Category: 5. Entertainment

Virgin Music Group has appointed industry executive Cindy Gu as general manager of Southeast Asia. 

In her new role, Gu will oversee Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam for Virgin Music Group. Gu will be based in Virgin Music Group’s Singapore offices.

“Cindy has a long track record of building successful businesses throughout Asia,” said JT Myers, co-CEO of Virgin Music Group. “An entrepreneur herself, she knows first-hand what it takes to build successful independent music businesses and will be a valuable partner to entrepreneurs in one of the world’s most important high growth regions.”

“Virgin Music Group is an incredible global brand and a powerful partner to independent labels and artists,” said Cindy Gu. “I am excited to work with Nat, JT, Michael Roe and the rest of the Virgin leadership team to further establish the company’s influence and success throughout the Southeast Asia region.”

Gu has joined Virgin after serving as managing director of Fabled Records, a joint venture between Live Nation and UMG’s Astralwerks Records. At Fabled, Gu led artist signings, strategic growth initiatives and overall operations.

“With over a decade in electronic music across both major labels and independent ventures, Gu has been a driving force behind some of Asia’s most globally successful releases, championing regional talent with world-class resources,” said a statement.

Her portfolio includes Indonesia’s breakout hit Lathi by Weird Genius (500 million streams); the Indo-Thai crossover Future Ghost by Weird Genius & Violette Wautier (50 million streams); Singapore producer Myrne’s collaboration with US artist Shallou, Falling Back; and the K-pop dance crossover Way Back Home by Sam Feldt, Shaun and Conor Maynard, which has surpassed two billion streams worldwide. 

She signed and developed these projects while holding senior leadership roles across Asia at Fabled, Astralwerks and WMG’s Spinnin’ Records.

Gu has joined Liza Fuady, regional director at Virgin Music Group SEA, who has spearheaded the region’s commercial strategy and business growth in the past 15 months. Fuady will continue to be based in Jakarta and report to Gu. 

 

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The Clickbait Clinic with Stacey Dooley (w/t), a new six-part documentary series for BBC One and iPlayer, will uncover the truth behind some of the wildest health trends taking over our social media feeds. From award-winning production company Nutopia, the series will reveal how online trends are shaping our health choices.

Stacey Dooley says: “Social feeds are full of health and wellness tips, but it’s impossible to know which ones to believe. I can’t wait to find out what the experts think and to meet the people behind the biggest online health trends.”

1 in 3 Brits now turn to social media for health advice, but how can we sort the miracle cures from the snake oil? Stacey will work with leading doctors and scientists to learn about the internet’s most hyped medical claims: from fitness boosters to pain beaters, youth elixirs to fat busters, the team will trace the digital breadcrumbs to figure out how a trend went viral, meet the key influencers driving the buzz, and put the science to the test. With NHS waiting lists growing, and with social media playing an increasing role in all of our lives, The Clickbait Clinic’s final verdict could be life changing… or lifesaving.

Jack Bootle, Head of Commissioning, Specialist Factual, says: “As social media force-feeds us an endless diet of health misinformation, there’s never been a greater need for a BBC series designed to sort the fact from the fiction – and tell us where some of the world’s weirdest health trends originated in the first place. Led by the amazing Stacey Dooley, this series will show us which health hack to believe and which to unfollow – and it could make a genuine difference to viewers’ wellbeing.”

Arif Nurmohamed, Executive Producer says: “This new format dives into the wild world of online health — sorting the hype from the hope. And with Stacey at the helm, we’ve got the perfect mix of heart and curiosity.”

The Clickbait Clinic with Stacey Dooley (w/t) is a 6×30 series commissioned by Jack Bootle, Head of Commissioning, Specialist Factual. It is being made by Nutopia, where Arif Nurmohamed, Tom Williams, Jane Root and Simon Willgoss serve as Executive Producers, with Caroline McCool as Executive in charge of Production. The series was developed by Nicola Moody and Samantha Fernandes, Tom Coveney is the BBC Commissioning Editor and Joe Myerscough serves as Series Director.

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This article contains spoilers for the Season 2 finale of “Wednesday.”

In a world where teenagers grapple with accusations of withering attention spans and a lack of motivation, Wednesday Addams managed to rouse from a coma and made the back-to-school scaries feel even more like a mind trip by … summoning Lady Gaga?

“Wednesday” returned for the second half of its sophomore season on Netflix this week, picking up right after Part 1’s ominous cliffhanger to reveal its moody teenage protagonist evaded potential death and that she was ready to dive back into the twisty world of deadly family secrets, monsterly situationships and friendship woes.

In the middle of the new threats and old mysteries are the show-stopping contributions from the pop superstar (and honorary mother to all outcasts, including her legion of Little Monsters, as her fanbase is called). Lady Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, made a roughly two-minute appearance as Rosaline Rotwood, a deceased professor at Nevermore, the school for outcasts that Wednesday (Jenna Ortega) attends, with second sight capabilities that trigger a Freaky Friday/body-swap interlude between Wednesday and her estranged friend Enid (Emma Myers). The multi-hyphenate artist also provides the song “The Dead Dance” to score what’s poised to be another social media dance trend akin to Ortega’s viral Season 1 moves to the Cramps’ “Goo Goo Muck.”

The Times spoke with creators and showrunners Al Gough and Miles Millar to break down the season. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

You know where we have to start: Lady Gaga. Tell me the origin story of this casting.

Gough: It all grew out of the viral dance from the first season. Some fan, who should collect a lot of money, put Lady Gaga’s “Bloody Mary” [over the dance] — because it was “Goo Goo Muck”— and suddenly the dance became its own, whole new thing. We’ve always been huge Lady Gaga fans. And if there was anybody who was the ultimate outcast, it would be her. We just started a conversation with her and her team … is there a way for her to be involved in Season 2? We found this character — because obviously, she’s very busy and touring — that could be a small role, but it’s an impactful one. Out of that grew “The Dead Dance,” a song that she had which we heard a year ago and loved it. They’re like, “She’ll hold it for the show.” And we were like, “Oh my God.”

Millar: When we heard the lyrics, it was almost like she had written the song for the show. And we had this moment in Episode 7, which we’d always planned — we never wanted to repeat ourselves with Jenna doing a dance — but it feels like music and the show and dancing are integral now. To not scratch that itch creatively in Season 2, I think the audience would have been so disappointed. So it felt like, how do we honor the incredible Rave’N dance in Season 1, which became such an iconic moment, but do it in a way that’s different and celebrate new characters? That’s why we came up with the idea of the gala and seeing Agnes [Evie Templeton] and Enid come together. They’ve been antagonistic, and it felt like a beautiful moment of female friendship and blossoming and this incredible Gaga song was just like the icing on the cake.

I was expecting a long courting process when you’re trying to get Lady Gaga — like, writing letters.

Gough: The process wasn’t fast, but it was always very pleasant and complimentary. Everybody wanted it to work. I think that’s where we were starting from, is everybody wanted it to work.

There’s a lot of discussion right now about gaps between seasons, and obviously there were some factors that caused the gap here — namely the strikes, but also other projects. How do you feel about that, especially knowing the fan base skews younger? Is it harmful to maintaining that relationship with the material?

Millar: We certainly never wanted a three-year gap. I think the show feels like an event movie, in a weird way, so I think people are prepared to wait, but it’s not ideal. It’s something that we would never want ourselves, as viewers. It’s been gratifying that people have come back in the way they have, and we definitely feel their love for the show, but we had obstacles in terms of getting to that place, coming back. No one’s to blame. It’s just the reality of the strike and everything else. Now the focus is coming back quicker. We rolled right from production into the writers’ room; now we’re rolling right into production [on Season 3 in October]. We’re definitely on a faster cadence, and that’s certainly the plan moving forward.

That said, as hopefully you see on screen, it is a huge show. We have over 3,500 visual effects shots. We’re still finishing [the finale] this week. There are still shots that are going to be dropped in that monster fight on the roof, the fight in the clock tower. The most complex visual effects in the show actually is Professor Olaf, which is the Christopher Lloyd character. But that takes a lot of time and trial and error to get to the point where I think the show looks as good as it does. Certainly our imperative is to get the show back faster; I know Netflix has that goal and wish as well.

Gough: Our goal is we’ve got to create the best show we can create. As Miles said, it takes us a certain amount of time. When you get in your head like that, you can’t actually do your best work. I can guarantee you that’s something that the Netflix marketing department thinks about a lot. They certainly try to keep fans engaged online and through other ways. And the Netflix Houses now that have those [fan] experiences. Can you translate that and keep engagement? You’re right, there’s a lot of shows and movies out there and you want to be able to stay in the zeitgeist in that time when you’re not in the zeitgeist. But for us, at a certain point, we just got to create the show, try to keep all the noise outside.

In the space between Season 1 and 2, Jenna was pretty vocal about not connecting with the character choices from the first season. I’m curious how you felt as it happened? And what has “Wednesday” taught you about how to work with actors and how to consider their opinions or perspective about the material?

Gough: We’re not going to speak to some of that because we’ve spoken to it in previous interviews, but I think our philosophy has always been — from “Smallville” on down “Into the Badlands” — it is a collaboration and a conversation with the actors. We always say movies is a party, but a television show is like a family. They have to feel ownership. We had that with Jenna in Season 1 — she read all the scripts, she gave notes. She’s continued to do that in Season 2. She’s taken a more active role in terms of being in production meetings and understanding the marketing perspective and just having all of that. She’s a generational talent and she’s going to have a very long career, and the career will be more than just acting. Actors are the keeper of the world and they have to be able to [understand] their characters. We’ll take a good idea from anybody. You just want them to be engaged and to have good ideas and be thinking about their characters. It’s something we learned from John Wells, who we met with very early on, before we started running “Smallville,” to get his advice. That’s what he told us. As a creator, you have to have the vision for the show, but you have to be open to these ideas and funnel them through.

Is it fair to say you took some of it into consideration because there was less of an emphasis on a love triangle, at least with Wednesday? We really see things build in the friendship between Enid and Wednesday.

Gough: The thing is, if your first boyfriend turns out to be a monster, there was never going to be like, “Oh, I can’t wait to dive back into a romance” idea. The show’s been in our head for six years; it was always like, Season 2 was once bitten, twice shy, especially if you’re Wednesday Addams — or once bitten, twice stabbed. That felt like the natural evolution. Again, she’s not a character who was, even Season 1 [boy crazy] and it worked great. People were invested and intrigued and wanted to know. I can tell you from having daughters — because most times it’s portrayed as the girls are loving for the boys. That’s not true in every situation. With my two daughters, it’s the boys who’ve been way more interested in the girls, and then they eventually come around or think, maybe I’ll do it. If you look at Season 1, Xavier and Tyler were way more interested in Wednesday. Wednesday had no interest and any time she even delved into what you would see as romance — she went to the dance because she thought he was a suspect. Wednesday never does anything because she goes with the flow. She’s either backed into a corner or it’s going to help her in her larger case. Even in that love triangle, we never betrayed Wednesday. She was never starry-eyed for either boy.

Millar: That love triangle worked, actually, very well. It’s the dramatic backbone of the season and leads Wednesday — because I think Wednesday, as we like to say, is often wrong; she is someone who just is very headstrong, and I think that’s what makes her so intriguing, that she’s complex and flawed. That’s an interesting thing for teenage female protagonist, who often aren’t that. It’s the journey of a teen; with Season 2, we can change it, and Jenna was in an agreement with that. It’s been a very successful partnership in terms of the steering the course of the character, and where she goes and how she behaves and what she says.

What were you interested in exploring between the Enid-Wednesday dynamic in Season 2? And how did you arrive at the body-swapping idea?

Gough: The end of Season 1, Wednesday made a friend, but then it’s like, OK, how do you be a friend? That’s something that she is still very Wednesday [about] and she still has her preconceived notions of Enid, which is, “I can’t tell her the secret, I have to save her. I can’t include her — she’s weak, she’ll lose her mind.” She doesn’t think that Enid can handle it, so she doesn’t really see her friend. With Enid, it’s even the case with Ajax, and moving on to Bruno, which is Ajax saw her one way, and she’s not that girl anymore.

The body-swap episode was a way to explore that so that they could see [what it’s like] literally walking a mile in somebody else’s shoes — in this case, their bodies — and seeing what it is that they appreciate about each other. It’s an idea that’s sitting there — they’re so polar opposites and they’re both such good actors that they’ve created characters with such specific quirks and body movement and cadences and things like that. To then put the one in the other, it just felt like, why wouldn’t we do that?

Millar: We’ve had moments of real darkness this season; we just need to have an episode where the audience is going to have the best time and it be a great ride. I remember we were on set and it was the moment where Enid wakes up in [Wednesday’s] body and starts screaming. Jenna can scream nonstop. She was screaming all day, but it was so incredible to hear. You didn’t know who it was really. It was complete transformation. It was definitely a challenge. It was more than halfway through the season, they were tired and it was a real testament to their resilience and professionalism that they really just went for it.

Gough: They would record each other doing the line so that they could hear. They studied like two A students. They really put everything into it.

You brought the Addams family further into the fold this season, particularly giving attention the mother-daughter dynamic between Morticia and Wednesday — their parallels, their tension.

Gough: The show‘s a comedy, it’s a satire, but it always comes down to [being] a family drama. Season 1 even went back Wednesday’s ancestor, Goody vs. Crackstone; then it was Gomez and Morticia vs. the Gates family. It all comes down to family secrets in this show. We wanted to expand that. The feedback we also got was people love the Addams Family and they’re intrigued by them because there’s no real mythology for the Addams Family. They didn’t have names until the TV show in the ’60s. Then you got a couple movies in the ’90s. People love them, but you don’t know much about them. For us, it’s great because it’s the opposite of “Smallville.” It is a clean slate where you can build the family tree. And we do it with the blessing of Kevin Miserocchi, who runs the Addams Foundation.

You got a taste of it in Season 1, with Morticia and Wednesday, and then you saw it in the Parents’ Weekend episode. But then the idea of Morticia is here, and what does that do? And the idea of this mother-daughter relationship, which especially in the teenage years, can be very fraught. They’re a lot more alike than they want to admit, on both ends. To take that very universal idea and relationship that a lot of people have experienced, but put it through the prism of the Addams Family with Morticia and Wednesday, and they solve their fights with swords and there’s more life-and-death sort of circumstances — that felt like a fun way to do it and a way to open up the show.

Millar: We really wanted to give Jenna some relief as well; she was in every scene of Season 1. It was a creative opportunity for us to explore different characters and to really expand the world of the show.

I loved getting an origin story for Thing.

Millar: The first thing you see of Slurp is this gloved hand coming out of the ground. We thought, “Oh, everyone’s going to know immediately; it’ll be the worst kept secret in Hollywood.” It’s been really gratifying because that’s such a great twist, if we could pull it off — it’s right in front of your face the whole time.

We talked about [whether Thing] should be attached to someone who is so evil. Obviously, he’s flawed. He’s often doing things for the right reasons; they’re sort of deranged reasons. But Isaac Night [Owen Painter] is a flawed character, but he’s also the noble genius as well. That was a debate. We had some other options we explored and went down the road with, but ultimately we thought it was this idea of transformation of seeing a zombie who then becomes human and the comic foil of Pugsley [Isaac Ordonez] choosing him like a pet dog, and then he starts eating brains — it just sounds so insane, but actually it make sense in the show.

Now I want to know the path you didn’t take with him.

Millar: We had a whole backstory for him, which is he was in a circus and he fell in love with a circus performer. It was a very much more sweet story, rather than this one, which is much more macabre, sort of inspired by Frankenstein, zombie movies.

What can you tease about Season 3? Will there be more Lady Gaga? Things ends with Enid being seemingly trapped in wolf mode and there’s Wednesday’s psychic vision of Ophelia, Morticia’s sister.

Millar: We’re in the middle of [writing] Season 3 now. Our lips are sealed. We can’t say anything, but obviously the end of Season 2 does set up that Ophelia will be coming to feature in Season 3. We’ll say that much.

By this time next year, will we have a Season 3?

Gough: I can’t say anything to that.

The chief executive of the UK’s leading artificial intelligence institute is stepping down in the wake of a staff revolt and government calls for a strategic overhaul.

Jean Innes has led the Alan Turing Institute since 2023, but her position has come under pressure amid widespread discontent within the organisation and a demand from the institute’s biggest funder – the UK government – for a change in direction.

ATI said the search was already under way for a replacement for Innes, who held senior roles in the civil service and technology industry before her appointment.

Innes said on Thursday: “It has been a great honour to lead the UK’s national institute for data science and artificial intelligence, implementing a new strategy and overseeing significant organisational transformation. With that work concluding, and a new chapter starting for the Institute, now is the right time for new leadership and I am excited about what it will achieve.”

ATI has been beset by internal strife since last year as staff protested against internal changes, culminating in a group of employees filing a whistleblower complaint to the Charity Commission last month.

The discovery of a previously unknown portrait miniature by one of Elizabethan England’s greatest artists would be significant enough. But a new work by Nicholas Hilliard that has come to light is all the more exciting because it has a possible link to William Shakespeare and a 400-year-old enigma of a defaced red heart on its reverse, suggesting a love scorned.

Hilliard was Queen Elizabeth I’s official limner, or miniature painter. His exquisite portraits, small enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand, are among the most revered masterpieces of 16th-century British and European art.

This example depicts an androgynous, bejewelled young sitter with long ringlets, thought to be the earliest known likeness of Henry Wriothesley, 3rd earl of Southampton, Shakespeare’s friend and patron – and possibly the “fair youth” of the sonnets, as some have speculated.

Shakespeare dedicated his two erotic poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, to Southampton, declaring: “The love I dedicate to your lordship is without end.”

Such miniatures were painted on onion skin-thin vellum that were pasted on to playing cards, as a stiff support. This portrait’s reverse reveals a card whose red heart had been painted over with a black spear or spade, seemingly indicating a broken heart.

The portrait has been identified by leading art historians Dr Elizabeth Goldring and Emma Rutherford, who were taken aback by the defacement.

Goldring, honorary reader at the University of Warwick and author of an award-winning Hilliard biography, told the Guardian: “You always know that there’s a chance that there could be a clue on the back or tucked inside the frame, but there almost never is. On this occasion, there was – and it was absolutely thrilling. Shivers down the spine. Someone had gone to great effort to spoil the back of this work.”

Rutherford, the founder of consultancy and dealership the Limner Company in London, said: “I can’t find any other evidence of this sort of vandalism. Everybody would have known that a miniature would be backed by a playing card, but the playing card back was never visible. Originally, this would have been encased in a very expensive, possibly jewelled locket. You’d have to get the miniature out of the locket in order to vandalise the back like this. So it is an extraordinary discovery, a 400-year-old mystery.”

Their research, jointly written with Prof Sir Jonathan Bate, a leading Shakespeare scholar, is published in the Times Literary Supplement on 5 September.

They write: “The fact that the heart has been painted over with a spade, or spear, inevitably calls to … mind thoughts of Shakespeare, whose coat of arms, drawn up c 1602, incorporated a spear as a pun on his surname – though virtually nothing is known, with certainty, of Shakespeare’s interactions with Southampton.”

Goldring said: “The discovery of this miniature will, I suspect, reignite debate about the nature of the relationship between Shakespeare and his patron Southampton, including the possibility that Southampton may have been an inspiration for some of the sonnets.”

There is, the historians suggest, the possibility that this portrait was a gift from Southampton to Shakespeare, who returned it, perhaps in 1598, the year that he married.

Within the late Elizabethan court, Southampton was known for his androgynous beauty, his vanity and his love of poetry.

In the 1590s, John Clapham’s Narcissus – a retelling of the Ovidian tale of a beautiful youth who falls in love with his own image – was dedicated to him, and in the dedication to The Unfortunate Traveller, Thomas Nashe praised Southampton: “A dere lover and cherisher you are, as well of the lovers of Poets, as of Poets themselves.”

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The portrait’s owners have a family connection to Southampton, but they were unaware of Hilliard’s hand or its significance, having long kept it in a box. They contacted Goldring and Rutherford after reading of their discovery of another Hilliard miniature.

Rutherford said: “This has never been published. It’s never been seen in public.”

They believe that it depicts Southampton in the early 1590s, when he was in his late teens, shortly before he attracted the patronage of Shakespeare.

Addressing the “endlessly debated” identity of the addressee of Shakespeare’s sonnets, they write: “Again and again, the sonnets return to the fair youth’s androgynous beauty. So, for example, in sonnet 99 his hair is compared to ‘marjoram’, the tendrils of which are long and curly: could this be an allusion to Southampton’s distinctive long ringlets?”

They argue that everything about this miniature – including the sitter’s gesture of clasping his cascading ringlets of auburn hair to his heart – suggests an intimate image.

Long hair was unusual at the late Elizabethan court, Rutherford said: “We know there was some criticism of how long hair made men ‘womanish’.”

Two pearl bracelets adorn the sitter’s wrist. Rutherford said that bracelets, though frequently encountered in portraits of women in this period, are rarely seen in portraits of men.

She added that, when someone first looks at the portrait, they struggle initially to determine whether it represents a man or a woman: “It’s just extraordinary. It has to be one of the earliest English homoerotic images.”

With Man’s Best Friend out, Sabrina Carpenter’s singles surge on U.K. charts — “Manchild” enters the top three while “Espresso” and “Please Please Please” reappear. NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MAY 05: Sabrina Carpenter attends the 2025 Met Gala Celebrating “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” at Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 05, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue)

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Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend arrived in the final days of August, and as attention turns to one of the year’s most anticipated pop projects, several of the superstar’s career-making singles are bouncing back onto the charts in the United Kingdom, where the singer may score a new No. 1 full-length in just a few days.

“Please Please Please” Reenters the Top 10

“Please Please Please” mounts a strong comeback this frame. The track reenters the Official Vinyl Singles chart at No. 9 and nearly cracks the top 10 on another list as well, vaulting from No. 62 to No. 12 on the Official Physical Singles tally. The slowed-down pop tune has crowned both rankings before.

“Espresso” Returns to the Sales Lists

“Espresso,” the smash that turned Carpenter into a global star in 2024, reappears on the Official Singles Sales chart at No. 54. It also rises from No. 34 to No. 7 on the Official Physical Singles list, scoring a top 10 spot on a tally where it has previously peaked at No. 2.

Beyond sales and physical formats, the cut remains present on several tallies, though it dips slightly. “Espresso” falls to No. 70 on the Official Singles chart – the all-consumption roster of the biggest tracks in the U.K. – and to No. 55 on the Official Streaming ranking.

“Manchild” Lifts Ahead of Man’s Best Friend

Lead single “Manchild” continues to power Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend era, largely on sales rosters. The song climbs from No. 13 to No. 3 on the Official Physical Singles chart and from No. 9 to No. 3 on the Official Vinyl Singles ranking. “Manchild” also improves on the Official Singles Sales chart, moving from No. 45 to No. 17, leaping more than 20 spaces at once.

On the consumption-based tally, it slips slightly, as “Manchild” is down one space to No. 26 on the Official Singles chart, off by one spot to No. 15 on the Official Streaming roster, and the cut slides to No. 62 on the Official Singles Downloads chart.

“Taste” and “Nonsense” Also Live On

“Taste” continues its long chart life, though it falls slightly this frame in the U.K. The cut drops to No. 82 on the Official Singles chart and to No. 69 on the streaming-only list. The Short n’ Sweet single previously ruled both of them.

“Nonsense” moves in the opposite direction, as it rises to No. 15 on the Official Physical Singles chart and to No. 11 on the Official Vinyl Singles list. The song – taken from an earlier album – has peaked as high as No. 3 and No. 1 on those two tallies, respectively.

The simple Victorian prints that Laura Ashley had seen in the V&A worked brilliantly in monochrome, which, coupled with imported cotton, kept costs low, enabling customers to style themselves and their homes on a budget. “They somehow clocked the aspirational desires of a whole generation,” says Sebba. “And by producing these clothes that seemed to come from the countryside and were very cheap, and the household fabrics to go with it, they enabled a whole generation to ignore social class, and that was powerful.”

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That their fabrics should be described as “an image of Englishness”, however, overlooks the company’s connection with Wales, where Laura was born. In 1960, now parents of three − and later, four − children, the couple relocated to a 500-acre farm in the Welsh Valleys, bringing the company with them, and providing welcome employment. A champion sheep shearer became their master garment cutter, and even when their products were stocked by Harrods and Liberty’s, “made in Wales” was printed on the labels, and the fabric dyed in the earthy browns, greens and grey-blues that recalled the landscape she loved.

This connection with the British countryside was part of the packaging of the look. “It was the first company to offer this whole lifestyle,” explains Sebba. “It wasn’t simply that you were buying a dress or decorating your walls, or making curtains, you were buying into this whole notion that the rural life was preferable to urban life.”

‘A simpler way of life’

Fifty years on, Carrie Bradshaw’s milkmaid look enacts this fantasy of a country life, as well as her desire for domestic stability, described by Laura Ashley as “security at home”, and central, she said, to her clothing’s appeal. “A rose-tinted idea of the past… is especially prevalent in times of systemic upheaval and uncertainty,” Dr Gaby Harris, a sociologist and lecturer in fashion cultures at Manchester Metropolitan University, tells the BBC.

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Courtesy of Café Spice Namaste

8. Best for an adventure: Café Spice Namaste, Docklands

Located in East London’s Royal Albert Wharf, Café Spice Namaste is a little off the beaten track. “Getting there is quite exciting – there’s a cable car from Customs House,” says Khan, noting that it’s well worth the trip for “the unusual Parsi cuisine”.

The restaurant is run by Parsi couple Cyrus and Pervin Todiwalla. “They have the usual samosas and kebabs and all that,” says Khan. “But what is most exciting are the Parsi dishes. They have the dhansak (meat and lentils cooked with spices), Parsi prawn curry with red rice and the original vindaloo – not like what is commonly available here.”

“It’s a part of London that most tourists don’t see,” she adds. “It’s quite a beautiful visual journey.”  

Website: cafespice.co.uk

Address:  1-2 Lower Dock Walk, London E16 2GT, United Kingdom

Phone: (0) 20 7488 9242

Instagram: @cafespicenamasteldn

 

BBC Travel‘s The SpeciaList is a series of guides to popular and emerging destinations around the world, as seen through the eyes of local experts and tastemakers.

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