Advertisement
U.S. markets closed
  • S&P 500

    5,254.35
    +5.86 (+0.11%)
     
  • Dow 30

    39,807.37
    +47.29 (+0.12%)
     
  • Nasdaq

    16,379.46
    -20.06 (-0.12%)
     
  • Russell 2000

    2,122.25
    +7.90 (+0.37%)
     
  • Crude Oil

    83.02
    +1.67 (+2.05%)
     
  • Gold

    2,241.40
    +28.70 (+1.30%)
     
  • Silver

    25.00
    +0.25 (+1.00%)
     
  • EUR/USD

    1.0789
    -0.0041 (-0.38%)
     
  • 10-Yr Bond

    4.2060
    +0.0100 (+0.24%)
     
  • dólar/libra

    1.2619
    -0.0019 (-0.15%)
     
  • USD/JPY

    151.3870
    +0.1410 (+0.09%)
     
  • Bitcoin USD

    70,898.40
    +2,186.76 (+3.18%)
     
  • CMC Crypto 200

    885.54
    0.00 (0.00%)
     
  • FTSE 100

    7,952.62
    +20.64 (+0.26%)
     
  • Nikkei 225

    40,168.07
    -594.66 (-1.46%)
     

The Summer of the Bare Chest—and Other Huge Trends That Will Own 2019

It’s officially summer, which means it’s time to do all the regular stuff: cry about the “Song of the Summer”; eat hotdogs with the confidence of four Joey Chestnuts; and hit a ball while screaming “AMERICA!!!”, your hair whipping in the wind like a loose sail on a boat totally nailing it in a super lowkey summer squall.

But some stuff is just not regular, and that stuff is called “trends.” This summer is chock full of trends, from bare chests to underrated travel writing to collecting furniture. Here are some of my favorites.

THIS IS THE SUMMER OF THE BARE CHEST
Perhaps you’ve been le surfing le French Guy fashion trend: swarthy, cerebral, and a little undone. But for humanity’s most valuable thought leaders, that BHL-level plunge simply isn’t enough. This summer, men will go ahead and unbutton their shirts all the way; reports from coastal cities as well as flyover states alike confirm that some men are foregoing shirts altogether, and not just when they’re holding up their Juul at the Dave Matthews Band concert. Inspired by a desire for more vulnerability (see: Saint Laurent Spring 2020), the increasing de-erotizication of the male form (IDK, this is not an art magazine), or just good old-fashioned HEAT, the chest—like the shoulders women showed off in summer 2016—is the safely erogenous zone that this summer asks to be shared with the world.

DYLAN’S THUNDERCLAP HAT
Receiving the wolf howl siren call known as the Scorsese director credit, teens, adults, and pets worldwide have been glued for the past few days to serial killer thinkpiece streaming service Netflix, parsing reality from fiction (a familiar American pastime!) in Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese.

The truest and most urgent piece of iconography is Bob Dylan’s hat, which he wore on the Rolling Thunder Revue tour and on the cover of his subsequent album Desire. A little cowboy and a little lonesome troubadour, the hat is a big gray plate with the subtlest lip and a big telescope crown. Gallant in proportion, it is softened, almost dandified, by a luscious sprig of flowers.

TL;DR: WOW.

Dylan loves hats. He might love hats more than Prince Charles or the Duke of Windsor or other noted hat freaks, as AARP Magazine pointed out in a 2015 slideshow. (Do not sleep on Dylan’s curious affection for AARP Magazine; he gave a 9,000-word interview to the magazine that same year.) And as it turns out, this hat in particular, AARP reports, was created by longtime Dylan milliner Baron Hats (who also made Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones hat I’M CRYING history is SO HOT). The Thunderclap is available in Beaver or Rabbit felt and starts at $850.

Buy this hat.

"Rolling Thunder Review" Concert Benefiting the Legal Defense of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter

Buy this hat.
Ron Galella

MARY McCARTHY TRAVEL WRITING
Infuriated by the impotence of TripAdvisor reviews, and dismayed by wronged customers with suspicious agendas, the traveling elite will gravitate towards the writing of Mary McCarthy, who in her mid-50s books The Stones of Florence and Venice Observed elucidated the beauty of traveling as no guidebook ever could. As Americans begin to vacation more “mindfully,” McCarthy’s books take on a new scriptural importance.

Also worth stealing from McCarthy is an affection for Ferragamo, the storied Italian leather company with new juice. McCarthy noted that they made her signature shoe in her 1953 Harper’s essay “Artists In Uniform.” Back then. an antisemite mistook her fancy footwear to mean that she wasn’t a total raging communist. (Sound familiar, lefty fashionistos???)

PAINFULLY UPPER-MIDDLE CLASS BRITISH MUSIC
I don’t know if you’ve been to the movies lately but there is a vogue for biopics of musicians who were big the ’70s—not only the aforementioned Robert Zimmerman, but also Queen frontman Freddie Mercury (last fall) and Elton John frontman Elton John (this summer).

This summer, the anthemic gems of these stars will reach new levels of extreme relevance and meaning as our worldwide malaise congeals into a desire for songs that feel at once heroic and heavy with the ennui of a dark time—a time not unlike the one we live in today. Other admirable entries in this catalog include Paul McCartney’s milky pre-Wings solo work, obviously Fleetwood Mac, Clapton Unplugged, Joni Mitchell, and absolutely under no circumstances U2.

The high point of any serious Summer 2019 will be listening to Dire Strait’s “Sultans of Swing” while eating cake off Coalport china, the sentimentally botanical porcelain of choice for British grannies, including John Lennon’s famous Aunt Mimi.

COLLECTING FURNITURE
Art: who can afford that? People with a chunk of moolah to burn are instead investing in works of design, like “important” chairs and “historically significant” desks. If earlier generations amassed impresario art collections on modest salaries (think of Mike D’s mom!!!, who bought Brancusi’s Bird In Space, among many other Modernist gems, on a social worker’s salary), the young and vaguely rich are instead turning to young and aesthetically erudite interior designers like Charlap Hyman Herrero, or honing their eye on 1stdibs.com, in search of Wendell Castle cloud shelves, witty masterpieces by the recently departed Nicola L., coffee tables by Misha Kahn, swollen kiddie chairs by Katie Stout, and benches from Green River Project.

Do not forget: a Noguchi lamp is cheaper than your average jawns acquisition.

AND ONE FOR THE LADIES: SCHLUMBERGER JEWELRY
The delicate, nimble-thin bars of silver and gold on wisps of chain necklace and whisper-sized rings is OVER, as the iconic jeweler Jean Schlumberger, who made hunky rings for Tiffany’s and big wacky buttons for Elsa Schiaparelli, finally comes back into style. Costume-y and baroque and even a little tacky, Schlumberger jewelry sets the new standard for Big Rings.

Originally Appeared on GQ

Advertisement