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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Móglaí 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 Próvaí—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," Móglaí 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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