Esquire has spent more than 90 years helping you figure out what to eat, drink, wear, and put in your home. We're determined to make sure you know exactly what to buy for your space. How do we do that? We try the stuff. We sleep on mattresses. Put insanely large couches in our homes. Fill our desks with espresso machines. All in the name of testing. For the last 365 days, our staff has been hard at work. Below you'll find 101 award-winning products we truly recommend you spend your money on. — Krista Jones, Senior Director, Commerce and Partnerships |
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101 award-winning products our editors tried, tested, and loved this year. From the perfect sleeper sofa to laser TVs, these are the items your life is missing. |
We'll always be here to help you figure out what to buy for your home. For more than 90 years we have been telling our readers what to buy and why. During the past year of narrowing down the selections for our Home Awards, we enlisted our entire staff—testing and filling our homes with as many new and noteworthy items as we could get our hands on. We sweated in the saunas, watched movies on the giant TVs, and drank from an untold number of the wineglasses before deciding which ones to award. Tough job, right? We kid—except that being discerning actually is hard work. So even if the robots make all other work obsolete, we'll keep doing this. We'll do it for you. But back to the present: We found 101 items that we really loved this year. No matter the style of sofa you want or the type of sleeper you are—whatever type of human you are—these are the things worth adding to your home now. |
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Last year, L.L. Bean organized a homecoming. But to understand why that matters, you need a brief history lesson. Back in 1992, the folks at Bean decided to open a second outpost. The first was in Freeport, Maine, so naturally the brand decided the next location should be … about 6,600 miles away, in Jiyugaoka, Tokyo.
It sounds surprising, but there was solid reasoning behind it. The flagship location had become the site for a very particular kind of fashion pilgrimage in the early '90s, with Japanese tourists flying over to shop the outdoorsy selection. And we're not talking about a stop along the way to another spot, like New York or L.A. No, the Bean flagship was the one and only destination. Robust mail orders confirmed that the brand's Japanese fan base was strong. L.L. Bean has since opened 18 different stores in the country, all offering a local spin on the company's iconic clothes and accessories. And for anyone with a taste for slightly off-kilter Americana viewed through a Japanese lens—which is to say a gigantic chunk of menswear nerds—it's become pretty desirable stuff. |
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Móglaà Bap takes a sip of his beer and then lays an Irish-history lesson on me. He's calling over Zoom from a pub in Belfast alongside Mo Chara and the balaclava-wearing DJ Próva×the other two members of the Irish rap group Kneecap. The barkeep hands them all pitch-black brews as we banter about the weather and their music's recent inclusion in Netflix's House of Guinness. Before we get too far, I need them to sort out a few bits of Irish slang for this American. For starters: What's a Fenian? "Fenian was originally a term used for a band of warriors in Irish folklore, and then it was repurposed for revolutions before it was used as a derogatory slur," Móglaà Bap says, skimming through hundreds of years of Irish history with a pint in hand. "It was used to shame us—to make us seem barbaric, like we were these forest people that go around with spears—but now we're trying to put our own stamp on it, and this album is a part of reclaiming that heritage." |
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 Project Hail Mary Is Actually About Male Loneliness |
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Guys are so lonely that it's easier for them to imagine making friends with space aliens than it is to tell stories about forging deeply emotional bonds with other guys. In Project Hail Mary Ryan Gosling and a crusty, faceless otherworldly creature he nicknames "Rocky" encounter each other in a distant solar system and combine their science knowledge to stop a star-devouring parasite from ending life in the known universe. It is science fiction, it's a buddy comedy, and it's also a kind of love story, arriving in theaters amid a bombardment of comparisons to another beloved movie about a human who makes an alien friend: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. I also thought of Steven Spielberg's 1982 classic when I saw directors Chris Miller and Phil Lord's big-screen movie adaptation of the 2021 novel by Andy Weir, the author best known for The Martian—about a stranded astronaut who has no one, although many long-distance friends are working tirelessly to reach him. (That's sort of like having "a girlfriend, but she lives in Canada" back when you're in middle school.) But for all the parallels between Project Hail Mary and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, there is one big difference that makes the new movie especially relevant. E.T. was about a lonely child who bonds with an unlikely friend, another outcast who feels abandoned and overlooked—rightfully so, since his own kind left him behind like the intergalactic version of Kevin McCallister. Spielberg's movie was about how childhood can be magical, but also isolating. Project Hail Mary explores a different idea, one that is frequently mentioned in the zeitgeist and "the discourse," although solutions to the problem remain elusive: How do you make friends as an adult? It's something everybody faces as they get older, and Project Hail Mary is a sci-fi story that uses its galaxy-saving premise as an allegory for this sad aspect of modern life. Work and family obligations become all-consuming, and opportunities to cut loose and just hang out dwindle down to nothing. We go it alone more, and rely on each other less. On the playground, friendships once sprung up like weeds, but as the decades pass you have to work harder to cultivate them. Studies show the issue is especially acute among men. Maybe guys have a harder time expressing themselves, having been culturally conditioned to hold our thoughts and feelings inside. Or maybe we're more naturally combative and reluctant to lean on others. We believe in that old maxim, "A friend in need is a friend indeed," and we're there for that 100 percent—as long as we're not the one "in need." We cling tightly to old friendships, but sometimes weeks pass without contact, then months. Suddenly, it's years. We often pick up easily where we left off, "like no time has gone by," but the longer that pattern continues the less you naturally have in common. When all that two people share is the past, and don't actually have a present together, the friendship becomes more like a relic than something that is living, breathing, and growing. Gosling's character, Dr. Ryland Grace, is a molecular biologist turned middle-school science teacher turned reluctant astronaut. Some unusual cosmic force is consuming the energy of our sun, and the long-shot effort that gives the story its title is a deep-space mission to another far-off sun that seems to be regulating this cycle without being depleted. When he awakes from his cryo-sleep, Grace finds another starship already waiting at his destination, a spiky, shapeshifting vessel from a vastly different world that is also trying to identify and solve the same problem. Aboard this ship is "Rocky," an alien character who looks like a Thanksgiving turkey carved out of sandstone. It has no eyes or mouth (it eats through its … nevermind.) It wobbles around on five limbs, and has three-toed pinchers that look about as effective at grabbing things as a loosely-rigged arcade claw game that never pays off. Still, Rocky gets around. He's just got zero in common with Grace, except a shared mission. Consider this excerpt from Weir's book, which puts into words what Gosling and Rocky puppeteer James Ortiz convey onscreen: "Speaking of loneliness, my thoughts turn back to Rocky. My only friend now. Seriously. He's my only friend," Grace says. "I didn't have much of a social life back when things were normal. Sometimes I'd grab dinner with other faculty and staff at the school. I'd have the occasional Saturday-night beer with old college friends. But thanks to time dilation, when I get home all those folks will be a generation older than me." Grace was far away from friendship even when it was right in front of him. A lot of guys will be able to relate. By Anthony Breznican |
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Project Hail Mary is science fiction, it's a buddy comedy, and it's also a kind of love story. / photo by: Amazon MGM Studios |
Is your bracket busted yet? It was hard to find time to catch up on TV this weekend with March Madness in full swing, but all the exciting college hoops still put me in a sports movie mood. I asked the 2025 NBA Draft Class to name their favorite sports movie last June, and their answers ranged from Hoosiers and Space Jam to Happy Gilmore. What's your favorite sports movie? Let me know by e-mailing me at josh.rosenberg@hearst.com. Did someone forward you this email? Sign up here. |
The Continuing Adventures of the Esquire Entertainment Desk |
Chuck Norris died at age 86. The martial artist and Way of the Dragon star left with a complicated and meme-filled legacy, which Eric Francisco paid tribute to on Friday. Kevin Zegers, of Air Bud fame, struggled with addiction and self-doubt for years after his time as a '90s child star. Now, the 41-year-old actor tells me all about finding himself again on The Madison. "It's given me a purpose," he says. "With my experience in recovery and sobriety, I'm so much happier to just be of service." Read the interview here. |
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Kevin Zegers found himself again on 'The Madison' / photo by: Emerson Miller/Paramount+ |
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The Cliff-Hanger's Winners and Losers of the Week |
Winner: Peter Parker The Spider-Man: Brand New Day trailer broke records on YouTube when it debuted on Wednesday, with the total viewership now sitting at over 26 million views. The film looks a little too busy to me, but apparently a down and out Peter Parker really does it for Spidey fans. Loser: Bachelor Nation The fans are the real losers of ABC cancelling Taylor Frankie Paul's season of The Bachelorette due to domestic violence claims. And after that horrible lineup they gave to Jenn Tran? With how much money ABC is losing over this—reportedly $60 million and counting, per Forbes—the end of The Bachelor franchise is certainly on the table. Winner: New York Haters Taylor Sheridan took a bite out of the Big Apple this weekend, when the second half of The Madison season 1 moved our characters back home to New York City following their trip to Montana. Much like any TV/movie dying to make fun of liberal East Coasters, the prolific TV creator wrote haters another tired "Can I just get a coffee-flavored cup of coffee?" scene. Loser: Netflix Responding to claims that the streamer asks TV creators to repeat the plot on their shows for audiences who are distracted by their phones, Netflix executives told reporters that no such directive exists. Maybe, but it's happening anyway. Winner: Vampires After Sinners took home a handful of major Oscars last week, news broke that Hulu canceled plans for their Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot. It sounds like a mess for everyone involved. But with the slayers out of the picture, the vampires live to fight another day! |
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