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As could be expected, the industry reaction to the preceding Pharrell cover was “fantastic,” Welch said. The broader public, less so, with some vitriol about perceived emasculation.
“My Twitter mentions were pretty swampy for about a month and a half.”
Still, he thinks there is value in a magazine making a public commitment to diversity and different types of conversations around men.
“Ask Pharrell if he felt emasculated on that cover. He didn’t,” Welch said. “This stuff is just in the air already.”
The conversation of a unified editorial goal for all of GQ’s global editions predates recent public events. It started late last year, when all of the lead editors of the different editions met in London as part of Condé’s move to combine its American and international operations. The two have been run separately for decades and one of the main tasks of new chief executive officer Roger Lynch is to combine operations, back to front.
“We all started talking and it got to wanting to make a statement that codifies this idea of us all getting on the same page in terms of our values,” Welch said.
There is no mandate for coverage that comes with the new “manifesto,” nor is there a specific goal in mind in terms of selling magazines or driving online engagement. Welch mainly wants to bring more reader awareness to the fact that GQ is a “global” publication and also offer a place of support for readers, and other editions of GQ, to be themselves.
But that will look very different in some editions of the magazine, compared to the American or European editions. GQ Middle East could not do a cover story with Pharrell in what comes across as a voluminous gown.
“Every GQ exists in a different context,” Adam Baidawi, editor of GQ Middle East since it’s launch in 2018, said from his home in Dubai. “We have, from the get-go, wanted to embrace a less rigid idea of what a men’s magazine can be.”
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