Short answers, pulled from the story.
Esquire was founded in October 1933 by Arnold Gingrich, David A. Smart, and Henry L. Jackson as an offshoot of the trade magazine Apparel Arts. It was first headquartered in Chicago before moving to New York City.
In Hannegan v. Esquire, Inc., 327 U.S. 146 (1946), the United States Supreme Court ruled that Esquire's right to use the postal service was protected by the First Amendment. The case arose from a 1943 charge by Democratic Postmaster General Frank Comerford Walker, acting for the Roosevelt administration, alleging that the magazine had used the mail to distribute lewd images.
Gordon Lish served as Esquire's fiction editor from 1969 to 1976 and became known as Captain Fiction for the writers he championed. He is credited with publishing Raymond Carver's short stories and encouraging Carver's minimalism, often over the objections of editor Harold Hayes.
Clay Felker relaunched Esquire as Esquire Fortnightly in 1978, abandoning the script logo used since 1933. The experiment failed quickly; by the end of 1978 the magazine had lost five million dollars, and Felker sold it in 1979 to the Tennessee-based 13-30 Corporation.
Editor Harold Hayes, who ran Esquire from 1961 to 1973, made the magazine a center of New Journalism by publishing Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Tim O'Brien, John Sack, and Terry Southern. In August 1969, Esquire also published one of the first reports on American atrocities committed against Vietnamese civilians.
Esquire currently operates twenty-three international editions. These include Esquire UK (since 1991), Esquire Korea (since 1995), Esquire Türkiye (since 1993), and newer editions such as Esquire Saudi (since 2021) and Esquire France, which is set to launch in 2026.