English Summary
Editor’s Letter
By Igor Garanin
(page 38)
A few days ago I had a most amusing conversation. My interlocutor burned with envy, lamented and was at a loss about the fact that certain individuals, both male and female and well-known within specific circles, seemed to do nothing more than change outfits and travel to exotic countries. “But look here,” this insulted and offended person continued unabated. “This beauty is yet again skipping along the Champs Elysees, and our mutual acquaintance N seems to have flown to Mykonos for the third time this month. Do they ever work?!” This is a question I hear more and more often these days. A huge number of people continue to psychologically remain in the 20th century, and they believe that to earn money and your daily bread you have to run to the office at 9am every day. And they can’t understand what people live on if they constantly change cities and directions. Little do the haters know: today success isn’t about the number of hours you sit in an office, but how quickly you solve problems, about being informed, able to analyze things quickly and make decisions without superfluous reflection. Things that used to require an hour and a half-long meeting now take just a few clicks in the elevator, somewhere between the first and fourth floor.
I thought up this issue’s cover with Svetlana Loboda while I was on holiday in Portugal. The pop singer agreed to do a photo shoot with her two month old daughter Tilda for GQ, and she flew to Moscow for several hours just for that. I was in touch with the studio and received the photographs on Whatsapp, as I was driving to Sintra. Boris Barabanov, the Kommersant music critic who kindly agreed to write a short piece about Loboda, couldn’t keep up with the singer’s frenzied tempo, and we decided that the interview would be conducted via Messenger. For three days, day and night, the author and the singer sent each other messages, photos, videos. I’m sure that this method gave our article more texture than a 40-minute interview in some dressing room. And nevertheless, all that time Loboda, I, and perhaps Barabanov were all posting beautiful, envy-inducing photographs on social media.