like you. - You know what? I, you know that if I thought he was shit, I would say it. (laughs) - That's true. - That's true. I just wouldn't say anything. But no, but the point being like I, no, what I wrote about that and we're talking about are my friend Chris Black who also went for Adam's job and had a column and no longer has one. But I totally and I think he understood that too that like why it makes sense. You wanna make changes but like how are you like staffing up to reflect this broader and also, I mean I'm sure there are people who left who you didn't want that want to leave. Like that's a lot of, I got, you know I got headhunted the other day for your executive editor job. - That's cool. - I was like, I am not available but it's a great job and I'll try to find someone for it. - Wow, we strike again. Well, Lauren, real recognizes real. - So I'm obviously, obviously a big believer of that mental health and physical health go hand in hand. But it's also very easy to put off taking care of your mental health when finding someone. and in-network therapist feels like a full-time job. I don't know, do they exist? 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You deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget. (upbeat music) Fall is a vibe. So what's yours? (upbeat music) Do you go wild or get a little nostalgic? Do you like to cozy up indoors or kick it outdoors? Whatever you fall for. Get shoes that get you. We've got the trends. You bring the vibes. DSW, let us surprise you. - Seriously though, on staffing stuff. What are you thinking about it? What kinds of people? And you can see if you look at your colleague Mark, like what he has done in terms of he hired a budget columnist, he hired a lot of really young columnists who are still kind of green. Obviously, he's moved around some of the long-time staffers there and given them new gigs, like made editors, writers, things like that. How are you thinking about staffing and what do you think you need to reflect this new point of view? - Well, part of it is unfortunately, deeply unsexy moving of the chess pieces. So for instance, GQ has never had a weekly video show, a weekly video interview show, has never existed. And operationally like, oh shit, like okay, we need someone booking that, we need a producer, we need far more editing muscle than we'd have in an ordinary week. You have to reorganize a video team around that and bring in new people. The best step one, step two for me is, okay, we've been really dialed in on fashion and celebrity, what does the features budget look like? What does Kat Stofall's kind of, Arsenal look like for her to deploy? Because she's like, I want a commission, John Ronson to go to the White House and cover the MMA thing and just to hang out for a week. And I want Chris Heath to go to Jupiter, Florida, to report on Tiger Woods and like, okay, these are really expensive things, we haven't been allocating things this way. So I won't lie, a lot of it has been shuffling around pieces that we have or hiring at the mid, a mid to mid senior level, not a director level. There's been a lot of that and a reallocation of resources. Elsewhere, like another thing I could credit you all with and that I definitely respect very much about what David Haskell does is like, we have to be much more platform agnostic. Like, Conday for all of its incredible power, cultural pool, all of that. Sometimes the publications here fall into a kind of old school paradigm, it's like, okay, everything is built around print production schedules. That's when the reporting has to be done. That's when it has to be filed. And I don't know, like, you have to imagine and it goes back to my time at the New York Times, like there is a healthier, more platform agnostic way to build this thing. Rambling answer, but the point is a lot of the changes that we've been making have been at a mid level and a mid senior level and it's also about reshaping and organizing the team. I think often about the Voices Week Commission and you'll see them start to come through. I touched on John, I touched on the reporting we did in Florida. You'll see more and more of that come through. And in addition to all of that, like, my aspiration is that this time next year, once again, now when we get to do our follow up podcast, I hope, because we're such good pals, there'll be multiple shows like SACs. There'll be, and then the universe of shows. So we've got a lot to do. And also we're just kind of getting started, you know? I told the team yesterday in the past four weeks, we've launched two issues, a print redesign, a social redesign, our first ever weekly video show. And this morning with Tom, our biggest global cover ever in 20 markets simultaneously. Like, there's a lot happening. - Okay, two more questions and then I will set you free. On the global cover thing. And this kind of runs into the second question, 'cause you have to be a business person also, which you obviously are, like, the way you're talking. We love journalists who are business people at Puck. - Glossy. - It's important. I understand the desire for a global cover, and I think I also understand that you understand that how to make money in different countries, that China has a big audience for you guys, and you'll have to figure all that stuff out. I'm not gonna ask you about that today, 'cause I haven't done any reporting on it in a long time. But like, all these different regions are very specific. The thing that I see happening, and you were a regional head, and I know that the Middle Eastern one wasn't owned by Kandai Tai, it was a license, or whatever, when you were, but still, yes, which, yes. We don't have to get into that either. It's that stuff's for an actual business person, yeah. But the point being, what I see happening at some of them is that it feels like they don't have their own personality, the regional additions, and maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe it is eventually it all becomes one big thing, and maybe there are niche regional things to satisfy the advertisers. But I think that something is lost in that, and how do you, when you have this big Tom Cruise cover, and Tom Cruise, who is probably a bigger star, or a less controversial star outside of the US? - Sure. - So you're great to use that as your advantage. - I think he's beloved worldwide. - He is beloved. - He's on a short list of like 10 people that might make like complete sense to every territory. - Exactly, so how do you balance that, and what kind of advice are you giving to, not just Martin, like all the regional heads? Because I know Anna spends a lot of time with them on the both side, especially. But like, it's complicated. I see it especially living in Paris now, and being closer to their worlds, like how hard it is for them to sort of balance the local advertising market and the local consumer market with what headquarters wants. And since you've done both, like how are you approaching that at GQ? - As you say, I feel uniquely equipped to understand the tension on both sides of the equation. Middle East is maybe the most specific market we could possibly have at GQ, maybe alongside Japan and China. Something that not everyone knew about my role as world's deputy was that I was the direct manager of each of the editors around the world. So I would have weekly one to ones with everyone from Taipei to Mexico City, Milan, Paris, all of it. And I got to understand not only the businesses there, but also the visions of our editors. And one thing I would really push back against, it's the notion that these titles are watered down or without a vision. I think when you pick up GQ, Japan, and you see the vision of Juna Shida, she comes from a really like art design and architecture heavy background, and it's so heavily reflected on the pages of her, GQ, I think she has one of the highest taste publications on planet Earth. And Japan is a market that is disproportionately run by consumer revenue. So their magazine, their new stand sales are massively important and they crush it there. It's one of our best businesses in the world. Or if you look at what someone like Federico Zareka has been doing in Milan for the past few years, like he just published a Banger Kimi Antonelli cover. It's the guy who's leading the Formula One leaderboard this year's 19 years old, it's crazy. And Feder's Kimi shoe was so good that a bunch of markets around the world tend to get it from Milan. I put it in American GQ, it was so good. And it was such a fascinating profile. And when you go to a Feder party in Milan, you're like holy shit, like these are the coolest best dressed, sexiest people in the city. And so they actually do have so much local specificity and flavor. What I will agree with you on is that we might have been a bit heavy-handed at the start of the global operation. And being like, okay, I'll tell you what, we'll all do the same cover, but everyone customized the inside of the magazine. And in fact, maybe one of the things we learned over the years is a truly global cover makes sense. Every so often, we've been blessed this year, if you think about what we did with the cost of the Odyssey or BTS and now with Tom. It's like, those are the kind of subjects that might make sense. in most of your territories. But actually, an average issue of GQ might make the most sense for a local editor to say, I'm gonna put a whole bunch of my budget into an epic cover and then run a mixture of global and local storytelling inside. - Great answer. - Sorry Dan, I'm not worrying you, am I? - No, it's, you're, I mean, it's the right answer. I think my last question for you is, and then if there's anything I missed or you would like to address after I have to attack you for the last six months. But on the business side, the thing that I've been thinking, I had a conversation about Anna and Vogue today with someone. It was, it was an on background combo. And the challenge with these businesses is, these brands are huge. They're some of the biggest fashion brands in the world. I always say that Vogue is as big as Chanel or like the second biggest fashion brand in the world. GQ is also a very big brand. It's globally known, all of that stuff. For many, many years, and anyone who reads Michael Grinbaum's book can see this is that they were not supposed, they didn't need to be revenue wise, extremely giant and definitely not profitable, but also just not that big. Like it's not like my, it's like these fashion brands that make $2 million a year in revenue and they are everybody thinks they're, you know, would be a billion dollar business. It was kind of like that. Like they were grade $250 million. Like that's not that much money and it didn't matter because they weren't, they didn't need to be big. The world has changed and it feels like there is ambition to make these brands bigger from a revenue perspective. What do you think? Like what are you trying to do? I think honestly, like the platform, the stuff you talked about with platforms and doing more video shows, more all, that all makes sense to me. What else do you think is possible? Because like having GQ restaurants isn't gonna make this a, it could be part of it, but it's not gonna make it a like billion dollar company necessarily. I mean, we all, and please profits. We know, you know the margins on restaurants are like three to six percent. It's completely insane even with alcohol. So you do it for the love. Yes. So what, but how do you think it's possible to make it a bigger brand from a business perspective, not just from a cultural perspective? Well, there's been a lot of hand-ranging in the media industry. And if I'm like, oh, this is so existential, we're all screwed. But what I love about the times, for instance, is that, you know, they could have sat in that paradigm and watched those classified pages shrink and shrink. I'm like, well, you know, it's the loud bread and butter. And people will subscribe to the satellite. But I think there are enough data points now that show when you deliver consumers something that they find compelling and worth exchanging money for, good things happen. Happen to you, happen to the times. If I go downstairs and talk to Remnick, haven't it in New Yorker? I don't think there's much excuse to be like, well, it's just too hard to figure out. And frankly, my aspiration here is like, I want to be able to go to the C-suite and be like, I want 10 more headcount. I want a bigger content budget. I want this. I want that. I want a podcast studio. And I fully intend on doing that. But I have to, you know, prove my thesis out first. And I will. So I think we've seen huge success with our events. In the UK, I told you a little bit up the men of the year, but I actually ended up tripling the revenue on that event by the time I left, which is unfathomable when I arrived, especially around the time of the hazing on the way in. So I think if you can like round out the GQ universe, scratch the obvious itchers like, duh, we should have multiple video podcasts. Duh, we should be addressing a wider, more diverse group of men who might be curious about GQ or being a man or fashion, whatever it might be. I think we'll be well set up. And if I leave this position, having the business been in the standstill the whole time I was here, I will not have done much else. Even if the creativity is wonderful. Did you commission chicken chop date for GQ? Chicken chop date for GQ. Did I ask Amelia to be our red carpet host? Yeah, I, that was pretty good. That's pretty good. Yeah, it was just, I was just thinking because she just announced she's not going to do it anymore, or something, and the way I found out about her is because she was, she was doing stuff during COVID for GQ or like right after COVID. Yeah, she, so she became a red carpet host for the rebooted men of the year, and I asked her, and she became a great collaborator and a great friend. And I will tell you this. By the end of our kind of collaborations on men of the year, we were hitting a hundred million video views in a week on a British event, a hundred people at dinner in London. And only a fool would underestimate Amelia to mold them burg and whatever she's gonna do next. I now understand why you got the job out of. Oh bless you, oh my gosh, did we get there, are we? We did, this was great. Thank you so much for taking the time. I appreciate it. And you better come back here in a year, or six months. I can't wait. I can't wait, challenge, throwin' down to every other editor of Conte Noss. Thank you. This was awesome. Thank you so much. It was really great. I appreciate it. I really appreciate it. And I appreciate you being a good sport and understanding what I'm trying to do and all that stuff. I appreciate it. Thanks Adam. We'll talk soon. Fashion People is a presentation of Odyssey in partnership with Puck. The show is produced and edited by Molly Nugent. Special thanks to Puck co-founder John Kelly, executive editor Ben Landy, producer Maya Tribert, and director of editorial operations, Gabby Grossman. An additional thanks to the team at Odyssey, Kelly Turner, and Bob Tabitor. Hey, all right, it's almost here. Are you ready? Just grabbing my shoes. That's what you said 10 minutes ago. I just wrapped a video call, uploading this giant file on my tablet, looking at my watch group of Nana's with the group chat, and of course, still lining up tonight's playlist on my phone. All at once? Yep, story of my life. That's why I switched to D-Mobile. They have the fastest 5G network. Okay, multi-tasker. I see you. Honestly, I never imagined I could do all this at once. It's awesome. Say no more, I'm totally switching. My post is taking way too long to upload. That's a sign you've got to get to mobile. So many reasons to join T-Mobile. Find yours at T-Mobile.com. Fastest based on analysis by Uglow Speed Test Intelligence data of national speed score results incorporating 5G download and upload speeds for the first half of 2026.