SMILING THROUGH THE APOCALYPSE

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In the past few weeks, Will Welch has taken a bit of flack for letting Beyoncé promote her new whiskey label on the cover of GQ’s October issue, with an interview that one X user described as “an intimate email exchange between GQ and several layers of Beyonce’s comms team.”

Whether that kind of thing rankles you or not—and yes, we asked him about it—in the five years since Welch took over, GQ seems to be doing as well or better than everybody else in the industry. Why? Ask around. He’s got a direct line to celebrities, who consider him a personal friend. He’s got real credibility with The Fashion People. And because of both of these things, advertisers love him.

Perhaps most importantly, his boss Anna Wintour loves him. 

The Atlanta-born Welch started his career at the alternative music and culture mag the Fader in the early aughts, and jumped to GQ in 2007. For a decade under EIC Jim Nelson, he operated as the magazine’s fashion-and-culture svengali, eventually becoming the creative director of the magazine and the editor of the brand’s fashion spinoff, GQ Style.

In 2019, Wintour tapped him for the big job: Editor-in-Chief of GQ—a title that in 2020 was recast in the current Condé Nast survival-mode as Global Editorial Director of GQ, overseeing 19 editions around the world.

After speaking with Welch only a few hours after the Beyonce cover dropped, we get what all the fuss is about. He is a great sport with good hair and just enough of a Southern accent who is confident-yet-never-cocky about his mission at GQ.

Let other people bemoan the “death of print.” Will Welch is having a blast at the Last Supper. 

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This episode is made possible by our friends at Mountain Gazette, Commercial Type, and Freeport Press.

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