Fashion

Tuesday

Antonia Hoyle

In praise of the Casio watch

Of all the accessories one might expect a celebrity with millions in the bank and army of stylists at their disposal to choose, a bargain watch is not the most obvious. Yet Casio timepieces – some of which sell for little as £10, and most of which cost under £50 – appear to have become something of a status symbol among a certain strata of the well-off and well-connected. Take former Manchester United footballer Gerard Piqué (estimated net worth £66 million), who split up with pop star Shakira last year. Recently the Colombian singer, 45, released a ‘revenge’ single with lyrics ridiculing the retired Spanish player, her partner of 11 years,

Monday

James Jeffrey

The unique style of Seville

If you want to feel scruffy, head to Seville, the outrageously attractive capital city of southern Spain’s Andalucia region. It’s not just the abundant exquisite architecture – the city has one of the largest historic ‘old towns’ in Europe, with every bar, café and restaurant looking tiptop – but also the sartorial elegance that abounds among the local population, made even more striking by it coexisting in apparent easygoing harmony with the often plain awful turnout of us tourists and visitors. If Santiago de Compostela in north-western Spain is the city of rucksacks and walking sticks, then Seville – currently Google’s most searched-for flight-only destination – is the city of

Tuesday

Kara Kennedy

The empty eco-activism of renting clothes

From time to time my Instagram algorithm will taunt me with a dress. It is – unequivocally ­– the most beautiful dress I’ve ever seen. Satin, emerald green, halter-neck. The dress retails for about £200, and is always sold out in my size. The ad that Instagram teases me with is for a rental, which you can pick up for £73. This is the latest fad in so-called eco-activism. Rent a dress for an astonishing amount – usually a dress that’s sold out or difficult to track down – and you will save the world! Fighting back against the mortal sin that is fast-fashion. The trend is so popular now

Friday

Antonia Hoyle

This old thing: the new fashion brag

The skirt I’ve worn most often recently is long, blue and as comfortable as it is flattering. ‘Why, thank you,’ I reply with a satisfied smile when I’m complimented on its delicate floral print and the way it swishes as I walk. ‘It’s Dorothy Perkins, 2011.’ I may not be able to distinguish Dolce & Gabbana from Dior or have set foot in a clothes shop fitting room since 2020, but when it comes to the newest form of fashion bragging, I excel. Nowadays, you see, it’s not the number on the price tag that counts, but the number of years you’ve owned the garment you’re wearing – and my

Wednesday

Igor Toronyi-Lalic

Apocalypse chic: Autechre, Last Days and Southbank’s Xenakis day reviewed

It was so dark, my friend noted, you could have had sex or done a Hitler salute. No stage lights, no stair lights, no desk lights, no door lights, no usher lights, no exit signs. The few wisps of illumination that did steal in created colossal shadows, giants freeze-framed on the walls. In these snatches the wooden ribcage interior of the Barbican Hall looked demonic. A few photons lit up the Autechre boys, Rob Brown and Sean Booth, who flickered like blue flames rising from a hob. A few more nudged into view the ceiling that had become a vast charcoal grisaille. When, occasionally, someone left, the tiny glowing portal

Wednesday

Deborah Ross

Pleasantly untaxing: Mrs Harris Goes to Paris reviewed

Mrs Harris Goes to Paris is a comedy-drama based on the 1958 novel by Paul Gallico about a cheerful, kind-hearted Battersea charlady who falls in love with a couture dress from Dior, decides she must have one of her own, and off she goes. If you are in the mood for something pleasantly untaxing you will be pleasantly untaxed This is a familiar type of British film. It’s similar in spirit to, say, Florence Foster Jenkins or Paddington or The Duke or that golf one with Mark Rylance. It isn’t but could have been directed by Stephen Frears. It stars Lesley Manville but it could have starred Julie Walters. We

Monday

Alec Marsh

Why Charles is the King of Savile Row

No one who has watched the events of the past ten days could doubt the King’s commitment to his late mother – or to his people. But I think another of Charles III’s commitments is also becoming apparent: one to British tailoring. From his black-braided morning suit when he addressed the Houses of Parliament at Westminster Hall to the ceremonial Air Marshal’s uniform he wore to process the Queen’s coffin from Buckingham Palace to her lying-in-state, His Majesty has been nothing less than impeccably attired at every turn. Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that we’ve got probably the best-dressed head of state in the world. As Prince of Wales, Charles

Friday

Lukas Degutis

Neckerchiefs are a sartorial risk worth taking

Neckerchiefs are an oddity. Once the cowboys’ sweat-wiping tool, they are now a key accessory in the glamour – or camp and borderline tack – of a flight attendant’s uniform. My approach to them tends to sit somewhere in the middle. Neckerchiefs are useful, stylish, rebellious, but comforting – a rare choice for men’s fashionwear. A neckerchief can spice up a dull-coloured shirt without imprisoning your neck in a collar choked by its distant relative, the tie. But before becoming the fabric embodiment of smart-casual, the neckerchief was wholly utilitarian. Sailors began wearing them in the 16th century to combat the discomfort caused by dripping sweat rubbing against their stiff-collared shirts.

Tuesday

Alicia Healey

The art of choosing sunglasses

Only Princess Diana could carry off Wimbledon white-rimmed aviators with such style. Pictured in the Royal Box at The Championships in 1986, The Princess of Wales brought an edge to her natural elegance in these striking shades. White sunglasses scream summer so are a great addition to a holiday wardrobe, pairing well with colourful fabrics.  If you find white too stark then opt for ivory as a softer alternative. Coloured shades You can’t go wrong with a classic Audrey Hepburn style black shade paired with monochrome outfits, but they can sometimes look too harsh with the softer colour palette and floaty frocks of summer. A tinted lens and tortoiseshell frame

Thursday

Daisy Dunn

How interesting an art is fashion?

One of the New York Met Gala stylists is sharing tips for wearing a corset to an evening do. ‘Breathe a lot in the morning,’ he tells the Gucci Podcast, with a discernible smile, ‘and by the time you put on the dress, you’ll be full of oxygen.’ The image of a puffed-up toad comes to mind. It’s a bit nuts, isn’t it, the fashion world? The Met Gala is the ball where anything goes – the costumes are witty and extreme – but even so the commentary on it can be pretty earnest, especially in the American press. The stylists on this podcast speak of dressing celebrities like disco

Thursday

Lynn Barber

Is Anna Wintour human?

Apparently Anna Wintour wants to be seen as human, and Amy Odell’s biography goes some way to helping her achieve that aim. Nearly all the photographs show her smiling, looking friendly, even girlish. And the text quite often mentions her crying. On 9 November 2016 she cried in front of her entire staff because Hillary Clinton lost the election. But then she immediately set about trying to persuade Melania Trump to do a Vogue shoot. Melania, another tough cookie, refused unless she was guaranteed the cover. Dame Anna has been the editor of American Vogue since 1988 and holds a position of extraordinary power in the fashion world. Designers, photographers,

Thursday

Taki

The sad demise of Brooks Brothers

New York Our own Douglas Murray is the canary in the Bagel coal mine as of late. The left controls culture, education and technology over here, but a few canaries are still free to warn the rest of us that we’re being taken for a ride. Here’s a warning to those multimillionaires who get down on one knee every weekend to make themselves feel better for getting lotsa moolah for playing a game in the sun. It has to do with black lives and whether they matter or not. Black lives do matter, but not to those who run the racket that goes by the acronym BLM. According to Murray,

Thursday

Charles Moore

The case against a European army

The end of the Cold War was used by the victors to unite Germany. To balance this, Europhiles created a single currency which, by replacing the deutschmark, would ‘hold Germany down’. The reverse occurred. The euro made Germany the most important power in the European Union, and so it remains. Today, the same Europhiles want to use the rebirth of the Cold War to encourage Germany to re-arm. To balance this, they want to create a truly ‘European’ defence, of which Germany would be a vital part. The EU would prevent Germany from using its force for national needs. For this purpose, they say, Nato would be no good because

Thursday

Horatio Clare

Birds have helped mankind throughout history — but we have repaid them cruelly

Unusually for a book about nature, the species in question, in this lucid story of the relationship between birds and humans, is ours. Why catch six million ibises, attractive water birds with curved beaks, plunge them into vats of liquid resin, wrap them in bandages and bury them in vast cemeteries in Middle Egypt in 650 BC? When There Were Birds explains that these ibises were offerings to Thoth, god of knowledge and wisdom. Throughout this story, faith, cash and custom drive humans to behave in astonishing ways towards birds. From the early 15th century we were moving canaries to the Swiss Alps and southern Germany, where breeders might raise

Thursday

Deborah Ross

Worth seeing for Lady Gaga but little else: House of Gucci reviewed

Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci has been much anticipated. The cast is stellar. It’s based on a luscious, true story (so juicy) featuring vicious family infighting and culminating in a murder. I was thinking Succession, but with luxury leather goods and the hiring of a hit man. It can’t miss, I was thinking. Except it can. Not entirely. It has its moments. But the middle act drags (it’s two hours and 40 minutes long) and also the decision to have the English-speaking cast a-speak-a in Italian accents may not have been the wisest one. There were many times I thought Gino D’Acampo was in the room-a. This stars Lady Gaga

Thursday

Taki

I can finally spill the beans about Halston and Princess Margaret

New York Already on your idiot box via Netflix is a mini-series about a man who also used one name, but burned out rather early due to an outsized ego and too much coke. His name was Halston, and his fame was based on the fact that he designed a pillbox hat that Jackie Kennedy Onassis wore at her hubby’s inauguration. Yes, fame is tricky, especially in America, where self-creation was invented and where superciliousness and sleekness pass for gravity and depth. I knew Halston, he was a friend of my then sister-in-law, but we had zero in common. In fact, he thought I wasn’t important enough to greet in

Thursday

Lara King

The politics of handbags

‘Of course, I am obstinate in defending our liberties and our law — that is why I carry a big handbag,’ Margaret Thatcher once told an interviewer. That handbag was part of the Iron Lady’s suit of armour; a fashion accoutrement turned into a political prop. But an accessory that became instantly recognisable on the outside held secrets on the inside. Thatcher referred to it as the only ‘leak-proof’ place in Downing Street, and it was a bag of tricks from which she might conjure pertinent quotes from Abraham Lincoln or Friedrich Hayek, or a crumpled brief from a mysterious source. Norman Tebbit said the art of being a successful

Thursday

Rod Liddle

Make Status Quo sound like Stockhausen: AC/DC’s Power Up reviewed

Grade: C The fear is this: you’re wearing a leather jacket and hipster jeans and think you look cool, but you can’t fasten either item of clothing and your teeth have fallen out. Instead you are simply an undignified granddad and everybody knows it. Hell, I’ve been there, over the years, until kindly women intervened. Apparently no women have intervened with guitarist Angus Young. He’s still wearing his short-trousered schoolboy outfit, gurning like a man who has just discovered a kidney stone, at the age of 65. No matter how desperately, inelegantly, you cling to your youth, there’s always Angus to make you look kind of measured. The Aussie-Geordie alliance

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: The limitations of a Covid vaccine

Still distant Sir: In James Forsyth’s analysis (‘Boris’s booster shot’, 14 November) he infers that a vaccine, if provided to the majority of the UK population, would deliver herd immunity from Covid-19, noting that ‘it seems increasingly probable that by the second half of next year, we will be emerging from this Covid nightmare’. I pray that he is right, though fear he may not be. In a recent Lancet editorial the view expressed was the exact opposite, as it notes that any vaccines are ‘unlikely’ to prevent transmission, though will reduce the severity of symptoms and likelihood of death. Critically, if transmission cannot be stopped via vaccine, in the

Dot Wordsworth

The language of lounging around

At the Austrian embassy in Naples, a German diplomatist asked the great beauty Madame de Ventadour if she had been in the Strada Nuova that morning. ‘What else have we to do with our mornings, we women?’ replied Madame de Ventadour. ‘Our life is a lounge from the cradle to the grave.’ How true. The observation comes in Bulwer Lytton’s novel Ernest Maltravers (1837). I was put in mind of lounging by remarks that Anne McElvoy made on the wireless about the use of video-conferencing and broadcasting allowing people to attend to their visible top half while wearing lounge pants below. I wasn’t too sure what lounge pants were. I