FIELD JOURNAL 13: Inside GQ's Jan 1992 Issue, New Huckberry Campaign, What Bourdain Taught His DP, and More...

Style & Gear News, Outifts, & Inroads for the adventure-seeking man.

Jan 07, 2025

Biking, hitting golf balls at the driving range, watching football, cleaning, and reading. That’s what I’ve been up to this past week.

In this issue, I’ve got some STYLE & GEAR news on the latest campaign I worked on at HB, my weekend reads, and my biking adventures—I recently bought an REI Co-op CTY 1.1 hybrid bike. In fact, OUTFIT is inspired by my Saturday morning ride into downtown Austin.

And for INROADS, I’ve got a top tier winter jacket from one of my favorite reviews publishers, some cool predictions of what will be popular for guys in 2025, and a short video on Parts Unknown Director of Photography Morgan Fallon sharing what he learned by working with Bourdain.

STYLE & GEAR

Biking From City to Trail

In case you missed it, I bought a hybrid bike over the holiday break. Have I told you that enough already? It’s so damn fun riding around Austin’s trails and bike lanes. On Saturday morning, I rode about 3 miles into downtown and stopped at a coffee shop to hang for a bit before riding back. I did the trip slow, stopping to take photos, sitting on park benches, and looking out at Lady Bird Lake along the way.

Now I’m constantly checking out bike gear on REI (Ortleib bags I’m looking at you), and thinking about the best clothes and watches to wear when I go out for these kinds of trips.

GQ January 1992 Issue

I was doing some deep cleaning and found myself looking at my old fashion magazines. This GQ issue from January 1992 has always been my favorite.

It’s my favorite for many reasons. The first is it has a feature interview of Oliver Stone about the release of his film JFK—I’m a fan of Stone and an even bigger fan of JFK. The second is it has an interview story from Gay Talese, one of my top writers of all time. (If you like Gay Talese, I recommend The Gay Talese Reader, it’s a short book that covers his most iconic stories.)

Most important is all the old outfits and trends covered. GQ’s 1992 Spring Fashion Preview is spot on to many of my fashion tastes—Americana, timeless, casual with a touch of prep. Good ol’ fashioned American Dream living. What’s cool about reading the preview 33 years later is that I see many similar trends have swung back around into popularity (denim outfits, shorts with boots, tastefully layering, to name a few).

For 2025, I’d like to collect some vintage Japanese men’s style magazines. Like Popeye.

New Huckberry Campaign: The Starting 5

We just kicked off our first campaign of the year at HB. It’s a style guide for the beginning of the 2025 that you can wear into spring. I’m proud to say I chose the name of the campaign and the tagline.

The idea behind “Starting 5” was to play on the idea of this being our first style guide to get you dressing your best (“set the tone”). I wanted to avoid words like “essentials”, so I turned to thinking about words like “lineup” and found myself researching sports references. I landed on basketball terminology, due to this being the time of year when guys actually start paying attention to the teams, players, and standings.

So this was my attempt to creatively position a men’s style guide without saying a typical buzzword in the title. And to reiterate, I only worked on the beginning of this campaign. There were other talented copywriters who jumped in to carry the load while I was asked to pivot to holiday projects. Overall, I think Starting 5 came out awesome, and I hope you all find inspiration and interest in these looks.