Shades of gray
If you’re a young man looking for the season’s hottest styles, save yourself the trouble of browsing through October’s GQ and Esquire and make a long overdue trek to your grandfather’s closet. You’ll save some cash and Gramps will appreciate the visit.
To celebrate turning 60, GQ invites 75-year-old Harrison Ford to grace its cover. But does the Hollywood icon don a tux to celebrate the occasion? Nope! Ford instead opts to wear his own clothes — a gray T-shirt that may have once been black before too many washings and well-worn jeans.
His eyes peeked upward from his famously crooked mouth as if to bark, “Look. I showed up, didn’t I?”
And that’s pretty much how things play out in Chris Heath’s interview with Ford as the actor behind “Star Wars” and “Blade Runner” is characteristically evasive.
In fact, we almost forgot that Ford likely only agreed to be interviewed because he has a movie to promote: “Blade Runner 2049” — due to be released Oct. 6.
To get more pep for the hotly anticipated sequel to the 1982 original, you’ll need to pick up Esquire. The Jay Fielden-led mag snagged an interview with Cuban stunner Ana de Armas, whose excitement over landing a role in the franchise is almost palpable in her four-page spread — which happens to be heavy on photos and light on text.
But we’re not going to let Esquire off too easy. At least GQ got Ford into the photo studio. Esquire’s cover features Robert Redford … or, rather a grainy photo of Redford from the 1975 film “Three Days of the Condor.”
The 81-year-old actor was thankfully a little more gracious in his interview with Michael Haine. He’s hawking “Our Souls at Night,” a Netflix film out later this month in which he’ll be reunited with Jane Fonda from 1967’s “Barefoot in the Park.”
Even 67-year-old Jeff Bridges pops up late in GQ in an ode to patterned cardigans. The mag doesn’t even try to hide that it is co-opting Bridges’ costumes when he played “The Dude” in “The Big Lebowski” -- film that is nearly 20 years old. We sincerely doubt that The Dude would have shelled out $3,100 for an Alanui cardigan that resembles grandma’s country throw blanket.
In trying to explain the ’70s style vibe and the re-emergence of brown and other earth tones, Esquire’s Max Prince offers this: “Consumers want something that’s opposite of the gadgets that have infiltrated their lives.”