Paige Hunter Blog

In the heart of Hong Kong, a block away from the Lan Kwai Fong entertainment district, a group of mainly white-collar workers gathers regularly to learn kung fu.

Banish any thoughts of flying fists at the office water dispenser, though. Nima King, head instructor at Mindful Wing Chun in the city’s Central district says more than half the studio’s clients attend classes to bring balance to their busy lives. Over 80 per cent of clients are office workers.

Mindful Wing Chun, as its name implies, aims to teach the martial art in a way that emphasises mindfulness - being in the present and in touch with your body to maintain overall health and wellness, King says.

Research tells us our minds can often be elsewhere as a result of stress at work or in other areas of our lives. Any build-up of stress leads to health problems – including poor posture in the case of many office workers. King says wing chun offers a holistic remedy to the problem.

“In my opinion, wing chun is the essence of correct and efficient movement,” he says, “meaning the minimum use of muscular force to get the maximum result. For anyone learning this type of wing chun, no matter what they want to achieve – pain relief, stress relief, self-defence – they have to come through the root of mindfulness. When we are mindful of the body, we are able to tap into the muscles and relax them. Once we achieve this, the joints are freer and we move more efficiently.”

This is why everyone, from professional athletes to housewives, can benefit from mindful wing chun practice, says King.

Wing chun has had a resurgence in recent years thanks to the Ip Man action films, in which the legendary martial artist has been portrayed by Donnie Yen Ji-dan and Tony Leung Chiu-wai. The films have been “a big buzz” for Mindful Wing Chun, says King, because the studio has a direct link to the grandmaster’s lineage. King came to Hong Kong 10 years ago to train under Chu Shong-tin, an associate of Ip. The two Guangdong immigrants lodged together in Hong Kong and Chu was among Ip’s senior instructors before opening his own school.

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Chu was giving a seminar in Australia in 2004 when King met him by answering the call for a volunteer to join him on stage.

“I was young and doing weights, and he was a very skinny old man. He said, ‘hold strong [onto my arm] and let me demonstrate something’. I thought, ‘I’m not going to hold as tight as I can; I don’t want to show him up in front of everyone’. Then he threw me with just a very small movement.”

This was a turning point for King, whose family had immigrated to Australia from Iran when he was 10, and who took up wing chun for self-defence. Meeting Chu made him understand there was far more to the martial art than brute strength.

“I was blown away. I thought, ‘I’ve got to go [to Hong Kong] and train directly under him’. So I started saving up and in six months, in 2005, I moved here,” King says.

He began training intensively alongside other students in Chu’s Prince Edward home, and continued to do so until Chu died last year. Photos on the wall of the Mindful Wing Chun studio depict Chu giving demonstrations. Older images show Chu with Ip and other students, while another portrays Ip and his most famous disciple, Bruce Lee.

King and his fellow instructors follow Chu’s tactile method of teaching, constantly correcting students’ posture to help them find their centre of balance and assess how the body feels, so any unnecessary muscular tension can be released.

Central to wing chun is the cultivation of nim lik, or the “fountain of youth”, which King defines as “the power gained from a highly focused mind”. It is reminiscent of qigong, another Eastern system, which cultivates what scientists now equate to the body’s electromagnetic energy.

Nim lik is cultivated by practising siu nim tao - “little thought” - the first and foremost form of wing chun. Ip nicknamed Chu the “king of siu nim tao”, King says, because of his mastery of this internal aspect.

To demonstrate siu nim tao, King instructs me how to stand appropriately and then, by gently squeezing certain muscles, I imagine the energy of nim lik moving up my spine and exiting like a fountain at the top. When King puts a hand on my abdomen and another on my upper back, and pushes, I feel my internal energy intensify and, incredibly, my body resists any pressure King exerts on me. Perhaps, as the Zen riddle goes, you’ll only understand it when you stop trying to rationalise it.

The mindfulness in wing chun “is basically what scientists are calling the flow state”, King says, referring to a mental state in which a person is fully immersed in a feeling of energised focus.

King says he knows of no other studio in Hong Kong emphasising the internal aspect of wing chun.

Many wellness disciplines talk of relaxation, but don’t tell you how to achieve it, he adds.

“A lot of people, when they’re sitting on the sofa, will say, ‘I’m relaxed’, but it’s not mindful. In my opinion, relaxation like this is just compression, rather than a mindful relaxation, which is opening and expansion.”

There are various types of class available at Mindful Wing Chun, including forms (not unlike tai chi practise), dynamics (fighting and self-defence) and an all-inclusive general class. Private lessons are also available. All types of class focus on mindfulness, however. “We don’t know how else to teach wing chun,” King says.

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The best foundations are a bit like the perfect winter sweater: They add comfort without weight; they cover flawlessly, smoothing as they go; and no matter how we layer them, they refuse to shed or wear thin. What more could one ask for?

Moisture. And lots of it. With December’s frosty arrival hitting especially hard—sneaking in, as it did, on the heels of a blissfully mild November—our skin is even tighter than usual at this time of year. So beyond upgrading to a richer face cream, we’ve begun seeking hydration in the form of foundation—because, as it turns out, those with ingredients like ceramides, oils, antioxidants, and humectants “can actually improve dry skin over time by keeping the skin’s barrier healthy and intact so it better retains water in the long-term,” says New York City dermatologist Amy Wechsler, who’s loyal to Chanel Vitalumière Aqua for its hefty dose of hyaluronic acid and natural-looking light reflection. A creamy base can also act as a shield, explains dermatologist Whitney Bowe, saving skin from parching winds and lipid-depleting pollutants. Her go-to, Giorgio Armani Lasting Silk UV Foundation SPF 20, softens with squalane while delivering medium coverage and sun protection.

According to makeup artist Nick Barose, who works regularly with Lupita Nyong’o and Rachel Weisz, a key consideration when selecting foundation for dry skin is the finish it imparts. “A liquid foundation is your best bet, as anything thicker can crack as it sets, making skin look flakier,” he says. The most indispensable dry-skin formulas in Barose’s kit include Koh Gen Do Aqua, a water-drenched mineral makeup that he says “turns skin luscious”; Lancôme’s “ultra-hydrating and easy-to-build” Miracle Cushion; and Clé de Peau Beauté Radiant Fluid, which is “thin but gives good coverage and an authentic radiance.”

And as with most makeup techniques, an impeccable winter-skin finish is best achieved with a bit of prep work, particularly on the most parched days. “I put a drop of Weleda Skin Food on a cotton swab and gently roll it over dry spots—it’s kind of magical the way it erases flakes,” says makeup artist Romy Soleimani, who praises RMS Beauty’s “Un” Cover-Up Foundation for its nourishing coconut-oil base and easy blending. To keep the color looking fresh, she mists Caudalíe’s oil-infused Beauty Elixir over the top, lightly pressing it in with a dampened Beautyblender. In lieu of ordinary moisturizer, Barose uses Sisley Express Flower Gel Hydrating Mask as a luxuriously intensive foundation primer, massaging it in for five minutes, then blotting off residue before smoothing on base to seamless effect.

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Pregnancy is not a time of high glamour. Quite the opposite, really, when you consider the swelling limbs, pock marks, breathlessness, exhaustion and sleeping only on your left side, which leaves half of your body as tender as a bruise. Still, if you’ve seen Beyoncé in burnt orange at the MTV Awards or Angelina Jolie swathed in forest green chiffon at Cannes, it’s difficult to quash the notion that those 40 weeks of expanding stomach should represent something of a fashion opportunity.

In fact, most celebrities are a terrible source of maternity-style inspiration. One or two red carpet appearances, stitched into a couture dress, does not equate to 40 weeks of waddling to work, hoping that your elasticated pregnancy jeans don’t fall down. According to the conspiracy theories of one Los Angeles doctor, a staggering amount of celebrities aren’t really up the duff, anyway; the use of prosthetic bumps is rife in Hollywood, he claims. Obviously, when such rumours reared their heads about Kardashian she addressed them the 2015 way – with a naked selfie.

Unlike most celebrities, Kardashian is photographed almost daily – clearly, spending weeks watching Scream Queens while mainlining cornflakes is not an option with 53.2 million Instagram followers to entertain. And while recreating her exact wardrobe of Balmain and Givenchy would require Kardashian-levels of time, money and contacts, there are lessons in gumption for everyone.

1. Channel Girls Aloud circa 2004

Kardashian has made it her business to swathe her bump in the kind of stretchy fabric last seen in the Girls Aloud Love Machine video – and she looks all the better for it. She wore bodycon in the early months, when baby bumps tend to look more post-Pret bloat than earth mother, and she’s sticking to it in the third trimester, too, a time when most in the public eye wear apologetic, tent-like smocks if they leave the house at all. Bodycon can be more forgiving than it sounds when styled, the Kardashian way, under a loose outer layer. In the real world, try going a couple of sizes up in a basic H&M tube dress and plonk on a denim shirt or duster coat.

2. Be yourself – literally

Obviously, no selfie-respecting social media star would pass up the opportunity to pose nude with a bun in the oven – although when Kardashian did it she bolstered her own social media following with the image, rather than doing it to flog copies of Vanity Fair, which would be totally 1991. Never one to hide her light under a bushel, Kardashian’s clothes have been revealing, too, featuring see-through fabrics, bra tops and racy cut-outs. Though a few charming wags on social media have taken to “fat” shaming her for such a brazen display, she doesn’t seem to give a stuff. In October, she laughed louder in the face of pregnancy style criticism, wearing a dizzyingly meta Halloween costume: she dressed up as herself at the Met Ball in 2013, the last time she was pregnant, when the internet decided she looked like a sofa. Dressing up as yourself is remarkably easy to achieve when you are not famous, too, though few are likely to get the joke; the true lesson here is to ignore the pressure to suddenly “dress like a pregnant person”. For you, that could mean channelling Kanye, not Kim, in Doc Martens, maternity jeans and an oversized, longline jumper – whatever you wear, it doesn’t need to be demure.

3. Try monotoning

All of Kardashian’s seemingly outlandish outfits have one thing in common: slavish devotion to a single hue. Kardashian might wear chiffon dresses with cleavage for weeks, but the look will be head to toe black. Or she’ll wear beige-on-beige, in a skin-tight midi dress with a duster coat, or grey-on-grey in the same silhouette. (Added duster coat bonus: the type that are designed to be worn open will still fit when you are no longer pregnant.) All in all, monotoning is polished, flattering and offers further proof that Kanye is a really good stylist. Add an oversized choker and an eye-roll at the haters, and you’re done.

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It’s time to play a little hide and seek with your clothes. After all, sheer panels are everywhere and in every possible fabric too.

With many celebrities like Sonam Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, Malaika Arora Khan and others being spotted wearing sheer outfits, the fashion community feels it’s a refreshing facelift to an outfit.

Designer Rahul Mishra, who has always used sheer panels in almost all his collections till date, says that the juxtaposition of sheer and opaque panels does wonders. “I love working with organza, Indian handloom, khadi and sheer. Having sheer panels at the hemline or waistline or the shoulders gives a modern and fluid look. In fact, it’s one of the signature elements for our collections. They look really good in jackets, saris, tops, skirts, etc. so you can experiment quite a bit. The ultimate beauty about fashion is to make it wearable, and sheer-panelled outfits do look chic,” Rahul adds.

However, some do point out that it’s not a classic trend because it doesn’t work for all body types. Designer Rick Roy says, “Sheer is badnaam for being a cover-up for fat arms or legs. It’s important to balance out the sheer in an outfit. Since it’s not a strong element, an entire sheer outfit would be over the top. You can mix and match an opaque top with a sheer skirt and vice versa.”

But most designers agree that this one is strictly for Gen Next. Designer Dev from the Dev R Nil brand says that it’s quite sporty and a breakaway from the regular mould. “Being bold and brave is so big internationally that they have pushed showing off your body to another level. Now, it has slightly trickled down to being a bit more massy. Sheer dresses do add to the glam quotient for eveningwear. However, you need to be fit and toned to carry it off, otherwise excess flab or cellulite could get highlighted. Also, if you’re not careful with the design and tailoring, there could be some wardrobe malfunctions. It’s better to keep it simple, otherwise it may look tacky.”

To avoid being uncomfortable, Rahul advises that before taking a final call, it’s better to try out your outfit while sitting because the posture is different. “If it’s an ultra short skirt, it will rise two inches higher while you are sitting. So settle on its length beforehand,” Rahul adds.

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Remember when hair contouring was all the rage and we realised that the tricks we use on our face also work incredibly well on our hair? Well, naturally, now the 2015 make-up trend of strobing has been applied to our locks - and it's definitely going to be a game changer. Welcome to the world, Hair Strobing.

Make-up strobing, as you may recall, is contouring without the darkness, illuminating without the shadows, and it's exactly the same for your hair.

The technique was developed by the team at the Andrew Jose salon on London's Charlotte Street, with colourist Nalan Derby carefully drawing a personalised hair map for each client, zoning the areas to be lifted or given depth - for example, lightening the hair around the eyes, to lift the cheekbones and brighten those peepers.



'Creating hair colour is not a "one size fits all" concept,' Nalan says. 'As there are so many different shades and tones to choose from, a bespoke and tailored colour may not be an instant thing. Your perfect colour quite often evolves from a series of journeys – which is why it is so important to create an individual path for each client. It is a process that is done together and follows an in-depth consultation.'

Similarly to contouring, hair strobing highlights where light would naturally hit the face, and adds a glow to those areas, so that strobers can draw attention to their best features, and complement those they're not too fond of with contrasting colours.

The salon uses colour that is two shades darker or lighter than clients' natural hair colour, creating a wave of light that makes hair colour pop and gives locks a glossy highlighted look that frames your face.

'Your natural hair colour and skin tone must be considered when choosing or changing your colour, which ensures your new shade complements your features,' Nalan says. 'Reflecting beauty, life and lifestyle, is also so important.'

The colourist highlights celebrities such as Gigi Hadid, Perrie Edwards and Cara Delevingne as key strobing celebrities who have got the trend down, highlighting their best features in the process.

'Jourdan Dunn has the perfect bronde, her blonde to brown ratio is the perfect balance,' Nalan says. 'The honey tones bring out her amazing complexion and she has it light in all the right places.

 Suki Waterhouse, a hair muse for many, has a natural looking shade that begins as a dark blonde and opens out in to a youthful and creamy blonde at the ends. It's a soft and natural way to incorporate lighter tones in to the hair, and this balayage technique keeps hair healthy and glossy while the contrast against her darker eyebrows really makes her eyes look big and striking

.

She also loves Cara's look, saying her blended colour 'gives her a slightly angelic look, but it also draws focus to her famous brows which stand out in contrast to her lighter hair

.'

'Gigi Hadid is a fantastic example of cool and effortless colour that lights up the face and makes the features pop,' Nalan adds. 'Her highlights are more piecey than the blended balayage we have seen over the last few seasons - it’s just the right balance of light and shade to perfectly illustrate how the strobing effect can lift the face.'

So after we've had our strobing done, can we just leave the salon and rock our look straight away? Absolutely, it's a versatile and wearable look, says Nalan, but she adds that 'the key to ensuring longevity of colour is all in the aftercare'.

She recommends the Salon Science Swiss Grape cleansing system, available from Boots, as 'the perfect partner for hair colour' as it contains potent antioxidants, which bind to the hair surface and help to revitalise and strengthen damaged or colour-processed hair.

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A few weeks ago the French artist Françoise Gilot caused a minor ruckus on the Internet when media outlets like The Guardian and Elle picked up on passages from her new book, in which the 93-year-old expressed some very behind-the-times ideas about rape.

Gilot is a well-regarded painter with work in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but she is perhaps best known for the decade (1943–53) she spent partnered with Pablo Picasso, father of two of her three children, an experience she chronicled in her best-selling 1964 memoir, Life With Picasso. She cowrote her latest book, About Women: Conversations Between a Writer and a Painter, on sale this week, with her old friend Lisa Alther, author of the ’70s feminist novel Kinflicks. (It’s worth noting that in a not-so-sisterly move, both The Guardian and Elle all but ignored Gilot’s artistic career, referring to her instead as Picasso’s “muse.”)

The new book does exactly what its subtitle suggests: It’s a faithful transcription of Alther and Gilot’s wide-ranging exchanges on the topics of womanhood, motherhood, fashion, and creativity. In less thoughtful hands, this experiment might be boring or feel sanctimonious: After all, 256 pages of uninterrupted sociological discourse is not the easiest sell. But while some sections do lag, the friends of 25 years have a provocative way of digging into whatever they’re discussing that keeps things generally interesting. And because they’ve emerged from such disparate backgrounds—Alther from backwater Tennessee, Gilot from the ranks of the French bourgeoisie—their book offers an intriguing case study into how the events of the 20th century shaped two women from two very different cultures.

Which brings me back to the controversy: The passage that most offended was part of a conversation about how French women and American women feel about being catcalled. “There’s so much violence against women here, and women feel it sets the climate for men’s violating their personal space,” asserted Alther.

“There are probably fewer rapes in France because people are less repressed,” responded Gilot. “If a man whistles at you and you smile, that oils the social wheels and eases the tension between the classes and sexes. It affirms that you both belong to the same culture. It’s a kind of give-and-take that acknowledges that the other person exists, so in that sense it’s not treating another person as an object . . . Each time a man says something to me, if I take it as an insult, then I’ll be insulted several times a day by strangers I’ll never see again. Whereas if I smile vaguely and go my way, it doesn’t cost me very much.”

It’s easy to see why the 21st-century feminist media might object. Gilot’s retro views, expressed elsewhere in the book as well, reek of a certain upper-class, white privilege that’s hard to swallow, and they implicitly suggest that women can antagonize men into sexually assaulting them. Not really the way we think about things these days. It’s also totally valid to point out that Gilot, now in her mid-90s, is probably not the right spokesperson for the thoughts and feelings of all, most, or even many French women.

But that doesn’t mean her perspective isn’t valuable. For me, About Women is most fascinating as a historical document, a real-time look at two women as they wrestle with and negotiate the tenets of modern feminism in their own lives. Gilot was born in 1921 and came of age during World War II, only after which were women in France granted the right to vote; Alther was born in 1944 and came of age in the ’60s, as second-wave feminism was beginning to grip the nation. Their points of view reflect experience of different historical events, different cultural influences, and different moments of consciousness-raising. Alther is generally apt to toe the party line; Gilot is usually quick to complicate modern notions of how to behave. She learned early that it was better to be wily and get what she wanted than to be strident and come out behind. But both are eager to discuss, to try to understand each other’s perspectives, and to try to incorporate new information into their worldviews. That kind of discourse between two women analyzing their own experiences of their own lives feels like precisely what feminists should celebrate.

In some ways we love to glamorize the origins of the women’s movement. Just look at present cultural offerings like the film Suffragette, about the women’s suffrage movement in early-20th-century Britain, or Good Girls Revolt, the new Amazon pilot about female researchers petitioning for the right to write at Newsweek in early 1970s New York. Or read Amanda Fortini’s recent essay, also in Elle, an ode to the unacknowledged feminism of the Hollywood femme fatale, a “crafty, magnetic woman who manages to maneuver around society’s constricting rules and expectations” and who “acknowledge that sexuality, however assured, can sometimes be a performance.” Fortini notes that the archetype may have arose from anxieties about rapidly changing gender roles catalyzed by World War II, the very moment, of course, when Gilot was stepping into adulthood. Can these seductresses who use their ultra-femininity to snare and manipulate men be seen as feminist icons? “The truly feminist notion, I now think,” Fortini concludes, “is to use every advantage you’ve got. A man would.”

The femme fatale makes active what Gilot suggests French women do passively as a matter of course: harness their self-presentation to negotiate the hazardous world of men. That notion that women have to walk a tightrope in order to avoid trouble is the same one invoked by the 87-year-old sex columnist Dr. Ruth Westheimer, who created a firestorm back in June when she went on NPR and claimed that a woman who gets naked with a man and gives him an erection doesn’t have the right to change her mind about having sex. She later, on Twitter, clarified that she’s “100% against rape” and compared the scenario with other “risky behavior like crossing [the] street against the light. If a driver hits you, he’s legally in the wrong but you’re in the hospital.” And it’s also essentially the same sentiment that got Chrissie Hynde, 64, into hot water in September, following the publication of her memoir, Reckless, in which the singer recounted a long-ago anecdote when, high as a kite, she went home with a crew of Hells Angels and was beaten and sexually assaulted. Later, Hynde justified her nonchalance about the episode by telling the Sunday Times, “If I’m walking around in my underwear and I’m drunk, who else’s fault can it be? If I’m walking around and I’m very modestly dressed and I’m keeping to myself and someone attacks me, then I’d say that’s his fault.”

Thank goodness we’re now teaching our daughters that sexual assault is unacceptable no matter what: how you’re dressed, if you’re drunk, how far you let things go in bed, whether you acknowledge the men who harass you in public—none of that should have any bearing on your fundamental right never to get raped.

But feminism did not spring from the womb fully formed. We can’t negate the women who grew up walking that tightrope, who fought feminism’s early battles, and who made the best of things under constraints they didn’t know might soon change. As Alther says in the book, “Every generation stands on the shoulders of the generations that precede it. That’s why I get annoyed when I hear young women repudiating feminism, even as they enjoy the rights we’ve managed to acquire.”

About Women feels progressive because it creates space for two women to question their own cultural biases, and because it acknowledges the fluidity of history. As Gilot says in the book’s last passage: “Whatever the prevalent philosophical attitudes that have come down to us as legacies from all the different cultures of the past, each age needs to reformulate them. The times are always changing, so if we have studied some philosophical systems and gone through spiritual experiences, our duty is to express these things in a way that will be appropriate for people in the present and the future.”

Perhaps Gilot has fallen a touch short of her mark on that last part. But is she a “present-day menace to modern women”? Hardly. She’s 93 years old and she has just published a thought-provoking book with her younger feminist friend about motherhood, love, sex, art, and friendship. Sounds pretty good to me.

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Taking your seat at a dimly lit table at Carbone in New York (if you’re lucky enough to get a reservation), you’re greeted with giant chunks of salty Parmesan cheese served by waiters in crimson tuxedos. Just behind them is a large cart full of fresh Italian bread, more cheeses, and a selection of cured meats and pickled vegetables. The titular Mario Carbone, chef and one-third of the restaurant group Major Food Group, clearly knows a thing or two about presentation—and delicious antipasti. He grew up cooking Italian food in his childhood neighborhood of Queens, New York; attended the Culinary Institute of America; and apprenticed at Mario Batali’s Babbo. Currently, alongside Rich Torrisi and Jeff Zalaznick, he owns and operates six of Manhattan’s most admired establishments: Parm, Santina, Sadelle’s, ZZ’s Clam Bar, Dirty French, and Carbone. The latter is one of Manhattan’s pinnacle Italian eateries, serving old-school family-style dishes and antipasti served on hefty boards, rolling carts, and colorful antique plates from Perugia.

It’s no wonder, then, that Carbone himself has the perfect collection of professional tips for putting together an antipasto spread for the holidays. As he says, “When it comes to assembling meat and cheese boards, I always go the Italian-American route—as a culture, we’ve pretty much mastered the antipasti game.” No argument there.

Here, his tips for creating an impressive board for holiday entertaining, plus all of the ingredients you need to get started:

1. Set a pretty table.

“Antipasti platters are a great opportunity to play with height and color in terms of table setting and serving pieces. I’ll keep it thematic by using just Italian-made serving pieces like Deruta and Solimene, but if your style is more rustic, you could do a mix of earthenware and wooden pieces to achieve the same effect. Use a tablecloth, have a few fresh flower arrangements, and bring out some risers or cake stands for dimension.”

2. Vary sizes and textures.

“For your meat and cheese choices, you want a variety of textures and cuts in your selections; this provides visual appeal and also signifies that there are indeed different items. Nothing is worse than a cheese platter made up of identical precut little triangles where you think you’re grabbing one cheese and it ends up being Swiss or something you dislike.”

3. Assemble your meats and cheeses.

“For my cheese board, I’ll do a little mound of Parmesan chunks, thick slices of fresh mozzarella, and a big wedge of gorgonzola dolce with a spreader stuck into it. For the meat, I’ll do cubes of mortadella alongside thinly sliced coppa and salami rosettes. Next to that, I’ll have a little vase of grissini or breadsticks that have been wrapped in prosciutto.

“On a separate board, I’ll have some hard-cured salami set with a serrated knife. I always have a few slices precut—with salami, cheeses, whatever I’m putting out—so there’s a bit of guidance as to what you’re supposed to do and guests don’t feel like they’re breaking into something so precious.”

4. Add some extras.

“It’s nice to have something to pair with each cheese. For example, with Parmesan I’ll have a really, really good balsamic to drizzle on it. Massimo Bottura’s Villa Manodori is perfect for this. Another easy accompaniment that lends itself to any cheese board is fresh and dried fruit. A bowl of fresh figs, cherries, or dried Blenheim apricots is perfect.

“You also want something to break up all of the richness of the meat and cheeses. Pickled giardiniera, olives, or brined artichokes are all great options. And finally, it’s not a true antipasti setup without stuffed B&G peppers.”

5. Have one interactive element.

“You don’t want to offer things that are difficult to assemble or that are hard to eat with a drink in your hand. But guests do enjoy a build-your-own-type dish that is a bit more substantial. I like to have a plate of grilled bread that’s been rubbed with a clove of garlic alongside a bowl of ricotta that’s been topped with some cracked black pepper, sea salt, and drizzle of really good extra-virgin olive oil. Put a spoon or spreader in the ricotta and you’re set.”

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It's a confusing time in fashion – not only with all these hirings and firings and designers jiggling about in their ever-musical chairs; but also in terms of the calendar. A week or so ago, I went into a Dior boutique in London, to paw through the wares. It's part of the job.

But I got confused. On a single rail you could see Dior's Tokyo-tinged pre-fall, the animalistic autumn/winter 2015 collection, and the fresh Frenchy checks of the label's pre-spring 2016 offering, shown in Cannes. That latter show was back in May, the former was last December, a six-month intercontinental sprawl of clothing that ends up funnelled at the same time into a boutique.

A higgledy-piggledy shop floor is becoming a regular part of the fashion landscape. Other big labels, such as Gucci, have similarly mixed-up clothes, a trilogy of collections fighting for space and attention simultaneously.

The spurious aim is seduction, the thrill of the new, which some labels insist is what customers actively come in asking for. However, I can't help but feel the message of all those catwalk shows – the original means of seducing customers – is being lost. Or maybe wilfully waylaid. Is the catwalk message important, when the stuff you see in shops ends up a melange of seasons past, present and never-before-seen? The catwalk itself is important – as the number of retailers proudly labelling garments “Runway” testifies, sales leap up when a garment has been seen there (which is one of the reasons so many labels are pumping cash into showcasing previously little-seen pre-collections with aplomb).

But does its message matter any more, or has it been relegated to a relic, like the odd, olden-days notion of fashion collections dictating hems and lines? Does anyone really want to buy into a fashion show's overriding theme – or do customers just want a free-for-all, a rack of clothes from which to pluck at will?

That feels very pragmatic – maybe even a bit pedestrian. You often expect department stores to do that sort of thing, to deflate designer messages and offer something more down-to-earth, of their own, to their customers. But fashion houses are doing the same. Maybe it's tied to the rise of the pre-collection, those previously dull, workaday clothes that we're always told now make up about 70 per cent of designers' turnover.

The danger, though, is that we're losing the essence – the stories that designers try to tell in their clothes, the emotions they try to evoke. Now I'm the one sounding old fashioned. I can't help but feel that if you totally divorce fashion from the dream, you just end up with a bunch of stuff.

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After years of stoically wearing four-inch stilettos, in recent times, fashion editors are taking pride in walking with ease, as trainers have become more fashionable – even among the manicured and glossy.

High fashion’s adoption of trainers has a lot to do with one woman – Phoebe Philo, the Céline creative director, whose pared back, androgynous designs are considered by many to be the benchmark for all that is tasteful. Philo’s determinedly feminist take on fashion has no truck with spindly heels, with the designer often seen in trainers backstage at her shows. And where Philo goes, legions of street style stars follow.

This has been a pleasant, rubber-soled revolution, but it’s not a simple question of comfort alone. Details matter when choosing trainers: the right make and model can speak volumes about the wearer’s self-image, ambitions and pop culture credentials to those in the know.

Thanks to Philo’s personal dedication to the style, fashion’s favourite trainer has recently been the crisp white Adidas Stan Smith, although the designer has worn a raft of others too, including the New Balance 574 – also worn by Rihanna and Pharrell Williams – which was hailed by the Guardian as the “fashion shoe of 2013”.

The similarly cushioned Nike Air Max has been blessed with the Philo seal of approval and seen on Dizzee Rascal and Barack Obama. Philo was also involved in the big Vans revival of 2012: Céline produced luxe slip-ons reminiscent of skater shoes, and similarly shaped trainers then became all the rage.

As should be expected from a fashion trailblazer, Philo now seems to have moved on. These days she is often seen in low-heeled, wilfully awkward-looking leather pumps of her own design. Not that Céline has abandoned the trainer – yet. One of its key styles this season is a squelchy moulded shoe that costs a very un-Adidas £530.

What Philo has been doing is capitalising on something that genuine sneakerheads have known for decades: that the right trainers tap into a sense of nostalgia, such as teenage memories of Run DMC in Adidas Superstars or Damon Albarn in Adidas Gazelles, that makes them perennially cool. True fans stay loyal to these designs for years, whereas the fashion crowd has enjoyed adopting them – and all they represent – for a season or two.

That makes Kanye West’s award-winning work for Adidas feel particularly fresh: his designs look weird, Star Wars-esque, futuristic. They are attempting to move beyond nostalgia to create a new mould.

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If winter’s chill makes your hair stand on end, there’s more at work than a tingle down your spine. Thanks to a perfect storm of dry air and friction-causing, neck-grazing sweaters, scarves, and coats, a surplus of electrons cling to us, building up positive or negative charges that cause each strand of hair to actually repel the others. Any number of moisture-sealing creams, lotions, and oils will set your situation back to normal—but why fight it?

“Flyaways aren’t your enemy,” says editorial hairstylist Tim Rogers. If you take the glass-half-full approach, the seasonal shift has provided you with the built-in wispy benefits of starchy dry shampoo or piece-y effects of salt spray. This means there are less steps standing between you and your artfully unkempt waves or evening-ready messy knot. Think of Brigitte Bardot’s lawless strands or Suki Waterhouse’s rough-and-tumble volume—minus the backcombing and aerosol hairspray.

Perhaps no one better embodies the look than French actress Lou Doillon, who posts selfies of her electrified strands and fuzzy knits, silk pajamas, and cozy sweater-coats on Instagram. It’s enough to make you want to rub your head against a balloon. “If you’re wearing your hair straight, static gives it a more bedhead-y look.” And Rogers notes that you’ll see more static with a hotter shower, warmer blow-dry, or easing up on your deep conditioning routine.

Those with extra-fine strands who find that blow-drying or slipping into a turtleneck has left them looking like, in Rogers’s words, “a science experiment,” in this case can smooth down erratic static with a lightweight cream like Living Proof’s Nightcap), or simply by pulling hair back into a lifted ponytail. “That little roughness around the hairline can be quite modern.” In other words, why beat it, when it looks so good to join it?

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