Find out what’s heating up (and cooling down) in our weekly barometer of trends from fashion to pop culture.
Start skirting the issue
After a winter of pulling on our jeans and joggers, we’re pleased to report that it’s all about the bells and whistles party skirt this season. Think tassels, texture and tweaked silhouettes. If you don’t have any parties in the diary yet, don’t let that hold you back, as the way to style yours is to make it “everyday” with white shirts and pared-back basics.
It all started on the catwalk (where else?) when Matthieu Blazy showed tassel-trim bouclé and floor-sweeping maxis at the Chanel spring/summer 2026 show; Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez presented dramatic asymmetric skirts at Loewe; while at Dries Van Noten it was chartreuse mermaid hems and see-through midis. We’re getting ours from Mango — its white textured style gives big movement — or Arket, whose lace-trimmed version has a more minimalist flair.
Going up
- Anchovy as an adjective
“More anchovy” is being used to mean quirky/eccentric. Salty! - Boxers hit the streets
Men’s underwear as a summer look has hit the masses - Buttonhole napkins
Like giant bibs, seen in London at Simpson’s in the Strand and Maison François - The personality pedicure When your summer foot glow-up changes your entire being
Going down
- BTS unboxing videos
It’s bad enough watching people open their post. We don’t need to know how they filmed it - Classic coffee orders
No imaginative topping on your hot drink? Boring! (See Starbucks’ new protein cold foam) - Exhausjean
Perennially searching for the perfect pair. Always ending up with some that aren’t quite right - Hen do pass-agg Ramping up for 2026. “If the person who still hasn’t transferred for the hot tub BBQ could do asap that’d be AMAZE”
Sing it back
Once upon a time karaoke had something of a bad rep: a cringe humiliation ritual that signalled to everyone it was time to call it a night after one too many wailing renditions of Cher’s Believe. But recently there has been a shift, thanks to a legion of tastemakers from the art and fashion worlds who have been quietly reinvigorating the Japanese innovation. Just ask Archie Madekwe, the 31-year-old Saltburn star, whose love of a good singalong is such that the actor now has a private room named after him at Moyagi, a karaoke and cocktail bar in central London.
Meanwhile, new spots are popping up in pockets across the capital, such as U9 off Leicester Square and the Black Eel in Dalston, which features a leopard-print-carpeted sing-song den on its top floor. Elsewhere, the Manchester pizza joint Nell’s installed karaoke booths last summer at its sites in Kampus and Media City, and Cosy Joes, Newcastle’s famed karaoke bar, has recently opened a spot in Sheffield. Meanwhile Boom Battle Bar in Birmingham has started hosting themed karaoke brunches. “In a world where everyone’s hyper-online and lonelier than ever, there’s an urge to find ways of connecting meaningfully,” says Marcus Schuterman, the co-founder and creative director of Moyagi. Karaoke does that, offering an intentional way for people to spend time together without screens. “The category has also been allowed to grow, as traditional nightclubs have contracted sharply during the past 20 years,” he adds. Better start practising in the shower then.
No notes: the rom-com journalist’s enduring appeal
The Devil Wears Prada is back, which means a return of the female journalist protagonist, the trope that dominated the Noughties rom-com. Yes, let’s hear it for millennials who were raised on a pop culture diet of women writers strutting through sleek glass offices with a coffee cup in hand, working on fulfilling-sounding assignments. Take How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Never Been Kissed, 13 Going on 30, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Confessions of a Shopaholic, Morning Glory, The Holiday — and that’s before we mention Carrie Bradshaw maths, which saw the Sex and the City character wearing Manolo Blahniks in an Upper East Side apartment on a writer’s salary. According to Kirsty Fairclough, professor of screen studies at Manchester Metropolitan University, the trope “embodies a specifically postfeminist ideal: professionally ambitious and culturally authoritative, yet still narratively framed through consumption, romance and self-fashioning”. An exhausted storyline? You could say that again. But be careful what you wish for: we’ll miss her when AI replaces all our jobs.
Additional words: Hannah Connolly, Olivia Petter
