Adriana Lima for Esquire UK, May 2013

In spring 2013, Brazilian supermodel Adriana Lima appeared in Esquire UK’s May issue in a black-and-white set photographed by Matt Jones. The feature landed at a familiar point in her public career: long established as a Victoria’s Secret Angel, still one of the most recognizable faces in commercial fashion, and still capable of turning a men’s-magazine shoot into something that felt closer to cinema stills than catalog pages.

Esquire’s British edition, like its American sibling, has long mixed journalism with fashion that borrows the grammar of lifestyle—shirts half open, domestic props, outdoor light—rather than runway severity alone. Jones’s frames for Lima lean into that language. Window blinds, a lawn chair, a garden hose, even a cereal box: ordinary objects become foil for a model whose fame was already global. The three images preserved here sketch the tone of the May 2013 story without pretending to be the whole magazine package.

Window light and striped waistband

The first frame is intimate and high-key. Lima sits mid-thigh to head, knees drawn toward her chest, eyes locked on the lens with a steady, unsmiling hold. Long dark waves frame her face and spill over her shoulders. A thin chain necklace falls in a single vertical line. Light bikini bottoms show a dark horizontally striped waistband; arms and pose keep the composition modest within the conventions of a 2013 men’s editorial. Behind her, blinds cut geometric texture into a blown-out white field—window light as both source and set design.

Black-and-white does particular work here. Without color, the story becomes contrast and contour: the glow along hair and shoulders, the soft falloff on skin, the hard-soft mix of Venetian geometry against a living face. Jones does not clutter the room. The blinds are enough architecture. Lima’s gaze does the rest. For readers who knew her primarily from saturated Victoria’s Secret campaigns—wings, sequins, stage smoke—this quieter register was a reminder that her modeling career had always included editorial stillness as well as runway spectacle.

By 2013 she had already spent more than a decade as one of the brand’s most visible Angels, walking the annual show and fronting fragrance and lingerie imagery that circulated far beyond fashion week calendars. Esquire UK’s decision to photograph her in monochrome, with domestic light instead of a fantasy set, fits a broader men’s-magazine habit of that period: cast a famous beauty, then stage “off-duty” glamour that still reads as polished. The window seat (or bed edge) is not documentary; it is a controlled invitation to look closer at face and posture.

Lawn chair, open shirt, Lucky Charms

The second image moves outdoors and turns playful. Lima reclines in a light, thin-framed lawn chair on grass, trees and patio soft behind her. A white long-sleeved shirt hangs fully unbuttoned over a bikini top; one hand lifts a delicate chain from her chest, the other rests on a large box of Lucky Charms cereal planted in her lap. Bracelet on one wrist, ring on the other. Bright daylight throws crisp shadows. She looks into the camera with a slight pout—relaxed, aware of the joke.

The cereal box is the editorial’s loudest prop. Children’s breakfast branding against supermodel poise is deliberate dissonance, a classic men’s-magazine move that undercuts solemnity without abandoning desire. Lucky the Leprechaun and a “Magical Movie” promo graphic sit in the same frame as Lima’s open shirt and direct gaze. That collision is the point: high fashion and supermarket aisle sharing one sunny afternoon. In black and white, the box’s graphics become tonal pattern rather than rainbow noise, so the irony stays elegant instead of cartoon-loud.

Matt Jones’s outdoor light here is harder than the window glow of the first frame. Grass reads in the foreground; foliage blurs into summer depth. The lawn chair’s thin metal lines keep the pose from sinking into pure beach-cliché. Lima’s posture—reclined but engaged—sells the fiction of leisure. Esquire UK’s May 2013 readers would have recognized the genre immediately: celebrity fashion that borrows backyard props to feel approachable while the casting remains aspirational. Adriana Lima, already a household name through Victoria’s Secret, did not need introduction; the cereal did the introducing for the concept.

There is also a career note embedded in the playfulness. Models who spend years as lingerie icons risk being photographed only in one register. A shoot that lets her hold grocery packaging, wear an oversized shirt like a robe, and sit in plastic garden furniture expands the public image without abandoning the glamour that made the booking valuable. The May issue timing—spring into early summer on UK newsstands—matches the sunny backyard fiction. Magazine calendars in 2013 still rewarded seasonal cues that felt light after winter features.

Hose, hoodie, gingham shorts

The third frame crops to torso and thigh in profile. Lima stands in a garden, left arm extended with a dark hose nozzle; a faint spray arcs toward plants out of frame. She wears a light short-sleeved hooded sweatshirt with gathered shoulder detail and hanging drawstrings, cropped enough to show a sliver of midriff, plus short retro dolphin-style shorts in a dense check or gingham with dark piping and a small back pocket flap. A thin metallic bangle—screw-motif “Love”-style—sits on the wrist that holds the hose. Background foliage dissolves into soft bokeh.

If the cereal shot is witty still life, this one is motion suggestion. Watering plants is ordinary labor dressed as editorial chic. The checkered shorts and cinched hoodie lean retro-athletic rather than eveningwear; the monochrome treatment emphasizes knit texture and print scale. Shallow depth of field isolates the gesture—hand, nozzle, spray—so the garden becomes atmosphere instead of botanical inventory. Men’s magazines of the early 2010s often chased this “weekend at a house with a yard” fantasy: famous women performing light domestic tasks in fashion-forward casuals. Jones executes the trope cleanly, without over-lighting or clutter.

Adriana Lima’s physical presence does the remaining work. Even cropped away from a full face, the frame reads as her: the posture, the jewelry, the ease of someone accustomed to cameras in informal setups. That ease is trained. Editorial days are long; props like hoses and cereal boxes are not accidents—they are scheduled beats in a shot list designed to give an art director variety across a spread. From intimate window portrait to backyard irony to chore-as-fashion, the three surviving images map a complete little arc for the May 2013 Esquire UK story.

Matt Jones, Esquire UK, and the 2013 context

Photographer credit matters because the look is not generic stock glamour. Jones’s black-and-white handling—bright blowouts, readable skin, props that stay sharp—ties the set together across indoor and outdoor locations. Esquire UK’s May issue placement put Lima in conversation with whatever else the magazine was covering that month: culture, style, and the particular British edition’s mix of imported celebrity and local voice. For international readers discovering the feature through blogs and fashion roundups, the takeaway was simpler: Adriana Lima, still at peak visibility, photographed with humor and soft daylight rather than only runway armor.

Victoria’s Secret remained the loudest association in her public biography in 2013, and tags on galleries from that year often listed the brand beside Esquire even when the clothes were not VS product. That association was accurate as career context, not as a claim that every frame was a campaign still. Editorial work for magazines like Esquire UK sat beside commercial contracts; both fed the same fame economy. Looking back from later years, these May 2013 pictures document a moment when print men’s fashion still circulated widely as scans and blog posts—exactly the path that preserved these three files.

What the set leaves you with

Taken together, the window portrait, the Lucky Charms lawn-chair frame, and the garden-hose crop show Adriana Lima as Esquire UK wanted her that spring: glamorous, game for a joke, and comfortable in black-and-white leisure. Matt Jones’s camera treats her face and posture as the constant; props and locations supply the variation. That division of labor is classic editorial craft.

If you return to only one image, make it the cereal box—the clearest signature of the May 2013 concept—or the blinds portrait if you want the quieter power of her stare. Either way, the shoot remains a neat time capsule of early-2010s magazine style: famous casting, monochrome polish, and everyday objects invited onto the set to keep desire from becoming solemn.