Esquire (magazine)

Lore & Background

Founded in 1933, it flourished during the Great Depression and World War II under the guidance of founders Arnold Gingrich, David A. Smart, and Henry L. Jackson while during the 1960s it pioneered the New Journalism movement. After a period of quick and drastic decline during the 1990s, the magazine revamped itself as a lifestyle-heavy publication under the direction of David Granger.

A Depression-Era Gamble That Became a Cultural Institution

Esquire launched in October 1933 as a spinoff of Apparel Arts, a trade publication that would later evolve into Gentleman's Quarterly. The three men behind it—Arnold Gingrich, David A. Smart, and Henry L. Jackson—brought complementary strengths: Gingrich handled publishing strategy, Smart managed business operations, and Jackson curated the fashion content that dominated the magazine's first fifteen years. Their political differences, with Jackson leaning Republican and Smart toward the Democratic side, even produced published debates within the magazine's pages.

What was originally planned as a modest quarterly run of one hundred thousand copies at fifty cents apiece quickly outgrew its ambitions. By the January 1934 second issue, the title had already transformed into a more polished periodical featuring contributions from literary heavyweights like Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and André Gide. The publication shared ownership with its parent company for nearly four and a half decades, and its headquarters shifted from Chicago to New York City as it expanded.

Pioneering New Journalism and Speaking Truth to Power

Under editor Harold Hayes from 1961 to 1973, Esquire shed its earlier identity as a fashion-and-pinup publication and became a laboratory for a new kind of American writing. Hayes championed the New Journalism movement, giving a platform to voices such as Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Tim O'Brien, Terry Southern, and John Sack. The magazine's distinctive oversized pages—roughly twenty-six by thirty-four centimeters—gave these long-form pieces room to breathe in a way standard periodicals could not. Esquire also took editorial risks that carried real consequences.

In August 1969, it ran Normand Poirier's "An American Atrocity," among the earliest published accounts of violence against Vietnamese civilians. The magazine even ventured into music, partnering with Verve Records in the mid-1960s to produce "Sound Tour" vinyl LPs offering travel advice paired with curated soundtracks. By 1971, however, Esquire joined the industry-wide shift to the smaller standard letter format, marking the close of an era.

Survival, Setbacks, and the Granger Turnaround

The 1970s and 1980s tested Esquire's resilience. In 1977, Clay Felker acquired the magazine and attempted a bold reinvention as a fortnightly publication, abandoning the script logo that had anchored the brand since 1933. The experiment collapsed within a year, bleeding five million dollars, and Felker sold the title to the Tennessee-based 13-30 Corporation, which restored the monthly cadence. That company also launched New York Woman as a female-audience spinoff before the partnership dissolved in 1986, sending Esquire to Hearst.

The early 1990s brought a deeper crisis: the flood of new male lifestyle titles and broader industry contraction eroded circulation, threatening a magazine that had long catered to a highly literate, older readership. David M. Granger arrived in June 1997, fresh from a six-year turnaround of GQ, and pivoted Esquire toward a lifestyle-forward identity. Under his leadership the magazine collected multiple National Magazine Awards and assembled a celebrated roster of staff writers including Tom Chiarella, Scott Raab, Chris Jones, Cal Fussman, Lisa Taddeo, and Tom Junod.

Pinups, Esky, and the Visual Language of a Generation

Few magazines have built as recognizable a visual identity as Esquire. The pinup tradition ran from the Petty Girls beginning in 1933 through the Vargas Girls starting in 1940, and later Al Moore's illustrations in the 1950s. The popularity of these images among servicemen during World War II drove circulation but also provoked legal trouble: in 1943, Postmaster General Frank Comerford Walker sued the magazine on behalf of the Roosevelt administration, alleging it used the U.S. Postal Service to distribute "lewd images." Republicans rallied in opposition, and in 1946 the Supreme Court ruled in Hannegan v. Esquire, Inc. that the magazine's mailing rights were protected under the First Amendment.

Equally iconic was "Esky," the blond, mustachioed, pop-eyed character created by E. Simms Campbell and Sam Berman, who graced nearly every cover for over twenty-five years. From 1962 until 1978, a stylized version of his face served as the dot on the "i" in the logo. The character resurfaced periodically through the 1980s, 1990s, a short-lived music award in the 2000s, and again during Jay Fielden's 2010s editorship.

Reader's Guide

Esquire is an American men’s magazine published in the United States by Hearst, with more than twenty international editions. It was founded in 1933 and thrived during the Great Depression and World War II under founders Arnold Gingrich, David A. Smart, and Henry L. Jackson. In the 1960s, it helped launch the New Journalism movement. After a sharp decline in the 1990s, it was revamped as a lifestyle-focused publication under David Granger.

The first issue came out in October 1933, spun off from the trade magazine Apparel Arts, which later became Gentleman’s Quarterly; Esquire and GQ shared ownership for nearly forty-five years. The magazine started in Chicago before moving to New York City.

The three founders had distinct roles: Gingrich handled publishing, Smart managed the business side, and Jackson ran the fashion section, which dominated the magazine’s first fifteen years. Jackson died in a 1948 plane crash; Gingrich led the magazine until his death in 1976; Smart left in 1936 to start Coronet and died in 1952. Their political differences—Jackson was a Republican, Smart a liberal Democrat—allowed the magazine to publish debates between them.

Esquire was initially planned as a quarterly with a press run of one hundred thousand copies, priced at fifty cents each. Demand was so strong that by its second issue in January 1934, it became a more polished periodical focused on men’s fashion, featuring work by Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Alberto Moravia, André Gide, and Julian Huxley.

During the 1940s, the Petty Girls and Vargas Girls boosted circulation, especially among military personnel, but also sparked controversy. In 1943, Postmaster General Frank Comerford Walker, a Democrat, charged the magazine with using the U.S. Postal Service to promote lewd images on behalf of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration.

Republicans opposed the suit, and in 1946 the Supreme Court ruled in Hannegan v. Esquire, Inc. that Esquire’s mailing rights were protected by the First Amendment. In the 1950s, Al Moore took over as the main pinup illustrator from Petty, who had worked for Esquire from 1933 to 1956, and Vargas, who was hired in 1940 and worked until 1946.

Starting with its second issue, a blond, pop-eyed, mustachioed character named Esky, created by cartoonists E. Simms Campbell and Sam Berman, appeared on nearly every Esquire cover for more than twenty-five years. Under Harold Hayes, who ran the magazine from 1961 to 1973, Esquire became known for its oversized pages and helped pioneer New Journalism, publishing writers like Norman Mailer, Tim O’Brien, John Sack, Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, and Terry Southern.

In the mid-1960s, it partnered with Verve Records to release a series of Sound Tour vinyl LPs offering travel advice and music. In August 1969, it printed Normand Poirier’s “An American Atrocity,” one of the first reports of American atrocities against Vietnamese civilians. In 1971, like many magazines of the era, Esquire shrank from its traditional large format to standard letter size.

The original owners sold the magazine to Clay Felker in 1977. Felker relaunched it as Esquire Fortnightly in 1978, dropping the script logo used since 1933, but the experiment failed, losing $5 million by year’s end.

He sold it in 1979 to the 13-30 Corporation, a Tennessee publisher, which returned it to a monthly schedule starting with the July issue. In 1986, the 13-30 Corporation, now renamed the Esquire Magazine Group, launched New York Woman as a spin-off for a female audience. The company split at the end of that year; Esquire was sold to Hearst, while New York Woman went to American Express Publishing and ran until 1992.

The rise of male-oriented lifestyle magazines in the early 1990s and industry problems in the mid-1990s caused a sustained circulation decline that threatened Esquire’s future. The magazine had long targeted an elegant, highly literate audience—until the late 1970s, it published a back-to-college issue each September, and in the late 1980s, it issued a year-end register of leading cultural figures under forty.

Did You Know?

• The magazine cost fifty cents per copy at its launch.
• The character 'Esky' appeared on almost every Esquire front page for over 25 years.