We arrived at Gare de Marseille-Saint-Charles just in time for the day’s peak temperature. Marseille wasn’t an escape from the heatwave, but somehow heat makes more sense near water. One final climb up a never-ending staircase before we could jump into the Mediterranean. Packing light was a nice thought. Not a realistic one. Plage des Prophètes was our closest beach. An eclectic crowd. All ages. A DJ blasting 2000s Top 40. It’s Fête de la Musique here too. 5 PM and still hot

“Don’t call him right away, just wait till you are done and look bored doing it.” I’ve heard this voice, only to figure out minutes later that it’s mine.

There was a time when self-care meant doing less. Taking a bath, cancelling plans, going for a walk, getting an early night. Somehow, it became another area of our lives to optimise. Sleep has a score. Steps have a target. Stress has a graph. Food has macros, workouts have zones, and even rest can be measured according to how efficiently our bodies have recovered from the day before. Wellness, once imagined as an escape from productivity culture, has quietly adopted its langu

On body odour, dating standards, and why basic hygiene suddenly became controversial.

One of my favourite quotes from a film that fascinated me when I was younger, Tuck Everlasting, says: “Don’t fear death, fear the unlived life.” This quote, although simple, has stayed with me for so many years. And although I couldn’t fully understand it before, I kept repeating it to myself. Lately, it has started to appear more frequently in my mind. I would think of it while taking a walk or while working, and it would come to me out of nowhere while preparing breakfast.

There’s something refreshing about a woman who knows exactly who she is and has no intention of making herself smaller for anyone else. Meet Aria Vega, the Colombian singer bringing the sounds, sensuality and unapologetic spirit of Barranquilla to the world. From her breakout track CHÉVERE to a Latin GRAMMY nomination and Paris Fashion Week, Aria is making waves while staying fiercely connected to her roots. Her world of Costeñita Core is all about Caribbean identity, maximal

I have this little tradition where every New Year’s Eve, I write down my resolutions for the year ahead. And for the past few years, the same one keeps making its way back onto the list: Stop seeking male validation.

Why is saying no to a drink still treated like a personality defect? Let's discuss the idiotic social expectation that getting drunk is the definition of having fun, the nights I've never quite understood, and why I'd rather wake up with my memories, my mornings, and my life intact. Forgive me for thinking there's more to a good time than losing control of yourself. And I promise I'm not the boring one….

The other night, I was sitting in bed, staring at my phone, wondering why I couldn't just call the person I fancy and say, “I don't want us to be weird with each other.” It was such a simple thing to do, and yet somehow it felt impossible. I could text him, wait for him to text me, reread our last conversation, ask my friends what they thought he meant, check whether he was online, and probably conduct a small-scale FBI investigation into the punctuation he used, but actually

Two months after The Atlantic announced ‘The End of Reading Is Here’, beauty and lifestyle influencer Alix Earle gushed to Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine that she had “never read a book”.

Someone once famously told me, shouting into the ether of an overcrowded room, “Politics is like LA for ugly people!” And as I sipped an eye-wateringly expensive gin and tonic, I started to ponder whether that might be changing within our current zeitgeist.

The tech bros have a crush on fashion, and like most people with crushes, they're trying, to say the least. However, putting Kylie Jenner in Meta AI glasses feels a bit like putting a supermodel next to fast cars in a beer commercial from the 80s. No shade to King Kylie, but her placement in this arena feels like superficial signalling of It Girl status, in exactly the same way an 80s beer commercial thought it could signal manhood by parking a supermodel next to a fast car.

A funk isn't a mood. It's the distance between you and yourself, and every piece of self-care advice you've ever ignored is a way of closing it. I love my birthday, I really do. I tell people I don't care about it, which is a lie I've told for years with total commitment. I love a second margarita at Ellie's bar in East London without a flicker of guilt. I love buying a new dress to wear on the night and maybe twice more, except my birthday is in September, so its second outi

Over the last couple of months, I've been lucky enough to intern as an editorial copy editor for this magazine. What an honour. I have worked with countless confident, inspirational women who write with awe-inspiring intelligence and emotional literacy. The pride the Roe girls have as women in today's society is incredible. With full transparency, I sometimes pinch myself that I get to be part of such a community. With that said, I like to consider myself like them, but most

I spent years chasing the next version of my life. Then I started wondering what would happen if I finally stopped. For as long as I can remember, there has always been something I wanted. Sometimes it was something material, sometimes something emotional: a thing, a person, an opportunity, a dream or a version of myself that I thought would finally make me happy. I could spend months, sometimes years, working towards something and imagining how different I would feel once I