The September 2002 issue of GQ magazine was its 45th Anniversary issue. It was a very large issue, coming in at just under 500 pages. Now, a lot (I dare say most) of that space was taken up by ads or pseudo-ads (i.e., short paragraphs telling you how much the item(s) the models were wearing cost), mostly for clothing. However, it also features several good articles. Some of them detailed events from US history during the magazine's 45-year run up to that point, including discussions of the Presidents during that time frame, and some covered more current events, such as how life had changed since the 9/11 attacks, which had occurred a year earlier. The two most interesting articles were one about what, at the time, were allegations against R. Kelly, and one about Eduard Pernkopf, an Austrian anatomy professor who aligned himself with the Germans during World War II, and the ethical debate over his Atlas of Human Anatomy and its use in education.
The magazine's main pictorial features Hedi Klum (who is also on the cover) in which she recreates looks of famous stars such as Bardot and Farah Fawcett, or movie scenes such as the pool scene from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, the interview scene from Basic Instinct, and the flower petal scene from American Beauty.
Overall, the issue has a lot of good content mixed with a lot of stuff that you can easily just flip by. It did not really need to be as large as it was, but given that print magazines are largely going extinct, and those that still exist only put out a few issues a year, with limited content, even with the fluff, this has more substance than a lot of what is being put out today. Ultimately, it will give you a decent look at what things were like (and popular) in the early 2000s and is worth checking out.
