Find out what’s heating up (and cooling down) in our weekly barometer of trends from fashion to pop culture.

Big cat energy

Looking for a wild idea for spring? The leopard-print coat is your friend. Offering more animal magnetism than a trip to London Zoo, this outerwear choice is the winter-into-spring trend we never saw coming. As demonstrated by some of street style’s finest, the joy of this look — and its potential to become your whole personality — is the minimal effort required.

When your coat is this “extra”, it’s plain sailing for the rest of your outfit and it can transform even the most low-key jeans and T-shirt. Happily, leopard-print coats are everywhere: Rixo and Reformation are favourites on Instagram, while Isabel Marant and Nour Hammour offer high-end alternatives. Hear us roar.

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Spring’s It lit? ‘Biogs with benefits’

Thought a memoir’s only job was to tell a story? Think again. These days expect a side of practical advice as we see a spate of autobiographies with benefits hit the shelves. Rachel Khoo’s The Smallest Restaurant in Paris (Maison Khoo £18.99, from May 12) mixes anecdotes about her time at Le Cordon Bleu and opening a micro restaurant from her tiny Parisian apartment with recipes. Likewise, Eleanor Steafel’s But First, Dinner (Orion £20, from May 7) blends memory, essays and recipes, while the cousins and co-authors Eleanor Bruce and Lucilla Gray’s book Things We Found in the Ground (HarperCollins £20, April 9) is a tale of self-discovery as well as a “guide that’s not a guide” to metal detecting. Finally, Black Fish: How to Fish, and Stories of the Wata, Kin & Community (Watkins Media £20, from May 12) by Speech Debelle — the Mercury prizewinning musician turned author — combines her memoir with tips on how to fish. “You can trace a line from 2014’s H Is for Hawk, where memoir became about more than narrating one’s life,” the literary publicist Maria Garbutt-Lucero says. “The growth of this hybrid genre — more friendly than a manual, more ‘useful’ than a memoir — speaks to readers’ desires to transform their lives while getting their hands dirty.” Yes, even our books are multi-hyphenates.

Hold your horses!

Hay there. Yes, we mean dried grass, the incongruous ingredient increasingly cropping up on the hottest restaurant menus. Its earthy, toasty, herbaceous notes are the essence of the British countryside, but using hay to age or smoke meat and fish, infuse sauces or to cook dans le foin (literally in the hay) are centuries-old techniques. Now the vibe is less eau de barnyard, more Michelin-starred menu. The hay-smoked potatoes are a signature at the chef Tomos Parry’s Soho restaurant Mountain, for instance. You can kick off a meal at Mýse in North Yorkshire with a hay-pickled quail’s egg with wild mushrooms, while in Cardiff, at Gorse, the trout starter is smoked over hay and the rhubarb pud arrives floating in hay cream.

Back in London, Portland dishes up a sumptuous hay-infused hollandaise sauce alongside the bread, and hay panna cotta is a must-order at Trogolo, the cool new Notting Hill trattoria-slash-wine bar from the husband-and-wife team Lara Boglione (co-founder of Petersham Nurseries) and Giovanni Mazzei (of Tuscan winemaking dynasty fame). Eating like a pony has never been so chic.

One more thing

Photograph: Sam nicklin. Edit: flossie saunders

The wait is over: Louise Trotter’s first handbag for Bottega Veneta is with us at last. Long-standing fans of the Italian house may recognise the Veneta from previous incarnations — the bag is a gentle reinterpretation of a classic silhouette introduced in 2002. An investment buy with true staying power, it comes in a rainbow of colours and various sizes. Carrying the kitchen sink or just a phone case? You can bet there’s a Veneta to match. Small Veneta bag, £3,190, bottegaveneta.com

Additional words: Victoria Brzezinski, Hannah Connolly