British GQ published its annual best and worst dressed men list. This year, the top 10 “worst dressed” men’s list will only include eight people after the publication took China’s President Xi Jinping and Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn off the list.
The publication, which is owned by the corporation Conde Nast, is now being forced to explain why they decided to scrub mention of Jinping and Thailand’s king. “We are conscious that digitally published stories travel globally and can gain traction where they lack the necessary context and can cause unintended offence,” a spokesperson from Conde Nast told BuzzFeed on Friday.
According to sources within Conde Nast, the company forced GQ to take the two political leaders off the online list, but Jinping was left in the print version. “It is not Hong Kong’s courageous freedom fighters that Xi Jinping should have a problem with. It’s his tailor,” the print copy states. “Xi gets totalitarian style cues from his hero, the mass murderer Chairman Mao, who enforced a dour and plain dress code for the Communist Party.”
The caption for Thailand’s king states: “How many others living deities do you know with a penchant for really tight crop tops, hipster jeans and fake tattoos? The answer is none. And that’s because no others exist.”
The top 8 list still included President Trump, who they call “a sad and sorry perennial fixture on this list.” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took second on the list, with GQ saying that he “looks just as bad in a suit as he does in his drab uniform of grey T-shirt and hoodie.” First place for “worst dressed” man belonged to Boris Johnson aide Dominic Cummings for his “unlicensed cab driver” look.
