Tuesday 3rd June 2025

Culture

Common threads: Historical fashion and its lessons for our time

When we think of historical fashion, images of towering wigs, tight-laced corsets, heavy brocades and voluminous skirts often spring to mind – ornate, impractical, and rooted firmly in the unenlightened...

Food, fashion, and escapism in a cost of living crisis

Food costs have been front and centre in newsreels as of recent months, whether...

Oxford Fashion Gala’s ‘Metamorphosis’ reflects the beauty of change

The Oxford Fashion Gala was back and bigger than ever, with a larger venue,...

Tailoring expectations: Couture culture shocks

Academia has a historic relationship with fashion, both officially and unofficially. The former manifests...

NT Live’s Twelfth Night: Review

The French philosopher and moralist Jean de la Bruyère once remarked “life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those...

Hidden in plain sight: Public art in Oxford

Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it.

Friday Favourite: The Neapolitan Quartet

In a rare interview with LA Times in 2018, Elena Ferrante, universally-celebrated, elusive (the name is a pseudonym) author of the Neapolitan novels, was...

The Court Painter: The Exclusivity of the ‘Popular’ Artist

For the casual modern art admirer, it might initially be difficult to comprehend the business of art in the 17th-century; a time in which...

A City Without Music?

Mila Ottevanger explores Oxford's place in music history...

Study music: ambience over annoyance

Jazz, techno, or lo-fi hip-hop beats, Emmaleigh Eaves asks what music best gets you into a productive zone and why...

Mad Dogs and Englishmen: 50 years on

In the spring of 1970, 50 years ago, a collection of musicians underwent the Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, which came to be immortalised in a...

A Taste of Honey Today

A Taste of Honey, a play by the Salford-born writer Shelagh Delaney, debuted in 1958 and is widely considered to be a landmark work...

Accessorizing, not so accessory

With the rippling brims of Givenchy’s millinery and Moschino’s pearl charms, accessories took the spotlight of Fashion week 2020. Beyond their obvious practical function, belts,...

The era of digital drama

When you imagine ‘going to the theatre’, an image of you in your dressing gown, sitting on the sofa and eating popcorn probably doesn’t come to mind....

The Art of the Runway

The art of the fashion show For a long time, fashion shows were exclusive, closed-off events, yet things are changing. As shows are increasingly...

For whom the Tik Toks speak

TikTok is a language entirely based on embracing ridicule

Uniquely comforting consolation: a look at Netflix’s Tiger King

A show perfectly designed to offer release has to do that without troubling itself with the burdens of social responsibility

Genetically Modified Foods: Friend or Foe?

The EU has not approved any genetically modified (GM) fruit or vegetables as safe for human consumption and in the UK they are mainly used to...

Titian behind closed doors: the ethics of an erotic gaze.

“Anybody who loves painting loves Titian.” With these bold words and the familiar, if rather flat, echo of Einaudi’s piano, the BBC streamed, digital...

Fashion in an age of aesthetics: artwork’s place within commercial culture

The intrinsic connection between art and fashion has been so perfectly expressed by none other than the illustrious Giorgio Armani who selects his garments “as if...

Richard II, coronavirus and creativity – in conversation with Dorothy McDowell

It seems like there’s enough drama happening in the real world to justify dark theatres and empty stages. The Edinburgh Fringe has been cancelled,...

Can museums be decolonised? The restitution question

The first step of reckoning with our colonial past is recognising its remaining presence. Every aspect of modern life is informed by the spoils...

A bygone age: restaurant reviews

I revel in the hyperbolic criticisms of journalists whose only job is to become eloquently irate about slightly sub-par food.

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