What we’re watching, craving and obsessing over this week
They know a thing or two about chafing, those Tour De France cyclists. So follow their streamlined lead and add a pair of cycling shorts to your next shop. Either slip a light-coloured pair on under your summer frock to discreetly banish chub-rub forever, or go loud and proud and team a black or navy pair with a matching blazer for a nonchalantly knowing 2022 take on summer suiting.
Oh. Em. Gee. Even though we can’t watch it until summer 2023, paparazzi shots of Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling in top-to-toe neon pink have ignited Barbie fever around the world. If you’ve already embraced scrunchies and cycling shorts (see above) consider yourself ahead of the curve, but for everyone else here’s the fashion forecast for the forseeable: anything fluro, stone-washed denim, and lashings and lashings of lip gloss. Follow the icon herself @barbiestyle on Insta. Iconic.
With school holidays upon us, win at parenting by investing in this pool – you’ll have your water babies away from their screens before you can say sunblock. With its 1920s aesthetic, you won’t look out of place in your high-waisted bikini as you play life guard either.
Perk up your summer plans by getting on board with Unboxed, the year-long festival of creativity that’s taking place all over the UK this year. The events range from Our Place in Space, a 10km sculpture trail by kids author Oliver Jeffers (which arrives in Cambridge later in July and hits North Down in Northern Ireland in September), to Storytrails which uses augmented and virtual reality to bring to life the history of selected British towns (Blackpool, Bradford and Sheffield in July). Our favourite is See Monster, a former offshore North Sea platform reimagined as an entertainment complex in Weston-Super-Mare. There really is something for everyone. And best of all, it’s free.
If long-haul adventures to summer climes are off the table for you too this year (damn you, cost of living crisis!) you can always drown your sorrows with an exotic beverage. May we respectfully suggest that this year you turn to a lychee martini, an unsurpassed drink of such deliciousness you’ll soon forget all about negronis and Aperol spritzes. It's a trip to the far east in a bottle. Well, nearly…
