Elle Fanning's Eczema 'Eyeshadow' Selfie Is The Most Relatable Celebrity Skincare Moment
A true celeb skincare moment
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LifestyleHouse BeautifulNeed a break? You can now rent this unique Airship in the Scottish Highlands via Airbnb
Who said staycations had to be boring?
EntertainmentHarper’s BazaarKim Kardashian boycotts Instagram and Facebook
She is among numerous celebrities to protest against the spread of "hate, propaganda and misinformation"
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Watch Jessica Alba And Daughter Haven Crush A New TikTok Dance Routine Like It's NBD
Honey has still got moves.
CelebrityHarper’s BazaarThe Sussexes donate $130,000 to an African girls education charity
The donation was as part of a celebration of Harry's birthday
NewsCountry LivingStorm Francis exposes ancient Welsh forest which has been submerged for 4,500 years
Legend believes it could be the mythical Sunken Kingdom of Wales
StyleYahoo Style UKThis viral peel has sold out almost everywhere, but we found it on sale on Amazon
This cult peeling solution from The Ordinary is currently reduced in price.
NewsThe TelegraphAnger and defiance in Israel reveals the problem with second lockdowns
Days before one of the most important holidays in the Jewish calendar, Israel has started a second lockdown
StyleElleShop Kate Moss' YSL blazer And Much More In Vestiaire's Celebrity Sale
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- CelebrityElle
Kendall Jenner Reveals She's A 'Stoner': 'No One Knows That'
A rare Kardashian-Jenner family secret comes out.
LifestyleThe TelegraphItalians seem to think face masks make them invincible
Ischia currently, to my knowledge, has no active Covid cases, which made my trip there all the more enticing. Not that Ischia, one of the largest islands off the Gulf of Naples, and a favourite with Italy’s domestic tourists, needs any help being enticing.
LifestyleHarper’s BazaarYou’re invited to our inaugural Bazaar At Work Week
The four-day virtual-event series will bring together inspirational female leaders
StyleRefinery 29 UKKate Middleton Rewore A Dress & Mask — & They Look Even Better Together
Apart from the whole Duchess thing, we like to think we’re not all that different from Kate Middleton. This was made easier when she was spotted on her way to a bakery on Tuesday in a dress and mask that she has worn in the past. (Granted, her trip Beigel Bake was part of a three-stop-tour of small businesses suffering due to the pandemic, but still…) For the occasion, Middleton chose a red-and-white floral Beulah London dress that she showcased during a Zoom call with Heads Together, an organisation led by the Royal Foundation that’s working to change the conversation around mental health in the U.K., in May. Then, we only got a glimpse at the collared shirtdress. On Tuesday, the stunning long-sleeve design was on full display. Her floral face mask, designed by a London childrenswear brand called Amaia, was also recycled from a previous outing. In early August, during a visit to Baby Basics, an organisation that helps to supply clothing, food, and other essentials to children in need, Middleton paired the “Liberty Pepper” mask with a white silk Suzannah shirtdress and Tabitha Simmons Dela heels. In the 24 hours that followed, searches for “floral face mask” in the U.K. surged 185%, according to fashion search engine Lyst. So, we can’t really blame her for keeping the mask on rotation, nor would we dare to. And while both her dress and her mask were standouts on their own, they look even better together. Both dotted with micro flowers, the two items are perfectly mismatched and ahead of trend: Clashing prints are quickly rising in popularity at New York Fashion Week, with Monse, Snow Xue Gao, Ulla Johnson, and PH5 all mixing patterns in their SS21 collections.Unfortunately for those of you looking to add the Duchess’ entire look to your fall wardrobe, her £15 mask quickly sold out in both the adult and children sizes, as well as every other mask design on its website, following the first time she sported it. Her Calla Rose dress, on the other hand, is still in stock, though it will set you back around £550. If that’s out of reach, you can also pre-order an Amaia mask (or all seven) for when they restock. Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?Face Masks Are Getting A Fashion-Forward TwistWhen Fashion Met Face Masks12 Pretty & Protective Face Masks You Can Buy Now
EntertainmentRefinery 29 UKTouch This Skin, Darling: Paris Is Burning Turns 30
Director Jennie Livingston refers to her documentary Paris Is Burning as her “old girlfriend,” a long-term relationship that has lasted to its 30th anniversary, becoming in that time a cultural touchstone of LGBTQ+ cinema that introduced the world to vogueing, realness, and extravagant balls. It was shot mostly over a five-week period in 1987; Reagan was president, and New York City was marked by intensifying income inequality, societal devastation from the AIDS pandemic, and the stigmatisation of and rampant violence against the Queer community. Following a re-release through the Criterion Collection this past February, its preservation in the National Film Archive by the Library of Congress, and its many influences on modern LGBTQ+ media, Paris Is Burning has established itself as one of the important documentaries in American cinema, having captured social issues we only now have the moral courage to talk about.“The ‘80s were a time of greed, savage inequality, and a willingness to ignore that, and that’s a period we are in now,” Livingston said, talking about the social conditions for LGBTQ+ people when the film was shot. “There was an economic boom, but there was a lot of poverty and struggle. The AIDS crisis was ascendant in the gay community, and that certainly affected trans people too. It was a time in the community when people of a certain generation were dying en masse.”Public spaces in New York City have always been places where people go to express themselves. In the ‘80s, parks were a communal stage for voguers, and the piers near the West Village were a place for Queer people to gather with their chosen families.“When I first discovered I was gay, I was very young; I remember walking down to the West Side, the Village, and discovering this whole world of people, of coloured folks that were just like me,” said José Xtravaganza, choreographer and Father of the House of Xtravaganza, who appears in Paris Is Burning. “I found my tribe, as they say… to see colourful characters so comfortable in their own skin and okay in being who they were. I drew from it as an artist, as a dancer.”Livingston was struck with a similar impression. “I was a young photographer, and I happened to meet some voguers in a [Washington Square] Park,” she said. “They said if you want to know vogueing, reach out to Willie Ninja. He was thought of as a star voguer, and [I was told] you have to go to a ball if you want to see this. I went to a ball, and then I went to many other balls. It was that culture of New York — that public space — that was one of the best parts of the city.”Livingston, who is currently working on her next feature Earth Camp One, didn’t go to film school, but, in 1985, she took a summer film course at NYU. Her assignment was to make a documentary. Inspired by meeting voguers in the park, she used the school’s wind-up black-and-white reversal 16mm camera — and took along a friend to do the sound — to capture a ball. “This was at the [LGBTQ] Community Center on 13th street,” she said. “The one person who was there that I met was Venus; she was there with her biological grandmother competing, and I just remember having my mind blown. I had never seen any kind of cultural manifestation where genders were being questioned — the energy of it, the categories, which, at the time, I didn’t understand most of what was going on. But I understood that not all the women were biological women. I understood that the categories were commenting on how we construct identity. And as a young Queer person, and as a new New Yorker, and certainly as a photographer who loved human creation, I was blown away.”“Creatively, what was put into whatever category you were walking, you would plan for weeks at a time,” Xtravaganza said. “You would plan every detail. It was so important because this was all we had. These categories were thought out. A lot of preparation went into it because it was so competitive, you always wanted to bring that wow factor to outdo your competitor.”Livingston was just 24 when she started working on Paris in 1986, and spent four years working on it. She began by using a still camera to take pictures and a professional cassette recorder to record audio interviews, getting to know the culture and people in the scene. Soon enough, she decided to make a feature. She raised money by selling her car and borrowing $5,000 from her aunt to buy equipment to shoot one ball. Then, she used that footage as a fundraiser trailer to help sell the idea to a producer. “People were like, ‘No no no, don’t want to fund it, don’t want to fund it.’ They all had different reasons why,” she said.Eventually, the late Jonathan Oppenheim, a friend (and future editor of Paris) who worked as an intern at WNYC at the time, helped her find the producer she needed. After the footage made its way to Madison D. Lacy, director and producer for the civil rights documentary, Eyes on the Prize, he invited Livingston in for a meeting, before offering to help produce. Livingston named the film after the ball event of the same name organized by Paris Dupree. For a film that shows lavish balls crowded with shouting onlookers and confronts issues of race, class, homophobia, and transphobia, it’s surprisingly intimate. We witness quiet moments. We see the personal spaces of voguers. We hear about their lives, their dreams, their struggles; we’re conscious of their heartbeats and pride when they walk to categories with realness.“When you can pass the untrained eye or even the trained eye, and not give away the fact you’re gay, that’s when it’s real,” Dorian Corey says in Paris, talking steadily to the camera while putting on makeup. “The idea of realness is to look as much as possible like your straight counterpart. It’s not a takeoff or satire. No, it’s actually being able to be this woman.”“I want a car, I want to be with the man I love, I want a nice home away from New York up in the Peekskills or maybe in Florida, somewhere where nobody knows me,” Venus Xtravaganza says to the camera, lying on her bed, next to her stuffed animals. “I want my sex change. I want to get married in church, in white. I want to be a complete woman, and I want to be a professional model behind cameras in the high fashion world.”“There are some who think we are sick, some who think we are crazy, and some who think we’re the most gorgeous special things on Earth,” she says, in a soft voice.Venus, who worked as an escort, was strangled to death in a hotel room during filming. She was 23. “I always said to her, Venus, you take too many chances you’re too wild with people in the streets, something’s going to happen to you,” House Mother Angie Xtravagaza said in the film, reacting to Venus’s death. “We used to get dressed together, call each other and say what we were going to wear, she was like my right hand. Any time I go anywhere I miss her. But that’s part of life. That’s part of being a transsexual in New York City and surviving.” Angie would die of AIDS in 1993, three years after the film’s release. She was 28. Time has added to the film’s significance. Many of the voguers portrayed have since died of AIDS, while some were victims of violence and other causes, exemplifying the lack of access to health care, entrenched marginalisation, and struggle to survive for people of colour in the gay and trans community that persists today. Although acts of violence are invisible in the film, they permeate the stories told by the voguers, putting faces to the issue of trans-violence at a time when that conversation was otherwise non-existent.“It was beyond my ability to imagine,” Livingston said about Venus’s death. “I was a young person. I certainly understood the risks of being a sex worker — she talked about it. It was hard to understand, it was hard to feel the reality of it, because it just didn’t seem that someone who was so vital and so powerful could [have that] happen [to her]. She was such a strong person.”“This phase of going back to look at footage I hadn’t seen in 30 years, and reconnecting to people from that time,” Livingston said. “I celebrate the film and I’m proud of it, but there is a lot of sadness. I want everyone to be here — Dorian, Willie, Angie, Venus — I want them all to be here.”Three decades later, important pieces of pop culture, from Pose to RuPaul’s Drag Race to HBO’s Legendary, trace their lineage to Paris Is Burning. The documentary has influenced a generation of LGBTQ+ actors, directors, writers, queens, and creators of colour, telling the story of the ball scene, and popularising drag to a mainstream audience. Yet the film is treated as somewhat of a skeleton in the closet, with critics like bell hooks calling it inherently exploitative due to Livingston being a white documentarian who entered and captured a culture that is Black and Hispanic.“For me to see her down there with a video camera filming, it was a bit intimidating and scary, because a lot of these kids weren’t accepted for being gay which is why this whole movement started,” said Xtravaganza, on interacting with Livingston when she was filming. “She definitely was a tough girl going into that culture because it can be shady and it can be hard, especially for a white woman at that time. I know she still gets a lot of flack from the community where some are unhappy because they feel she didn’t put them in the film or they didn’t get the accolades from it financially or whatever the stories have been throughout the years.”“I think there’s a shift [now] in that there’s more opportunity to portray people,” Livingston said. “[Disclosure: Trans Lives on the Screen] talks about how trans people are portrayed in Hollywood. There’s, of course, Pose and Orange Is the New Black. There are people who are being empowered to make work. I don’t think there is enough. I don’t feel like we’re yet at the point where there’s fully a sense that if there’s a gay or lesbian or bi or trans or queer story that the filmmaker needs to be queer. We see our lives best.”“I know there are people who feel like, well then, how can you make Paris Is Burning?” she said. “There wasn’t anyone else who wanted to make that film, I did have the relationships, and the people did want the film made. To this day, the stats are 96% of films in general release are directed by men. The stats for films about people of colour by people of colour are bad. I think when you have more executives who can understand in an embodied way that people need and want to see those stories, more of these films will get funded.”Paris captured moments that looked beyond the confines of stereotypes, transition narratives, and sobering news reports that usually make up depictions of transgender lives. The voguers left a legacy of unapologetic expression and fragile humanity, creating a landmark work of art that helps gay and trans people understand their self-worth and transcend their identity to tear down the social barriers placed around them. Their names are now in the voices of many.“We barely had rights, never mind the trans community. I never imagined it being so part of society as it is now,” José Xtravaganza said. “A lot of these people in the film don’t have the luxury of being alive today to share in the success and phenomena that vogueing and ballroom culture has become. They are to be praised, and I’m proud I witnessed it firsthand, to know the people who opened the doors. None of this would have happened if Jennie had not done such a beautiful, heartfelt documentary.”“They have a lot to say to how we as humans live,” Livingston said. “The ball world has a lot to say [about] how we build our society, and how we have creativity and resilience in a world where it would like to knock that out of us, particularly as Queer people. There isn’t a single person who doesn’t feel like they’re up against some bad circumstances that they had to overcome to become themselves.”Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?Honest Conversations With Trans KidsGanni & Richie Shazam Support The Black CommunitySurvivors Must Fight For Trans Women Too
LifestyleHouse BeautifulInstagram's most popular wallpaper trends revealed
These wall coverings have made the biggest impact so far this year...
BusinessThe TelegraphThomas Cook relaunched as online-only tour operator
Thomas Cook has risen from the ashes of its collapse last year, and recommenced selling holidays as an online-only travel company.
EntertainmentRefinery 29 UKNetflix’s Criminal Is Still Great & There’s One Episode In Particular
Caution: spoilers ahead for season two of Criminal on Netflix.If you missed season one of Criminal, get yourself back to Netflix (what else have you got to do?) and give it a watch now. It’s an unusual show, set almost exclusively in two rooms. Each episode is centred around a different character as they undergo a police interrogation for their part in a serious crime.With a stripped back set-up and little to distract viewers, the acting needs to be seriously on point. The first series featured suspects played by David Tennant (see ITV’s Des for more superb creepiness from him), Hayley Atwell and Youssef Kerkour. The detective team, made up of Katherine Kelly, Lee Ingleby and Rochenda Sandall, employed verbal gymnastics to try and trip the suspects into confessing what they knew.Now, the team is back for a second series, this time featuring A Suitable Boy‘s Shubham Saraf as a new recruit, eager to make his mark. The suspects are an impressive line-up: Sophie Okonedo, Sharon Horgan, Kit Harington and, in quite the departure from The Big Bang Theory, Kunal Nayyar.This series is as masterful as the previous one. The storylines are varied, from Sharon Horgan as an online vigilante to Sophie Okonedo as the churchmousey wife of a convicted killer. The twists are expertly woven into the narrative, impossible to predict and yes, the acting is definitely up to scratch. Keep an eye out especially for Kit Harington’s six-minute, to-camera monologue as Alex, an arrogant west London estate agent accused of rape.Harington’s episode in particular is worth watching very closely (spoilers start here). Alex is, for lack of a better word, a prick. He owns a property company in Latimer Road. He wears an expensive suit with a pink shirt. His brown lace-up shoes taper to a point and above them, a hint of colourful sock is visible. He’s a walking, talking caricature of a grown-up public school boy used to being seen and heard, and to getting his own way. His “I’m right, you’re wrong” attitude echoes a thousand bosses who’ve mansplained, refused to listen and taken credit for women’s ideas. Alex is accused of raping a female employee after Friday night drinks. He details the events of the evening in a nonchalant manner. He’s thought of everything: who booked the Uber, who kissed who first, who suggested more drinks. It’s a defence delivered by a man who hasn’t even considered that his actions might have consequences. However, as the episode goes on and the detectives carefully drop their breadcrumbs of evidence, a shift begins to occur. Alex taps his foot and becomes increasingly shrill. He’s on the verge of losing it altogether when Detective Petit (Saraf) uncovers a piece of information from the victim’s past which means the case against Alex will be impossible to prosecute. In fact, the new evidence even suggests that the employee might have planned it. The episode ends with Alex free to go but demanding an apology for what he’s just been through.This outcome may feel infuriating. Not only is Alex highly unlikeable, this narrative appears to play into the one that dominates Twitter every time a high profile rape allegation is dropped. How could a woman drag an innocent man’s reputation through the gutter so publicly? How will the accused go on in the face of such ruinous claims? As DCI Warren (Sandall) says in the episode: “I just don’t want that to be true, I don’t want any woman to be like that.”But of course women aren’t like that. The Home Office estimates that just 4% of rape allegations are false, not that you’d know it from the Twitter mob who vilify the ‘anonymous’ woman who accused their favourite football or movie star of rape. But a rape case being dropped doesn’t automatically mean that the victim lied; it means that there wasn’t enough evidence to convict.Rape cases are notoriously hard to prosecute; last year, over 55,000 cases of rape were reported to police in England and Wales but just 2,102 of those cases made it to court, resulting in either a conviction or an acquittal. That’s out of the 97,000 cases of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault by penetration that are estimated to occur every year. In July, Harriet Wistrich, founder of the Centre for Women’s Justice, told the BBC that these statistics send out a message that rape has essentially been ‘decriminalised’.So while Alex in the show might walk free, worrying about damage to his reputation (and if he is innocent, quite rightly so), what the episode is really doing is highlighting the difficult reality of reporting a rape. The detectives, and even Alex’s own lawyer, make it clear that Alex being free to go doesn’t necessarily make him innocent. “We decided that we cannot show you are lying,” Detective Myerscough (Ingleby) tells him. Alex demands justice for what he’s been through and written confirmation that he is innocent but it is clear no help is coming. For those who report rape only to have their cases dropped, the outcome is the same. There is no comfort for what they’ve been through, no written confirmation that they weren’t making it all up. The difference is that Alex leaves a free man with a reputation that will, if he is innocent, hopefully recover, but a rape victim remains trapped with the trauma of what happened to them. All of the episodes weave their own complicated tale but it is this one with Alex that really steals the show. So give it a watch, seethe and reflect and then do your homework on the reality of the situation. With rape prosecutions at a five year low, this is something that needs to change, now.If you have experienced sexual violence of any kind, please visit Rape Crisis or call 0808 802 9999.Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?'The Duchess' Is A Comedy About Middle Class MumsDavid Tennant's 'Des' Will Keep You Up At Night"Malcolm & Marie" Is Coming To Netflix
CelebrityRefinery 29 UKEmily Ratajkowski’s New Essay Explores “Image, Power, & Consent”
In a new essay for New York Magazine, Emily Ratajkowski opens up about her experiences having her images used without her consent — and exactly how damaging that can be.In the essay, Ratajkowski describes several instances when others claimed ownership of her image. She writes about, for instance, being sued for posting a picture of herself to her Instagram account; the image in question had been taken by a paparazzo. The model is not the only celebrity who’s had this experience. Gigi Hadid and Khloe Kardashian have both been sued for posting images of themselves to Instagram.Later in her essay, Ratajkowski describes receiving notice that photographer Jonathan Leder was publishing a book titled Emily Ratajkowski. The book included hundreds of images of the model, including poctures Leder had taken of her in 2012. And the book was being published without Ratajkowski’s knowledge or consent. It was reprinted three times.At one point, the model tweeted about her objections to the book: “I’ve been resisting speaking publicly on the recently released photos by Jonathan Leder to avoid giving him publicity. But I’ve had enough. This book and the images within them are a violation. These photos being used w/o my permission is an example of exactly the opposite of what I stand for.” In the essay, she describes the “unrelenting” victim-blaming replies.Making matters worse, some of the images in the book had been taken during a photoshoot that seemed uncomfortable, to say the least: Leder asked Ratajkowski to pose in lingerie, then nude, though she hadn’t realised it would be a lingerie shoot. She describes the negative experience in detail in her essay. She also says that when Leder was contacted by a New York Magazine fact-checker, he responded by victim-blaming and calling Ratajkowski’s allegations “too tawdry and childish to respond to.”Ratajkowski’s essay is just one part of a larger collection of personal essays from the model, according to her recent Instagram post.Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?'I May Destroy You' & The Brutal Truth Of ConsentGynecologist Charged For Sexually Abusing PatientsA Nurse Reveals ICE Is Performing Hysterectomies
EntertainmentThe GuardianHottest front-room seats: the best theatre and dance to watch online
Hottest front-room seats: the best theatre and dance to watch online. From live-streams of new plays to classics from the archive, here are some of the top shows online now or coming soon
4 Delicious Hot Dog Recipes You Have To Try
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