GQ celebrates its 50th with 10 (!) split-run covers of "style icons"

Oh, wow, it must be nice to have a big budget. GQ, the stylish men's magazine from Conde Nast, is celebrating its 50th anniversary by publishing 10 (count 'em) 10 split-run covers showing "style icons" from 5 decades. This according to the lead story in minOnline.

Before GQ launched in 1957 (then as the Apparel Arts supplement to Esquire), the typical man dressed, à la the 1956 Gregory Peck movie, in that all-conforming gray flannel suit. GQ was the catalyst to the men's-fashion revolution, and editor-in-chief (since March 2003) Jim Nelson tells min that in the October commemorative, "we chose 50 men who epitomized style and change." Ten are on the split-run covers--from 'godfathers of cool' Sean Connery, Paul Newman, and Robert Redford to the present-day Tom Brady and Johnny Depp--representing what Nelson says "is, in a fashion sense, the ascent of man." Others in the "fraternity" are Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan, John F. Kennedy, Jack Nicholson, and Al Pacino. Five are shown here:

min, a pricey, invaluable newsletter about the media industry, notes the perception of GQ as a "gay" magazine 20 or 30 years ago, when this was decidely not considered a compliment.

How much better conditions now are debatable, but September 2007 cover Barack Obama certainly did not react like JFK did in February 1962, when he railed to the late Time White House bureau chief Hugh Sidey about being on the cover of a "clothing magazine" that the less politically correct Bobby Kennedy called a "fag rag" (min, March 31, 2003).

But GQ's greatest influence has come since August 1983, when Condé Nast chairman S.I. Newhouse, Jr.--four years after paying $9.2 million for the magazine--hired the late Art Cooper as editor-in-chief. Editor Nelson described the 1983-2003 reign of his predecessor with one word: "substantative".

"He remade GQ to fit his image of an 'every guy,' with politics, sports, cars, and girls joining fashion and lifestyle. Art blew the lid off of GQ."