More often than we’d like to admit, we all love the idea of escaping away into places, being more like the wellness enthusiast that we keep seeing on the internet, and perhaps that’s one of the reasons why a retreat attracts many seeking a quiet getaway to spend some time away from the hustle and bustle of their busy daily lives, in a nice hush-hush area, somewhere where the meaning of peace doesn’t mean watching a Netflix series but understanding the essence of allowing yourself to slow down, another buzzword that has taken over in 2026. There’s something about being away from the constant noise that makes slowing down feel less like a chore and more like a necessity.

What Is Coolcationing? A Response to Summer Heat

Amidst this, mountain retreats took the slowing-down bit up a notch, and suddenly everybody wants to go and meditate on a hike in Mussoorie or try out a 6-course Kumaoni meal in Himachal Pradesh. As much as the sea seems beautiful and endless, sometimes a breathtaking view of high ranges and peaks while getting a hydrogen therapy done is something unmatched. Perhaps that’s the real appeal of coolcationing, finding a place where the weather, the landscape and the slower pace of life all seem to work in your favour. It’s less about escaping summer and more about finding a version of summer that actually feels like a break. This is what a ‘coolcation’ is, and maybe that’s why we’re all coolcationing through the roads of cities and embracing the route the way Imtiaz Ali portrays his films or the way Ruskin Bond indeed leads us. 

Northern Destinations See a Cooler Climate Boost

We’re not all just going to the mountains after watching Musafir Cafe on Netflix, but it took us all long enough to realise that while beaches are fun, a part of us always wants to wind down at a higher altitude and surrender to the mountains. As summers get warmer and city life gets increasingly unbearable, places like Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Kashmir and the Northeast are becoming the new answer to the annual heat escape. People are swapping beach holidays for pine trees, cold winds and mornings that actually require a jacket. The appeal is pretty simple: when the weather itself feels like a wellness treatment, why not make a holiday out of it?

Climate Change Anxiety Is Driving Travel Choices

Climate change has also quietly entered the travel group chat, and the way we choose where to go is beginning to reflect that. Extreme heat, unpredictable weather, and increasingly uncomfortable summers are making travelers think twice about the kind of holidays they want to plan. A destination isn’t just being judged by how beautiful it is anymore but by whether you can actually enjoy being there without melting by 11 AM. There’s a growing desire to find places that feel calmer, cooler and slightly more removed from the climate chaos happening outside.

How Shifting Weather Patterns Are Reshaping Travel Plans

Travel plans are changing because the weather is changing, and the shift is more obvious than ever. Summer holidays are no longer automatically synonymous with coastal destinations, with travellers increasingly looking at altitude, temperature and seasonality before booking a trip. It’s also changing what we expect from a getaway. A holiday now needs to offer more than sightseeing, it needs to give us a chance to breathe, reset and escape the heat that follows us everywhere. Maybe that’s why coolcationing feels less like another internet trend and more like a very logical response to the world we’re living in.

Also Read:

What 11,500 Feet Above Sea Level Taught Me About Living Well

I’m a Plastic Surgeon. These Are the Cosmetic Treatments I’d Never Do.

The origins of Women At Leisure are deeply personal. Yadav lost her mother in 2013, when she was 23, and was left grappling not only with grief but with an uncomfortable realisation: she had known her mother primarily as her mother, but very little about who she had been as a person. Her mother, who grew up in a village in Bundelkhand and studied until the eighth grade, had a life vastly different from Yadav's own experience as she completed her dual degrees at IIT Delhi.

That question, “who was my mother when she was not being my mother?” — became the starting point for a project that would eventually grow into a much larger inquiry into women's labour, time and freedom.

A conversation with a neighbour who remembered her mother as someone who laughed and joked more than any other woman in the colony made Yadav curious about the life that existed beyond the overworked, constantly irritated mother she had known at home. She began photographing her elder sister, documenting the ways she found pockets of leisure while managing a home and children. Soon, she began noticing the same question everywhere: in homes, markets, festivals, streets, agricultural fields and public spaces.

The photographs first appeared on Yadav's personal Instagram account under the title Women At Leisure. When a friend suggested she create a separate page, she initially rejected the idea. What began as a personal inquiry, however, eventually became a collective and political one.

A decade later, Yadav is still trying to understand her mother, but she does so now with, as she puts it, “less grief, more joy”. Through submissions from women across the country, Women At Leisure has become an archive of the many ways women find, negotiate and sometimes steal time for themselves.

For Yadav, leisure isn't simply about having free time. It is about permission, who is allowed to sit without purpose, wander without a destination, rest without guilt or laugh without paying a price.

On Independence Day, Yadav speaks to ELLE India about the origins of Women At Leisure, what a decade of submissions has taught her about women's freedom, the reactions that have stayed with her, and why the ability to truly relax might be one of the clearest measures of how free a society really is.

ELLE: You started Women At Leisure (WAL) from a deeply personal place of grief and longing. How did that personal inquiry eventually become a larger conversation about women, leisure and freedom?

Surabhi Yadav: Longing & loss made me create WAL. I lost my mother at 23 (2013) and was hit not only with immense grief but an unexpected wave of guilt. I felt so guilty of not really knowing my mother as a person. I realised I really didn’t know her worldviews, her politics, her ways of joys, her life before becoming my mother. Her and my life were also so different from each other that I also didn’t have enough imagination for who she could have been. She was from a village in Bundelkhand and got to study only till 8th grade. Whereas I was finishing my dual degrees at IIT Delhi at the time of her demise. I was so unaware about her interiority that it made me feel she was a stranger to me and I was so ashamed by that realisation. Immersed in this grief & guilt, I started an interview series titled “Knowing Ma as a Person” of people in her life asking about the aspects of her being that they understood and I missed. I wanted them to introduce this stranger to me and be friends with her.

One such interview with an aunty in the neighbourhood responded to my opening question, what do you remember about ma? — by saying “colony mein mein koi bai, koi ladies itna hasi mazak nahi karti thi, jitni tumhari mummy karti thi. Hasi mazak mein ek number”.

Her core memories with my mother didn’t match with my perception of my rather overworked and irritated mother who was constantly running after us 4 children to get things done in the house. This conversation made me desperately curious about, “who was my mother when she was not being my mother?”

I began photographing my elder sister whose life seemed similar to their mother, someone who manages home, kids, and is always working. I started documenting how my sister finds time for leisure & what her leisure looks like.

Once this gaze emerged, it became difficult to disengage from it. Observations of women’s labour and the scarcity of uninterrupted leisure began to appear everywhere, in homes, public spaces, festivals, markets, agricultural fields, and streets. I started sharing these photos on my private personal Instagram account and titled them as “women at leisure”. One of my male friends suggested I should make a separate page for this photo series, to which I scoffed & rejected saying, this is my deeply personal inquiry into memory, grief & absence, what do others have to do with this?

When the photos started increasing, I ended up making a separate page hoping just for focused organising purposes. My intention was to keep documenting this and try to reconstruct an imaginary understanding of who she was by getting a glimpse of the interiority of women like her. In a decade-long journey of documenting WAL, I still long to get to know her as a person, as a woman, what made her her. But now, I do it with less grief, more joy. Gradually, the inquiry shifted from the singular and personal toward the collective and political. Now the guilt and regret have been replaced with remorse & bottomless curiosity & purpose. And of course, it is now becoming a much bigger quest of understanding time, leisure, labour as feminist issues. To arrive at the point of discovering how leisure is at the heart of feminist liberation. WAL is India's first and largest digital archive documenting women and girls’ leisure.

ELLE: You now receive submissions from people across the country. What do you think makes someone look at their own life and think, “This is a moment I want to share”?

Surabhi Yadav: I think on social media, I get submissions for very mixed reasons. Some people absolutely romanticise a moment’s aesthetics and idea of leisure, some people find it so novel when a woman around them is at leisure, some truly really feel moved when they realise what they didn’t notice at all and feel stunned/amused/joy when they see themselves or their mothers/wives/grandmothers at leisure. I usually ask for consent, context and credit when considering a submission for the repository.

People often also treat “joy” as synonymous with leisure. But I can tell you from my own experience and from this documentation, leisure is so much more than joy.

ELLE: After seeing submissions from people across India, what have you learnt about what leisure and freedom look like in women's everyday lives?

Surabhi Yadav: India celebrates at least 100+ festivals every year. Meaning, on an average, there is a festival celebrated in some part of the country every 3-4 days. For a country obsessed with celebrations, one must imagine that the Indian must love to both pray and party. To some extent that is true, sights of people breaking into dances together, feasting together, dipping in rivers, going on long travels are common. But someone gotta cook the food, clean up the plates and the rivers, pack for the travels, and get a beating for dancing openly. And more often than not, a big swath of this back-end machinery of the nation’s joy, celebrations and rest are women.

Often, leisure & freedom looks stolen, conditional and compromised for women in India. It is stolen when it happens outside public visibility; conditional when it depends on prior proof of usefulness; and compromised when the only available route has its own price.

Farmers playing with mud while sowing seeds; aunties taking all-women’s trips to religious sites after retirement; older women at weddings spewing crass songs that rail against marriage, in-laws and extol extra-marital affairs; women competitively playing games in someone’s living room during their monthly kitty gatherings; nuns staring at the evening sky on a beach for hours; teachers dabbling with a basketball after the school empties, lovers stealing a kiss under a moonlit sky, girls enjoying a nap in the winter sun, mothers obsessively journalling her grief and thoughts about the life and death of her child, or just sipping a cup of chai by herself on the balcony in the first hour of the morning, before the grind begins.

ELLE: The images are often incredibly ordinary, a woman having chai, travelling, spending time with friends, dressing up, resting or simply being by herself. Why do you think these mundane moments can feel so significant?

Surabhi Yadav: The obviousness reveals obliviousness. We are oblivious to women’s inner worlds and their richness. It reveals that we are not curious about what women who are homemakers think all day. We don’t know if our mothers were to write poetry, what they would be writing. We are often clueless about how women's unabashed joy in public as a norm would look like, feel like. The visuals are ordinary but not abundant and familiar. They are not around but totally accessible. That revelation is what jolts people and thus, makes it a significant realisation.

And because capitalism and casteism has made us tie people’s worth with the size of their income, we absolutely forget to credit women for their relentless unpaid work of taking care of homes, families, relationships, ailing, failing, and lives. When women’s productivity is unworthy, their leisure i.e. their ‘unproductivity’ is not treated worthy of sustained attention or curiosity.

Because their labour is not important, their leisure or rather absence of it is not important. This project not only reminds one that women’s leisure exists, and that it is important but also shows how beautiful, comforting and liberating it can feel and look like. It reminds of the possibilities of that beautiful life immediately in your home, in your world that many people are missing observing and creating. It is sneaky feminism that lovingly nudges people to see big losses due to oppressive structures and their role in it, without blaming them.

ELLE: The page has clearly resonated with people beyond Instagram. What kind of reactions have you received, particularly from women and men who encounter the project through your public talks?

Surabhi Yadav: Overwhelmingly positive! At the end of my public talks, women come hug me, hold my hand and sometimes cry while holding me. A lot of men come to me expressing their shock about missing something so obvious and asking many questions about how to fix it for women in their lives. I see this pattern play out in almost all my public talks. I think WAL gives revelations to men and validation to women.

I often joke that there are no small talks on WAL's DMs, so many conversations simply begin from the deeper end, people’s reflections on how did they miss such an obvious thing around them, people’s reflections on their relationships with their mothers, grandmothers, mausis, partners. Reflection on why it feels so hard to be at leisure despite the fact they really want it. Reflections on ways to help their mothers be more at leisure and failing at it. The page is such a giving oasis in the world of the internet. It is my feminist hotbed, that’s where I go when the world feels full of injustices and I need my dose of hope for the day.

ELLE: Has there ever been a criticism or disagreement about the project that ultimately changed the way you approached Women At Leisure?

Surabhi Yadav: There were two different instances when two women rather harshly criticised the project because I had said that this project reveals that religions, despite their regressive practices at the expense of women’s freedoms, are one of the most common ways women access leisure in our country. They hated that comment and interpreted it as me glorifying oppressive structures. It was important for me to see that vehement dislike for this observation because it made me a better writer, I started making more nuanced thought leadership pieces to help people understand the negotiations that women are making on a regular basis to access the basic things in life. And that my job is to not go out in the world judging good leisure vs bad leisure or tell women if their feminism is better or inferior than mine. But to actually observe, draw patterns and make social commentary based on reality. My commitment is to not refute reality even if it is not my favourite reality.

ELLE: Do you think women feel the need to justify their leisure differently from men?

Surabhi Yadav: The more I paid attention to women at leisure around me, the better I understood how little time they actually had to relax, explore themselves and be idle. For men, being idle is a choice. A right they earn by virtue of being a breadwinner, or one in the making. For women, especially homemakers, it is an accusation. Because the value of labour is measured in economic terms, the labour of caregiving and managing homes is unpaid, unacknowledged, underappreciated and unceasing. For women like my mother, finding guilt-free time to do nothing is foreign and being idle is equivalent to being worthless. So they work, constantly.

When inequality is discussed, money, property, power and rights become key players in the conversation. But rarely do we discuss time and its ownership, quantity and quality as a resource. In reality, the freedom to have time and choose what to do with it is tied to our social and economic standing, which in turn are informed by our caste, class, geography and gender. This project, born out of love and a longing to know my mother better, soon became a quest to explore time and leisure as feminist issues.

But there’s more to it: leisure is not just a function of time but permission too. Who is allowed laziness, carefree loitering and purposeless visits to the market? Not women. In rural and peri-urban India, religious norms and rituals play a crucial role in allowing women to travel, have picnics outside their homes, dance, sing, let loose, and even be hysterical. Religious activities are socially sanctioned ways to be at leisure even when they are often at the expense of other liberties for women.

ELLE: When you look at the submissions coming in from different parts of India, do you see a common thread in the little pockets of freedom women create for themselves?

Surabhi Yadav: I think the common thread is not necessarily what women are doing, but the negotiation required to get there.

ELLE: You describe leisure as being about permission as much as time. What does Women At Leisure ultimately mean to you?

Surabhi Yadav: To me leisure doesn’t just mean ‘free time’. I define it as “window of time and space where a person can let down their guards to as much extent as possible”. The question is not simply whether women have time to rest, play or just be. The more revealing question is: under what conditions are they permitted to do so? Who is allowed laziness, carefree loitering and purposeless visits to the market? For the most part, not women.

The WAL archive repeatedly suggests that leisure is not simply a matter of time but permission. A woman may possess an afternoon free of paid work and still be unable to use it for herself. The absence is not temporal but social (Parikh, 2024; Henderson & Shaw, 2006). She just doesn’t lack time but also legitimacy and worthiness for leisure.

View this post on Instagram

To be at leisure in this context means constant negotiation with oppressive structures. Leisure becomes a game of permissions. It is an issue of access, rewards and punishments. The layers of oppressions decide the layers of permission for a person to be at leisure. In India, that’s an interconnected web of hoops of caste, class, gender, geography, abilities among other factors.

Also, leisure is a measure of freedom. There is a simple test for how free a place is. Observe who gets to truly relax in it. Who sits without purpose. Who wanders without destination. Who laughs too loudly and pays no price for it. If the women in a street, a park, a city, a country can do those things freely, it is very likely a free place.

ELLE: The page has resonated with such a huge audience. What do you think people are seeing in these images that makes them want to share, save or send them to someone?

Surabhi Yadav: When permissions are so rigid and their criteria so narrowly defined, transgressions are so easily enacted. Sitting is a transgression, sleeping is a transgression. Being yourself is a transgression. When the mundane feels so extraordinary, when the obvious feels like a revelation, it makes people think hard about what they are missing out on. That's the beauty and power of an initiative like WAL. It reveals to people both what is missing and what is possible. It exerts the lack of freedom by showing the vastness and vibrancy of everyday freedoms. It also asserts that leisure is a great measure of how free a country, a street, and a home is.

Oppression, in essence, is all about controlling and exercising what not to do and what to do. It is about conditioning people's worthiness and worthlessness to external factors like money, caste, gender etc. Leisure is a great antidote to oppression. Because if oppression is about limiting ways of being, leisure is all about permitting to just be. It untangles worthiness with all that is external. Every person's inner life is worthy in itself.

ELLE: Have you heard from people who say that seeing Women At Leisure made them want to do something for themselves?

Surabhi Yadav: SO MANY PEOPLE!!! Of course it inspires and I think sometimes, incentivises people to slow down — to be part of the cool gang that chills, you know! ;) I have had people write to me telling me about the new leisure rituals they have formed for themselves, some with their families, some with their mothers.

View this post on Instagram

But more than that, I think the page has inspired many people to work on their relationships with the women in their lives esp their mothers. I have had people give me detailed accounts of how grown women have judged their mothers harshly as they were growing up and the page allowed them the patience and the gaze it needed to soften them and allow for new curiosity to emerge in old relationships. The accounts of mothers-daughters becoming friends because of this page and its ideas, its visuals are balm to my heart that aches for losing my mother before she and I could have entered the phase where mothers and daughters become friends.

ELLE: Finally, if there is one thing you wish every woman felt free to do without guilt, what would it be?

Surabhi Yadav: A rich, rich chance to get to know herself as a person.

Shoes have a way of making or breaking an outfit — and a day. You know the drill: the heels that look incredible for the first hour and betray you by the second, the “everyday” flats that never quite make it into your everyday rotation, the sandals bought for one holiday and never worn again. Somewhere between fast fashion that falls apart and investment pairs that need their own EMI, there’s a middle ground most wardrobes are missing. That’s the gap this edit is built for. These are our favourite choices from ELLE Footwear.

Square Toe Ballet Flat With Gold-Tone Chain Mary Jane Strap

There's something quietly confident about a ballet flat that skips the bow for hardware instead. This nude-toned pair keeps the silhouette clean and square-toed, then adds just enough edge with a gold-tone chain looped Mary Jane–style across the strap. It reads polished for the office, easy enough for a full day of errands, and pairs just as well with tailored trousers as it does a slip dress on a warm evening.

Square-Toe Flats With Large Decorative Bow

Patent leather in a soft blush-mauve gives this pair an instant shine, while the squared-off toe and low stacked heel keep it grounded and easy to walk in all day. The real draw sits right at the vamp — a polished metallic buckle that adds a little old-money charm without tipping into fussy. Think of it as the flat that makes cropped denim look more put-together and a slip skirt look intentional.

High Heel Strappy Sandals With Gold-Tone Chain

This is the sandal built for the after-hours version of you. Glossy black patent straps crisscross the ankle before landing on a sleek stiletto heel, while a chunky gold-tone chain across the toe strap adds a sharp, jewellery-like finish. It’s minimal enough to not compete with a statement dress, but has just enough hardware to hold its own with a plain black slip or a co-ord.

 Embellished Strap Block Heel Sandals

Metallic gold and crystal-studded straps make this pair feel like jewellery for your feet. The crisscross detailing wraps the foot in delicate, sparkling lines, while a chunky block heel keeps things surprisingly wearable for something this glam. Save it for wedding season, festive dressing, or any night you want your shoes to do half the outfit’s work.

Knee-High Riding Boots With Buckle 

Every wardrobe needs one pair of boots that can outlast a season, and this is it. Sleek black leather runs knee-high with a smooth, structured shaft, finished off with a single silver buckle at the ankle for a classic equestrian edge. Flat, functional and endlessly versatile, it’s the boot that goes from jeans and a blazer straight into your winter travel bag.

Square-Toe Slingback Pumps With Metallic Horsebit Detail

A deep wine patent finish makes this pump feel richer than your average workday shoe. The square toe and slim slingback strap give it a distinctly French-girl edge, while a gold horsebit buckle across the front nods to old-school equestrian glamour. With a low block heel that’s comfortable enough for back-to-back meetings, it’s the pair that makes even a basic shirt-and-trouser combo look considered.

Glossy Pointed-Toe Stiletto Pumps

There’s a reason the classic pointed-toe stiletto never really goes out of style. This pair comes in a high-shine oxblood patent that instantly elongates the leg, with a sharp point and a needle-thin heel that means business. It’s the shoe to reach for when you want a look to feel finished in one move — power dressing, date night, or that one meeting you need to walk into feeling unbeatable. 

Pointed Toe High Heel Mules With Chain Detail

For anyone who wants the ease of a slip-on without sacrificing polish, this mule earns its keep. A pointed toe and taupe finish give it a quietly luxe, loafer-inspired look, while a slim gold chain across the vamp adds just the right amount of shine. The block heel means you can actually walk in it, making this the pair you’ll wear on repeat once you realise it goes with everything from tailored pants to a midi dress.

Glamorous Elegant Embellished Block Heels

This one is all spectacle, in the best way. A metallic gold base sits under a strap covered edge-to-edge in crystal-studded circles, catching the light from every direction, while a sculpted block heel keeps it steady enough for a full night out. Pair it with a simple slip dress or your favourite festive lehenga and let the shoes take over as the main event.

Sequin-Embellished Square-Toe Heeled Sandals

Covered edge to edge in tiny burgundy sequins, this sandal turns something as simple as a mule into an event. The square toe keeps the shape modern, while a slim, flared heel offers a little more stability without losing the sleek line. Slide it on with a plain slip dress or a linen co-ord and let the sequins catch the light as you move.

Shop these pieces and more here.

For years fashion seemed to make everything quieter. Clean lines, neutral pallets and barely there branding became the uniform of understated luxury, while minimalism was treated almost like a personality trait. The less you wore, the more sophisticated it seemed. But somewhere between the endless beige outfits and the obsession with looking effortlessly polished, fashion started to feel a little too serious. 

Now the pendulum is swinging the other way. Bows are appearing on everything from ballet flats to handbags, ribbons are being woven through hair, ruffles and polka dots are returning to dresses and bright shades are taking over wardrobes. Charms are dangling from bags, jewellery is becoming more playful and nostalgic details are turning everyday outfits into something that feels almost like a costume. 

Whimsical fashion is having its moment, and it is less about following one specific aesthetic than it is about embracing the joy of getting dressed.

Fashion Is Getting Its Personality Back

The rise of whimsical fashion feels like a direct response to years of minimalism. Quiet luxury encouraged clothes to look expensive without necessarily looking expressive. Think cashmere knits, tailored trousers, muted colours and discreet accessories. The appeal was in appearing polished without appearing as though you had tried too hard.

Whimsy rejects that idea entirely. A crystal-covered shoe, a sequinned cardigan or a handbag decorated with charms does not necessarily make an outfit more practical. That is precisely the point. These details exist simply because they’re fun.

The shift also reflects something bigger: how people think about personal style. Rather than dressing to fit neatly into an aesthetic category, fashion is becoming a space for experimentation. A romantic blouse can be paired with baggy denim. A pastel skirt can be styled with chunky trainers. A delicate bow can sit next to an oversized leather jacket.

The result is less about looking perfectly put together and more about looking like yourself.

Nostalgia Is Doing The Heavy Lifting

Much of fashion’s current obsession with whimsy is rooted in nostalgia. Charms recall the personalised bags of childhood. Hair ribbons feel lifted from old school photographs. Mary Janes, lace socks and babydoll silhouettes bring back memories of dressing up before getting dressed became an exercise in looking effortlessly cool.

This isn’t about recreating the past exactly — it’s about borrowing familiar details and giving them a contemporary context. That might mean attaching a collection of tiny bagcharms to an otherwise minimalist handbag, pairing a sequined blouse with low rise jeans or wearing pastel ballet flats with a formal corporate outfit. 

The Internet Made Dressing Up More Fun

Social media has played an enormous role in making whimsical fashion feel accessible. Platforms such as TikTok and Instagram have turned niche styling details into global trends overnight. A glittering accessory, embellished bag or unexpected sequinned piece can move from a handful of creators to millions of wardrobes within weeks.

But the internet has also changed the way people discover fashion. Instead of looking towards one definitive trend, users are constantly encountering micro-aesthetics, styling references and vintage inspirations. The result is a fashion landscape where seemingly unrelated influences can coexist. One person is inspired by balletcore, another by childhood nostalgia, another by vintage glamour and another by their grandmother’s wardrobe. Whimsical fashion makes room for all of it at once.

The Beauty Of Being A Little Extra

Perhaps the biggest appeal of whimsical fashion is that it gives us a space to be a little extra. After years of dressing around the idea of restraint: muted colours, discreet accessories and clothes designed to look effortlessly expensive, there is something refreshing about wearing something simply because it makes you happy.

A sequinned skirt doesn’t need to wait for a party. A glittery heel doesn’t need a special occasion. A charm covered bag, crystal earrings or feathery scarf can exist purely because they make an otherwise ordinary outfit feel more exciting. There is a particular kind of freedom in choosing the unnecessary. 

Maybe that’s what makes this shift feel bigger than another passing aesthetic. Whimsical fashion is less about maximalism for the sake of it and more about allowing personality to take up space again. It is choosing the pink coat because you love the colour, adding another charm to your bag because it reminds you of something, or wearing a little sparkle on a Tuesday afternoon simply because you can.

After years of trying to look effortless, there is something liberating about looking like you made an effort.

It doesn’t have to mean going all out, either. Sometimes it is a single crystal hair clip, a glittering handbag or a pair of earrings that catch the light. These small details can turn the everyday into something that feels more considered, more personal and, importantly, more fun.

Maybe fashion doesn’t need to make perfect sense. Maybe it just needs to make you feel like you, because, after all, what else can you do in this life but live?

It’s been quite the year for Anne Hathaway. From waiting for husband in The Odyssey to stepping back into Miranda Priestly’s office in The Devil Wears Prada 2, and playing a pop star in Mother Mary, Hathaway has moved between some very different worlds. But perhaps her most unexpected stop yet is a suburban neighbourhood suddenly overrun by dinosaurs in The End of Oak Street.

And no, this isn’t Jurassic Park. David Robert Mitchell’s film takes the familiar dinosaur movie and gives it a surprisingly different spin. Instead of sending a group of scientists or adventurers into the prehistoric world, it brings the prehistoric world to a seemingly ordinary suburban neighbourhood. One minute, the Platt family is dealing with the everyday messiness of marriage, family and suburban life; the next, their entire neighbourhood has been transported 250 million years into the past. The film doesn’t spend too much time worrying about explaining the science behind it, and honestly, that works in its favour. You simply have to go with it.

What makes the premise even more entertaining is the time-travel angle. We’ve seen countless films take us back to the ’80s, ’90s, 2000s or even the era of the flappers. But how often do we imagine going back to the dinosaur age? The End of Oak Street takes that absurd question and turns it into a surprisingly effective suburban nightmare.

At the centre of it all are Denise and Greg Platt, played by Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, whose marriage is already on shaky ground. Their relationship becomes an interesting metaphor for the chaos unfolding around them. There’s almost an elephant in the room that neither of them wants to acknowledge, and then, quite literally, the entire world around them becomes impossible to ignore. As the dinosaurs arrive, the family is forced to confront the things they have been avoiding.

But the film never gets too weighed down by its emotional themes. That’s where it gets the balance right. It is, first and foremost, a fun movie. Mitchell brings his horror sensibilities to the suburban setting, creating plenty of tense moments in houses, backyards and narrow spaces, while the dinosaurs themselves provide enough spectacle to keep things moving.

And the dinosaurs are perhaps the biggest surprise. They aren’t simply there to recreate Jurassic Park. Mitchell’s prehistoric creatures are more bird-like and, at times, genuinely unsettling, while still retaining the larger-than-life quality you expect from a summer blockbuster. The Spielberg influence is obvious, with the film leaning heavily into that old-school Amblin adventure spirit, but it has enough of its own oddball personality to make the experience feel fresh.

Of course, the film isn’t without its problems. The wormhole science doesn’t make much sense, some character decisions will have you wondering why they didn’t simply choose the obvious option, and the ending leaves a few questions hanging. But The End of Oak Street isn’t really asking you to sit down and solve its scientific logic. It wants you to grab some popcorn and enjoy the chaos. And once you accept that bargain, it becomes considerably more enjoyable.

What ultimately makes the film work is its originality. In a summer dominated by established franchises and familiar formulas, there is something refreshing about watching a film take a completely bizarre idea and commit to it. It may borrow liberally from the movies that came before it, but it doesn’t feel like another straightforward Jurassic Park sequel.

It’s funny, chaotic, occasionally scary and genuinely entertaining. And while it may not reinvent the dinosaur movie, it certainly gives us a new way of looking at one.

For anyone looking for an original theatrical watch, The End of Oak Street is worth the ticket. Suspend disbelief, embrace the absurdity and let the dinosaurs loose.

Rating: 3.5/5

Your best friend is probably the only person who knows how insane you are and has decided to stay anyway. They’ve lived through the toxic relationships, the questionable decisions, the 52-message mental breakdowns, your ugly crying and every version of you that doesn’t make it to Instagram. They know the story before you finish telling it, and you’re almost certain full conversations happen through eye contact alone. For years, pop culture has taught us that finding your platonic other half was the ultimate milestone. Monica had Rachel, Blair had Serena, Meredith had Cristina, Max had El, Devi had Eleanor and Fabiola.

And honestly, having that one person is one of life’s greatest luxuries. But then life happens. You change cities, start jobs, develop new hobbies and somehow keep collecting people along the way. Some know the person you were, some meet you as you are, and some become part of the person you’re still becoming. We’re all, in some way, mosaics of the people we’ve held close — little pieces of their humour, their habits, their wisdom and their ways of seeing the world becoming part of us without us even noticing. Maybe that’s what makes a life well-lived: not one perfect friendship, but a life made richer by the people who leave something of themselves behind. And if friendship really is a mosaic, here are five pieces you’ll want in yours.

The Keeper Of Your Lore

via GIPHY

There’s something comforting about having a friend you’ve known for years. They’ve had front-row seats to every phase of your life. They’ve watched you change your mind, your hair and occasionally your entire personality — like when Kylie Jenner changed her aesthetic and suddenly you owned enough Kylie Lip Kits to open a counter at Sephora.

They’ve seen enough of your life to know when something is actually wrong and when you’re just having a dramatic Tuesday. When you’re convinced your latest problem is the end of the world, they have the receipts to remind you that you’ve felt this way before. And survived.

They remember the old stories, the forgotten dreams, the things you cared about before life got busy. Sometimes you don’t need someone to tell you what to do. You just need the old friend who knows you well enough to remind you who you are beyond whatever is happening right now.

The Truth Bomb

via GIPHY

There’s the friend you call when you need to hear that you look hot. And then there’s the friend you call when you need to know whether you actually do. She’s the one who will tell you when the dress is wrong, the haircut is questionable and, most importantly, when the man you’ve been defending for eight weeks is, in fact, terrible.

She knows when you need comfort and when you need someone to interrupt the spiral. When you’re about to send the paragraph, make the impulsive decision or romanticise a situation that really does not deserve a montage, she’s the one who pulls you back to reality.

And because she isn’t afraid of being the bad guy for five minutes, you trust her judgement when it actually matters. Some friends protect your feelings. This one protects you from yourself.

The Comrade

via GIPHY

There’s a different kind of comfort in having a friend who works in the same industry as you. You don’t have to explain why getting that one opportunity felt like a bigger deal than it probably sounds, why you’re still thinking about something your boss said three days ago or why a job opening at that company suddenly has both of you spiralling.

They understand the things your other friends politely nod through. The industry gossip. The impossible deadlines. The tiny wins that feel huge when you’re trying to figure out who you are.

You send each other job openings, introduce each other to people and celebrate the wins that other people might not quite understand. Because having someone in the same world means you don’t have to navigate it entirely alone. You have someone who knows the rules, sees the same doors and knows which ones are worth walking through.

The Maker Of Memories

via GIPHY

You probably wouldn’t have gone.

You had plans. Or a headache. Or absolutely no idea who was going to be there. But your friend insisted, so you went anyway. Three hours later, you’ve met six new people, found a tiny restaurant you’re already planning to drag everyone back to and somehow agreed to a weekend trip with someone you met approximately 47 minutes ago.

This friend makes your world a little bigger. She introduces you to the music you end up obsessing over, sends you the café you would never have found and convinces you to take the class you’ve been saying you’ll try “one day”.

Maybe that’s the whole point. Some remind you where you came from. Others remind you that life doesn’t always have to be serious — and that there’s a whole lot more of it waiting outside the world you’ve already built.

The Safe Place

via GIPHY

There’s a friend you can call after the worst day of your life and somehow feel better before you’ve even finished explaining what happened. You can show up exhausted, overthinking, underdressed and carrying the emotional equivalent of seven open tabs, and she never makes you feel like you need to tidy yourself up first.

She’s seen the polished version of you, obviously. But she’s also seen the 2 a.m. version, the insecure version, the version who doesn’t know what she’s doing and the version who needs to cancel plans and disappear for a week. Nothing about you has to be particularly impressive around her. You can sit on the floor, order the same food you always do and talk absolute nonsense until somehow, everything feels a little lighter.

Maybe that’s her piece of the mosaic: the reminder that you don’t have to become a different version of yourself to be loved. The other people in your life may challenge you, ground you, introduce you to new worlds or remind you where you came from. She gives you somewhere to bring all of it. And perhaps that’s the beauty of the mosaic, none of the pieces are meant to be the whole picture. Together, they become a better you. 

There was a time when online fashion shopping was little more than a digital catalogue. You knew what you wanted, typed it into a search bar, applied a few filters and scrolled until something caught your eye. Today, however, shopping has evolved into a far more holistic experience—one that extends well beyond simply searching for a garment.

What do I wear to my first day at a new job? How do I style linen trousers for an evening dinner? Will this dress flatter my body type? Is this really my size?

Increasingly, these are the kinds of questions shoppers expect technology to answer. As artificial intelligence reshapes everything from search engines to customer service, fashion retail is embracing a more intuitive and personalised way of helping people discover, style and shop.

For Myntra, the ambition is to help customers make more confident fashion decisions in an increasingly crowded digital marketplace, transforming online shopping from a product search into a more personalised styling experience.

Shopping That Starts With A Conversation

The biggest change is perhaps the simplest one: moving beyond keywords.

Instead of searching for "white dress" or "black heels", shoppers can now begin with natural conversations. Through Maya, Myntra's conversational AI assistant, discovery becomes less transactional and more intuitive. Customers can search for outfits based on an occasion, mood, destination or styling dilemma, allowing the platform to respond with suggestions that feel more closely aligned with real-life needs rather than presenting an overwhelming list of products.

This evolution reflects how people naturally think about fashion. Rarely do we shop for clothes in isolation. We shop for moments. We shop to express ourselves, dress for occasions and make an impression, not simply to buy clothes.

Beyond Product Discovery To Personal Styling

Finding a garment is only one part of getting dressed. Knowing where to wear it, what to pair it with and whether it suits your personal style is often the harder part.

That's where Myntra's AI-led Contextual Styling suite comes in. The platform offers styling suggestions that place supported styles  within a broader wardrobe context, helping shoppers understand where an outfit might work, how it can be styled and how it fits on different occasions. It brings a more personalised styling experience to digital shopping, bringing a more guided and personalised layer to digital shopping. 

Building on this are Occasion-Based Looks and Mix & Match, which offer styling inspiration and allow customers to Mix and Match AI-suggested outfits across supported styles. 

As the experience continues to evolve, it is also designed to help shoppers understand not only where they can wear a piece, but how to style it as part of a complete look. As fashion increasingly becomes about inspiration rather than individual purchases, these tools bring a more editorial, stylist-led approach to e-commerce.

Making Online Shopping Feel More Personal

One of the biggest frustrations of shopping online is uncertainty.

Will this fit me? And the ambiguity around the sizing standards of various brands. Will it look the way I imagine?

Myntra's AI-powered Size and Fit Intelligence aims to answer those questions by moving beyond standard size recommendations. Instead of simply suggesting a size, the platform explains why a particular recommendation is suitable, helping customers better understand and trust the decision. Today, the technology covers approximately 85 per cent of Myntra's eligible apparel portfolio, with size explainability delivered in under two seconds.

Fit Visualisation, which is being progressively rolled out, is designed to show how the same garment may drape across different body types, acknowledging that identical sizes rarely look identical on different people. Myntra is also developing Try On Me, a forthcoming capability designed to allow customers to visualise a customised outfit on themselves as a digital avatar , adding another layer of confidence before making a purchase.

Together, these features help shoppers make more informed purchasing decisions while reducing the uncertainty that often leads to the hassle of returns and exchanges.

Discovery That's Built Around You

Personalisation has long been a cornerstone of digital shopping. Today, around 90 per cent of Myntra's monthly active users experience personalised search, with recommendations informed by individual preferences, browsing behaviour and shopping patterns. Instead of navigating a generic catalogue, shoppers increasingly encounter products that reflect their own tastes and interests, making discovery feel increasingly personal.

The same thinking extends to creator-led discovery. Fashion inspiration now comes as much from creators and everyday shoppers as it does from traditional campaigns, and Myntra is building a personalisation layer for Glamstream, their social commerce platform to make creator-led content more relevant to the user and closely connected to shopping. . 

The Technology Behind The Experience

While these features are designed to simplify the customer journey, they are supported by a much broader AI ecosystem operating behind the scenes.

Myntra's AI-powered Seller Growth Hub has reduced seller onboarding timelines from 10–15 days to approximately one to two days, enabling brands to reach customers faster. Across the platform, AI has also accelerated catalogue generation turnaround time  from one day to four hours and helped engineering teams increase feature rollout velocity by 40 per cent. These operational improvements allow new features to reach shoppers faster while enabling brands and sellers to bring products to market more efficiently.

As Sharon Pais, Head of Myntra, explains, "This consistent approach compounds across thousands of brands and directly shapes how customers discover on the platform. . Our focus remains on strengthening capabilities that give brand partners clear pathways to scale while continuing to make the shopping experience more relevant and confident for customers. For us, AI is not just a layer we have added on top, it sits at the heart of how Myntra operates, from the moment a customer opens the app to how our teams continue to innovate."

As AI continues to evolve, it's role in fashion is becoming less about simply surfacing more products and more about providing relevant, contextual guidance.  The future of online shopping may not be defined by surfacing more choices, but by helping people navigate those choices with greater confidence. In that future, the most valuable feature may not be a smarter search bar at all, but a digital stylist that understands not only what you're looking for, but why you're looking for it—making fashion discovery feel more personal and intuitive .

I have a soft spot for Korean skincare, but it is not the 10-step routine that keeps me interested. It is the way Korean brands pair ingredients with a clear skin concern without making everything feel overly complicated.

That is what made MAMONDE interesting to me. The Korean brand has spent more than 30 years researching flowers for skincare, and its new India launch brings that approach into two very different collections.

I tried the Rose HA and Peony BHA ranges for three to four days as part of my usual routine. It is too early for dramatic claims, but long enough to know which products I genuinely enjoyed using.

The Rose HA range, first impressions

The Rose HA collection is the more hydration-focused of the two, with Damask Rose, Rose Water, Rose Peptide and hyaluronic acid running through products including the toner, serum, cream and liquid Mask.

The Rose HA Serum was the easiest one for me to reach for. It gives the skin that comfortable, hydrated feeling without making the routine feel like work.

The Liquid Mask was probably the most fun product to use. It is designed as a quick hydration step, and the immediate result is that familiar soft, dewy finish that makes skin look considerably more awake. Would I call it a transformation? No. But I also do not think every skincare product needs to produce a dramatic result to be useful. Sometimes the appeal is simply that your skin looks better after using it.

Then I Moved to Peony BHA

The Peony collection is where things become more targeted. It combines peony extract with BHA, or salicylic acid, across a serum, spot gel, cleanser, pads and sunscreen.

If Rose HA is about getting the skin to look fresh and hydrated, Peony BHA is about keeping things clearer and more balanced. That makes it particularly relevant when skin is feeling oily, congested or uneven.

The Peony BHA Serum stood out to me because the ingredient combination is straightforward. Salicylic acid has a well-established role in exfoliating dead skin cells and helping with excess oil, so there is a clear reason for it being at the centre of this collection.

I liked the way it made my routine feel more targeted, but this is also the range where I would be most cautious about judging results too quickly. Four days can tell you whether a product feels comfortable on your skin. It cannot tell you everything about how a BHA routine will perform over several weeks.

What Stood Out After a Few Days

The Rose HA range is the one I enjoyed immediately. It gives me the hydration and glow I tend to look for when my skin is feeling dull or dehydrated, and the products are easy to work into a routine.

Peony BHA has piqued my curiosity. I like the ingredient approach and the fact that it addresses a completely different set of concerns, but I would want to use it for longer before deciding how much of a difference it makes to congestion and texture.

That is probably the fairest conclusion after few days. For now, Rose HA has made the stronger first impression, while Peony BHA is the one I will be watching more closely as I continue using it.

Also Read:

ELLE Discovers: The Beauty Brands Everyone Will Be Talking About Soon

The Comfort Scents I'm Reaching For As Summer Winds Down

As a plastic surgeon, people constantly ask me about the latest and greatest in beauty: what fillers, lasers, surgeries and serums I recommend. But the question nobody thinks to ask, and the one I think matters just as much, is what I would never do.

As a board-certified plastic surgeon in New York City, skin scientist and founder of Dr Devgan Scientific Beauty, I have spent my life studying the face and body from the inside out. After more than a decade operating on faces and bodies, treating thousands of patients and building a skincare line grounded in the same science I use in the operating room, I have developed firm opinions about the things I will not touch. These are not judgements about other people’s choices. They are the lines I personally will not cross, for reasons that are clinical, aesthetic and earned through experience.

Reduce the Face to a Looksmaxxed Algorithm

We are living in an era where every face can be scanned, scored, filtered and analysed by artificial intelligence, where an algorithm can identify asymmetry in the brows, millimetres of difference in the eyelids, uneven lip volume, nasal deviation, jawline angles, facial thirds, facial fifths and every departure from some theoretical ideal. That information can be interesting, and sometimes even useful, but it is not the same thing as taste. The face is not a mathematical equation. Beauty is not an algorithm, despite the looksmaxxing content and golden-ratio overlays that populate our TikTok feeds.

Some of the most beautiful faces in the world have asymmetries: a stronger dimple on one side, a dominant nose, a brow that is more arched, a smile that tilts to one side. Often, they are the very details that make a face memorable, recognisable and alive. The goal is not to polish away every point of variance until the face becomes a generic textbook ideal. The goal is to understand which details contribute to beauty and identity, and which ones create distraction, heaviness or disharmony.

The face is not a spreadsheet where every feature can be adjusted independently and still add up to beauty. It is more like a conversation, where the brow changes the way we read the eyes, the midface changes the way we understand fatigue, the neck changes the authority of the jawline, and the skin changes the credibility of everything beneath it. A millimetre in one place can soften a decade in another.

The best results are not the ones that satisfy a formula or flatten every irregularity into sameness. They are the ones where the whole face becomes more coherent, where nothing looks newly purchased. The patient looks rested, alive and unmistakably recognisable, and surgery disappears into the larger truth of the face.

Let a Trend Near My Face

Aesthetic medicine has fashion cycles, just like clothing does. The difference is that when a trend is integrated into your anatomy, it can be much harder to leave behind. We have seen the eras of bad aesthetic trends come and go: the dramatically overfilled lips, the pillow cheeks, the frozen forehead, the exaggerated “fox eyes” and the hyper-snatched jawline. Every one of those looks felt modern at the time. Many of them aged poorly because they were designed for a feed or a filter, not for a living, moving human face. Unlike a hemline, a face cannot simply be let back down, and you cannot restore a distorted smile or stretched tissue to its original architecture.

Operate on Someone Who Is Not Ready

People often assume that a surgeon’s instinct is to operate. In reality, one of the most important decisions a surgeon can make is when not to. I have turned away patients who wanted procedures I could technically and beautifully deliver because the timing, emotional state or expectations were not right. Surgery can refine anatomy, restore proportion and improve confidence, but it cannot get you a job, make someone love you, repair a heartbreak or solve the deeper problems of a life in transition. Plastic surgery is medicine, not magic.

“Surgery can refine anatomy, restore proportion and improve confidence, but it cannot get you a job, make someone love you, repair a heartbreak or solve the deeper problems of a life in transition.”

I am also careful when there is a mismatch between what a patient wants and what their anatomy, tissue quality, healing capacity or surgical safety can responsibly allow. Not every reference photo can be translated. Not every face or body should be pushed to the edge of what is technically possible. One of my favourite Shakespeare lines is that “discretion is the better part of valour”, and it resonates with me often in surgery. Sometimes the most ethical, protective and skilful thing I can do in a consultation is say no or not yet.

Give Up on Filler

Filler has become unfashionable to defend. The concern is real, and filler can be overused, misplaced and misunderstood. That being said, I would never give up on it. The reason is simple: facial ageing is not merely about descent; it is also about volume loss. Bone remodels, fat compartments deflate, soft tissues thin and the face loses some of the internal architecture that once made it look balanced. If you only lift without restoring volume, the result can look tight. If you only fill without respecting descent, the result can look heavy. The most beautiful outcomes usually require both concepts: repositioning what has fallen and replacing what has been lost.

Replacement of lost volume can be achieved with filler or fat grafting, and each has a role. Fat is beautiful for global, soft, biological restoration. Filler is beautiful for precision: a subtle tear trough, a crisper chin, an elegant non-surgical rhinoplasty, a more supported lip. The problem is not filler itself, but rather using filler as a substitute for judgement. My approach is structural microdroplet placement, the meticulous application of small amounts of filler in anatomically precise planes. When filler is used well, it should look like better light on the face, better proportion, better rest and better harmony.

Skip Sunscreen

The least glamorous item on this list is also the most evidence-based, and I am going to say it plainly: sunscreen and sun avoidance are the single most powerful anti-ageing intervention that exists. Not a serum, not a laser and not a surgery. Skin cancer is the most common cancer in America, with over 1 in 5 people affected by age 70, and over half of Americans have evidence of degenerative skin changes due to UV exposure.

I have operated on thousands of faces, and the single most consistent predictor of how well skin ages is sun exposure history. I have seen 45-year-old faces with the tissue quality of someone 20 years older as a result of decades of unprotected UV exposure. I have seen 60-year-old faces with remarkable skin integrity, almost always belonging to women who took sun protection seriously their entire adult lives. No procedure undoes the cumulative damage of chronic sun exposure. And no cream, however excellent, compensates for the prevention you skipped 10 years ago.

Neglect the Eyes or the Neck

If I could tell people one thing about facial ageing, it would be that the eyes and the neck matter more than most people realise. They are the two areas that most powerfully shape how a face is read: the eyes communicate energy and presence, while the neck frames the jawline and often reveals age before the central face.

These changes are subtle, but they are socially powerful. They can make a person look exhausted, stern or less present, even when she feels completely vibrant. That is why blepharoplasty, brow support, fat grafting, neuromodulators, filler and laser resurfacing around the eyes can have such a disproportionate impact. The goal is to restore the eyes to their role as the face’s primary instrument of expression.

The neck is equally important, but for a different reason. It is the architectural support for the lower face. The neck is also one of the places where shortcuts are least forgiving. A little filler in the face cannot correct true neck laxity, and overcorrecting the lower face while ignoring the neck can make the result look incomplete. For the right patient, a neck lift, lower facelift, submental liposuction, platysmal work, neuromodulator or skin-quality treatment can restore the frame of the face in a way that is quiet but transformative.

Anything Overly Hyped

There are many things in aesthetic medicine that are technically possible, heavily marketed and financially tempting, but that does not mean they are wise. I am cautious about energy-based devices that promise non-surgical tightening by heating tissue, denaturing proteins and creating controlled injury beneath the skin because they can be unpredictable. The same heat that may create contraction can also contribute to facial fat atrophy, tissue thinning, contour irregularity or a hollowed appearance in the wrong patient. I do not believe in chasing a small, inconsistent tightening effect at the expense of the soft-tissue volume and integrity that make a face look youthful in the first place.

I feel similarly about procedures where the risk profile is out of proportion to the aesthetic benefit. The Brazilian butt lift has become safer when performed with modern protocols, ultrasound guidance and strict attention to injection plane, but it has historically carried one of the most serious mortality concerns in cosmetic surgery. I also would never endorse free silicone injections or other permanent injectable shortcuts because the complications can be devastating, delayed and extraordinarily difficult to correct. Permanent materials have a way of becoming permanent problems.

There are also procedures I avoid because they may burn bridges for future, better options. In my practice, I am careful with biostimulatory products in patients who may later want surgical facial rejuvenation. In theory, collagen stimulation sounds appealing. In reality, anything that changes tissue planes, creates unpredictable fibrosis or obscures anatomy can make future surgery more difficult. Aesthetic medicine should not just solve today’s concern. It should preserve tomorrow’s possibilities.

My philosophy is not anti-technology, anti-injectable or anti-innovation. It is anti-hype. The question is never only, “Can this be done?” The better question is, “Is this beautiful, safe, reversible when possible, anatomically respectful and compatible with the patient’s future?” If the answer is no, I will not do it.

Read the original article on ELLE USA

Fashion has a funny way of bringing old ideas back into the spotlight and sashiko embroidery is having one of those very good moments. At first glance, its white lines against indigo fabric look almost like a graphic print. Look closer, though and there is a whole story hiding in those tiny marks. The technique grew from everyday need in Japan, where running stitches were used to strengthen, layer and repair worn clothing, particularly in colder northern regions.

Over time, that practical work developed its own visual language of repeated lines, waves, circles and geometric motifs. Today, sashiko sits somewhere between heritage and design: tactile, handmade and full of character. In an age of throwaway trends, there is something refreshing about a textile that was made to be used, repaired and kept.

The Signature Running Stitch That Defines Sashiko

The magic of sashiko embroidery begins with something deceptively simple: the running stitch. Rather than relying on elaborate needlework, the technique builds its look through small, even stitches worked across fabric. Traditionally, white cotton thread on indigo cloth created the instantly recognisable contrast, although sashiko is not limited to that pairing. The rhythm matters as much as the thread itself, with spacing and proportion giving the surface its visual pulse. Historically, the same technique could reinforce thin areas, join layers of cloth and make garments warmer and more durable. The Metropolitan Museum of Art describes sashiko as a quilting technique that prolongs textile life. So yes, every tiny mark has a job to do.

That is what makes the craftsmanship so fascinating. Sashiko does not hide the hand behind the textile; it puts the hand front and centre. A line that shifts slightly or a repeated motif that changes subtly can reveal the maker’s pace and personality. Hitomezashi, one form of the technique, uses individual stitches aligned on a grid to create intricate surfaces. What begins as a humble row of thread can suddenly become an entire composition. There is no flashy trick here, just patience, precision and decisions. That stripped-back approach is part of why sashiko embroidery feels so current: it has the clarity of graphic design but the warmth of something made slowly by hand.

Sashiko And Sustainability: An Early Form Of Slow Fashion

Sashiko’s sustainability story is not a new fashion-industry invention; it was built into the technique from the beginning. In historical Japan, cloth could be precious, particularly where cotton was difficult to access. Instead of treating a worn garment as finished, people repaired, reinforced and layered it so it could keep going. Sashiko became closely connected with boro, the practice of repeatedly patching and mending textiles, turning scraps and old clothing into pieces with longer lives. Japan’s official tourism guide describes sashiko as the reinforced stitching that became part of boro’s history of reuse. The idea of making something last was not a marketing line. It was simply how the textile was treated.

That makes sashiko feel surprisingly relevant to today’s conversation around sustainability. There is a pleasure in seeing a repair instead of hiding it, especially when the repair becomes part of the design. The technique asks us to look at clothing differently: not as something that loses value when it shows wear but as something that can gain character through use. Modern designers have carried that idea into denim, jackets, workwear and patchworked pieces, often pairing the embroidery with recycled or deadstock fabrics. It is fashion with a visible backstory. Sometimes the coolest detail on a garment is the one that says it has already lived a little.

Geometric Patterns That Turn Stitching Into Textile Art

If there is one thing that makes sashiko impossible to scroll past, it is the patterns. Repeating circles, interlocking shapes, waves, grids and nature-inspired motifs turn a simple running stitch into something almost architectural. One small mark meets another, then another, until a larger image appears across the textile. Traditional motifs can also carry cultural associations, while the repetition itself creates a mesmerising sense of rhythm. This is where sashiko moves beyond repair and into textile art: the stitches are no longer simply strengthening fabric; together, they become the design.

Speaking about the power of geometric design, Nelson Jaffery, Head of Design at LIVA, says, “Geometric patterns hold an extraordinary ability of transforming basic embroidery into an art form of textiles. It is all about the rhythm of lines, shapes and motifs...” He further notes that their strength lies in the balance between structure and creativity, where “every single stitch forms a bigger picture of design.” And that is precisely what makes geometric sashiko so compelling. A single stitch may look insignificant on its own but repeated hundreds of times, it can create waves, circles, diamonds or intricate grids that completely change the character of a textile.

Sashiko's Modern Revival In Contemporary Fashion

Sashiko has moved well beyond its traditional setting, finding a new audience in contemporary fashion, interiors and denim. Designers are drawn to its strong graphic quality, while shoppers respond to clothing that shows its making. The technique can appear across an entire garment or as a smaller detail on a pocket, sleeve, hem or jacket panel. Its influence also sits comfortably alongside today’s interest in visible mending, upcycling and craft-led dressing. Even fashion’s fascination with Japanese workwear and indigo textiles has helped bring these details back into focus. What once belonged largely to functional clothing can now feel perfectly at home alongside modern tailoring, denim and statement outerwear.

That revival does not mean sashiko has to be frozen in its original form. Its language can move across denim, cotton, outerwear and accessories while keeping the core idea of careful making alive. For contemporary fashion, that is the real draw: sashiko looks distinctive without needing to shout. It gives a textile texture, history and a sense of touch that digital prints cannot quite replicate. More importantly, it reminds us that old techniques do not necessarily belong in the past. Sometimes, all they need is a new canvas.

FAQs

How is sashiko different from embroidery?

Sashiko uses simple, evenly spaced running stitches, traditionally for reinforcing fabric, while embroidery focuses mainly on decorative needlework.

What is the Indian version of sashiko?

Kantha is often considered India’s closest counterpart, using running stitches to join, decorate and repurpose layers of fabric.

Which thread is used for sashiko?

Traditional sashiko uses thick, tightly twisted cotton thread, usually in white, though contemporary designs often experiment with different colours.

Also Read:

The Embroidery Renaissance: How Ancient Craft Is Rewriting Modern Style

Shivani Wadettiwar and Abhisar Agne did not have to look far to find each other. The two grew up as neighbours in Nagpur, their families familiar with one another and their own lives unfolding side by side long before love entered the picture. They crossed paths through family gatherings, local events, and the familiar rhythms of growing up in the same community. Years later, friendship evolved into love, and marriage became the natural next chapter for two people whose lives had been intertwined since childhood. For their wedding, they took that sense of familiarity and turned it into a three-day celebration in Udaipur, filled with personal references, Maharashtrian traditions, and a generous dose of theatrical décor.

Held from 12th to 14th May 2026 at Taj Aravali Resort & Spa, Udaipur, the wedding brought together more than 350 guests for a series of celebrations that moved between Gatsby glamour, childhood nostalgia, an underwater world, and a traditional Maharashtrian ceremony. Each day had its own visual language, yet the details consistently circled back to the couple themselves.

A Love Story Without a Proposal

There was no elaborate proposal to mark the beginning of Shivani and Abhisar’s relationship. After growing up as neighbours and knowing each other for years, the transition from friendship to love happened naturally. As Abhisar puts it, “We grew up in the same community, crossed paths at family gatherings and local events, and shared many familiar faces. At that time, we were just two kids living our own lives.”

Looking back, that long history gives their wedding story an appealing sense of continuity. “It’s amazing how life quietly connected our stories long before we realised it,” he says.

That same familiarity shaped the wedding. Rather than building the celebrations around a single grand gesture, the couple filled them with details that reflected their shared history, their families and the city they grew up in.

Three Days, Three Different Worlds

Shivani had always pictured a resort-style destination wedding where guests could spend several days together, rather than simply turning up for one ceremony and heading home. Udaipur made sense for the scale of that vision, while Taj Aravali Resort & Spa provided the sprawling setting for the 350-plus guest celebration.

The festivities began on 12th May with a Gatsby-inspired Welcome Dinner. Black, gold, and deep red set the palette, with warm lighting, vintage-inspired details, and a life-sized installation of the couple’s initials, A and S, establishing the visual language for the celebrations ahead. The monogram became both a striking décor element and a symbol of two families coming together.

The following day switched gears completely. The Haldi, themed around Bachpan Ki Yaadein, drew from the couple’s childhood in Nagpur. Churan counters, old-school tattoo bars, and playful interactive stations brought a nostalgic, almost school-holiday quality to the celebration. Even the couple’s beloved dogs made an appearance through personalised décor, making the theme specific to them rather than simply nostalgic for nostalgia’s sake.

An Underwater Sangeet

If the Haldi looked back to childhood, the Sangeet looked towards one of the couple’s shared loves: the ocean. The creative team transformed the space into an immersive underwater world inspired by oceans, submarines, and life beneath the sea.

Blue and green formed the base of the palette, while sculptural installations, reflective surfaces, layered textures, wave-like forms, and atmospheric lighting created the impression of being beneath the water. The décor moved away from rigid symmetry in favour of softer, organic shapes, giving the space a fluid quality.

For Dakshita, Founder of DB and Spaces, who worked on the creative direction of the celebration, the concept was built around who the couple actually are. “They both love the ocean, beaches, and the feeling of being close to the water,” she explains. “We wanted the celebration to reflect something that genuinely represented them rather than creating a theme just because it looked beautiful.”

The performances added another layer to the evening. Shivani took to the stage with a song dedicated to her parents, offering guests a glimpse of the daughter behind her public persona. Later, Abhisar surprised her with a song of his own. Looking back at the performance, he says, “It wasn’t about the song itself—it was about the effort, the vulnerability and the emotions behind it.”

It was the kind of Sangeet detail that photographs well, of course, but carried a story beyond the décor.

Bringing Nagpur to Udaipur

For all its destination-wedding grandeur, the celebration kept returning to Nagpur. A specialty coffee experience was flown in from the couple’s hometown and served to guests throughout the wedding, giving the destination a familiar taste of home.

The Maharashtrian Mangalashtak ceremony took that connection further. Traditionally recited before the bride and groom exchange garlands, the sacred verses invoke blessings for the couple and mark the ceremonial moment when the cloth separating them is lowered for their first glimpse of each other as bride and groom.

The couple invited traditional Mangalashtak artists to perform the verses live, bringing their Maharashtrian roots into the Udaipur setting. For Abhisar, this was particularly meaningful. “Although we were getting married in Udaipur, we wanted the ceremony to reflect our Maharashtrian roots and the traditions we grew up with,” he says. “Hearing those sacred verses live created an emotional atmosphere that connected our families, our culture and our new beginning.”

The 24-Foot Floral Mandap

The wedding on 14th May brought the visual spectacle back to a more classical setting, with Maharashtrian rituals taking centre stage beneath a 24-foot all-white floral dome mandap.

Creating a structure of that scale came with its own production challenge. The dome had to be engineered in four sections so that it could be transported and assembled at the venue. The production began almost a month in advance, with the intricate border work handcrafted before the pieces were transported to Udaipur.

Dakshita explains, “Since such a large structure couldn’t be transported as a single piece, it was meticulously engineered into four sections that could be moved safely and then assembled seamlessly at the venue.”

Once on site, the four sections were reassembled before the floral installation began. The result was a dramatic all-white canopy layered with blooms, creating a sophisticated setting for the ceremony while allowing the traditional rituals to remain at the centre.

Beyond the Public Persona

Shivani is widely recognised for her youth leadership and public presence across Maharashtra, a world that often places her in positions of responsibility and visibility. The wedding offered a different perspective. Here, she was a daughter performing for her parents, a bride thinking about her guests and someone deeply invested in bringing family traditions into a celebration that was distinctly her own.

That personal side came through particularly strongly during the Sangeet, when she performed for her parents, and during the wedding ceremony, where the Mangalashtak connected Udaipur back to the traditions of home.   

For Abhisar, however, the most personal part of the wedding happened away from the stage and the spectacle. “After all the ceremonies were over, we found ourselves stealing a few quiet minutes together before joining everyone again,” he says. “For the first time in days, there were no cameras, no schedules and no expectations.”

He remembers the two of them laughing about how quickly the celebrations had passed and taking in the fact that they were finally husband and wife.

A Celebration That Came Full Circle

For a couple whose relationship began in the same neighbourhood, the wedding had an unusual sense of continuity. Childhood references appeared at the Haldi, the ocean they both love shaped the Sangeet, Nagpur travelled with them through food and coffee, and Maharashtrian traditions anchored the wedding ceremony.

The result was a destination wedding that could happily embrace grandeur while keeping its focus on the people at its centre. And perhaps that is what made Shivani and Abhisar’s celebration particularly fitting. Their story had already been years in the making. Udaipur simply gave them three days, 350-plus guests and plenty of spectacular décor to celebrate the fact that the neighbours from Nagpur had, eventually, found their way to each other.

Also Read,

Love, Long Distance: The Wedding Of Aishwarya & Jai

Coolcationing is exactly what it sounds like: choosing cooler places to escape the summer heat. The travel trend is seeing people swap sun-drenched beaches and soaring temperatures for mountain towns, northern landscapes and high-altitude retreats where the weather is actually part of the appeal. And honestly, it makes sense. When summer starts feeling less like a season and more like something you need to escape, a place with crisp air, chilly evenings and dramatic mountain views can sound infinitely more inviting. The idea is not to avoid summer altogether, but to experience it somewhere that lets you breathe a little easier and enjoy being outside without melting in the process.

I have always been someone who would pick the mountains over almost anywhere else. Give me a car, the windows rolled down, a great playlist and those spectacular views unfolding with every turn — endless lush greens, misty stretches and, in some places, mountains completely covered in snow — and I am happy. There is something about driving through the hills that instantly puts me in a better mood. I felt that especially in Bir Billing, Himachal, where I spent time discovering little cafés, eating some genuinely brilliant food and, most importantly, having the best hot chocolate I think I have ever tasted. Maybe it is the scenery, maybe it is the slower pace or maybe it is simply the feeling of being surrounded by mountains but I always seem to leave a mountain trip feeling happier than I arrived. And right now, with summer getting hotter, I can see why more travellers are feeling the same way.

What Is Coolcationing? A Response To Summer Heat

Coolcationing is a fairly simple idea but it says a lot about how our relationship with summer is changing. Instead of planning holidays around sunshine and warmer temperatures, travellers are looking for places where they can actually escape the heat. Mountains, forests, northern towns and high-altitude destinations are becoming especially appealing, offering cooler climate, fresh air and a welcome change from hot, crowded cities. The appeal is not difficult to understand. When temperatures are soaring, the thought of spending your holiday somewhere with chilly mornings and cool evenings starts to sound far more exciting than another afternoon spent searching for shade.

What makes the trend interesting is how it changes the mood of a summer holiday. A coolcation can mean waking up to mist outside your window, putting on a light jacket for dinner or taking a long drive without the heat making you want to turn the air-conditioning up. It is also why mountain escapes feel particularly suited to the moment. There are cafés to discover, trails to wander, local food to try and views that make you want to stop the car every few minutes. Summer, in this case, is not about chasing the sun. It is about finding somewhere that makes you want to stay outside.

Northern Destinations See A Cooler Climate Boost

As travellers look for relief from rising temperatures, northern destinations are having a serious moment. Scandinavia, Iceland, Scotland and northern parts of Europe offer a very different version of summer, with cooler weather, long daylight hours and landscapes that feel almost made for slow travel. Instead of spending the day trying to escape the heat, you can hike through forests, explore little towns, sit beside a lake or simply walk around without constantly checking how hot it is. The weather becomes part of the reason to go, rather than something you have to work around.

There is also something wonderfully cinematic about a northern summer. Think long evenings, green landscapes, dramatic coastlines, quiet roads and mountains disappearing into the distance. These places have always been beautiful, of course, but a changing climate is making their cooler climate even more attractive to travellers who want to get away from extreme heat. The traditional summer holiday may still have its beach clubs and sun loungers but there is clearly a growing appetite for something different. A destination where you can spend the day outside and actually enjoy it sounds pretty good right now.

Climate Change Anxiety Is Driving Travel Choices

Climate change is becoming part of the travel conversation in a way that is difficult to ignore. Heatwaves, unpredictable temperatures and changing seasons are making travellers think more carefully about when and where they want to go. For someone already feeling climate change anxiety, booking a holiday in a place known for extreme summer temperatures may not feel particularly relaxing. A cooler destination, on the other hand, can offer a sense of relief before the suitcase has even been unpacked. It is not necessarily about making every travel decision through the lens of climate change, but the weather is clearly becoming harder to separate from the experience of travelling.

This is also changing what people expect from a holiday. A beautiful destination is not quite enough if the weather makes it difficult to enjoy. Walking through a city in extreme heat, cancelling plans because it is too hot or spending half the afternoon indoors can quickly take the shine off a trip. Cooler places offer another option. They allow travellers to spend more time outdoors, move at their own pace and experience a destination without constantly planning around the temperature. In that sense, the rise of coolcationing feels less like a fleeting travel fad and more like a response to the way the world around us is changing.

High Altitude Escapes Replace Hot Weather Getaways

There is a reason high-altitude destinations have always been summer favourites, particularly in India. When the plains start feeling unbearably warm, places in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Kashmir and the Northeast offer a welcome change of scene — and temperature. But the appeal goes beyond simply finding cooler weather. Higher elevations bring a completely different landscape, from pine forests and alpine meadows to dramatic valleys, glacial lakes and snow-capped peaks.

The rise of the high-altitude holiday also fits neatly into the way people are travelling now. A mountain escape can combine adventure, culture, food and downtime without feeling like you have to choose one over the other. You can spend a morning hiking, find a local café in the afternoon and end the day watching the light change across the peaks. There is also something about being higher up that makes a holiday feel like a proper reset — fewer distractions, quieter surroundings and a landscape that does most of the talking.

How Shifting Weather Patterns Are Reshaping Travel Plans

Weather patterns are starting to play a much bigger role in how people plan their holidays. There was a time when summer automatically meant certain destinations, certain activities and a fairly predictable idea of what the weather would look like. That predictability is changing. As temperatures become more extreme and seasonal patterns shift, travellers are paying closer attention to forecasts, heat levels and the best time to visit a place. It is a more flexible approach to travel, with people increasingly choosing destinations based on how they actually want to feel while they are there.

That could have a lasting effect on the summer travel map. Places once considered shoulder-season destinations could become more attractive during the hottest months, while traditionally popular hot-weather escapes may need to adapt to changing conditions. For travellers, it could simply mean thinking beyond the usual summer checklist. Maybe the perfect holiday is no longer the one with the hottest beach or the brightest sunshine. Maybe it is the mountain drive where you keep the windows open, the café where you order something warm and the view that makes you forget to check your phone. If the weather is changing the way we travel, perhaps it is also giving us a very good reason to discover somewhere new.

Also Read:

Somewhere Between The Himalayas And The Silence, I Found Myself

Rakul Preet’s latest look takes a familiar eveningwear formula and gives it a more considered silhouette. The actor stepped out in a striking red gown that combines a fitted, strapless bodice with a sharply defined waist and a floor-skimming skirt. Rather than relying on a complicated colour palette or layers of accessories, the look gets its impact from its construction. A sculpted neckline, a narrow mermaid skirt and an exaggerated peplum-like detail around the hips create a play between volume and restraint, while the all-red finish keeps the silhouette cohesive. Finished with a diamond choker, earrings and a sleek updo, it is a reminder that statement dressing can come down to shape as much as embellishment.

The Strapless Silhouette Sets The Tone

The gown begins with a strapless bodice that gives the upper half of the look a clean, almost architectural quality. Its neckline is split subtly at the centre, creating definition without the need for additional embellishment. The fitted construction follows the body before narrowing into the waist, establishing a clear contrast with the volume that follows below.

The deep red colour also plays an important role. Instead of breaking up the gown with contrasting details, the tonal approach allows the shape to remain the focus. It makes the look feel dramatic without making it overly complicated.

A Sculpted Waist Changes The Proportions

The most interesting element is arguably the waist. A structured bow-like detail sits across the middle of the gown, functioning less as decoration and more as a visual break between the fitted bodice and skirt. It draws the eye towards the narrowest point of the silhouette while giving the otherwise streamlined gown a distinctive point of interest.

This is where the craftsmanship of the look becomes particularly apparent. The detailing feels built into the garment rather than added on afterwards, allowing the silhouette to retain its clean lines.

Volume Meets The Mermaid Skirt

Below the waist, the gown takes an unexpected turn. Instead of moving directly into the classic mermaid shape, exaggerated peplum-like folds extend from the hips before the skirt returns to a closer, elongated line. The contrast gives the gown movement and changes the proportions of the traditional fitted evening silhouette.

It’s a styling choice that keeps the look from becoming predictable. From the front, the volume creates a sculptural frame around the hips; further down, the skirt falls close to the body before extending towards the floor. The result is dramatic, but the drama comes from construction rather than excessive surface detail.

The Jewellery Keeps Things Focused

Rakul kept the jewellery focused around her neckline, wearing a diamond choker with coordinating earrings and a bracelet.

The choice works because it follows the structure of the gown rather than competing with it. The choker sits neatly against the bare neckline, adding brightness to the deep red while keeping the attention on the upper half of the silhouette.

Beauty Stays Sleek

The beauty look follows the same streamlined approach. Rakul wore her hair pulled back into a neat updo, leaving the neckline and shoulders unobstructed. Her makeup stayed defined but relatively pared back, with softly sculpted skin, lined eyes and a muted lip.

Together, the styling lets the gown do most of the work. There is no attempt to soften its strong proportions or add another focal point. Instead, the hair, makeup and jewellery all reinforce the same idea: when the silhouette is doing something interesting, everything else can afford to be quieter.

For Rakul Preet, the result is a look that feels less about traditional glamour and more about the architecture of the clothes. The gown’s appeal lies in its proportions, from the sharply defined neckline to the exaggerated waist and the controlled volume at the hips. It is a more contemporary way of approaching evening dressing, where craftsmanship and silhouette carry the look.

A bride once came to Label Prerna Mehra with a detail that had very little to do with fashion. Her mother, who was no longer with her, had a favourite flower. Mehra turned it into a motif on the bride’s lehenga.

It is the kind of detail that might go unnoticed in a room full of wedding guests, but mean everything to the person wearing it. And that, really, says a lot about how Mehra thinks clothes should work. A wedding outfit, she believes, should carry ‘an essence of her’ — the bride’s journey, personality and choices finding their way into what she wears. The aim is not simply to find the grandest lehenga in the room, but to make sure the woman wearing it does not disappear underneath it.

Indian bridalwear has, after all, become particularly easy to recognise on a moodboard. One celebrity wedding gives us a colour. Another gives us a blouse shape. Soon, the same references are being saved, sent to designers and recreated in slightly different forms. Mehra, however, thinks brides are increasingly looking beyond that.

‘Today’s Indian bride is looking for a way to represent herself through her looks, to really express her personality and keep it very authentically her,’ she says, ‘and not just show up in a heavy lehenga.’

The shift is subtle but important. The question is becoming less What is everyone wearing? and more What would actually feel like me?

It is an idea that follows Mehra well beyond bridalwear. At some point, getting dressed became something we apparently needed to study for. There is a rule for your body type, a colour for your season, jewellery for your neckline and, somewhere on your feed, a very confident person explaining why the jeans you have worn happily for five years are suddenly doing absolutely nothing for you.

Mehra finds fashion far less complicated. Looking back, she says 17-year-old Prerna had already understood something she still believes today: ‘There are no major rules, no major hacks and it stems from personal style more than most people think.’

Her own wardrobe choices follow that instinct. Mehra has never been particularly seduced by fashion’s long-running love affair with beige. Given the choice, she will take maximalism over minimalism and colour over neutrals, gravitating towards classic shades that brighten the skin. There is no elaborate philosophy behind it.

She simply knows what she likes.

Perhaps that is the part of personal style we have made unnecessarily difficult. Not everything we wear needs to fit neatly into an aesthetic with a name. You do not need to wake up and decide whether you are ‘quiet luxury’, ‘clean girl’, ‘old money’ or whatever new category the internet has created before breakfast. Sometimes liking colour is enough.

Working closely with clothes has, however, made Mehra more particular about what she buys. She has grown increasingly conscious of craftsmanship, the hours of labour behind a garment and the cost of design development — all the things that can be easy to forget when the finished piece is hanging beautifully on a rack.

‘I’m a lot more mindful with Indian wear now because I end up wearing my own pieces so often that when I actively choose another designer or brand, I want to make sure I don’t just like it but absolutely love it,’ she says.

It is not necessarily about buying nothing or turning every purchase into an heirloom. It is simply about raising the bar beyond this is nice. Once you understand the time and skill behind clothes, buying something you only half-like begins to feel rather pointless.

Then there is holiday Prerna, who seems determined to undo almost everything you might assume about a maximalist fashion designer.

‘Unlike most people, I’m a less fancy version of myself on vacation, not more,’ she says. Her suitcase is refreshingly uncomplicated: T-shirts, plenty of jeans, a good trench or maxi dresses, swimsuits and a beach bag. There are fewer accessories and fewer things precious enough to cause a small crisis if an airline happens to misplace her suitcase.

It feels almost novel at a time when holidays seem to come with their own wardrobe requirements. There is the airport look, the beach look, the dinner look and, of course, the outfit for casually walking towards breakfast while someone inexplicably happens to be photographing you. Mehra would rather pack clothes she can actually live in.

And maybe that is what makes her approach to style feel convincing. It allows for contradiction. You can love maximalism and still live in jeans on holiday. You can design an elaborate lehenga and believe the person inside it matters more. You can appreciate beautiful clothes deeply without needing every outfit to become a performance.

Personal style was probably never meant to make us look like exactly the same person every day. It is supposed to carry pieces of who we are our taste, our memories, our moods and sometimes even our mother’s favourite flowers.

Seventeen-year-old Prerna seems to have figured that out early. The rest of us may simply need to stop saving so many styling hacks.

Also, read:

Inside Alekha Advani’s Vision For A More Intentional Way To Be Well

This world has seen many fashion eras: the '90s Lycra obsession, the early 2000s' sparkle, and countless fleeting microtrends that have dominated our runways and wardrobes. However, for the past few years, exposure to the West’s “clean-girl”, build-a-capsule-wardrobe era has indirectly influenced the fun-o-meter in our daily outfits. Don’t get me wrong. There is absolutely no harm in having a capsule wardrobe filled with basics and neutrals. It eliminates decision fatigue and also creates a sense of uniformity, which makes you look put-together without doing much work.

But in this constant chase for the next-best neutral and close-to-perfect basics, have we forgotten how to incorporate colour into our wardrobe? Here comes Dopamine Dressing—the act, or rather the art, of dressing in colours, textures and prints that are seemingly fun and bright, and that indirectly influence your mood. This notion has been discussed, and there’s no denying that how you dress indirectly influences your mood. And it sounds easy, right? Wear bright colours, feel happier? But Dopamine Dressing is easier said than done, especially for the girl who tends to rummage her entire wardrobe only to end up wearing a black top and jeans. So, how do you incorporate colour into your wardrobe?

1. Start small, quite literally

The easiest way to feel comfortable in colours that seem “scary” is something I like to call minute exposure therapy. Instead of overhauling your wardrobe overnight, choose one statement accessory at a time—a pair of drop earrings in citrine yellow, sunshades in a burnt orange hue, or a statement bag you'd normally scroll straight past. Accessories are low-commitment by nature: they don't need to fit, they don't take up much space in your wardrobe, and if the colour feels like “too much” by 3pm, you can always take it off. Start with one bright piece against your black-and-jeans uniform, and let your eye slowly recalibrate to what “too much” actually means. More often than not, you’ll find it’s a much higher bar than you thought.

Seychelles Bracelet

Icon Studded Tote in Blush Pink Leather

Cannes Tobacco

2. Change your regular neutrals

The fashion industry has decided that neutrals begin and end at black, grey, beige and white. Change that notion. A neutral is really just any colour with a wide enough shade family that you can style it the way you'd style a basic—as a base, a highlight, or a background note. Take pink, for instance. It ranges from barely-there baby pink (a genuinely wearable everyday neutral) all the way to magenta, fuchsia and rani pink at the deeper end. The same logic works for green: sage and olive read almost as neutral as beige, while emerald and bottle green sit at the saturated end for when you want more drama. Once you start thinking in shade families rather than single “neutral” or “colour” categories, building outfits stops feeling like a gamble and starts feeling like the capsule wardrobe logic you already know, just with a wider palette.

V Neck Short Sleeve

SculptCore Bra - Sunset Blush

Bubblegum OnTheGo Shorts

3. Bright shoes

Pumps, ballet flats or trainers—your choice, but make them loud. Shoes are one of the easiest ways to refresh your wardrobe without replacing a single existing outfit, because a single colourful pair works with nearly everything you already own: your black trousers, your white shirt, your favourite pair of blue jeans. A cherry-red ballet flat or a cobalt-blue loafer instantly becomes the “bread” in your sandwich (see point three), grounding a neutral outfit in one confident hit of colour. Best of all, shoes sit at the bottom of your outfit, out of your direct line of sight all day, which makes them the least “scary” place to experiment if you’re still building your colour confidence.

Away Day Grotto Blue

Emmy Stiletto Heel Pumps - Blue

Swans Gingham Yellow

4. Notice and collect colour families

Pay attention to the colours and patterns that catch your eye on your commute, in the grocery aisle, on a stranger's umbrella on a rainy day. You could spot a bottle of Fanta and clock how well the orange and blue work together—a combination you'd probably never have picked out on your own, but one that tells you something real about the colour family you gravitate towards. The same goes for a bougainvillea spilling over a wall, or a stack of spices at the local market. Screenshot it, photograph it, note it down—whatever keeps it in front of you. Over time, this becomes your own colour reference library, so that when you’re actually shopping, you're not guessing at what “your colours” are. You already know, because you've been collecting the evidence all along.

Sienna Tie Knit in Pastel Blue

Yana Top

Color Block Knit Top

5. The sandwich method

One of the trickiest parts of dressing in colour is knowing how to co-ordinate it without looking like you got dressed in the dark. Enter the sandwich method. The idea: pick your “bread”—your top and your shoes—in the same or a closely related colour, and let a bolder, contrasting piece sit in the middle as the “filling”. Think a white top and white trainers bookending a cobalt-blue skirt, or black loafers and a black blazer framing a fuchsia dress. Because the eye reads the matching top and bottom as one cohesive unit, the loud colour in between registers as intentional rather than accidental—which means you can wear something as bold as you like in the middle without the whole outfit tipping into chaos.

Buttercup Bubble Dress

Mystic Sands Rhinestone Chain Patchwork Shorts

Linen Princess Line Dress - Fuchsia

Spend a week watching what young Indian women are wearing, to brunch, to a concert, on a flight, and Miss Mosa is hard to miss. This Gurugram headquartered company has grown into one of the largest D2C western wear brands for women in the country.

Its real edge is timing. Polka dots are everywhere this season, and this brand is already deep in them, scarf dresses, co-ord sets, breezy summer silhouettes. When the latest season of Bridgerton sent corsets and regency necklines surging back into search bars, a dedicated edit was already waiting. The team treats trend forecasting as a discipline, watching runways, street style and culture, then moving fast enough to put a style in a woman’s hands while it still feels new.

“Indian women are dressing for more lives now,” says Akanksha Sethi, Co-Founder and Creative Director. “The same woman is at a wedding, a vacation, a brunch and a work dinner in the same month. She needs a wardrobe that keeps up, and she doesn’t want to wait three weeks for it.” That last point matters. Every style on the site is in stock and ships the day it is ordered. Delhi NCR receives same day or next day delivery. Most of India gets it within a day or two, and the rest within four. New collections drop every week.

“When we started, an Indian woman who wanted trend led western wear had two choices, wait for a foreign brand to ship, or pay designer prices,” adds Co-Founder and CEO Jayant Sethi. “We built Miss Mosa for everyone in between, with most styles priced under ₹3,000."

That consistency has built a following far beyond the average shopper. Miss Mosa has been worn by several Indian actors, celebrities, creators and stylists, with Kiara Advani, Ananya Panday, Sara Ali Khan, Parineeti Chopra, Diipa Khosla, and many more among its frequent wearers.

A decade in, Miss Mosa has become one of the most worn homegrown fashion names of its generation. Not the brand a woman saves for a special occasion, but the one she reaches for when she simply needs to be dressed, and dressed well.

Shop at Miss Mosa.

For previous generations, adulthood seemed to come with a fairly predictable roadmap. Graduate, get a stable job, buy a house, get married and start a family. The timeline may not have always been easy to follow, but at least there was a sense that everyone was working towards the same destination. 

Today, that roadmap feels increasingly unclear. For many young adults the idea of having everything figured out by a certain age feels less realistic, and perhaps less appealing. Careers are changing, relationships look different, home ownership feels further away and the idea of staying in one job for decades seems almost outdated. Instead of following a straight path, adulthood has become something much more experimental: a series of choices, changes and moments of figuring things out as you go. 

Welcome to the era of new adulthood, where almost everyone is quietly wondering the same thing: Am I doing this right?

The Rise Of “Quarter-Life Crisis” Culture

The quarter-life crisis has become one of the defining experiences of modern adulthood. Once dismissed as simply a period of confusion after university, it has become almost a cultural phenomenon. From TikTok videos about feeling behind in your twenties to endless conversations about finding your “purpose”, young adults are increasingly open about the uncertainty that comes with this stage of life.

The traditional markers of adulthood that once provided a sense of security are no longer guaranteed. A degree doesn’t automatically lead to a stable career. A full-time job doesn’t always mean financial independence. Moving out doesn’t necessarily mean feeling like you have everything under control. 

For many people, their twenties are less about building a life they already imagined and more about questioning whether that life is even what they want.

The pressure, however, remains. Social media has created a strange contrast where everyone seems to be figuring themselves out publicly. One person is announcing their dream job, another is travelling the world, someone else is buying their first home, and suddenly it feels like everyone has a plan except you.

Perhaps the quarter-life crisis isn’t actually a sign that something has gone wrong. Maybe it’s simply a more honest version of growing up.

Is Uncertainty A Normal Part Of Growing Up?

The idea that young adults are “lost” is often repeated, but perhaps it misses the bigger picture. Previous generations also experienced uncertainty; they simply had fewer platforms to share it.

The difference today is that confusion has become visible. The internet has created a space where people openly discuss doubts that were once kept private. The messy parts of growing up—the career changes, failed attempts, unexpected turns—are no longer hidden.

Maybe new adulthood feels uncertain because it is less about following instructions and more about creating your own.

There is freedom in that, even if it can feel overwhelming.

Not having a five-year plan does not mean you are falling behind. Changing careers does not mean you made the wrong choice. Taking longer to figure things out does not mean you are not progressing. Uncertainty isn’t a symptom of doing adulthood wrong — it may simply be what doing it honestly looks like. 

The End Of The One-Path Career

For generations before, success was often associated with stability. Staying at one company for decades was considered a sign of commitment and achievement. Today, that idea has shifted dramatically.

Young adults are entering a workforce where changing jobs, exploring different industries and building multiple careers is increasingly normal. The idea of choosing one career path at 21 and following it forever feels less realistic in a world where industries constantly evolve and new opportunities appear every year.

The newer generations have challenged the idea that work should define their entire identity. A job is important, but it is not necessarily the only measure of success. There is growing interest in flexible working, creative careers, entrepreneurship and finding work that aligns with personal values rather than simply providing financial security.

This doesn’t mean career ambition has disappeared. Instead, ambition has become more personal.

Success might mean becoming an expert in one field, but it might also mean having the freedom to explore multiple interests. Someone can be a designer today, a content creator tomorrow and return to education years later. Changing direction is no longer viewed as failure, it can be a sign of growth.

The idea that we are supposed to discover one passion and stick to it forever is slowly being replaced by the understanding that people evolve.

Why Changing Your Mind Is Becoming Normal

One of the biggest differences between traditional adulthood and modern adulthood is the acceptance that people are allowed to change.

Previous generations often viewed changing your mind as inconsistency. If you left a career, ended a relationship or changed your goals, it could be seen as a lack of commitment. 

Today changing your mind is increasingly seen as self-awareness. 

Growing up means learning more about yourself, and sometimes that means realising that the things you wanted at 18 are not necessarily the things you want at 25. The dream job you once imagined might not feel fulfilling. The lifestyle you thought you wanted might no longer fit your values. 

Social media has also made these conversations more visible. People openly share career pivots, moving back home, going back to university or starting over. While this can sometimes create pressure to constantly reinvent yourself, it has also normalised the idea that there is no single timeline for success. 

People are no longer asking, “why are you behind?”, but instead asking, “what actually works for you?”

How Gen Z Is Redefining Independence

Perhaps one of the biggest changes in new adulthood is the way Gen Z views independence. 

For previous generations, independence was often measured through external milestones: owning property, having a permanent job/ being financially separate from your family. These things still matter but younger generations are increasingly defining independence in broader ways. 

Independence can mean having control over your time. It can mean setting boundaries, prioritising mental wellbeing or choosing a lifestyle that does not follow traditional expectations.

Even moving back home after university or relying on family support looks different today. Rising living costs and economic uncertainty have changed what independence realistically looks like. Rather than viewing these experiences as failures, many young adults see them as practical choices within a difficult economic landscape.

There is also a growing rejection of the idea that adulthood means having everything figured out. Being independent does not necessarily mean never needing help. It can also mean having the confidence to ask for it.

The Takeaway

Perhaps adulthood was never meant to be a checklist. Maybe it was always supposed to be a process of becoming.

Changing careers does not mean you made the wrong choice. Changing your mind does not mean you lack direction. And redefining independence on your own terms does not mean you’ve fallen behind everyone else.

In a world where everything is changing faster than ever, not knowing exactly where you're going might just be the most normal thing about growing up.

Dubai is a vibrant, cosmopolitan city celebrated for its futuristic skyline, spirit of innovation and world-class beaches, while Abu Dhabi - the nation’s capital and economic powerhouse - serves as the UAE’s cultural heart, offering a refined sense of place rooted in heritage. 

Within this landscape, Four Seasons operates three modern, ultra-chic hotels and resorts across the country, making every stay an unforgettable experience. Relax in the oceanfront oasis of Four Seasons Resort Dubai at Jumeirah Beach; stay seamlessly connected to the world’s financial hubs at Four Seasons Hotel Dubai International Financial Centre; or enjoy a blend of shopping, entertainment, and business at Four Seasons Hotel Abu Dhabi at Al Maryah Island, set within the capital’s premier waterfront community.

Across all three properties, guests enjoy effortless access to business districts, luxury shopping, world-class dining, and significant cultural destinations. State-of-the-art amenities including serene spas, modern fitness centers, and refreshing pools, paired with light-filled, spacious rooms and suites ensure a stay that feels both elevated and comfortably at home.

Set against a striking dual backdrop - the tranquil waters of the Arabian Gulf on one side and Dubai's iconic skyline, crowned by the Burj Khalifa, on the other - the resort offers a rare sense of escape, while staying close to the pulse of the city. Just a 25-minute drive from Downtown Dubai, this private beachfront retreat places guests within easy reach of the city's world-class shopping, global dining and vibrant entertainment scene.

In the 237 ultra-spacious guest rooms including 49 suites, the décor blends Arabic design motifs with cool, contemporary style, creating an atmosphere of light, airy luxury. Guests can also access 10 restaurants and bars, including one of the city’s most lavish spas, three swimming pools and fun family activities. 

Savour refined Far Eastern cuisine at Sea Fu, take in the stunning skyline views over cocktails at Mercury Rooftop, or enjoy authentic Mediterranean flavours at Jou Jou Brasserie. Beyond the resort, the neighbouring dining village offers some of Dubai’s most celebrated destinations, including Nammos, NusrEt, Coya, and Mimi Kakushi. 

Unwind at The Pearl Spa & Wellness Jumeirah, recently awarded a prestigious Five-Star rating by Forbes Travel Guide for the second consecutive year - a recognition of its holistic approach to wellbeing. Here, advanced therapies, bespoke treatments, and calming design come together to create transformative wellness experiences grounded in both innovation and indulgence.

Guests can also look forward to an afternoon delight at Shai Salon, which has recently unveiled its new Ritual Afternoon Tea - an experience inspired by the beauty of slowing down. Thoughtfully curated by Senior Executive Pastry Chef Nicolas Lambert, the experience unfolds through a carefully considered sequence of sweet and savory courses, each designed to be savored at a slower pace. As the creative force behind the resort's pastry programme, Chef Nicolas also oversees dessert creation across all outlets. His award-winning craftsmanship and collaborations with renowned chefs have earned him international recognition. 

Set in the heart of the vibrant DIFC, this stylish boutique hotel places guests within walking distance of Dubai's leading financial district, renowned restaurants, art galleries and luxury shopping. Guests can also look forward to state-of-the-art wellness facilities, award-winning cuisine by Chef Michael Mina at MINA Brasserie, and Luna Dubai - the property's iconic rooftop experience. A true lifestyle destination, right at the epicentre of the city.

Late last year, the Japanese dining destination KIGO opened its doors. Created by Fundamental Hospitality in collaboration with celebrated Chef Izu Ani, Head Chef Akinori “Aki” Tanigawa, and Sushi Head Chef Daihachiro Ebata, the restaurant delivers a refined counter style omakase experience complemented by an elegant kaiseki set menu that honours Japan’s most sophisticated culinary traditions.

Set within a chic, minimalist 44 seat dining room - including an intimate private dining room for up to 10 guests - the space embodies the serene spirit of Wa - the Japanese philosophy of harmony - offering a tranquil backdrop to dishes crafted with precision and artistry. The name KIGO, drawn from the seasonal expressions found in Japanese haiku, reflects the restaurant’s devotion to seasonality: each dish is designed to capture nature’s fleeting beauty through ingredients selected only at their peak. 

An ultramodern sanctuary rising 34 stories above the Arabian Gulf, Four Seasons Hotel Abu Dhabi at Al Maryah Island stands at the heart of the capital’s most dynamic waterfront district, a high-end playground for business, shopping, dining, and entertainment. 

Awarded one Michelin Key in the 2025 Michelin Guide for its outstanding design, architecture and service, the property also enjoys direct access to The Galleria, Abu Dhabi's premier luxury shopping destination.

Perfectly located in the heart of the capital, the hotel serves as an ideal gateway for guests to discover everything Abu Dhabi has to offer. Within just 20 minutes, guests can immerse themselves in the city's rich cultural heritage, explore its vibrant entertainment scene, or unwind along its pristine shores.

Inside, the hotel blends urban chic with understated luxury across 200 light filled accommodations, including 38 suites that frame sweeping views of the city skyline and shimmering gulf waters. Guests can mingle with fellow travelers and stylish locals in the elegant Al Meylas lounge, find serenity in The Pearl Spa & Wellness Abu Dhabi – which is the only and first-ever spa in Abu Dhabi to receive a Forbes Five-Star rating – or unwind at the rooftop outdoor pool and terrace with striking views of the Abu Dhabi skyline. 

Dining unfolds across six contemporary restaurants and lounges, from the chic lobby lounge - often referred to as “the living room of Abu Dhabi” - to innovative culinary destinations that celebrate the capital’s global palate including the popular 1920s Chicago-inspired modern steakhouse, Butcher & Still, Cafe Milano and more. 

Saikindō, the new HiFi cocktail bar at Four Seasons Hotel Abu Dhabi at Al Maryah Island, introduces a first of its kind concept to the region. Inspired by Japan’s legendary listening bars, it blends sound, space, and craft cocktails, all rooted in the spirit of Omotenashi - the Japanese art of wholehearted hospitality. Led by Beverage Director Marco Corallo, the bar uses AI to transform music’s tempo and tone into taste, creating cocktails that mirror sound. Saikindō offers a curated weekly program, featuring DJ nights and a dedicated Listening Night each week, with each session highlighting a different genre. 

Whether visiting the UAE for leisure, bleisure, or anything in between, Four Seasons offers the perfect stay - where comfort, a sense of home, and exceptional elevated service come together seamlessly.

Shimmy in your Schiaparelli. Life could take a turn for the surreal this August, and no, we can’t blame it on Mercury retrograde. There’s a new cosmic culprit in town. Welcome to the eclipse corridor, the liminal two-week period between the August 12 total solar eclipse and the August 28 partial lunar eclipse. Like Alice tumbling through Wonderland, this trippy period is a time when nothing is exactly what it seems. Secrets surface, plans rearrange, and it feels like time itself plays by different rules.

While the results of eclipses are unpredictable, their mechanics are not. They arrive in pairs (occasionally threes), each spaced two weeks apart. A solar eclipse is a supercharged new moon. As the moon slides directly between the Earth and the sun, it blocks the sun’s life-giving rays, briefly turning day to night for anyone standing in the path of totality. A lunar eclipse, though, coincides with the full moon. As the Earth slips between the sun and the moon, its shadow washes the lunar surface in an eerie blood red.

Ancients and modern astrologers alike have reverence for eclipses, and rightfully so. They are a break from the norm, a shakeup of what’s expected. A dark daytime sky? A blood-red moon? Not at all an everyday occurrence. By the principle of “as above, so below,” eclipses are considered cosmic curveballs that hurl unanticipated opportunities and challenges in our paths.

In recent years, the eclipse corridor has become known as a fertile time for shadow work, which means examining the parts of ourselves we normally keep out of view. The revelations that arrive can be uncomfortable, yet ultimately liberating. They can also be filled with delight. Hidden talents have been known to surface just as often as a scandalous tidbit. You may learn something about a friend that makes you love them more. Not everything tucked in the shadows is unwelcome.

This solar eclipse came with a new moon in Leo, a sign that’s getting a lot of play already this year, thanks to the once-every-12-year transit of Jupiter. This is also the first total solar eclipse in the sign of the lion since 2017’s Great American Eclipse, the one that sent everyone into parking lots wearing paper glasses. This eclipse also arrives on the final day of the 2026 Lion’s Gate portal, closing that manifestation window with a flourish.

Leo rules the heart, the stage, and the sovereign self, so expect themes of creativity and leadership to dominate the corridor. But remember that eclipses illuminate a sign’s shadow too. Leo’s runs toward unchecked ego, attention-seeking, and materialism gone awry—worth watching in your own behavior and in the headlines. How we lead, and who we let lead us, tends to come up for review under Leo eclipses.

This is also Act I of two Leo total solar eclipses. The sequel arrives with the Leo new moon on August 2, 2027, and the path of totality passes directly over the pyramids of Egypt—a spectacle the ancients would have read as a major portent.

The August 2026 eclipse corridor closes on the 28th with a partial lunar eclipse in Pisces, a sign that rivals Leo in its powers of imagination. With these two bookending the corridor, your inner artist could have an awakening. Pisces delivers inspiration through subconscious channels: melodies you can’t place, dreams vivid enough to write down at 3 A.M., or a color palette that arrives while you’re doing the dishes. Keep the notes app open and resist the urge to edit yourself before the thought is finished

Lunar eclipses are moments of release. With watery Pisces, that’s akin to a dam breaking. What’s been bottlenecking your progress or slowing your flow? The August 28 eclipse helps you clear it from the pipeline, but you have to be willing to surrender (Pisces’s favorite word) and trust the universe.

Compassion runs high now, and you may find yourself forgiving someone you’d written off—or finally understanding why they did what they did. Just remember that Pisces rules smoke and mirrors, and eclipses are unreliable narrators to begin with. Be wary of anyone who suddenly seems too perfect, whether that’s a too-good-to-be-true offer or a DM from someone who mysteriously shares every one of your interests. Escapism is a trap here, too. There’s a difference between a restorative bath and six hours lost in a scroll. Feel your feelings, but keep one toe on solid ground.

How best to navigate the eclipse corridor? Loosely. Hold your plans with an open hand, keep a journal within reach, and fact-check anything before you debut it. Much like Mercury retrograde, eclipse-fueled inspiration isn’t always the final draft. If you want a preview of what’s being stirred up, dig out your calendar from August 21, 2017, the last time a total solar eclipse crossed the sign of Leo. Whatever was unfolding then may be a mystical trail marker for whatever surfaces this month.

Read the original article on ELLE USA

There’s a very specific energy that shows up in the early weeks of a new relationship. Suddenly, you’re putting a little more thought into your outfits, reaching for perfume before heading out, and finding yourself paying extra attention to the small details. Ask why, and you might just laugh, you already know.

Love can shift the way we see ourselves, and sometimes that shows up in how we dress and groom. It’s not necessarily about impressing someone else. It can simply be a fun, instinctive way of expressing how good you feel and enjoying a little extra confidence along the way.

The Dopamine Dressing Phase

We have a term for the early, giddy stage of romantic love: limerence. What they don't have a term for is what limerence does to your wardrobe and grooming style. Suddenly the good bra is in weekday rotation, washed and dried multiple times a week. The silk shirt you were saving for something gets worn to a Tuesday coffee run, because sending him an outfit snap counts as an occasion now.

This isn’t a performance for an audience of one. It takes you a step closer to self - recognition. You learn, you realise and understand products that suit your skin, lip tints that do the flirting for you and eyes that do all the talking. You dress up to keep pace with all the new feelings that you go through. 

There's also a looser, less curated side to it. The oversized shirt that you borrowed and never returned. The way a person in love will happily leave the house without concealer because someone, somewhere, is looking at their face like it's already their favourite thing. Love doesn't just add effort to a beauty routine, it also has a habit of quietly editing out the parts that were only ever there for other people's approval.

When the Mirror Feels a Little Different

Heartbreak has its own beauty routine: the impulsive haircut, the sudden gym membership, the late-night skincare haul. The so-called revenge glow-up is often less about revenge and more about feeling like yourself again.

There’s a quieter side too, the days when even washing your face feels like effort, followed by the small rituals that slowly return: skincare before bed, lipstick for a solo dinner, flowers for yourself, or a haircut simply because you want one. Somewhere between the excitement of new love and the aftermath of heartbreak is something steadier: self-care. Not the Instagram version, but the everyday rituals that make you feel good in your own skin.

It’s beauty without an audience getting dressed, caring for your skin, and showing up for yourself simply because you deserve the effort. Love may change, but that relationship with yourself stays.

The Beauty of Being Yourself

Love, heartbreak, healing, and everything in between can show up in the way we dress and care for ourselves. A red lip on a good day. Barely-there makeup on a difficult one. A new haircut after a breakup, not to become someone else, but to remind yourself that you can still make choices for you.

Maybe that’s the beauty of it: our wardrobes and beauty routines reflect where we are, one outfit, haircut, and skincare ritual at a time.

August is bringing a fresh crop of exhibitions that span far beyond the traditional gallery experience. From artists reimagining mythology and technology to immersive explorations of nature, memory, migration and identity, this month's shows invite you to look at the world through an entirely different lens. Whether you're a seasoned art lover or simply looking for something new to do this month, these nine exhibitions deserve a spot on your cultural calendar.

Performing Belief by Rahul Kumar

Exploring the relationship between belief and artistic expression, Performing Belief looks at how Indian modernists drew from mythology, tantric philosophy, folk traditions and collective memory. The exhibition then brings these ideas into the present, examining how contemporary artists engage with questions around migration, ecology, gender, urbanisation and the body.

The show also marks the first exhibition under Kalakaar Art Salon's renewed curatorial direction, setting the stage for a new series of research-driven exhibitions.

Dates: 13 August – 30 September 2026
Venue: Kalakaar Art Salon, D-64, Second Floor, Defence Colony, New Delhi

A Life Drawn in Silence

Celebrating the life and legacy of acclaimed pen-and-ink artist Prakash Ghadge (1955–2025), A Life Drawn in Silencebrings together almost five decades of his artistic journey. The retrospective spans works from his student years at Sir J. J. School of Art through to his final pieces, including several intimate works that remained unfinished on his studio table.

Together, the collection offers a portrait of an artist whose practice was rooted in patience, introspection, humility and an enduring commitment to his craft.

Dates: 11–17 August 2026
Venue: Auditorium Hall, Jehangir Art Gallery, Kala Ghoda, Mumbai

As the Crow Flies

Curated by Srila Chatterjee, As the Crow Flies brings together a rich mix of Indian artistic traditions, connecting artists across generations, mediums and creative perspectives.

At its heart is nature, interpreted in multiple ways across the works on display. It appears as a sacred space, a mythical terrain, a cherished memory and, at times, simply an object of visual beauty. The exhibition offers a chance to see how different artists translate their relationship with the natural world into art.

Dates: 28–30 August 2026
Venue: Bangalore International Centre, 2 Stage, Domlur, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560071

The Urban Biome, A Group Exhibition

KYNKYNY, one of Bengaluru's leading contemporary art galleries, is bringing its first Mumbai gallery to life with The Urban Biome. The group exhibition considers the relationship between people and the environments they inhabit, from domestic interiors to the wider urban landscape.

Rather than viewing spaces as static arrangements of architecture and objects, the exhibition considers them as constantly evolving ecosystems, shaped by our routines, structures, belongings and the many forms of life that share them.

Dates: 8 August – 4 September 2026
Venue: KYNKYNY, 4th Floor, No. 20, Gool Mansion, 6 Homji Street, Horniman Circle, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400001

(Re)claiming Rights of Render(ing) by NewArtX (NAX)

What happens when technology becomes part of the artist's toolkit? (Re)claiming Rights of Render(ing) brings together nine contemporary artists working with AI, VR, projection mapping and digital sculpture to consider what the future of art could look like.

But this isn't simply about celebrating new technology. The exhibition questions what happens to authorship, identity and human expression as algorithms, artificial intelligence and virtual worlds become increasingly embedded in everyday life.

Dates: Open till 14 August 2026
Venue: LTC, Bikaner House, New Delhi

QUANTUM

Going from the tiniest scales of existence to the vastness of the cosmos, QUANTUM invites visitors into a world where uncertainty is part of the equation and possibility is everywhere.

The exhibition explores a universe where paradoxes coexist and the rules we take for granted begin to shift, offering visitors an opportunity to engage with some of the fundamental ideas that shape our understanding of science and existence.

Dates: From 8 August 2026 onwards
Venue: Science Gallery Bengaluru, Bellary Road

A Voyage to Permanence

An immersive, multidisciplinary project by independent filmmaker Purandar Chaudhuri, A Voyage to Permanence is conceived by Jooby Yohannan and curated by Johny ML. Bringing together experimental film, photography, sound and visual essays, the exhibition explores ideas of migration, labour, memory and impermanence.

The experience extends beyond the gallery walls, incorporating film screenings and photographic installations, alongside the launch of the Goa Cyanotype Notebook, creating an expansive reflection on the traces people and places leave behind.

Dates: 12–14 August 2026
Venue: Museum of Goa, Pilerne, Goa

ARTIX 5.0

Forget the conventional art fair format. Since launching in 2023, ARTIX has transformed luxury hotel suites into intimate exhibition spaces, creating a more immersive way for artists, galleries, collectors and audiences to experience and engage with art.

For its fifth edition, ARTIX will take over 21 curated gallery suites, featuring works by some of India's leading galleries, artists, jewellers and creative brands. Expect art, design and luxury to meet in a setting that feels more like an experience than a traditional fair.

Dates: 22–23 August 2026
Venue: The Claridges, New Delhi

Walking Root Route

Built around the interconnected ideas of "root" and "route", Walking Root Route considers movement as something that continually reshapes landscapes, identities and shared histories.

Through tactile and conceptually layered works, the exhibition looks at how migration, environmental shifts and cultural exchange become embedded in both physical materials and collective memory. At the same time, it encourages audiences to think about connection, care and what it means to coexist in an ever-changing world.

Exhibition Dates: Open till 17 August 2026
Venue: LATITUDE 28, B-74, Ground Floor, Block B, Defence Colony, New Delhi – 110024

Vedika Pinto is proving that prints don't have to shout to make a statement. In her latest appearance, the actress steps into a head-to-toe polka dot co-ord in a soft, buttery yellow — a shade that feels warm and sun-kissed rather than loud. The scattered dark dots lend the outfit a distinctly retro charm, evoking old-world glamour, while the fitted, body-conscious cut keeps it firmly rooted in the present.

Photographed against a moody, dark-panelled backdrop, the outfit practically glows — proof that a well-chosen print, styled with intention, can hold its own as the centerpiece of a look without needing embellishment, layering, or accessories to do the heavy lifting.

Halter Crop Top, Modern Silhouette Edge

The story starts at the top — literally. The halter neckline draws the eye upward and elongates the frame, while the cropped hem introduces just the right amount of skin without tipping into anything overtly bold. It's a silhouette that feels tailored rather than thrown together, with clean, structured lines that keep the playful polka dot print from veering into costume-y territory. This is the quiet power of good tailoring: it takes a pattern that could easily feel whimsical or juvenile and gives it an edge — sharp, considered, and unmistakably grown-up. 

Fitted Pencil Skirt Balances the Playful Print

Where the top brings the edge, the skirt brings the polish. A fitted pencil skirt in the same polka dot fabric continues the print seamlessly from waist to ankle, creating a co-ord that reads as one cohesive statement rather than two separate pieces styled together. The silhouette is deliberately body-hugging, tracing the frame in a way that feels confident and controlled — the kind of fit that requires precision tailoring to get exactly right. It's a masterclass in how repetition of print, when paired with contrasting silhouettes on top and bottom, can create visual rhythm without ever feeling repetitive.

Metallic Heels, Minimal Jewelry Finish

Every great outfit lives or dies by its finishing touches, and here, Vedika keeps things deliberately understated. Strappy metallic gold heels catch the light against the muted yellow of the co-ord, adding just enough shimmer to elevate the look from daytime-casual to evening-ready — without overwhelming the outfit's core color story. The jewelry, meanwhile, stays minimal and unobtrusive, a conscious styling choice that keeps all eyes on the print and the silhouette rather than splitting attention across multiple statement pieces. It's a reminder that restraint, when used well, is its own form of styling confidence. Sometimes the most impactful accessory choice is knowing when to stop.

Soft Waves Complete the Celebrity Styling

The finishing flourish comes in the hair — loose, soft waves that frame the face and bring a sense of movement and softness to an otherwise structured, tailored outfit. Rather than opting for a sleek, severe style that might have echoed the sharpness of the pencil skirt, the styling team leaned into something more relaxed, creating a nice tension between polished tailoring and effortless, undone hair. Paired with the polka dot co-ord, the soft waves round out a look that feels simultaneously retro and current, playful and polished, and entirely, unmistakably Vedika Pinto.

Forget quiet luxury as a buzzword — Bhumi Pednekar just gave it a masterclass. In an all-ivory suit that reads more heirloom than hype, the actor traded logos for lapels and proved, once again, that the loudest fashion statement right now is silence.

The internet has spent the better part of two years debating what quiet luxury actually means, and this look answers the question. It's not about the absence of style — it's about style so assured it doesn't need to raise its voice. Styled by Nidhi Jeswani, every element here is doing quiet, deliberate work, and the payoff is a silhouette that feels less like a fashion moment and more like an inheritance.

Ivory Structured Blazer, Old Money Silhouette

The blazer is the thesis statement. Cut in a single, unbroken ivory, it skips the usual cropped-and-cinched playbook in favor of something longer, sharper, and infinitely more grown-up. The shoulders are structured without veering into stiff, the kind of tailoring that suggests hours on a fitting table rather than a rack pull. There's no pattern, no piping, no contrast stitching to distract — just fabric, cut, and confidence. This is the blueprint of old money dressing: monochrome as a flex, not a limitation. It's the sartorial equivalent of a low, steady voice in a room full of shouting — you lean in precisely because it isn't trying.

High Mandarin Collar Adds Architectural Craftsmanship

If the blazer is the thesis, the collar is the footnote everyone will be talking about. A high mandarin neckline closes the look up to the throat, secured with a trail of polished metal clasps that read more hardware than button.

It's a detail borrowed from military tailoring and reworked for the red carpet — structured, a little severe, entirely intentional. Where a standard lapel would soften the silhouette, this collar sharpens it, giving the whole look an almost sculptural edge. It's the difference between a suit that's simply well-made and one that feels engineered — and it's exactly the kind of design choice that turns a solid outfit into a talked-about one.

Tailored Trousers Complete the Monochrome Power Suit

Down below, the trousers keep the conversation going in the same tone — literally. Cut from the same ivory cloth, they fall clean and straight, with no attempt to break up the palette or compete with the blazer for attention. This is tonal dressing at its most confident: when every piece matches, the eye has nowhere to go but the tailoring itself. The trousers elongate the frame, the blazer anchors it, and together they build a silhouette that reads polished from every angle — proof that a monochrome suit, done with this much precision, doesn't need a single accessory to feel finished.

Bold Smokey Eye Adds Edge to Minimal Styling

A smudged, deeply pigmented smokey eye and a berry-stained lip inject exactly the right amount of attitude — enough to suggest this isn't just corporate dressing, it's corporate dressing with intent. Loose, undone waves finish the look, softening the sharpness of the tailoring just enough to keep it from feeling like a uniform. It's the styling equivalent of a raised eyebrow: understated everywhere else, then one deliberate moment of drama where it counts.

Over the past few months, ballet seems to have quietly stepped out of the theatre and into pop culture or maybe it never left. From the conversations around Timothée Chalamet’s Marty Supreme press tour and his comments on ballet, to Olivia Rodrigo bringing ballet dancers into the visual world of Stupid Song, and the ballet performance for Sinners that had audiences talking at the Oscars, the art form has been appearing in places where you might not traditionally expect to find it.

And then, over a Zoom call with Dhvani Kothari, I found myself watching ballet from a very different perspective. As she spoke to me about her journey, I could also see glimpses of her practice sessions,  the discipline, precision and physicality that can so easily disappear when ballet is reduced to its prettiest silhouettes on screen. There is something almost deceptive about watching a ballerina move. The effort is hidden beneath the control,  the years of training are compressed into what looks like a few effortless seconds.

For Kothari, however, ballet has never been simply about looking effortless. She discovered it at 13, an age considered late by professional ballet standards, and went on to train internationally, compete and become an award-winning ballerina. But perhaps the most significant part of her journey began when she returned to India and realised that the ecosystem she needed as a young dancer simply did not exist.

“I feel like ballet chooses you,” she tells me. “I feel like it chose me.”

At just 21, Kothari founded the National Ballet School of India (NBSI), determined to create the kind of formal ballet education she had once searched for herself. Today, with centres across Mumbai, as well as in Bhopal and Goa, NBSI is not just training dancers; it is trying to change who gets to access ballet, what a ballet dancer can look like and, eventually, whether an Indian dancer needs to leave the country to build a career in the art form.

Because while ballet may be finding a new audience in pop culture, Kothari is interested in something much bigger: making sure India has a place of its own in the ballet world. Growing up as a shy child in Mumbai, Kothari experimented with different art forms but never quite found one that felt like hers. Ballet clicked almost immediately when she met a Russian instructor visiting Mumbai. “It just felt like, you know, I belong there. This is where I'm meant to be,” she recalls.

At the time, however, India had little in the way of a formal ballet ecosystem. There were classes and occasional modules, but no established educational pathway for someone who wanted to seriously pursue the art form. Kothari would eventually travel abroad to train, compete and understand what a professional ballet ecosystem could look like. It was during this time that she realised the problem was also an opportunity.

“I was like, ‘I don't want to just do this for me. I want this to be something that people can access, people can do,’” she says.

ELLE: What was the ballet scene in India like when you were starting out?

Dhvani Kothari: It was pretty non-existent. Honestly, there wasn't any formal education, there weren't any teachers and there wasn't any school that was properly doing it. If there were classes, they were probably just a class or two or a module to learn while you were doing something else. It wasn't really there.

We've had to create a completely new world here for ballet — curate something that didn't exist and pave our own way. I had to figure things out as I went because there isn't a set path. You're just making one.

ELLE: What made you turn that experience into something bigger by founding NBSI at 21?

Dhvani Kothari: I travelled abroad to learn this art form to the best of my ability and really see what the ballet world was and understand what people actually do. I ended up winning a lot of competitions, and that's when I thought, you know what, we can do it. Maybe we just haven't thought of it yet.

I didn't want to just do this for me. I wanted it to be something people could access and do. I wanted a real, true ballet education to exist in India. It was never my path to choose ballet. I was actually a very smart kid growing up and always thought I was going to be a doctor or something. But my journey took me here. When I returned from Croatia, I thought, I want to give it a chance. I want to give ballet a real, true chance in India.

I wanted to see what we could do and what our dancers could do. So I founded the National Ballet School of India for the next generation of ballet kids.

The whole idea was to put India on the world ballet map. Even when I was applying to things, India was never on the list. We had to get people to think, even Indians can do it.

ELLE: You also experienced being one of the few people of colour in ballet spaces abroad. What was that experience like?

Dhvani Kothari: Very, very tough. I remember when I was doing my course in Budapest, I felt so lonely because nobody would really interact or talk to me. I don't know why. I just didn't understand it.

Obviously, you do see a lot of fair-skinned people, and I was probably the only person of colour there. It was a very lonely experience.

But I feel like that is changing now. People have started to accept it. Brands are making things specifically designed for our skin tone, which honestly helps so much. It tells you that we are also a part of this, that we do belong here and there is space for everyone. Now we see so many people of colour, especially Misty Copeland. She has been revolutionary in this. Seeing her make space for all of us has been insane.

Even with casting and auditions, people are much more open to it now. I don't think that is such a barrier anymore, which I think is beautiful. It opens a lot of doors.

ELLE: You want to make ballet more inclusive in India. What does that mean to you?

Dhvani Kothari: I feel like ballet belongs to everyone. It is something that everyone should try and everybody should attempt because ballet is the base of all art forms. Ballet gives you technique and discipline that helps you throughout your life, not just in your dance career. That's why I feel like it is for everyone and every body type.

We're very inclusive in the way that we don't discriminate. There was such a [traditional perception of who ballet was for], but I don't believe in it at all. Ballet is for everybody.

We have dancers doing so well across every body type. They're dancing en pointe, they're doing shows,  it's crazy. We also want it to be accessible to anybody who has talent, even if they don't have the means for it. If you have the talent, my academy is the place for you.

We want it to be open to anybody who wants to give it a shot, anybody who's really willing to try and put in the work. That's how we try to make it inclusive and make it a place for everybody, not just one kind of person. Once you're in it, I don't think anybody sees you as anything else other than just a dancer. You're here to learn, grow and move together. We really believe in that team and community feeling.

ELLE: Ballet is often considered elitist or niche in India. What perceptions did you have to overcome?

Dhvani Kothari: Initially, there wasn't really any awareness of what ballet was in India. We had to educate people about what ballet means and what it is. You would get inquiries for “belly” because people didn't understand what it was. It was probably looked down upon because there was no understanding.

They didn't understand that it is actually an education. It's a full course that you have to do. So initially, it was about awareness and educating people.

Then we did have a certain target group that would apply or be interested. To break that, I started centres all around Mumbai. I didn't want it to be something that belonged in one area or was just for a certain type of person.

We are in 12 centres around Mumbai. In almost any location you can think of, we have a centre nearby. I feel like it's not just for a certain type of group or people. It's for anybody and everybody. That's how we've tried to make it more accessible.

ELLE: NBSI has also collaborated with brands and institutions such as the French Embassy, Gucci and many more. What do those collaborations mean to you?

Dhvani Kothari: Honestly, I was just so grateful that the conversation had started in the first place. People realised that ballet exists and that people are really taking it seriously.

When you see a brand collaborating with a ballet school, I feel like it opens people's minds to ballet and exposes it to a bigger audience.

Ballet can really fit anywhere. That's my ideology. It isn't just for the stage. You can think of any campaign and ballet somehow has a place in it because it is such a pure and beautiful way of storytelling.

You can think of anything. We've done it with so many brands and told a different story through our art form. It is beautiful because it can mould itself into anything that it needs to be. I don't think that, because of the way the world is today, it is just a traditional way of looking at it. It is so modernised in the way you can take it and the ideas that can flow with it. It gives us a chance to explore and see where we can go with it, or how we can incorporate a certain vision with ours.

It has been the most fun and creatively fulfilling experience. Everyone we've worked with has been so supportive and open to the idea, just letting us run free with it.

ELLE: There has been a recent conversation around whether traditional art forms are dying. Do you think ballet is?

Dhvani Kothari: Honestly, yes — I don't think ballet is a dying art form in any sense. Like I said, it is more than just dance. What it teaches you is honestly how to live. It teaches you resilience and how to commit to something.

I've had students at my academy who started with us and are now becoming doctors. They come back and tell me that the skills they gained in a ballet studio have helped them throughout their careers and lives.

I think that is so beautiful. That is a true investment. If you find a classically trained dancer in any organisation, they are going to have those skills. They are going to be disciplined, organised and willing to put in the work. I think that's why any classical art form stays with you as you grow up.

Ballet is truly the core of so many things. It is going to help you in so many ways. And even traditionally, I don't think ballet is a dying art form. Theatres around the world are full. Everything is sold out because people do want to experience it. It is the purest, truest form of art. You want to see it live, to see something so beautiful depicted so effortlessly. You wouldn't be able to tell that so much work has gone into it. It makes people feel connected. And more so now, because we need those human experiences and human connections.

View this post on Instagram

ELLE: You've spoken about putting India permanently on the world ballet map. What does the next five years look like for NBSI?

Dhvani Kothari: Because I was the first and only Indian to win international awards in ballet for India, my goal was to pass the baton to the next generation. We've had students who have won so many things, won scholarships and been placed in beautiful academies internationally. I think that is what it is about.

But obviously, my goal is to have an ecosystem here in India. We hope to get a residency here. We hope to have a theatre space where Indian dancers can perform. Indian dancers need a true home for ballet. They shouldn't have to travel abroad because right now, that is the only path, it's the only gateway. I want something that is truly ours, truly nationalised. When you're starting off, we get a lot of parents asking, what does the career path look like? What are they going to do with this?

Right now, we do have to send them abroad. But imagine a world where they learn and get to perform here. They have everything here, from their residency to their apprenticeship and then performing professionally. Everything should be here. That is my goal. Centres like NMACC really help because they give us a platform. Maybe we start with a small performance, but eventually, having seasons of ballet shows hosted here, performed here and trained here — that is truly the final, eventual goal.

ELLE: Who were your ballet heroes growing up?

Dhvani Kothari: Misty Copeland is a through-and-through inspiration. But Svetlana Zakharova,  looking at her, I really realised what ballet means. She was my idol. I watched her videos every single day. Natalia Osipova and Yasmin Nagdi were also huge inspirations. I have had the pleasure of meeting and learning from Yasmin, and even having her host something for Indian ballerinas. She was the kindest. She's a principal at the Royal Opera in London.

Just watching them shaped my mindset around ballet. They made me understand what it is, who I want to be and what I want my young students to look up to. Diana Vishneva is another beautiful ballerina who has been so important to us. She has helped NBSI and guided us through so many difficulties. These people have shaped so much, and we're so grateful.

ELLE: If someone wanted to discover ballet for the first time, what would you tell them to watch?

Dhvani Kothari: I would say watch original ballet works. Tchaikovsky's music is so core to ballet. Watch Swan Lake, watch The Nutcracker, watch the Bolshoi Ballet performing them, or the Mariinsky. That's actually what ballet is — the costumes, the detailing, the storytelling. It will blow your mind. Rather than watching anything commercial, because ballet does tend to get dramatised a lot in popular media, watch the true classical art forms.

There is Coppélia, The Nutcracker and Swan Lake, and also La Bayadère, which has so many Indian elements in it. Imagine getting to see something from your culture done in that way. It's so beautiful. For Kothari, the ambition isn't simply to produce more ballet dancers. It is to make sure that an Indian child who discovers ballet doesn't have to leave the country to find out how far that dream can go.

She started late, had to build her own path and once found herself alone in a foreign ballet classroom. Today, she is trying to make sure the next generation has something different: a school, a community, an audience and, eventually, a stage they can call their own.

Because for Kothari, putting India on the world ballet map isn't just about having Indian dancers recognised internationally. It is about creating a world where they can build that future at home.

Also, read: 

Who Says No One Cares? Opera And Other Classical Arts Have Been The Backbone Of Pop Culture

Ritesh Batra’s 2019 film Photograph follows Rafi (Nawazuddin Siddique) and Miloni (Sanya Malhotra) in Mumbai. Rafi, a long-time bachelor and a migrant in the city, works as a photographer in the popular tourist  sites and heritage precincts. His is a job in photography that is sans the poncy gloss of museum-isable images from the street chaos. Rather, his neat portraits of tourists against the backdrops of the Gateway of India, the Taj Hotel, and the timeless Arabian sea, diverts our attention to one of the overlooked forms of image-making. He is a street-side photographer unlike a street photographer who works with poesy for passion and awards. The penultimate reward for the likes of Rafi is not more than 50 INR per hard copy. The gap between ‘street’ and ‘street-side’ in photography is indeed as long as the gap in the inner worlds of Rafi and Miloni themselves. 

Urban-bred, a CA Inter topper, conveniences of a well-off urban family, and a desolate nod for every parental decision, Miloni is an enigmatic city-mouse.  Both their lives run into each other very much at the ripple-free cycle of their daily grind. For him, that is between the city’s streets and his creaking attic of tin and a whirring fan which he shares with four others. For her, it is the day-time coaching classes, home, dinner table, and overnight reading at her study. 

Photograph is an ode to migrant lives hoodwinked as a story of two unmixable individuals trying to impregnate the veritable glass wall of class. The film is also Bombay-ish with an unmissable old-worldness where Rafi and Miloni walk alongside each other in the precincts of Ballard estate, alleyways teeming with life and activity, and a sailing jetty that drags our senses to the oft-forgotten Bombay seaside. All the same, Photograph also carefully escapes the risk of becoming a wholly Bombay-esque film, with the absence of that characteristic hurry-hurry as a lens and migrants’ large-heartedness as a trope to narrate the story. 

The question of gender and class, its ability to flag high and distinct, even in the dizzying smorgasbord of the metropolis keep surfacing not as a forced layer in the film but as an inevitablity. Photograph takes as a chance to introduce us to the organization of village networks, mostly from the north of India, that keeps the city never short of labour supply. Rafi belongs to that stock. We know it through Rafi’s Dadi’s (Farrukh Jaffar) antics that reach him, from a distant village in U.P’s Ballia to the tightest ghetto in Mumbai where he lives, through a chain of his acquaintances’ voices. His roomie and work-buddy, the Kirana store chacha whom he turns to for his daily supplies, his regular Kulfi vendor, and a taxi-driver emerging from chaos behind him – all informing him that Dadi had stopped taking medicines in protest of his refusal to get married – brought to him by their own immediate family newsrooms. 

In a desperate act to convince Dadi to resume medication, Rafi lies to her in a letter about his imaginery relationship with a non-existent Noorie attaching Miloni’s photo, which he took earlier that day, a stranger hitherto. Dadi comes to Mumbai to meet Noorie i.e, Miloni. Alarmed Rafi, finds and successfully coerces Miloni into playing Noorie during Dadi’s short visit where events unfold as he planned, and the film doesn’t transform much after that. 

Nothing remarkable happens in the story. But Rafi and Miloni transform inward with each meeting and that arc relies on moments of stillness in paused frames, prolonged wait, and a truckload of acting which the two ace. In the wait for pakoras to be crush-wrapped in a newspaper sheet by a vendor sitting under an umbrella of ladi pav and fried food in rain, another vendor on a sunny day to prepare a see-through cup of ice-gola, and a warm glass of tea between Rafi and Miloni late one night, the pauses mostly breathe in between the culinary labour. If you look for it, culinary metaphors dot the film. Miloni’s reluctance to outside food in the initial meetings, her body’s harsh response to ice gola and Dadi’s subsequent puzzle as to how can someone fall sick by eating from the street, and Rafi’s discovery of Miloni’s fondness for a lost taste of Campa Cola which took him to a Parsi gentleman, the only one with the formula for the drink. The coalescence of what she lost and what Rafi found in it promises him a next phase. The delight of having cracked his life’s code beams over his face when he felt a bottle of Campa Cola in his hands straight out of the machinery when the old man handed him. It’s a dual joy for him to think about the possibility of setting up a tiny soda factory with that formula and giving Miloni the taste of her childhood. In which order the film doesn’t reveal but it is the door to set himself free of debt. The wretched debt that looms large like the ghost of Tiwari, a former resident of his attic, who died of suicide for no earthly reason. A reminder to Rafi and his attic-mates of the easy disposability of migrant lives in a city like Mumbai.

In Photograph, the city is both specific and generic. It is sometimes Mumbai and other times a city. It becomes any migrant city in frames when it zooms in to open lives of huddled migrants in a container-like attic, that looks uninhabitable but domesticated and shared by five men, and then when women domestic helpers find their third space in Juhu Chowpatty on a Sunday afternoon. It could be Singapore or New York and the thread of commonness in the migrant labour universe is afloat. Nevertheless, the specificity of Mumbai pops out in the many Kaali Peeli rides Miloni and Rafi take together. The inside of the cab, the city’s fixture, where the both are on the move, is allegorical to their individual insides where unnoticeable shifts happen, one ride at a time. Another time when the city is specifically Mumbai is Miloni’s date with Dadi and Rafi in an Irani cafe, the highest of Rafi’s affordability. Such spaces are like an intimate promise  and a comforting embrace of the city to its migrant children as though to tell them “you also belong here”. There, when Miloni tells Dadi that she is preparing for her CA exams Dadi – defensively in her effort to set both their profiles in equilibrium – tells her that Rafi would have become a great compounder to a doctor like his grandfather in Kanpur, given a chance to pursue education, leaving them both with a laugh in hiding. 

Many worlds apart, Dadi in that first meeting gifts Miloni an old anklet. That meeting is a cultural collision that left Miloni overtly curious about a world outside of her small confines. The message that cultural crossovers are impressionable is realized when Miloni hears her own family helper Rampyaari’s (Geetanjali Kulkarni) anklet for the first time at the dinner table that night. Though subtle hints to Rampyaari’s feet are seen in the film earlier, our attention together with Miloni’s is drawn suddenly to its sound for the first time. Miloni breaks free from her first inattention to familiarity from there. Miloni and Rampyaari’s first real conversation outside of an employer-employee situation also takes place that night. Miloni’s innocent questions about village life to Rampyaari, as though the latter comes from a land no one knew, zooms out to us as what scholar Gopal Guru calls “proximity of inequality” – as two bodies that inhabit the same space but different worlds.

Just when you are disoriented with where the film is heading to, when there is only a few minutes to end, Miloni walks out of a movie followed by Rafi. When he says that it's fine to miss the end because it's the same in all the old movies where the mechanic or a working-class hero is rejected by a rich heroine’s father, we’re confronted with the question of Rafi and Miloni once again and the film ends there. Though they never confess feelings for each other, if they were to head in that direction, can that ever happen, even if that’s onscreen? Did films like the ones Rafi talk about from the past deal with the class question straight on the face than today? Does Photograph want us to think about it?

Read More: Why Is Gen Z Suddenly Obsessed With Indian Reality TV Shows?

The Legend of Zelda is the latest title in Nintendo’s catalog to receive a movie adaptation. The game—which follows Link as he embarks on a series of challenges to save Princess Zelda and defeat Hyrule’s evil villain, Ganon—is coming to life on the big screen in 2027.

Though details about the project’s plot have been kept under wraps, a few official updates have rolled out as the movie’s premiere date draws closer. Here’s everything we know about the Legend of Zelda live-action movie so far.

Who is in the cast?

In July 2025, The Legend of Zelda video game designer and producer Shigeru Miyamoto confirmed that Bo Bragason and Benjamin Evan Ainsworth will play Zelda and Link, respectively.

“I am pleased to announce that for the live-action film of The Legend of Zelda, Zelda will be played by Bo Bragason-san, and Link by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth-san,” Miyamoto wrote on X. “I am very much looking forward to seeing both of them on the big screen.

This is Miyamoto. I am pleased to announce that for the live-action film of The Legend of Zelda, Zelda will be played by Bo Bragason-san, and Link by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth-san. I am very much looking forward to seeing both of them on the big screen. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/KA5XW3lwul

— 任天堂株式会社 (@Nintendo) July 16, 2025

Deadline revealed on August 6 that Uli Latukefu will play Ganondorf, “a powerful warlock king driven to dominate protagonists Link and Princess Zelda’s kingdom of Hyrule.” Severance’s Dichen Lachman and The Handmaid’s Tale’s Yvonne Strahovski are set to appear in the film, in addition to Sam Neill, who filmed his part in the movie before his passing on July 13.

On August 7, Deadline revealed that Lydia Peckham will have a role in the movie, though the details of her role are currently under wraps.

What has the cast said about filming The Legend of Zelda?

In a July 2026 interview with Decider, Ainsworth shared that starring as Link in The Legend of Zelda movie and as Daeron Targaryen in House of the Dragon feels like two sides of the same coin.

“I was like, ‘What are the chances that these two roles are both fantasy, green tunics with swords?’ But yeah, no, it’s funny,” he said, noting that there’s “similarities between the two” projects.

Ainsworth added, “The scale, yet like the immense detail, despite how large things feel. You know, both very inviting and welcoming sets to join and be a part of. And two characters which have reputations amongst the fans and the audiences, and I think both would have been all the more scary to take on if it weren’t for how welcoming people were.” He also revealed that he’s been embraced by both fanbases and shouted out the fans for “how lovely they’ve been.”

In an August 2026 interview with Teen Vogue, Bragason said that “entering Zelda was a very...a new world, which I love.” She added, “I love stepping into something that I have no idea what exactly is going to happen.”

She compared Zelda to her Sterling Point character Oona, saying, “It’s polar opposite character-wise, but there’s always a little bit of myself within each character, I’d say.”

Has the movie finished filming yet?

Yes. The Hollywood Reporter confirmed that The Legend of Zelda film finished shooting in April 2026.

When will the movie be released?

Miyamoto issued an update on the live-action film in May 2026, revealing that it would be moved up to April 30, 2027, from its original May 7, 2027 release date.

“This is Miyamoto. I would like to let you know that the worldwide theatrical release date for the live-action film of The Legend of Zelda has been moved up to April 30, 2027, from May 7,” he tweeted on May 13. “The team is working hard to deliver the film to everyone as soon as possible. There’s less than a year to go until release, so thank you for waiting.”

This is Miyamoto. I would like to let you know that the worldwide theatrical release date for the live-action film of The Legend of Zelda has been moved up to April 30, 2027, from May 7. The team is working hard to deliver the film to everyone as soon as possible. There’s less…

Can I see a sneak peek?

First-look images from the movie arrived in November 2025. In them, Bragason and Ainsworth step into their Zelda and Link costumes and walk through Hyrule together.

Read the original article on ELLE USA.

Somewhere between making our 47th “new life reset” timetable and watching someone else's 5 a.m. morning routine, young people have developed a slightly obsessive relationship with routine. 

We have always been very good at making schedules. Following them? Less so.

We were the generation making elaborate study timetables in school, promising ourselves that this Monday would be different. Sometimes they were colour-coded. Sometimes they had little doodles. Sometimes they were made at 2 a.m. the night before an exam, complete with ambitious plans to wake up at 5 a.m. and somehow revise three months of coursework before breakfast. The timetable would inevitably survive longer than the routine.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Bpharm Tutor (@byminnaco)

But the obsession was always there.

Perhaps that is because we grew up in a world that rarely stays still. Our feeds change by the second, our jobs can change overnight, our social lives exist across five different apps, and there is always another trend, plan, notification, opportunity or crisis waiting around the corner. Even our identities are allowed to be fluid. We are constantly becoming someone slightly different.

So, naturally, we have started craving the opposite. Routine. Familiarity. Something that happens the same way every time. And increasingly, that seems to mean becoming a regular somewhere — a bakery down the street, the same bookstore corner every Sunday, a gym class where the instructor already knows your name, a café where they’ve stopped asking for your order.

We have actually been taught to romanticise this idea for years. Think about the places we grew up watching on television. Central Perk in Friends was never just a coffee shop. It was practically another apartment. The characters knew where they sat, the staff knew them, and somehow there was always a table waiting for them.

Then there was Luke's Diner in Gilmore Girls, where Lorelai and Rory's relationship with coffee was practically a character of its own. Luke knew their orders, knew their routines and, more importantly, knew them.

These fictional places felt like home precisely because they weren't home.

And maybe that's the part we've carried with us. The appeal isn't really the coffee, the pastry, the book, or the workout.

It's the fact that someone knows you're coming. 

There is something deeply comforting about walking into a place and not having to introduce yourself. You have been there enough times that your presence is no longer an event. You are simply part of the landscape.

Someone knows your order. Someone knows where you like to sit. Someone notices when you've changed something. Someone might even notice when you haven't shown up. And perhaps that fantasy hits differently now because so many of us don't really have a place that feels like home.

For a generation that often leaves home for college at 18, moves cities for work, lives with roommates and builds entire social lives online, home can become a strangely temporary concept. You can live somewhere for years and still feel like you're passing through. But being a regular offers a miniature version of home without all the complicated parts of home.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by It’s Recess | Surry Hills Sandwich Shop (@its.recess_)

Nobody asks what you're doing with your life. Nobody asks when you're getting married. Nobody asks why you've been sleeping at 3 a.m. or whether you've finally found a job you like. They just know you. Or, at least, they know a version of you. And perhaps that is the most appealing part.

We don't necessarily want to be known in the traditional sense anymore. We don't always want to explain ourselves, share everything, maintain constant communication or turn every passing connection into a friendship.

We just want to be remembered.

There is a very specific kind of intimacy in someone knowing something small about you. Knowing what you order. Knowing what time you usually arrive. Knowing which seat you prefer. Knowing that if something is left over, you are probably going to want it.

It is intimacy with boundaries.

You get the warm feeling of recognition without the responsibility of actual intimacy. That might be exactly what we need. Because young people get accused of being scattered all the time. And fair enough, we probably are. But the interesting thing is that we're also painfully aware of it. We know we're overwhelmed. We know we spend too much time online. We know our attention spans are questionable. We know we keep downloading productivity apps, buying planners and making increasingly elaborate “Sunday reset” routines that last approximately four days.

We know. Which is why we keep trying to create little systems of stability wherever we can. A morning routine. An evening routine. A post-work walk. A Sunday grocery shop. A particular coffee before work.

And then, eventually, a place.

There is also something almost quietly luxurious about being a regular. It feels like having a secret VIP pass that nobody actually gave you. You walk in and someone recognises you. You don't have to look at the menu.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by emily (@emily.makes.coffee)

And suddenly, something that would otherwise be completely ordinary feels personal. Not because anyone has done anything particularly grand for you, but because they remembered. And that's where the “I saved you one” comes in. It is the fact that, before you arrived, someone had already thought about you. It is such a tiny gesture. Almost meaningless, if you look at it objectively. But emotionally, it says something enormous.

I knew you would come. I knew you would want one. I thought about you when you weren't here.

Maybe that is what we are actually looking for when we become regulars somewhere. Not necessarily friendship. Not necessarily community in the traditional sense. Just evidence that our presence has made some small impression on the world around us.

Because one of the most revealing things about being a regular is that the relationship doesn't have to go anywhere. You can have the same three-minute conversation with someone for six months and still not know much about each other. There is no pressure to become friends. No need to exchange Instagram handles. No obligation to invite them to your birthday.

You can simply exist alongside each other.

This is perhaps why the idea of being a regular feels so different from traditional ideas of community. The community used to demand participation. You knew your neighbours. You went to the same club, market or local shop. You were expected to actually know people.

Now, we seem to want something slightly softer. We want to be recognised without being scrutinised. Known without being exposed. Connected without being consumed by connection. We want someone to remember the little things without asking us to reveal the big ones.

And maybe that is why being a regular can feel almost romantic. Because romance, at its core, has always been about being considered. Not necessarily grand gestures or declarations, but the tiny evidence that someone has made space for you in their mind.

In a world where everything is constantly changing, being a regular means there is at least one thing that remembers you.

You are not new there.

You don't have to explain yourself.

You don't have to perform a version of yourself.

You don't even necessarily have to talk.

You can just walk in.

And someone knows you.

Maybe the most romantic thing isn't being someone's whole world.

Maybe it's just knowing that somewhere, in the middle of their ordinary day, they saw something and thought:

I'll save you one.

Also Read:

Decision Fatigue Is Real, So We Quit Choosing

August in beauty means one thing: the monsoon is having a say in our routines. Hair has developed a mind of its own, makeup needs to survive the humidity and skincare suddenly requires a little more strategy. Thankfully, this month’s new launches seem to understand the assignment, with plenty of clever formulas and mood-lifting treats landing just when we need them. Here are the beauty newcomers worth making room for.

Clinique Chubby Stick Collection

The Chubby Sticks are back, and they still know how to earn their place in a makeup bag. Creamy, easy to blend and brilliantly fuss-free, these multitaskers take you from lip to cheek, contour to highlight with a few quick swipes. Perfect for days when your beauty routine needs to keep up with you.

Shop Here

Fenty Beauty Rose Amber Collection

Rose Amber collection is giving date-night lip in the best way, a cool taupe-brown that looks polished without trying too hard. Wear it with the Gloss Bomb Stix for shine or Trace’d Out Lip Liner for a sharper look.

Shop Here

SHYR Beauty Face It Concealer Stix

Shyr Beauty is entering the scene with the Face It Concealer Stix, a creamy, full-coverage formula aimed at dark circles, blemishes and redness. With 14 shades and a natural finish, it looks like a solid everyday option, particularly if you prefer your concealer quick, fuss-free and easy to blend.

Shop Here

Laneige JuicePop Box Lip Tint

Laneige’s JuicePop Box Lip Tint is the kind of lip product you can throw on without checking a mirror twice. The colour builds easily, feels light on the lips and the clip-on format makes reapplying almost too convenient. Wait for it to dry once you put it on and you're good to go.

Shop Here

Redken Acidic Bonding Concentrate Hair Bandage Balm

Redken’s Hair Bandage Balm is aimed squarely at those dry, frayed ends that make even a good hair day look slightly questionable. The creamy treatment smooths and softens on contact, while its 230°C heat protection makes it particularly handy if your hair spends a lot of time under a dryer or straightener.

Shop Here

Maybelline New York Lifter Gel

For the gloss girlies, Maybelline’s Lifter Gel is an easy win. Juicy colour, glassy shine and a click-twist pen made for quick top-ups. The hardest part is picking a shade.

Shop Here

FIKN Elixir Collector's Edition

FIKN is making fragrance feel a little more luxe with its Elixir Collector’s Edition. With over 30% French perfume oils, the scents are made to last and evolve as you wear them, while the collector’s box adds a nice bit of drama.

Shop Here

Chloé Atelier des Fleurs Plage du Figuier

Chloé’s Plage du Figuier smells like a holiday you wish had lasted longer. Fig takes centre stage, softened with florals and orange blossom for a scent that feels sunny and polished.

Shop Here

Staze 9to9 Twin Flame 2in1 Lipstick + Lip Liner

Staze 9to9’s Twin Flame is for anyone who cannot be bothered carrying two lip products around. One end gives you a matte liner, the other a glossy lipstick, so you can line and fill in without the usual juggling act.

Shop Here

&Done Hair Begin Again

&Done Hair’s Begin Again is taking the scalp-first route to hair fall, which makes sense when monsoon humidity and hard water are doing their worst. The idea is to reset the scalp barrier and bring some balance back, rather than piling yet another product onto already stressed lengths.

Shop Here

Qi Ayurveda Pro Ageing Collection 

Qi Ayurveda is making its skincare debut with a three-piece Pro-Ageing range. The idea is simple: look after skin as it changes, rather than treating every sign of ageing like something that needs fixing. Ayurvedic ingredients and Swiss botanicals make up the formula mix.

Shop Here

The Body Shop Velvet Fig & Pistachio Shower Gel

The Body Shop’s Velvet Fig & Pistachio shower gel has the sort of fragrance that makes you want to keep sniffing your skin. It starts bright and fruity, settles into creamy fig and pistachio, then dries down warm with milk, sandalwood and musk. Cosy, slightly decadent and very easy to get hooked on.

Shop Here

PHD - Underarm Roll-On

PHD Underarm Roll-On is for anyone who wants a little more from their everyday deodorant. Instead of simply masking odour with fragrance, it goes after the source, making it a more interesting option for the daily routine.

Shop Here

Also Read:

ELLE Discovers: The Beauty Brands Everyone Will Be Talking About Soon

The Comfort Scents I'm Reaching For As Summer Winds Down

There was a time when watching reality TV was something you admitted to only after someone else confessed first. Now, it is practically a group activity. You watch an episode, open Instagram, watch five edits of the same fight, send a reel to your friends, argue about who was actually in the wrong and then, somehow, find yourself defending a contestant you did not even know existed 48 hours ago.

From Lock Upp to Splitsvilla, Desi Bling to The Traitors, The Alliance and every new reality show that seems to appear on our streaming home screens overnight, Gen Z is deep in its reality TV era. And while the shows themselves might look newer, the obsession is anything but.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Netflix India Reality (@netflixindiareality)

Because Indian audiences have been hooked on reality TV for decades. We just used to watch it differently. Before Instagram edits and fan accounts, there was Bigg Boss. Before contestants became trending topics before their first episode even aired, there was Roadies. And before every fight became a meme within minutes, there was the good old-fashioned thrill of watching strangers yell at each other on television and wondering how anyone could possibly be this dramatic on camera. So, what changed?

It’s The Kalesh, Obviously

Ask a Gen Z viewer why they are watching reality TV and the answer will probably involve some variation of ‘the drama’. But the appeal goes deeper than simply enjoying a little chaos.

“I genuinely only heard of it on its launch day, and I just started seeing it because it was all my friends were discussing on the group chats,” says Lakshya Arora, 18, from Lucknow. “And if there’s something I can give my opinion on, you best believe I’m not tackling the FOMO.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by शिवांगी जोशी (@shivangijoshi18)

And therein lies the first secret to reality TV’s current chokehold: FOMO. 

You don't necessarily choose the show. Sometimes, the show chooses you. Or, more accurately, your Instagram feed does.

For Neha Kataria, 21, from Mumbai, it was the same story. “I never intended to watch it too, but to be a part of my friends’ group discussion, I was forced into watching it, tbh.” Her entry point wasn’t even the show itself. It was Instagram.

“Honestly, the contestants’ edits on Instagram made me watch the series. By the time I started to watch, the series was already trending and more than halfway through. The catfights, mind-boggling revelations, marriages, trauma and dramatic daily soap opera scenes actually made me open Netflix on my device.”

And then there are the edits within the edits. Exes. Former best friends. New enemies. Contestants who have already crossed paths on another reality show. A clip from three years ago suddenly becomes essential viewing because two people are now sitting across from each other on a completely different show.

“These coming-up reels with exes and sworn besties to enemies from previous shows are the hook points,” Neha adds. “Not to forget links that amplify scandalous news and a few influencers who review and sum up all the drama.”

And of course, how can we forget Rakhi Sawant’s reaction videos, because we would rather subject ourselves to her commentary than the whole show. “Rakhi is such an icon, I have enjoyed her career trajectory so much. These days when she pops up on my feed, I don’t care about which Netflix show she is reacting to, I just wanna see her reacting to the thing,” says Ekta Sinha, Culture Editor, ELLE India.

Reality TV has effectively become a cinematic universe, except instead of superheroes, we have influencers, exes, TV actors, models and people who have somehow become famous for being famous.

The New Reality TV Celebrity Is Born Online

This is where the current reality TV boom gets particularly interesting. Contestants are no longer necessarily introduced to us as complete strangers. In fact, the opposite is often true. By the time someone enters Lock Upp or another streaming reality show, they may already have a fanbase, a controversy, a viral moment, a dating history and several million opinions about them online.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Akanksha Choudhary (@akankshachoudhary_official)

The more Instagram-famous you already are, the more likely you are to become reality TV material. And it makes sense. If you are already a trending topic, you are more likely to bring an audience with you, but also more likely to have something to add to the show.

Look at the personalities that have emerged from this new-age reality TV ecosystem: Akanksha Choudhary, Gullu aka Kushal Tanwar, Yogesh Rawat and Shreya Karla, among others. Their journeys reflect how reality TV is no longer simply a platform where people compete for a trophy. It can be the beginning of a much bigger internet identity. And that identity can be built in real time.

A contestant has a fight. Someone makes an edit. The edit goes viral. A fan account appears. The contestant trends. People who weren't watching the show start watching the show. The contestant gains followers. Brands notice. And suddenly, a person who entered a reality show is no longer simply a contestant. They are internet personalities.

But Haven’t We Been Here Before?

Here’s the thing: this isn't the first time India has turned reality TV contestants into stars.

The difference is that today, fame happens much faster and is much easier to measure. Reality TV has always had an uncanny ability to manufacture celebrities. Roadies gave us personalities who went on to build careers beyond the show. Bigg Boss turned contestants into household names and, in some cases, revived or completely transformed existing careers. And the list of people who used reality TV as a stepping stone is surprisingly long.

From Digvijay Singh Rathee to Ayushmann Khurrana to Ravi Kishan, reality television has played a role in creating career trajectories that stretch far beyond the shows themselves.

Ayushmann, for instance, first became known to a generation of young Indians through Roadies before becoming an actor, singer and one of Bollywood's most recognisable names. Ravi Kishan, on the other hand, went from award-winning films to the parliament.

Instagram x Reality TV

For decades, audiences had one primary way to express their obsession with reality TV: watch it, gossip and judge with your friends and family.

Now, there are hashtags, edits, memes, Reddit threads, fan accounts, reaction videos, YouTube recaps and, most importantly, that little Instagram follow button. The audience is no longer passive. We don't just watch people become famous. We participate in their fame.

A contestant can trend on X, become a meme on Instagram, rack up followers overnight and have fans creating fancams before the season has even ended. The audience gets to decide who becomes the main character. And the most interesting part? The contestants know this too.

Reality TV and social media have become almost symbiotic. Social media gives contestants an audience before they enter the show, while reality TV gives social media a never-ending supply of content. It is a perfect ecosystem of kalesh.

Things We Do In The Name Of ‘Escapism’

Perhaps the biggest reason reality TV has survived every change in entertainment is also the simplest: it feels real.

Even when we know there is editing, production and a carefully constructed format involved, reality TV still feels more unpredictable than fiction. And maybe that is exactly why it works as escapism.

Gen Z has grown up in an internet landscape where almost everything is PR manicured. Instagram feeds are curated. Dating profiles are displayed for traction. Even casual photos can involve 137 takes. Reality TV offers the fantasy of seeing behind the curtain. Or at least the illusion of it.

The Reality TV Rabbit Hole Is Real

Of course, the investment doesn't always happen immediately. I personally feel this section of entertainment went through the biggest dip in the last decade, and now, clearly it's peaking.

Sometimes you watch because everyone else is watching. Sometimes you watch because you want to understand the meme. Sometimes you watch one reel and suddenly need to know the entire backstory of two people who broke up on a show you have never seen. And sometimes, you don't even realise you've become invested until it is too late.

For Mahika Bajaj, 25, from New Delhi, that moment came towards the end. “Sadly, towards the end,” she says. “How nonsensical it sounds, right? But when I realise only five or six episodes are left, I lose interest. Even though I love kalesh and drama, I still start to feel detached.” She was not entirely convinced by the format either. (Lock Upp) “Is it even a reality show? Because I have grown up watching the OGs. I was like, what is even happening??? It felt like wasting time, device charging and most importantly, sleep.” And yet, she was invested. Everyone is.

And Then There’s The Nostalgia

Ask any Indian reality TV fan about their favourite moments, and chances are the answers will take you straight back to the OG era. For Tanishka, it is SidNaaz in Bigg Boss 13, the infamous Gautami Gulati song moment from Bigg Boss 8 and Dolly Bindra's fights.

For Lakshya, the most ridiculous part of the new reality TV ecosystem is the constant recycling of contestants. “I think the concept of inviting participants who were the limelight of another reality show, for all good and bad reasons, is totally ridiculous. Calling them and running the show on the same narrative and their shared dynamics is totally ridiculous.” But isn't that exactly what makes it work?

Reality TV has quietly built its own extended universe. Contestants move from one show to another. Friendships become rivalries. Rivalries become content. Exes become plot points. A contestant's previous reality TV history becomes the lore you need before starting the new season. The shows aren't just selling new stories anymore. They're selling existing drama with newer updates.

So, Why Are We Obsessed Now?

Maybe the question isn't really why Gen Z is suddenly obsessed with Indian reality TV. Maybe it is: why did we ever think we stopped being obsessed? The medium changed. The audience changed. The platforms changed. The fame machine simply got faster.

Once upon a time, becoming a reality TV celebrity meant appearing on television every week. Then came YouTube. Then Instagram. Now, a 15-second edit can turn someone into the most talked-about contestant in the country. The hashtags replaced the voting lines. Fan pages replaced magazine posters. Instagram followers replaced TRP conversations. Edits replaced episode recaps. But the fundamental appeal remains the same. 

We want drama that feels unscripted. We want personalities we can love, hate and obsess over. We want to argue with our friends about who is right. We want to escape our own lives for an hour and become deeply invested in someone else's. (Recession Indicator?)

Also, Read:

We Watched Desi Bling So You Don't Have To

A Look Inside Bollywood’s 'Brain Rot' Phenomenon, Where Logic Goes On Vacation

Natasha Poonawalla makes a case for maximalism in an archival Versace look that brings together Italian design, Indian textile craftsmanship and collector-worthy accessories. The outfit is a bespoke interpretation of Look 3 from Atelier Versace’s Fall 2002 collection, reimagined in richly patterned Banarasi brocade.

Styled by Rhea Kapoor, the look brings together candy-pink, yellow, green and lavender brocade in a sharply tailored skirt suit, topped with an oversized feathered jacket. A rare Dior Saddle Bag from the maison’s 10th-anniversary collection adds another layer of craftsmanship: the Gota Patti Saddle Bag combines the house’s signature silhouette with gota patti, zardozi and a nath-inspired detail.

Finished with emerald-heavy Bvlgari jewellery and Indian fine-jewellery accents, the result is a meeting of archival fashion and Indian craftsmanship that feels deliberately extravagant.

A Riot Of Colour In Archival Versace

The colour-blocking does much of the visual work: saturated pink, yellow, green and lavender are divided across the jacket and skirt, while the structured lapels and fitted waist stop the palette from becoming visually chaotic. It is maximalism, but there is plenty of construction underneath it.

That connection to the original Versace collection is worth noting. Donatella Versace’s Fall 2002 couture was already built around ornate fabrics, patchwork, embroidery and an exaggerated hourglass silhouette, so the brocade interpretation feels less like a random collision of references and more like a continuation of the collection’s original language.

What makes Poonawalla’s version feel fresh is the textile itself. The Banarasi brocade doesn't merely decorate the Versace silhouette; it changes it's character, giving an archival European design a distinctly Indian visual identity.

When Dior Meets Gota Patti

Then there’s the bag, a tiny piece of Dior history in the middle of all that colour.

Poonawalla carries Dior’s Gota Patti Saddle Bag, from the house’s 10th-anniversary Saddle collection. The pink bag is covered in gota patti and zardozi, with a nath detail sitting across the front. It’s ornate, undeniably Indian and about as far from a quiet luxury handbag as you could possibly get.

And somehow, it works perfectly with the Versace. The pink picks up the brighter tones in the brocade, while the gold embellishment plays off the jewellery. But the fun is really in the contrast: a recognisable Dior Saddle, one of fashion’s most instantly identifiable bags, covered in techniques more commonly associated with Indian occasionwear.

It feels less like the bag was chosen to match the outfit and more like it belongs to the same maximalist universe. Because when the rest of your look is already doing this much, why carry a sensible handbag?

Feathers And A Little Bit Of Theatre

And then there’s the feather jacket, because apparently the brocade wasn’t doing enough.

The oversized blush-pink layer is pure retro glamour. It sits over the sharply tailored Versace, softening all those structured lines with a cloud of feathers and making an already maximal look feel even more dramatic.

But it’s the styling around it that really sells the fantasy. The sleek hair, narrow sunglasses and the sheer scale of the jacket give the outfit that old-school fashion-editorial quality — somewhere between a vintage red-carpet moment and a very expensive fever dream.

There’s no attempt to make the feathers practical, understated or particularly sensible. They’re there to make an entrance. And honestly, that feels very Versace.

Bvlgari Statement Jewelry Completes Natasha Poonawalla’s Look

We all know that there’s a a very specific kind of Instagram Reel that keeps finding its way back onto our feed. Tom Welling in Smallville, usually in a backwards cap, looking young and annoyingly good-looking. Shah Rukh Khan in Mohabbatein, running his hands through his hair or delivering one of those speeches that somehow made falling in love sound like a life philosophy. Saif Ali Khan in Hum Tum, smiling like he knows exactly how charming he is. Shahid Kapoor in Jab We Met, before the internet had a name for the kind of man who is essentially a walking green flag. Hrithik Roshan in almost anything from the early 2000s.

And the comments are always the same.

"They don't make men like this anymore." Or, "I was born in the wrong generation." Or just, "Bring back the 2000s." "How did we let this era end?"

The funny thing is that we didn't exactly let it end. It keeps resurrecting itself. Every few days, another clip from a two-decade-old film or award show appears on our feeds, usually edited to a slowed-down song, and suddenly an actor who was famous before half of today's internet had access to a smartphone is trending all over again.

It makes you wonder what exactly we're missing. Because, obviously, beautiful men have not disappeared. We have Jacob Elordi, Michael B. Jordan, Manny Jacinto, Paul Mescal, Charles Melton, Harris Dickinson and a new crop of actors who can send the internet into a collective meltdown. There is no shortage of attractive men, or even attractive men who can act.

Yet there is something different about the men we crushed on in the early 2000s. Shah Rukh Khan wasn't simply a leading man. He was the romantic hero, before protein powder took over our screens. Saif Ali Khan could make the commitment-phobic, slightly chaotic urban man look like someone you might actually want to date. Or a Lee Min Ho K-drama throwback for all the feels. 

Hollywood had its own assembly line of men to obsess over. Hugh Grant had perfected the bumbling romantic. Jude Law had the face of a man who could ruin your life and make you thank him for it. Josh Hartnett had the brooding thing down.

Mark Ruffalo brought an understated, grown-up charm to romantic films. Tom Welling spent ten seasons on Smallville being Clark Kent before he was Superman, which meant that audiences got something superhero films rarely give us now: the pleasure of watching a ridiculously attractive man simply be a person.

He could look awkward. He could be shy. He could be jealous. He could fall in love. He could stand in a doorway looking confused for several seconds. And we loved him for it.

That might be the first secret of the 2000s heartthrob: he was allowed to be romantic before he was required to be cool.

We Didn't Just Have Hot Men. We Had Romantic Heroes.

The early 2000s were an unusually good time to be obsessed with a fictional man because the stories themselves were built around making you fall in love with him. Romance wasn't something a character had to squeeze in between saving the world and blowing something up. Romance was the story.

Hollywood was doing the same thing. The Notebook. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Love Actually. The Holiday. 13 Going on 30. Sweet Home Alabama. Serendipity. 50 First Dates. Teen television was equally invested in making us emotionally dependent on fictional men, from Smallville to The O.C. to One Tree Hill.

The point isn't that every one of these stories was a feminist masterpiece; they weren't. Some of them have aged considerably better than others. The point is that they took romantic fantasy seriously.

The hero had to win the girl. He had to pine, yearn and make a grand gesture. He had to realise he was in love. He had to say something devastatingly sincere while standing in the rain, at an airport or in the middle of a wedding. There was room for yearning. And yearning is perhaps the most important ingredient in creating a heartthrob.

We don't fall for people simply because they're attractive. We fall for the possibility of them. We fall for the moment before the kiss, the almost-confession, the look across a crowded room. We fall for the character who wants something desperately but can't quite have it. The 2000s were very good at making us wait.

Today, fandom is much more fragmented. One person is obsessed with a Netflix actor, another with a K-drama star, another with a footballer, another with a musician they've discovered through TikTok. The algorithm knows what you like and keeps serving you more of it. There isn't necessarily one actor whom everyone is watching at exactly the same time.

The 2000s had monoculture. We all watched the same films. We all saw the same award shows. We all read the same magazine covers. We all knew who the biggest stars were. And that made the crush feel bigger.

Maybe The Internet Is Partly Responsible For Killing The Mystery

This is where things get complicated. We have never had more access to celebrities than we do now. We can wake up and see what our favourite actor wore last night, watch a ten-minute interview, see their Instagram Story, hear their podcast appearance, watch them dance on TikTok and then scroll past a paparazzi video of them getting coffee.

We know way too much. The 2000s heartthrob existed behind a little curtain. You might see him in a magazine interview every few months. You might catch him at an award show. You might buy a poster. You might watch a music video repeatedly on television because there was no guarantee you would see it again when you wanted.

That scarcity mattered. We are essentially turning old celebrities into new ones through nostalgia. And perhaps the reason those old clips feel so magical is because they capture celebrities before celebrities became a 24/7 content machine. Back then, a star could simply appear once in a whikle. Now they have to perform their own relevance every day.

The Heartthrob Has Also Become More Complicated

There is another reason the old formula doesn't translate quite as easily today. The definition of masculinity has changed. The early 2000s romantic hero could be muscular, confident and traditionally masculine, but he was also expected to cry, pine, write letters, make ridiculous declarations of love and occasionally embarrass himself. Today's male celebrity exists in a strange space where vulnerability is desirable, but so is being effortlessly cool. Men are expected to be emotionally intelligent but not overly earnest, sexy but approachable, masculine but not intimidating, funny but not try-hard.

And mainstream cinema has spent years leaning into a much harder version of masculinity. The action hero. The anti-hero. The gangster. The morally complicated man. The superhero. The man with a gun and a six-pack who says very little. The list is quite depressing. 

After years of watching men solve problems through violence, destruction and one-liners, there is something almost radical about watching a man simply fall in love. Perhaps that's why the book-to-screen romance boom feels so interesting. The renewed appetite for stories built around longing, chemistry and emotional intimacy suggests that audiences haven't fallen out of love with romance. If anything, we may have been waiting for it to come back.

Today's Heartthrobs Aren't Exactly Failing

It would be unfair to say today's men aren't creating fandoms. Noah Centineo became an internet phenomenon through To All the Boys I've Loved Before, proving that a streaming rom-com could still manufacture a romantic fantasy. Jonathan Bailey is as an internet obsession for the girls and the gays.

Paul Mescal's appeal is different again. His popularity has been built partly around a kind of emotional interiority that the 2000s heartthrob didn't always possess. Charles Melton became a fan favourite by allowing audiences to see softness beneath the polished exterior.

The heartthrob has evolved. But the lifespan of the obsession seems shorter. An actor can be everywhere for six months and almost forgotten by the algorithm the next. Today's fandom moves at an extraordinary speed. A clip can turn someone into an overnight sensation and disappear from the feed just as quickly. The 2000s crush, by comparison, had time to become mythology.

And Then Came Heated Rivalry

Which is why Heated Rivalry is such an interesting exception to everything we're talking about. Because if you want proof that the heartthrob phenomenon isn't dead, look at what happened when audiences were given two things they hadn't had enough of lately: romance and chemistry. Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, who play hockey rivals Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, went from relatively unknown actors to two of the most talked-about young stars almost overnight after Heated Rivalry became a breakout hit. The show's fandom has continued growing even after its first season ended, rather than simply disappearing when the finale aired. And there is something almost beautifully old-fashioned about the obsession.

People aren't only talking about how attractive Williams and Storrie are. They're talking about their chemistry. The series has become proof that audiences are still willing to go completely feral for a romantic story when you actually give them one.

And perhaps the biggest clue is that Heated Rivalry isn't even a traditional straight rom-com. Its central romance is a queer love story between two rival hockey players whose relationship unfolds over years. The emotional stakes, secrecy, longing and chemistry have given audiences exactly the thing mainstream entertainment has increasingly struggled to provide: a relationship worth obsessing over.

So, Do We Actually Miss The Men—or The Feeling?

Maybe that is the real reason Tom Welling keeps appearing on our Instagram. Maybe it isn't just because he looked good in a backwards cap. Maybe we're nostalgic for the feeling of having a crush that lasted.

Today's celebrities are more accessible, but somehow that has made them harder to mythologise. Today's fandoms are bigger, faster and louder, but they're also more fragmented. We have more romantic content in theory, but fewer romance-led cultural moments that everyone experiences together.

And maybe that's why the men of the 2000s refuse to stay in the past. We keep bringing them back through fan edits, Instagram compilations and Instagram Reels because they represent something that feels increasingly rare: a time when a man could become a cultural crush simply by being charming, vulnerable, mysterious and very, very good at looking at someone like he was in love.

Avantika Vandanapu steals the spotlight in a black and gold gown that perfectly balances sheer detailing with glamorous embellishments. In her latest fashion moment, at the Variety’s Power of Young Hollywood event, the actor steps out in a floor length covered in shimmering gold embellishments, creating a look that feels both sophisticated and daring. The fitted bodice features a striking cut out neckline with an embellished choker style collar, while the transparent lace fabric adds an alluring dimension to the silhouette. From the statement bell sleeves to the sweeping skirt, every element is designed to make an impact. Against a clean backdrop, the metallic detailing catches the light beautifully, allowing the intricate craftsmanship to take center stage. With her long flowing hair and polished makeup avantika keeps her beauty styling sleek while letting the outfit deliver all the drama. 

A Sheer Moment That Refused to Be Subtle

Sheer dressing has become one of fashion's biggest statement trends, but Avantika gives it a particularly glamorous twist. Her floor length black gown uses transparent lace as a canvas for elaborate gold embellishments, creating an intriguing balance between coverage and reveal. The fitted upper half draws attention to the structured bodice, while the deep cut out neckline adds a daring edge to an otherwise elegant design. A striking embellished band rises around the neck resembling a statement choker and seamlessly connecting to the bodice. The sheer sleeves continue the intricate detailing, keeping the entire silhouette cohesive. 

What makes the look particularly effective is its confidence. Rather than treating sheer fabric as a subtle accent, the gown embraces transparency as its defining feature. The fitted waist gives the outfit shape before the skirt flows dramatically towards the floor. Black lace brings depth to the design, while gold sequins and embroidery ensure that every movement catches the light. Avantika’s styling demonstrates how sheer fashion can feel sophisticated when dramatic elements are balanced with thoughtful construction and a strong silhouette. It is bold evening dressing with a distinctly modern attitude. 

Gold Constellations Turn Up the Drama

The real magic of Avantika's gown lies in its extraordinary gold embellishments. Scattered across the sheer black lace are shimmering motifs that almost resemble a constellation of stars, creating a mesmerising effect as the fabric catches the light. The metallic detailing becomes especially striking across the bodice, where dense embroidery and sequins accentuate the shape of the outfit while drawing the eye towards its dramatic neckline.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by avantika (@avantika)

Further down the gown, the embellishments become more dispersed, allowing sections of transparent black lace to remain visible. This contrast prevents the intricate gold work from feeling too heavy and gives the floor-length silhouette a sense of movement. Every layer appears to have been carefully considered, from the ornate detailing around the neckline to the embellished waist and flowing skirt.

The gold also adds warmth to the otherwise dark colour palette. Instead of relying on bright colours, the gown creates impact through texture, shine and contrast. Under studio lighting, the sequins sparkle against the black lace, giving the outfit an almost celestial quality. The result is luxurious without looking overly traditional.

Avantika's choice of accessories and beauty styling further allows the embroidery to shine. Her long dark hair falls freely over her shoulders, while glowing skin and defined eyes complement the metallic accents. The overall effect is one of old-Hollywood glamour filtered through a contemporary sheer-dressing lens.

Those Bell Sleeves Were Made for a Grand Entrance

If the sheer fabric and gold embellishments establish the mood, the sleeves bring an extra dose of drama. Avantika's gown features long, sheer sleeves that flare gently towards the cuffs, creating an elegant bell-sleeve silhouette. The shape adds movement to the outfit while giving the otherwise fitted gown a beautifully balanced proportion.

The sleeves are covered in intricate lace and gold embellishment, echoing the detailing found throughout the bodice and skirt. At the cuffs, the embellishment becomes especially eye-catching, creating a statement finish whenever Avantika moves her hands. This makes the sleeves more than simply a functional part of the dress; they become one of its most memorable design elements.

Bell sleeves have long been associated with romantic and bohemian fashion, but this version feels decidedly more glamorous. The transparent fabric keeps the silhouette lightweight, while the metallic embroidery adds sophistication and eveningwear appeal. The combination works particularly well against the fitted structure of the bodice, creating a contrast between sleek tailoring and flowing volume.

The sleeve design also photographs beautifully. In one pose, the fabric appears almost sculptural around the arms; in another, it falls softly against the body, allowing the gold details to catch the light. That versatility gives the gown a sense of movement that a more rigid silhouette might lack.

Together with the sweeping skirt, the bell sleeves give Avantika the kind of dramatic presence associated with a grand entrance. They transform an already striking sheer gown into a complete fashion statement, proving that statement sleeves remain one of the easiest ways to elevate an evening look.

Sheer, Sparkling, and Impossible to Ignore

Her styling keeps the focus firmly on the gown. Long, glossy hair frames her face and adds softness to the dramatic silhouette, while luminous skin, defined eyes and a neutral lip complete the beauty look. A tiny bindi adds an unexpected personal touch, blending beautifully with the overall aesthetic.

For anyone looking to experiment with sheer fashion, Avantika's look offers plenty of inspiration. The key is allowing one statement element to lead while using complementary details to create cohesion. Here, black lace provides sophistication, gold embellishments bring sparkle and the dramatic silhouette does the rest. The result is a red-carpet-ready look that proves sheer dressing can be both bold and beautifully refined.

When we last caught up with Juderic Braganza, who goes by Jude, he was fresh out of Central Saint Martins (CSM), he walkinng us through his first capsule collection, his design philosophy, and a future that was fluid, ethereal and open to all. This time, his second collection is named Don't Worry About It Angel, a phrase, he tells us, "my grandma said to me often, but ironically, one that was also said to me by someone I was once madly in love with, and that didn't end well." Out of that small, loaded coincidence came the collection's entire premise: the "juxtaposition of an angel as a heavenly, protective being, but also a vengeful one, since an angel is traditionally known as a warrior of God too." It deals with pure, unadulterated love, "the kind my grandma had for me," alongside a love that wasn't fully there, one that transformed into something closer to vengeance and destruction. "That idea runs throughout the collection: beauty that can also be dangerous, even insidious."

Raised On Glamour And Grit

Much of that idea, glamour with an edge, traces back to how Braganza grew up. Raised in an Indo-Portuguese Goan household, he's always been surrounded by glamorous, powerful women, and his garments have functioned, in his words, as a running love letter to them. His community migrated from Goa to Bombay without much money, but lived beautiful lives regardless, working hard through the week and playing just as hard on weekends. That idea, beauty persisting despite scarcity, has shaped his practice and research from the start.

It also shapes how he sources material. Braganza remains committed to zero-waste cutting and pre-loved fabric, insisting on it even as sustainability has curdled into a fashion-industry buzzword. Most of what he uses is pre-existing, pulled from vintage suppliers or reassembled from old clothing. A purple coat in this collection began life as a 1930s vintage find from a thrift store, since redesigned into a jacket trimmed with lace, some of it hand-crocheted in Goa, some of it salvaged from an old tablecloth. Where he does use new fabric, he sticks to material that could eventually return to the earth. "Whenever I make something, I try to keep the carbon footprint as close to zero as possible, by taking something that already exists, rehashing and redesigning it, rather than adding more to the earth." It isn't always simple, particularly with clothes meant to sit close to the body, but he's found workarounds: cotton silk instead of polyester, vintage synthetics salvaged from older garments.

"We never have to resort to a polyester slip dress."

Ask him which piece from the collection he's proudest of, and Braganza doesn't hesitate. It's a cropped leather jacket, painted over in white, with a deconstructed wing detail at each shoulder. "The idea initially came from rage, this notion of a falling angel." Hidden beneath layers of paint, invisible now, is a tiny replica of a love letter he once wrote to the man the collection is quietly haunted by. "As I was making the piece, it started forming its own shape. It no longer looked like a broken wing or a fallen angel; it looked more like its own powerful, almost creature-like form." What began as an expression of rage became, in his words, "majestic, slightly terrifying but beautiful," and unmistakably wearable. "It's the kind of piece I hope people would love to wear, and maybe even perform in. I feel like it deserves to be worn by a musician."

The Journey So Far

That instinct, to make the emotionally charged genuinely wearable, traces back to how far Braganza has come since his CSM days. The LVMH Scholarship, he says, changed the scope of what was possible. "It allowed me to take risks and experiment further with materiality and fabric, and gave me the resources to put together a seven-piece collection with exactly the fabrics I had in mind." CSM itself, he's quick to add, gave him something less tangible but just as essential. "The university radicalises you, expands your horizons, and helps you view the world differently. It also gets you to focus on two of the most important things as a designer: problem-solving and research (and knowing who your person is)."

Life since graduating has looked markedly different. Between Brexit and a UK economy that isn't exactly generous to young creatives, Braganza has leaned on the people around him. "We find ways to get by, thanks largely to the community." Several of the models in this collection are close friends from university. "My life has completely changed, and I can't wait to keep showing the world my work."

That growth is visible in the work itself. Where his first collection lived almost entirely close to the body, this one introduces layers, pieces designed to sit over the body-conscious silhouettes that defined his earlier work. It was a deliberate response to something he kept hearing. "I'd often hear people say, 'I love your collection, I love your pieces, I wish I could pull them off.' I wanted to challenge that." His answer: glamour and power don't require exposure. "You can feel that way even wearing a layer or two." 

The Woman He Designs For

Ask Braganza who he actually pictures when he designs, and the answer widens beyond the household he grew up in. "I picture a woman who's equally glamorous, bold, and a little strange." His list of dream muses reads like a mood board of unapologetic difference: Björk, Julia Fox, Malala Yousafzai, Olivia Rodrigo. "Musicians, artists, performers and activists who stand up, who are bold, brave, and also a bit strange."

It's a word, strange, that Braganza has made peace with, and one he now wears deliberately. In our last conversation, he described himself as a misfit, the very thing that led him into fashion in the first place. Two collections and one scholarship later, that identity hasn't faded; if anything, it's sharpened. "It does, but now it's a badge of honour more than an observation," he says. "There's always been this dream to build a community of people who don't completely fit in, and I feel like I'm on my way to doing that." Much of that community, he's careful to note, is made up of the very people who've helped him get here, fellow creatives, "all different, all with a distinct point of view, who've never truly fit in. That's what's given us our perspective."

As for what's next, Braganza is characteristically candid about how much he can share. He's continuing his practice, and hints, carefully, at a possible move to another city. "I can't say much more about that just yet." What he can talk about is getting his clothes onto "some really amazing people," and the fact that select pieces from the collection, the tank top and the jacket, are already available to buy.

"I hope to keep expanding my world, and to see people wearing my clothes and celebrating life in them."

Misfit, warrior, angel. Braganza seems entirely at ease holding all three at once, and it's precisely that refusal to settle into one identity that makes his clothes, and his community, so hard to look away from.

There are few things French beauty does better than making you care about what is inside the bottle. Spend enough time around French skincare and a pattern emerges: the formulas are rarely about having the longest ingredient list or the loudest claim. There is usually a story behind the ingredient, a reason it was chosen and, often, decades of research sitting quietly behind something that looks deceptively simple on a bathroom shelf.

That is what came to mind when Yves Rocher arrived in India. The French beauty house has been working with plants since 1959, when Yves Rocher began developing botanical beauty in La Gacilly, Brittany. This was long before botanical extracts became a beauty trend and certainly before every new launch needed a hero ingredient. Plants were not a marketing angle for the brand; they were the starting point for its entire approach to beauty.

That philosophy still runs through its From Seed to Skin approach, which follows ingredients from cultivation and research through to formulation and manufacturing. When beauty is constantly chasing what comes next, Yves Rocher's long-standing focus on botanicals feels refreshingly grounded.

The Formulas to Know

The India debut is a fairly focused edit, covering the skincare and haircare concerns that often arise in real life.

Glow Activating Serum is the standout. It pairs Vitamin C with patented Orange Nasturtium, bringing a familiar brightening active together with Yves Rocher's botanical research. Rather than pitting botanicals and actives against each other for attention, the formula puts them to work side by side.

Glow Boosting Cream takes a simpler route, focusing on hydration, plumpness and healthier-looking skin. Not every moisturiser needs a complicated ingredient story or a dozen promises. Sometimes, a good everyday cream that leaves skin comfortable and well hydrated is exactly what earns a permanent spot on the shelf.

Anti Dark-Circle Eye Care speaks to a very current beauty concern: tired-looking eyes. Designed to target six visible signs of eye fatigue, it feels particularly relevant for anyone whose relationship with their screen is far too intimate.

Then comes Hair Shine Vinegar Rinsing Lotion, which adds a little intrigue to the haircare line. Made with Raspberry Vinegar, the post-shampoo treatment helps remove build-up, smooth the hair cuticle and leave hair softer and shinier. The idea is wonderfully straightforward: sometimes the easiest way to get better-looking hair is to clear away what is dulling it.

Why This One Has Our Attention 

Something is refreshing about a beauty brand that knows exactly what it wants to be. Yves Rocher has spent decades building its world around plants, research and formulas designed with purpose. That kind of clarity feels increasingly rare in a category that can be quick to move on to the next big thing.

And that is perhaps what makes this India debut worth a closer look. The products are now here, the formulas can speak for themselves, and the next chapter of Yves Rocher's story begins exclusively on Nykaa.