Latest news with #GeriHalliwell
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Sport
- Daily Mail
Revealed: Woman at centre of scandal that almost brought down former Red Bull chief Christian Horner last year has a new role in motorsport
The woman at the centre of the scandal that almost brought down Christian Horner last year has left Red Bull and now has a new role in motorsport. The 'female employee', as she was usually referred to in media reports, made accusations of inappropriate and coercive behaviour of a sexual nature against then Red Bull team principal Horner. She has not been named by Mail Sport for legal reasons, and her identity remains a secret from the public. Horner, husband of former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell, was cleared of misconduct by two separate investigations led by KCs. Earlier this month, the 51-year-old executive effectively left Red Bull after 20 years in charge, during which time he led them to 14 world titles. He was not given an explanation for being 'released from operational duties' three weeks ago on Tuesday. A severance package worth up to £60million to settle his contract has yet to be agreed. Despite having her claims rejected, the woman remained on Red Bull's payroll for many months afterwards, suspended on full pay, though that arrangement is believed to have stopped some time ago. It has now emerged that she has taken up a new position. The paddock was electrified in Bahrain last March when an anonymous email, containing a slew of racy text messages purporting to be between Horner and the employee, was sent to F1's leading figures and media. Horner was absent from the F1 paddock at the Belgian Grand Prix for the first time since 2004, instead watching avidly from home as Oscar Piastri won, with Red Bull's defending champion Max Verstappen fourth.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How Geri Halliwell's Union Jack Dress Inspired a Generation of Pop Stars and Patriotism
Geri Halliwell's Union Jack dress has left its mark as a sartorial moment to remember in pop culture history. The original Spice Girls member's mini frock struck a cultural chord and quickly became a statement-making piece for other pop stars to follow. The dress, featuring the Union Jack flag, is tied to the United Kingdom's history. Originating in 1606 as the flag that represented both England and Scotland, the design was reimagined in 1801 as the current red, white and blue symbol, with the addition of the St. Patrick's Saltire. More from WWD Barbie Creates One-off Doll for Type 1 Diabetes Advocate Lila Moss How Celebrity Beauty Brands Are Doing in 2025 Dua Lipa Goes Avant-garde in Keyhole Cutout Dress for Schiaparelli's Fall 2025 Couture Show in Paris In the 1970s, the Union Jack was incorporated as a style motif for several British punk bands. The design was used through sartorial messaging, a subversion of the flag. In the late '90s, however, Halliwell's fashion statement repurposed the Union Jack symbol. Halliwell (also known as 'Ginger Spice') wore her Union Jack minidress at the 1997 Brit Awards, where the Spice Girls performed. 'There's different layers to this story,' Halliwell told Drew Barrymore on the actress' eponymous daytime talk show in April 2025. 'There's a flag; that, for me, was taught by America. You guys taught me about being proud, being patriotic about your country. At the time, it was the Brits and I thought, 'I really want to celebrate being British,'' Halliwell recalled. 'I remember [my] stylist at the time said, 'No, no, no. Be more modest.' So I went, 'No, absolutely not.'' Halliwell explained to Barrymore that the original dress was actually a 'black Gucci stretchy dress' that had been gifted to her. 'It's really corseted. It's like an old swimming costume…like a '50s swimming costume.' Halliwell stitched a tea towel with the Union Jack on top of the Gucci dress. 'I'm not very good at stitching but I'm good at the idea,' Halliwell confessed. Halliwell's sister helped sew the tea towel onto the dress. What happened to Geri Halliwell's Union Jack dress? Halliwell's Union Jack dress was sold at auction by Sotheby's in September 1998 to Hard Rock Café cofounder Peter Morton for roughly $70,000, as reported by the BBC. The auction served to raise funds for the Sargent Cancer Care for Children. In 2007, designer Roberto Cavalli made a new version for Halliwell to wear during the Spice Girls reunion tour, designed to resemble the original but with rhinestones and Swarovski crystals. In 2012, Halliwell designed a clothing line inspired by the dress, which she revisited again for the 2019 Spice World tour. The Union Jack dress in pop culture Decades after Halliwell popularized the Union Jack dress, pop stars are still inspired by her fashion statement. Dua Lipa added a Union Jack kilt skirt by Vivienne Westwood, featuring pleating and a punk style aesthetic, to her performance attire at the 2021 Brit Awards, paying homage to Halliwell's iconic sartorial moment at the awards show from more than 20 years prior. Taylor Swift wore a Union Jack-inspired ensemble when she performed at the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show in 2013. Rita Ora also wore a Union Jack-inspired look for her performance at the Fashion Rocks 2014 event in New York City. The Union Jack dress on the runway The Union Jack also made its way onto the runway. Before Halliwell's Union Jack minidress moment in 1997, Kate Moss modeled a jacket inspired by the flag as part of John Galliano's 'Olivia the Filibuster' spring 1993 ready-to-wear collection. A Union Jack minidress, among other designs, was also featured as part of Jean Paul Gaultier's Paris Fashion Week fall 2014 ready-to-wear collection show in March 2014, harkening back to the punk style sensibility and subversion of the '70s. 'The overall takeaway: Austin Powers meets Sid Vicious. A disconnect, yes, but perhaps deliberately so. After all, one of the few places the two could coexist would be on a fictional space odyssey with JPG as pilot,' an excerpt from WWD's review of the collection read. Ashish's fall 2011 fashion show also featured a Union Jack sweater vest. 'Wannabe' Turns 25: Looking Back on the Spice Girls' Success View Gallery Launch Gallery: 'Wannabe' Turns 25: Looking Back on the Spice Girls' Success Best of WWD 23 of the World's Most Expensive Handbags: Jane Birkin's Original Hermès Bag, Chanel's Crocodile Skin Flap Bag and More Brands With the Power of the Purse 'Project Runway' Winners: Where Are They Now? Superfake Rolexes Are Getting Smarter: How to Spot Counterfeit Timepieces in the Luxury Watch Market Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
On This Day: Spice Girls fan with world record collection showcases her treasures
On this day in 2016, Liz West, a dedicated Spice Girls fan from Manchester, proudly showcased her impressive collection of memorabilia at Watford Colosseum. Holding the Guinness World Record for the largest collection of Spice Girls items, Liz possessed nearly 5,000 unique pieces, including personal items like shoes and costumes. She reflected on her journey as a collector, stating: "I first started collecting mostly because I was a fan. "Like everyone else I loved listening to their music and swapping photographs in the playground like football stickers." Read more On This Day: Golf star unveils statue at prestigious club On This Day: Viewers left baffled as bizarre blunder appears on BBC On This Day: 'Serious' fire breaks out in field after record-breaking temperatures Liz's passion for collecting began in her childhood, where she preserved items in their original packaging, unlike her peers. Her most significant purchase was a green dress worn by Geri Halliwell during The Spice World tour, which cost her £2,500. Now, her ambition is to meet all the Spice Girls and acquire the iconic Union Jack dress currently displayed in a Hard Rock Cafe in Las Vegas. [From the Watford Observer of July 22, 2016]
Telegraph
19-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
It is Britain's utter disgrace that wearing the Union Flag has become the ultimate taboo
It was a small and sorry tale that went big. On Friday July 11, as the sun shone down in Warwickshire, Courtney Wright, a Year 7 pupil at the village school in Bilton, Rugby, ought to have had a lovely day. It was the school's 'culture day', and so Courtney donned a cute sequinned Union Flag number and a hat to match. It had shades of the famous dress worn by Geri Halliwell of the Spice Girls in 1997, back when Britannia was briefly considered 'cool'. But a few hours later, Courtney's day had turned into an Orwellian nightmare. She found herself sitting outside the school waiting for her father to collect her, having been castigated and expelled. Her crime was wearing British garb, and with it, the suggestion that on a day of cultural celebration for the school 'community' in Warwickshire she was somehow … what? Asserting white supremacy? Racist nationalism? Expressing disgust for the 'diverse' members of the school? This sweet 12-year-old girl was treated as if she'd come dressed as a member of the Ku Klux Klan, or a skinhead from the National Front. Never for a moment dropping the imbecilic woke jargon that led them into this perverse position in the first place, the school issued a sort of bureaucratic apology, which reminded me of the Labour party's apologies for repeated outbreaks of anti-Semitism. Clearly missing the point, it droned that it was 'learning from this experience and ensuring that every student feels recognised and supported when expressing pride in their heritage'. One felt a queasy guffaw rise in the throat as the statement went on. 'As a school, we are reviewing our policies and strengthening staff training to ensure our practices reflect our values of inclusion, respect and understanding for all.' No, you buffoons. This isn't about 'reviewing policies' or 'values of inclusion'. It's about a culture that is so embarrassed and actually hostile to itself that it can't even countenance its own flag worn in sequins and good spirit by a 12-year-old girl. It's about the disastrous policies that have led to a moment in which terrorists are painstakingly afforded all the protections of British and European human rights, and pro-Palestine obsessives can drape themselves in keffiyehs and Palestinian flags, but a girl is humiliated, ostracised and sent home by teachers for celebrating, in the most light-hearted of ways, her British heritage. It's about the catastrophic melange of bad ideas leading to the blind worship of 'multiculturalism'. Careful observers have always known that this term was a mess; it has killed off any understanding of the importance of having a flexible but dominant home culture. One that is critically engaged with its history and heritage, but also insistent upon the Western values that are the fruits of that history and heritage. One that could not only handle, but enjoy, a dress like the one Courtney wore. We all know that Bilton School's aims are not for a moment about actual diversity, whether it is conscious of this fact or not. They are about brainwashing. And what happened to Courtney Wright is a microcosm of what has been happening, at greater intensity, in Britain's wider culture for years. Indeed, Bilton School's notion of 'heritage' as something that's first and foremost 'inclusive', and thus worth celebrating so long as it's not British, will feel very familiar to many. For example, the students at university or pupils at school who, for years, have dared not say anything about the British empire lest they end up conveying something other than scathing hostility. Britain faces a massive crisis of identity, and the events in Rugby have shone a direct light on it. The anti-Britishness of Britain is leading directly to policies, like those of the police and the security services, that harm British children. The grooming gangs weren't stopped, in part, because of a fear of Islamophobia. The security services didn't chase up a lead that might have stopped Salman Abedi from bombing the Manchester Arena; there is no reason to think this blind-eye-turning wasn't, at least in part, caused by the same fear. At the 20th anniversary of the 7/7 bombings in London, the great and the good hung their heads in respect of the victims, but few named what caused the carnage: Islamist terror. Fear of inflaming 'community tensions' – the same reason Jews were told not to hang 'missing' posters of the hostages taken by Hamas on October 7 – no doubt explain that reticence. I'm as averse to chest-thumping jingoism as the next cosmopolitan, rootless Jew whose patriotic grandparents had to flee their nations – their national loyalty counting for less than zero. Nationalism has long been associated with violence, racism, anti-Semitism and loutishness, to say nothing of Nazism, the most terrifying empire the world has ever seen. But Britain isn't plagued with Nazism, or the murderous racism of the Ku Klux Klan. Not even close. We are, in fact, dealing with a country on its knees, suffering from a lethal lack of confidence. As ever, Europe both experiences and responds to such tensions in volatile technicolour. In Germany, the far-Right, nationalist, anti-immigrant AfD has closer links, for obvious reasons, to the dangerous rhetoric of Germany's recent past. Indeed, celebrating 'Germannness' is, in my view, something that should only be done with the utmost caveating for quite some time to come. At any rate, the AfD's Thuringia chapter is considered its most extreme Right-wing and is on German state watch lists. Its leader, Björn Höcke, has many views ranging from dubious to repellent. He has said that 'the big problem is that one presents Hitler as absolutely evil', wants less Holocaust education and a return to the 'natural gender order', whatever that is. But in his book, Never Twice in the Same River, Höcke, a former school teacher, stumbles on a kernel of truth. He tells how one summer, students at the school started wearing T-shirts with the names of countries printed on them, including 'Turkey', 'Russia' and 'Italy', but of course not Germany. And then a girl showed up wearing a 'Germany' shirt. 'The Turkish and African boys were beside themselves,' writes Höcke. 'These otherwise divided Turks and Africans spontaneously agreed in their aggressive rejection of 'Germanness'.' Höcke then turned up in a 'Germany' shirt the next day, and he was elated when some students followed suit. The point is not that poor old Germany deserves to forget the Holocaust and rehabilitate Hitler; that would be monstrous. It's that societies founder without a clear sense of where they've been, where they are and where they are going. Germany and the rest of Europe do not need to embrace far-Right politics to do this. No, they have only, at least in the first place, to refuse to let worries about offending minorities, or being seen to do so, get in the way of asserting the rule of law. And for the rest of us, the job is to assert the customs and values of the land without fear. Without that clarity of mission and identity, we will continue to see travesties from the small to the cosmic. Thankfully, Britain is not Germany. We have a history without the atrocities of the Nazi era. Our cultural inheritance is so rich, and has so many brilliancies alongside the less good things, that we have a feast of opportunity to work on, if only we were able. Seeing things this way would not only be more interesting and educative for children, it would also save lives.
Metro
18-07-2025
- Automotive
- Metro
Red Bull decide to sack driver just days after Christian Horner exit
Just days after Red Bull axed Christian Horner, the Formula 1 giants have reportedly decided to sack one of their drivers. Last week, Red Bull announced that Horner had been 'relieved of his operational duties' having lead the team for over two decades. The dismissal of the team principal, husband of former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell, comes after months of tension within the team and a sharp decline in performance on the track. While Max Verstappen has won two races this season and sits third in the standings, he will relinquish his championship crown to either Oscar Piastri or Lando Norris of McLaren. The RB21 is proving incredibly difficult to drive, as evidenced by the woeful results of Verstappen's teammates, who have scored a combined seven points to the Dutchman's 165. Young Liam Lawson was picked by Horner to replace Sergio Perez for 2025 but was brutally axed after just two races, with the more experienced Yuki Tsunoda replacing him. The Japanese driver has not fared much better however, failing to finish higher than ninth and not scoring any points in the last five grand prix. And it seems patience has run out for the 25-year-old, with GPblog claiming that Red Bull have decided not to extend his contract, though he will be allowed to see out the rest of the season. It might not be the end of the road for Tsunoda however, as it is said his representatives recently held talks with Cadillac who are joining the grid in 2026, while he also continues to be linked to Aston Martin. If all this is true, Red Bull could have an entirely new driver line-up next year with four-time champion Verstappen in talks to join rivals Mercedes. More Trending Racing Bulls rookie Isack Hadjar would be first in line to step up to the senior Red Bull team following his impressive start to life in F1, with Lawson also under consideration. This would open the door for 17-year-old Arvid Lindblad, a Red Bull junior and Formula 2 star, to be fast-tracked to Racing Bulls and become the fifth British driver on the grid after Norris, Sir Lewis Hamilton, George Russell and Ollie Bearman. The F1 season continues with the Belgian Grand Prix on July 27. For more stories like this, check our sport page. Follow Metro Sport for the latest news on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. MORE: Inside Christian Horner and Geri Halliwell's sprawling countryside homes with mini farm MORE: How much did Christian Horner make as Red Bull chief before dismissal? MORE: Inside Christian Horner's marriage to Geri Halliwell as he's sacked from Red Bull
