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Selected Features

The Guardian •

‘She changed the beauty industry’: how Charlotte Mensah brought black hair into the spotlight

When Charlotte Mensah was a young child growing up in Accra, Ghana in the 1970s, she would spend hours watching her aunties having their hair intricately threaded, an ancient African technique where hair is wrapped tightly using yarn or thread. She didn’t know then that she would go on to become one of the most influential hairdressers in the UK. Renowned for championing natural black hair textures, she has worked as hairstylist to singers Janelle Monáe and Erykah Badu, and the writer Zadie Smit...
British Vogue •

This Cult London Shoe Emporium Was On The Brink Of Closure. Fashion TikTok Stepped In

“I love the colourful things,” says Ivy Rhodes, 20, a student who discovered the store through social media. “I’ve been getting into cute little vintage shoes and heels recently,” she tells me, while contemplating whether to buy a pair of chunky fluorescent-pink pumps. “I like the ’90s, early-2000s vibe, so it’s a bit of me, here.” It’s perhaps no surprise that a generation infatuated with the Y2K era is now queuing for glitzy designs that look as though they might once have belonged to Paris Hi...
The Guardian •

Back to the future as young England fans embrace fashion of the noughties

The Carpet Shop nightclub in Peckham, south London, is ordinarily packed with rowdy crowds at the weekend. But Saturday night’s liveliness was not congregated around the DJ on the dancefloor, the crowd was at the sold-out venue for England’s victorious quarter-final game at the 2026 World Cup, and the young spectators were there for the fashion as much as they were for the football.Luke Grandon and Mattia Guarnera, both 27, are “massive” football fans, and their love for the game is expressed in...
The Guardian •

How the I ❤️ T-shirt became trendy again, thanks to gen Z and anti-Trump sentiment

The biggest faux pas a tourist can make? Dressing like one. Selfie sticks and oversized backpacks fall within this category, but there is one item that has seemingly transcended cringe and entered the realm of cool.The “I heart” T-shirt is an instantly recognisable item. While it’s found in every souvenir shop in every major city across the world, there is no place the T-shirt is more associated with than New York. But what would ordinarily be found for sale at a stall on Canal Street for no mor...
Dazed •

No job, no future? Inside Britain’s new ‘Bedroom Generation’

Dave Martin, 25, lives with his parents in his childhood home just outside the supergrid city of Milton Keynes. His days consist of doing chores around the house to “earn his keep”: walking the dog, mowing the lawn and cooking meals for his family a few times a week. In his free time, he experiments with writing fiction and loses himself in tabletop role-playing games with his online friends. But for the past four years, since he graduated from university, the majority of Dave’s days have been s...
The Guardian •

The babydoll is back – and so is the moral panic

In the music video for her recent single Drop Dead, pop sensation Olivia Rodrigo saunters beguilingly through the ornate rooms of the Palace of Versailles, her eyes fixed on the camera. It is an all round soft-girl production, shot by Petra Collins who captures a hazy teenage aesthetic close to a carbon copy of Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film, Marie Antoinette. But when the video aired last month, it was met with instant backlash online – not for her halting tourists from visiting the world heritage s...
The Guardian •

‘Sick of swiping’: the dating event where your mates make the pitch for you

For many young people, the dating game has been nothing but a thankless task of endless swiping and ghosting, with little hope of finding love.But as dating apps fall out of favour, and a relationship recession looms, young singles have discovered a new way to revive the dating scene: talking up their pals to strangers.“Date My Mate” events involve pitching a friend to a room of singles, and are gaining momentum across England and Wales.The night unfolds like a reality TV dating show. Participan...
The Guardian •

‘The chef is a metre away from you’: the cosy allure of micro-restaurants

It started with the portion sizes, as all-you-can-eat buffets were reduced to bite-size small plates. Then the menus started to decrease, with pages of dishes shrinking to an A5 sheet of paper.Now restaurants are undergoing another round of downsizing. Micro-restaurants, which usually seat fewer than 20 people, are gradually spreading across the UK.The focal point is the communal table. At Gwen, a 3-metre-wide restaurant in Machynlleth, Wales, a table for eight holds all the bookings for the nig...
The Guardian •

‘It’s cooler than saying I bought this on Asos’: the big car boot sale rebrand

It’s a crisp Sunday morning in south-west London. Tucked within rows of terrace houses, the playground of a primary school has been transformed into an outdoor treasure trove. Tables are filled with stacks of books and board games; clothes hang from metal racks or are piled into boxes which are strewn over a hopscotch. It’s the 10am opening of Balham car boot sale. A modest queue filters through the entrance: families, pensioners, fashion influencers, TikTokers.Three friends – Dominique Gowie, A...
The Guardian •

Cocktails and checkmates: the young Britons giving chess a new lease of life

One of the liveliest spots on a Tuesday night in east London’s Brick Lane isn’t a restaurant or a streetwear brand pop-up, it’s a chess club – or chess club-nightclub hybrid, to be exact.Knight Club is the unlikely crossover between chess and London’s fervent nightlife scene. It was started by Yusuf Ntahilaja, 27, who began his first chess club in August 2023 at a smaller bar in Aldgate, not too far from the current location at Café 1001 on Brick Lane.“I wanted to make chess clubs for people who...
The Guardian •

‘Funny, sexy and a bit weird’: inside the new wave of literary parties

On a Saturday evening in London’s Notting Hill, a large crowd of moderately tipsy young people are spilling into a tailor’s shop on Portobello Road. A passerby could easily assume they were walking past a fashion pop-up attracting a stylish herd of fanatics. But they’d be wrong. The buzzing crowd is here for a live reading event, and they’re eager with energy and anticipation.Soho Reading Series began in the summer of 2023 and was founded by Tom Willis, a writer and PhD student. He wanted to mak...
Dazed •

Youth Demand, the movement taking on the British government

Last month, 10 protesters were arrested on ‘suspicion of conspiracy to cause public nuisance’ outside the opening of Parliament. The protestors – most of them under the age of 25 – were captured by an air drone camera as they donned keffiyehs and held placards with the words “Stop Israel’s Gaza Genocide”, encircled by a ring of Metropolitan Police officers glowing in fluorescent hi-vis. 
Those involved are part of a new organisation called Youth Demand - a youth-led, umbrella activist group whic...
Financial Times •

When Women Ran Fifth Avenue — the queens of 20th-century US retail

If ever there was a place where the impetus behind American consumerism and wealth in the 20th century could be located, it would be Fifth Avenue. Its glittering image as New York’s most lavish thoroughfare is often characterised by female shoppers surrounded by towering edifices named after retail giants.

Yet in our era of shopping malls and online conglomerates, the department store has largely ceased to exist. Today, the likes of Saks and Bergdorf Goodman — which still occupy prime real esta...
Financial Times Property Listings •

Fantasy home: a blueprint for switching off in Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days

I wouldn’t consider myself much of a homebody. I live in London — a city whose sprawling demands — be they work, leisure or a commute time of 40 minutes — mean I spend more time outside the confines of my home than I do inside it. But as much as I willingly succumb to the frenetic pace of city life, I often yearn to escape the chaos.

When watching Wim Wenders’ latest feature Perfect Days, I was struck by the refined living space of Hirayama — a toilet cleaner who spends his days driving in his
Dazed •

Why are so many of us ditching the pill?

The contraceptive pill was the harbinger of the sexual revolution – but now women are growing increasingly sceptical of

Since launching as a consumer drug in the UK in 1961, the pill has earned a reputation among feminist historians as one of the driving forces behind the sexual revolution. For generations now, the circular wheel on the green tinfoil package has been recognised as a rite-of-passage drug for those seeking sexual freedom without the risk of pregnancy. Today, it’s estimated that 1

Selected News

The Guardian •

From council estate to cabinet: the political life of Wes Streeting so far

Wes Streeting has resigned from government, in a move that could pave the way for a leadership contest.Suspicions have long been swirling that Streeting has his eyes on the Labour party top spot, but who is the man gunning to be, or to help choose, the next prime minister?Humble beginnings 1983-98Wes Streeting grew up on a council estate in Stepney, east London, the child of working-class teenage parents. His maternal grandparents were imprisoned for armed robbery; his grandfather serving time w...
The Guardian •

Foreign Office unit tracking Israel’s potential breaches of international law closes due to cuts

The Foreign Office unit tracking potential breaches of international law by Israel in Gaza and more recently Lebanon has been closed because of cuts within the department, the Guardian can reveal.The decision to shut the international humanitarian law cell follows a review by Olly Robbins, the permanent secretary at the Foreign Office dismissed last week by the prime minister over the Peter Mandelson scandal.Only a fortnight ago, the foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, said respect and support for...
The Guardian •

‘Our assumptions are broken’: how fraudulent church data revealed AI’s threat to polling

If you had been keeping tabs on the news about church attendance in Britain lately, you would be forgiven for thinking the country was in the midst of a Christian revival.Stories of swelling congregations, filled with young people returning to the flock, spurred on by everything from social media to a rise in bible sales appeared to be confirmed by a 2024 report from the Bible Society.Based on data collected by a YouGov survey, it claimed church attendance was increasing in England and Wales. Th...
The Guardian •

A beheaded tyrant and reckless drivers: a history of royal run-ins with the law

The news of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest on Thursday morning may come as surprise to many but the British royal family has long been mired by controversy. From illegal gambling, motoring offences and even execution, these are just a handful of the many royal run-ins with the law.Charles IThe last time a member of the British royal family was arrested was more than 350 years ago. Charles I was taken prisoner in 1647, after his defeat in the English civil war by parliamentary forces. The mo...
The Guardian •

Emerald Fennell hopes Wuthering Heights will ‘provoke a primal response’

Emerald Fennell has revealed that Margot Robbie asked if she could play the lead role in the adaptation of Wuthering Heights before she had approached the actor to do so.Robbie, whose production company LuckyChap Entertainment produced the film, asked if she could play Cathy after reading the script. “I sent it to them to produce, and Margot luckily asked if she might play Cathy,” said Fennell in conversation at the BFI Southbank in London.“I was very nervous to ask her, because I think we have...
The Guardian •

‘It’s younger people seeking some sort of spirituality’: UK Bible sales reach record high

For Christian booksellers, any good news about Bible sales has been few and far between. But recent retail figures have shown a revival.Sales of the good book reached a record high in the UK in 2025, increasing by 134% since 2019 – the highest since records began – according to industry research. Last year, total sales of Bibles in the UK reached £6.3m, £3.61m up on 2019 sales.The sudden uptick of interest has caused booksellers and scholars to ask some profound questions of their own, such as w...
The Guardian •

Online misinformation putting women off contraceptive pill, study finds

Social media misinformation about the contraceptive pill is encouraging women to view it so negatively that many give it up, a study has found.Researchers have identified myths spread on TikTok and other social media platforms as a key driver of users suffering side-effects that are real but psychological in origin. It is called the “nocebo effect”, the opposite of the better-known placebo effect.Experiencing it is closely linked to anxiety, depression and fatigue, with experts saying people bec...
The Guardian •

‘I don’t touch my phone. At home, I’d be scrolling’: why young people are flocking to independent cinemas

A new generation of film lovers is helping to drive an increase in cinema attendance across the UK. As the industry slowly recovers from the decline of audiences during the pandemic – there were 126.5m admissions in 2024 compared with 176.1m in 2019, the rise in younger people returning to cinema may be due to a newfound love for film developed during the lockdown years. Although figures are yet to be restored to pre-pandemic levels, admission rates are continuing to increase, and it is younger...
The Guardian •

Irish Museum of Modern Art rejects censorship claims after Derek Jarman film cancellation

The Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) has rejected accusations of censorship after suspending screenings of a Derek Jarman film following a complaint against the showing of a gay kiss.In a statement, the museum’s director Annie Fletcher said: “We at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) are dismayed at the current supposition that we would actively censor the work of Derek Jarman and /or any artist from the LGBTQ+ community.”The museum cancelled screenings of Jarman’s experimental 1985 film The...
The Guardian •

Gillian Anderson announces ‘even more daring’ follow-up to bestselling book of sexual fantasies

Gillian Anderson has announced a follow-up to her bestselling anthology of female sexual fantasies, Want, with the hope that it will be “more international, and even more daring”.The original book “gave thousands of women the freedom to talk about sex without shame or judgment; to see themselves in the words of strangers, and reflect on their own desires – some for the very first time,” Anderson said. “But Want unlocked so much more for so many and felt like just the beginning of a deeper conver...
The Guardian •

‘It makes me feel quite dehumanised’: young at London career fair lay bare barriers to jobs

Westfield White City is the biggest shopping mall in the UK and it is no stranger to crowds of young people parading through its halls. But instead of swarming the retail shops for the latest exclusive fashion drop, the hundreds of people in attendance this weekend are in search of something even more sought after and rarefied: a job.The London job show is the capital’s biggest career event. It is held every year and hosts a range of employers from the Metropolitan police to car valet services....