admin “I’ve got a good feeling I’m going to meet Kim Kardashian tonight,” said Jacob Elordi with a cigarette dangling from his lips. He had just strode onto a wraparound balcony at the Chateau Marmont. With the lights of Hollywood stretched out before him, the man who stars as Elvis in Priscilla looked like he might shake his hips at any moment. It was the Thursday night of GQ’s 2023 Men of the Year party, and the Aussie heartthrob was there to celebrate his leading role in our annual year-end issue.
And he was most looking forward to seeing Kardashian, his fellow MOTY cover subject alongside Travis Scott. “The covers were all awesome,” Elordi said. “But I loved Kim’s cover. She looked so rad.” Soon enough, his feeling was proven correct. To get the evening started, GQ global editorial director Will Welch and his MOTY co-hosts—Elordi, Kardashian, Scott, and Tom Ford—gathered for an intimate dinner. (See more photos here.) Elordi and Kardashian sat next to each other at the long table in the penthouse.
GQ’s first Men of the Year issue came out in 1996. The franchise embraces the most important and fascinating figures from the previous 12 months, the actors and musicians and entrepreneurs and filmmakers and designers and athletes and creatives whose work, in whatever medium, was definitive in our culture. (Despite the name, it is not a gender-specific thing.) And every year we throw a big party in Los Angeles to bring the people from the pages of MOTY together. This year, the evening was sponsored by Glenfiddich, State Farm, Spotify, and Google Pixel.
And come together they did. As guests pulled up to the penthouse for a pre-dinner cocktail, many of them beelined for Past Lives director Celine Song to congratulate her on her debut flick. “I’m so honored,” Song told Olivia Rodrigo, who praised the MOTY subject’s Oscars-contending film. “Celine just made her first movie and she’s the belle of the ball,” added the musician and actor Jason Isbell. “I mean, she’s amazing. She popped out fully formed like she’s Townes Van Zandt or something.” Nearby, GQ designer of the year Jonathan Anderson consorted with Song’s husband, the writer Justin Kuritzkes. The JW Anderson founder and Loewe creative director designed the costumes for upcoming Luca Guadagnino films Challengers and Queer. Kuritzkes wrote both screenplays. “We saved each other’s lives” on these projects, said Anderson. Why? “Well, it was both of our first films!” said Kuritzkes. Post-strike, Hollywood was roaring back to life.
As dinner hit the tables, Welch rose to give a toast to Ford, whom he profiled in a career-spanning exit interview for MOTY. “I’ve already said quite a bit about Tom Ford in the magazine, and he said quite a bit back,” said Welch, who explained that he wanted to shout out Ford’s singular world of luxury and beauty. “One thing that I didn’t get to in the piece was that I think Tom has this unique ability to combine sex and money…Money is the most boring thing—”
