Jo Ellison

Last weekend Scotland-based veterinarian Jasmin Paris became the first woman to complete the Barkley Marathons in the event’s near 50-year history. In a great win for gender equality, Paris crossed the line at 59 hours, 58 minutes and 21 seconds, with just one minute and 39 seconds on the clock to spare. The US race was conceived in 1977 by ultrarunners Karl Henn (“Raw Dog”) and Gary “Lazarus Lake” Cantrell. It consists of five 20-ish-mile loops around an unmarked circuit in Tennessee and was i…

The first time I met Cillian Murphy was at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, in 1997. The actor, then 21, was making his stage debut in Disco Pigs, a two-hander about teenagers from Cork, Ireland, a frenetic story about friendship and first love. Even then, in tight-fitting silver trousers that looked like tin foil, fearless, feral, Murphy had a magnetism that ricocheted around the room. That ethereal face, that deep, laconic Irish accent, those ice-blue eyes held everybody in his thrall. He wou…

Croydon was never cool. But growing up there I didn’t realise the extent of its sad-sack reputation until I crossed its boundary line. Peers would sneer about the postcode and nod sympathetically when I revealed my home address. Quite why Croydon became the symbol of all that is awful was never clear, but it seemed to have claimed an outsize grip on the public’s imagination as being the definition of suburban hell. I thought my hometown was pretty boring, but I was always bemused by the Croydon…

For the third episode in our design series, we’re talking fashion design through the lens of the 2006 classic The Devil Wears Prada. The film is having a moment on the internet. We’re here to revisit it with fresh eyes, and with two experts in fashion: Jo Ellison, the editor of our luxury magazine HTSI, and Rob Armstrong, our men’s style columnist (OK, he’s also our US financial columnist). The film stars Meryl Streep as a powerful magazine editor based on Anna Wintour, and Anne Hathaway as a yo…

In the first of the Brains of Wellbeing + Beauty episodes, where we sit down with the scientists, entrepreneurs, innovators and disrupters powering the $5.6tn wellness industry, HTSI editor Jo Ellison speaks to fashion designer and beauty mogul Victoria Beckham. The duo discuss everything from the art of contouring to the business of building a global brand, which has recently entered a period of double-digit growth. Click for the lessons learned along the way, from investing in a tripod (Beckh…

This spring sees our third wedding special and, following seasons of slimline, simple wedding tunics, we’re heralding the return of big, bold bridal style. Widen the aisle, ladies and gentlemen, because the meringue is back. Sara Semic has spoken to nine brides who said yes to the very big dress, and reports on their inspiration – from a six-year-old doing dress-up, to princesses and a Guns N’ Roses video. My favourite is Sylvia Farago, of Farago Projects, who has produced many HTSI fashion shoo…

Last week, at a work lunch, I found myself, quite inexplicably, running out of chat. It may have been jet lag, or just exhaustion, but I had zero to contribute. Sure, you say, that must have been a blessing. I tend to be a gobshite after all: happy to pontificate on any subject and spout unprompted opinions on all things. Still, running out of conversation seemed like a massive professional fail. My job entails many dinners, and sitting next to strangers. The most basic requirement of a journal…

Dave Asprey is one of the internet’s favourite biohackers. As his website claims, he is a four-time New York Times bestselling author, the CEO of Upgrade Labs and host of a podcast called The Human Upgrade, in which he discusses life on the longevity frontier. He wears shoes that mimic the feeling of walking barefoot, and Truedark glasses that help him sleep better at night. Asprey has spent $2mn of his own money researching and testing his limits in an attempt to reverse the ageing process. On…

How would you hope your partner might talk about you? It was the first thing that struck me when reading the artist known as Rotraut describing her feelings for Yves Klein. “For me he was on the top of the mountain,” she says of her late husband, who is currently the focus of a retrospective in New York. “I thought he was just divine; the best, the highest… Between us there was a kind of oneness: we could not speak but we’d understand things at the same time or think the same thing.” Not bad, e…

Charlotte Tilbury launched her beauty brand in 2013, a rose-gold coloured smorgasbord of products that blended a blow-out glamour with hard-wearing durability. I was first introduced to the range by a fashion stylist who swore by her concealer, the optimistically named Magic Away. Sceptical as I was of the lofty claims on the packaging, it did indeed erase my spots. In the years since, I’ve watched Tilbury’s business empire grow: it hit a billion-dollar valuation when she sold a majority stake…