All about men
Men want the overview. Women want the details. Men are more aggressive. Women take the soft approach.
This, "Esquire Philippines"editor-in-chief Erwin Romulo knows all too well. That's why a fashion pictorial or article for the men's magazine doesn't focus on mixing and matching coordinates as much as it does in what's best to wear, say, for summer or a corporate event.
"We show the entire picture. We show fashion in context," Erwin explains.
A masculine look defines the cover. This month's Ely Buendia cover, for instance, has a solid gray background. The fonts, except for the magazine's logo, are big and bold.
"It's a very aggressive type of cover," relates Erwin. "It reaches out to you, tries to grab your attention."
Who wouldn't take a second look at an Ely Buendia who trades his signature jeans for a formal suit and a pair of black shiny shoes?
After all, Ely, like everyman, wants to look better, more stylish.
"The core values of Esquire all these years have remained the same," declares Erwin. "It' for men with a certain style; who want to look better, be smarter."
And so they picked two Mannys: business tycoon Manny V. Pangilinan (MVP) and Manny Pacquiao to grace earlier covers.
MVP shed his corporate image and unabashedly revealed that he's as human as the guy next door.
"He's very personable, very funny," notes Erwin.
So he and the staff bravely left the beaten path and showed a smiling MVP swamped with handwritten chalk prints, not stiff fonts. The message: The guy is human after all.
"When we shot and interviewed Mr. Pangilinan, we were delightfully surprised that he wasn't a stuck-up figure. We thought of humanizing him to show that he's not a stiff man," recalls Erwin.
Come to think of it, whether you head giant corporations or you're slaving it out in an eight-to-five job, men — and women are — the same.
They laugh, they cry, but they also reach out for the stars.
Esquire is a tribute to this humanness in the male specie — and what we can learn from it
