The Beatles weren’t particularly known for their blue jeans – the famous suits and boots and haircuts loom much larger in the popular imagination. But they did contribute a few poetic lines to denim’s rich cultural history. Ringo Starr shares with me one example in particular, when the Fab Four strolled across Abbey Road. Ringo, John, and a shoeless Paul wore suits, while George brought up the rear in a dark denim shirt and groovy flared jeans. The composition was impromptu. “That’s what we put on that day,” the Beatles rhythm man says with a shrug. “Paul looked like he was looking for a job,” he says, laughing. But denim-clad George? “George,” says Starr, “was just cool.”
What was true then is still true now: the perfect pair of blue jeans is the epitome of cool. It is a style and symbol that transcends time and everything that divides us. “When it comes to denim, now we’re all seeing eye to eye,” says Hall of Fame NBA basketball player Dwyane Wade. “She can rock it. He can rock it. They can rock it.” Wade and Starr are two of more than 20 international denim aficionados GQ recently gathered together in a photo studio in Los Angeles. Everybody was asked to bring their own favourite jeans, and they brought plenty of their own stories, too, about the intense emotional connections we have to these workaday garments.
Past Lives leading man Teo Yoo recalls how, as a German-born Korean kid living in Cologne, he was captivated by denim-filled spaghetti Westerns he watched on television. (Talk about a cross-cultural mash-up.) “In South Africa, denim is everything,” says amapiano pop star Tyla, who keenly understands denim’s universal coming-of-age connection. “I remember being young, I would beg my parents for 501s.”
Supermodel Winnie Harlow is from Toronto and has been rocking Canadian tuxedos for her entire life. “I’m a denim enthusiast,” she says. Turnstile bassist Franz Lyons enthusiastically destroys his denim: “You get one fresh pair, you wear ’em until dust and then you cop another one,” he says, sporting a pair of patched-up denim double-knees. “I did almost all the repairs myself until two years ago, and then I needed somebody that was nice with the machine.”
Atlanta rap superstar Gunna tells me he’s been trying his hand at making his own jeans. Why? His favourite pair of distressed designer denim went missing on a recent trip. “I loved those jeans,” he says. “I tried to find them, I tried to go buy ’em again. I couldn’t find them, so I was just like, I’m going to make me some jeans like them, because they were fire. What else are you going to do?”
What emerged in the studio is a portrait of the wide world of denim, a fabric that’s both eternally classic and always ripe for reinvention, that’s both universal and deeply personal. Looking at the pale vintage Tom Ford-era Gucci jeans he wore for his portrait, Starr says he’s reminded of the indigo uniform of his youth, when he was a boy in Liverpool wearing jeans to the factory and the Cavern Club. “Well, now it’s fashionable,” he says. “So I’ve got to go back to the closet and get the old ones out.”
Ringo Starr
Coming off the Beatles’ first UK No 1 hit since 1969 with “Now and Then” – “I was FaceTiming Paul the other day and we said, ‘No 1, brother, yeah! Fifty-four years since the last time!’” – Starr isn’t ready to hang up his drumsticks. Far from it: he’s got a couple of EPs coming out in the spring, another in the works with T Bone Burnett, and a tour with his All-Starr Band on the horizon. Starr says he just can’t quit the feeling of jamming with his fellow musicians. “I love being in a band,” he says. “If you can play a piano, a guitar, anything, I’ll play with you all night.”
Daniel Moon + Co
Behind almost every celeb with a radical hair transformation is Daniel Moon, who wields dye and bleach with the skill of an abstract painter. “We’re colour shamans,” says the 23-year salon guru who gave Kid Cudi a tennis-ball ’do and popularised sherbet-coloured hair. He and his stylish squad are still the best ambassadors for wavy hues. Moon’s tip? Dress it up. “Multicolour has a bad reputation for being too punky,” he says. “[But] I wear suits and ties. I love seeing it in a sophisticated way.”
Eli Russell Linnetz
The Venice Beach native’s clothing brand, ERL, is already in some 300 stores worldwide, so as Linnetz prepares to launch his own web store, he wants it to mark a new chapter. All the pieces he’s designed for it will be made in California. “For me, it was never about clothing production, it was about storytelling,” says Linnetz, who is also writing a feature film about college life that’s set in the ’70s. “And so it’s super exciting to work with American artisans to create something that feels more authentic as I discover what I want to say.”
Winnie Harlow
The supermodel has conquered just about every peak in fashion, reshaping the conversation around the industry’s beauty standards along the way. Now she’s becoming a different kind of force in beauty with SPF line Cay Skin, which she founded in 2022. “Protecting my skin from the sun has always been really important,” she says. “When I decided that I wanted to go into the skincare space, I really wanted to do something that was true to me – not just slap my name on some products.” She’s also preparing to jump into acting. Harlow says she’s an action-film buff. “I would love to see myself as a superhero – or a villain.”
Tyla
At the vanguard of South Africa’s amapiano scene, 22-year-old Tyla launched one of the most viral songs of 2023: “Water,” the jazzy dance track that turned TikTok upside down. Now, she’s working on her first album, sure to include plenty more sounds to gyrate to. “I’ve been working on the album for two years now,” she says. “I’ve grown a lot and I’m super proud of it. I just feel like it’s going to be the start of something completely new.”
Aaron Donald, Cooper Kupp, and Greg Lauren
When Kupp, the Super Bowl MVP wide receiver, walked into the locker room one day wearing pieces by artisanal menswear specialist Greg Lauren, his Rams teammate Donald immediately noticed – he’d been wearing and collecting the brand for years. “Once AD starts saying he knows what you’re wearing, you’re in,” says Kupp, who picked up his buddy’s obsession. “Everything is done by hand,” explains Donald. “That alone is mind-blowing.” The duo have since become pals with Lauren, who considers them the perfect clients and ambassadors. “It’s a blast working with these two because I try to make everything unique and personal, [but only] when it’s on the person who’s wearing it does it really come to life,” he says. “It should amplify something that’s already inside – and they happen to both be pretty heroic.”
Teo Yoo
Breakthrough actor
Teo Yoo was born and raised in Cologne, Germany, then studied acting in London and New York before moving to Seoul to ply his craft. “I was always curious about my own identity as a diasporic Korean, and finding that part of myself, that was very foreign to me,” he says. It took him about a decade to master the language and rise up the Korean cinema call sheet. In 2023, he scored the international breakout he’d been working for in Celine Song’s Past Lives, where he and Greta Lee performed a tour-de-force rendition of lovesickness that garnered Oscars buzz. On set, “there was some sort of magic going on,” Yoo says. “It felt like this perfect little storm, what you hope for with any production, a dream scenario. And I think it translates onscreen. People feel the chemistry.”
Don Nguyen, Atiba Jefferson, and Franz Lyons
The trio met via skating... and the bass guitar, which all three play; Lyons for hardcore outfit Turnstile. Jefferson, skateboarding’s pre-eminent witness, shoots their shows and album covers. He and Nguyen (AKA “Nuge”) linked after Nguyen became the first skater to ollie the infamous El Toro 20-stair (outside Irvine, California) in 2001. They’ve all been in bands and travelled the world together. And now, Nuge and Jefferson have launched a brewing company: Open Beer. Says Nuge, “It’s about open-mindedness and diversity – how skateboarding and music are.”
Gunna
After being released from jail in December 2022, Gunna has basically become a walking self-help book. He’s jacked now that he hits the gym six days a week. He speaks of surrounding himself with “productive people” who stoke his creativity. And he’s rededicated himself to making music. “I’m saying, I’ve been working a lot,” he explains. He’s got a project in the works that he calls “special” and “more mature.” He’s excited for the new music to surprise. “It’s not expected, and it’s needed,” Gunna says of the forthcoming sound. “It’s like something that the world don’t know they need yet.”
Kristen Kiehnle
Kiehnle is a model and former UCLA volleyball star keeping the dreamy analogue SoCal lifestyle alive. She drives a vintage Westfalia camper van and is launching season two of her swim line with Jack’s Surfboards, inspired by the golden age of LA surf and skate culture. “I’m obsessed with the vintage ’90s Roxy aesthetic – that natural beach girl, no make-up, just salty hair,” she says. “I feel like we’re losing that touch.” There are other swimsuits, she notes, for LA girls who want to feel “sexy and cute.” Her designs, on the other hand, are “not necessarily for Instagram.”
Isabella Lalonde
“As an artist, I’m just a trickster,” says Lalonde. The Beepy Bella founder has cast a spell on us all with her funky pearl necklaces and imaginative accessories, souvenirs from her singular fantasy world of fairy tales, frogs and mushrooms. Now, her company is sprouting in mystical new directions, with aims for ready-to-wear and collabs with heady brands like Guayakí Yerba Mate that will help her explore different motifs. “I started out with mushrooms and frogs and fairies, and I still base myself within those seeds that I planted,” she says. “But now I feel like I’m gardening something that is much more diverse than I originally planned.”
Zack Bia, Verdy
When Zack Bia got ready to release his first album, he called his friend Verdy, the prolific Tokyo-based artist whose little cartoon punks have shown up everywhere from Kenzo collections to Lionel Messi’s on-pitch shirt. It was just the latest move in an unfolding creative exchange that also saw the pair make a bomber jacket with Nike to celebrate Bia’s Field Trip record label. As is typical of their collaborations, they gave the jackets away to friends and family. “It’s really just art projects,” explains Bia. “We’ve never sold anything we’ve done together. It’s always been like, Let’s make it exist. That’s always been the spirit in between our crazy lives: Oh, we have this new thing, let’s connect on it.”
Dwyane Wade
D-Wade didn’t slow down after hanging up his jersey in 2019. It’s about “trying to create the vision I have for myself,” he says. Now, he and his wife, Gabrielle Union, run Proudly, a baby care line, plus he has a wine brand and a clothing label – and he just launched a podcast in January. He’s also a Fashion Week regular. (Donatella Versace is just “DV” to Wade.) Before this GQ shoot, he woke up early for yoga. “When I was an athlete, I was up before my competition,” he says. “Now, same thing.”
Lead image credits: On Ringo: Jacket by Levi’s Vintage. Vintage jeans by Tom Ford for Gucci from the Society Archive. T-shirt, sunglasses, earrings, necklace, and buttons, subject’s own. On Gunna: Jacket by Sebastien Ami. Jeans by Louis Vuitton Men’s. T-shirt, sunglasses and jewellery, subject’s own.
Styled by Jon Tietz
For Dwyane Wade: Barbering by Christopher Smith
Skin by Hee Soo Kwon using La Mer
For Gunna: Barbering by Bryan Lee
Hair styling by Aliky Williams
All other men: Hair by Will Carrillo using Balmain Hair Couture
Skin by Hee Soo Kwon using La Mer
For Winnie Harlow: Hair by Anittria Wicker
Makeup by Adam Burrell using Rouge Dior
For all other women: Hair by Takuya Sugawara* at Walter Schupfer Management*
Makeup by Hadia Kabir at Walter Schupfer Management
Manicures by Yoko Sakakura using Chanel
Set design by Bryn Bowen
Produced by Helena Martel Seward at Lolly Would