If there are two things every human on earth requires for happiness, they would surely include love and ice cream. Yes, even those opting for a dairy-free, gluten-free, guilt-free life. Despite the icy tropes that informed you about goths through movies and television, goths need love and ice cream too.
While the former of those two essentials is a bit tricky, ice cream is a sure thing. Little Damage Ice Cream shop in L.A. is leading the charge. The shop, located in Downtown L.A., specializes in artisanal soft serve in many cheeky and punk rock flavors. Mango sticky rice, beet, and unicorn tears-flavored ice cream can be topped off with items like fruity pebbles and caramel popcorn. What exactly unicorn tears taste like? That's anyone’s guess. Photo’s of the popular flavor reveal an eye-catching turquoise color, reminiscent of the childhood classic, Blue Moon.
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Considering the amount of attention the family-owned shop has received since opening this past February, it seems to be a hit with customers.
The best part is that the witchy ice cream is served in delicious made-to-order black waffle cones for an even darker effect. According to Los Angeles magazine, the black cones are made with almond charcoal, which means not only does it taste great, it also has a few health benefits.
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Last summer on another coast Nick Morgenstern, founder of Morgenstern’s ice cream in New York City, made some adventurous foodies dreams come true when the ice creamery debuted their “coconut ash” flavor. The ice cream has been a hit ever since, despite the need to wash the black ice cream down after eating and before giving a full-grinned smile. The black inky cream is known to temporarily turn your mouth a bit gray.
We’d imagine a goth-inspired black lippy is just the trick to detract eyes from your temporarily stained teeth.
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More Brits now believe Brexit is a bad idea than a good one for the first time since the shock referendum result, according to a new poll by YouGov. 45% of voters now agree that, with hindsight, Britain was wrong to vote to leave the EU, compared with 43% who said it was the right thing to do. Meanwhile, 12% said they didn’t know, the poll for The Times found.
That bodes well for the next two years of untangling a tapestry of rules, regulations and agreements stitched over more than four decades since Britain joined the union…
More Remainers than Brexiteers believed they’d made the right decision, with 89% of remain voters saying the result was the wrong decision, compared with 85% of leave voters who still backed exiting the EU.
Less pleasing for many Remainers were some of YouGov’s other findings. The Tories were the only party who people thought had a coherent message on Brexit, with 50% saying they had been clear and 31% unclear, reported The Times.
More respondents favoured a hard Brexit (43%) over a soft one (36%), and more people would trust the Tories under Theresa May to negotiate leaving the EU than Labour under Jeremy Corbyn – a sizeable 45% to 16%.
The poll questioned 1,590 adults on the 25th and 26th April. Was this result a blip, or the start of a larger backlash against Brexit? Only time will tell.
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When you’re a kid at primary school, your biggest worries are who's “it” or the chances of getting a snow day. But for parents, it’s another matter entirely. Most people don’t want their offspring to underachieve and end up in a failing school. Nor do they want to feel like their child has been cheated out of a good education by parents that can afford to diddle the system.
Last week, around 600,000 families found out whether their 4-year-olds had been awarded a place in reception class at their first choice of primary school for September. Although councils including Birmingham, Kent, Brighton and Hove, and Essex reported that a higher proportion of parents than last year had got their first choice of primary school, there was still big disappointment in areas of high demand, with some parents unable to get their kids into any of their preferred schools.
“For fuck sake,” said one parent on Facebook when she found out her child had missed out on all of the top five school choices she put down that were on her doorstep. “How does this algorithm even work?” The mum of two now faces sending her child to a school with a poor reputation and having to travel by public transport each day (with her younger child in tow), rather than a quick walk down the road. Her only hope is to try and move her child after the first term if a space comes up elsewhere, or get on a waiting list and hope someone else drops out.
So what's it all about? Primary schools can vary a lot. Not just in terms of league tables and Ofsted reports, but in their ethos and reputation. Some parents choose to visit a school and see if they are impressed by the headteacher; others focus more on exam results. Certain schools are also considered feeder schools for secondary places, so getting the right primary can impact on a child's whole education.
One issue is that most primary schools in England use proximity as their main admissions criterion, meaning that, in densely populated areas, access to the most popular schools can be restricted to a few hundred metres from the school gate. As a result, those that can are moving as close as possible to their school of choice.
Chloe, a mum of one from Yorkshire, did this and it paid off. “Ollie has had his place in primary school confirmed, yey," she says. "Moving house has all been worth it."
This might sound drastic but it's a game that some parents feel they have to play. “We have to move, it’s too important,” said John, father to a 2-year-old, who is planning on moving closer to a good nearby school early next year.
The Department of Education says being close to one of the top 10% of primary schools in London adds £38,800 to the value of a nearby home. Across England, that figure is £18,600.
“I think in the long term, schooling is way more important than having less space to play," says John, who will have to downsize in order to afford to be in the catchment area of his preferred school.
Others agree. Sasha Marshall from Reading has two kids under 3 and says she will have to move house in the next year in order to get her kids into a decent school. “We're planning on moving this year as we have to apply for schools in January so we have to find somewhere with a selection of schools we like,” she says. “Obviously, house prices go up the closer you are to a good school. It’s quite stressful to think your child could be put in a rubbish school because of where you live and what you can afford. People shouldn’t have their futures defined by their wealth.”
Another, simpler way of getting kids into their top choice of school is to accept whatever they get allocated and go on a waiting list for other schools at the same time, in the hope that someone might drop out. Some parents also opt to get their children into an affiliated nursery or pre-school in a bid to "get in" with the school, or even ham up their religious beliefs if there's a good faith school nearby.
Those that can afford it are far more likely to get their way but, ultimately, it's a valid worry for any parent and, for many, not something they anticipated having to deal with. "Schooling is something that I never wanted to have to think about and never thought I would," says John. "But it’s gradually become a complete obsession. I stay up at night thinking about it.”
John says the issue of schools taps into his competitive nature. “I find it easier to switch off my competitive instinct for myself, but when it comes to my daughter I have to be pushy on her behalf. The thing that stresses me out most is the idea that she won't get the opportunities that other people have.”
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Cats have long been one of the internet’s main attractions, but with the rise of social media – Instagram in particular – they’ve taken centre stage. These days, the trendiest moggies have their own accounts (the size of Choupette Lagerfeld's following will put you to shame).
All this social media attention has fuelled demand for certain breeds. One popular breed is the Scottish Fold, which features in nearly two million Instagram posts.
The breed is beloved of celebrities including Ed Sheeran, who has featured the adorable Calippo on Instagram, and Taylor Swift, whose two much-photographed kitties, Meredith Grey and Olivia Benson, have become stars in their own right. Kirsten Dunst and Patrick Dempsey apparently have Scottish Folds, too.
Even Scottish Folds without ties to A-list celebs, like Milla and Maru, have amassed gargantuan followings. Clearly, there’s something about these felines’ floppy ears and owl-like appearance that we find irresistible.
But you might want to think twice the next time you’re about to double tap one of their photos. Animal welfare campaigners have called for the breeding of Scottish Folds to be banned, claiming the gene mutation that helps to make the breed so cute also causes health problems.
The mutation which give them floppy ears may also affect cartilage throughout their bodies, making them more susceptible to arthritis and other severe health problems.
Gudrun Ravetz, the president of the British Veterinary Association, said the breed's "cuteness" is fuelling its popularity. "These cats have become so popular on social media and with celebrities," she told the BBC.
"People are wanting to have these cats because of that, but unfortunately it is another example of us prioritising how a pet looks rather than their quality of life."
A report by Dr Richard Malik, a veterinary internal medicine specialist at Sydney University, says "breeding these cats is cruel" and "ethically indefensible", a fact that, he says, has been known since the 1970s.
"Vets and cat breeders who condone this practice have no scientific basis with which to defend this practice. They are not breeding cats – they are perpetuating a disease state," Malik argues.
The Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SSPCA) concurs and is calling on the country's government to ban the practice. "It is common for the breed to suffer from serious health problems," SSPCA chief Superintendent Mike Flynn told The Times.
"The cartilage and bones do not develop properly, which leads to arthritis and other painful joint diseases that can cause reluctance to move, abnormal posture and gait, lameness and short, misshapen limbs. We welcome any change to legislation to prevent the breeding and sale of Scottish fold cats."
In response to the concerns, the Scottish government said it is "currently considering the issue of pet breeding as part of an ongoing review of pet welfare."
As you might expect, breeders of Scottish Folds claim it's a non issue as other cat breeds also have known health problems. One breeder, who provided Sheeran with his kitten, told the BBC: "When you balance that against the number of other health issues that occur in other breeds, you could argue that for most pedigree breeds."
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Amal Clooney and Beyoncé have more in common than being some of the most impressive women of our time: They're both expecting twins! Honestly, at this point, it seems like twins are almost a requirement to be one of the rich and famous. But it turns out that some people are just more likely to have twins, triplets, and beyond (a.k.a. multiple pregnancies) — and it doesn't always have to do with your level of celebrity.
Most commonly, you end up with multiple pregnancies because more than one egg has made its way down your fallopian tubes during ovulation. As the Mayo Clinic explains, fraternal twins are the result of two eggs that are fertilised by two different sperm. In this case, each foetus ends up with its own placenta. However, in the less common case of identical twins, one egg is fertilised and then splits. From there, it develops into two separate foetuses that may or may not share a placenta.
Having twins is definitely a challenge — and not just because you get to deal with twice the diapers. It means you'll probably have all those usual pregnancy symptoms (e.g. morning sickness) earlier on than those carrying only one pregnancy. Having multiple pregnancies also puts you at a higher risk for several complications, including preterm birth and preeclampsia. After giving birth to your multiple bundles of joy, you're also at an increased risk for postpartum depression.
Of course, everyone's pregnancy goes differently. And having more than one pregnancy at a time doesn't automatically mean you're sentenced to nine months (plus) of total agony. If you do end up with more than one bun, though, your doctor will want to see you for check-ups more often and may do a few more tests to make sure everything is going smoothly.
Whether or not you're hoping to score double, read on to learn more about five factors that increase your odds of having multiple pregnancies.
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Fertility Drugs
Drugs designed to increase your fertility — such as injectable hormones and clomiphene citrate — are the single most common cause of multiple pregnancies. That's because they encourage ovulation, even if you've already ovulated once during your current cycle. So these drugs significantly increase your odds of ending up with two fertilised eggs at once.
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Your Age
As people with ovaries age — especially once we reach 35 — we naturally become more likely to release more than one egg during a cycle (possibly because older women tend to have higher levels of follicle-stimulating hormone, research indicates). That makes twins more common among parents who are older.
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In Vitro Fertilisation
We often blame IVF for multiple pregnancies because it's possible to transfer multiple embryos at a time, a procedure that was much more popular in the 90s. But today, IVF actually causes fewer multiple pregnancies than it once did thanks to the recent development of more sophisticated techniques for stimulating the ovaries and developing embryos. These increase your chances of a successful birth without the need to compensate with multiple embryos.
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Your Previous Pregnancies
If you've had kids before (especially if you've had twins), that raises your likelihood of having a multiple pregnancy, thanks to a combination of your genetics and the simple fact that you get older with each successive pregnancy. Luckily, if you're a parent of twins already, this probably isn't too surprising to you — and it means you know the drill.
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Your Family
If multiple pregnancies run in your family — perhaps you're a twin? — there's some evidence to suggest it's hereditary, meaning you're more likely to have twins yourself.
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It’s been four years since the release of sister trio HAIM’s first album, Days Are Gone. The twentysomethings’ unique sound instantly captured our attention, and gave us the break-up song we never knew we needed in “The Wire.”
Este, Danielle, and Alana Haim had been practicing for this moment their whole lives. Hailing from a Los Angeles, the three sisters played instruments in their family band, Rockinhaim, for years before going solo. While HAIM first formed in 2007 and played sparse, infrequent gigs, it was only until 2012 that the sisters went full steam ahead on their musical careers. And it paid off, big time: HAIM was nominated for Best New Artist at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards, and the sisters were initiated into the inner sanctum of Taylor Swift's friend group.
After releasing their smash hit debut album, Este, Danielle, and Alana Haim retreated into their music-writing enclave. At last, after weeks of cryptic teasing, the sister trio HAIM finally announced a release date for their sophomore album, Something to Tell You. Here’s everything we know about forthcoming follow-up.
We have a release date!
After weeks of mysterious signals, like billboards popping up in London, Berlin, and on the highway to Coachella, HAIM finally gave a straightforward message. Their sophomore album, Something to Tell You, will drop on July 7, 2017.
@HaimTheST
You can listen to the first single, “Right Now,” right now.
HAIM also debuted the video for “Right Now,” which was directed by legendary director Paul Thomas Anderson ( The Master, There Will Be Blood). In the bare-bones video, catch a glimpse of the Haim sisters’ recording process in action.
HAIM and Paul Thomas Anderson have a surprising connection.
The Haim sisters have a connection with director P.T. Anderson that goes way, way back. Their mother, Donna, was Anderson’s elementary school art teacher in Los Angeles.
HAIM reached out to Anderson with new singles from their album. As Alana explained to Beats 1 radio, “He comes to the studio the next day and we showed him the songs and were listening to it, and he was like 'Why don’t we just shoot this?'" As you can see in the video, that’s just what they did.
@haimtheband
Lucky concertgoers got a taste for Something to Tell You last year.
HAIM debuted two new songs, "Nothing's Wrong" and "Little of Your Love," at concerts in 2016.
For more singles, watch Saturday Night Live.
The band will be performing on the May 13 episode, hosted by Melissa McCarthy.
@nbcsnl
The songs on the album will have a common theme.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Danielle Haim said many of the new album’s songs are about, "Trying to go back to your normal life, but realising there is a difference." Ah, the price one pays for fame.
@haimtheband
Vampire Weekend fans might especially like the album.
For a few tracks, HAIM teamed up with producer Rostam Batmanglij, a former member of Vampire Weekend.
@matsor
HAIM’s getting back to their rock roots.
On the first album, HAIM experimented with organic and non-organic sounds. This time around, HAIM didn’t use samples on their album the same way.
As Danielle explained to Rolling Stone, “We still love that, but this time we came at it from a more organic, rock standpoint. Because when we play live, we realise that ultimately, we're a rock band."
@haimtheband
And since it's been four years, a quick refresher.
"HAIM" rhymes with time.
@haimtheband
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Girlboss has been out in the world for less than a week and it’s already time to start asking the big question: will fans get a season 2? The first season of the Netflix series gives viewers a “real loose” version of Nasty Gal founder Sophia Amoruso’s origins story. We watch the girlboss dumpster dive, get a hernia, and start the company that would eventually make her famous (or is it infamous?). Yet, there’s so much we haven’t seen of the former eBay queen’s journey from casual thief to the CEO of a multimillion-dollar company to the ex CEO of a bankrupt company, all of which happened before Sophia turned 33.
If that doesn’t sound like enough turmoil for about eight seasons of a Netflix dramedy, we’re not sure what would. Girlboss creator Kay Cannon, who executive produces the series with Amoruso, agrees.
“We haven't started working on it yet. Netflix waits until after it launches, but I think they feel very happy,” Cannon tells Thrillist. "If we were to get a second season, there's so much more of her getting the big investment and moving.”
The Pitch Perfect trilogy writer even knows the “really interesting” places she sees the story going years from now. “I don't know how far I would go in the second season, but we will eventually at some point later down, if Netflix were to give me more than two, we would see the fall of her, too. The fact that Boohoo.com bought Nasty Gal and how Sophia…basically lost her company and she's 32 years old. We're not telling a fairy tale.”
This is all good news for a lot of reasons. Not only does this simply mean there’s likely more Girlboss on the horizon — even Hemlock Grove went on for three seasons on Netflix, and it didn’t come close to creating the think piece industry Sophia “Marlowe” has — but we’ll likely see a much stronger series for its sophomore run. At the beginning of the show, it lacks the must-binge nature of many other streaming offerings. But, as Sophia grows into her business, the appeal of Girlboss does too, by leaps and bounds. The nasty gal is clearly at her best when she’s running her company, as opposed to railing against adulthood and healthy relationships.
And we all know we’d like to see Sophia with someone better than adultery fan Shane.
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It sounds like something from the Dark Ages: As little as 20 years ago, one of the best ways to remove a tattoo called for the actual destruction of the skin. Your first option was salabrasion, a technique that used an abrasive tool to, quite literally, scrap the tattoo off the skin. (Ouch!) Your second, dermabrasion, wasn't much better: a rotary device was used to sand the tattoo away. Neither were all that effective — and they both hurt like hell and left scars.
Thankfully, we now have less barbaric means of removing dubious ink — all thanks to lasers. But as anyone who has searched “tattoo removal” online knows, there is an overwhelming number of treatment options, machines, and practitioners who promise to delete your ink in a flash. Suffice it to say, it’s hard to know where to start.
We talked to Andrew Miller, MD, a board certified plastic surgeon and laser specialist in New Jersey and New York City for a roadmap and definitive directions. Get everything you want to know about professional tattoo removal, ahead.
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Understand Your Options
There are a ton of tattoo removal devices on the market, but they’re not all created equal. Miller suggests sticking with the big three, all Q-switched lasers (a type of laser), when looking to stamp out a tattoo: Nd:YAG lasers, ruby lasers, and the PicoSure laser.
All three options work the same way to eliminate ink. That is, after a burst of energy pops the pigment in skin, your body's natural cells carry it out of the body.
Selecting the best laser for your tattoo depends on the colours used in the design, Miller says. “The ruby laser is thought to be better for some colours that are harder to get rid of, like green and yellow,” he says. Meanwhile, “Dark blue, black, and red inks are easier to remove. Yag lasers and the PicoSure usually do a pretty good job with that.”
While Q-switching lasers have been around for more than a decade, the PicoSure is the newest of the trio. Because it has a shorter and more powerful pulse duration, Miller notes that some doctors feel it breaks up more pigment, though results vary greatly from person to person and tattoo to tattoo. “You may need fewer sessions, but it’s a very expensive laser, so the treatments may be more expensive,” he says. Though a laser that treats all ink colors with uniform success would be optimal for tattoo removal, Miller says he’s not aware of any such technology that’s on the horizon, so tattoo removal will likely always be a bespoke procedure, at least for the near future.
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Prepare for Pain
Anyone who has watched Eva Longoria or Khloe Kardashian’s snaps of their own tattoo removal sessions knows that the process isn’t exactly a picnic. Miller says the sensation that patients feel is akin to having a rubber band repeatedly snap on your skin. And there’s no part of the body that experiences this sensation more or less strongly, he says. “It hurts everywhere. If it doesn't hurt isn’t not doing anything,” he says — kinda like getting a tattoo itself. But derms and cosmetic surgeons do have a little something in the arsenal to take the edge off, if needed: good ol' numbing cream.
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Manage Your Expectations
Miller stresses that results are not always guaranteed, no matter how experienced your practitioner may be, how many sessions you try (this completely relies upon your ink, so your best guess is after a consultation, but around 10 isn't unusual), or what laser you use. “Nobody can guarantee that it’s going to go away, but most people are happy because it either goes away or comes close to going away. Have reasonable expectations and it will be ok,” he assures.
Ink color isn’t the only thing that can trip up total removal. Research published in the American Medical Association’s Archives of Dermatology reports that smoking can reduce the chance of successfully removing a tattoo by nearly 70%, after 10 treatment sessions. (Just one more reason to finally quit.)
Placement of the design on the body matters, too. “It’s harder to remove tattoos on the lower leg because the skin is thicker, which means it’s tougher for the laser to penetrate.” He also says that ink deposited in deeper layers of the skin (like with some stick-and-poke tattoos), are hard to remove because the laser can’t reach the depths needed to bust up the ink.
What does this all mean? First, it's important to decide which you prefer: Your unwanted tattoo, or a shadow of your unwanted tattoo, as it may not be totally removable. A consultation should help quell your fears by giving you more clarity on your ink.
-Dr. Miller
The good news? Unlike with lasers used for facial treatments or hair removal, these lasers can work for any skin type and tone, the pro says. “If you have a darker tone, you have a higher chance of pigmentation changes around areas of [former] tattoo — but it’s not that bad,” he assures. (Another thing to consider for those with dark to deep complexions!)
Bottom line: “You never know until you start going through the treatments. Sometimes people try one laser then switch to another," Miller says. "It's a matter of finding the best laser for your particular tattoo.”
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Find a Pro
Just ask the Internet: In some cases, a one day course will certify someone to remove a tattoo. (You probably have apples in your fruit bowl that are older!) Just as you wouldn’t trust a tattoo artist who's been in the game for only a day or two, you shouldn’t trust a tattoo removal practitioner unless they have real, lengthy experience, Miller says. “Look for a well established plastic surgeon or dermatologist with a lot of experience,” he advises. “Ask the office: ‘How many tattoo removals have you done?” and ‘How many years have you been doing this?’”
Then, once those questions are satisfactorily answered, ask some more: Find out exactly what type of laser will be used. There are other machines aside from Q-switched lasers whose makers claim to remove tattoos — and being treated with them carries more risk.
Moral of the story: Look for someone with a ton of experience, manage your expectations, and always ask what kind of laser they'll be using. Final remarks from our pro? “Make sure you’re going to a place that uses Q-switched Lasers: Nd:YAG laser, PicoSure, or ruby lasers,” Miller says. “Be proactive and ask exactly what it is!”
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My name is Beate Wedekind. I have been a journalist promoting the empowerment of young women for many years now. Then the W20 Summit in Berlin happened, and I lost it.
Germany's Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is the one who invited Ivanka Trump to the W20 Summit, and it was a smart move. The discussion was geared towards women's issues and was attended by some of the most powerful female business leaders in the world. Articles and comments on Ivanka flooded in almost instantaneously. The media, and social media alike, went ham on this news and one can undoubtably say that the Women's Conference in Germany has never gotten this much recognition.
Isn't that a sad commentary on modern society though? Do we need a controversial figure to get press coverage on a conference that aims to emphasise the fact that the global stabilisation of economies and societies will only be achieved through the empowerment and economic equality of women?
I really don't think that Ivanka's comments elevated the conversation amongst these inspiring and powerful women in any way, shape, or form. One empty phrase after the other. A song of praise for her father, who she blindly calls a women's advocate and also says is a fair business man who proved that he supports women. At some points, Ivanka overdid it so much that we, the audience, reacted with booing. And yes, my participation in booing her came with deep conviction. I might even have been the loudest. It wasn't as much about what she said, but that she had the audacity to use this important conference to campaign for her father.
My participation in booing her came with deep conviction. I might even have been the loudest.
The fact that the attendance of the first daughter diverted the attention from the important topics of the W20 Summit, as well as the more interesting attendees, is not only embarrassing, but also damages the reputation of this conference.
What about the young African tech entrepreneur, Juliana Rotich from Kenya, who passionately fights for the recognition of women's potential in third world countries?
Or the Canadian foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, who, among other things, supports the US office of the Financial Times as a journalist?
What about Queen Maxima of the Netherlands, who, prior to her marriage, was a successful international banker? She came to the W20 Summit, not as royalty, but as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development? She enriched the panel with her contributions.
My personal highlight of the event was the banter between the excellent host Miriam Meckel (publisher of WirtschaftsWoche), Angela Merkel, the other women on the podium.
The host asked the Chancellor: "Are you a feminist?"
Angela Merkel started off with assessing her own social situation before she came to her conclusion and answered, "I don't want to adorn myself with the feathers of feminism."
Queen Maxima said, "I think a feminist is someone who strives for a world wherein all women get the opportunity to be happy and proud of themselves."
And with an impish smile Merkel added, "Then I'm a feminist, too."
Beate Wedekind is a journalist, the cofounder of German ELLE , and the former Editor-in-Chief of Bunte . All opinions are her own.
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Emma Watson would rather keep her private life private— and that protectiveness extends to her internet presence. At a screening of Watson's new movie, The Circle, at the Tribeca Film Festival, the actress revealed that she's now extra mindful of how she uses the internet.
Watson's latest film endeavour certainly acts as a cautionary tale. In the film, Watson plays Mae, a new employee at a Google-esque company called The Circle. While Mae's new gig initially seems like a dream job, it's not long before The Circle starts asking more and more of her — specifically, when it comes to sharing her personal life with company's larger social network.
Based on the Dave Eggers book of the same name, The Circle poses questions of privacy versus knowledge — should we be more open with the world in order to expand collective information, or should we pull back and keep some things to ourselves, even if it means shutting out the rest of the world? That's the question that Mae grapples with in Eggers' work, and one that the former Harry Potter actress was asked at the Tribeca Film Festival. Are the advancements in technology good or bad for humanity?
"I guess the big thing for me having been involved in this is just taking back the idea that this information that belongs to us, or belongs to me and just being mindful and much more aware of what’s unveiling before our very eyes, oftentimes without us even realising."
She's right: There's a reason why your computer knows the exact shoes you were looking at while perusing DSW.com, and why the internet seems oddly intuitive to your specific searches. It's not that sharing information online is bad necessarily (it is helpful to be reminded when those cute sandals go on sale) but it is a reminder that there's really no such thing as privacy on the internet.
Of course, Watson is no stranger to asking for privacy, please. She told Vanity Fair that she no longer takes selfies with fans because she's afraid of being tracked in real life due to posts pinpointing her location.
"If someone takes a photograph of me and posts it, within two seconds they've created a marker of exactly where I am within 10 meters," Watson told Vanity Fair. "They can see what I’m wearing and who I’m with. I just can’t give that tracking data."
It sounds like Watson knows exactly how to protect herself — and there's no doubt that being a part of The Circle helped validate her reasons why.
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For those not in the know, Hannah Witton is a YouTuber. A big one.
Hannah has nearly 350,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel and collectively, her videos have been watched nearly 29 million times. That's a lot of eyes on one 25-year-old from Manchester.
What makes Hannah worth checking out, though, is her dogged determination to educate younger generations about all the sex stuff we had to muddle our way through as teenagers. Things like period sex. Which, tbh, is something we could all do with a bit of education on, even now.
In 2016, Hannah was nominated as one of eight Girls Champions for the BBC's 100 Women list, thanks to her work on sexual education. She's been honest and open about contraception, given lessons on anatomy, and been frank about toxic relationships.
Want more proof? Hannah's new book Doing It: Let's Talk About Sex is the manual your sexually inexperienced teenage self was crying out for. Those of you old enough to remember magazines will recall desperately flipping the pages of Sugar, hoping to find a nugget of honest advice about "what to do if you had awkward sex with Liam from Maths in his big sister's bed after too many WKDs" in among the "wait for the right guys" and "check with your doctor firsts".
In Doing It, Hannah covers everything from masturbation ("It's truly magical!"), to sex shaming ("If I had 10p for every time I've been called a slut I could buy myself a luxury sex toy"), to the big, serious issues like consent and what a healthy relationship looks like.
Like the period sex video, there's also plenty in it for those of us that have been having sex for years. Do you know, for instance, the stories of how your best friends first discovered masturbation? How about how deaf people give sexual consent? There are even anatomical diagrams of the female reproductive system for you to peruse because, frankly, I'm not entirely sure many of us could label all the different parts and what they do correctly, now, could we?
"The most common question is always 'Am I normal?'" Hannah says when we ask what her viewers ask her the most. "Whatever it is... their sexual desires, their bodies... whatever they believe isn't normal and are ashamed of talking about."
The answer, she says reassuringly, is nearly always "Yes, you're normal."
I will sing this until the day I die! Everyone is different. The amount or type of sex you're having and who with is entirely your business.
As previously mentioned, masturbation is a key factor in her book. In fact she refers to it, rather wonderfully, as "self-care" – meaning you can now add it to your list of wellness requirements, directly under "yoga", "gym" and "eat lots of grains and whole foods".
"It has loads of health benefits!" she says. "Cleaner, healthier genitals" and, she reminds us, it can help with stress.
So why are some women still more reluctant to talk about masturbation as openly as they talk about their sex lives? "We're not taught about our bodies when we're younger," she explains. "We're not taught about the clitoris!" She continues: "What we are taught through society and culture, though, is that girls just aren't that sexual."
What she does think is super-important is schools providing the right kind of sexual education. "It ensures that everyone is getting the same information and no one is left behind in terms of their understanding of really important topics."
Really important topics like consent, for instance – to which Hannah dedicates an entire section of her book, on top of the chapter on porn and porn addiction, healthy relationships, and sex shaming. One misconception she still hears when it comes to consent is the idea that you can just "assume someone is into it".
"Never assume. Always ask" she reiterates firmly.
Overall, the main takeaway from her book is that, when it comes to sex, as long as you and your partner are both consenting and happy, there is no such thing as "normal".
"I will sing this until the day I die!" she says. "Everyone is different. The amount or type of sex you're having and who with is entirely your business."
She continues, "There is no right or wrong way to enjoy a healthy sex life, it's whatever works for you and the consenting partner or partners."
In short? "You do you, boo."
Doing It: Let's Talk About Sex by Hannah Witton is out now
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What do you think of when you hear the words ‘craft’ and ‘artisan’? Pale ale and boujis coffee shops? Well, non-profit organisation Nest is here to school you. The craft industry is no small fry. With a net worth of £26 billion, it’s the second largest employer of women in emerging economies (further proof that ethical fashion is a feminist issue). Linking up fashion brands with makers from across the globe, Nest's aim is to provide "transparency, business development, and advocacy for global artisans, while preserving cultural traditions of craftsmanship".
We spoke to founder and executive director Rebecca van Bergen about the invisibility of artisan women and the successes of a Kenya-based jewellery-making husband and wife duo.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Photo: Sara Otto
Tell us about your background and how that led you to found Nest. For as far back as I can remember, craftsmanship was a part of my life. My great-grandmother and grandmother were both sewers and quilters, who passed down these skills to me. Craft was a fabric that connected us as women and united us across generations through its quality of tradition. Most women I speak to – regardless of where in the world they live or what their professional background is – share similar artisan-related memories: their mother knitting a sweater, learning how to sew a button for the first time, a school home economics or art class they’ll never forget – these tend to be very fond memories.
While studying, I took a trip to India as a volunteer yoga teacher and found myself struck by the craftsmanship surrounding me: women skilfully working with their hands to make beautiful clothing, jewellery, and objects for the home. I knew there must be a bigger market for this work than existed within these local villages operating on the periphery of the global economy. It was with these thoughts that the seeds for Nest were planted. I graduated in 2006 and entered my idea for Nest in a business plan competition for a social enterprise, winning money that became my seed capital for Nest.
Why did you set up the non-profit? When I founded Nest more than 10 years ago, words like ‘artisan’ or ‘sustainable’ weren’t a part of the fashion lexicon. I saw that craft was an industry employing millions of women globally, but that these women were hidden, disconnected from one another, and cut off from the global marketplace. I wanted Nest to change this. I wanted to create a non-profit organisation that would help women use their hands and heritage to realise economic opportunity for themselves, their families, and their communities.
Why is it so important for organisations like Nest to exist? While the amount of data on the craft sector is alarmingly sparse (an issue Nest is working on fixing), Lucy Siegle’s To Die For suggests that as much as 60% of garment production is likely to be happening outside of regulated factories. Part of the reason why this enormous artisan workforce has been so invisible is because it is physically difficult to get to and tricky to track – for example, craftwork is often subcontracted and outsourced from factories without brands knowing. Unless systems are put in place to help brands map these complicated supply chains, and unless industry-wide standards are accepted for assessing ethical compliance in homes and small workshops, artisan invisibility will continue, increasing the likelihood that these women are not protected and advocated for.
Additionally, when a brand is left without means for ensuring the wellbeing of its home-based workforce, it may decide to pull production from artisans altogether, putting many people – largely women – out of work. For women in particular, this is devastating news, because the ability to work from home is one that is fundamental to their wellbeing and livelihoods. Working from home gives women living in some of the most challenging environments in the world the ability to provide for their families even when travelling to cities is dangerous; outsourcing childcare is not an option and factory work is undesirable. It is critical that this work continues, and Nest is creating the compliance standards that ensure it can do so in a way that promotes artisan wellbeing and artisan business growth over time.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Photo: Caroline Ashkar
In layman's terms, how do you work with artisans to ensure fair and sustainable production? Nest has two assessments that help us identify the key hurdles. Our director of artisan compliance and programming, Sara Otto, is rarely in our New York offices and more typically in Africa, South America or southeast Asia, conducting interviews. The first is a series of questions and reviews that we use to guide conversation with an artisan business leader. It is important that we structure these interviews with utmost respect to the artisan leaders and workers they employ, observing cultural traditions like sitting down over tea first. The assessment helps artisan businesses with fair work policies and communicating those policies down to the artisan level.
The second assessment identifies key business hurdles like the need for new or upgraded production tools and equipment; the need for higher quality marketing materials and look books; the need for design elevation guidance; or the need for financial literacy training – the list goes on. Artisan participation is a key to success. We see our role as working alongside of artisan business leaders in driving their growth and success.
How do you think the fashion industry has changed since the Rana Plaza disaster? Rana Plaza shed a painful light on the realities of human rights issues in factories. At the same time, we cannot ignore the large portions of fashion supply chains that are based outside of factories. Artisans and homeworkers are one of the fashion industry’s most vulnerable populations. Until we have wider industry adoption of standards for ethical compliance beyond four-walled factories, we risk millions of people, predominantly women, being overlooked, unprotected, and underinvested in. Nest’s Ethical Compliance Standards are set to launch publicly in late 2017, and we are excited about making large strides in paving the way for sustainable development in the artisan and home-based production sector.
How can we make fashion businesses become more transparent with their manufacturing and production of clothes? We believe in the importance of building a circular economy by which craftspeople, brands, and consumers are all generating increased social value through transparency, education, and commerce. To ensure this closed loop system, consumers must be educated about the people and processes behind the clothing they consume so that they are able to factor these qualities into their purchasing decisions. By giving consumers 'access' to artisans by sharing their stories on product tags and other point of sales channels, by sharing digital assets that take consumers behind the scenes of rare craft technique processes from around the world, and by explaining social impact, brands can improve artisan visibility and demand for artisan product.
What's your favourite Nest success story? We just had a very special experience seeing our work come full circle on a project in Kenya. About five years ago, Nest began a project in Kenya to help support a husband and wife who were running a jewellery workshop from their home. The couple, Anton and Benta, are very community-oriented and had adopted several orphans into their family, along with their own children. As such, they were operating large jewellery-making machinery for brass casting and polishing inside a crowded home with children nearby. Not only did this present a health and safety issue, but it also created a difficult environment in which to ensure high product quality. Anton and Benta were producing for the luxury fashion brand Maiyet, and so it was critical that their product quality be a high standard. After multiple interviews on-site with Anton and Benta and the artisans they employ, we decided together to build a small workshop adjoining their home, in which they could safely produce. We also upgraded their tools and equipment to help them achieve the highest product quality standards.
Five years later, Sara from the Nest team returned to Kenya where she had the joy of visiting Anton and Benta again. Their workshop is thriving and they have taken on new clients like ethical jewellery producer, Soko. Sara said Anton likened Nest to a place where all the artisans, like birds, can come and grow – that with our help, his business is flying. It doesn’t get better than that.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Photo: Caroline Ashkar
This weekend was meant to be the glittering launch of Fyre Festival, a boutique, luxury music festival backed by A-list models including Bella Hadid and Emily Ratajkowski. The reality on the ground has been a little, er, different.
The event in Exumas, Bahamas, with packages costing up to £10,000, has descended into chaos, with half-built tents, piles of rubbish and unopened boxes littering the site, and feral dogs wandering around, MailOnline reported.
Photos taken by attendees and posted on social media show what look like disaster relief tents being used in place of the advertised "modern, eco-friendly, geodesic domes", lockers without padlocks and food that most people wouldn't accept from a roadside cafe.
The festival had boasted of "chef-curated culinary pop ups" and a "luxury food court", but one attendee tweeted a photo of a half-hearted attempt at a sandwich – two slices of bread and plastic cheese served in a polystyrene box.
Some guests chose to return home and demanded a refund upon seeing the site, but many have been left stranded at Exuma International Airport, according to reports.
The festival's high-profile lineup boasted acts including Pusha T, Tyga, Blink 182, Major Lazer, Skepta and Disclosure, but Blink 182 pulled out last night, tweeting that "regrettably and after much careful consideration," the band wouldn't be performing because of concerns about the "quality of performance" they could provide.
The festival was tipped as a “cultural moment created from an alchemic blend of music, art, and food” and was meant to run for two weekends starting from today. Its website shows models including Emily Ratajkowski, Bella Hadid, Alessandra Ambrosio, Hailey Baldwin and Joan Smalls frolicking on the beach and enjoying themselves.
Tickets were priced at $400 (£309) for a day pass to over $12,750 (£9,853) for a VIP package that included four festival passes, flights from Miami and accommodation in a "rustic tent" overlooking the ocean.
In a statement (or should be that understatement) on its official Instagram account, festival organisers admitted, "Things got off to an unexpected start at day one of Fyre Festival".
It added: "Thank you for bearing with us as we work through the growing pains that every first year event experiences." We've no doubt it's difficult organising a festival, especially for the first time, but how could it go this wrong?
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It doesn’t take much for me to feel like a disorganised, poor excuse for an adult human being – just ask me to confidently stand my ground in a serious meeting or even think about getting a mortgage and I’m in over my head. Things start feeling out of control and I begin to wonder why I’m even here. So meeting the actress Florence Pugh on a rainy afternoon in a Soho hotel was always going to make me want to reevaluate my life choices.
Mature, precocious and with a discerning team of advisers behind her, 21-year-old Pugh is well on her way to A-list status – and her self-assuredness is enough to make anyone doubt themselves. The British actress plays the lead in the new film Lady Macbeth (no, not that one), based on the 19th-century Russian novel Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District by Nikolai Leskov. Adapted by playwright Alice Birch, and directed by stage director William Oldroyd, the story has been relocated to rural Northumberland and repopulated with British characters.
Pugh plays Katherine, the young bride and anti-hero who finds herself in a loveless marriage with a bitter man twice her age who demands she stay indoors. It’s not until she begins a passionate affair with a young worker on her husband’s estate, Sebastian (played by Cosmo Jarvis), that something switches inside her. Expect sex, violence, love, rage, nudity, betrayal – the works.
While it may contain all the hallmarks of a traditional period drama – pretty costumes, a charming setting , class conflicts – the film is a thoroughly modern thriller that has shocked and impressed audiences since it premiered in Toronto last September. “It’s shocking because we’re seeing a very modern woman in a period film," Pugh tells Refinery29. "We’re so used to seeing period films where the women suffer, but Katherine is the difference – and the audience is shocked by this just as much as the other characters.”
Aside from the obvious attraction of playing the lead, it was the parallels between Katherine and Pugh's own personality that drew her to the part. “I loved that I agreed with her and supported her. I’m probably the worst person to ask questions about her because I am majorly Team Katherine. We're both feisty and neither of us likes being told 'no'. I think it's important for you to have some ties to the character.”
It's Katherine's ruthlessness and determination to escape her circumstances that have led many to dub Lady Macbeth a feminist film. Unfortunately, however, projects and parts like it are few and far between, says Pugh. “I don’t usually come across characters like Katherine or scripts like that. It shouldn't be shocking to come across an incredible character because there should be more of them. But it's definitely risen the bar to the scripts I read now.”
It wasn’t just the script that spurred Pugh to imbue her character with a feminist stance, however. The uncomfortable costumes – full-length crinoline gowns and constricting corsets – helped, too. When asked what life lessons she’d want female viewers to take away from the film, she's resolute. “Don’t wear uncomfortable clothes if you don’t have to. I think that's the most important thing. When I got in those corsets it was so obvious that I couldn't move or talk the same way I did, and when I got out of them I was happy, so I made sure that whenever Katherine got out of them she was loving it. The women of that time wouldn't have liked wearing those clothes. They’re not fun.”
But as a young woman only recently out of her teens, surely she’s as guilty of wearing unsuitable clothes as the rest of us? “I'm a sucker for that too – I love wearing beautiful uncomfortable things," Pugh admits, but she's clearly been thinking about the wider consequences. "We go out and buy high heels and tight clothes but they’re not comfy, even though they’re pretty and we like wearing them, what are they doing for us?”
When Katherine isn’t following orders and wearing her prescribed dresses and corsets, she’s either in a nightie or she’s naked. What’s it like filming nude scenes as someone so young? “I don’t mind it, and not in a weird way. If I read a script and it’s obvious that they’re just trying to get your kit off, then I don’t find that interesting and I don’t read the rest," Pugh says. "If I’m reading a sex scene where it feels completely organic and real, then I’ll think 'wow, that’s really cool,' and if we can film it like that, even better." That’s the experience she had with Lady Macbeth. "All of those love scenes, whether she’s naked or not, they were so natural and felt so right.”
Indeed, the film contains a fair amount of sex, but these scenes weren't as embarrassing for Pugh as they might have been for another young actor. She also had sex scenes in the 2014 psychological drama The Falling, but nevertheless doesn't exactly relish the experience. “They’re always going to be awkward. It’s never going to be natural for you to pretend to have sex in front of a 40-person crew. That’s why when people say ‘did you enjoy it?’ It’s like, ‘really? No!’" Still, she admits sex scenes can be a great bonding experience if the other person's "cool".
Luckily, Pugh’s parents, a restaurateur and former dancer, are supportive of her career and have a solid understanding of the types of films she likes making. Of her three siblings, two also act professionally – her brother, Toby Sebastian, has a part in Game of Thrones – and have supported her along the way. Family, friends (most of whom are still at university, which Pugh admits has been tough), and spending time in the countryside and in Spain, where she grew up, all help her stay grounded when the going gets tough.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
“You get told ‘no’ about 70% of the year [in this industry] and if you don’t have people who are going to tell you ‘it’s ok’ and to keep on trying, then you’re essentially quite alone a lot of the time.”
Pugh's next big role is as the Norwich-raised international wrestler Paige in Stephen Merchant’s new film Fighting With My Family, which as well as being worlds away from Lady Macbeth, also helped her discover a new hobby – CrossFit. She was put through a “pretty intense” training regimen for the part, which involved a lot of “people chucking themselves on you and you being able to carry them”. She laughs, “It’s not like I now go around saying ‘yeah, I lift’, but I like to feel strong. If my body is strong then it’s awesome.”
When asked whether she’ll continue doing smaller films or gravitate towards more mainstream, Hollywood projects, Pugh is on the fence. “I love indie films because there’s a lot of love and passion and care behind them, but I also love big films because there’s lots of space and possibilities. I don’t know what I want to do next." She's more drawn to particular characters than the idea of starring in a specific type of film. "It will always be a feisty woman, I think. It will always be something where the character has something to say. Otherwise I can’t really find justification for it.”
Pugh is currently based in London, but is being pulled in different directions by various potential projects. Surely moving to LA and trying to crack Hollywood is an attractive option? “It is, but the social scene and the way that world is created over there isn’t," she admits with slight hesitation. "Hollywood is a very big prospect and I think you need to be aware of what you’re getting into before you get into it. If you’re not completely sure of who you are and what you represent before you go over there it will be decided for you," she cautions. Somehow, we don't think she'll have a problem.
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Maintaining a long-distance relationship can be challenging at the best of times. For most women, the idea of not seeing a partner for months on end can be daunting, to say the least. But what about keeping a relationship together during a prison sentence?
The Howard League for Penal Reform estimates that this is the reality for approximately 80,000 women in the UK who have a partner incarcerated in a British jail. With a limited number of visits per month, typically lasting for a maximum of two hours each, prison can have an almost instantaneously damaging effect on a marriage or relationship. Often with years apart stretching ahead, it’s no wonder that relationship breakdown is a common side-effect of prison life.
According to The Prison Reform Trust, the average distance an individual has to travel to visit their partner in prison is 60 miles. Making calls from prison costs money, and staff shortages mean that prisoners spend more time locked in their cells, which equates to fewer opportunities to keep in regular contact with family.
However, one prisoner appeared in court earlier this year citing a different reason for prison violence and family breakdown. Stuart Horner is serving a life sentence for murder at HMP Manchester and told the court that prisoners not being able to have sex with their partners was having a far bigger effect than we might think.
For women on the outside, little to no physical contact and zero opportunities for sexual intimacy while their partner is incarcerated is obviously very difficult. How are you meant to feel close to your partner? And in the case of a long sentence, are you expected to stay faithful?
In the summer of 2014, The Howard League released a report entitled Sex in Prison. It explored the possibility of conjugal visits – which are not permitted in the UK but operate successfully in much of Europe, Canada and even the Middle East. Lorraine Atkinson was one of the researchers behind the paper.
“There’s a lot of evidence around how having a strong relationship on the outside is a very good indicator that you won’t go on and commit other crimes” says Lorraine.
But if conjugal visits were to become legal in the UK, would women even be interested in partaking in them?
“Intimacy is a key word,” she explains, “that was something that clearly came out from the research – the partners didn’t necessarily want to go in and have a sexual encounter. They wanted to be able to touch, cuddle them, that kind of thing.”
The rigid structure of prison visits undoubtedly contributes to relationship breakdown. Visits take place around a table, often with a piece of wood underneath to prohibit anything being passed between. The security search process for visitors, and any delays getting prisoners out of their cells mean that a two-hour visit can easily end up being half an hour shorter. Women with children usually bring them – so time spent alone, partner-to-partner, is a rarity.
Josie Bevan knows all too well the reality of prison visits. Her husband Rob was sentenced to eight years for tax fraud last summer and Josie has taken to writing a successful blog, Prison Bag, to detail what it’s like to “be locked out, as well as locked in”.
Would you like to have a relationship with your boyfriend where you couldn't touch him or kiss him or make love?
She had a healthy sexual relationship with her husband before sentencing and felt that it was integral to her happy, 16-year-long relationship. For Josie, maintaining her marriage is now a priority – and one that she believes is crucial to the future wellbeing of her two daughters.
“My children will certainly be more okay if I can keep my relationship together over the next eight years, which is no easy feat without any form of intimacy,” she says. “Would you like to have a relationship with your boyfriend where you couldn’t touch him or kiss him or make love or any of the things that are actually vital?”
The couple love one another and for Josie, staying faithful is a no-brainer. However, prior to Rob’s sentencing, the question of fidelity did arise.
“Before my husband went to jail, in the years where him going to jail wasn’t a cert, he’d say to me, ‘Babe, just do what you’ve got to do, okay?’ Because he knows me and we had a really good relationship like that,” says Josie. “And I’m saying, 'Of course I’m not going to do what I’ve got to do, of course I’m not going to do that'. As it got more and more likely, that really wasn’t what I was hearing from him, it was, ‘Babe, please wait for me’.”
Waiting, it seems, is the name of the game when it comes to seeing a relationship through a prison sentence. Josie and Rob have years ahead of them, devoid of any form of physical intimacy: “It would be great if I can be okay and stay faithful to him and I hope that will happen. Of course I have a choice in that, but it’s a pretty shitty choice and it’s a choice that I don’t think I should be having to make."
If conjugal visits were allowed, Josie would jump at the chance. She’s even thinking of starting a campaign to introduce them in the UK.
“They do it all over the place because it improves outcomes for prisoners, it improves outcomes for their wives – we don’t do it in Britain because we’re really prudish,” she says. “I’m at an age where I’m very in charge of my sexuality and proud of it. I think people should have sex, I think I should have sex and it would probably be better for everyone if it was with my husband.”
She makes a compelling point. But it’s certainly not the opinion of every “prison wife” out there. Debbie Hayes is Operations Manager for Partners of Prisoners, an organisation that offers support to individuals with a partner serving a prison sentence. She came into contact with the organisation after her husband was in jail between 2007 and 2010.
Unlike Josie, Debbie wasn’t aware of the full extent of her husband’s crimes when he was sentenced. As a result, his time in prison became an opportunity for the couple to rebuild the trust in their relationship.
Norway, where conjugal visits are allowed, has one of the lowest reoffending rates in the world
“When he went to prison I just told him, ‘If you want me to remain with you for these years, I have to see everything now, I need to know everything, I want the power of attorney because I’m going to sort everything out now.’”
Prison visits became integral to this – yet sexual intimacy wasn't something Debbie even considered. “The trust had been broken to a certain degree because of the offence he had committed,” she explains. “Going forward it was all about, ‘So what are we going to do to rebuild our relationship and rebuild the trust?’ Intimacy was the furthest thing from my mind – what I wanted to do was thrash him over the head.”
The lack of physical contact actually worked in the couple’s favour. It allowed them to re-establish a connection, with no distractions, ultimately building a stronger relationship in the long run.
“For me, the visits were really important, it was about time really getting to know each other, dealing with why he made the decision to do what he did instead of talking things through in the first instance,” Debbie says. “It’s about being able to provide contact that gives reassurance. I wanted to feel his hands against my hands. Just that contact – that’s what I needed. Anything more intimate, I couldn’t have got my head around it.”
Every relationship is different and a prison sentence doesn’t change that. Conjugal visits may work for one couple but for another, they might feel too forced.
There’s no denying their success, though. Lorraine from The Howard League visited Halden prison in Norway in 2014, where conjugal visits are allowed. Inmates can have as many visits with a partner as they like, with private visits taking place in a room containing a sofa bed, a cupboard with sheets, towels and condoms, and a sink.
“The whole ethos of Norwegian prisons was about enabling people to be reintegrated when they are released,” says Lorraine, “and part of that ethos was encouraging people to maintain family contact so it’s easier for them to go on to lead a law-abiding life.”
With no prospect of conjugal visits becoming a reality in the UK anytime soon, all that prison partners can do is navigate the separation and disruption a jail sentence brings as best as they can. For Josie, this means phone calls, letters and plenty of hand-holding a couple of times a month around the prison visit table. For Debbie, it meant something different – but which proved equally integral to the success of her relationship.
But for the UK justice system, maybe the appetite for change that is currently consuming prison policy will extend to the sexual rights of similar women who are “locked out”. Sexual intimacy has the power to bring people closer, even with a cell door and a punitive sentence in the way. Or as Josie puts it: “It would do a lot for a lot of people.” With the prison system in crisis, perhaps it’s time we started to pay attention.
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Those unofficial “Tube chat” badges may have gone down like a lead balloon, but there’s a new badge coming to the London Underground that many people might actually want to wear.
The blue “Please offer me a seat” badges and accompanying cards are aimed at people with hidden health problems and are being rolled out after a successful trial on 1,200 people in September, the BBC reported.
The scheme was created after demand from travellers whose hidden conditions meant they struggled to get a seat on the tube.
Nearly three quarters (72%) of those taking part in the trial said making journeys was easier while wearing the badge and 86% said it made them feel more confident to ask for a seat.
The scheme is reportedly the first in Europe to officially recognise hidden conditions on public transport.
Transport users don't need to fulfil set criteria to qualify for the badge and as such the scheme is based on trust like "Baby on board" badges, TfL said. Sadly, this means it is open to abuse.
London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan said the badges “will make a real difference to passengers who need a seat but just haven't felt confident enough to ask for one."
Indeed, people with hidden health problems took to Twitter to welcome the scheme, with some claiming to have had positive experiences wearing it during the trial, and others saying they wished it had been launched earlier.
@LeoJamesWard1@TfL I was on the trial for the badge and on the whole people didn't even need to be asked especially on the tube.
As a healthy looking 24 year-old hiding severe hip pain, this @TfL badge would've saved me lots of painful tube journeys - fab initiative! https://t.co/MRsacTbTru
"This is a brilliant scheme and I am very glad that it is being introduced by the mayor," James McNaught, who took part in the trial, told the BBC.
He previously made his own "cancer on board" badge to increase his chances of getting a seat when chemotherapy and morphine for his cancer made him appear drunk.
"The anxiousness of needing a seat but being unsure whether you will get one can rob people of the confidence to use public transport. This simple initiative will make a huge difference to the lives of many people."
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Last November, my mother called me around 10 p.m. My boyfriend and I were in the middle of dinner — we eat late because of his work schedule — and I squinted at my phone before answering. I’d been trying to spend less time messing around with my phone, especially during meals, but my mother had worked the same job in Indiana for two decades and was almost always asleep by 9. Seeing her name flash on the screen, I was worried.
She said she had something to tell me. Then, she hesitated. I left the table and walked into the bedroom to pace on my own. My worst fear was that something had happened to one of my three siblings, a worry that literally fuels my nightmares. She let out a long sigh before responding.
“Your dad is getting out of prison.” I stopped pacing.
“When?”
She sighed again. “In two weeks. I just found out. Are you okay?” I wasn’t, but I said I was, so I didn’t have to talk about it more. I went back to the table and told my boyfriend, Kelly. I laid my phone on the table, face down. Then, I went right back to eating while he stared at me, eyes wide and mouth open. “Well, how do you feel?” he asked me warily. “I don’t know,” I said. I looked at my phone, wondering if I should call my mother back, and say more. But what would I say?
I stopped eating and began to cry. “I really don’t know.”
My father went to prison when I was only a few months old. He and my mother were married. She was 22 years old, and he was two weeks from 21. His crime and subsequent incarceration devastated her. She discovered she was pregnant with my brother after my father was already gone. She didn’t talk about him much. No one did, except to say how much I looked like him. My Uncle Clarence, my father’s closest brother, would just stare at me. Sometimes I caught him. “You gotta excuse me,” he’d smile. “You look just like my brother, but smaller and with pigtails.” Then he’d hug me, and we’d laugh. I always wished he’d say more about his beloved brother, my absent father, but he rarely did.
I’d seen my dad approximately four times over 30 years, but I only remembered two of them: a visit when I was 12 years old, and one when I was 25. When I thought of visiting my father, I pictured the beige rooms, the beige uniforms, and how everything seemed to be nailed down. I always brought bags of change to use at the vending machines. I knew he had a sweet tooth, and I wanted to buy him something sweet. He always got reprimanded by guards for holding my hands too long.
The only real information I had about my dad came in his letters; he sent me dozens. Photographs included in those letters were precious. In the 30 years he was locked away, I only received four. That was the best he could do.
He kept writing: that I was his favourite girl, I was brilliant, and I was the best daughter anyone could ever hope for. For a long time, that was all I needed. Until, of course, I needed more.
Phone calls were too expensive, plus, my mum, siblings and I kept moving. He was wasting money he didn’t have calling numbers we had left behind. He had no access to the kind of technology people were using more and more on the outside. I’d gone to the library and signed up for a Hotmail email address. I thought I might be able to give it to him the next time we spoke, but they didn’t have email in prison. Meanwhile I became obsessed with communicating with strangers online, a compulsion that was only tempered by the fact that we couldn’t afford the internet at home.
I wrote him back by hand approximately three times. I had been receiving his letters since before I could read, and wanted to respond much more often than I did. How do you catch someone up on your entire life? I didn’t know how, and so I rarely tried. Our relationship existed in sparse correspondence and our own imaginations.
Back then, our relationship wasn’t real. I felt like I knew him, and he felt like he knew me, but really we were both building versions of the other we couldn’t confirm or deny. We dreamed of one another — what we might be like — long before we met. Each meeting, though pleasant, bowed under the weight of all our expectations. We were happy to see one another, but we could not always say the thing we most wanted to say and risk spoiling the other’s dream. We never talked about it, yet somehow agreed on these terms. An unspoken pact between an emotionally desperate father and daughter.
“That’s okay, Baby,” he’d say, when I tried to apologise on the phone for not writing. “You write me when you want to. I’ll be waiting patiently, and happily.”
He kept writing: that I was his favourite girl, I was brilliant, and I was the best daughter anyone could ever hope for. For a long time, that was all I needed. Until, of course, I needed more.
I made a special playlist on iTunes before going to see my dad for the first time as a free man. I sat up in my hotel room in Indianapolis, having arrived from Brooklyn at nearly 1 a.m. The room was dirty and badly designed, but I’d booked it last minute using an app. Now, I was back in my favourite Midwestern city, preoccupied with the phone in my hands, trying to answer the question, “What songs will I want to listen to on the way to see my father for the first time outside of prison?” I didn’t want to hear anything too loud or too fast. I wanted familiar and soothing; 60 tracks later, the list was lousy with Anita Baker, Lauryn Hill, and ‘90s-era Kenny Loggins.
Sleep did not show up that night. As scared as I was of the bedbugs I assumed surrounded me in that atrocious hotel, I was more afraid what would happen when I saw my father. Would the man who showed up be anything like the one I’d been imagining, and would I be anything like the daughter he thought he had? Would he be proud of me? How were we going to make this relationship — the real one — work? I lived in Brooklyn, and he would be staying with his sister in Indiana. More importantly, he had been in prison for 30 years and had no contact with modern technology.
We were on opposite ends of this technological spectrum, but if we wanted to know each other, we would have to meet somewhere in the middle.
He didn’t have an email address, while I was tackling multiple inboxes every day. He’d only seen photos of cell phones, but I was blocking apps in an effort to get my time and attention back. The social aspect of the internet I’d always enjoyed had recently begun to feel like something I was trapped inside of, something at odds with my desire to be close to people. And yet, I was constantly logged in, logged on, or scrolling. We were on opposite ends of this technological spectrum, but if we wanted to know each other, we would have to meet somewhere in the middle.
I went to my aunt’s house, and my father wasn’t there just yet. My mother, my aunt, and I sat around chatting for over an hour before we heard the garage door open. I stood up — he didn’t know I was there. He didn’t even know I was coming to see him, and I wanted to be the first person he saw. And I was. He walked over to me silently, put his arms around me, and kissed my temple. My aunt began to cry and yelled, “Thank you, Father God! Thank you, Jesus!” My Uncle took dozens of photos of me and my father that I knew I’d want immediately. I only ever had one picture of us together, taken in the prison visiting room: my brother and I seated on either side of a father we did not know; our faces a mixture of happiness and confusion. On this day, my father and I silently looked up at each other, wondering who the other might be, and excited to find out. My aunt cried behind us, “God is so good!”
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I stayed in Indiana for a week. My dad and I went shopping for new clothes for him. Stores were a lot for him. He didn’t understand why everyone walked around looking down at their phones. He couldn’t fathom what could be happening on the phone that kept them so entranced. I tried to explain that there were often other people to talk to or look at on phones. Sometimes those people were far away, or people they didn’t even know. There were mostly no long-distance fees; there were photos and videos — basically the whole world could be on these screens. He thought about that for a minute and said, “But there are people all around right here. A lot of people we don’t know. Why not just look at them?” I didn’t have an answer to that. I thought about taking my phone out of my bag and showing him, but I also didn’t want to bring my Phone World into Our World. We were shopping together for the first time, shooting the shit for the first time, and despite all my usual inclinations, I had no desire to rush to document it. I didn’t want to share it with anyone else.
When my dad asked for my number, I wrote it down on the back of a receipt and handed it to him. “Is this your New York number, or your Indiana number?” he asked. I looked up at him and grinned. “There’s no difference between the two, Dad. That number follows me wherever I go.” I wondered if he’d ask me how that worked, but he didn’t. He didn’t really seem to care. All his questions were about me. Where did I work? Did I love it? Who was I dating? Did I love them? Would he get to meet them? What was my home like? What was my favorite food? Did I remember telling him I was proud of his art? Did I know that that’s why he got one of his degrees in art? Would it be alright if he called me on Wednesdays and Saturdays? Would I spend the night tonight so we could sleep under the same roof for the first time? Was I sleepy? Was I happy? By the time I fell asleep, I didn’t even know where my phone was.
I left the next morning emotionally exhausted, my phone screen crowded with notifications I didn’t want to answer or know about. I did not want to leave my father, and yet, I couldn’t relax until I was finally on my way back to Brooklyn. I ignored my phone the entire drive back to Indianapolis, the flight back to New York, and most of the day after. When my Uncle Clarence started texting me the photos he took while my dad was holding me, I couldn’t help but open and look. I cried while I scrolled through them, then immediately distracted myself by digging into my inbox, my iMessages, and various social media alerts. A hundred people were trying to reach me, and I felt too many miles away from the one person I wanted to see. I closed the phone again, downloaded an app that periodically blocks me from social media, and called my aunt’s number to see if I could speak to my dad.
Over the past five months, my father and I have taken on the monumental task of getting to know each other. I’ve visited him once more, pulled into the driveway listening to “Almost There” by Michael Jackson, just to walk into the house and hear him listening to the very same song. In many moments, in person and over the phone, we’ve marvelled at how alike we are. We share similar tastes in music, art, and humour. We’re stubborn, but not hot-headed, and given to daydreaming as long as we can. We had our first argument, a miscommunication really, and once it was resolved I giggled and thought, Wow. I just had my first fight with my dad. A real fight with my real dad. He keeps calling, and I keep answering. He has a job and a smartphone now, but he doesn’t really know how to text. I just send him pictures of me, my home, my city, and I know he can see them, even if figuring out how to respond still eludes him on most occasions.
This was what he never got to do, be there for me in hard times. I could give him this.
When he calls, we talk about our days, our weeks, and our hopes. Occasionally, we rant, but not often. Because of how much time we've lost, we're constantly catching each other up. He tells me about his childhood, and I tell him about mine. He's called at least once when I was deeply depressed. He asked if everything was okay, and I didn't have the energy to lie. I told him I knew I wasn't much fun when I was like this or interesting to talk to. He said, "You're my daughter. Everything you do is interesting to me. I know you're upset, but if you'll let me, I'd like to try and help. Can we just keep talking?" I smiled at the longing in his voice. This was what he never got to do, be there for me in hard times. I could give him this.
"Sure, Dad," I said. "I'd love to keep talking." And so we did.
At least once a day I open my phone to scroll through our one-sided text conversation. There are a few sentences from his end, words separated by periods. He has trouble with the space bar. I see the uninterrupted column of my selfies and views of my surroundings. I know he appreciates the technology that allows him to see my current world so clearly, as he missed so much of my past. Because he has trouble responding with text, he calls to say how wonderful I am, how proud of me he is, and how much he wishes he could see the things I see every day. If I can't answer he leaves minute-long voicemails. He is a talker, and I am his rapt audience.
I know someday he’ll figure out how to text exactly what he wants to say. When that happens, I’ll miss how much we’ve had to fit into phone calls, and how I’ve had to describe all the things he can’t see about who I am and where I am. I’ll miss his voice, too. His strange and familiar voice that sounds so much like my brother’s, and his brother's, though the thoughts often sound just like mine.
Yes, one day, he’ll think to text before he thinks to call because that’s what everybody does. It’s quicker and more convenient. Less intimate. Traditionally, with most people, I’ve preferred it that way. With him, it’s different. I’m different, and I want to talk to my dad on the phone more than I want him to text me. But I don’t have to worry about that just yet. For now, I wait to hear his voice on Wednesday and Saturday nights. I wait patiently, and happily.
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Designer Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons is like the sun: life-giving and nurturing, but too intense for most people to look at directly without some sort of filter. Let me explain what that means by listing some of my favourite pieces of hers: I call this dress from her spring ’97 collection “The Working Girl Shift For Smuggling A One-Legged Ghost.” Along with a crinkling, funnel neckline and cute cap sleeves, the dress also prominently features a large, leg-shaped lump along the hip. This is “Giant Shorts for Average People”: an all-white look from the ’95 collection that’s basically one massive pair of tweedy hot pants you wear by putting both feet inside one leg. And here is the “The Pious Oreo Peacock” from the spring ’17 collection, a ruffle-lined disk with a starched Wednesday Addams collar but no arm holes. "2Night in 2D" treats the human body like a slightly too-small paper doll. "Roomba Lint" looks like what you’d find inside a dust cartridge.
These garments are all fabulous and museum-worthy; which is why the subject of the upcoming Costume Institute's Exhibition at The Met is Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art of the In-Between. But it’s also totally unwearable. Not that it really matters when it comes to Kawakubo. “For fashion people, she is church,” says stylist Kate Young, whose clients, including Michelle Williams, Selena Gomez, Natalie Portman, and Dakota Johnson, are considered some of the more fashion-forward celebrities to walk the red carpet. “Everybody lives for it. So much of what’s important in fashion comes from Rei. Comme des Garcons is regularly ahead of everyone else, and does things that are more exciting, smarter, more forward thinking. And it starts a waterfall of creativity from the rest of the fashion industry.”
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For designers, that waterfall oftentimes looks like more agreeable interpretations of Comme des Garcons philosophies — clothes don’t have to be pretty to be beautiful, they shouldn’t have to accentuate the natural body, and what exactly is a sleeve? For enthusiastic dressers, like myself and the other members of the mid-2000s blogging community, that also included mining the vast vocabulary of Comme — red tartan, polka dots, felt suiting, Doc Marten oxfords, too-short pants — and finding affordable substitutes in thrift stores, men’s sections of big-box stores, and misspelled (but genuine) CDG originals on eBay.
With the Met Gala coming up on Monday, May 1, Comme des Garcons as a theme presents a unique challenge for stylists like Young and the glitterati they work for: How do you do antipretty when the purpose of the red carpet is to be attractive, alluring — pretty?
“Never,” Young interrupts me, as I begin to ask her whether she’s ever pulled Comme des Garcons for celebrities to wear. “ Neverrrr. I’m not invited to their runway shows. My job is packaging actresses to make the public love them. Putting them in bumpy dresses isn’t a good idea. Comme des Garcons need to be pre-digested by another designer for it to work.”
Solange or Rihanna will not have a problem, but Taylor Swift certainly will.
Stylist Micaela Erlanger who works with Lupita Nyongo, Meryl Streep, Naomie Harris, and Winona Ryder also does not pull from Comme des Garcons showrooms: “It’s not a common brand that I necessarily call in for my clients, but it’s not because of a lack of respect or interest. You see Comme worn a lot more by musicians and stage performers — the avant garde pieces are better suited for them. But certainly the commercial pieces work for celebrities and are much more wearable.”
This is what makes this particular Met Ball so interesting. Solange or Rihanna will not have a problem, but Taylor Swift certainly will. I’m even having a hard time imagining what exhibit co-chair Katy Perry, who recently appeared on the most recent cover of Vogue in a Comme creation, in anything as true to Kawakubo as Pious Oreo Peacock. Besides celebrities, the rest of the Met Gala guest list also attracts an audience who might struggle with the theme: fashion designers who want to promote their own labels, and New York socialites who can afford the £25,000 ticket. If we as an audience are going to view the red carpet as a reflection of Kawakubo’s ethos, our own repulsion might be the biggest indicator of whether guests are doing it right.
And...that’s really weird! For a fashion brand to be so widely beloved within the industry, so often referenced, rehashed, and revered, Comme des Garcon is largely invisible in its pure form.
Rei Kawakubo has been designing for Comme des Garcons since 1969. But I didn’t come across her work until 2006, in the form of one of her many quotes that were floating around Fashion Internet at the time: “For something to be beautiful, it doesn’t have to be pretty.” It struck me as profound, as many things did when I was 19, but in a way that had an immediate impact on my day-to-day. My yardstick for what fashionable had meant included “sophisticated” clothing that had moved beyond girlish ruffles and whimsy, but not so grown-up that things got dowdy. The epitome of style was the long, noodle-thin women on the cover of fashion magazines wearing body-hugging clothes and carrying monogrammed bags. Style was sexy, and expensive, and attractive, and pretty.
But as I fell into the world of Comme des Garcons and Kawakubo, I found myself entranced by images of women wearing those girlish ruffles like battle spikes and rubber-soled combat boots with tulle ball gowns. Their clothes were not pretty, though some of it was sweet, and the whole thing was actually aggressively un sexy though plenty of the tops showed off their entire chest. I fell for it hard. For me and a whole group of fashion nerds on the Internet in 2006 (including Tavi Gevinson, Susie Bubble, and every member of Super Future forums), Rei Kawakubo was ground zero; our upgraded understanding of fashion began with and was framed by her work.
“I make clothes for a woman who is not swayed by what her husband thinks."
This was exactly what she was going for. “I make clothes for a woman who is not swayed by what her husband thinks,” Kawakubo said. The word husband can be a stand-in for any other entity — consumers, the status quo, a first date — who might care to see a woman presented as pretty, sexy, or down-to-earth. This philosophy is why Comme des Garcons’ clothes have been considered the paragon of avant garde fashion for nearly five decades.
Kawakubo began making clothes in 1969 that were in stark contrast to the sultry look of Halston disco or the sweet, feminine style of Laura Ashley prep. They were more punk, but without the sex — like Ziggy Stardust without the glitter and Vivienne Westwood without the bustiers. Kawakubo created black, shapeless separates in “dowdy” materials like boiled wool and linens — the aesthetic was so severe that Japanese media called her followers “The Crows.”
It as a hit. By the ‘80s, she was dramatic, controversial collections in Paris. By the ‘90s, she had a dozen off-shoot brands. Today, Comme des Garcons International is a lucrative privately owned company, operated by Kawakubo’s husband, Adrian Joffe. And even though she’s made it clear that she has a decidedly un-capitalistic approach to growth, business is healthy:The Guardian reported in 2015 that the brand’s profits are £200 million a year. For comparison, Prada — a much bigger company with mass brand-name recognition and more accessible products (read, shirts with just two sleeves) — earned £302 million last year. But unlike most other fashion brands, the business is not driven by growth, but rather by Kawakubo’s dedication to her art, and all the conflict and alienation it entails. Obviously, this has sometimes led to problems.
It’s no surprise then that for a designer who’s built a brand around deliberately attacking the idea of “good taste,” sometimes the real world would describe elements of Kawakubo’s world as taste less. She has cited the homeless, itinerant “bag lady of New York” as a source of inspiration as long ago as 1984 and as recently as 2009. That collection promptedThe Washington Post ’s Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Robin Givhan to say, “[Kawakubo] had found inspiration in the plight of the homeless, the defeated and the desolate. When designers take creative license with the aesthetics of the less privileged, the less powerful, it feels as if they are stealing the very souls of those people.”
Her runways, too, are one of the few remaining places where you’ll find a completely whitewashed model lineup, a surprising thing considering that the most of her clientele are men and women of colour. Most designers would get reamed for that fact, but Kawakubo has mostly escaped widespread criticism for it. That’s because it’s accepted that she treats her models as mannequins instead of stand-ins for her ideal consumers, covering their faces with makeup, wigs, and garments, sometimes completely obscuring their identities. To Kawakubo, the runway is not a place for people to use her clothes for their interpretation; it is a place for her to use people to relay her interpretation through clothes. To some, it’s fascism on the runway. To others, it’s art, full stop — and that argument is buttressed because most of the time, what’s shown on the runway is not actually for sale.
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Today, the Comme des Garcons family has 18 different, distinct lines of varying degrees of avant garde. The most popular (and commercial) is Play — its polos, T-shirts, and mariner tops with the tell-tale heart with eyes attract young Hypebeasts and graying art teachers alike. Its wallets and pouches, too, are wildly popular. The other lines read like a marketing team brainstorm, with names like Comme des Garcons Comme des Garcons, Comme des Garcons SHIRT, Comme des Garcons SHIRT Girl, Comme des Garcons SHIRT Boy, Comme des Garçons Girl, and Comme des Garcons Homme (designed by Junya Watanabe) — not to be confused with Junya Watanabe Comme des Garcons Man.
All of these brands are housed in Comme des Garcons’ NYC flagship store in Chelsea. Walk through a calamari-shaped metal tube and enter a white-and-golden shrine filled with racks of clothes in varying shades of black, red, white, and grey. Occasional fluorescent florals break up the colour story, and a plexiglass altar containing Play merch is conveniently situated by the door and the register.
Clothing on the racks doesn’t actually include what you see on the runways, but rather toned-down versions that allow for real human activity, like sitting and using your hands. I was shown two shoppable iterations of a black jumpsuit that appeared like the bottom half of a goth Gingerbread costume: The more advanced one looked like a pair of fly-fishing waders made of black wool (£975). The more wearable one was nearly indistinguishable from a typical pair of cropped black trousers with attached suspenders (£350). According to brand spokespeople, the runway looks are often distilled into a varying number of pared-down variations per look.
Despite the fact that I didn’t see another customer during the hour I was in the store on a late Monday afternoon, a store clerk assured me that they had a busy month fulfilling orders for the Met Gala — and that the garments people picked were thankfully more advanced than wearable. They also told me that Rihanna had been upstairs earlier in the month, rummaging around in the archives for a runway original from a past season.
Rihanna and the the handful of adventurous red carpet celebrities aside, expect to see a lot of attendees combat the challenge by opting for Comme des Garcons motifs rather than the anti-pretty Comme des Garcons spirit: a lot of polka-dotted gowns; red, ruffled dresses; and nubby black skirt suits, in attractive, flattering renditions.
“Challenge is good,” Erlanger posits. “The Met Ball allows people to embrace the art of fashion in the sense that they’re wearing masterpieces that are meant to be worn and showcased in a theatrical way.”
And next Monday while I’m covering the affair, I feel like I owe it to my 19-year-old self to also mind the theme. I’ll be wearing a pair of patchworked Junya Watanabe Comme des Garcons pants, and a Comme-in-spirit-but-not-in-label Victoriana blouse that I love but — more delightfully — my fiancé absolutely despises.
It might not be pretty, but it’ll be pretty perfect.
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This week we've been championing sustainable fashion and investigating the sad facts that the fashion industry relies on cheap fabric, exploitative labour and a lengthy, complicated supply chain. Want that £3.99 T-shirt? There’s a good chance that the desire for this basic garment comes at the expense of an underpaid garment worker in a developing country. Things are, however, changing slowly – the combined effect of new legislation, increased consumer awareness and the tireless work of non-profit organisations like Fashion Revolution. Still, union workers are being jailed in Bangladesh for striking over criminally low wages, activists are being attacked and silenced by untrustworthy governments, and factory fires are still a relatively common cause of death for garment workers. We need to do more.
It may sound an unachievable mission but a new generation of design talent is proving that, with enough creativity and commitment, clothing can be both innovative and sustainably made. Some use organic fibres or recycled textiles. Others work with local craftspeople, eliminating the need for global exports and the air pollution caused by fuel transit. These are all small changes which ultimately prove that style doesn’t need to come at the expense of others.
Better still, these designers are using a new language of sustainability. Devoid of press buzzwords, their explanations of their brand ethos and design aesthetic break down the complex web of effects so often reduced to terms like ‘ethical’ or ‘green.’
Bethany Williams, for example, works with local communities and creates a cycle of income still anomalous in the fashion industry. The Autonomous Collections make unique garments from scrap fabric in their east London studio; Jodie Ruffle uses couture embroidery techniques with small adjustments, which results in a beautifully imperfect aesthetic. Elliss incorporates sustainable manufacturing without compromising design, whereas ONEBYME has created an entire world around their gender-fluid vision that turns fabric waste into delicious cupcakes.
These inventive minds are exploring and expanding their creativity without exploiting workers or polluting the environment; they’re part of a new generation for whom sustainability is a natural consideration, not a passing trend intended to sway new consumers. Ultimately, they are part of today’s fashion revolution.
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The Autonomous Collections
“The word ‘autonomous’ means independent, free or self-ruling, and that is what The Autonomous Collections is about: expressing autonomy through fashion. Our London-based brand takes an ethical approach to fabrication and design, offering a bold aesthetic that is wearable and considered.
We think about how to create each step of the design process responsibly, whether that be using scrap fabric, zero waste or organic and natural fibres. All of these can be used in the same design.
We hand-make all of our products in our studio in east London, ensuring each garment has its own unique characteristics. We believe that fashion should represent the uniqueness and originality of the individual wearing it.”
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Jodie Ruffle
“My work centres around a return to traditional craft; deconstructed embroidery techniques that value the beauty of imperfections and unpredictabilities are applied to an easy-fit, sportswear silhouette.
I take a wabi-sabi approach, often creating my textiles inside out – working from the back to reveal the raw qualities of stitch on the front. I want each of my pieces to have a story behind them, so I emphasise all the imperfections that happen during the creative process; every stitch and knot is visible.
Each piece is created by hand in my London studio, always with consideration for sustainability. It’s semi-couture, socially responsible streetwear.”
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Bethany Williams
“The brand identity of Bethany Williams is about working and collaborating with a charity each season. Sustainability is integral, social responsibility is imperative; we aim to create a brand that is socially engaging, helping and supporting local communities. Through this collaboration we hope to create collections embedded with real people and cause a real effect through a cycle of exchange and generation of profit given to connected charities.
Our charity engagement, closed-loop system and alternative fashion production mark us apart – we believe fashion’s reflection on the world can create positive change. We encourage British craftsmanship by working with local craftsmen, women factories and suppliers to create traditional, hand-crafted techniques within print, woven, knitted and embroidered textiles. Similarly, all garments are 100% recycled or organic, including their component parts such as materials, zips and threads.”
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Elliss
“The pieces are clean, flattering cuts with unusual detailing and print. The ethos of the brand is ‘Unconscious Clothing’, which is a play on the idea of the ‘Unconscious Customer’. The women who buy our clothes may not be looking for something eco-friendly, but they may choose a piece because of the design – to be unconsciously conscious.
The placement of the print is very important because I work with the body but also against it, challenging and jolting the female form. Collection I was inspired by the women who spoke out before others would; I incorporated 18th and 19th century portraiture into prints. The most recent collection is a commentary on nudity and what sexualises the human body – specifically, the female body.”
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ONEBYME
“ONEBYME is a gender-fluid, urban luxury fashion brand. We craft garments from ONE piece of cloth, woven from 100% natural fibres by mills here in the UK.
Imagine a world where fashion waste turns into food. That’s the ONEBYME World. We place our fabric offcuts into our Wormery. Our Wormery yields compost, and from the compost we grow herbs – like the basil used to make our delicious Lemon Basil Cupcakes.”
Blake Lively trolled Ryan Reynolds on Instagram, and we are here for it. The Hollywood power couple were at the Time100 Most Influential People celebration dinner. Lively snapped a photo for her feed. The photo is a shadow of Reynolds as he steps in front of John Legend. Legend is on stage performing in the shot. Reynold's head almost completely blocks out Legend.
"Congratulations to the most influential person in my life," Lively wrote. "The best man I know... you deserve this @time 100 honor ... If only my husband wasn't blocking you in this shot. I'm so sorry @johnlegend."
That is next level, playful shade from Lively. Time selected Reynolds as part of this year's "Influential" list, which is a distinguished honour, so maybe his wife is simply doing her part to keep his feet on the ground. Or maybe she saw an opportunity to give her husband a taste of his own social media medicine.
Reynolds is notorious for being sarcastic on his feed and takes every opportunity to go for the joke, usually at his expense. Earlier in the week, he posted a photo of himself thanking Time for the honour. "Thank you #Time100 For including me in this ridiculous list of brilliant and sometimes terrifying people. And the gorgeous @helenmirren ...," he captioned. "I thank you from the heart of my bottom for the kindest words ever. They will be sung by a children's choir at my extravagant funeral."
Lively wasn't alone in her love for Legend at the Time gala. The star-studded event looked like a total blast, at least from the flood of photos on Instagram. She was just the one who took the time to take Reynolds down a notch.
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