10 Things Jonathan Van Ness Can't Live Without

Another essential that I'm obsessed with,

absolutely obsessed.

Have never been more obsessed with anything...

And do I realize that this is 11 products?

I do, GQ. Okay?

But you gotta show everything.

Don't want these to get jealous.

How did you get here, GQ?

I'm Jonathan Van Ness and these are my essentials.

[upbeat music]

One of the things that I'm obsessed with is a cute bag.

Throw it to me. Olly oop.

Oh my God, did you see it? I caught it.

Oh my God.

Just a great bag.

You know, in this case it's a clutch.

Like, get away, you know?

It's kind of one of those. It's gorgeous.

This was an impulse buy in Australia of 2020,

right before everything shut down.

I bought it and then I didn't leave the house for two years.

But yes, it's always all about an essential, gorgeous bag.

Let's talk about what's in the bag.

Lube. Just kidding. [laughs]

A Mophie, wallet, typically my phone,

but it's right next to me, and then another Mophie.

This thing is a life changer.

I don't know if you know what this thing is.

What do you think it is? A sex toy?

No. What else do you think it is?

No, not that either.

This thing is so that you can do this.

Phone holder. Who knew?

Could do a FaceTime.

You could do a TikTok.

You could do anything really.

I basically never don't have one.

I always have one in my purse or my luggage

and I have like literally one

in every single room in my house.

Ah, another essential is a great jacket.

Now I know that this looks like a duvet cover.

It is in fact, a gorgeous jacket.

Not to name drop, but it is Missoni.

And also not to double name drop, but I saw that Bretman

has this fucking same jacket, oh my God.

I run very warm, so I am not someone who can just, like,

wear a jacket 'cause it's cute if it's hot outside.

You know, who can though? Karamo.

It will be 127 degrees outside

and he's like let me put a bomber on it and a hat.

I literally, in the pandem-dem,

have been able to escape the COVID-19.

You know what I did not escape?

Was COVID-65, which is when you gained 65 pounds

from eating so much at home.

I couldn't stop making chicken fajita casseroles,

I couldn't stop making cakes, pies, cookies.

I realized halfway through the pandem-dem

that none of my jeans fit anymore.

And so I just started wearing t-shirt dresses

and I know that they're gonna fit again.

Like, everything's fine.

And even if they don't, it's also still fine,

but this is just like this great t-shirt dress.

It's really cute.

So comfortable, there's pockets,

it's a good price point.

I just love a great t-shirt dress.

It gives you, like, substitute teacher,

but with style.

That's my truth.

Guess what my first sentence was.

Anyone. Guess.

You're not gonna guess.

My first full sentence was no buttons, no snaps, no zippers.

I hated to feel bound up.

So what I've always is a great pair of tights.

They just made me feel like I was, like, Betty Okino,

they made me feel like I was Kerri Strug,

they made me feel like I was Kim Zmeskal

which are all very famous gymnasts

from the late 80s, early 90s.

And I also like this big, thick band on the top

because it just makes me feel [inhales]

just all lookin', sittin' pretty, you know what I mean?

Very versatile, very day to night.

Simple, great, stun.

You can put a t-shirt dress over it,

you can put a skirt over it,

you can really do so much with a great pair of tights.

Herbivore coconut milk bath soap.

This...

This is how we show things on YouTube.

It's really gorgeous.

It looks like contraband on an airplane

but it's really not.

You can just really smell the coconut.

It's so stunning, but here's why I love this stuff.

I love baths generally speaking

but I hate feeling dried out afterwards.

So this coconut melt bath

is really, like, assuaging to the skin.

It feels really moisturizing when you get out of the bath.

You don't have to put on a bunch of lotion.

I love taking baths because there's just something

about a bath that feels very relaxing.

It feels intentional, especially when you add something

like a nice bath soak in it,

whether there's the aroma therapy aspect of it

or the skin conditioning aspects of it.

I also like that during a bath

you can just throw on a face mask.

You can multitask.

And I also, full disclosure, was gonna show you

this other stuff called Pursoma which I also love.

Maybe you could like fly in a graphic or something.

I'm also obsessed with it, but I did forget that bag.

First of all, can we talk about these colors?

Gorgeous.

This JVN Hair. This is like my baby.

And when people ask me what my favorite thing is,

I'm like why would you ask me that?

Like, they're all so important, equally favorite,

but they all have different jobs.

I formulated JVN Hair for hair concern, not hair type,

because one thing about hair is, is that all hair is hair.

Hair is hair is hair.

All hair either needs more moisture

or it wants more body and volume

or it wants to have more strength.

I always knew that I loved hair.

I think it was like the Miss USA Pageant 1990,

or it could have been

the US National Figure Skating Championships in 1991.

Tonya, Kristi Yamaguchi, Nancy Kerrigan.

Oh my God. That's when I knew.

I just, I've never fallen out of love with hair ever since.

[claps]

Dark spot serum, honey.

I love Biossance stuff so much.

When it comes to skincare,

mommy's obsessed, like caps lock.

My grandpa, he's 90 and he's, he's not a nightmare,

he's just 90, you know?

And like 90 year old men,

they wanna like wash their faces with Dial soap.

But I was like, Papa, you're basically taking

like an AK-47 to your most sensitive skin on your face.

I need you to use more gentle skincare.

And he was like, Oh, I don't want to, it's not gonna...

And I was like, Yes it is.

And he literally emailed me yesterday,

not kidding, yesterday, and he said,

I can't believe it.

My skin looks so different. It looks so much better.

Can you handle?

So yeah, we love Biossance.

It's an essential for me

and also essential for other people, too.

I love needlepointing.

It's really cute.

This is kind of anticlimactic

'cause my mom just gave me this for Christmas.

I just like to travel with needlepoint

so that I can have something to work on.

This is this cute cat pillow that I'm gonna make.

It just keeps your fingers busy. It's kind of fun.

There's a million different stitches you can do.

They also make really cute presents

'cause you can just, like,

I feel like it really says like I love you

that I spent hours needle pointing this thing for you.

It's like love.

And like my grandma always did it.

My mom is really into it.

So it just feels cute and like connected

to my family or something.

The final essential. Photos, right?

Our animals, our families.

We just love them so much.

I'm just gonna show you a few.

Ugh.

This cat.

Baby G. Genevieve.

Liza Meownelli.

Look at Liza Meownelli.

She has overcome panleukopenia and eye herpes

and irritable bowel syndrome.

Fighter.

She did give Lady G herpes, though, of the eye.

Matilda. She's magic, just like Roald Dahl's classic.

Elton. He's so sweet.

Baggy.

Baggy.

There's a couple more, sorry.

Larry.

He's a weather man.

If you've followed my Instagram for long enough,

you may have seen when he was a meteorologist.

He did suffer from burnout

from having to report so much meteorological events in 2020

so he wants to take a step back from meteorology

but he is gonna come back to being a weatherman.

He's very, he's my most artsy.

Here's Pablo.

And then the other essential is my gorgeous husband.

Look at that.

Look at my...

My husband.

That's us with Elton.

When we were a transatlantic couple pre-pandemic,

pictures were really nice and made me feel closer.

And they really help me when I'm out of town with the cats.

I miss them so much when I'm not home.

So pictures make me feel so much closer

to my little babies and it just makes me feel

like I'm touching home base, even if I'm away.

GQ, thank you so much for having me on.

Thank you for letting me tell you about my essentials.

I hope you, like, learned something fun about me today.

I hope we just bonded a little bit more.

This was so much fun.

[gasps] And actually,

this just in, don't forget to watch

Getting Curious on Netflix January 28th.

Ah!

Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness,

January 28th, Netflix.

Yes!

All right, you have a good day.

I love y'all. Bye.