The Sunday Times Style - 28 August 2022

46 Pages·2022·14 MB·English

28 AUGUST 2022

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MEET THE MMD
HaIr
THE MINIMAL MIDI
DRESS IS YOUR NEW
WORK UNIFORM
(at any age)
PUT YOUR
PHONE DOWN!
The kidswear coverline
FIVE ARGUMENTS
TgHoEe As-L iInST t’Sh FiAsV sOpUaRIcTeE ShTeYLrIeST p lease ALL COUPLES
NEED TO HAVE
REVEALS HIS SECRETS

The Barometer
Edited by Priya Elan
Fashion! Beauty! People! Things! Welcome to your weekly guide
to the stuff everyone will be talking about. Do keep up
Ditch the baby oil
E
and grab the Kleenex! WN
O
Strippers go emo BR
M
If the striptease challenge in Love Island HO
left you feeling anxious and melancholy, T
you’re not the only one. Stripping is
officially in its emo era: we’ll soon be
getting two projects based on the life
of the Chippendales’ founder, Somen
Banerjee, who was convicted of
murder-for-hire but found dead in his
cell before sentencing. The first, Welcome
to Chippendales, is a TV miniseries starring
Kumail Nanjiani, Juliette Lewis, White
Lotus’s Murray Bartlett and Nicola Peltz
Beckham. The second, an as yet unnamed
film, will star Dev Patel. With non-cheery
jockstraps A Thing on the catwalk, thanks to
Bloomsbury Lite Gucci, Ludovic de Saint Sernin and Rick CI
C
Owens, and a TV sequel to The Full Monty U
G
comes to your living room and a new Magic Mike on their way, it’s
definitely time to play an acoustic cover of
What with the craft revival, colour’s comeback and
Ginuwine’s Pony and cry into your beer.
the temptation to paint roses on the Ikea Pax
wardrobe that haunts every bored working-from-homer, it’s
no surprise we’re going Charleston crazy right now. No, not This picture Welcome
the flapper dance — the East Sussex farmhouse of the to Chippendales.
Bloomsbury Group, where Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant Above right Channing
slathered every surface with decorative motifs. It’s an Tatum in Magic Mike
abiding inspiration for Kim Jones, the artistic director of
ures Fendi’s couture and womenswear and Dior’s menswear, both
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ner summer 2023 men’s show (top left), which had a model of the
War farmhouse on the catwalk. How to do it IRL? We’re calling it
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ON THE COVER NYOUMA, ELLA RICHARDS AND MICHELE RONSON PHOTOGRAPH LIZ COLLINS HAIR SAM MCKNIGHT STYLING DES LEWIS
NYOUMA AND ELLA WEAR VEST TOPS, £65 EACH, AND MICHELE WEARS SQUARE-NECK CAMISOLE, £245, VINCE
EDITOR LAURA ATKINSON DEPUTY EDITOR CHARLOTTE WILLIAMSON ART DIRECTOR ANDREW BARLOW FASHION DIRECTOR KAREN DACRE BEAUTY DIRECTOR SARAH JOSSEL FEATURES EDITOR PRIYA ELAN
ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR SCARLETT RUSSELL JEWELLERY DIRECTOR JESSICA DIAMOND ASSOCIATE FASHION DIRECTOR VERITY PARKER FASHION AND MERCHANDISE EDITOR FLOSSIE SAUNDERS BOOKINGS DIRECTOR AND
CREATIVE PRODUCER LEILA HARTLEY ACTING BOOKINGS DIRECTOR AND CREATIVE PRODUCER JESSICA HARRISON PICTURE EDITOR CATHERINE PYKETT-COMBES ACTING PICTURE EDITOR LORI LEFTEROVA SENIOR DESIGNER ANDY TAYLOR
JUNIOR FASHION EDITOR HELEN ATKIN STAFF WRITER AND EDITORIAL ASSISTANT ROISIN KELLY CONTRIBUTING EDITOR ALICE KEMP-HABIB CHIEF SUB-EDITOR SOPHIE FAVELL SENIOR SUB-EDITOR JANE MCDONALD
© Times Newspapers Ltd, 2022. Published and licensed by Times Newspapers Ltd, 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF (020 7782 5000). Printed by Prinovis UK Ltd, Liverpool. Not to be sold separately
The Sunday Times Style • 3
In need of lols? Heating up
Grab a ‘ha-moir’ ▲ MAX HEADROOM
The comedy memoir (the ha-moir?) The show that has
has been having a renaissance ever since provided eternal
Tina Fey’s Bossypants helped redefine hairstyle/sunglasses
the genre. Since then we’ve had lol-tastic inspo for many (Brad Pitt,
tomes from Mindy Kaling, Amy Schumer Daniel Kaluuya, Matt
and Amy Poehler. The new crop is led by Smith, we’re looking at
the Glow actress Betty Gilpin: her debut you — through pixelated
book, All the Women in My Brain (out shades) is back
September 6), is giving us Carrie Fisher ▲ DILL PICKLE
vibes. Meanwhile Ziwe, the mistress of
The flavour of now:
cringe race comedy whose talk show has
in popcorn, hummus
featured Fran Lebowitz and Phoebe
and even cocktails.
Bridgers, is bringing out The Book of
Yum — honestly
Ziwe: Iconic Commentary and (Mostly)
True Stories (September 29). This year
we’ve already had I’ll Show Myself Out ▲ MID-CALF SPORTS SOCKS
from the American stand-up Jessi Klein, The easy-to-afford street-
Judd Apatow’s Sicker in the Head, and style accessory pivot
Saturday Night Live alumna Molly
Shannon’s tragicomic Hello, Molly!.
Time to add “bust a gut laughing” to
your reading list.
▲ ISLE OF TAN
You can now get the tan
that turned Ryan Gosling
into Barbie’s Ken, courtesy
of Isle of Paradise
Cooling down
▼ SANDALWOOD
Everything in men’s
beauty smells like
sandalwood now.
This picture Can we have a new
Lisboeta. Left Nuno scent, please?
Mendes and his
arroz de marisco
▼ REMAKE FATIGUE
Deliciosa! Portuguese Working Girl?
A League of Their Own?
food is having a momento
Get some new ideas!
Bom dia, foodies! This summer, Portuguese cuisine has ▼ UBER-LAYERING ora
n
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4 • The Sunday Times Style
The Barometer
One more thing …
For anyone in need of some real self-care, this bracelet by
Van Cleef & Arpels is surely it. Infinitely better than any
mindfulness app, it combines the jeweller’s signature Perlée style
with diamonds and yellow gold. Wear with everything from a little
black dress to a plain white T-shirt. This beauty speaks for itself.
Perlée Couleurs bracelet in yellow gold with lapis lazuli and
diamonds, £18,800; vancleefarpels.com
Artists
uke
Saint L
hesi at
ucc
Stefania L Photograph Rodrigo Carmuega Styling Flossie Saunders
gn:
Set desi
The Sunday Times Style • 5

‘I thought I’d
bring the whole
show down!’
Instead Sarita Choudhury became the standout star of And Just
Like That…, playing sex-bomb singleton Seema. The actress talks to
Polly Vernon about finding fame at 56 and why she couldn’t resist
her new role as a burlesque dancer (in, yes, Benidorm)
It would be reasonable to say that Sarita Choudhury — from pain to be a burlesque dancer or a woman who isn’t
the 56-year-old actress of Indian and English descent, married and doesn’t have kids? Like, who gives a shit?”
whose star ascended with giddying rapidity eight short Choudhury got the role while swimming in the
months ago when her turn as the real estate agent Seema Atlantic off the coast of Spain with the film’s director, her
Patel in the Sex and the City reboot And Just Like That… friend Isabel Coixet, who casually said to her: “I have this
proved the breakout role of the series — is happy with thing I want you to do. You’re going to say no.”
her fabulous new circumstances. Reverse psychology! She was playing you, I say.
“This? Right now?” she says. “I lie in bed and I don’t “Oh, I should have talked to you first!”
know what’s happening! I don’t even know how to talk Having watched the film, it’s not difficult to imagine
about it. If I talk about it, I sound like a show-off. If casting Alex required a little gentle manipulation on Coix-
I don’t talk about it, I feel like I’m going to explode. et’s part. It’s an intensely — if delicately — sexy part, one
I just want to grab someone and be like, do you realise entirely suited to Choudhury’s general demeanour, but
what’s happening to me?” still: Alex is a big, exposing ask of an actress. Early in the
She has worked consistently but relatively quietly for film, for example, Alex performs her signature act: dressed
the past 30 years, from her straight-out-of-film-school in ridiculous heels and a leather basque, she swings and
casting opposite Denzel Washington in the 1991 film vacillates across a stage, before lovingly producing a
Mississippi Masala, through a recurring role as Saul loooong string of pearls from a part of her anatomy which
Berenson’s wife, Mira, in Homeland (2011–2017). Now is … off camera, let’s say. The scene is vulnerable and beau-
Choudhury finds herself suddenly rather famous, recog- tiful and utterly lewd: how hard was it to do?
nised on the street, with the kind of professional heat
more usually associated with a 22-year-old ingenue fresh
off the back of a breakthrough rom-com. “On the work
level you suddenly have access to stuff that you never did
and it comes to you more easily. Then, on the streets,
there’s just a lot of love because And Just Like That… is
so beloved. You entered their lives. It’s strong.”
All this comes to Choudhury at an age when women
historically have been brutally written off our screens.
“When you’re in your late thirties, early forties, they’re
like, ‘It’s going to get harder, you’re going to play mum
roles. Be ready!’ [Now] I’m thinking, I can’t believe I
listened to that bullshit! I’m having the time of my life!”
We’re Zooming. Choudhury is beautiful and animated
in her New York apartment, all hair and charm and
palpable excitement. Our official business is her new film:
It Snows in Benidorm, a tender, weird, indie love story, in
which she stars opposite the British actor Timothy Spall.
She plays Alex, a performer in Benidorm’s burlesque club
scene, a role she loved because “usually in scripts,
everything has to be explained: the backstory, the pain
you come from. And the fact that you don’t have to come
8 • The Sunday Times Style
This picture Sarita
Choudhury.
Opposite With
Sarah Jessica
Parker in And Just
Like That …
“Hard. Nonstop — three, four days of choreography. crutch. You can turn away from the character, you can
I remember when we were ready for action, I was in the blow.” She mimes again. “It’s a great movement. I love it.”
curtains, there was an audience. I remember Isabel Of course I want to know all about Choudhury’s expe-
ork looking at me, going ‘You ready?’ Me thinking, how can I rience of And Just Like That… , for example: how does it
Netw be ready to come out from the curtains in this outfit and feel to be labelled the breakout star of one of the biggest
me perform for these people?” shows of the year?
wti As a character Alex is both like yet completely unlike “Weird. You read that about other people but you
o
Sh Seema Patel, the driven, successful, exquisitely dressed don’t think it would ever be about you. When you do read
©
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man, Also: both women smoke a lot, I say. You alone?
Slo “Yes! Every line it’s like: take a drink …” Choudhury “Yes. Seema is … You have to start at number 10 with
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The Sunday Times Style • 9
From left Choudhury with Mandy Patinkin in Homeland; in her first film, Mississippi Masala, 1991; with Timothy Spall in It Snows in Benidorm
I choose not to ask, as many journalists before have, about married to the father of her daughter, Maria. How easy was
the notion that her inclusion in the new cast, along with it to embody Seema’s contemporary singleness?
that of three other non-white actors, is a clumsy, in itself “I have been single. I was in a relationship for a long time,
problematic attempt to address retrospective observations but then …” She trails off and I quietly fill in the gaps: she
that Sex and the City is painfully non-diverse. I’m white: was married to Maria’s father, that marriage ended, now
really, what right do I have to interrogate a woman of colour she’s with someone else and the reason biographical details
on the ideological purity of her role choices? Absolutely on her are sketchy is because that’s how Sarita Choudhury
none. Also, if you ask me, giving oxygen to the suggestion likes it. She won’t tell me with whom she is now involved;
that Choudhury was cast for any reason other than pure she is, however, happy to talk in an opaque way about the
talent is insulting to the point of problematic, not to nature of attraction. “I would always have a crush on the guy
mention utter nonsense. who was fixing the lightbulb on the film set.”
Instead, I ask about the pressure, or ignominy, of Seema’s We talk more about whether the perception of women of
character being received as a substitute for Samantha Jones. her age is truly changing in TV and film. Is the break-
Depending on who you ask, Kim Cattrall wasn’t asked or through of her and, say, Hannah Waddingham (Ted Lasso’s
refused to reprise her role as the magnificently single Emmy- winning fortysomething Rebecca) and even Gillian
Samantha in And Just Like That…; Seema’s resplendent, Anderson (arguably more established, with more opportu-
empowered singleness was inevitably interpreted by some nities as an actress in her fifties than she ever had in her
as a replacement. early twenties) evidence things are finally getting better for
“I think my close friends [would] be like, ‘Does it annoy actresses in that, and by extension, all age brackets, and if
you when they do that?’ I don’t know how to tell them I’m so: why? “It feels so good that it’s a possibility. Although, the
kind of honoured. Because I love Samantha in the show. I other day, I was like, shit, man, I’m going to have to do my
thought she was so ballsy in every sense. That’s another sit-ups and my push-ups and it’s a pain in the ass. I have to
character [like Seema] that could have gone wrong. And wear all those dresses.”
somehow she played it in this perfect way, like a panther. I Speaking of which: “I’ve never experienced clothes like
have to say, part of me is honoured.” this! Usually if you do a show, even if you’re playing an
I tell her easily one of my favourite moments of the series expensive character, they can’t afford to get everything. So
is the scene in which Seema tells off Carrie, after Carrie imagine: not only designers who are sending stuff, but two
“congratulates” her for “still being out there” on the dating costume designers who are amazing, who go to Paris
scene, a statement as patronising as it is ageist as it is a [before filming] and pull [all the samples]! So you walk into a
transparent expression of Carrie’s fear about putting herself room that’s very beautiful, and colour and hats and all of
back out there. “That scene was my favourite scene. I love Sarah Jessica’s clothes. The fact they went for cream and
that Sarah Jessica went for it, then was caught in it. A white and brown with me! Who puts a brown girl in brown?
different actor may not have gone so strong, so that their No one — but they did. I really liked their thinking.”
character wouldn’t be embarrassed by it, but she let that As for series two, any hints on what to expect? “I would,
moment happen.” except I don’t know. Sarah Jessica, Cynthia and Kristin
Biographical details on Choudhury are sketchy. She was probably are privy to more because they’re also producers
born in London, raised all over the world by her English and because they are who they are. But I’m not.”
mother, Julia, and her Indian scientist father, Prabhas Fine, I say, I’ll wait. One last question: in the It Snows in
Chandra Choudhury (her accent is as American as Seema’s); Benidorm burlesque dance, when Alex produces her pearls,
she trained in dance, before formally taking up acting at they’re not actually coming from … where they’re supposed
university. She is, as far as I could ascertain from Google, to come from, are they? “No! Fake! That’s everyone’s first
thought. I was like: well, there’s no way! And Isabel was like,
‘Of course not!’ The amount of rigging was hilarious.
It feels good that things are
Imagine a fishing rod, like the reel, placed on my back, with
improving for actresses of all a string that went to one side …” She demonstrates with her
hands. “Half of doing sexy is praying the pearl isn’t going to
ages – but doing my sit-ups and burst from the string.” ■
push-ups is a pain in the ass
It Snows in Benidorm is in cinemas nationwide from Friday
10 • The Sunday Times Style