Editor’s Letter

the great summer films are best appreciated in winter. That’s summer films as in films set in the summer, rather than films that are released during the summer, which are summer movies, and typically have nothing at all to do with balmy heat and bronzed bodies and erotic yearning and the rest of it. (An exception is Jaws, which is one of the best ever summer films, as well as the first ever summer movie; he’s not Steven Spielberg by default.)

You can see a summer film any time. There is no bad moment to re-watch Body Heat. Or Do the Right Thing. Or The Green Ray. (Or

Caddyshack.) But their spells are cast most powerfully when it’s cold outside, when the thirst for light and heat can be temporarily quenched by images of attractive young people in bathing suits, sizzling.

The film that has sold more fortnights in Italy than any since Roman

Holiday, Anthony Minghella’s dazzling The Talented Mr Ripley, was a hit for many reasons. But I can’t help thinking that the fact it was released in the depths of the winter of 1999, treating cinemagoers in chilly northern climes such as ours to sunkissed golden couple Jude and Gwyneth cavorting on Ischia, might have had something to do with it.

Another case in point: Call Me by Your Name, the most summery summer film of the winter just gone. A poignant, if somewhat decorous love story set in northern Italy during the summer of 1983, Luca Guadagnino’s film is refreshing chiefly as an unashamed celebration of male carnal desire at a time when male carnal desire is rarely celebrated unashamedly, if it is celebrated at all. But also for another reason: it wasn’t the best summer film of winter 2017 — that was The Florida Project, obviously — but it was definitely the best dressed.

The lovers in Call Me by Your Name, statuesque twentysomething Oliver and coltish teen Elio, are played by Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet. Both are resplendent in their summer wardrobes, Hammer a postgrad Apollo in blowsy print shirts and short satin shorts and Chalamet, a pouting, tousled beauty, in Lacoste polo shirts two sizes too big for him, old Levi’s cut off at the knees and turned up just so, plus knackered tennis shoes.

Both men looked as lovely as a Tuscan sunset. But it’s the Chalamet wardrobe I appreciated most keenly. That faded Talking Heads T-shirt, those printed shorts, those dusty espadrilles... It all looked strangely familiar. I might have mentioned this as I walked out of the cinema:

“That Timmy Challyberet cuts quite the dash, doesn’t he?”

“You would say that,” said my companion, a little churlishly I thought. “He dresses exactly like you do on holiday!”

(She was ignoring, as was I, the memorable final scene, in which Chalamet is suddenly transformed into early Marc Almond. If everyone is very lucky, perhaps I’ll try that this year?)

Now, it hardly needs saying that I’m no summer style icon, no Mastroianni or McQueen. But ageing polo shirts and ancient jeans I can do. And, in fact, I have been doing, each July or August, since about… since about the summer of 1983. (I had a couple of years off for bad behaviour and terrible trousers around 1990, when I went all Ravey Davey Gravy, but I’m feeling much better now.)

I’m not claiming this look — if it can be said to be anything so considered as a “look” — as daring. It is crushingly conventional and strikingly lacking in imagination and as bourgeois as two weeks in the Luberon. And yet, still, it is easy and flattering, and while I would never claim to be able to carry it off with the inimitable panache of young Chalamet, it has served me tolerably well over the years. If you, like me, are crushingly conventional and strikingly lacking in imagination — and quite fancy two weeks in the Luberon — then I commend it to you.

(If you haven’t seen Call Me by Your Name then I commend that to you, too. Though not with the enthusiasm that I commend The Florida

Project to you, with the caveat that the latter is about children living in poverty, so possibly less handy for men’s style tips. Shame.)

But I’m getting ahead of myself. This issue is concerned with spring. Summer is still a way off. And the question of what to wear in spring, especially the British spring, is not so easily answered with an old T-shirt and last year’s trainers. Happily, then, the magazine is full of new stuff to buy. Hawaiian-style shirts for barbecue days; loafers for every occasion; lightweight summer suits. Also: what to drink, the best diving watches, why you need a table tennis table in your life, how to party like a Swede and the shirt off Picasso’s back. And a thing about Monsieur T Chalamet’s barnet. (I don’t think he’s even French, really. Although maybe he is? Oh, who cares when he looks that delish?)

Regular Esquire readers might notice that our Style section has had a crisp makeover. The section is under new management — Johnny Davis and Charlie Teasdale are now its sharp-dressed editors — and it has added attitude, with even more erudite writing on grooming, cars, tech, travel, food and trousers. (For a stern corrective to all this stuff about fancy clobber, turn to Giles Coren’s column on page 33. How to put this? He’s less sold on fashion than some of us.)

As for the spring/summer looks from the leading megabrands, who better to model them for us than their Royal Highnesses Harry and Meghan? Somehow, clearly by mistake, we’ve secured world exclusive access to the honeymoon of the year. More than that, we’ve been able to style the newlyweds in some of the sexiest get-ups of the season. Surely this is a story that ought to appear in Hello! or the Mail Online, not Britain’s most stylish and sophisticated men’s magazine? Who sanctioned it, I don’t know. Heads will roll in the palace press office, that’s my prediction. It’ll be like Tudor times all over again, only without the ruffs. Ruffs being, well, not very summer 2018. Or maybe they are? What would I know? I’m a crumple-collared polo shirt man, myself.