Blog Posts by Esquire.com

by Julia Carpenter

Esquire.com

Adulthood has no eureka moment. Author and blogger Kelly Williams Brown, whose new book Adulting: How to Become a Grown-up in 468 Easy(ish) Steps came out this week, believes true maturity is instead built on smaller stepping stones: using the correct screwdriver, wearing sunscreen, not going around telling everyone the foolish thing your friend did at 14.

"Those moments of feeling together and in-control, we kind of need them," Brown says. "Because life is chaotic, and so much is out of our control, and at any moment there's like 18 million things we're worried about, but when a little worry crosses your path and you're like, 'No, I've got it,' that's a great feeling." Indeed. And so, using her book and enlisting her boyfriend David and good friend Markus as a guide, Brown created a special male-centric appendix for Esquire.com.

Plus: The Best Relationship Advice for Men

1. Learn to tie a tie. Even better: learn how to tie a bow tie. Even better

Cary Grant: The world's coolest man

From North by Northwest to His Girl Friday to Charade, Cary Grant was the ultimate mid-century icon, owning the silver screen in his grey flannel suits as he played both the everyman and the man everyone wanted to be. Born Archibald Leach in Bristol, England, Grant was one of the last fixtures of Hollywood's sartorial golden era. And it wasn't just that his suits always fit flawlessly, or that he was blessed with a look that could make an entire movie house swoon. It was that everything Grant wore, he wore with purpose. In our current age of Hollywood stylists and "leading men" who can't even dress themselves, Grant's attention to detail is not only admirable, it's enough to make you nostalgic for the days of good ol' black and white.

Plus: How to Look Better at the Office, Right Now

Take this shot from 1947, for example. From the cufflinks to the peak lapels to the tilt of the hat, the details alone could fill an intro level textbook on classic men's-wear. But what seals the

Esquire.com

Published in the May 2013 issue

Chef Michael Kaphan, Purdy's Farmer & the Fish, North Salem, New York

I'm a chef who grew up in the era just before the green-market revolution. Like so many others, my mother was a Birds Eye queen, and the Jolly Green Giant was her best friend, always hiding in the cupboard. So as I grew older and my passion for food grew, I wanted to come up with a simple, tasty, and healthy way to prepare garden or green-market vegetables. After many years of cooking, I find myself always returning to this one tried-and-true technique. It never fails me, and my guests always want to know how I did it. Simplicity, I tell them. The secret lies in the technique, and after a couple tries, you'll pick it right up. To use a restaurant phrase, it's done à la minute - "in a minute," or done to order. The goal is a reduced sauce clinging to vegetables that still have their picked-from-the-garden taste.

There's another phrase in professional kitchens: mise en

by Josh Ozersky

Meathead Goldwyn/amazingribs.com

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you, or someone like you, is planning on doing some grilling this weekend. If you haven't broken out the tongs yet, this would obviously be the time to do so, particularly those of you who, like me, live in the gray and frigid northeast. I am figuring on cooking on Sunday for the first time since the weather broke. And on an occasion like that, nothing will do but a bone-on rib steak.

Of course, you don't need me to tell you to eat a rib steak. You were born with the urge to do that. But I am here to give you a few pointers. A great bone-on rib steak doesn't just grill itself. So, while I trust that Eat Like a Man's readers know the basics of how to cook outdoors - and if you don't, read this - I will skip over the fundamentals and jump right into the your executive summary-style bullet points.

Plus: The Truth About Grass-Fed Beef

• Not all rib steaks are created equal; pay less attention to whether the

Face-off. Kind of literally. No apologies for the pun.









Score one for the bearded. Again. For now. Because a new study published by the journal Evolution and Human Behavior reports that women find men with "heavy stubble" most attractive, trailed by an apparent mob of disgusting fully bearded, lightly stubbled, and clean-shaven men, all of whom the fairer sex found to be about equally attractive to one another. (In fairness, full beards were rated highest for perceived parenting ability and healthiness.)

Plus: 75 Things Men Don't Know About Women

For the bald-faced among us, this comes as a bit of a surprise (by which we mean: punch to the groin). It was only three years ago that Schick's Skin-dex Survey declared that shaven men have sex about twice as much as those who don't. And that 64% of women would rather sleep with a cleanly shaven man - senses of humor and bloodlines held constant, we assume. (For the reasonable skeptics of companies who release polls: Schick does make a trimmer, too - though we of course see your point.

Duff Goldman, the Ace of Cakes, and his father Morrie.By Duff Goldman, the Ace of Cakes

Published in the May 2013 issue

My business and everything that's come out of it - the bakery, the television show, the cakes for celebrities, and this year's presidential inauguration - is actually a big accident. I was working as a private chef when I really wanted to be on tour in a rock band (1). I was twenty-five at the time. I had made a couple of birthday cakes for the kids of the people I worked for, and they liked them so much, they asked me to make cakes for their friends. The more cakes I made, the more requests I got. It didn't take long to figure out that I could make it work as a business.

But there was no dream of owning a bakery and being on TV. I just needed the kind of business that would allow me to take a month off now and then to go on tour. I saw it as my path to rock stardom. Here's the thing, though. My dad is an entrepreneur with a Ph.D. in economics from UCLA. He's crazy smart - the kind of guy who can grasp the essence of a

She secretly threw out all his clothes — that's why he's shirtless.

















They say all is fair in love and war keeping your half of the closet sacred and well-protected against those treacherous people you love. But that second bit is proving to be not all that easy. According to a recent poll released by Oxfam in conjunction with British clothier Marks & Spencer as part of their Shwopping initiative, more than half of women in relationships regularly pillage their male counterparts' wardrobes. Which may not sound all that surprising. But the tactics can quickly become Machiavellian.

Plus: Paul Rudd's Facial Hair Evolution

Nearly half of the women polled admitted to throwing away their partner's clothes without telling them first. (Whether they come clean about what they've done after a polite, "Honey, have you seen my favorite T-shirt that I've had since I won my high school's breaking crew competition - which, yeah, I burned a hole into during one ill-fated Fourth of July celebration but nonetheless love so dearly, almost as much as I love

PRPS NoirWe live in an age of endless options, where nearly anything is possible. And the notion that personal style is contingent upon purchasing high-priced designer goods has been all but squashed thanks to democratic retailers like Gap, Uniqlo, and Zara. But while many brands look to cut corners in order to increase profit margins, Donwan Harrell of PRPS is moving in another direction. He introduced a specialized division of his label, PRPS Noir, that traffics in the world of handcrafted denim - with an eyebrow-raising price tag attached. A pair of these jeans will set you back four figures, topping off at around $1,200. But is it worth it? We called Harrell to talk about his Bentley of denim.

Plus: How To Look Better At The Office

Harrell had just returned from Qatar when we reached him. "The most beautiful, serene place I've ever been in my entire life," he enthused. In fact, Harrell has a deep reserve of general excitement, on display most prominently when he's talking