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Elle
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Elle
Everything You Need To Know About Topshop's Catwalk Return
It's back! We're once again living in a time where Topshop thrives by creating major fashion moments in the beating heart of central London. On Saturday afternoon, hundreds gathered in Trafalgar Square to welcome the British stalwart back as it unveiled its new collection. ELLE was there front and centre of the action to take in the looks, understand the vibe and discover what's next for everyone's favourite accessible label. Here's everything you need to know — from the glitzy attendees to the styling tricks to note — about Topshop's second act. In a setting befitting Topshop's Great British status, the high-street brand chose London's Trafalgar Square for their long-awaited relaunch. In the shadow of The National Gallery, Nelson's column and the four plinths, fashion industry insiders and Topshop devotees enjoyed tunes from Norman Jay MBE and Melvo Baptise, of Good Times as the models walked out. Cara Delevingne (who is Topshop's face once again and curator for the brand), Adwoa Aboah and Alva Claire swapped the catwalk for the front row to take in the collection in the middle of Trafalgar Square. Together, the trio were fast to snap their favourite looks for future reference, while singing along to Beyoncé on the soundtrack. Each of the Brit models wore a Topshop look that befitted their personal style. Delevingne wore louche aubergine separates, Aboah wore a tailored jacket and midi skirt, while Claire styled it out in a polka dot skirt that featured in the show. Also in attendance? Sir Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London. Part-catwalk, part-zoo, the collection was chock-full of animalistic references. Featuring a zebra print mini, a cow print handbag and faux-fur coats and stoles aplenty, we know the streets of London will look go wild for the collection this AW. Proving themselves as the brand to go to for wardrobe staples, the Topshop runway was awash with denim. Leaving their classic Joni and Jamie jeans aside for the day, the high-street brand put denim to work showcasing a denim jumpsuit, which Farrah Fawcett herself would likely clamour to wear, and a denim mini dress-cum-jacket that was a real crowd pleaser, while the male models kept this cool in baggy 1990s-style fits. Fitting into a trend we're already expecting to take off for AW25, the Topshop collection also went in heavy on matching skirt sets. A particular standout was a natty turquoise skirt suit, worn with a tie and personality hat. Another great one that piqued the interest of ELLE's editors perched on the front row was a long-length brown mac worn with coordinating pencil skirt. It's a fail-safe way to achieve instant polish this winter. Daisy Murray is the Digital Fashion Editor at ELLE UK, spotlighting emerging designers, sustainable shopping, and celebrity style. Since joining in 2016 as an editorial intern, Daisy has run the gamut of fashion journalism - interviewing Molly Goddard backstage at London Fashion Week, investigating the power of androgynous dressing and celebrating the joys of vintage shopping. Freelancer
Time Out
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
How Tom Cruise's new blockbuster created a Tube station in central London
The blockbuster of 2025 so far, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is bookended by two scenes in the heart of London. The movie opens with Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt and his team, including tech wiz Benji (Simon Pegg) and computer specialist Luther (Ving Rhames), emerging from Trafalgar Square tube station and into a throng of police and protestors all on the edge of a riot with armoured trucks standing by. Evil A.I. The Entity has taken control and martial law has been imposed on society. The second scene we won't spoil, except to say that it has the IMF crew back in the same bustling corner of Trafalgar Square and exiting the same Zone 1 station. Amid this dystopian set-up, eagle-eyed viewers will have spotted one major anomaly in the two scenes: Trafalgar Square tube station, of course, does not exist. 'Charing Cross Station has an entrance in Trafalgar Square but to get Tom and all those extras in – and to get The National Gallery in the background – this new tube station was born,' explains the film's supervising location manager Niall O'Shea. 'All the Mission: Impossible movies are love letters to the cities they're in – Fallout is Paris, Dead Reckoning is Rome and Paris – so Trafalgar Square picked itself. It's where a big protest would happen.' Creating the fictional tube station and filming in Trafalgar Square required close collaboration with TFL (Transport For London) – not least in creating the iconic roundel sign for the fictional station. 'The roundels are copyrighted and they kindly gave us the digital model [to work with] and permission to go ahead,' says O'Shea. 'The sign is like a red bus or a postbox, it tells the audience we're in London.' In real life, the movie's station exit is the actually entrance to the Heritage Wardens' office. 'The wardens look after Trafalgar Square,' says O'Shea. 'They stop people putting Fairy Liquid in the fountains, keep it clean and manage it as an event space.' Out went the wardens, in came Cruise, Pegg, director Christopher McQuarrie, a small army of cast, crew and extras and 'a big travelling circus' of trucks, drones and lighting rigs in April 2025. 'We had the square closed for 24 hours on a Sunday,' remembers O'Shea. 'The martial law element was dressed at 11am, the shoot crew turned up at 2pm, we filmed the daytime stuff until about 7pm, redressed it until 10-11pm, then shot til dawn. We gave it back to Londoners first thing on Monday morning.' So where are the Trafalgar Square station signs now? 'I know there were a few people who thought it'd make a great piece of film memorabilia,' says O'Shea, 'but no one will own up to having it'.
New Statesman
04-06-2025
- General
- New Statesman
How colour is created in the mind
Illustration by Marie Montocchio / Ikon Images What colour is the grass? It looks green to me, and you say it looks green to you, but are we seeing the same green? And what makes it green anyway – the light, or our brains? Welcome to episode one of Stories in Colour, a new podcast from the National Gallery. This is a truly multidisciplinary endeavour – not just art but history, psychology, literature, sociology, economics and religion. World history is told through the story of pigments and how their development shaped centuries of artistic expression. Our emotional reflexes to colour – fear, disgust, calm – are put under the microscope. Paintings in the National Gallery's collection take centre-stage, with the mastery of Turner, Renoir and Monet dissected brushstroke by brushstroke. But it begins with science, as Beks Leary from the gallery's digital department tries to understand what colour actually is and if it's even real. For this, she is joined by 'colour scientist' Professor Anya Hurlbert for a deep dive into physics and then evolutionary biology to understand why we see colour in the first place. If you're still wondering whether the dress in the photo that went viral ten years ago was really blue and black or white and gold, Hurlbert has recreated the illusion in real life and can give you the definitive answer. More interesting, though, is why it divided the internet, with millions of people utterly flummoxed that they could view the same image yet see something so different. Colours are, it turns out, our 'personal possessions': real, but also something we create in our own minds, influenced by both our surroundings and our memories. So is the grass green? You'll need a philosopher to answer that, not a colour scientist or an art historian. But the viral dress wouldn't have bamboozled Monet or Turner. Orange skies, a golden cathedral, fields laid out in purple – the minds behind some of the world's greatest artworks instinctively knew that colours aren't always what they seem. Stories in Colour The National Gallery podcasts [See also: The BBC Sounds series 'Stalked' is thrilling and worrying] Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Related
Time Out
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
‘Fountain of Youth' locations: behind the scenes on Guy Ritchie's globe-trotting heist adventure
Guy Ritchie's new adventure movie, Fountain of Youth, is a globe-trotting caper in the spirit of National Treasure and that all-time classic, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. There's clues, a treasure map, stolen portraits, subsea wrecks and a powerful McGuffin that people will die to keep safe – and that John Krasinski's artefact hunter will risk it all to pinch. A Quiet Place 's Krasinski plays Luke Purdue, an adventurer who teams up with his reluctant sister Charlotte (Natalie Portman) on a quest to find the mythical Fountain of Youth. Domhnall Gleeson's terminally ill tycoon provides financial backing, hopeful that water from the mythical spring will cure him. Queuing up to stop them are ruthless agent Esme (Mexican star Eiza González), a detective played by Succession 's Arian Moayed, and more than is a few twists and turns. Fountain of Youth Filmed filming locations The Apple TV+ movie has Apple money behind it, which means big action set pieces and iconic international backdrops for them to play out against. We asked Guy Ritchie's long-time production designer Martyn John (The Gentleman) to talk us through the film's globe-spanning filming spots. The scooter chase – Bangkok, Thailand Fountain of Youth opens with Purdue in possession of an item that his adversaries want very badly. Cue a madcap chase through Thailand's bustling capital city as the treasure hunter tries to outrun his foes on a flaming scooter. 'Bangkok was amazing,' says John of the location. 'We shot in Chinatown and used this derelict building in another part of the city for the chase sequence with the bike. We dressed it as if people lived there – with a laundrette and a food market.' The train journey – Hua Lamphong Train Station, Bangkok The sequence ends on a train at Bangkok's main train station, where Purdue encounters the mysterious Esme for the first time. Via the magic of editing, the scene transitions from a real train to an on-set recreation. 'Because John [Krasinski] is very tall, we had to expand a train carriage on set to make it easier for us to film,' explains the production designer. 'Sections of it came off for the fight sequence.' The National Gallery painting theft – Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool For a film full of sleight of hand, it's fitting that Guy Ritchie manages to pull off one of his own: the scenes set in London aren't London at all but Liverpool. When Luke Purdue reunites with his sister and steals a painting from The National Gallery, it's actually Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery. 'Filming around Trafalgar Square is a nightmare because it's so busy,' explains John. 'We looked at other galleries around London, but the Walker Art Gallery was [perfect]: it's Georgian, it's stone, it's very similar architecturally to The National Gallery.' The London getaway chase – Dale Street, Liverpool The heist spills into another breakneck chase across London. This was filmed on Liverpool's Dale Street. 'Doing a car chase in London is nigh-on impossible,' says John. '[But] Dale Street could be anywhere in London.' The piano recital – Harrow School, London In a scene filmed at Harrow School, Purdue stops in at his nephew's piano recital. 'We wanted to go to the Royal Albert Hall, but the dates didn't work.' says John. 'The boys' school in Harrow has this amazing, semi-circular auditorium.' The Lusitania sequence – Leavesden Studios, Hertfordshire Purdue and his sister's treasure hunt leads them below the waves – or very close to them – when they board the sunken passenger liner RMS Lusitania. Rather than the southern coast of Ireland, the vessel's resting place, a section of the ship was reconstructed at Leavesden and in Pinewood's underwater tanks using hydraulics systems. 'The design is an amalgamation of the Titanic and the Lusitania,' says John, 'because we [needed a specific layout] for the stunts.' The Old Queen's Head, Islington A later encounter between Purdue and his nemesis Esme takes place in a chic London bar. Eagle-eyed Bridget Jones fans might recognise it: Islington's The Old Queen's Head also featured in Mad About the Boy earlier this year. 'You need so much space [to film] and The Old Queen's has lots of it,' says John. 'Guy [Ritchie] likes big sets with lots of depth and visual interest, so we always find those spaces for him.' The Viennese library – Austrian National Library, Vienna The trail of clues leads Purdue and co to Vienna's grand library in pursuit of an artefact called the Wicked Bible – a (real) antiquarian version of the bible with one or two scurrilous misprints. The production team looked at libraries in Paris, as well as Dublin's Trinity College library, before settling on the Austrian capital. 'We convinced them to let us film in there,' says John, 'but then I had to match it in a studio so we could do a fight sequence with our books in case they damaged them.' The Viennese hotel – Hotel Imperial, Vienna Look out for exterior shots of this five-star Viennese hotel, although the scene in its suite was filmed in the UK. 'We found an old Elizabethan house near the studio in Leavesden,' remembers John, 'and I went to town decorating it to make the suite.' The team's safe house – Hoxton Docks, east London The London safe house where Purdue and his team hole up was filmed at Hoxton Dock. 'It's a big warehouse in the East End,' says John, 'and that was a brilliant dress. We had all this technology and antiquity melded together in this one [space]'. The pyramids – Giza, Egypt Without giving anything away, the movie's climax takes its characters to the ancient pyramids at Giza. 'To be able to film with the pyramids as a backdrop was incredible, and they let us get as close as we possibly could,' remembers John. Of course, filming inside a pyramid isn't an option so he had creative license to tzujz up the ancient Egyptians' design work. Look out for a pop star Easter egg. 'I was once in a birthday cake with Grace Jones at Naomi Campbell's 40th birthday party – she was popping out of it to sing and I was working the mechanism – and I made one of the statues in the pyramid look like a Nefertiti version of Grace Jones. The actors loved that.'And the chess? 'Guy loves to play chess – they spent ages playing on set.' When can I watch Fountain of Youth? The Guy Ritchie adventure movie will be landing on Apple TV+ on May 23. Is there a trailer? There is – you can watch it below. The 101 best action movies of all time to get your blood pumping. .
Time Out
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning': a travel guide to the globe-spanning blockbuster
Ethan Hunt is back to save the world again – and this time it really needs saving. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, the eighth and biggest Mission movie yet, sees Tom Cruise's agent pushing at the boundaries of gravity and physics once again in an attempt to foil the megalomaniac plans of evil AI The Entity and its human handmaiden Gabriel (Esai Morales). Luckily, Ethan has back-up in the equally mad/daring form of Benji (Simon Pegg), Luther (Ving Rhames), Grace (Hayley Atwell), Paris (Pom Klementieff) and new guy Theo (Greg Tarzan Davis). The action, as our review will testify, is on another scale and the stakes are even higher. Fans of the franchise will not be shortchanged. Behind the scenes, the film's production story was not a lot less bananas, with the film's shoot overlapping with that of previous instalment Dead Reckoning, Hollywood strikes and about a bajillion moving parts for director Christopher McQuarrie and his stuntman star Cruise to corral into place. Here's how – and where – they did it, and how to visit the movie's incredible locations. Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning filming locations Trafalgar Square, London If there's one thing the Mission: Impossible franchise loves even more than self-destructing messages and fast-burning fuses, it's the city of London. From Brian De Palma's opening entry back in 1996, which had a key scene inside Liverpool Street Station, to Mission: Impossible – Fallout, which featured a nutso foot chase across the city's rooftops, Ethan Hunt has been parking his tanks on 007's lawn for years. Liberties, however, have been taken. Hunt's sprint across Westminster Bridge under the shadow of Big Ben is strictly by the A-to-Z, but Final Reckoning also cheekily invents an entirely new Tube station. The film opens with Hunt and his team emerging from 'Trafalgar Square Station' and into the eye of a storm. Good luck with that IRL. Nearby Charing Cross Station's agent will be having words. Travel tip: London needs little introduction but visitors looking to push the boat out and get close to the Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning action should check into the opulent Corinthia Hotel a short spring away from Trafalgar Square. It even has an espionage past of its own. A wander through Trafalgar Square will take you to The National Gallery and the historic St Martin-in-the-Field church. For extra Cruise heritage, it's here that the star hopped off that chopper in Edge of Tomorrow. Middleton Mine, Derbyshire Derbyshire hasn't had too much airtime on the big screen but this Mission: Impossible two-parter has been busy putting that right. Dead Reckoning 's climactic train crash was filmed in Darlton Quarry in the Peak District and Final Reckoning returned to the area in March 2024 to film a series of key tunnel sequences 15 miles away in Middleton Mine. Travel tip: To visit Middleton Mine you probably need to be making a blockbuster of your own – the 26 miles of limestone tunnels are not open to the public – but the mines are situated in an area of outstanding beauty that's still well worth a visit. The nearby town of Matlock, a Peak District oasis full of independent shops and restaurants, is a perfect base for walking the local limestone valleys. Longcross Studios, Surrey It's not open to the public but England's busy Longcross Studios plays a crucial role in the movie's production. The underwater scenes involving Hunt boarding sunken Russian sub The Sevastopol were all filmed in the studio's water tanks, with director Christopher McQuarrie donning scuba gear and diving in to join his star underwater. Svalbard, Norway The new Mission: Impossible also heads to the roof of the Earth for a key sequence involving a CIA listening station and that missing submarine. The scenes were filmed on the startlingly beautiful Norwegian island of Svalbard, a previously unfilmed location that brings a frostbitten isolation to the movie's middle stretch. Temperature reached -40 and hairdryers were employed on set to keep hands from freezing. 'It's a very difficult landscape to shoot in,' remembers Hayley Atwell. 'That kind of adds to the suspense and the drama of it. The sense of risk and stakes just to be able to be there filming – I think it translates beautifully on camera.' Travel tip: Far more hospitable in real life, Svalbard boasts the world's most northerly food festival and an annual jazz fest. There are flights to the island from Oslo (three hours) and Tromsø (90 minutes), and it'll take about seven hours from London. There are six hotels to pick from in the island's main town of Longyearbyen. Head to the official Visit Svalbard website for the full low-down Blyde River Canyon, South Africa The spectacular 26km-long river canyon, the third largest green canyon in the world, is the backdrop for Final Reckoning 's extraordinary aerial sequence in which Hunt and Gabriel grapple for control of a biplane – the only mode of transport that can't be hacked by the busybody AI. 'That sequence is almost like Top Gun meets Mission: Impossible – the best of both worlds,' notes stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood stunt coordinator who first suggested the location. Travel tip: The area is home turf for Eastwood – the movie's legendary stunt coordinator hails from Durban – and he recommends Kapama River Lodge as a luxe base to strike out for the area. The lodge even has its own private aircraft and airstrip for high-altitude sightseeing, although wing-walking is not encouraged. The Wild Coast, South Africa The plane sequence actually uses a patchwork quilt of South African landscapes. Alongside Blyde River Canyon, where the scene opens, the Drakensberg mountains in KwaZulu-Natal Province form the backdrop for the middle stretch, before the two adversaries soar out over the Indian Ocean above the Wild Coast. Including prep time and hundreds of hours of rehearsals at England's Duxford Airfield, the sequence took four and half months to film. Travel tip: A 155-mile stretch of dunes, rocky cliffs and plunging waterfalls, the Wild Coast is a lesser-known gem on South Africa's tourist map. Book into Mbotyi Lodge, an affordable, beachside family hotel right that's a great base for visiting Waterfall Bluff, a stunning set of falls which appear in the movie. A more opulent alternative base is Umngazi hotel and spa. When is Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning in cinemas? You can catch it in worldwide cinemas – and in IMAX – now. Watch the trailer below.
