(Only the gauche ever uttered the “54” part.) It was also, not to put too fine a point on it, a much gayer era of GQ.
It was a time when the magazine had a smaller readership, measurable in the low six figures, and a smaller staff: a hedonistic, tight-knit group whose members socialized together after work, often in a pack, often at Studio. Sometimes, there would even be a woman in the shot. And in the foreground, gorgeous creatures in very small bathing suits, frolicking in the surf, water beading seductively on supple flesh. Can we get a seaplane? Indeed we can get a seaplane! So there would be a seaplane-an expensive prop int he background. Everyone’s hair had blond highlights everyone’s skin was fetchingly on t he cusp of a burn. Or if it wasn’t summer, it was at least an occasion to pack up and jet off to some summery locale, maybe Tahiti or Hawaii or t he Caribbean. It was always summer at GQ in the late 1970s.
