Sunday 5th October 2025
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Dispatches: ‘Marooned between past and present, not here’

Izzy Smith
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Dispatches: ‘Marooned between past and present, not here’

She knocked a mug onto the floor and her mother shouted, but that was okay because she was a pirate and pirates aren’t scared of anything and she drew herself with a bright red parrot on her shoulder under a sky of swirly blue clouds and the next day the climbing frame at school was a pirate ship and she was the captain even though Hannah wanted to be it. She was a better pirate than Hannah, anyway. She drew back into herself, pulling the cuff s of her blazer over her hands, as the group of boys who had yelled at her earlier piled onto the bus, as they spotted her and scuffled over, laughing and commenting and staring all the way. But that was okay, it was okay they told her, they were just having a laugh, and she rammed her headphones into her ears and turned up her music, her shaking thumb jamming on the volume button long after it had reached max. She could feel eyes on the back of her neck, her muttered name and other, worse words rasping over her skin, and wished that she had worn a longer dress. He had told them all, then. She should have known he would, it would only enhance his reputation.

But it was okay with half bottle of vodka inside her, everything was warmblurryfine, everything was fine, although too bright, but fine, everything was sad, how could he do that, she was numbed, but she was angry, couldn’t control the words as they came out, and they were laughing, god they were awful, god her head. She didn’t want to, but it happened anyway, just as it had happened with so many of her friends. She had just wanted to go home, but he’d stopped his car and wouldn’t start it, she begged him to, but ‘Not until…’ but ‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ but ‘Don’t you love me?’ Yes, but—but she lay back, eyes wide open, and memorised every contour of the inside of his car roof, every crease and snag, the handles above the doors with a small hook attached—for coats, probably. Anything to step outside her body.

She walked home alone at night, but she wasn’t scared, she couldn’t feel a thing, which should be okay, preferable, but was almost more scary. This didn’t seem real, none of this was real, a dark sky, crowding buildings, pavement hard under booted feet. Pulling off a glove and running fingers over a rough brick wall. Muffled, detached, reality slipping away, the present pitching sideways, fluid, rootless. At sea, marooned between present and past, not here, not in this body, not quite a part of the world. She had wanted to escape, but this wasn’t on her terms… Six months into therapy her mother digs out some of her old drawings. She sticks a few up on the wall of her kitchen, smiles sadly and picks up her pencil.

Fresh ideas abound in new Netflix original ‘The OA’

Priya Khaira-Hanks
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Fresh ideas abound in new Netflix original ‘The OA’

I blundered into Netflix original series The OA expecting your standard sci-fi fare: alien abductions, hulking metal space ships, sexualised female leads, maybe some kind of cheap alien language conjured by a sound technician with acting aspirations and a vocoder. I gathered this impression mainly from the title art—two huge, stylized letters against a starry night sky, a female figure made to look vulnerable and small under the arch of the ‘A’—and settled down to enjoy some ten-a-penny aliens, maybe a reliable interstellar landscape or two.

However, the first episode resisted any kind of generic surety and rejected the conventional scene-setting. Instead, with the scope of an epic and the quiet ambiguity of a certain milieu of art house film, we were rocketed through a series of disparate situations. Gritty realism, as a waiflike, seemingly homeless woman attempts suicide, is destabilized by the miraculous: blind when she went missing from her home town seven years ago, she is refound by her parents with her sight restored.

The episode then proceeds to take us from a seedy, teen drama sex scene, to sweeping shots of snowy Moscow, via the small town claustrophobia of suburban Michigan and the somewhat eerie behaviour of the protagonist’s overprotective parents. By the time the title sequence kicks in, we are an hour into the episode and any hope of categorisation is lost: the viewer is forced to surrender to the fact that the show’s creators, Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij, have embarked on one of the most ambitious, risky, and truly original, series of recent years.

In this, it stands out from the two juggernaut new series of 2016, HBO’s Westworld and Netflix’s Stranger Things. Both are defined by paying homage to the past: the former to the 1973 film of the same name, the latter to 1980s science fiction, particularly the work of Steven Spielberg. Both achieve what they set out to do—create easily-consumable, addictive, thrilling entertainment—with style, wit and unquestionable talent.

However, neither could ever be perceived as breaking new ground, airing new ideas, or asking new questions. The OA, however, manages to do all three, whilst simultaneously having a strong, complicated, and compelling female lead.

The new ground in question is that of NDEs (Near Death Experiences). The phenomenon, though it can be the subject of real scientific study, is often hijacked by those with a religious agenda to push, and is most commonly found in popular culture in the pulp fiction of Christian conversion stores. Titles like 90 Minutes in Heaven and Embraced by the Light, with bright white light on the front cover and vicars’ testimonies on the back, are the mainstream face of NDEs.

The OA, then, sets itself the task of taking this emotionally charged subject and transposing it into a darker and more mysterious register. Whether the show is fantasy, science fiction or something else entirely depends on your belief in the reality of NDEs, and in that of an afterlife.

Though its main agenda is definitely to entertain, it flirts with the thoughtfulness and complexity of an altogether different kind of art: one concerned with not only amusing the consumer, but maybe, just maybe, giving them something totally new to think about. Westworld may engage with the issues surrounding artificial intelligence, and Stranger Things toys with the idea of parallel universes, but The OA goes beyond this conventional sci-fi territory, and begins to map out a more original blueprint. By the end of the first series, however, only tentative steps have been made: we will have to wait till series two to see if The OA is really carving itself a new dimension.

Life after cricket for Varsity hero Sam Agarwal

Matthew Roller
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Life after cricket for Varsity hero Sam Agarwal

Since 2013, only two men have scored a triple-century in a first-class match in the UK: Kevin Pietersen and Sam Agarwal.

Pietersen’s knock, a swashbuckling 355 not out against Leicestershire in a Division Two game, turned out to be his last ever in white clothing, as the very next week, England’s Director of Cricket Andrew Strauss informed him that he would not be considered for international selection going forward.

By a quirk of fate, Agarwal’s 313*—the highest ever score in a Varsity cricket fixture—was also his final first-class innings. Despite making headlines across the country and earning him a summer-long trial with Surrey, Agarwal’s innings failed to bring about the career he had dreamed of pursuing.

“I will never forget that game,” the 26-year-old told Cherwell this week. “I get nostalgic every time I watch the video of me scoring the 300th run.

“But more than just the feeling of scoring 300, my team-mates made that so special: I could not have asked for a better way to end my time at Oxford.”

“There is a significant difference between the standard of cricket between the Varsity Match and a standard first-class fixture,” Agarwal continued, “but it’s a great feeling to be mentioned in the same breath as him [Pietersen]. I’ve always considered him an outstanding player and a true entertainer.”

The Dark Blues went on to win the 2013 Varsity Match by an innings and 186 runs, after racking up a total of 550-7 declared in the first innings. Agarwal’s knock, which came from just 312 balls and included three sixes and a gargantuan 41 fours, was described as “once-in-a-lifetime” by his coach Graham Charlesworth.

Yet this innings was no fluke: Agarwal could play. Earlier that summer, he had scored a first-class hundred against a strong Warwickshire attack, his second first-class ton after a Varsity 117 in 2010. It was no surprise that Surrey had kept tabs on him, and the opportunity to play 2nd XI cricket for them came along in 2013.

“I’m really looking forward to continuing to work with Surrey,” he told the BBC that summer. “My next step is to score runs for them this summer and hopefully pursue a career path in cricket with them.”

“Playing at Surrey was where I enjoyed my cricket the most,” Agarwal continued to Cherwell. “I was fortunate enough to open the batting with Jason Roy, face Tymal Mills and Shaun Tait in a single match and above all share the field with Glen Maxwell in a series of 2nd XI T20 games.”

It was quite the summer for the Material Sciences student, and although the runs and wickets dried up towards the end of 2013, a professional career was still very much on the cards.

However, the Utter Pradesh-born right-hander faced a major challenge in England: the restrictions on overseas players. In order to discourage counties from recruiting too many overseas stars at the expense of the national team and the development of young English players, the England and Wales Cricket Board allow each side to field only one overseas player at a time.

That summer, Surrey’s overseas player was legendary South African batsman Hashim Amla, and Agarwal was aware that his opportunities in England would be limited: “I had to return to India.”

But over the course of the next year, Agarwal fell out of love with the game. Frustrated at a lack of opportunities to play first-team cricket, his form fell away completely, and the dream died.

“Frankly, I never really enjoyed cricket in India as much as I did in the UK, and that was the big reason for me to stop playing. Due to…a string of low scores, and the politics in the game, I decided to give it up.

“At the moment, I play cricket occasionally,” he continues. “I am the captain of the Oxford and Cambridge Society of India and play a few ‘Jazz-hat’ games every year.”

It is sad to hear that a player whose career had so much potential has slipped away from the game to this extent, but that is the situation Agarwal finds himself in. Pursuing a career after cricket, he co-founded an app, MyVote.Today, which aimed to “improve the standards of democracies across the world” by providing a quick and easy way to collate polling data.

“We found it difficult to monetise the traffic we gained through Twitter and on the app,” he said, regretting an opportunity missed.

“Now, I am working with my father at Indian Ceramic House. We manufacture precious metals for the tableware and glass industry: [it is] quite closely related to my Material Science degree.”

Asked for his advice to his Fresher self, Agarwal commented “each student faces numerous opportunities during their time at Oxford and often fail to recognise their importance, because they are too busy and think they will come around again…my advice would be not to take things for granted.” It seemed a cathartic reply from a man who is now finding that despite his regrets, there is life after cricket.

Inside Vogue with Alexandra Shulman

Megan Husain
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Inside Vogue with Alexandra Shulman

“The print magazine is still really where my heart lies. If I had a choice between allocating funds to sell more print copies or drive digital traffic, most often I would choose the former.”

So writes Alexandra Shulman, editor-in-chief of Vogue, in her new book Inside Vogue: A Diary of My 100th Year. She spoke to Sali Hughes at the Sheldonian about her experience in twenty-five years of editorship. Starting in 1992, Shulman has seen Vogue change over time, with the development of the website, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat. She highlighted how this enables them to get a story out immediately, whereas it previously would have taken three months before it appeared in print.

Yet Shulman’s loyalty still remains with the physical magazine over its younger online sibling. This was borne out in conversation with Hughes, as Shulman stressed how important the physical object of Vogue remains for readers, with its glossy pages and aura of indulgence. “I still think that to look at a beautiful fashion shoot is so much better on paper than on a screen,” she says, as a rare moment of laughter erupts in the Sheldonian at her exaggerated mime of zooming in and out on a phone screen. From Inside Vogue, one gets the sense that the visual now seems to be Vogue’s strongest asset:

“Our ability to be the informers of which trends are the newest and strongest has obviously been diluted by the speed and reach of digital websites, where so much information will already have been published, but none of them has, as yet, managed to create the memorable imagery that we can. So this season I feel less bound by the stories being trend-driven than I have at other times, and more by the originality of the photography.”

Shulman, however, was not always interested in fashion: “It’s not a secret that when I first came to Vogue I knew nothing about fashion. My interest was always first and foremost in journalism and that idea was that I’d bring an ‘everywoman’ approach to this aspirational magazine.” Compared to her American counterpart Anna Wintour, Shulman explained how she is known as the ‘normal’ editor. She has always tried to stay clear of questions about her personal style, and anecdotes from her book serve to portray her as a surprisingly grounded individual.

“I find myself on the fashion floor Selfridges, which stocks every conceivable designer, utterly lost as to which direction to turn. Problem number one is that I don’t know where to find anything. I am the editor of Vogue. Surely, this should not be happening.”

Later in the book, she describes getting a dress made and fitted for Vogue’s centenary gala and trying cycling shorts on underneath to see if it would make her look better. Again, we get a brilliant moment of dry humour:

“I tell him about the removal of the shorts and he’s polite enough to say that it looks better without, though I immediately feel I’ve loaded him with too much information on the underpinnings situation of a fifty-eight year old woman.”

Despite this modest self-deprecation, Shulman is not a woman to be messed with. She talked to Hughes about how the rising power of celebrities and their PRs is making photo-shoots more and more difficult. She envisages the fashion industry moving away from photographing actresses and singers, and back to models, because “at least they’ll wear what you ask them to!” From her book, it is clear that Shulman’s attitude remains consistent —Vogue do not give copy approval or pander to celebrities:

“Her [Rihanna’s] ‘people’ want all the pictures to be in black and white, and there is a specific pair of thigh-high denim boots they want featured on the cover—which may well be hard to achieve as our covers in general are crops. And we don’t get told what clothes to put on them.”

Towards the end of the hour Hughes moved the session on to questions from the floor, and a young woman asked how Shulman feels about fashion and politics, particularly the Daily Mail’s recent ‘Leggs-it’ story. Shulman took an interestingly nuanced view on that, arguing that although the Daily Mail piece was wrong, she doesn’t want fashion to become estranged from politics, or any other field. She explained that she feels that many women take pleasure in what they wear, and she doesn’t want us to reach a point where it is not PC to talk about clothes.

In her book she berates the fact that brands lend clothes to ‘street-style’ girls as opposed to for example “the head of pathology at a hospital”.

“How are we meant to inspire young girls to be judged on criteria other than physical appearance when worlds they admire, like high fashion, don’t encourage the notion that you can mix being a fashion plate with working in other fields?”

Shulman acted on her opinions and Vogue’s November 2016 edition was called ‘The Real Issue’. It championed the everyday working woman, by only featuring women in professions that had nothing to do with fashion—‘a model-free area’. This was a pioneering and impressive step for Shulman to take and you can see the initial thoughts about it forming in her book.

But when questioned on body image and the success of Vogue’s ‘Health Initiative’ by another audience member, Shulman was slightly less inspirational. She admitted that Vogue’s ‘Health Initiative’, if put through the metrics, probably wouldn’t have made much of a difference. She didn’t provide any alternatives, and just stuck to repeating the fact that Vogue don’t hire models under the age of 16, and have always taken care of them. Even in her book, she doesn’t provide an answer to the problem or a discussion of the issue. She simply berates the backlash she received for doing an interview on the subject of body image for a parliamentary inquiry. It must be a fine line to tread as Editor of Vogue when discussing such matters, and yet one cannot help feeling a little disappointed that Shulman doesn’t address these important issues more frankly, especially considering that her tenure is nearly over.

Shulman is due to leave her role this summer, and she explained to Hughes how her role as Vogue editor has expanded over the years, to become far more multi-layered—“If I’d known what the job would entail I probably would have been too frightened to take it!” she laughs. She feels like an ambassadorial voice of the fashion industry, and often gets asked to bring a ‘Vogue’ idea to it. “I have to take care of Vogue the brand, not just the magazine…Vogue is more than a magazine, it’s an idea”.

When asked her what prompted the decision to leave, Shulman explained short stay in Suffolk enabled her to focus her mind and solidified her decision to take a break. But that’s not to say she won’t miss her job. Shulman seemed genuinely saddened at the idea of leaving . She talked of how she would miss the act of coming into an office in the morning, something she’s done since the age of 23: “What’s a holiday without an office to come back to? What’s a weekend without work on Monday?”

But of course, as Hughes jokingly suggests, Shulman doesn’t seem the type to settle down. She’s already written three books—Inside Vogue, The Parrots, and Can We Still Be Friends, but she intends to write even more and become more involved with the Vogue fashion and design college. Her new predecessor has just been announced as Edward Enninful. He comes from being fashion and creative director at W Magazine where he has worked since 2011. Yet again Vogue seems to be paving the way and pushing boundarie—Enniful is the first male editor in Vogue‘s 101 year history, and the first black editor of a mainstream British style magazine. It is a tough job to take though, Shulman leaves very big boots to fill.

The Oxford Literary Festival was fascinating, and the audience clearly enjoyed their insight into a life at the centre of British fashion. Deeper thought about more serious issues surrounding the industry is perhaps on its way—despite her detractors, Shulman has been a progressive force.

Independent learning more beneficial than contact hours, report finds

Theo Davies-Lewis
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Independent learning more beneficial than contact hours, report finds

A recent report by the Higher Education Academy (HEA) has found that independent learning is more effective than taught sessions in the development of key skills.

The HEA 2016 Engagement Survey was based on the responses of 23,198 students at 29 institutions, but the University of Oxford was not involved in the research.

Notable findings in the report included how there was a four-percentage point positive difference in perceived development of academic skills such as writing and critical thinking among students with eleven or more hours of teaching each week, compared to those who receive ten hours of teaching a week.

As well as this, 94 percent of those surveyed felt that their course encouraged them to develop their own independent learning, despite the fact that students feel they are not engaging with fellow students or academics

Students also said that studying more time out of class could be twice as beneficial in developing active learning skills, like innovation and creativity, compared with even more teaching sessions (six percentage points to three percentage points). For civic skills, such as developing values and ethics, or perhaps being informed and an ‘active citizen’, the difference was five percentage points to three.

Reacting to the report, Camille Kandiko Howson, senior lecturer in higher education at King’s College London, explained how its findings showed the drastic need to expand learning outside of the classroom, saying: “Students still think contact hours are what they need, but this gives us evidence that students’ skill development is greater when they spend more time in independent study.”

According to Times Higher Education, the results could have consequences for England’s teaching excellence framework, which could use contact hours “as a proxy for standards”.

Dr Kandiko Howson added that policymakers should move beyond this “very narrow” view of learning, especially considering that the report found that extracurricular activities were found to be beneficial to skill development.

The report also found that students who took part in sports or societies, for example, had academic skill development seven percentage points higher than those who did not participate, in addition to how volunteering gave a six-percentage point advantage.

The report also found that undergraduates at pre-92 and post-92 universities had significantly different experiences of their education

For example, students at older institutions usually worked harder, with 63 per cent of respondents saying they had eleven or more contact hours a week, compared with 50 per cent of post-92 respondents. When it came to spending 11 or more hours studying independently each week, the gap was 57 per cent to 49 per cent.

However, those students at post-92s suggested they were more engaged in their learning, with higher levels of skill development in every area except academic skills.

Week in Science: 30/04/17

Cherwell Science and Tech Editors
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Week in Science: 30/04/17

It’s not easy keeping up with all the events going around the University. With Week in Science, the Cherwell Science and Tech editors bring to your attention interesting talks around the city, all of which they attend religiously.

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The concept of time in biology, and the unity of life 

Source: Oxford Martin School

Presented by Oxford Martin School and the Oxford Centre for Tropical Forests 

Date and Time: 8th May, 17:30 to 18:30pm

Location: Oxford Martin School, 34 Broad Street, OX1 3BD

Speaker: Professor Brian J. Enquist

Description: One of our biggest technological innovations is that of time keeping. From the atomic to the astronomical scales, our technology has enabled us to precisely measure time. Our timekeeping uses clocks that all tick along the same time scale – a time scale that is also relative to how we perceive the passage of time.

For biology, the passage of time, however, is not only different but reveals deep truths about life. Across the diversity of life, the passage of time from bacteria to humans to giant Redwood trees is perceived differently. Instead of a constant ticking of a clock – the pace of life is reflected in scaling laws that characterise the variation in the cycles of heartbeats, metabolism, growth and reproduction.

In this lecture Professor Brian J. Enquist, Oxford Martin Visiting Fellow, will introduce a second concept of time – physiological time. Physiological time enables us to better understand why we age, the emergence of disease and cancer, the functioning of ecosystems, and the diversity of life. Physiological time is one of the most significant characteristics of life and helps unite the study of biology. A deeper question is what ultimately sets the pace of life.

As will be discussed, the search for a universal biological clock that unites life’s cycles is the most intriguing Holy Grail of biology.

Entry: Free, register early to avoid disappointment.

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Puzzle Competition

Presented by The Oxford Invariants Society

Date and Time: 2nd May, 20:00pm.

Location: Maths Institute Café, Mathematical Institute, Woodstock Road, OX2 6GG.

Description: This week we’re having a puzzle competition!

It starts at 8pm on Tuesday (2nd May) in the Maths Institute Café. Bring your friends or form a team of up to 4 people on the spot and solve some fun maths puzzles! Of course, there will also be snacks and drinks for everyone and some great prizes for the winners.

Entry: The event is free for members and £3 for non-members. Memberships is also available for £15, for life.

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Lorna Casselton Memorial Lecture: The International Search for Life Beyond Earth – From Mars to Extrasolar Planets

Presented by St Cross College

Date and Time: 3rd May, 17:00 to 18:00pm.

Location: Main Lecture Theatre L1, Mathematical Institute, Woodstock Road, OX2 6GG.

Speaker: Dr Ellen Stofan, NASA Chief Scientist.

Description: The 3rd Lorna Casselton Memorial Lecture, given by Dr Ellen Stofan, former NASA Chief Scientist, and entitled “The International Search for Life Beyond Earth – From Mars to Extrasolar Planets” will be at 5 pm on Wednesday 3rd May 2017 in the main lecture theatre, L1, at the Mathematical Institute, Woodstock Road, Oxford.

Entry: Free, register early to avoid disappointment.

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Life Divided: Croquet

Akshay Bilolikar and Esme Ash
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Life Divided: Croquet

For: Akshay Bilolikar

It’s the first swing, but also the final. It’s that almost intractable angle hiding in plain sight on an Oxford college lawn. It’s the croquet bug: an insatiable seasonal desire to pick up the mallet, set up the court, and hit wooden balls through hoops. Between shots, there’s conferral with your partner. Grand and arcane schemes are orchestrated. Your vision must compete with your opponent’s if you’re to master the court. Little, if anything, ever goes to plan. Perhaps the sun is in your eye, but in any case you can’t quite master the angle on that last shot.

The game isn’t lost yet. There’s still possibility, even if it’s only in reach with a healthy dose of Lady Luck. One hoop behind, it’s not yet over. Two, a triumph becomes distant, yet almost within reach. On the third, there’s no way to win except to take—ruthlessly—all the opportunities your opponent gives you. Half the time, the game ends there—the leader’s advantage is not easily waived. Just often enough, however, the golden window presents itself. Jumping through the window of opportunity to snatch success from the jaws of defeat. Strategic thought, almost like chess on grass, to match your opponent on the court.

And yet, the croquet bug is not solely an infection of the mind: it’s an infection of the soul, one rooted in the summer air and the scent of the good months ahead. The game always takes longer than you allocated it time. You inevitably have to deputise to hold your place. Frustration mounts, pitilessly, but it never overwhelms because the balance of possibilities will, one day, swing in your favour. Day after day, you find yourself returning to the court. Some of your friends—the immune ones, who don’t see the possibility at play between the hoops—will balk at the hours you spend in the summer sun doing little more than hitting balls through hoops. And yet, you’ve got the bug, and you’re doing so much more

Against: Esmé Ash

Croquet? Seriously? You’d be forgiven for mistaking this pointless game as a tasty snack (see croquettes), but for some unfathomable reason, the tradition of whacking balls with sticks à la Alice in Wonderland—minus the flamingos—hasn’t died out when it really should have by now, along with boater hats and braces.

There are lots of wonderful eccentricities that are part of the fabric of college life, but croquet does not earn its place in the hall of fame for three reasons. Firstly, the “sport” (if you could call it that) is inherently unfair. No matter how flat the quad, it’s never a level playing field when cuppers rolls around because prime time for practising is invariably Trinity term, when anyone who has exams, or studies a real degree, is too busy for such frivolity.

Meanwhile, hordes of E&M students spend hours honing their skills, Pimm’s in hand, ready to crush the opposition within minutes of setting up those little hoops on the grass. No, I don’t know what they’re called—and any self-respecting student won’t know, either. But, sore losing aside, the institution of croquet and its association with Oxford is just another stereotype we have to fight, to break the misconception that we all wear red trousers and pinstripe blazers. “What’s so special that means they can play on the grass?”, prospective students wonder as they skirt the quads.

The format of the game leaves little room for mistakes, too, dissuading even the bravest of timid freshers from stepping up and having a go in case they ruin a team’s winning streak. Finally, Oxford in the summer is a beautiful thing to behold—and there are so many other things you can do which lie beyond the well-groomed lawns of your particular college.

Try rowing, punting, touring colleges, and venturing out to Cowley, Jericho or another quirky corner of the city. Croquet is a spectator sport, best served with strawberries and cream.

Fashion in Paris is moving in the right direction

Chloe Dootson-Graube
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Fashion in Paris is moving in the right direction

One would be hard pressed to find anything in fashion journalism as sacrosanct as the concept of ‘The Parisian’. The recent elapse of fashion weeks across the globe saw fashion publications taking to the streets in an attempt to document the street-style turn out and I defy you to find a look more widely aspired to or applauded than the ‘Parisian’.

But what is meant by the term in its sartorial use? To channel Bardot and Birkin, or to don a starched shirt, neat trousers and sensible shoes, has become the ubiquitous ‘Parisian’ trend. But many would argue that it is more a state of mind than a particular type of attire. Vogue identi es it as an “overall air of gamine insouciance”, and one of the movement’s foremost IT girls, Caroline de Maigret, attributes it to the personality of the wearer, and the “effortless” air they possess.

Others suggest that the de ning feature of Parisian style is largely the cultivation of a personal image. Ines de la Fressange and Carine Roitield’s nurture of this plays a big role in their esteemed fashion credits and Vogue supports this notion: “No deliberate statement-making, no peacocking of designer freebies […] it’s not about fitting the clothes, see: it’s about the clothes fitting you.” The integrity of the cut, the strength of the silhouette and the shape of the fabric seem to be what is valued.

One of the many benefits of this is that by embracing the individuality of the wearer, many of the stigmas that plague the fashion industry have been ostensibly removed. For example, many of the movement’s IT girls are significantly older than is typical in the fashion industry: well respected figures like Caroline de Maigret, 42, de la Fressange, 59, and Roitfeld, 62, are all far older than the teens and twenties of the Kendall Jenners and Gigi Hadids of New York.

There do however remain certain gaping holes in the movement’s liberal inclusivity. After all, “the overall air of gamine insouciance” comes part and parcel with a certain waifish slender-ness. One would encounter some difficulty in attempting to identify any plus-size figures at the forefront, or indeed, even in the background of the movement.

Moreover, it ought to be noted that the scene remains disproportionately white for a city with a population that is 10-15 % Muslim and 18 % black. With a city with such a substantial non-white population, is it not somewhat suspect that this diversity finds no representation? Why is it the neat black garb of impressionists that finds itself highlighted, rather than the hijab?

Furthermore, this notion of an individual personal style only seems to go so far. It is perhaps somewhat melodramatic to describe Parisian fashion as a policy of ‘uniformization’, but De Maigret herself concedes in a Refinery 29 interview that she believes “sometimes French women are so scared of the faux pas that they’re not adventurous. I think sometimes maybe it’s a bit dull”. The Gucci Gang, a Parisian style collective who have turned the heads of fashion publications such as I-D and Vogue, make the claim that in France, “everything is taboo”.

Yet it must be said that minimalism and uniform dressing are not universal facets of the day-to-day Parisian dress. My grandmother is a born and bred Parisian and her approach to fashion is buying clothing with a price below double digits. While I’m certainly not naming my own ageing relatives as the epicentre of innovative fashion, this sort of the out-the-box thinking is beginning to proliferate. Take the Gucci Gang, for example, who have been making waves with their Parisian fashion is ‘mort’ attitude. Thaïs, one of their members, said in an interview that “there is a great energy in the new generation of Parisian designers”.

Moreover, Rihanna’s Fenty Puma line —which debuted at Paris Fashion Week last year—makes the case for both decadence and ‘trashy-dressing’, combining the indulgent ruffles and baby pinks of the classic ‘Marie Antoinette style’, with standard sportswear staples. There is still a long way to go, but Parisian fashion is proving itself to be a diverse medium, not limited to the stark standards set by its forebears.

A day in the life of… an assistant director

Rebekah King
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A day in the life of… an assistant director

Adjusting the bosom of another woman, as you pull closed the clasps on her corset, is an intimacy best reserved for the more advanced months of a friendship. Unless, of course, you are Assistant Director for a period-costume play, in which case you may find yourself fondling others and making introductions at once:

“Hello, I’m Rebekah; I’ll be helping Sarah out.”

“Hi, I’m playing Charlotte Brontë. Should I take my bra off first?”

To be an Assistant Director is to multitask. One has, therefore, a truly unique perspective: a hands-on closeness to all aspects of production.

As first mate, I have watched the captain of our ship bring Brontë safely into port. Sarah Pyper (a development officer at St Peter’s) is one of those directors whom actors and production folk alike adore. She is intelligent, practical, and calm, and has done wonders with a difficult but rewarding script.

Here’s the problem: Polly Teale (our author) wants to write for television. Many’s the time when Sarah has cursed her for a stage direction such as ‘Lights change: it is 1835’ (“Ah!” thinks the lighting designer, “I’ll fetch my 1835 bulbs”) or ‘Emily releases the hawk’ (“How expensive is it to hire a bird of prey for a fortnight?”). But once the tidying up was done, Brontë started to look like a touching and, at times, truly poetic script: a fitting cousin for the BBC’s recent To Walk Invisible.

If you know and love the Brontës, this is a play for you. If you can’t quite remember who wrote Wuthering Heights, and had forgotten that the third sister was called Anne, the play will invite you to discover a world of purple moors and wild imaginations.

Being Assistant Director is a much more important role when things go wrong. It’s a bit like being the younger brother of king: if he’s loved you’ll never get to feel the inner contours of the throne. But open rebellion on a play-set is an excitement I have witnessed before and will happily do without.

Thistledown Theatre is not a student company, and everything feels rather more relaxed. Sarah and the rest don’t need my guidance, and for once I can enjoy the ‘assistant’ half of my job-description.

Rewind: “Our greatest work may be found in our escape”

Carmen Martinez
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Rewind: “Our greatest work may be found in our escape”

In 1925, Theodor Seuss Geisel—more commonly known by his pen name, Dr. Seuss—started a postgraduate degree in English literature at Lincoln College, but he never completed it. His lecture notes on Shakespeare quickly became scribblings of strange beasts, as he found life at Oxford stifling. Seuss himself later imagined his tutor thinking he was “the only man he’d ever seen who never ever should have come to Oxford”. This tutor advised him to leave Oxford, to broaden what he knew about the world, to travel Europe with schoolboy guides to meet the world in real life.

The scenes in the colourful pages of his storybooks can seem an escape from real life, and indeed it was cartoons that offered Seuss an escape from the course at Oxford which he felt he was gaining nothing from. His time at our university is summed up well on Lincoln’s website: “While finding a course in the punctuation of Shakespeare dull, he began to draw pictures and doodles during his lectures.”

When Seuss took a couple of example cartoons he had drawn to illustrate ‘Paradise Lost’ to a certain famous Broad Street bookshop, cheekily hoping he might be commissioned to do many more, he was turned away, having been told: “This isn’t quite the Blackwell type of humour.” Forty years later his books were the main event in the shopfront window.

In looking back over Dr. Seuss’s works, I see what these doodles eventually amounted to. I am drawn into the mundane quibbles of furry, odd but also strangely majestic creatures with names like ‘Sneetches’ and ‘Zax’. The characters find themselves in trouble against a backdrop of improbably colourful trees and hills, but tend to work out their differences, in dialogue with the rhythm and rhyme that made their author so important to helping children learn to read.

However, the tales of Dr. Seuss’s wacky beasts don’t lack a didactic angle, and criticism of the sources of hate in our world. In ‘The Zax’, a North-Going Zax and a South-Going Zax meet in the middle of a desert and in refusing to budge come to resemble a political deadlock:

“Never budge. That’s my rule. Never budge in the least! Not an inch to the west! Not an inch to the east! / I’ll stay here not budging! I can and I will / If it makes you and me and the whole world stand still!”

While the books’ settings are a zany escape from real life, there is value to be gained from mocking this kind of behaviour. Dr. Seuss artfully fused his skill for creating doodles with stances on morality. He helped children around the world to love reading and it started with drawings which seemed a product of distraction and not the ‘right thing’ to be doing in his time at Oxford.

Perhaps our greatest ‘work’, like that of Dr. Seuss, can be found in the marginal scribbles of our essay notes. Our greatest work or product, found in our ‘escape’.

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