The cross-over event of the summer
Be the sharpest dad on the school run in the Cupra Formentor, this year’s edgiest family car Story by Jason Barlow
C upra is Seat’s sporty and electrified sub- NEED smooth-shifting seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox. It’s a familiar powertrain
brand, a development that precisely no TO put to excellent use here, aided and abetted by its four-wheel drive system
one was waiting for. But wait. Although KNOW to deliver seductive point-to-point pace. The sound is digitally augmented
it’s part of the sprawling manufacturing inside, generating a surprisingly authentic woofle. Don’t like it? Turn it off.
hive mind that is the Volkswagen Group, the Engine
Formentor is off and running simply by looking 306bhp 1,984cc, The cabin’s imaginative too, with clever trim combinations and a suffi-
sharper than its key rivals. Granted, the “cross- four-cylinder turbo ciently bold use of ambient strip lighting to make this an inspiring place
over” – 2021’s default family runaround – is not to be after dark. Less enriching is the 12-inch touchscreen that handles the
a segment likely to inflame anyone, but Cupra’s Performance infotainment. Temperature and audio volume can be adjusted via a slider but
design team have successfully pushed at the con- 0-62mph in 4.9 secs; it’s hit and miss and the graphics are a childish-looking Day-Glo mishmash.
straints. The nose is chiselled and sharky, the top speed, 155mph
badge like something from the Marvel Cinematic Otherwise, the car is extremely well judged. Perhaps Curpa could loosen
Universe, the high-riding stance and overall pro- Price the reins a little more, but the Formentor has character, entertainment and
portions executed with unusual panache. £39,830
versatility to spare – and zero brand baggage, which is refreshing in itself. G
Nor does it feel like a Golf in Mediterranean Contact
drag in terms of its driving dynamics. A 1.4-litre cupraofficial.co.uk Muscular bodywork
plug-in hybrid promises 242bhp and 31 miles puts the Formentor
on electric power alone, but way more fun
is the 306bhp 2.0-litre turbo, harnessed to a in the top tier of
cross-over design
Then things got
really weird:
‘Bon Jovi’s like,
“You’re f***ing
Cousin Greg!”’
Rollneck by Dior, £1,450. dior.com
100 GQ.CO.UK JULY 2021
NICHOLAS BRAUN
Cousin it!
Succession is back. Nearly. And that means
the return of TV’s most horrifyingly
dysfunctional bromance and the star who
low-key might (somehow, impossibly,
hopefully?) become the last shark swimming
in the Roy family pond. Here, on anxiety,
ambition and studded Crocs, embodying
‘cuck life’ for his new film Zola and
penning the first pandy-pop mega-hit,
Nicholas Braun is about to make his move
Story by Ben Allen
Photographs by Jennifer Livingston
Styling by Matthew Marden
JULY 2021 GQ.CO.UK 101
On a warm afternoon in He’s sitting in his New York apartment with Director Adam McKay (Anchorman, Step
New York City last autumn,
a very tall man wearing a tousled hair, looking not much like Greg at all, Brothers, The Big Short), who executive produces
protective facemask, clear-
framed glasses and a black even though he’s currently spending most of Succession and helmed the pilot, tells me he
baseball cap sidled up to a
vlogger on a busy sidewalk his days filming the long-awaited new series. knew he had found his Greg as soon as Braun
to nervously profess his
adoration of the vlogger’s I’m trying to parse what exactly has kept him walked out of the audition. “He’s really smart,
pizza review series. The
vlogger, who was filming so level-headed, after three years of Succession he’s handsome, he’s talented, yet at the same time
while awaiting a guest, was
a little uneasy – in truth, he and much longer with a very different, far more incredibly vulnerable,” McKay says, “and it’s a
appeared quite keen for the
man to go away – until the rabid audience as a Disney Channel stalwart in mixture you don’t see quite as much these days.
stranger pulled down his
mask to reveal the lower half his teens. It wasn’t the first time he had cold- It reminds me a little bit of how actors were in
of his face: it was Nicholas
Braun, known to many as approached someone he admired, he tells me. the 1970s, when you would have these leading
Cousin Greg from the
Emmy-winning, Murdoch- He once asked Vin Diesel for a selfie and, even men and women that were vulnerable, flawed,
baiting, culture-dominating
series Succession. ballsier, at 19, approached Quentin Tarantino on slightly different.” He and Succession head writer
“I just wanted to be like, ‘Man, thanks for the an aeroplane with a torn-out magazine ad for Jesse Armstrong were immediately impressed by
entertainment,’” Braun recalls. “I kind of looked
like a schlub.” The vlogger changed his tune dra- his film Minutemen. “I was like, ‘Quentin? Mr Braun’s ability to riff and improvise and add lay-
matically, as he was a massive fan of Succession.
Then things got really weird: Jon Bon Jovi turned Tarantino? Hey, I just want to say I’m an actor. ers to the character. “He is able to do that thing
up – the vlogger’s guest and also, it transpired,
a fan of Braun – and then that most unlikely of I love your films. I hope I get to work with you which I always love in actors: he’s able to do two
trios ate pizza together on the side of the street.
“I guess that’s why Succession is crazy sometimes, someday.’ He was in the window seat, so I had to things at once all the time,” Armstrong says,
because that doesn’t happen unless he’s like,
‘You’re fucking Cousin Greg!’” Only in New York, lean over a person to give it to him.” “dumb and clever, high status and low status.” In
only in a pandemic, only when you’re in the best
show on TV. His groundedness, as I read it at least, can many ways, Braun embodies the show’s unique
In the early seconds of the exchange, which is be chalked up to a piece of advice given to him balance between comedy and tragedy: Greg is one
available to watch on YouTube, you can see shades
of Braun’s now-iconic character, a mixture of by Daniel Petrie, the director of his first movie, of the more outrightly comedic characters, but
awkwardness and chutzpah that is unmistakably
Greg. But it’s only a flicker, which disappears once a made-for-TV melodrama called Walter And Braun’s deeply emotive eyes imbue him with an
the initial tension is diffused. The overwhelming
takeaway from the encounter is Braun’s earnest- Henry, when he was just 12 years old. It was endearing rawness. You feel embarrassed for him.
ness, unbridled by the success he has enjoyed for
the best part of his 20-year career on screen. It’s extremely simple, a comment that most children You feel sad for him, even when you’re laughing
very difficult to imagine anyone else of his stature
(he was nominated for an acting Emmy) assum- his age would have shrugged off as the allure of at him. And, more than anything, you want him
ing the position of fan like that, as more often
than not he is on the receiving end of it. Cousin fame and money drew them deeper and deeper to go on and win it all.
Greg is, and this is not an exaggeration, every-
one’s favourite TV character. Just ask Virgil Abloh, into the mechanism of Hollywood. To paraphrase, In some ways, Greg is like ten per cent of Braun
who recently slid into Braun’s DMs and sent him a
custom pair of Off-White trainers. As the gawkish it was: don’t let acting and fame become the crux taken to its fullest extreme. To bring the charac-
outsider of the Roy family, one of the world’s most
powerful media dynasties, he brings humour and of your wellbeing. But Braun took it seriously, ter to life, he leans into his anxious side. “I guess
humanity in his self-consciousness, his eagerness
to please and his quiet ambition. even as he watched his teenage costars, including I’m one of those people who is not, like, instantly
When I mention the pizza review as we speak Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato, become super- comfortable with people; it takes me a while
over Zoom, Braun, 33, lights up at the memory.
stars. He’s still thinking about it today, when his to know what version of myself I’m going to be
profile is the highest it has ever been, at least with somebody.” Greg is also a composite of awk-
among the adult population. It means that when ward individuals he has come across in his life,
someone comes up to him on the street, invari- including a guy he once saw dancing unabashedly
ably calling him “Cousin Greg” (it happens a lot), at a wedding. In the lead-up to his audition for the
he appreciates it but doesn’t let it inflate his ego. show, he would drop himself into conversations
He has learned to find his self-worth in things with strangers and force himself to live in that
apart from the approval of others, an impressive awkwardness for as long as he could tolerate it.
achievement in an increasingly gamified enter- “When there’s any kind of awkward silence, I’m
tainment industry. “I do love when people love the like, ‘OK, probably time to go.’ But I think Greg
show,” he says, “but if it makes me feel so much doesn’t have that voice in his head.”
better about myself that someone said this to me, A natural overthinker, Braun considers every
I think I need to work on my self-esteem more.” detail of his character, down to the clothing Greg
wears. “I would tell the costume
W e meet Succession’s ‘It takes me designers his first suit is a $100-
Greg Hirsch – a while to know $300 suit. A lot of it was about
great-nephew of what version what’s in Greg’s bank account.”
Brian Cox’s irascible power- of myself I’m He envies costar Matthew
house Logan Roy – in the open- going to be Macfadyen’s ability to switch off
ing episode, at a low point as he with someone’ from his character between takes,
flops out of the Waystar Royco’s something he struggles with.
management training scheme. Instead, he replays each scene
On placement at one of the over and over in his head, ruing
organisation’s various theme parks while high, missed opportunities and isolating what he could
he vomits through the eyeholes of a cartoon char- have said and done that would have suited the
acter costume, traumatising a bunch of children scene better. “I like being very particular about
in the process. But thereafter he attaches himself what I want to achieve,” he says.
to the family unit like a limpet and begins a steady He thrives on the energy of being surrounded
climb up the corporate ladder, making his way by his supremely talented costars, particularly
through the cruises division, where he is ordered when they get to share the screen as an ensem-
to destroy evidence of a sex scandal, and, later, to ble. On occasion during these family gatherings,
the company’s Fox News analogue, ATN. As the they try out “loose” takes, in which the camera
episodes roll on, he trades his grubby khakis for runs on beyond the scripted lines and improvisa-
designer suits and slicks back a mop of hair. “It’s tion is encouraged. Braun offers up one delicious
sort of in the nature of the guy who comes in from example: in the series two finale, the entire family
throwing up through the mask that if he’s going is gathered around a breakfast table on a yacht
to be in this room full of sharks, he has to acquire in the Mediterranean, discussing who should be
some of those skills.” offered as a sacrificial lamb to assuage public >>
102 GQ.CO.UK JULY 2021
NICHOLAS BRAUN
Shirt by Paul Smith,
£500. paulsmith.com.
Glasses by Moscot,
£275. moscot.com.
Ring by Miansai, from
£150. miansai.com
JULY 2021 GQ.CO.UK 103
Jacket by Brunello
Cucinelli, £1,390.
brunellocucinelli.com.
Sweatshirt by Todd
Snyder x Champion,
£65. toddsnyder.com.
Necklace by Miansai,
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Opposite: Cardigan
by Greg Lauren,
£1,707. greglauren.
com. Sweatshirt by
Giorgio Armani,
£575. armani.com.
Jeans by Brunello
Cucinelli, £670.
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Boots by Timberland,
£180. timberland.
co.uk. Socks by
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com. Necklace by
Caputo & Co, £240.
caputoandco.com.
Rings by Miansai,
from £150 each.
miansai.com
104 GQ.CO.UK JULY 2021
NICHOLAS BRAUN
Culkin walked
round the table,
jumped on Braun’s
back and the two
started wrestling
JULY 2021 GQ.CO.UK 105
Jacket, £680. T-shirt,
£285. Jeans, £530. All
by Dolce & Gabbana.
dolcegabbana.com.
Boots by Grenson,
£300. grenson.com
‘When there’s an
awkward silence,
I’m like, “Time to go.”
Greg doesn’t
have that voice’
106 GQ.CO.UK JULY 2021
NICHOLAS BRAUN
>> unrest about the crimes committed on the
company’s cruise ships. It is exactly what this
show does best: narcissistic, entitled, yet some-
how endearing rich white people trying to eat
each other alive. “What about Tom with some
fucking Greg sprinkles?” Kieran Culkin’s Roman
suggests. “I object, I really do,” Greg responds,
“I’m more than a sprinkle.” In the cut that made
it to air, their interaction is heated but it peters
out as other scalps are offered up. “That’s really
one of the few moments I get with Roman where
we actually look each other in the eye and have a
moment.” But there were several takes that esca-
lated. In one, Culkin got up, walked round the
table and jumped on Braun’s back, knocking him
to the floor, and the two of them started wrestling.
“That’s kind of the freedom we all get when we’re
doing these scenes. It’s not a one-minute take, it’s
a six-minute take, so you can’t leave your head-
space and everyone is sort of forced to stay super
present for the entirety of the scene.”
During Braun’s childhood, his father, a
former creative director for Warner Music
renowned for codesigning The Rolling
Stones’ tongue logo, made a late-career pivot to
acting in his fifties and Braun would accompany
him on the audition circuit, eventually develop-
ing a taste for the craft himself. He soon became
laser-focused on carving out a career and the
two of them would scan bootleg versions of
the industry breakdowns and send out postcards
to casting directors with headshots attached,
hoping to eventually get noticed. After landing
a couple of small projects in the early 2000s,
his Disney career began in 2005 with Sky High,
a comedy about a high school for superheroes
in which he played a character with the under-
whelming ability to turn his skin a fluorescent Nicholas Braun with (from top) Riley Keough in Zola and shark-chum Matthew Macfadyen in Succession
yellow. It threatened to become all-consuming as
he became one of the Mickey Mouse corp’s go-to
supporting players, starring next in Minutemen,
a sci-fi about time-travelling teenagers, and then
Princess Protection Program
with Selena Gomez and Demi ‘I was like, casting agents and say he was culture. After a day of moshing and drinking “the
Lovato. “When you do a movie “Mr Tarantino?” 6ft 5in – was a bit of a hin- grossest alcohol we could get”, he found him-
with Selena or Demi, you know, drance at times. He was too self on stage with a hundred other juggalos for
and they’re, like, being groomed He was in the baby-faced to play a grown-up, an almost ceremonial experience in which they
in a way for being the next big window seat, too tall to be a son. He found were all drenched in a soft drink called Faygo –
thing, you kind of sense it.” so I had to lean himself questioning, but never a kind of juggalo baptism. “I felt disgusting. My
over someone’ regretting, his decision. “I was skin was just layers and layers of soda, dirt and
Even at such a young age, looking at the Twilight people sweat.” It helped him realise that his character
he knew that kind of life and I was like, ‘Man, that must wasn’t, in fact, a juggalo. (He has only good things
wasn’t right for him, at least
not back then. At 13 he turned down the oppor- be awesome.’ But then, you know, it dies down to say about the juggalo community, incidentally:
tunity to test for a lead role in a major sitcom and it changes. I think I’ve just believed in the “They’re kind of sweet, you know.”)
that might have made his name because of the slow rise and to make sure that I focus on my In his new movie, Zola – an exhilarating,
implications it would have on the back end of his work and that I remain an artist and not neces- 90-minute thriller based on a real-life stripper’s
adolescence. “The opportunities to be the lead of a sarily go towards the thing that would get me the Twitter thread about a “hoe trip” gone wrong
Disney Channel series felt scary to me. It felt like most fame the most quickly.” – Braun plays Derrek, the cuckolded, chinstrap-
a commitment that might come around to bite Braun takes his acting seriously. While he’s not adorned boyfriend of the wayward antagonist,
Photographs HBO; Anna Kooris me in the ass.” Instead, he attended a boarding a Daniel Day-Lewis method actor, he makes a lot Stefani, who follows her, whining and moaning,
school and got to live like a normal teenager. He of effort to embody his characters. For a now- on an odyssey through Miami’s seedy underbelly.
went to prom and did all the other vital teenage cancelled movie a couple of summers ago, he took He took things even further. “I felt this relation-
stuff, setting aside some time in the summers to a throwaway line in the script about a character’s ship was kind of eating him up,” he says. Braun
act. After he finished school, he moved into adult- allegiances to “juggalos” – the fan group of the lost some weight. He put lesions on his skin. He
aimed work and what followed was a nine-year rap-metal group Insane Clown Posse – as a cue subsisted on only candy and coffee. “I was just on
period of smaller films and a slew of TV shows to fly out to their annual, five-day festival, The this really weird, thin, kind of manic energy.” It
that either fizzled out or never made it to air. His Gathering Of The Juggalos, in Oklahoma City, and worked: he is hilarious and a little devastating as
lofty stature – he’s 6ft 7in, but he used to lie to immerse himself in their aesthetically unsettling this comically tragic man. >>
JULY 2021 GQ.CO.UK 107
‘He reminds me of
actors in the 1970s,
leading men that
were flawed,
slightly different’
ADAM McKAY
108 GQ.CO.UK JULY 2021
NICHOLAS BRAUN
Jacket, £1,040. Shirt,
£280. Both by Ami.
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by Gucci, £520.
gucci.com. Boots
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uniqlo.com. Rings by
Miansai, from £150
each. miansai.com.
Belt, stylist’s own.
JULY 2021 GQ.CO.UK 109
>> Braun doesn’t need to be able to directly relate Kendall Roy wage war against his father? “Tom
and Greg’s relationship continues to be rocky.
to every character he plays, but if he can, even And there’s a deep love for one another under
just a little bit, it helps. He’s too self-aware to have it all. That’s all I can say.” Not much of anything
found himself so deeply embedded in the kind really, but I’ll take it. He will say that the buzz
of abusive relationship that Derrek and Stefani on set has never been better and the rapport
have, but he has experienced the grain of it. “[My with his costars remains strong. The situation is
relationships that came closest to that] didn’t go perhaps helped, he says, by the fact that Culkin,
on very long. You know, it would be a few weeks who is liable to lean into his character’s eccen-
of obsession and, like... I don’t like feeling that tricities, is unable to stick his fingers in Braun’s
powerless. I kind of run away from relationships drinks, due to strict Covid measures.
where I know, ‘OK, I care too much about this.
They don’t care as much as me. I gotta get out.’” Whether or not the show addresses Covid, it
will stand out from the previous series, if only
F or a large portion of the pandemic, Braun aesthetically, as the cast and crew have been
was stuck in Los Angeles, as he awaited grounded in New York, meaning that gallivant-
the long-delayed restart of production ing to yachts in Croatia or estates in Scotland is
on Succession. He crashed with his old friend not an option. But he says they adjusted quickly
to their new way of working, which involves
Christopher Mintz-Plasse, “McLovin” from mask-wearing, rigorous testing and social dis-
tancing on set. “You can’t even be annoyed.
Superbad. They built Lego together, binged Love There’s nothing you can do.” And it’s not going
to harm the best aspect of the show: the various
Is Blind and other dating shows (Braun is working dynamics between the Roys. “The scenes haven’t
been affected. I think we’re tighter than ever.”
on a script, a “social horror movie” about them. In Succession with Jeremy Strong as Kendall,
“I find reality shows to be kind of horrific”) and upstart heir of the venal Roy family Given Succession’s popularity, Braun’s fame
made silly videos to post on social media. They today is very different to how it was during his
time with Disney, particularly when you take
also jammed together (Braun was in a band when they want me to hit them with my car, like in a into account the complications that social media
brings. But, as he did in his youth, he has found
he was younger and still loves to make music) and sexy way,” he said, “or stomp on their neck with a way to cope with it (avoiding Twitter, for the
most part). “You kind of just have to give yourself
later in the summer he wound up crafting one of my Crocs, these kind of violent-sexy-type things.” over to it. I have no power over any of it.”
the first pandemic hits, “Antibodies (Do You Have The Crocs were his attempt to climb out of the He’s conscious but pragmatic about the way
the internet gives people the open-ended ability
The)”. It began as a throwaway video he posted celebrity styling hole and imprint his personality to laud or criticise celebrities. “It can be anxiety-
inducing. But, at the end of the day, I’ve got to
on Instagram to his 176,000 followers calling for onto his outfit. “It doesn’t feel good when you’re just try to be myself and not to judge myself.
Because, you know, what can I really do?”
“musical people” to help turn some lyrics, which wearing stuff you don’t like – you feel like a man-
I observe that the way he uses Instagram,
he screamed in a quasi-British accent, into a nequin or something. You’re like, ‘Yeah, they put posting highly self-aware and silly videos of him-
self, (the Crocs, for one, and another in which
song. “Do you have the antibodies, do you want the clothes on me and here I am looking nice and he jokingly attempts to court Kim Kardashian),
feels brave to me precisely because they feel dis-
to be with me?” The musical people obliged and slick, but it doesn’t actually feel like me.’ So I guess tinctly like the Braun I’m talking to today. It’s
not a committee-run project, it’s just him and
turned it into a post-punk masterpiece about find- I’m trying to find ways to do this that feel good to his phone, on a whim. It seems that, in a way,
he’s revealing his true self to a massive audience.
ing love in the lockdown era. What started as a me and in brands that I like and, I mean, Crocs And, sure, he says, it’s made him more relaxed,
but he’s not trying to build a profile and harvest
joke turned into a major flex: Braun is now signed felt like the right thing for an at-home Emmys.” likes. He’s just having fun and being himself, kind
of like the way that director once told him to.
to Atlantic Records and his sin- He now owns ten pairs of
“I’m like, ‘Well, if anybody still follows me after
gle has been played more than ‘There’s been Crocs, wearing them three to four hearing me say the stuff I’ve been saying, then
a million times across Spotify people saying times a week, and is expanding cool, then they liked me.’ Or they think I’m inter-
and YouTube, with a portion of they want me into more straightforwardly fash- esting, at least. I’ll go with that. Yeah.”
profits (from streams and its ionable footwear thanks to his
SUCCESSION SERIES THREE IS ON SKY ATLANTIC AND NOW TV
accompanying merch, includ- to hit them new pal Virgil Abloh, as he makes LATER THIS YEAR.
ing a mask that reads “Mask with my car... deeper forays into the world of
on, pants off”) going to health- in a sexy way’ high fashion. “I still don’t feel + More from GQ For these related
focused charities in the US. like I’m made to be in the fashion
stories visit GQ.co.uk/magazine
The video for the song featured world,” he says, “but it gets more
JED MERCURIO TALKS LINE OF DUTY AND CLAPPING
a woman he had gone on some socially distanced fun the more you learn about it.” BACK AT CRITICS (Ben Allen, March 2021)
dates with, adding a bit of real-life romance to the Braun is now “fully vaxxed up”, which has EVERYTHING WE KNOW ABOUT SUCCESSION SERIES
THREE (Anna Conrad, August 2020)
whole thing. Are they still together? “We’re not removed some of the anxiety of shooting a
MATTHEW MACFADYEN’S TV SUCCESSION FROM MEDIA
together, just because, you know, she lives in LA. I major TV show mid-pandemic. As our con- SNEAK TO QUIZ CHEAT (Anna Conrad, April 2020)
wasn’t sure when I’d ever get to LA again. It was a versation turns to said show – rivalled only by
great pandemic romance.” Marvel and Star Wars for the severity of the
In September 2020, he attended the virtual omerta its stars are forced to keep – it becomes
Emmys – he was nominated in the Outstanding a sparring match as I hit him with a barrage of
Supporting Actor In A Drama Series category for questions he dodges skilfully. How much have
Succession – in a crisp Paul Smith suit and a pair they filmed already? “Some.” Does Covid come
of dark blue Crocs (adorned with pins and studs into the storyline? “I shan’t say.” Can you tell
spelling out “Antibodies”), creating shock waves in me anything at all? “I play Greg.” He laughs
the menswear community still felt today (not for and shifts in his seat, evidently slightly uneasy
nothing, Justin Bieber has just released his own about being so unforthcoming. Finally, I beg
line of the divisive shoes). It was a viral red-carpet for one tiny morsel about the state of the best
moment in a year lacking them, representing the relationship on TV, between Greg and Matthew
loungewear boom and flexing Braun’s own per- Macfadyen’s Tom Wambsgans, the slithery-but-
sonal style at the same time. Even if you hated the lovable brother-in-law who plays Greg’s best Photograph HBO
Crocs, you respected Braun’s bravado all the same. friend, boss and chief tormentor all rolled into
Days later, he posted a video to his Instagram jok- one. Are they going to be on opposite sides this
ingly addressing his followers’ disturbing thirst series now that, as the series two finale revealed,
messages. “There’s been a bunch of people saying Greg appears to have helped Jeremy Strong’s
110 GQ.CO.UK JULY 2021
NICHOLAS BRAUN
‘I was just on
this really weird,
thin, kind of
manic energy’
Vest by Ami, £280.
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Nicholas’ own.
JULY 2021 GQ.CO.UK 111
‘Tom and Greg’s
relationship
continues to be
rocky. But there’s
love there.
That’s all I can say’
Jacket by Brunello
Cucinelli, £1,390.
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112 GQ.CO.UK JULY 2021
NICHOLAS BRAUN
Rollneck by
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Tailor Joseph Ting
Grooming
Rheanne White
Digital technician
Dallas Raines
Styling assistant
Katherine Vaughan
Photography assistant
Hans Olson G
JULY 2021 GQ.CO.UK 113
114 GQ.CO.UK JULY 2021
CRIME
The real
HEAT
LA, 1997: $18.9 million stolen in a city still living in the shadow of the
Rodney King riots. Today, having served almost 20 years for the raid on an
armoured truck depot, its mastermind suggests it wasn’t greed but another
base impulse that lit the touchpaper of America’s biggest cash robbery
Story by Alex Hannaford Illustrations by Gavin Reece
It was a little under six hours since the
robbery when John McEachern got the call.
The veteran investigator was on the early
morning shift, sipping coffee at his desk in
the FBI offices on Wilshire Boulevard in
Los Angeles. LAPD detective Steve Laird,
whom McEachern regularly worked alongside
on robbery investigations, was on the line.
‘‘Dunbar’s
he said. squad. Since the 1980s, LA had the unenviable McEachern, who has piercing blue eyes and
Just after midnight, six masked robbers with distinction of being the bank robbery capital of cropped hair, smiled. It was a start, but experi-
guns had broken into a Dunbar Armored
storage facility on Mateo Street. Banks didn’t America. According to McEachern, four divi- ence taught him it was going to take a while.
keep a lot of cash on hand and at the end of
each business day they’d turn the bulk over to sions of the California FBI – San Francisco, “Knowing who did it and proving it are two very
the armoured car industry. Dunbar essentially
babysat banks’ money for them. And it wasn’t Sacramento, LA and San Diego – investigated different things,” he thought.
just cash: as McEachern liked to tell people,
“Hell, if you had a prized baseball card collection almost 70 per cent of those crimes nationwide. Pace had worked at Dunbar for a year and
or piece of jewellery, they’d store it for you.”
But their biggest business was cash from ATM In 1992 the Los Angeles office dealt with 2,641 a half as its regional safety inspector. His job
machines. And among their biggest custom-
ers was Wells Fargo. There were a handful of bank robberies alone. Although McEachern was kind of like internal affairs for armoured
Dunbar employees on shift that night and the
robbers bound their wrists and ankles with duct didn’t know it yet, he was about to lead an cars: make sure drivers are doing their jobs
tape before disappearing into the vault to claim
their haul. investigation into the largest cash robbery in properly, that they aren’t speeding or driving
It was 13 September 1997 and McEachern was American history. recklessly. He worked the graveyard shift – 10pm
a year shy of celebrating his tenth anniversary
with the FBI. Before that he’d spent 14 years as When McEachern arrived at the Dunbar to 6am – but had been sacked the day before
a small-town detective in Opelika, Alabama –
the first member of his family to work in law depot, Detective Laird and his LA was the the robbery for tampering
enforcement. Joining the Bureau was a child- lieutenant, Jim Grayson, were bank robbery with company vehicles.
hood dream and before he was transferred from already on scene. The robbers capital of the US. McEachern made a note of
Pittsburgh to LA in 1993 he’d worked health- had entered through a metal- In 1992, there his name.
care fraud, weapons and drug cases. Once in the framed glass door – it looked were 2,641 cases
city, he was assigned to a Crips gang unit, but like they’d tampered with the Once the robbers had
for the last year he’d been on the bank robbery lock but it wasn’t broken – and gained access to the facility
security cameras had been and tied up the employees,
they’d driven a truck into
turned to face the other direction. “It felt like the loading bay. The vault where the cash was
an inside job – I thought it; we all thought it,” stored was open – that wasn’t unusual because
McEachern says. trucks would come and go all night. The Dunbar
In the shipping and receiving bay, where employees told McEachern the men had stuffed
armoured trucks load up and drop off cash day money into black garbage bags before piling
and night, one of the LAPD detectives, John them into the vehicles and making their escape.
Licata, picked up a broken piece of tail-light and But while they were leaving they must have
rotated it in his hand. An employee who had bumped into something, causing a small piece
been tied up said she recognised the voice of one of amber-coloured plastic to fall off the running
of the robbers. He’d called her “baby” – “Just lights of the truck, a piece that didn’t fit any of
do what we tell you and you’ll be OK, baby.” It the Dunbar armoured vehicles.
sounded like someone who used to work there – Mike Gambrill had worked for the Baltimore
a man called Allen Pace, she said. police department for 35 years, mostly homicide,
116 GQ.CO.UK JULY 2021
CRIME
before retiring as chief. For the last few years lens from the getaway vehicle in his briefcase. responsible for his firing. Besides which, he
he’d been employed as head of security for the
entire Dunbar Armored group, headquartered It didn’t take long for the lab to report back had an alibi: that night he’d been at a party in
on the East Coast. At the time, Dunbar had
around 60 branches and at each the regional with the results: the rear-light cover had been Long Beach.
security manager reported to Gambrill. He’d
never met Allen Pace, but that morning, as manufactured specifically for U-Haul rental Two weeks after the robbery the same
Gambrill took the first aeroplane west from
Baltimore to LA, he knew Pace was the prime trucks. McEachern set to work securing grand surveillance team followed Pace and his then
suspect. He also knew he was about to be
reunited with his old friend, McEachern, who jury subpoenas for customer information girlfriend, Tamiko Carnes, herself a former
was heading up the investigation into the rob-
bery for the FBI. Gambrill knew there was no one from the hundreds of U-Haul dealerships Dunbar employee, to Las Vegas, where the cou-
better than McEachern – “the sharpest investi-
gator I’ve ever seen”, he’d say. “He’s got this old scattered in and around the Los ple got married. McEachern
Alabama way about him, an accent that lulls you It became clear guessed they’d done it so Carnes
into telling him anything. And he takes great Angeles area.
notes, writes down everything you say. He’s just a
brilliant investigator and that head of his is just And it wasn’t long before none of the couldn’t later be forced to testify
turning and burning.” they found Pace either. The robbers knew against Pace – a legal device
FBI set up surveillance on how much known as spousal privilege – but
While his agents began looking for Pace, him and within a little over he didn’t know for sure.
McEachern flew from LA to the FBI laboratory
in Quantico, Virginia, with the piece of plastic a week he was in handcuffs they’d stolen The Dunbar robbery had
taken place in September. It was
and sitting in an interview
room face-to-face with McEachern. Pace now almost Christmas and while McEachern
said that he had no idea about the robbery and his team were still following up on leads
and didn’t care anyway that the facility had and carrying out surveillance on Pace and his
been robbed, because they’d terminated his friends, they still had no money, no admission
employment. It wasn’t that he seemed evasive. On of guilt and nothing to tie any of the suspects
the contrary: Pace simply denied any knowledge to the robbery other than what amounted to a
of the crime altogether and made it clear how vague statement that one of them had “sounded
much he detested the company and the higher-ups like” Pace.
been hit,’’
E leven months after the robbery,
McEachern assembled a task
force consisting of the FBI, LAPD, Internal
Revenue Service and California Department Of
Motor Vehicles. The same day, Dunbar upped its
reward to $250,000 for any information leading
to the arrest and conviction of those who pulled
off the audacious heist.
The same afternoon, McEachern got the
break he’d been waiting for. He took a phone call
from a man claiming he had some vital informa-
tion and, together with Detective John Licata,
he drove down to Long Beach to meet him. The
story the man told them sounded far-fetched:
that he’d been approached to make some real
estate deals and had been given a million dol-
lars in cash to buy homes that were in default
by the bank – known as foreclosures. While
McEachern and Licata were wondering if they’d
wasted their time, the man disappeared into his
bedroom and returned moments later carrying
several bundles of paper money secured with
straps. McEachern took a bundle and examined
it. In black lettering was the date 13 September
1997, together with the initials “WFCS”.
“We knew immediately,” he says. “Wells Fargo
Cash Services.”
The man said he’d been given the money by
someone called Eugene Hill, who, it turned out,
was a close friend of Allen Pace. Meanwhile, FBI
agents working for McEachern had begun visiting
U-Haul locations in and around LA. In the days
of the nascent internet, most of the records >>
JULY 2021 GQ.CO.UK 117
>> were kept, old-school style, in banker boxes W hen someone is arrested on criminal Beach, after which Hill and McCrary drove to a
charges in the federal system, they’re home in Palmdale where, under instruction from
and agents had to pore through them by hand. taken before a magistrate who reads Pace, they burned some of the bills that had been
Eventually they came across a rental agreement those charges and sets a bond amount. At this sequentially numbered in a fireplace to make it
for a 14-foot U-Haul truck, together with a pho- stage they’re not asking for a guilty or innocent harder to trace. But they didn’t destroy enough of
tocopy of the driving licence of the person who plea. McEachern recalls that when the magis- them. Instead, they spent about $4m on houses,
rented it: Eugene Lamar Hill. trate read the amount of money that was stolen sports cars and gambling trips to Las Vegas. Hill
aloud – $18.9 million – the men looked at each and Johnson laundered $2m through a shell
By now the FBI had a list of probable accom- other, as if wondering who had taken the lion’s company they’d set up called Rain Forest.
plices, four of whom had some experience share. In later interviews they’d tell McEachern
working as security guards, but there was some they thought they’d stolen a few million dollars On the morning of 18 June 2001, Pace stood
disagreement between the agency and the LAPD in total. blinking before US district judge Lourdes Baird
over whether to do a big roundup and arrest eve- as she delivered his sentence, 24 years for rob-
ryone at the same time or individually. Eventually, The theft of millions of dollars from armoured bery, conspiracy, money laundering and weapons
McEachern got his way. They’d take them down car companies wasn’t new and in some cases offences (he would go on to serve 19). Boyd got
one at a time, beginning with Hill. Freddie more than $18.9m in cash was taken. But theft 17-and-a-half years for his part in the robbery;
McCrary was next. Then Terry Brown. One man is very different to robbery. As McEachern puts McCrary and Brown, meanwhile, testified against
led to the next and to the next. When they arrested it, “If you go home tonight and someone has bro- Pace, while Johnson and Hill also confessed to
Thomas Johnson in Las Vegas at an old casino ken in and stolen your television, your house has their roles and cooperated with the government
downtown, his first words were, “What took you not been robbed. You are the victim of burglary in exchange for leniency. The four were convicted
guys so long?” Johnson’s confession was swift. and theft. Only people can be robbed, not houses of robbery and other charges and sentenced to
or buildings. In the Dunbar case five employees between seven and ten years in prison.
The men were friends. All except Erik Boyd. were physically confronted, tied up and robbed,
He was recruited to help with the heist and when which is what made this the largest cash robbery In a separate case, Los Angeles attorney David
he was detained he demanded to see an attorney. in the history of the FBI.” Matsumoto and his ex-law office manager,
They didn’t even have to go to Pace’s house. He Joaquin Bin, pleaded guilty to money launder-
gave himself up at a police station. What became McEachern also knew the robbery could have ing, admitting they took $1m each from two of
clear, as McEachern and his investigators began been much larger. While the men were stealing the Dunbar robbers, depositing it in a client trust
conducting lengthy interviews with the men, was from the vault, they had to walk around a big account and using some of it to buy a house in Las
that none of them actually knew how much they’d fibreglass cart on wheels the size of three over- Vegas and write cheques to the robbers to make
stolen. The Dunbar cash, most of it in $20 bills, sized refrigerators. None of them ever opened the it look like they were earning legitimate wages.
was destined for ATM machines throughout LA. top of that cart, but inside it was $65m in cash.
In the vault, it was stored in clear plastic bags But the tale of how six men almost got away
in separate bins marked for a particular bank or The trial would last less than a week. Pace was with the largest cash heist in US history doesn’t
ATM location. Pace and his accomplices cherry- offered a deal – confess and reduce your sentence end there. Just occasionally, the intervening
picked the bags they believed had the most money – but he refused to take it. Boyd refused too. The years allow for a peeling back of the layers of sto-
in them, placed them, in turn, in large black gar- court heard that after the robbery, the men had ries like this one, revealing more about motive
bage bags and took them out to the truck. divided up the money at an apartment in Long and offering up further detail. What’s more,
Allen Pace has never spoken about the robbery.
Until now...
Six years before Pace
and his five accomplices
robbed Dunbar, a man
called Rodney King
led officers from the
LAPD on a high-speed
car chase through LA’s
San Fernando Valley.
Once they’d stopped him, those officers dragged
King from his car and beat him, leaving him with
numerous injuries, including a fractured cheek-
bone and skull. In the days before smartphones,
a local man caught the attack on home video
and sent it to a local TV station. Within days the
footage was on all the major networks and
the outrage of the American public palpable.
On 29 April 1992, the officers who beat King
were found not guilty and Los Angeles erupted.
Several days of violence, arson and looting
caused then President George HW Bush to
call in the National Guard. By the time the LA
Riots were over, more than 60 were dead and
2,000 injured. There had been about $1 billion’s
118 GQ.CO.UK JULY 2021
CRIME
worth of property damage and LAPD had made planned to one day rejoin them in Nevada where At Dunbar Armored, he says, the manage-
12,000 arrests.
they lived. What’s more, he said, he’d recently ment were mostly white, while the drivers and
But as Rolling Stone magazine described it in
a later assessment, the riots were the culmina- been given a release date and would be heading guards were largely black and Hispanic. He
tion of “an anger that had been simmering in the
neighbourhood – and areas like it – for genera- to a halfway house in the near future. tells me he was asked to do surveillance on two
tions”. It was into this world that Pace and his five
accomplices – all black men – had been born and Pace was 52 years old when he got out. He sent African-American drivers. “When we do that, we
raised; an LA marked by rising unemployment
and crime in its poorest neighbourhoods. At the an email a couple of weeks before saying, “This don’t do it intentionally – we don’t have a person
time, the Los Angeles Times reckoned, “In many
ways, LA symbolises the racism in this country is going out to everyone on my contact list. I will in mind to do surveillance on – it’s random. But
like probably no other city.”
be going home soon, sometime next month. So, this wasn’t random. They wanted me to do sur-
Pace, Boyd, Hill, Johnson, Brown and McCrary
were now in prison, being punished for their [when my] Bureau Of Prisons account... goes off, veillance on them and find something wrong.”
crime. But Pace, at least, felt he’d achieved his
goal. For him, you see, it was never about the that’s telling you that I am out.” Afterwards, Pace says he refused to write up
money. It was about retribution for what he saw as
discrimination towards him and other minorities John McEachern told me he’d informed Pace the report but that, in the end, he says, the two
from certain individuals in positions of authority.
back in 2001, at his sentencing hearing, that people in question had their jobs terminated
In October 2019, I got in touch with Pace via
the prison’s internal email system. He was he’d be there to meet him whenever he got anyway. Later, Pace tells me, the company tried
in a federal penitentiary in California and I
wanted to see if he’d agree to talk. We exchanged out of prison. But when I called him he had no to demote him because he failed to answer his
a handful of brief messages. Pace told me he was
well. “Still doing one day at a time,” he wrote. idea Pace had even been given When Johnson pager. “But there was something
a release date. And so, after was arrested in wrong with the pager system
I asked if we could chat on the phone. He almost 20 years, Allen Pace, Vegas, his first and I explained this to HR.”
said he’d like to, but that, for now, he wouldn’t mastermind of the largest words were,
discuss the case. So we talked. He told me how cash heist in American history, ‘What took you One day, Pace says, one of
he’d taken the opportunity to study and work in slipped out, quietly, anony- guys so long?’ his superiors had an accident
prison six days a week and that he had Fridays mously, into the outside world. in the parking lot: he was in a
“off ”, that his family had visited and how he rental car and he turned too
“I had a good childhood,” hard and hit one of the Dunbar
Pace tells me one afternoon by trucks. Pace figured the superior
phone, a month or so after his would report it, but, instead, he
release. He was raised in Carson, a city in Los ignored it, so Pace wrote him up. Nothing hap-
Angeles County. His mother was employed by pened. Afterwards, Pace suspected they’d find
the Hughes Aircraft Company, working on a seat any minor infraction in order to fire him instead.
designed for the Space Shuttle. His father was a The writing was on the wall, he thought.
restaurant manager at a local branch of Denny’s. The end came after a disagreement over his
After high school, Pace joined a private security role. Dunbar fired him for tampering with com-
company and climbed his way up the ladder, pany vehicles; Pace claims he caught drivers
working in shopping centres and doing airport leaving the facility with faulty brakes and that
security at LAX. he’d deliberately done something to those >>
The six Dunbar Armored robbers, plus David Matsumoto and Joaquin Bin, who were tried separately and pleaded guilty to laundering money stolen in the heist
JULY 2021 GQ.CO.UK 119
120 GQ.CO.UK JULY 2021
>> brakes as a test to see whether they had per- Several weeks later, the police got in touch CRIME
and asked Pace to come to the station for
formed the necessary checks. He insists this was an interview. “I knew it wasn’t game up for Jim Dunbar was not racist. The only thing that
pissed him off was if someone didn’t work.”
part of his job remit. Pace says nobody was fol-
Dunbar Armored was sold to the private secu-
lowing the correct procedures and that it seemed me, because I knew they wouldn’t find anything.” rity and protection company Brink’s in 2018. GQ
put these allegations to Jim Dunbar’s son, Kevin
to be one rule for one, one rule for another. Eventually, he took a little of the money. Not Dunbar, who worked for the firm at the time of
the robbery. He declined to comment.
Frustrated, he was determined to get back at much, because he knew he couldn’t spend it
Twenty-four years on from the robbery, there is
the company and so, months earlier, long before yet. In California, the statute of limitations on still almost $14m of the Dunbar haul unaccounted
for. McEachern acknowledges that Pace and the
the robbery, he began to plot his revenge. But he bank robbery is anywhere from three to six others have served their time, but he’s convinced
that even if they know the whereabouts of the
would need time to train the others. What he had years. Pace decided he would wait at least seven missing millions, they’d find it hard to spend it.
“Keep in mind that 65 per cent of it was in $20
planned would hit Dunbar where it hurt the most. before spending any of the cash. He was playing bills. And they’re the old-style bills. Sometime in
the early 2000s they switched over, so it would
McCrary was an old school friend. They ran the long game. The problem was that he had to throw up red flags.”
their own security company together on the trust the others would do the same and burn McEachern says he heard a rumour the remain-
ing cash was divided between some of the families
side and Pace mentioned his plan to him one any money with sequential serial numbers. of the robbers – kept in storage units – but he
doubts it’s still around today. “If he gave it to a
night while they were working the door at a strip “Common sense will tell you that’s traceable,” he friend, there’s no honour between thieves; they
may have taken it. He could have, quite frankly,
club. It was mostly about the money for McCrary, says. “If you have two million dollars and a mil- put it in the bank under someone else’s name, but
I think the Bureau must have checked that.”
Pace says; he thought he’d walk away with at lion is bad, get rid of a million. It doesn’t make
So where is the missing money? I ask Pace. He
least a million dollars. For Pace, it was about any sense to keep it. But they were greedy. They laughs. “I think they recovered more than they
said,” he says, clarifying that maybe the prop-
much more. kept most of the sequential money.” erty that was impounded was worth more and
had been paid for with substantially more of the
Pace tells me he wasn’t nervous. The night of Have you spoken to any of the others since stolen cash. “I also think a lot of it was burned.”
the robbery he drove to his sister’s apartment in you’ve been out? I ask. “No,” Pace replies. “They Do you know where any of it is? I ask, push-
ing him. “No,” he says, laughing again. “I literally
Long Beach and waited there until around 11pm testified against me.” don’t know where it is. I wish I did – definitely.”
to establish an alibi. Then he drove to McCrary’s Today, Gambrill, Dunbar’s then head of secu- There’s a scene at the end of The Shawshank
Redemption (which came out three years before
sister-in-law’s house in Long Beach, where she rity, acknowledges that Pace’s motives were the Dunbar robbery) in which contraband smug-
gler Ellis “Red” Redding, played by Morgan
was having a party, to meet the others. From largely driven by revenge. “I think he’s told you Freeman, is freed after serving a 40-year prison
sentence. His old inmate friend Andy Dufresne
there, the six men drove to the Dunbar depot the truth,” he says. “Don’t get me wrong, I think (Tim Robbins) has given him directions to a bur-
ied tin box in a hay field, near an old stone wall.
in two vehicles: a Honda car and the U-Haul the money was important to him and I never When Redding finds it, he pulls out an envelope
sealed in a plastic bag. Inside is cash and a note
rental truck. At around 11.30pm they pulled up verified this, but I think it was revenge for what from Dufresne that reads, “Dear Red, if you’re
reading this you’ve gotten out and if you’ve come
just down the street, where they could see the was going on in LA. He was probably discrimi- this far, maybe you’re willing to come a little fur-
ther.” It invites Redding to join Dufresne, who
Dunbar facility. Outside, three employees chat- nated against – or he felt he was, which has the has withdrawn several hundred thousand dollars
of cash laundered by corrupt prison officials, on
ted in the parking lot and Pace and the others same result.” the Mexican coast. And that’s how the film ends
– with Redding, who has served his time, making
waited in the car for them to leave before pulling McEachern says the “race issue” never came up his way to Mexico to live out his days in freedom.
up in front of the building. in the trial, but says he had learned about a poten- Like Redding, Pace has served his time. And
I think we’d be lying if we didn’t admit to some
Pace climbed out of the vehicle wearing a 9mm tial motive during the course of his investigation. tiny element of satisfaction in wondering if he
had always intended to play the waiting game and
Glock 17 handgun on his hip and led the others to He felt the drivers were underpaid and yet they
that maybe, just maybe, he is still playing it. G
the main entrance. The front door was magnet- were risking their lives every day: in the 1990s few
+ More from GQ For these related
ised and all it took was a paper clip to open the armoured car firms even supplied their drivers
stories visit GQ.co.uk/magazine
lock and turn the knob. The men wore ski masks, with bulletproof vests – “a tremendous expense”,
HOW THE WORLD’S FIRST BITCOIN HEIST WENT SOUTH
black trousers and black shirts. Each carried a McEachern says. Pace was “written up” by a white (Peter Ward and Sean Williams, April 2019)
pistol. After the main door, only one other needed person and when McEachern interviewed Steven INSIDE THE EL CHAPO TRIAL, THE MOST HIGH-PROFILE
TRIAL IN AMERICA (Alex Hannaford, February 2019)
prying open; the others were already open. Pace Schrieken, the former manager of the Dunbar
HATTON GARDEN: THE BIGGEST JEWEL HEIST IN
and his accomplices waited in the break room. facility who had been fired a year before the rob- BRITISH HISTORY (Stuart McGurk, May 2016)
“Everyone had to come in there bery, Schrieken told him he felt
sooner or later,” Pace says, “and ‘I think it was Pace had been unfairly treated
when they did we tied them up.” revenge for and that there could have been
LA. [Pace] something to the idea that he
The official investigation was probably may have been motivated by
determined Pace had disabled discriminated the racism he felt he had expe-
or turned around the security against’ rienced. “I remember Pace was
cameras, but he insists he never bitter with the company well
touched them. “My guess has before he got terminated. And the
always been that one of the
employees moved the cameras day he got terminated they were
so they were watching his car instead of where not planning to do the robbery for another week
they should have been trained. There were prob- or two, but it caused him to change his plans: ‘We
ably four in total.” do this tonight if we’re going to do it at all.’”
When they got to the vault, it was open. “We McEachern says Pace had expressed his bit-
just took the money. We didn’t know what bags terness towards Dunbar. “He knew that it was
to take and it was impossible to count it there. a very rich and powerful family business and I
But most of the money was outside the vault in think maybe Pace was bitter about being termi-
bags, just sitting there.” He admits they had no nated from the company... He may feel the same
idea how much they’d taken. way today, that in firing him he was wronged
Once the U-Haul was full, they left and went by Dunbar.”
back to McCrary’s sister-in-law’s house in Long “But,” McEachern says, “I can tell you from
Beach to rejoin the party. It was late and so they experience that Jim Dunbar [who ran Dunbar
unloaded some of the cash. Everyone took a lit- Armored] didn’t have a racist bone in his body.
tle – $20,000 or $30,000 each – Pace says, except You worked hard and they paid you what you
him. He would wait. His girlfriend was asleep agreed on. Now, if there was racism in the
when he arrived back at their house. He insists company... I can imagine someone gets a little
she just thought he’d been working a night shift power, gives choice assignments to the whites
doing security at the strip club. and not to the blacks... I don’t know. But I know
JULY 2021 GQ.CO.UK 121
in conversation with
Mary
McCartney
‘Your dad’s band was the catalyst for all of it’
For this Woking-born son of the 1970s, there were four father figures who underpinned everything, from his first
guitar to an inspirational career that continues to expand and explore more than 50 years later. On the release of his
latest solo record, his third in three years, we asked the Modfather to pick through the past with an artist who knows
better than any how The Beatles shaped the generation that followed
Introduction by Dylan Jones Photographs by Mary McCartney
122 GQ.CO.UK JULY 2021
PA U L W E L L E R
Paul Weller
photographed for
British GQ in
London, 29 April
JULY 2021 GQ.CO.UK 123
n the early days of The Who, equivalences with the career of arrogant enough, or whatever
back in the mid-1960s, the an artist Weller was previously it was, to think it was only a
band’s guitarist and principal equivocal about (“For years I matter of time. And I always
songwriter, Pete Townshend, only liked Low”), David Bowie. said to myself, ‘If I don’t make
realised it was the audience it by the time I’m 20, I’m
who were in charge, not the The tunes are still there, going to pack it in,’ because
band. The audience “gave their too, and in the past three I thought it would all be over
consent and allowed The Who years Weller has produced by that time. And then we
three albums that are easily [The Jam] got signed – I was
Ito occupy the stage and perform as good, and as varied, as any- 18. I was always very proud
for them”, said journalist Peter thing he has done previously. that my first record came out
Stanfield in his book A Band True Meanings (2018), On when I was just 18, as most
With Built-In Hate: The Who From Pop Art To Sunset (2020) and last month’s of my heroes were kids when they started. But,
Punk. “There was none of that sense of entitle- Fat Pop (Volume 1) – such is Weller’s work rate you know, at that time I thought anyone over
ment that The Kinks or the Stones or The Beatles that his manager has begged him not to release 25 had had it. I was never in any doubt that it
appeared to have,” said Townshend, “which was, Volume 2 in the next nine months – are crammed would happen. And then we got into the London
‘We’re the stars, you’re the audience.’ It was the with such great songs that it would be easy to pub rock circuit, we managed to get a few gigs,
other way round. ‘We’re the stars and you can think their author is working towards his own we did The Greyhound in Fulham Palace Road,
entertain us for a while, if you behave your- personal endgame: there are going to be a finite the Hope & Anchor up in Islington and The
selves.’ That was the tone of it.” number of Paul Weller albums, so why not make Kensington in Olympia. Then we had to start
In a way it was a similar thing with The Jam. them all as perfect as possible? really thinking about the set and we had to play
When Paul Weller’s teenage band started having some covers, because I only had a few tunes, but
success, in the heady days of punk – and when This is a career that has been driven com- it made me concentrate more on the songwriting
their signature tune at the time was still called pletely by his own passions, his own obsessions and try to play our own songs.”
“In The City There’s A Thousand Things I Want and by an incredibly singular determination. Weller is one of the most self-aware artists
To Say To You” (which is how Weller introduced At the core of all he does is Weller’s passionate of his age. Accused of being “difficult” by music
“In The City” the first time I saw them, at the espousal of pop. Over the years, he has devel- journalists when he was young, all he really was
Nag’s Head in High Wycombe, in early 1977) – oped an encyclopaedic knowledge of dozens was shy and inarticulate. He still has no inter-
they were very much a people’s band. Weller was of different genres. But, more importantly, he est in suffering fools gladly, but his recall, when
keen to level the field between performer and still writes and performs with the enthusiasm asked nicely, is terrific.
audience and his newfound fans were keen to of a teenager. “There’s a good song I did when I was about
adopt a group they felt were “one of their own”. 16 and I was going for a heavier Otis Redding
Throughout his career, through the national Back then, in the early days of The Jam phase,” he told me. “I wrote this soul-sounding
treasure days of The Jam, through the European (which Weller formed in 1972, at Sheerwater tune in my mind, called ‘Left, Right And Centre’.
youth club Style Council period and throughout Secondary School in Woking, when he was only That was probably the best song I’d written up
his peripatetic 30-year solo career, Weller has 14), his songwriting was informed by the likes to that point. And then years later, Dean Parrish,
kept a keen eye on the entertainer/consumer of Motown and The Beatles (some of his early who was really famous on the Northern soul cir-
relationship, always mindful of becoming too songs, he says, were straight Mop Top rip-offs, cuit, he did ‘I’m On My Way’, a big Northern tune.
top-down and never forgetting he owes his suc- called things such as “Loving By Letters”, “One Anyway, he cut a version of it, but it was funny to
cess to the patronage of others. Hundred Ways To Love You” and “More And hear a proper American singer doing this tune
Conversely, he has seemingly gone out of his More”) and yet he always knew he was going to that I wrote when I was a kid, trying to ape this
way to persistently challenge them, in the way make it. soul R&B thing, and then hearing it done prop-
that great artists often do, be they Bob Dylan, erly, you know? But that was probably the first
David Bowie or Weller’s own North Star, The “I never had any doubt about it,” he told me proper song I wrote. Prior to that, they were just
Beatles. He had to drag many of the diehard recently. “I was kind of pretentious enough and Beatles copies.”
Jam fans with him to The Style Council (many of For Weller’s latest GQ appearance, we thought
whom were blindsided by Weller’s understanda- ‘I was pretentious and it would be good to put him together with an
ble desire to move on) and those who came with arrogant enough to old friend, the photographer Mary McCartney.
him were repeatedly assaulted by changes in think [making it] was Which is what we did...
direction. While other artists were encouraged only a matter of time’
to experiment and dabble, Weller’s constituency, Mary McCartney: So, Paul, when did you
both in concert halls and in the media, seemed become a Beatles fan? When you were 12? Photographs Getty Images
determined to create their own kind of creative Paul Weller: When I was five years old. I had
cell for him, damning him whenever he decided some of the singles, because my mother bought
to leave it, which was often. them, but the first time I saw them was the Royal
Weller’s way of dealing with this was to Variety Performance in 1963, when I was five.
ignore them and to push ahead, coaxing himself From the time I saw The Beatles I loved music
through the tributaries of the music industry, and then when I was around age 12 I started try-
leading where others wanted him to follow. His ing to learn to play guitar. Me and my mate had
solo career has been testament to that, a three- a few lessons for a bit and got a few weeks in,
decade cavalcade of experimentation that, in the but the guy was trying to teach us how to read
past ten years or so, has seen him develop an music, so we got bored with that. And as soon as
extraordinary desire for experimentation. This we learnt enough chords we stopped the lessons
desire to dabble and evolve has not only mir- and we just start doing it ourselves.
rored the professional playfulness of The Beatles MM: When did you actually start writing songs?
(“After ‘Please Please Me’, we decided we must PW: As soon as we – me and my mate Steve
do something different for the next song,” Paul Brookes – learnt the three or four chords. I’m still
McCartney told the band’s biographer Hunter
Davies. “Why should we ever want to go back? mates with him now. We started a band and >>
That would be soft”), but it has also shared
124 GQ.CO.UK JULY 2021
‘As soon as that PA U L W E L L E R
first tune strikes
up, I feel this Weller on stage with
is where I’m The Jam, 1977;
supposed to be’
(opposite) as The Style
Council frontman, 1985
JULY 2021 GQ.CO.UK 125
‘We used to
pinch a lot of
Beatles songs.
Everyone starts
out copying
other people’
126 GQ.CO.UK JULY 2021
PA U L W E L L E R
>> we just learned together and we just kept and looking and appreciating, not rushing always ready to roll. I can play guitar, obviously,
swapping whatever we’d learned in the week, around. I was lying in bed one night in the middle as well as bass and piano, but I’ve never really
swapping back and forth. It was just me and him
and then we just gathered up people as we could of London. It was 2am and it was so quiet it felt enjoyed playing the drums, because I can’t sing
find them. There was never any doubt in my
mind that’s what I would do and, even at around like we had gone back 100, 200 years. I couldn’t and drum with any conviction. It’s a different art
12, I thought that was definitely what I was going
to do for a living. Well, I didn’t know it could be hear the rumble of the underground and it was altogether, playing drums. I like drummers who
a career, I just knew I was going to do music. So
by the age of 14 we were playing pubs, working almost as though cars hadn’t been invented. play the song, who can play the tune and
men’s clubs and social clubs with The Jam. But
your dad’s band was the catalyst for all of it. PW: How was your lockdown, Mary? who aren’t trying to do their own thing. That
MM: You know, I’m directing a documentary
about the history of Abbey Road Studios at the MM: Mine was good, but we’re not here to talk requires a certain amount of discipline, a differ-
moment, so I’ve been taken back to those times.
There is a photograph of me aged three months on about me. I’m grilling you today. But mine was ent discipline: not playing too much but playing
one of the sofas in the studio, so I was there before
I can remember being there. Whenever I walk good. Well, I say it was good, but it was unnerving. I the right thing. Your dad is a good drummer.
in through the doors I still get a funny
feeling. But I’m learning a lot about The think, on a global scale, it was just unnerving MM: Yeah, he is. Mum introduced me to a song
Beatles’ recording process, though. What
was your writing process in the early days? because it was like living in a science fiction he played drums on years ago, called “My Dark
PW: When we started to write songs we
just used to pinch a lot of The Beatles movie. I think the main thing a lot of us benefit- Hour”, by the Steve Miller Band. He’s credited as
songs. They were very basic, just us tak-
ing our first steps as songwriters. I was ted from was having to slow down and not being “Paul Ramon” and he does backing vocals, gui-
actually very passionate at the time, but
I didn’t have the skills to articulate that able to just go and do things. So, in that sense, tar, bass and drums. It was recorded in Olympic
passion. That kind of developed. Our first
songs would have been nonsense songs, it wasn’t a bad thing. I was obviously worried Studios in London towards the end of 1969, after
just “My Baby Love Me” stuff... But, like
every other fledgling songwriter, I just about people’s health and the economy, but, like an argument Dad had had with the others over
started off by aping other people, like
The Beatles did, like Dylan did. Everyone you, I really got in touch with nature. I did a lot Allen Klein becoming their manager. The oth-
starts out copying other people.
MM: I assume you recorded your new ers had gone off and he said Steve Miller
album during lockdown?
PW: I did. I had about four or five tracks walked in and asked if he wanted to play
left over from [last year’s] On Sunset and
they were just lying around, unused. So I the drums on this track he was recording.
started working away, chipping away, try-
ing to put together a new batch of songs. I think the drumming on it is so good, but
As ever, I recorded them all in the studio
down in Surrey, just me and a guitar sing- you can tell he’s letting out a lot of tension.
ing along to a click track. If I couldn’t
record with the band, I’d send the record- PW: I love that first solo album of your
ings to them and they’d play their parts
and then send them back. It was a very dad’s, the one with you as a baby on the
odd process, but it worked. However, when
we could finally all record again together, back. That’s probably one of my favourite
it was like the first day of school after
the summer holidays. It was great. The writing records. It was lo-fi before lo-fi was even
process was actually the same as it always is, but
because I knew I didn’t have any live work for the talked about.
foreseeable future, we just created all this space.
MM: I love the rawness of it, as it’s just so
I think the lockdown was actually hugely
influential in a way, as all the quiet made me personal. I still listen to McCartney and
appreciate nature in a way I hadn’t done for
quite some time, maybe ever. I could really feel Ram a lot. They shot the album cover up
and hear and see nature again, it started to take
over. I loved hearing the birds sing and not see- in Scotland. They were horse riding and
ing any aeroplanes in the sky. It helped me think
about things I would never normally think about he zipped me up in his jacket. He put me
in any situation. I felt more in tune with nature.
I had a thought that if we weren’t here, if we all in the jacket so I was safe, as he was going
disappeared, which I’m sure we will do one day,
the earth would just reclaim itself and that it will riding. I love that picture from a photo-
always be here and we won’t.
MM: It was such a nice feeling, actually stopping graphic point of view as well, as it’s very
real. It’s taken at the end of the day, during
the golden hour. It’s so natural.
PW: Now, what was it like growing up,
then, as a daughter of a Beatle?
MM: Well, it was more like growing up
as a daughter of Paul and Linda, because
they were such a great couple. But,
also, they were such adventurous peo-
ple. So, we were kind of following them
around and going on lots of adventures.
Mary McCartney with We went on tour with them and we really
her father, from the only stopped when we needed to go to
school. So I have lots of memories of trav-
back cover of his 1970 elling as a girl. I even remember going on
debut solo album
the double-decker that they used as a tour
more photographic work outside. And, of course, bus in 1972. The seats on the upper deck were
I started to prep for the Abbey Road doc. What’s replaced by mattresses and bean bags.
the perfect recording scenario for you? PW: I assume it was your mother’s inspiration
PW: Well, I love my studio and, to be honest, I’d that made you want to be a photographer...
be quite happy to never come out of the place. I MM: I think so, as I think I just always saw her
could quite happily stay there forever. I bought taking pictures. She had such a casual style too.
the building in 1999, but it’s only really been the She didn’t do a lot of setting up and neither do
past 15 years or so that we’ve really got it I. It’s just so much nicer when you connect with
together, with the sound and the vibe and the your sitter and when you just casually take pic-
Photograph Linda McCartney equipment. I’m continually making little acous- tures. I much prefer that and I certainly know
tic adjustments to the room. We’ve got a drum kit that you don’t like to have your picture taken
set up all the time, as well as a mic’d piano, so it’s in a very set-up kind of situation. What really
‘Sometimes you have to got me into becoming a photographer was look-
compromise, but what ing at Mum’s pictures from the 1960s. They were
you really want to do is about her being with someone and taking pic-
pursue your passions’ tures and very much not “This is Jimi Hendrix”.
Again, casual. When I became a photographer, I
took Mum’s talent for granted. She would take >>
JULY 2021 GQ.CO.UK 127
PA U L W E L L E R Photograph Getty Images
‘I have a cup of tea
[after a show]
these days. In the
past, I would have
got off my nut’
128 GQ.CO.UK JULY 2021
From left: Rick Buckler,
Paul Weller and Bruce
Foxton of The Jam,
New York, 1979
JULY 2021 GQ.CO.UK 129
PA U L W E L L E R
>> pictures out the car window and then they ‘It took a long time for more difficult when we first started, because the
Britain to become record company tried to step in more and tried
became these books or a print on the wall. When modern, but when it to guide us to do this or that. In the early days
I started doing it myself I’d put the camera up of The Jam they even suggested we cover a 10cc
and I’d be like, “Dad, can you turn the car around
so I can take this picture?” And he’d be like, “No.” did, it was explosive’ song. We said, “No fucking way is that going to
She would take pictures so effortlessly and I happen.” You’ve got to stick to your guns. You’ve
didn’t realise there was a knack to it. Mum and
Dad would treat everyone equally; I do remem- comfortable in that position. Also, to me, it feels got to pursue what you set out to achieve.
ber that. We were always surrounded by people,
so I suppose that’s why I think I am a bit of a like your music has to be played live. I went to a MM: Fashion and clothes feel important to what
people person. I like meeting people and I like
connecting with people, but I still find I’m quite concert before lockdown and the person was so you do, maybe because they make you feel a cer-
shy about it. I find it stressful, but I like it. But I
could never in a million years get up on a stage, vacant and not connected to the audience and, tain way to be able to perform?
ever. Even thinking about it makes me feel like
fainting. When did you first walk out in front of because of that, it made me nervous. You could tell PW: Yeah. But although I was too young to be
a big crowd? How does that feel? Is it just feel-
ing that adulation and love and appreciation they were going through the motions, that it was really involved in the 1960s, I still lived through
and then giving that back? Does that feel really
healthy? I always think when it works perfectly, an act. They had no connection at all. Whereas that time and that whole thing has never gone
it just must be such a healthy feeling.
PW: It’s almost a weird thing, because just prior when I look at Dad on stage he’s all about connec- away for me. I love that period and it informs
to going on stage, especially in the hour before,
I’m in bits. I’m so nervous and so don’t want to be tion. I think I had taken it for granted before that, a lot of what I do, including how I dress. The
there and want to go home, and then within min-
utes of actually being on stage, as but when you see someone who doesn’t connect, whole look and sound of that time is just really
soon as that first tune strikes up,
I automatically feel as though this you realise how important it is. formative. I don’t feel I’m stuck in that time, but
is completely where I’m supposed
to be. It feels like the most natu- PW: I know some people who turn up just it will always be the cornerstone of everything
ral, most comfortable, Zen-like
place you could possibly be, it’s before they go on stage and as soon as they fin- I do. I just thought it was such a brilliant time
so weird. I’ve always felt nerv-
ous before going on stage. That’s ish they get in the car and they’re off. I don’t for music and fashion and art and all that stuff.
never changed. I mean, it’s got a
little bit better as I’ve got older, understand that either. It’s a far bigger thing MM: What do you think it is about it? Is
but not much. I think I need to
have that feeling. It was weird, than that for me, because I’m looking for that it experimentation?
because there was a time when I
tried to stop drinking – before connection. As much as the audience might be, PW: I think so. It was those postwar years, com-
I stopped completely – and when I
stopped I suddenly wasn’t nerv- I am as well, and my band too, because I’ve seen ing out of all that austerity, that bleak black and
ous before going on stage. And I
didn’t like it. It felt really odd. it happen with my own eyes and there are some white, grey world – large parts of the country
MM: Isn’t there something superstitious
about this? were still like that in the early
PW: No, I don’t think so. I just think it gives you
an edge. Those nerves can make you edgy and I Weller and Paul McCartney 1960s. There were still bombsites.
think that’s important for me. at Abbey Road Studios to There was still slum housing. So
MM: And then did the nerves come back? record The Help Album in it took a long time for Britain to
PW: When I started drinking again they did. aid of War Child, 1995 become modern, but when it did,
MM: But now you’re not?
PW: When I finally stopped drinking it took me it was explosive.
at least two years to get used to that feeling of
going on stage totally sober and straight. And now MM: Dad describes it as it all
I love it. But it took a good two years to get com-
fortable, as it was really odd at first. I’d be on stage suddenly going technicolour.
and I’d notice so much, like there’s a guy in the
front row who’s wearing a green shirt or some- PW: Yeah, I think that’s true and
thing, and now I don’t feel that at all. Now it feels
natural and I have a greater appreciation of it. you just see the clothes and music
That’s the other thing as well, getting more from
it and being more conscious of what we’re doing. expanding. Men stopped wearing
MM: Growing up, watching Mum and Dad on
stage just felt natural. But I’ve seen you play a demob suits and started wearing
few times and it makes me realise how much
I couldn’t do it myself. There is such great all these bright-coloured clothes.
energy and it’s really entertaining and you look
completely natural, but I wouldn’t be able to feel MM: And the pill came about
and made life a lot easier.
PW: Then the other pills came a
little bit later and helped expand
everyone’s horizons. These peo-
ple were pioneers. And also look
nights where you get so connected together at the art world – Peter Blake, David Hockney,
by an audience that this thing just grows and Bridget Riley. It felt as though everything was
grows. It transcends the moment. becoming more modern and opening up and
MM: It’s like magic. becoming different and colourful. I was only a
PW: It’s something special. The last time I very tender age, but, nevertheless, that influence
played at the Fillmore in San Francisco, a cou- was of great importance and value and always
ple of years ago, it was like that, and it wasn’t has been. Punk was probably the first time I
because of gear. It was almost like we took off, experienced that freedom. We missed out on the
like the whole room just lifted up. 1960s, had a lift with Bowie, but after that it was
MM: Have you got a ritual for after the show? largely a cultural wasteland. I was always looking
PW: No, not really. No. for when I thought it was going to be our term.
MM: My dad has this sandwich and a Margarita, The 1970s were still very much in the shadow of
because he doesn’t eat before he goes on. He the 1960s until punk. And then it all blossomed.
waits until after. Then it all started to make sense. G Photographs Getty Images; Grace Guppy
PW: I have a cup of tea these days. In the past,
I would have got off my nut, but I don’t any + More from GQ For these related
more. But if you have a gig like that and that
becomes your benchmark, you’re always look- stories visit GQ.co.uk/magazine
ing to get back to that moment, which is not AT HOME WITH PAUL McCARTNEY, PHOTOGRAPHED
always possible. But that becomes the thing BY DAUGHTER MARY (Dylan Jones, August 2020)
you’re always searching for, to find that connec-
tion. We’re always striving for the spectacular. PAUL WELLER ON HIS INSPIRATIONS FOR HIS 15TH
It’s the same with record companies. Sometimes SOLO RECORD, ON SUNSET (Dylan Jones, June 2020)
you have to compromise, but what you really
want to do is pursue your own passions. It was TUTUS AND DR MARTENS: WHAT HAPPENED AT THE
JAM’S LONDON GIG IN 1978 (Ian Stone, June 2020)
130 GQ.CO.UK JULY 2021
Mary McCartney with
friend Paul Weller,
whom she also shot for
the GQ Men Of The Year
cover in 2018
Producer Grace Guppy
First assistant
Pedro Faria
Digital technician
Alexander Brunacci
Make-up Jane Bradley
Retouching
The Hand Of God
‘The thing you’re
always searching
for [is] connection.
We’re always
striving for the
spectacular’
JULY 2021 GQ.CO.UK 131
Designs from the Walk
A Mile In My Shoes
collection with Idris and
Sabrina Elba; (opposite)
Christian Louboutin at
L’Exhibition[niste], his
2020 show at Palais De
La Porte Dorée in Paris
When it comes
to naughty, silly,
upbeat on-foot
fun, ‘Chrissy Loub’
is your man
132 GQ.CO.UK JULY 2021
Photograph Christian Louboutin CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN
The
step
father
What happens when Christian Louboutin takes his
foot off the gas? Two pivotal new partnerships,
that’s what. In the wake of a deal that values his
legacy at almost £2 billion and a major new A-list
collaboration, we ask France’s famous sole man why
slowing down hasn’t, well, slowed him down...
Story by Teo van den Broeke
hen it comes to designer shoes, wants to be seen and feel sexy, naturellement, but
also one determined not to be taken too seriously.
Christian Louboutin has the monopoly on fun. Sure, Manolo Blahnik, Cardi B rapped about her preferred “red bottoms”
in her 2017 hit “Bodak Yellow” and the Sex And
Louboutin’s Canarian luxury footwear contemporary, has the market cor- The City wardrobe department was famously
required to pay Louboutin for the (many) pairs of
nered on elegance and Jimmy Choo’s arguably got the edge on sex, but his shoes that featured in the show; other design-
ers were willing to give theirs away for free.
when it comes to naughty, silly, upbeat (albeit ultra-expensive) on-foot fun,
Arguably, it’s this singular approach to his craft
Chrissy Loub – as he’s colloquially referred to in this country’s better-heeled that has resulted in the extraordinary global suc-
cess Louboutin celebrates today. He has around
shoe emporiums – is your man. 150 stores and brand outlets in 30 countries
worldwide and in March it was announced he
“It’s a simple concept to have fun with what you wear,” the French- would be selling a 24 per cent stake in his epony-
mous brand to Exor – the Agnelli family-owned
Egyptian designer tells me seriously when we meet over Zoom at the tail holding company with interests in Ferrari and
Juventus football club – for £460 million, valuing
end of the UK’s third lockdown. Louboutin is in his office in Paris’ glitzy his company at around £1.9 billion and boosting
his personal wealth to a reported £850m. It was
1st arrondissement and his perfectly bald head is surrounded by a halo of a bold move in a year when most brands who
deal in the kind of “look at me” luxury in which
postcards and other aesthetically pleasing paraphernalia, including a note Louboutin specialises were hunkering down and
waiting for the Covid-19 storm to pass, but he
from his late friend Kobe Bryant (“Kobe was a great mind, a great soul, wasn’t going to let a pesky thing like a global
pandemic stop his pursuit of world domination.
great athlete”) and a photograph of his “idol”, Dolly Parton. We’re here to
“I was planning to strike a deal like the one we
talk about his new collaborative collection with Idris and Sabrina Elba, but just did with Exor for quite a while, specifically
around the time I started to work on my exhi-
first he wants to discuss, well, everything else. “There’s nothing wrong with bition – which opened in 2020 at Palais De La
Porte Dorée [in Paris] – almost three years ago,”
having fun. Not looking like you’re coming out of a box is not a bad thing. he tells me, with an unguarded ease that belies
I’m serious in one thing: with my work. My world is that of entertainment, Mika performs in
Louboutins, Milan,
luxury and pleasure, so this is what I take seriously.” 22 June 2019
Louboutin – who speaks excellent English in long, lyrical sentences –
spent much of the first wave of the pandemic at his house in the beach town
of Comporta in Portugal (he also has homes in Paris, the Vendée, Brazil and
a houseboat in Egypt), where he retreated to see out the lockdowns with his
young twin daughters and their mother, a close friend of many years. “To
be perfectly honest, I didn’t dislike the experience of lockdown,” Louboutin
tells me as we settle in. “I’m perfectly aware that for most people it’s been
really awful, but for me it has been good that things slowed down. I sort
of needed to – not to step down, but to slow down, in order to do better. It
means that you have more time to think creatively, because you are doing
less travelling and not doing a million things at once.”
The past three decades have been busy for Louboutin, who celebrated
his 58th birthday in January, though he doesn’t look a day over 45 (he may
have discovered Zoom’s fabled “smooth skin feature”, though I suspect that’s
not his style). The designer and entrepreneur started his women’s business
in 1991, following stints working with legendary créateurs de chaussures
Charles Jourdan and Roger Vivier and a period spent as a freelance footwear
designer for labels such as Yves Saint Laurent. The towering stiletto heels and
dangerous-looking platform shoes he produced under his own name were
instant hits with the teetering classes – Princess Caroline Of Monaco was his
first customer and the likes of Madonna and Catherine Deneuve followed
soon after. It wasn’t until 1993, however, that Louboutin’s signature, a dem-
onstration of his innate dedication to fun, his defining cherry-red lacquered
sole, saw the light of his first boutique in Paris’ Galerie Véro-Dodat.
“My sketches were not reproduced exactly as I had designed them and I
couldn’t figure out why,” Louboutin told creative journal Artflyer in 2015.
“The two-dimensional sketch was so powerful on paper, but when turned
into a three-dimensional object, it was some-
how lacking energy. Frustrated after having ‘When I Photograph Getty Images
tried different things to liven up the design, started to
I spontaneously grabbed my assistant’s red see it come
nail polish and painted the sole. I instantly together, it
knew that this would be a success.” The rest, was almost
as they say, is fashion history. 40 years of
work. I’ve
In the following decades, Louboutin’s got a legacy’
shoes – from the sassy-yet-classy black patent
“Pigalle” pump to the ankle-threatening “Very
Prive” platforms – became synonymous with a
certain breed of scene-stealer, a woman who
134 GQ.CO.UK JULY 2021
his status as a high-fashion plutocrat. “When I CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN
started to see the body of work come together
I thought, ‘My God, you know. I’ve got a legacy.’ any creative control, I wonder. A common side-effect of big group buyouts
There was almost 40 years of work there. An exhi- is fashion designers being forced to dilute their vision somewhat. “I will
bition is almost like a visualisation of a chapter, pretty much be more creatively engaged,” he tells me flatly. “I was talking
which means a new chapter needs to be opened.” to my friends and they were asking me, ‘Are you going to have less work?’
He continues: “The opportunity with Exor arrived I said, ‘Basically I’ve signed up for more work!’”
at a moment when I thought, ‘Well, the company
is in really good condition, so we could have an O ne key area of business in which Louboutin has seen impressive
active partner to get involved and help us write growth is that of men’s shoes, turnover from which has increased by
this new chapter.’ My main concern, however, was about 30 per cent in the past five years. They were a late addition to
that we didn’t want to be paternalised by our part- his wider portfolio, introduced in 2011, but in the decade since, the designer
ner, but rather we need to be fraternalised, which has established himself as the go-to brand for men looking to make a state-
is an entirely different thing.” ment with their footwear. Trainers are spike-coated – a second-tier Louboutin
signature – slippers are Swarovski crystal-encrusted and, naturally, all soles
With so much rip-roaring global success are finished in his trademarked shade of red, Pantone 18-1663 TPX.
already under his studded belt, I’m intrigued to
know what Louboutin hopes Exor – a company Louboutin’s odyssey into the realm of men’s shoes started when Mika,
with few fashion interests to speak of, other the Lebanese-British singer of “Grace Kelly” and “Big Girl” fame, asked
than Chinese luxury group Shang Xia – will him to create all the footwear for his first tour in 2007. Louboutin, who had
bring to the table. “There are three aspects that never designed men’s shoes prior to that (“I didn’t feel I had anything to
the Exor merger will help us with,” Louboutin add to the conversation”) met the challenge head-on. “Mika told me, ‘When
explains. “Sustainability, our digital presence a woman puts on your shoes she gets transformed and there’s this obvious
and engagement, and we need to focus on one excitement. I want you to do the same thing for me when I’m on stage as
market in particular – where we already have a you do for those women.’”
few stores but need to be present in a bigger vol-
ume – and that’s China.” Will he be relinquishing When I suggest that this theatricality is still infused throughout
Louboutin’s men’s collections to this day, he’s quick to agree. “When
‘We didn’t want to be paternalised by I design for women I often think of her performing. That performance
our partner, but rather fraternalised, doesn’t have to be for 10,000 people. You can perform for your husband
which is an entirely different thing’ or wife or girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever, but basically my shoes are
for people who like that excitement about the shoes they wear. So I trans-
Louboutin’s first men’s planted that idea when designing for men. Men are often seen as more
line was inspired by a conservative, but I thought, ‘I’m not going to touch that. I’m going to focus
2007 commission by on this person who wants to perform,’ and after that it was extremely easy
Mika to make pairs for me to design, to think of this man on a stage and to break that idea of
for his first tour. The conservatism. It was completely easy.”
designer has continued
to release special It’s fair to say Louboutin started designing men’s shoes at just the
editions for the singer right time. His first collection was unveiled just a year after the launch
of Instagram (anyone who spends more than two minutes on the plat-
form knows its users love nothing more than a conspicuous fashion shoe)
and, latterly, Louboutin’s growth in the men’s arena coincided with the
burgeoning gender fluidity movement of the mid-2010s, a period that saw
the nonbinary visions of designers such as Alessandro Michele at Gucci –
by way of his earthly conduit Harry Styles – and younger creatives such as
Charles Jeffrey legitimise flamboyant fashion for men in a very tangible
way. It’s a shift, I suggest, that must have seriously benefitted the trajectory
of Louboutin’s business.
“The masculine mentality has pretty much completely changed in the
past decade,” he agrees. “You now have a lot of men who are excited by
fashion in the way that women have long been. They buy things they don’t
necessarily feel like they need to keep for ten years but that they want to
wear immediately. They need it now.” He pauses. “With my men’s collec-
tions I thought, ‘I’m going to focus on this new man, who buys things by
instinct.’ The more you’re free, the more people respond to that freedom.”
This notion of luck is central to Louboutin’s story. A freewheeling, crea-
tive child born into a modest Parisian family, his mother, Irene, was a
housewife and his father, Roger, a cabinet maker. Louboutin spent more of
his late 1970s adolescence dancing in Paris’ Le Palace nightclub and watch-
ing shows at the Folies Bergère than he did in school – he was expelled
three times, in fact – and, by his own admission, he never expected “to
need to work”, let alone become a globally recognised footwear designer
responsible for, at last count, around 2,000 employees.
“A lot of people say to me, ‘Oh, wow, you have all this energy and you
have so much enthusiasm,” he says, laughing, “but that’s just down to
chance. I was born like that. I’m very happy, but I was born happy. It’s
sad because not everyone is born happy,” he continues at pace. “Also,
I was raised during the 1970s, when there was this amazing innocence. I
had my first boyfriend at 13 and there was never a problem. Everything was
genuine. I was expelled from school at 16 and had zero concept of working.
The only concept I had was that I had two legs to dance with.” He laughs.
“There were no role models representing wealth back then, not like there
are today. These days, magazines celebrate business people. Why? Back >>
JULY 2021 GQ.CO.UK 135
Clockwise from above left: Shoes, £890. Loafers, £995. Trainers, £675. Trainers, £675. All by Christian Louboutin. christianlouboutin.com
‘Sometimes Idris sends me shoe designs and asks me what I think... He loves
cars and I always think a good car designer would design great male shoes’
136 GQ.CO.UK JULY 2021
CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN
>> then it was just about creativity. Money was not that important. Feeling
bad because you had no money was not an issue.”
It’s this sense of genuine generosity and creativity, I think, that makes
each pair of Louboutin shoes feel not only special – like upbeat on-foot
talismans – but also, in turn, worth the enormous price tags they sport
(loafers go for upwards of £600, while a pair of his razor-toed Chelsea
boots will set you back more than £900). Louboutin’s AW21 collection, for
instance, which the designer showed digitally from a virtual reality private
jet, “Loubi Airways”, was full to the vents with jazzy, back-to-life pieces,
including a backless slipper in chartreuse velvet and a faux-shearling and
spike-covered Chelsea boot, which looked like something a go-go dancer
moonlighting as a shepherd might wear for a night out at Le Palace.
It’s a much documented fact that over the past year our collective
approach to dressing has pivoted in a relatively seismic way in the direction
of ease and comfort. So ingrained is our current obsession with function
over form that the global athleisure market is expected to break a stag-
gering £300bn by the end of 2021. I can’t help but wonder what impact
the shift has had on Louboutin – whose entire business model is built on
selling sexed-up, party-ready footwear – and the kind of shoes he designs.
“When a negative period of life has just finished, you don’t want to keep
digging through the nightmare you’ve just lived,” he tells me, thoughtfully.
“I remember signing shoes in America just after the financial crisis in 2009.
There was a reporter who came up to me and asked whether I thought
that signing shoes during a crisis was indecent. I said, ‘No. I think it would
be indecent to mourn and be sad and design black shoes and reflect the
world we’re living in.’ What would that give to the person? Nothing special.
No excitement.” He pauses. “On that I’m very serious. The one thing I’m
mature about is that it’s not my job to bring more sadness to a world that
is already struggling.”
When the Black Lives Matter movement reached full tilt in the first ‘Christian was truly collaborative...
half of 2020, Louboutin was both saddened and struck by the We share the intention of using our
stories of systemic racial discrimination that began simmering platforms to secure change’ IDRIS ELBA
to the surface. “As everyone knows, it was a tough moment and shocking,”
he says. “It was in your face. It was difficult to veil yourself from it and think Profits from the Walk Louboutin’s phone starts to ring off screen for
of something else.” In the wake of George Floyd’s death, specifically, the A Mile In My Shoes the second time – “It’s this number from Fiji,” he
designer took to Instagram and quickly found himself watching a discussion collection will be shared says. “I’ve got no idea who it is” – and I can sense
between his friend Idris Elba, Elba’s wife, Sabrina, and one of the founders by five charities his publicist trying to catch his attention from
of the BLM movement, Opal Tometi. The three were discussing their own supported by Idris Elba behind the monitor, so before he disappears in a
experiences as people of colour and as Louboutin watched he decided there and his wife, Sabrina puff of cherry-red smoke, I ask the man behind
and then that he wanted to do something meaningful to help the cause. the soles one final question: “Christian, who
was the more accomplished designer, Idris or
“Sometimes Idris sends me shoe designs and asks me what I think,” he Sabrina?” Louboutin’s response, which follows
says now. “So I said to him, ‘You know, I think we should do something a burst of laughter, is both generous and meas-
related to Black Lives Matter. Let’s work together with Sabrina to do a col- ured. “Sabrina has been looking at everything
lection and everything should be dedicated to the causes around it.’ So Idris related to textiles, fabrics, things coming from
asked me to call him back the day after, when he would be with Sabrina, Africa. So she’s been doing a lot of research.
on his birthday, because he wanted my idea to be his birthday present. So She was also the one who did all the research
I called them back the next day to suggest the idea that we design a collec- with the freedom flowers and the symbols in the
tion together. She laughed and shouted, ‘Ah, that’s the best present ever!’” collection.” A pause. “And Idris has been more
involved in the shape. You know, he loves cars
The resulting collection, released this summer, is titled Walk A Mile and I always think a good car designer would be
In My Shoes and features a wide range of styles, including Louboutin’s
classic Vieira tennis shoe and his low-slung Dandelion slipper, a selection a great male shoe designer.” G
of which feature interpretations of the plant “Mandela’s Gold”, while oth-
Photograph Getty Images ers, finished in black, are embroidered with the name of the collection in + More from GQ For these related
Louboutin red. The most important thing about the collection, however, is
that 100 per cent of the profits will be going to five of the Elbas’ favoured stories visit GQ.co.uk/magazine
causes, including Immediate Theatre, an East London arts-for-all initia-
tive, and anti-child incarceration charity The Gathering For Justice. “With RICK OWENS HAS FINALLY COLLABORATED WITH
this collection I have the possibility, alongside Sabrina and Idris, to do DR MARTENS (Zak Maoui, March 2021)
something dedicated to something that is not the thing I do every day,”
explains Louboutin. “So for that I need to give myself fully, the way that PAUL ANDREW: ‘I’M TOTALLY CHANGING EVERYTHING’
Idris and Sabrina give themselves fully. Therefore, of course, we must give (Teo van den Broeke, October 2020)
all the profits to charity.”
IDRIS ELBA BROUGHT POOL SLIDERS TO THE STREET
“Christian was a dream to work with,” says Idris. “He was truly collabo- (AND IT WORKED) (Zak Maoui, July 2019)
rative, encouraging and showed a real interest in our design concepts. We
share the intention of using our platforms to play a small part in securing
change. Our chosen charities are a reflection of that, as they look to help
people, especially the young. These are the people that will benefit from
our collaboration.”
JULY 2021 GQ.CO.UK 137
‘I wish I’d been
bolder’
Much has transpired since Ed Miliband became the first shepherd of
Labour’s years in the wilderness. But while the shadow frontbencher and Westminster
podfather emerged with more than a few war wounds, his battle was far
from over. Here, he takes on the scourge of ‘mates’ rates’ government and outlines
a grand political picture that’s simply too big to ignore
Story by Jude Rogers Photographs by Charlie Clift
Ed Miliband
photographed for
British GQ at his home
in London, 18 March
138 GQ.CO.UK JULY 2021
ED MILIBAND
‘The way the
country runs
should not be
based on whose
mobile number
you’ve got’
JULY 2021 GQ.CO.UK 139
“We were naive about me running
for leader. We were naive!
Actually, I’m going through the
list of people for whom it’s been
good that I lost the election.”
Say hello to Ed Miliband, the 2021 version. He’s Shakespearean mists of vaulting ambition had unusual: he turned his humiliation into his
open, regretful, surprisingly ebullient. Maybe it’s
the weather. overtaken him. By September, he’d beaten older armour and it became his career propellant.
It’s the first spring-like morning of the year on brother, foreign secretary David – the dashing, This flawed, funny Miliband sparkles with
Hampstead Heath, North London, when we first
meet, the kind that gives sensitive souls hope for Blairite heir to the throne – to Labour’s top job. an Alan Partridge-like flourish through Go Big,
the year ahead. “I can’t get over this!” Miliband
says, striding boldly up a hill. Other walkers Many would argue this was when his ambi- a hefty, thoughtful book with 779 footnotes.
clock him, nudge elbows. He affects oblivious-
ness. After all, this is his daily walk from his tion “o’erleaped itself ”, like Macbeth’s, and fell Chapter one gives you its flavour: “I am stand-
house in nearby Dartmouth Park, his stomping
ground of the past 12 years. on “th’other”; today, Miliband sort of agrees. “We ing in a hotel room in Copenhagen in my pants
He’s also back on the frontbenches, literally and were naive” – he talks of the decision to run in getting ready to go to bed for the first time in 48
metaphorically. A year ago, Sir Keir Starmer gave
him a hefty new job, shadow secretary of state for terms of his conversations at home with wife hours. Those who know a little about me may not
business, energy and industrial strategy, a sub-
stantial role thanks to Brexit and Covid-19. His Justine – “but it’s very hard to understand the be surprised to learn that I haven’t been on a two-
weekly political podcast, Reasons To Be Cheerful,
with Sony Award-winning DJ Geoff Lloyd, is level of scrutiny, the level of intrusion, taking over day Nordic bender.”
going great guns. His new book, Go Big: How To
Fix Our World, is out now, full of ambitious ideas your life.” His five-year stretch in charge is one It belies confidence that has skyrocketed
about how to solve gigantic social issues such as
working life, childcare and climate change. most people remember from memes, of rashers of recently at the dispatch box and on political TV
But behind him are the 2010s, which began pork stuffed between slices of bread falling out of shows too. “Come on,” Miliband railed at Boris
brilliantly and ended devastatingly. He’d turned
40 on Christmas Eve 2009, when he was a Gordon his mouth, of an eight-foot-tall ceremonial stone Johnson during one parliamentary debate in
Brown-backed frontbencher in a Labour-majority
government. By the following summer, after a engraved with election pledges looming behind September, a clip of which went viral. “[I know
general election that ended in a hung parliament,
him, like a rejected prop from The Thick Of It. you’re] a details man!” Johnson squirmed in his
By Miliband’s 50th birthday, the Tories seat like a toddler with a full nappy. “He’s just a
were celebrating their first landslide major- chancer, really, isn’t he?” Miliband says today,
ity since Margaret Thatcher. On his 51st, the laughing, as I bring up that particular incident.
UK-EU Trade And Cooperation ‘Part of the job I was warned of Miliband’s
Agreement was announced, is to make puppyish anxiety around jour-
rubber-stamping Brexit. But sense of the nalists. Today it’s nowhere. He
usually if a politician is beaten trauma many comes across like a kind, curious,
brutally at the polls, they run people have chatty youth, not a man who suf-
away to a luxury writing shed been through’ fered a humiliating, traumatic
or to a slick senior role in a downfall. But later, I think of him
fancy international organisa- using the pronoun “we” when
tion. Miliband did something he mentioned his naivety to run
for leader. “We” places him as a
family man, as someone who makes decisions
collectively. It might also distance him from his
decisions as an ambitious individual and the
ramifications they would go on to have.
As Labour leader, Miliband campaigns in London ahead of the general election, 16 April 2015 Miliband HQ is a four-storey house Photograph Getty Images
behind a pastel-blue door on a street
magically insulated from nearby bus
routes and Heath walkers. On pale-pink walls
hang framed pictures of unassuming modern
art and a portrait of Justine with their sons,
Daniel, now eleven, and Samuel, ten, without Ed.
A television is shoved in a corner, looking like
a low priority. A trampoline in the garden and
felt-tipped cartoon of Sonic The Hedgehog on the
fireplace offer tiny glimpses of family life.
We discuss the emergence of Miliband 2.0 to
much amusement. He arrived after an email came
from DJ Geoff Lloyd in 2017 suggesting the pair
do a positive political podcast together. Lloyd had
interviewed him on Absolute Radio during the
2015 general election campaign and they had an
instant rapport: Lloyd the cheeky little brother >>
140 GQ.CO.UK JULY 2021
ED MILIBAND
‘Boris Johnson
is just a chancer,
really, isn’t he?’
JULY 2021 GQ.CO.UK 141
>> to Miliband’s trusting, geeky elder. A film of With brother David at the Labour Party conference, Manchester, 27 September 2010
their chat had almost 200,000 YouTube views. Brexit was successful: “So many people in my like Jeremy Corbyn. He was saying the working
“I think the podcast has changed me,” Miliband constituency [Doncaster North] – one of the class have been robbed of their livelihoods and
highest-voting Brexit constituencies in the coun- so on by the global elite. Now, I’m sure Trump
says, stretching out on his sofa. “It’s probably true try – said to me, ‘I’m voting for a new beginning didn’t mean a word of it, but he was speaking to
to say that [it] gives me control, too, being com- for my grandkids.’ It wasn’t just about immi- that pain and sense of loss that people had about
pletely candid. Control is something you don’t gration or the European Union. It was about a the precariousness of life, about the insecurity
have as a politician. It allows me to be super- much deeper sense of yearning for something of life.”
relaxed ‘Podcast Ed’. I certainly wasn’t him when different.” He also understands why Trump con-
I was leader.” The podcast also revealed he does nected with people and mentions one of his 2016 Later, I ask Miliband directly what he thought
“indeed have a personality”, he adds, with a smile. campaign adverts. “Honestly, parts of it sounded of Corbyn. He’s too nice – or canny – to bite.
“I’m reticent to be personally critical of people.
Surely that must be infuriating, given some
politicians are allowed to have a personality when
in power, I say, like the prime minister. “I think it’s
harder for Labour people,” Miliband says, shrug-
ging. “The media is less forgiving. But I also take
my own responsibility for it.” And from that lit
touchpaper, he’s off on a leadership postmortem.
He campaigned badly: “Mario Cuomo, the
[former] New York governor, said, ‘You cam-
paign in poetry and you govern in prose.’ Maybe
I campaigned in prose.” He was “significantly
younger” when he ran and too in touch with
the party’s commitment to “message discipline”.
Meaning what? “One word out of place gets you
a bad headline in the Daily Mail. You then have
to spend three days clearing it up. That caution
can be quite constricting.” More than anything,
he knows now that politics is “primary colours.
People have busy lives and unless they know in
very bold strokes what you’re actually saying, it’s
going to get lost.” His watchword is boldness. “I
wish I’d been bolder.”
Then come the theories. He knows why
‘The podcast
gives me
control, [which]
is something
you don’t have
as a politician’
Photographs Getty Images
142 GQ.CO.UK JULY 2021
ED MILIBAND
I’m sure Jeremy feels the responsibility doesn’t agree. “He’s given me a great quote for back to his childhood, which he touches upon
for the defeat in 2019 like I took responsibility for
my defeat in 2015.” He defers all questions about the book about economic boldness. He didn’t in the book. At eleven, he would “argue the toss
Corbyn to the Labour Together report published
in June 2020, analysing what had gone wrong have to do that.” I argue that Starmer, his boss, with the slightly nonplussed friends of my par-
in the general election. “It said he [Jeremy] was
not popular with the electorate, the Brexit issue did. He brushes this off. ents who came round to dinner... I must have
was ‘dividing our coalition’ and the party’s posi-
tion [on Brexit] definitely alienated some voters. He feels for Starmer. “Honestly, it’s such a been a pretty irritating child.” He also had geeky
People don’t think we were presenting a cred-
ible offer. I don’t shy away from that. After four difficult job. You get millions of pieces of advice. pop-culture fascinations, including American
election defeats, we’ve clearly got a mountain to
climb.” May’s local elections loom as he says this. Keir is a man of great integrity and decency. He football and Dallas, “much to the bemusement
Does Miliband feel a sense of responsibility has been responsible, he has been sober, he has of my Marxist father”. Ralph Miliband was 45
about what happened to the Labour Party – the
division, the disarray – after he became leader? been constructive. There’s only one thing you when his youngest son was born and had a heart
“I definitely take responsibility for the defeat in
2015,” he says, diplomatically. But you see social can do as a leader, or indeed as a politician, and attack when he was three. “I was very aware of
democratic parties all around the world strug-
gling to assemble winning coalitions, he adds. that’s to be yourself. That’s what he’s doing.” his vulnerability,” Miliband says.
“And if you look at the electoral arithmetic here
[the move away from us] dates back some years.” Being yourself, of course, is something Boris This endured. At 21, Miliband recalls badger-
The report shows the strength of voter identi-
fication with the Labour Party falling from the Johnson does all too well. The pre-election sleaze ing his father to get a new heart consultant. When
mid-1980s. It dramatically declined between
2001 and 2010. scandal is a few weeks away, but his rogueish, Ralph finally found someone, he needed an emer-
Things aren’t looking much rosier for Labour larger-than-life bounder persona is still gener- gency bypass “and then he took a year to recover,
now, to put it mildly. Just before I meet Miliband,
a Britain Elects poll revealed that more vot- ally serving him well. Starmer’s often withers, then he died”. Miliband’s never really thought
ers now view Sir Keir Starmer negatively than
positively. I find it striking that Miliband keeps inaudibly, in its reflection. about what having an older father meant before.
talking about boldness, which barely squares
with Starmer’s softly-softly approach. Miliband His chancer comment aside, Miliband won’t “Although I do remember somebody when I was
criticise the prime minister more personally: I younger saying to me, ‘The thing about having an
wonder when this decency becomes a liability older parent is you don’t tend to rebel.’”
rather than a strategy. The closest he comes is There was more vulnerability to be acknowl-
in a later follow-up call. I’m at home and my edged, historically, on both sides of Miliband’s
seven-year-old bursts in, hears me saying “Boris family. When his Polish-born mother, Marion,
Johnson” and shouts that he’s an idiot, that he was five, the Second World War began: along-
doesn’t like him. “Your son’s ‘A word out of side her sister and mother, she
clearly someone of good judge- place gets you a was sheltered, at great risk, by
ment,” Miliband hams. bad headline in Catholics. Her father, Dawid,
the Mail. That wasn’t with them: he died in
But on this first spring-like caution can be a concentration camp three
morning of the year, we leave constricting’ months before the end of the
the house and we walk, tak- war. Seventeen of Ralph’s side
ing in the sunshine. I realise of the family were sheltered by a
that to try to understand this
upbeat, geeky man I have to go Belgian farmer. Ralph and his >>
Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn, his
successor as party leader, with
Labour In For Britain during the
EU referendum campaign,
Doncaster, 27 May 2016;
(opposite) Miliband resigns as
leader after his party’s defeat to
the Conservatives, 8 May 2015
JULY 2021 GQ.CO.UK 143
‘Keir is a man of great integrity.
He has been responsible,
sober and constructive’
144 GQ.CO.UK JULY 2021
ED MILIBAND
>> father managed to flee to Belgium then escape
to England, all on foot.
These family narratives have had a huge impact
on Miliband, he admits, but he doesn’t linger on
the trauma. “I think people are basically good.
There’s so much goodness in people. I know that
sounds trite, but I genuinely believe that.” The
proximity of family history also lingers in his
life because his mother still lives nearby. How’s
she found the pandemic? “She’s got Alzheimer’s,
unfortunately. So she’s pretty... It’s pretty difficult.”
Diagnosed in 2014 when her youngest son was
still leader, she has carers, managed between Ed
and David. This means the brothers talk “quite
a lot” these days. “I mean, it’s mainly centred
around my mum.”
Miliband sounds nervous today only around
mentions of his brother. They holidayed in New
York a few years ago, he says, where David lives With protesters opposing Donald Trump’s presidential visit to the UK, London, 13 July 2018
and works as CEO of the International Rescue
Committee. It matters to Ed that their children
know each other, however distant they are
geographically: they have a good relationship.
That’s about as far as he’ll
go. Does Ed think David ‘After four election or six degrees – and I was I think it’s the way the government operates. It’s
will ever return to British defeats, we’ve doing 20 minutes’ swimming. the way Johnson operates – but this goes deeper.”
politics? “Er, I don’t know, clearly got a Alastair Campbell went and He brings up the three million self-employed he’s
really. I think that’s a thing mountain to climb’ only did 12.” Miliband knows been working with who didn’t qualify for pan-
for him. I mean, look: because the lifeguard told demic financial support. “They’ve struggled to
he’s making a difference in a Campbell and Campbell then get a meeting with the treasury minister. That’s
really important way.” And that’s that. texted Miliband. “I knew he was a very competi- what this is about. Cameron can send text mes-
As we amble back towards his home, another tive person.” He smiles and raises his eyebrows. “I sages to Rishi Sunak. It’s about him having access
contemporary of Miliband’s leadership years turned out to be, as well!” that other people don’t have.”
comes up. What does he think of Sir Nick Clegg Still, Miliband never sounds angry. He doesn’t
working for Facebook? His response comes with A s Miliband’s house approaches, he lays even seem to get annoyed when the Tories steal
a dollop of cantankerous camp. “I feel more out his beliefs ahead of May’s elections. his ideas, such as the energy price cap, which they
annoyed at him for keeping David Cameron in He believes Covid-19 should kick politics did in 2017 – he’d called for it in his general elec-
power in the way that he did rather than going to into action (“Part of the job of politics is to make tion campaign. “People said it was bonkers back
work for Mark Zuckerberg.” He does find social sense of the collective experience, the trauma that then. But suddenly these things look relatively
media “upsetting”, he adds: someone from his many people have been through, to understand mainstream and uncontroversial, so you’ve got to
team generally tweets for him now. “Not because why it happened, but also to say, ‘Look, we can keep going.” Don’t people who steal his ideas ever
of the things people say about me – although that do better”). He talks about leadership needing to make him feel like punching a wall? “Or howling
can be upsetting – [but] watching two people who be about empathy (“It’s this very untapped and into the void!” He says, laughing. He obviously
I have respect for having an absolute hammer- incredibly important aspect”), but he’d never run avoids this at all costs.
and-tongs spat... I don’t love the hatred.” again. “Oh, no! No, no, no! I don’t think so!” Now Politics needs to be about the big things, he
When he thinks of those years alongside Clegg he looks traumatised. “I think I did that gig.” stresses. “Not small, trivial things. We’ve got to
and Cameron, though, one regret lingers more What he does want to talk about is how much resist that. We have to. We’ve just got to.” Two
than most. He became Labour leader when his has changed in his lifetime. “Think about the weeks later, Labour loses Hartlepool to the Tories,
eldest son, Daniel, was 15 months old and changes in LGBT rights or the minimum wage and shifts attention from triumphs elsewhere
his youngest, Samuel, was a few months away or in the institution of the NHS... People couldn’t to the bloody drama of Starmer briefly sacking
from being born. “I’ve been too absent as a father. have imagined them happening and they hap- Angela Rayner. But when I say goodbye to the
When my father was there, he was there. He never pened.” He mentions the need for massive social leader that failed but bounced back, he’s off to
said, ‘I’m too busy.’” housing projects and for deprivation and inequal- rally voters, full of beans, full of life. He remains
Miliband spends lots of time with his children ity to be fixed after Covid-19. “Other countries do Dawid’s buoyant grandson, Ralph and Marion’s
now, although he got into trouble for writing his things like this now.” He shrugs, boyishly. “Why optimistic child, a man wanting to turn the past
book during their last summer holiday. His los- aren’t we?” There’s a lot more of this in his book. into something hopeful. G
ing the election has also been good for his wife, We speak again, twice, over the next six weeks.
he says, happily: she became a High Court judge, The first time just after a Jennifer Arcuri exclusive GO BIG: HOW TO FIX OUR WORLD BY ED MILIBAND
therefore a QC and a dame, in 2019. “Her career’s ran in the Sunday Mirror, raising more questions (VINTAGE, £18.99) IS OUT NOW.
Photograph Getty Images taken off. I don’t think it’s coincidental.” about her relationship with Johnson and the + More from GQ For these related
He sounds almost jolly, almost glad that he misuse of public funds. “God, it’s passed me by
completely,” Miliband says. stories visit GQ.co.uk/magazine
lost. Maybe he was. “Ha! Not really, if I’m honest.
I mean...” He composes himself. “No. Because I The second time, the Tory sleaze scandal is KEIR STARMER IS THE LABOUR PARTY IN
put my heart and soul into it, for all the faults growing. Miliband allows himself a little steam. HUMAN FORM (Glen O’Hara, June 2020)
and all the things I did wrong. This is why “The way the country runs should not be based on
it’s complicated.” who you know and whose mobile number you’ve ED MILIBAND HAS REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL
got,” he says. “It’s like having mates’ rates. It’s not (Alastair Campbell, April 2018)
He’s also still competitive. As we walk past the the way to do things.”
Highgate Men’s Pond, he raves about his latest JEREMY CORBYN’S HOSTILE TAKEOVER
hobby: cold-water swimming. “It was cold – five Like a Bullingdon Club ethos writ large? “Yes! (Stuart McGurk, February 2018)
JULY 2021 GQ.CO.UK 145
Aaoogfploe#pnsBo,griGsktiuQednLe’siitifCnyeifiaalnunraetdhnnfeciTnehhrdesasa,pcraatocrmotijfvomaiinsnutnsusitrathbnyea,dinLdyopeonneudlttoihottnysoonacfnhaadlplter
Photographs by Tristan Bejawn
146 GQ.CO.UK JULY 2021
#BIKELIFE
Ciaran Thapar joined
about 60 young cyclists
on one of the regular
#BikeLife rides through
the London streets
JULY 2021 GQ.CO.UK 147
yells one voice, then another, and another. Controlled, swerving handlebars, his pedals rendered unnecessary.
All of a sudden, a rumble of anticipation fills wheelies are a It’s his signature move. “Every rider has a move,”
the local vicinity. It’s like I’m being strapped stock-in-trade on says Danz, explaining that he likes to “hill bomb”
into a roller-coaster ride. Feet stomp, metal #BikeLife ride-outs (wheelie at pace down a long hill) while standing
rises from concrete, chains whizz. A tipping and individual cyclists on his rear foot pegs. Back at the strip, Liam has
point has been reached, the tribe’s size become recognised for already shown me his favourite move: detaching
deemed large enough by its hive mind. their signature moves his front wheel, positioning his frame upright
and, using a lamppost to steady himself and his
Welcome to “the strip”, a wide stretch ‘It’s how left hand to tap his rear brake, riding around
of road where traffic is nonexistent. Over the trick is in circles sitting on top of his handlebars, like a
recent years, in British cities and towns, shown to the circus entertainer on a unicycle. “The way each
teenagers on pedal bikes, bound by the outside world of us rides reflects what our personality is like,”
hashtag #BikeLife, have gathered at strips that matters’ adds Trizzy, whose move has become known as
to show off trick combinations (seat-stands, “The Trizz Drag” by his followers. He pulls the
leg-overs, foot-drags), then headed out to bike into a wheelie, bends one knee through
ride en masse, like snowboarders practis- the bike frame and stretches the other leg out
ing on a nursery slope before ascending behind him to drag his shoe on the floor, main-
a mountain. taining enough forward momentum to hop back
up onto his saddle seconds later.
It’s a Saturday afternoon and I’m
perched at the top of Stonecutter Street in We head west along the north side of the River
Farringdon, London, with my trusty road bike, an electric-blue Giant Defy. Thames, past Temple, Embankment and the
Glass windows of tall monochrome buildings reflect a grey, cloudy sky. Ministry Of Defence. At any one time, at least
Deloitte’s empty headquarters looms over Antony Gormley’s “Resolution” a third of the pack are doing continuous, swerv-
sculpture: a life-sized male body constructed of rusting steel blocks that, ing wheelies. Those on its outer edges narrowly
according to its creator, “interacts with the daily life of the street”. dodge buses and vans – referred to as “traffic
work” in the closed, elite lexicon – or weave their
Roughly 60 young men and a handful of young women, of all races way through shrinking gaps between shops, bins
and religions, classes and creeds, from all corners of the city, stand, fidget and pedestrians (“gap work”) or grab hold of a
and whip around on bikes of all sizes, colours and brands. Elders exude slow-moving car and let it pull them along like
confidence and ownership of the space, lighting cigarettes, securing GoPro a drag lift. Some of the younger boys riding are
cameras, complimenting new arrivals on their bikes’ features: a frame’s loud half my size and age, on purpose-made “wheelie
design, the thickness of tyres, a new seat. Youngers spin by, trying to get bikes” weighing 50 per cent more than mine,
noticed, or stand nervously to the side, helmet strap fastened, sandwich box designed for grip and physicality, as opposed to
in hand, awaiting their call to action. The coiled quiet doesn’t last for long. the speed of a road bike. Yet I still have to pedal
hard to keep up.
I grab my Giant and kick off behind the pack of riders who are shrieking
with glee, pouring onto Farringdon Street, overwhelming the road, traffic Once a rider has learned to wheelie, which
and pavement like a stampede. Within seconds I realise that to have a chance takes months of constant practice, of falling and
at keeping up I will have to resist the temptation to stop for anything. On getting back up, they exist on a stylistic spectrum.
“ride-outs”, which can last for hours, red lights – normal rules, control meth- At one end are those who master tricks and frantic
ods in a city governed by distracted adults – might as well not exist. foot combinations, which they refine and display
at the strip; at the other, there are those who seek
“Stay with the group,” I’m advised by 19-year-old media student Danz. If to gain fluid momentum while dodging obstacles,
a younger rider misbehaves – yells at drivers or knocks over traffic cones which means they thrive on chasing speed, out on
– older riders such as Danz will tell them to fix up. “It’s important for our the roads. Some riders cover both bases: enter-
image that when people on a ride-out are moving incorrectly, it has to be tainment and travel; flair and endurance. The
sorted out, because it reflects badly on all of us,” says 17-year-old film and sweet spot is bringing your well-rehearsed com-
photography student Trizzy, one of the most impressive and fearless riders binations to a ride-out, while keeping up.
in the country. “Everyone I ride with I count as one.” Like many well-known
#BikeLife characters, Trizzy has a professionally edited YouTube channel “Some will go to the strip and practise doing,
with tens of thousands of subscribers. To wheelie skilfully like Trizzy does, like, 30 combos,” explains 24-year-old Kizzy from
riders must use their shoulders and forearms to yank and hold up their South London. “Others, like me and Danz, we’ll
front wheel for minutes at a time, all the while pedalling, pulling constantly just go and fuck up the streets.” As a former
respawning combinations of foot, leg and hand tricks, swerving people member of London City Killers, one of the UK’s
and traffic, like a skier carving between trees, and navigating a route. But early #BikeLife crews, and the motorbike group
advancing as a video editor is an equally important prerequisite for suc- No Limits, Kizzy is one of the most experienced
cess in the scene. “You might be able to do the trick, but it’s how the trick wheelie riders in the city. He’s had his own sig-
is shown to the outside world that matters,” Trizzy explains. “How is some- nature bike model made by the popular brand
body gonna see you do it?”
Mafiabikes, called the “Lucky 6”. He estimates >>
“Smile, bro!” yells 19-year-old Liam as he whizzes past, pointing a camera
stick towards me, followed by his friend, Rohullah, who is sitting on his
148 GQ.CO.UK JULY 2021
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