British GQ - 09.2019

Dylan Jones, Editor

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On the cover and subscribers’

cover: Suit by Gucci. gucci.com.

Shirt by Smyth & Gibson, £120.

smythandgibson.com. Tie by

Dolce & Gabbana, £145.

dolcegabbana.com

Covers photographed by

Simon Webb

EDITOR’S LETTER

Get away in style

Soak up the the last of the summer sun with

our travel guides on island resorts and beyond.

Fomo no more

Never lose another

hour browsing

through Netflix

titles again:

presenting GQ’s

definitive list of

what to watch

and what to avoid.

Go behind the scenes with James Corden

Spend more time with The Late Late Show host

on the set of his GQ cover shoot in London.

Eat your way across the UK

Whatever your cuisine of choice, we’ve got it

covered in our little black book of restaurants.

>> that were deliberately temporary. I was

a cocktail barman at a nightclub called The

Fridge, I was the doorman of an African dance

night on the old site of Billy’s, I went to Japan

to model for a fashion designer (stop laugh-

ing at the back) and I even appeared in a few

films as an extra (I pushed by David Bowie

and Catherine Deneuve in a nightclub scene –

naturally – in an appalling vampire film called

The Hunger and I shot down Roger Moore’s

plane in the James Bond film Octopussy). But

the rest of the time I was leading an itinerant

and not completely rewarding life as a profes-

sional layabout.

Until my mentor called.

One day I was called by a photographer

friend of mine who needed someone to inter-

view a bunch of people he was shooting for

i-D magazine. I can’t remember what the ques-

tions were, although I doubt, given the time,

they were any more sophisticated than 1)

“Where do you buy your clothes?” and 2)

“How much do you hate Margaret Thatcher?”

But the editor obviously saw something that I

didn’t as he promptly called me up – well, as

I didn’t have a phone, he actually called one

of my friends – and offered me a job. Would I

like to be an editor on the magazine? Would

I like to use my writing (and presumably

editing) skills to improve the editorial quality

of his magazine? Even though my degree

show at Saint Martin’s had been a magazine,

I certainly didn’t consider myself a writer, as I

had had absolutely no formal training. So not

only did he save me, but he invented me, gave

me a purpose and gave me a sniff of a life I

had previously only dreamed about.

Terry Jones was that man, a former art direc-

tor of British Vogue, who had left the magazine

when the punk explosion had suddenly made

the street more interesting than the catwalk.

He had started i-D in 1980, the year that also

saw the launch of The Face and Blitz, two

other magazines that would go on to define

the Eighties. I ended up working with Terry

for four years, four years in which he became

a close friend as well as becoming my mentor.

He taught me what to do and then let me get

on with it. Like many of the other people

Terry plucked from obscurity – Nick Knight,

Ray Petri, Edward Enninful, Caryn Franklin,

Kate Moss, the list would fill a book – I was

given the keys to the kingdom and then told

to hurry up.

I wouldn’t have got my foot on the first

rung of the ladder if it hadn’t been for Terry,

something I always go out of my way to

say whenever I’m asked how I got into the

industry. No one does it by themselves and

someone always gives you that first piece of

encouragement, which is why mentoring is so

important. In this issue, our very brilliant Style

And Grooming Director, Teo van den Broeke

(whose own mentor is Jeremy Langmead,

from Mr Porter), has overseen a feature about

mentoring in the fashion industry, featuring

Kim Jones and Edward Crutchley, Andreas

Kronthaler and Matty Bovan, Pierre Hardy

and Alexandre Mattiussi, Manolo Blahnik and

Grace Wales Bonner, and Virgil Abloh (whose

own mentor was, intriguingly, Kanye West)

and Samuel Ross (the recent winner of the

BFC/GQ Designer Menswear Fund). In Ross’

case, Abloh sent him an email, having scrolled

through just six images on Ross’ Instagram

feed. In Abloh’s own words, he had stumbled

upon Ross’ “genius”.

I’m fairly sure the word “genius” wasn’t

uppermost in Terry Jones’ mind when he tried

to call me that day, but his motivation was one

and the same.

Thank you, Terry. G

EDITOR’S LETTER

09-19EditorsLetter.indd 42 11/07/2019 12:29

38 GQ.CO.UK SEPTEMBER 2019