Category: 5. Entertainment

Already at the high end of luxury fragrances, Maison Francis Kurkdjian’s hero Baccarat Rouge 540 is getting a five-figure upgrade.

In mid-September, the perfume house will unveil a $28,000 special-edition offering of the scent, complete with a crystal case and exclusive refill membership. The brand joins a wider range of LVMH labels unveiling fragrances at prices once reserved for handbags and jewellery as collectors’ enthusiasm drives demand.

The Baccarat Rouge 540 Édition Millésime will be released in 54-product batches over the next decade, for a total of 540. With permanent collection bottles at $695 for 6.8 ounces, its price premium comes partly from the addition of ambergris to its ingredient list. But its crystal packaging takes top billing. The brand’s original bottle designer Fred Rawyler was enlisted to design a red crystal vessel. A crystal-compatible spray function was added to its 24-carat-gold cap, while 19 Baccarat artisans created a crystal display for the bottle that took 500 hours. The fragrance comes in a leather and beveled mirror-lined spruce box and a hand-stitched lambskin sleeve by Paris leather workshop Atelier Renard.

“When I create, I never begin by thinking about the client. I simply follow my creative vision, striving to bring beauty into the world through my fragrances,” said Kurkdjian, the brand’s perfumer and artistic director.

While Kurkdjian has long offered pricier bespoke fragrances for VIP clients, the launch is the label’s first “exceptional piece” to be unveiled by the maison.

Owners will have access to what CEO Marc Chaya describes as “the ultimate customer journey,” an exclusive members club called Les amis du Rouge, inclusive of up to five refill purchases a year. Club membership will also include curated brand experiences such as dinners, masterclasses with Kurkdjian, shows at the brand-partnered Vienna State Opera and a visit to the perfumer’s upcoming Palais de Tokyo solo exhibition.

Ultra-high-end collectible fragrance launches, long a practice of fellow LVMH-owned perfumier Guerlain, have become more frequent at the luxury house as avid collectors have helped drive a high-end fragrance boom. Some of the most expensive perfumes have been Bulgari’s Opera Prima launched for $235,000 in 2014 and Dior’s J’adore L’or Prestige Edition for $75,000 in 2016.

Learn more:

The Fragrance Market’s Squeezed Middle

Fragrance may be booming, but the premium category has cratered compared to high-end niche perfumes and affordable body and hair mists that have become an expansion focus for brands.

Disclosure: LVMH is part of a group of investors who, together, hold a minority interest in The Business of Fashion. All investors have signed shareholders’ documentation guaranteeing BoF’s complete editorial independence.

According to close friends, Prince Harry wants to keep coming back to meet family and wants to bring his wife, Meghan Markle and children along, The Times report said.

In May, Prince Harry openly expressed his intention to reconcile with his royal family. In an emotional interview with the BBC, he said he was “devastated” at losing a legal challenge over his security in the UK.

“I would love reconciliation with my family. There’s no point continuing to fight any more, life is precious,” said Prince Harry, who said the dispute over his security had “always been the sticking point,” he said at the time.

Another friend of Prince Harry told The Times that he made it “absolutely clear” that he wants to rebuild ties with the royal family. “It’s on them now,” he said.

However, those in royal circles see it differently. His unwise choice of words about Charles’s health and repeated suggestion that the King should have intervened in his security battle — something the King would never consider, given his constitutional role may have only compunded the situation.

Prince Harry’s first visit to the UK in months

This week marks Harry’s first extended visit to the UK in months. He arrived in London ahead of the WellChild Awards on Monday, the third anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s death.

On Tuesday, he travelled to Nottingham for an event focused on supporting young people affected by violence. The rest of the week will be spent in private meetings and receptions with several of his patronages, including the Invictus Foundation, Scotty’s Little Soldiers, and The Diana Award.

His itinerary has been described as “jam-packed with hardly any downtime,” but amid reconciliatory efforts, there is one question left– Will Prince Harry meet with his father, King Charles III?

The two have not seen each other since February 2024, when Harry made a brief visit following the King’s cancer diagnosis. While both sides are said to miss each other, no meeting is currently scheduled.

In a recent BBC interview, Harry acknowledged the deep fractures within the family, especially with his father. “I don’t know how much longer my father has,” he said. “He won’t speak to me because of this security stuff. Of course, some members of my family will never forgive me for writing a book. But I would love a reconciliation.”

If that happens, it would be the first time the two have met in more than 18 months. Royal biographer Tom Bower called it “a meeting full of peril.”

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University presents Homage: Queer lineages on video, an exhibition of eight time-based works by contemporary artists who use single- and multi-channel video installations to pay tribute to formative figures and overlooked histories. Curated by Rattanamol Singh Johal, the exhibition upends conventional modes of commemorative image making, such as portraiture, documentary, and monuments, by foregrounding performative interventions, selective appropriation, and imaginative staging.

In their video works, Dineo Seshee Bopape, Tony Cokes, Carolyn Lazard, Kang Seung Lee, P. Staff, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul preference desiring, melancholic and reflexive forms of relationality across generations through works that posit queer forms of kinship. In a challenge to the preoccupation with visibility and publicness across the politics of identity and representation, these works demonstrate the potential of anachronistic gestures, formal affinities, and archival adjacencies in reframing relationships between artists and their chosen ancestors. The resulting constellation reveals modes of memorialization–of paying homage–that disturb canonicity and heroization through constant creative reinterpretation. 

Some of the artists engage with formal structures and characteristics of experimental film and early video. Disparate legacies of these avant-garde forms of the 1960s and 1970s are made manifest in their contemporary works, which surface issues of landscape and ecology (Weerasethakul), disability and perception (Lazard), and representation and narcissism (Bopape). Deploying sound, slowness, flash, and flicker, these artists attempt a queer reorientation of spectatorial sensibilities, directing them towards questions of place, identity, and access while retaining visual tropes of experimental moving-image practices.

Queer subjects and their ongoing investments in nurturing resistance, artistic expression, and joy are mobilized in installations by Lee, Cokes, Staff, and Tiravanija. As diverse artists across generations address the ongoing impact of HIV/AIDS on culture and lived experience, significant actors and histories from different contexts are brought into affective dialogue. The body is addressed and implicated across all these works, which consider the legacies and lived experiences of illness that have catalyzed communities of care and networks of solidarity among the living and the long departed.

The exhibition is accompanied by a 68-page publication with contributions by Rattanamol Singh Johal, Binghao Wong, Piper Marshall, Gaëtan Thomas, and Lynton Talbot. 

Jamea Richmond-Edwards: Another World and Yet the Same
September 13, 2025–June 14, 2026
Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College

The Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College presents Jamea Richmond-Edwards: Another World and Yet the Same, a large-scale survey of work by Detroit-based artist Jamea Richmond-Edwards. Highlighting her interdisciplinary practice, this exhibition features a selection of mixed-media paintings from the past seven years alongside a body of newly created work debuting at the Wellin. For over a decade, Richmond-Edwards has drawn inspiration from the communities and cultural signifiers of her hometown of Detroit, using her art to reflect on personal experiences and broader social and environmental themes. In this exhibition, the artist weaves an epic narrative following a caravan of family and friends on a fictional journey to Antarctica to build a new egalitarian society. This fantastical expedition explores the challenges of creating a utopia on a rapidly shrinking continent and examines the complexities of self-determination.

Richmond-Edwards draws inspiration from diverse sources, including the biblical stories of Exodus, the science fiction mythology of jazz musician Sun Ra, and the exploration of both real and imagined continents. Her work reflects a deep engagement with themes of migration, resilience, and the quest for a more equitable world. The exhibition’s title, borrowed from the seventeenth-century dystopian literary work about a voyage to the oceans south of Africa entitled Mundus alter et idem by Joseph Hall, underscores the artist’s exploration of the potential for societal transformation.

Jamea Richmond-Edwards: Another World and Yet the Same is curated by Alexander Jarman, Assistant Curator of Exhibitions and Academic Outreach, Ruth and Elmer Wellin  of Art at Hamilton College. A fully illustrated exhibition catalogue will be published in 2026, edited by Tracy L. Adler, Johnson-Pote Director of the Wellin Museum of Art, with contributions by Alexander Jarman; Melanee C. Harvey, Associate Professor and Coordinator of Art History at Howard University; and Juana Williams, independent art curator and writer based in Detroit. 

Alongside the solo exhibition, the Wellin Museum presents EXODUS, a group exhibition curated by Richmond-Edwards to honor the mentors and peers who have profoundly shaped her artistic journey. Featuring artists Akili Ron Anderson, Wesley Clark, Larry W. Cook, Shaunté Gates, Hubert Massey, Stan Squirewell, and Felandus Thames, EXODUS highlights the vital role of artistic kinship and collaboration in navigating both personal and structural challenges within the creative field.

Public programs
Friday, September 12 at 1pm (Facebook Live): Virtual artist & curator preview
Saturday, September 13: In-person panel discussion (2:30pm) followed by opening reception (4–6pm)
Monday, October 6 at 4:30pm: Hybrid “artists in conversation” lecture featuring Jamea Richmond-Edwards

About the Wellin Museum of Art
A teaching museum located on the campus of Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, the Wellin Museum invites visitors to discover the arts and form unexpected connections through groundbreaking exhibitions, a globally representative collection, and innovative programming for the campus community and beyond. Artists whose work has been featured in solo exhibitions organized by the Wellin include Jeffrey Gibson, Yun-Fei Ji, Yashua Klos, Sarah Oppenheimer, Michael Rakowitz, Elias Sime, and Renée Stout, among many others. Through its exhibitions, public programs, publications, and educational outreach, the Wellin Museum sparks dialogues across disciplines, inspires experimentation, and fosters creative inquiry. Opened in 2012 under the leadership of Tracy L. Adler, the innovative facility was designed by Machado Silvetti Associates and features a 27-foot-high visible archive, a large exhibition gallery, and other amenities that foster common exchange and learning.

For more information, visit here, subscribe to the museum’s newsletter, and join the conversation on social media.

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Martin Lewis has called for Big Tech companies to be threatened with fines worth “tens of billions of pounds” to end the menace of AI-generated deepfake adverts on social media platforms, stressing the damage to British victims’ mental health as well as their finances.

Speaking at the FT Weekend Festival on Saturday, the consumer champion said it was not unusual for “300 to 400” scams a day featuring his image to appear across different social media platforms, including deepfake videos in which the Money Saving Expert founder appeared to be promoting fraudulent investment schemes.

“There are scam ads of me in computer games that children play, they’re all over the place,” he said. “I have people on my team who can spend half their week dealing with scam ads with me in [and getting them taken down].” He questioned why he had to fund this, and not the online tech groups.

Lewis said he had attended meetings with Big Tech companies who had told him they were investing in better software to spot and remove scam ads, but were resistant to his calls to employ more people to do so.

“Does Big Tech want scams on their platforms? No. I don’t believe they do. But this is a financial decision, not a technological decision,” he said to a round of applause from the audience in the FT Money tent at Kenwood House in north London.

“The reason they don’t crack down on scams is because it would slow down the advertising process and decrease their revenue. When we do put regulations in place . . . we need to be fining them tens of billions of pounds for bastardising our economy and hurting vulnerable people when they allow [scam ads], so much so that it is worthwhile financially for them to change their advertising practices to avoid the fines.”

Lewis waged a successful campaign to have scam ads included in the scope of the UK’s online safety bill in 2023, but a consultation on tackling scam ads will not take place until next year, leading him to fear consumers will not be protected by any additional legislation “until 2027” at the earliest, assuming UK regulators are “brave enough to enforce it”.

He expressed his deep frustration that for now, consumers remain unprotected. “When you’re scammed, especially for older people; you’re in retirement and your money’s gone . . . you hate yourself forever that you fell for it.”

Six years ago, Lewis personally sued Facebook for defamation over the issue of scam adverts fraudulently featuring his image, donating his £3mn out-of-court settlement to Citizens Advice to help victims of fraud. 

Meta, the owner of Facebook, was approached for comment.

Nearly 80 per cent of scams originate online, according to research by banking trade body UK Finance, with social media platforms accounting for around three-quarters of this total.

Advances in generative AI technology have led to a surge of investment scams with deepfake videos featuring the images of celebrities ranging from Elon Musk, Lewis, stars of the British TV series Dragons’ Den and the FT’s senior economics commentator Martin Wolf.

Last week, on ITV’s This Morning programme, Lewis was visibly upset when he met Gill Casey, the widow of 85-year-old Tim Casey who lost £120,000 to a deepfake scam that used his image to promote a fraudulent crypto investment scheme.

On another occasion, he said he had been approached by a member of the public who had fallen victim to a similar deepfake investment scam featuring Lewis’s image, but who refused to believe it was not real. “It took me over 20 minutes to persuade him it was a scam,” he said. “It’s funny, and it’s tragic, and it’s happening everywhere.

“I almost think the word ‘scam’ inures us to it . . . this is sophisticated organised crime. [Big Tech] needs to deny these criminals the oxygen of publicity.”

Bagpuss, the saggy old cloth cat who starred in one of Britain’s best-loved children’s TV shows, is set to appear in a new film that will see him awaken in the present day.

In the 13 original episodes, broadcast in 1974, the pink-and-white toy cat came to life when he woke up in a shop window.

Bagpuss gained more young fans with frequent repeats, and it was voted the nation’s favourite children’s show of all time in a BBC poll in 1999. Nine years later, he topped a poll to find the nation’s favourite children’s TV animal.

The planned film sequel, which is currently in development, will be the first new Bagpuss production since the original series and will feature a mixture of live action and animation, producers said.

Bagpuss and his companions, including a woodpecker called Professor Yaffle and Madeleine the rag doll, will “stir from their slumber to find themselves in contemporary Britain”, the announcement said.

They will embark on a “modern-day quest” with a story and animation techniques that will stay true to the spirit of the classic series, producers promised.

The film is being developed with the estates of Bagpuss’s original creators, Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin.

Firmin’s daughter Emily, who was the girl in the original series, said: “Bagpuss was an integral part of my childhood. To me he wasn’t just a character on the screen, he was a friend who taught me about kindness, care, and imagination.

“To see our most magical cat return now is incredibly moving and I’m thrilled that new fans will have the chance to discover him, and that his magic will live on and be shared with the next generation.”

In the original series, Emily brought lost and discarded property for Bagpuss to identify.

He was described at the beginning of each episode as “the most important, the most beautiful, the most magical saggy old cloth cat in the whole wide world”.

The film will be made by Birmingham-based Threewise Entertainment, co-creators of Nickelodeon’s Rock Island Mysteries, who are aiming for a release date in 2027.

Merlynn Tong’s new play, Congratulations, Get Rich!, bursts onto stage with all the colour and flair you’d expect from a work set in a struggling Singaporean-style karaoke bar.

Currently playing at Brisbane’s La Boite Theatre, the play opens with Mandy (Tong) and her doting boyfriend Xavier (Zac Boulton) caught in a literal and metaphorical storm on the 7th night of Chinese New Year, as the couple fight to save their failing business, Money Money Karaoke.

As tension mounts, two women from Mandy’s past materialise – her long-dead mother (Seong Hui Xuan) and her equally deceased grandmother (Kimie Tsukakoshi). Both women, returned as “hungry” ghosts, clamour for power and attention (and bok choy), as they air their unresolved grievances and reclaim what they have lost.

Unapologetically hectic and at times hilarious, the work is an ambitious blend of spectacle and soul-searching. A collaboration with Sydney Theatre Company and Singapore Repertory Theatre, it is also La Boite’s first international co-production in its 100-year history.

However, buried under sequins and showy songs, this generational ghost story ultimately privileges theatrics over tension and fails to forge an emotional connection.

Glitter, grief and intergenerational trauma

As a supernatural drama, the play grapples with big questions. What do we inherit from our ancestors? Can we escape the grip of the past? Are our lives determined by fate, or the choices we make?

At its heart, this is a story about cultural obligation and family dysfunction. In particular, it explores the inheritance of shame, silence and unresolved grief between mothers and daughters.

But the play feels like it’s trying to say too much, too quickly – as though it’s not sure if it’s a meditation on loss, or a musical comedy about self-reinvention.

The songs that punctuate the action are satirical, in a somewhat forced counterpoint to the dark circumstances of the drama.

The character of Xavier, Mandy’s white husband, provides some sharp commentary on “white saviour” tropes, but ultimately functions more as a dramatic device than a person. His underdevelopment makes it difficult to care about the couple’s relationship or future.

When the emotional climax of the play arrives – “I will make my own tradition” – it feels too neat, too expected.

The lighting is magical. And the movement work is delightfully choreographed, especially in its campy, supernatural moments.

Yet the story itself feels out of reach, as though trapped inside all that theatre.

Suicide and stigma

Cultural myths about trauma and grief can be powerful, but they can also misinform.

In 2020, Everymind, in partnership with the Australian Writers’ Guild and SANE Australia, published evidence-based guidelines for theatre makers whose work includes representations of mental ill-health and suicide.

The guidelines warn that dramatised portrayals of suicide can perpetuate stigma, and discourage individuals from seeking help if the suicide act is romanticised or sensationalised.

Stage productions should avoid glamorising suicide through music, lighting or setting. They should frame suicide as a tragedy, not a solution. And they should show suicide as the result of multiple complex and interacting factors, rather than a single cause.

In Get Rich!, the consecutive suicides of Mandy’s mother and grandmother arguably normalise suicidal ideation as an acceptable, and inevitable, course of action.

The family insists they carry “the suicide gene”. While this is deeply evocative and dramatically inviting, it serves to reinforce a deterministic view of mental health in which families are “doomed” by their biology, leaving little room for agency, hope and the possibility of recovery.

We learn Mandy’s mother takes her life because she struggles to cope with the collapse of her marriage and her resulting financial hardship. Mandy’s grandmother, a member of a gang known as the Red Butterflies, jumps off a bridge to evade police arrest.

The fact that suicide is used not once, but twice, with little exploration of the underlying causes and warning signs, diminishes the profound complexity of familial transmission of suicidal behaviour, and ultimately desensitises the audience to its real-world consequences.

Importantly, the Everymind guidelines also recommend contact details for support services are provided at the end of a piece, or as part of the drama.

At the play’s conclusion, once the hungry ghosts are exorcised, Mandy rapidly releases herself from her cultural baggage and internalised trauma when she realises, in a moment of epiphany, she can forge a new way forward.

Technically slick but emotionally elusive

Tong’s decision to both personalise and fictionalise the trauma sets up an uneasy reception.

She describes the work as a fantastic autobiography in which she “allowed [her] imagination to run wild”.

Tong herself grew up in a karaoke bar. At the age of 14, she lost her mother to suicide after her father passed away from cancer and her mother struggled to keep the family business afloat. In a recent interview, Tong explained that growing up, she “heard rumours that [her] grandmother may have passed the same way”.

However, much of the play’s emotional weight is conveyed through flashbacks, acted out by the performers behind a TV screen at the karaoke bar. While these retrospective moments are theatrically striking, the screen creates another layer of distance between the audience and characters.

We don’t hear Mandy – or Merlynn – give voice to the unspeakable pain of losing two generations of women to suicide.

If the point is that trauma is unspeakable, then the theatrical choices make sense. But the heart of the play remains largely in shadow – its emotional core obscured by glitter and gloss.

Congratulations, Get Rich! is playing at La Boite until September 20, at Singapore Repertory Theatre from October 29, and at Sydney Theatre Company from November 21.

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Sphere Entertainment spent an estimated $2.3B on a huge, state-of-the-art venue in Las Vegas, 366 feet tall and 516 feet wide, and launched it in 2023 with a U2 performance.

(more…)

Billy Porter is “recovering from a serious case of sepsis”, forcing the early closure of Broadway’s revival of Cabaret in which he played a leading role.

The show’s producers announced on Sunday that Porter “is recovering from a serious case of sepsis” that will prevent him from returning to the stage.

“His doctors are confident that he will make a full recovery,” they added, “but have advised him to maintain a restful schedule these next couple of weeks”.

Porter has yet to issue a statement on his health.

The 55-year-old actor had been playing the role of Emcee since July, when he and Marisha Wallace took over from Orville Peck and Eva Noblezada as Emcee and Sally Bowles respectively. The same production of Cabaret is still being staged in London, where it swept the 2022 Olivier awards with Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley in the leading roles. Porter and Wallace also appeared in the West End production.

Despite acclaim, ticket sales for the Broadway production have declined recently, with the New York Times reporting that the show’s weekly grosses peaked at $2m in May 2024, but dropped to $505,142 by the end of August 2025. The show will now close at a loss on 21 September, rather than 19 October.

Producer Adam Speers said it was a “painful decision” to end the show’s Broadway run.

“Billy was an extraordinary Emcee, bringing his signature passion and remarkable talent. We wish Billy a speedy recovery and I look forward to working with him again in the very near future,” he said.

The Broadway production’s two alternates for Emcee, Marty Lauter and David Merino, will share the role for the final performances.