Adam Baidawi recalls being enthralled by GQ magazine the first time he pored through an issue as a teenager in suburban Melbourne, Australia.
Some two decades later — and on the other side of the world — Mr. Baidawi will now take the helm of the men’s magazine as its next global editorial director.
Condé Nast, the publisher of GQ and other brands like Vogue and The New Yorker, on Tuesday announced Mr. Baidawi’s promotion to the top job, effective immediately. Mr. Baidawi, 35, who led British GQ and was the deputy global editorial director, will now oversee all of GQ, including its U.S. publication and its global editions, as well as the music publication Pitchfork, which was folded into GQ in 2024.
He replaces the longtime GQ editor Will Welch, who announced in January after a run atop the masthead that he was leaving to move to Paris to work with Pharrell Williams, the musician and men’s creative director for Louis Vuitton.
Mr. Baidawi’s appointment is the latest shake-up of the top editorial ranks at Condé Nast, which in recent months has promoted a new generation of internal talent. In June, Mark Guiducci, the 37-year-old creative director of Vogue, became the top editor of Vanity Fair. And last fall, Chloe Malle, 40, the editor of Vogue’s website, succeeded Anna Wintour as American Vogue’s top editor. (Ms. Wintour, 76, remains Vogue’s global editorial director as well as the chief content officer for Condé Nast.)
Mr. Baidawi, who is Iraqi-Australian, started his career as a music writer and wrote freelance articles for the Australian edition of GQ. He spent a year as an Australia correspondent for The New York Times before spotting a job advertisement looking for someone to launch GQ Middle East. He was named the editor in chief of GQ Middle East in 2018 at age 28, making him the youngest-ever editor in chief of a GQ edition.
In 2021, Mr. Baidawi became the deputy global editorial director of GQ and the head of editorial content of British GQ.
In an interview from London, Mr. Baidawi said he wanted to restore GQ “to its rightful place as the North Star of masculinity” and to have the magazine be “more participatory in the cultural and political debates of our time.”
Mr. Baidawi added that while there was a lot of hand wringing currently about the online “manosphere” and toxic masculinity, the current counterprogramming amounted to lectures and earnestness.
“I’m curious to propose a version of masculinity that is yes, progressive, yes, modern, but is also sexier and cooler and more aspirational and more desirable than some of the nihilism or cruelty or vanity that we see out there,” he said.
Mr. Baidawi also said he planned to incorporate more long-form video and long-form audio into the GQ brand.
In a statement, Ms. Wintour described Mr. Baidawi as “a cultural thinker at a time when the culture needs to be thought through, and even interrogated a little.”
“This is someone GQ’s readers can expect to challenge received wisdom — about modern masculinity and the worlds of celebrity, sport and fashion — and have a lot of fun doing so,” she said.
Mr. Baidawi will relocate to New York, and his first print issue of GQ will publish in September.
Katie Robertson covers the media industry for The Times. Email: [email protected]
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