The Ceremony
The Komische Oper in Berlin hosted GQ’s 18th annual awards ceremony for their Men of the Year,
and eight hundred and fifty people showed up to watch other people get trophies. That’s a lot of people to convince that this matters, but they managed it, mostly because Bill Murray was in the building.
Murray got the Legend
award from actress Lisa Martinek, which is the kind of category that writes itself. You hand Bill Murray a trophy and everyone’s happy because Bill Murray is incapable of not being the best part of any room he enters.
Naomi Campbell took Model of the Century
from Philipp Plein. It’s one of those awards that only works if you’re giving it to someone who actually deserves it, and Campbell absolutely does. That category could have felt empty—could have been pure marketing—but Campbell’s actual presence in the culture makes it land differently.
Cro won Man of the Year - Music National
and performed an unreleased song called Noch da
to celebrate. There’s something funny about winning an award and then immediately proving why you won it by playing new music, like you’ve already moved past the point where the trophy matters.
The BossHoss showed up in the Entertainment category and did Jolene.
A German country rock band playing American country to a Berlin crowd—it shouldn’t work, but it did. That’s the thing about The BossHoss; they have the energy to carry you past any doubt about the whole setup.
Palina Rojinski, Bonnie Strange, Sara Nuru—the usual circuit of people who understand that a black-tie evening is just a room to navigate, no different than any other. You either know how to move through these things or you don’t.
At a certain point you realize these ceremonies aren’t really about the awards at all. They’re just a night where everyone agrees to dress up and care about the same thing simultaneously. The trophies are beside the point.