Carola Long

Two new boutique hotels have added a sprinkle of chic to the sleepy, serene, Île d’Yeu

Geriatric starlet Iris Apfel’s posthumous book is full of bon mots

All the Rage: Power, Pain, Pleasure: Stories from the Frontline of Beauty 1860-1960 by Virginia Nicholson (Virago) As the high-fashion corset returns to the catwalk and the red carpet, thanks to John Galliano and Kim Kardashian, this deep dive into western female beauty over a century seems particularly timely. From details of gruesome early 20th-century cosmetic surgery involving paraffin wax injections to analysis of the idealised women presented by mid-century advertising, it’s a reminder th…

It’s midnight in LA, where Kevin Kwan lives, but this is his preferred time for a phone call. “I’m a night bird,” he says. “If I was doing an interview at 8am, my brain would be foggy and not well-caffeinated . . . I swear to God I will be much better at midnight.” Indeed, the Singapore-born author of bestseller Crazy Rich Asians has his wits about him as he discusses his latest novel, Lies and Weddings. It follows eligible British-Chinese aristocratic Rufus Leung Gresham as his former supermod…

Cécred Moisturizing Deep Conditioner, £37, cecred.com Did we need another celebrity beauty brand? Probably not, but when it’s Beyoncé’s new line, exceptions are made. The eight-piece hair care collection featuring shampoos, leave-ins and treatments caters to all hair types and textures. The star of the Cécred show is the moisturising deep conditioner which is described as “best for curly, coily, and zig-zag coiled hair”. A thick, luxurious blend of shea and murumuru butter and oils such as mori…

In 2011, I went on a river swim at a summer festival called Port Eliot. Everyone taking part wore a yellow swimming hat for visibility and we were warned a photographer would be taking pictures at the end. “No way am I being photographed emerging from a river in a rubber hat,” I told my husband and duly dodged the lens. Unfortunately the photographer turned out to be Martin Parr. I missed my chance to be immortalised, but then again with Parr, a flattering portrait was not guaranteed. For more…

Paris Fashion Week got into full swing on Tuesday with shows from Dior and Saint Laurent, luxury houses owned by French conglomerates LVMH and Kering respectively. Both are known for a quintessentially French vision and heritage, and with the Olympics starting in Paris in July, all eyes are on the image of the capital city presented to the world. Fashion is a significant part of the national identity, and when it comes to using the global stage provided by the Olympics, LVMH is the one going fo…

In Paris last summer for the couture shows, I made time for a brief shopping pilgrimage. While the world’s 0.01 per cent perused hand-embellished eveningwear, my between-show treat was a snatched detour to the more reasonably priced Soeur boutique. The city is brimming with shops offering their own vision of La Parisienne, but for me, Soeur’s mix of clean shapes, workwear fabrics and retro prints has an easy cool that stands out. I recommend it to anyone else who wants a change from APC, likes…

It’s 11am on a Friday and the busiest counter in Space NK’s King’s Cross store in central London is Rare Beauty, the make-up line from singer Selena Gomez. Wanting to understand its popularity, I get chatting to Tara, a glowy 36-year-old who has come down from Oxfordshire for the day to buy beauty products and has “made a beeline for the concealer”. She’s intrigued to see if Rare Beauty is as good as she’s heard on social media, adding that the brand’s concealer is £10 cheaper than her usual D…

Procrastinating over presents? It’s not a problem — yet — but you might want to step on that ordering, if only to avoid the dreaded last minute stealth tax known as Next Day Delivery. After asking an extended circle of friends what they wanted, I’ve concluded that what most people want is “something useful, but make it special”. Extra-long matches from Pentreath and Hall fit the bill, creating a sense of occasion. A little decadent but hey it’s only 11p a match, maths fans. Or perhaps opt for…

Sometimes getting ready for a party is part of the fun. And sometimes it can descend into a frenzied rush of trying to discern whether your evening look is about as hip as an ’80s pineapple and cheese hedgehog. This happened to me recently when, five experimental ensembles later, I was back in the silk shirt and straight jeans I put on first. Casting around for something a bit extra, I found it in the form of a red lipstick. Matte with a slightly blurred finish, the newly launched Rabanne Famou…

Every designer at fashion week wants attention, but few are as upfront about it as Schiaparelli artistic director Daniel Roseberry. Talking about the instant impact he wanted to make, he said, “a lot of [founder] Elsa Schiaparelli’s work was first degree: a jacket, a lobster; it’s not hard to understand. That’s what we are looking for in everything we are doing, a sense of immediacy.” This isn’t just out of respect for her legacy — it also reflects the kind of bold designs that play well on soc…

After a slew of designer debuts in Milan, the second day of Paris Fashion Week played host to shows from big brands who have had the same creative directors since 2016: Dior, helmed by Maria Grazia Chiuri, and Saint Laurent, designed by Anthony Vaccarello. Both designers have honed a distinctive albeit very different style and made the houses their own, but this season there was something of a shift at Saint Laurent, the Kering-owed brand which reported revenues of €3.3bn last year. The show,…

Independent designers have brought their energy and individuality to the party but with a nod to what customers want

How to reinvigorate Burberry? Guests at the brand’s London Fashion Week show on Monday once again hoped they would see a definitive answer to this long-running question, courtesy of designer Daniel Lee’s second collection for the homegrown heritage brand. For Burberry chief executive Jonathan Akeroyd, Britishness is part of the answer. “It’s unique and helps us stand out in a crowded market,” he told investors last year. But defining Britishness is tricky, troubling politicians as much as fash…

“We don’t wake up for less than $10,000 a day.” Linda Evangelista’s infamous 1990 remark burnished the mythology of the supermodels, but also came to haunt them. Was it a statement of female power, or a sign of greed and egotism? Or perhaps, a deliciously diva-ish quip that spiralled out of control? New four-part Apple TV+ documentary The Super Models explores the phenomenon that spawned that quote via archival footage and extensive interviews with four of the original supers: Linda Evangelista…

The fashion industry is collectively out of office in August, and designer Gabriela Hearst is staying in her villa on the newly fashionable Greek island of Milos. With Instagrammable volcanic rock formations, it has been described by Condé Nast Traveller as “one of the Mediterranean’s most sought-after vacay spots”. “It’s paradise, but paradise comes with no cell signal,” says Hearst, as she tries to find a patch of decent reception so that we can talk while she stays in the shade. Today she’s…

When it comes to perfume, Rabanne has plenty of hits to its name. There’s One Million, with its bottle shaped like a gold bar, and Fame, launched in 2022, which resembles a woman in a chain-mail dress. Now the Puig-owned luxury house is hoping to sprinkle its fragrance fairy dust on to colour cosmetics with the launch of a 90-piece collection. “Make-up is the new filter of the brand; it’s how we want it to look,” says vice-president for Rabanne Beauty Jérôme Leloup. It’s part of the company’s “…

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Forget matcha lattes and cashmere tracksuits — going grunge is the real self-care