Esquire

8 min read There are Scotch whisky brands, and then there is The Macallan. The Speyside distillery has spent 200 years building something closer to a luxury house than a spirits company, one where a single bottle holds the world record for any wine or spirit sold at auction: $2.7 million. In 1926, a sherry-seasoned cask—number 263—was filled with new-make spirit in Speyside, Scotland. Sixty years later, in 1986, The Macallan’s masters of maturation decided it had reached the apex.

5 min read Lorenzo Bringheli Dress and sunglasses by Prada; Red Bull necklace, Gu’s own. If you were a screenwriter, you’d need to dial it back. Your protagonist is a two-time Olympian, six-time medalist, professional model, and Stanford student (first studying quantum physics, now international relations). She is officially the best in history in her chosen sport—freestyle skiing—and earned $23 million last year in off-the-slopes endorsements.

2 min read For nearly two centuries, Jaeger-LeCoultre has operated from the Vallée de Joux—a remote Swiss valley that shaped generations of watchmaking through sheer isolation and brutal winters—producing movements so technically accomplished that half the industry has used them under different names. The Reverso. The Memovox. More than 1,400 calibres. 430 patents. JLC has been an industry pioneer in so many different capacities it’s no surprise where the brand gets its sobriquet.

2 min read Making a watch thinner is easy in a game of subtraction. Making it thinner while also improving its reliability and strength is a different challenge entirely—one that Vacheron Constantin's engineers spent seven years trying to solve. The new Calibre 2550 is the answer. Vacheron Constantin’s obsession with elegance is the maison’s North Star, and this is on full display in the new Ultra-Thin Overseas reference.

2 min read The Piaget Polo has been a lot of things since its debut in 1979: a status symbol forged in yellow gold, a sleek date night companion, a collector’s grail, and a jet-set staple for the likes of Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor, and Andy Warhol—the latter a favorite client that the brand has since immortalized in special editions. Sylvester Stallone, Usher, and Michael B. Jordan are just a few modern converts, proof that the cultural reach of this heritage hit is strong.

2 min read Every watch that's ever gone to space has been, in some sense, a compromise—a terrestrial tool sent somewhere it was never designed to be. IWChas had timepieces aboard Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn, but until now, every one of them was essentially a modified aviation watch. The Pilot's Venturer Vertical Drive ($28,200) is the first wristwatch built with space as its only design brief.

9 min read For this installment of the Secret Lives of Men, we spoke with Gianluca*, a 59-year-old self-made finance executive in Dallas whose decades-long career has been defined by high stakes, precision, and control. When a late-in-life divorce sent him scrolling through dating apps at midnight, he kept seeing the same thing: women who wanted to be tied up. What followed was an unexpected education in rope, restraint, and the art of creating conditions for a woman to surprise herself.

2 min read The new rules of fashion dictate that there are none. It's all about matching your mood, your movement, and your closest with your personal POV. Today's styles are luxury without rigidity, and with no need for declarations. The key concept becomes a shared wardrobe that combines masculine and feminine styles—where clean-cut trousers meet well-worn sneakers, a tailored coat with raw denim, and a blazer with a simple T-shirt.

7 min read “Fine, Daddy—I’m a Mets fan from now on.” There it was, right in my own kitchen, the ultimate Uno reverse card, the dagger in any sports fan’s heart: your kid threatening to switch to your team’s rival because you had the audacity to ask him to finish his supper. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a Mets fan. (I mean, apart from the obvious.) It’s just that in my family, we are Yankees fans. End of. You support the team your family supports.

If you missed it, the Ryan Gosling-led Project Hail Mary cruised to a massive opening weekend at the box office. Even better: Critics (including Esquire's Anthony Breznican) are already touting it as one of the runaway movie hits of 2026—a perfect package of cinematography, acting, directing, and storytelling. Project Hail Mary follows a disgraced scientist-turned-schoolteacher (Gosling) sent to a distant planet to stop a star-eating algae from killing the sun before Earth freezes over.