The weather might have been subpar in the Cotswolds for the first day of GQ Heroes 2024 , but the vibes were anything but. Our annual ideas festival — once again hosted at Soho Farmhouse, a bucolic little spot in the Oxfordshire countryside — kicked off with talks from Oscar-winning actor Russell Crowe , football legend Ian Wright , menswear maestro Sir Paul Smith and women’s rights activist Taban Shoresh. A little mist of rain couldn’t dampen any moods.
Just ask Crowe , who arrived at Heroes just days after playing Glasto (he’s a rockstar, too). “What a nice spot for a chat,” he said, taking to the stage with GQ deputy editorial director Adam Baidawi for the first of the afternoon’s talks. In a conversation covering everything from the time he almost got poisoned to death by a tarantula to reworking the “fuckin’ rubbish” Gladiator script from the ground up, he was at his blunt, says-it-how-it-is best.
Russell Crowe and GQ deputy editorial director Adam Baidawi. So the bar was set high — truly, what an unenviable act to follow — but Sir Paul Smith and GQ editorial director Will Welch killed it in an energised conversation about the fashion legend’s life and career. (Smith even nicked a roll of orange tape from our tech crew, doing some on-the-spot designing to give his trousers a signature pop of colour).
The 77-year-old capped off his spirited talk with some valuable life advice: “Fashion is not that serious: it’s not saving lives; it’s not .
