In the heat of the moment 🌞
Several cities in India have been hit by a severe heatwave, with Mumbai recording the highest temperature in the last 10 years at 39.7 degrees Celcius 🥵 It’s no surprise that climate change is real and is happening in real-time. In another part of the world, a place like Dubai is seeing heavy rainfall and record flooding. While some speculate that this is the result of cloud seeding (a weather manipulation technique that modifies clouds to produce more rain/snow), experts suggest that this seems more likely to be a result of our changing climate.
On a lighter note, as India anticipates more torrid heat, here are some ways you can combat the sweltering summers.
A face mist or refillable mist bottle can be instantly rejuvenating, especially if you are at work, in school or just on the go. Mario Badescu, Caudalie, and Forest Essentials offer some great facial mists. Or you can also indulge in some sheet masks to wind down at home!
Wear light-coloured linens. The light-weight and airy material will keep you cool, check out some at Uniqlo, they have a new line dedicated exclusively to this evergreen and sustainable fabric.
Invest in a cooling neck fan! I first came across these when I was vacationing in Italy last summer and noticed a bunch of fellow tourists wearing these to the beat the scorching Italian heat. From afar they looked like sleek headphones worn around the neck but on closer inspection, you can see the vents that blow the air on you.
H2O and coconut water may keep you hydrated but once in a while, you need a fun drink. Enter, Bartisans. They sell mixers that make it so easy to concoct your favourite cocktails/mocktails at home, with lower calories and better ingredients than drinks from elsewhere.
Bellissima!
Milan Design Week 2024 is underway and a lot of the major fashion houses are displaying their furniture and homewares across the design capital of the world. From Gucci’s new creative director, Sabato De Sarno, we saw a collection in Gucci’s classic ‘Ancora red’ shade. Loewe presented a variety of hanging and table lamps, in different abstract shapes and colours. Other brands like Fendi, Diesel, MCM, Ralph Lauren, Dolce & Gabbana and Loro Piana presented a range of couches, sofas and armchairs. For Thom Browne’s first foray into Milan Design Week, the designer showcased cotton sateen bed linens and sleep masks.
A major trend I noticed across designers and collections, was the inclination towards using natural materials like wood, bamboo, marble and natural fibres being favoured over synthetic materials. Bottega Veneta created an entire display of Japanese technique inspired scorched-wood finish stools stacked on top of each other, whereas Loewe’s lamps were made of bronze, onyx, bamboo, glass and oak. While Thom Browne used cotton, Issey Miyake’s carpets were crafted with bamboo skewers. Fendi’s coffee tables were made with wood and marble, and Zegna completely dedicated its display to its reforestation project.
As for a design concept that was explored by many were rounded and bulbous furniture pieces. From Lora Piana, MCM and Gucci to local Italian furniture brands like Parla and Poltrona Frau, home furnishings, especially sofas are about to be all about the curves.
Speaking of home decor, Zara Home is setting sights to open its first store in India this year in Bangalore! The company Inditex, that’s bringing Zara Home to India will also be setting up clothing brand Bershka’s first Indian store in Mumbai this year as well. Until then, if you are in store for the latest in fashion, Victoria Beckham’s collab collection with Mango comes out on the 23rd of April, online and in stores!
Watch out
A quick glance at the best shows/movies/trailers that released this week, that you should add to your watchlist if you haven’t already…
Anyone But You (Netflix) - Fret not if you missed the most talked about rom-com of recent times because it’s now streaming for your viewing pleasure!
Fallout (Prime Video) - Based on the role-playing video game franchise of the same name, fans approve of this TV adaptation of the action-packed game, set in a post apocalyptic world.
The Greatest Hits (Disney Plus) - A romantic fantasy movie where certain songs enable a girl to travel back in time to relive memories. Starring Lucy Boynton and David Corenswet aka DC’s newly anointed Superman!
Ripley (Netflix) - Andrew Scott and Dakota Fanning star in this neo-noir thriller series based on the crime novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley. Scott is too convincing as the con man and he is for sure nabbing some hardware when awards season comes back around.
Civil War (in theatres) - Set in a dystopian world where a civil war has broken out. Starring Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny (of Priscilla fame) and Nick Offerman.
X-Men ‘97 (Disney Plus) - This animated series following the events of the X-Men show that aired in 1997 came out on the 20th of March but since an episode was released this week (as it does every Wednesday), technically I can mention this here! My reason for bringing it up, SPOILER ALERT, Professor Charles Xavier is back! The show ended in 1997 following the character’s death but he makes a return in this week’s episode. Catch up with the series as it is a well made reboot and evokes a sense of old school, classic, comic book storylines and characters.
Hit Man (trailer) - Glen Powell and Adria Arjona bring their A game to this trailer and it looks like a sure shot entertainer with Powell playing a police officer disguised as a, you guessed it, hit man. It will release on Netflix on June 7th.
Pretty Little Liars: Summer School (trailer) - The PLL reboot is back with its second season. It premieres on Max on May 9th.
Now You See Me 3 (announcement) - Not a release or trailer but a new NYSM installation is in development and all of the original cast is returning, which makes this worth mentioning! The first two movies are well loved and were huge successes, so naturally fans are highly anticipating the next heist despite no release date yet. Joining the cast (Jesse Eisenberg, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco, Woody Harrelson) are Justice Smith, Dominic Sessa and Ariana Greenblatt (in awe of the 16 year old’s decorated filmography: Avengers Infinity War, Ahsoka, Barbie). Can’t wait to see what the four horsemen get up to! You can watch the first two movies on Prime Video.
Like Ariana Greenblatt, another young starlet is adding another feather to her cap. Rachel Zegler (West Side Story, Snow White, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes) is set to join Kit Connor (Heartstopper, Rocketman) as Broadway’s new Romeo and Juliet! The original score will be by Grammy winning producer and long-time collaborator of Taylor Swift, Jack Antonoff.
Need for speed
It’s race week and Formula 1 is back racing in China at the Shanghai International Circuit! This is the first race back here in 5 years as Covid restrictions left it out of the F1 calendar. This race also marks the first Sprint Race of the season which means that there was just one practice session on Friday, followed by the qualifying session for the sprint. While there is historical data for this track where F1 has been coming since 2004, it could still be a testing time for the drivers due to limited on-track practice and the rains, and also a challenge for the younger drivers who have never raced on this track before.
The sprint qualifying saw McLaren’s Lando Norris topping the time charts in the rainy session, which gives him pole position for the sprint. He will be alongside fellow Brit, and the last Chinese Grand Prix winner Lewis Hamilton on the front row in P2. The top 10 will look like this on Saturday, closing out with local favourite, Chinese driver Zhou Guanyu.
Saturday’s weather is also predicted to be wet, so drivers will have to be careful in being in control of their cars in slippery conditions. Sunday is predicted to have clear skies though, so we’ll have to wait and see if Championship leader Max Verstappen and Red Bull continue their reign. The sprint race on Saturday (8:30AM IST) will be followed by the qualifying session (12:30PM IST) for the race. The race will take place on Sunday at 12:30PM IST, you can watch it on F1TV or Fancode in India.
All’s fair in love and poetry
It’s Taylor Swift’s world and we are all living in it. After living it up at Coachella with boyfriend Travis Kelce, and heavily influencing Ryan Gosling’s All Too Well-inspired Saturday Night Live monologue (PS, he did a brilliant job hosting, watch all the skits here), Taylor’s highly anticipated 11th studio album (the most pre-saved album in Spotify’s history!), The Tortured Poets Department, was released at midnight on Friday. The precursor to this was a week full of clues and easter eggs, in classic Taylor Swift fashion (you can get a deep dive into this by checking the ‘Tortured Poet’ story highlights on Hyperlinked’s Instagram page!) Amongst these clues, Swifties found evidence for a double-album theory. And lo and behlod, it turned out to be true! At 2AM, two hours after the release of her album, Taylor released a second album called The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology. The standard album consisted of 16 songs and this one had another 15 new songs. 31 new songs in total!
Now, as you can imagine, Friday to Saturday (when this newsletter goes live) is a rather limited turnaround time for this tortured poet to not just process these songs herself but also provide you with a review. So, while I spend some more time in the department, I leave you with this, my biggest takeaway from The Chairman of The Tortured Poets Department.
So many deep lyrics and intense feelings (and some mild teasing) in 31 songs but what stood out to me was the song Taylor chose as her album closer. The last track, ‘The Manuscript' talks of the narrator (or shall I say poet?) revisiting the manuscript of an old relationship. The first verse includes direct quotes from possibly a real conversation between two lovers. The second verse mentions a few instances that point out the age difference between them. By the bridge, a well-versed listener of Swift would quickly understand that this song is referencing the doomed relationship that led her to writing the song 'All Too Well'. That song is the manuscript. The song that is widely considered the quintessential Taylor Swift song. Her magnum opus.
All Too Well, track 5 (known to be Swift’s most personal/gut-wrenching/heart-breaking track on her albums) from her 2012 album Red, was 5-and-a-half minutes long, deeply anecdotal and not considered radio-friendly at all. Yet the Swifties related to it and showed it love. More love than Taylor or anyone could have ever imagined for a track that was not promoted or treated differently. So much so, that Swift performed it at the following Grammy Awards because of her fans’ requests even though it was one of the more difficult songs for her to perform live because of the memories/pain it brought up, and it would often leave her crying. But a teary-eyed Taylor, on that stage alone with a piano, got a well-deserved standing ovation from the audience.
Swifties found out that the song’s original cut was 10 minutes long and had been asking Taylor to release it ever since. Cut to 2021, Taylor decides to re-release her albums to own her masters that were stolen from her, and she comes out with Red (Taylor’s version), and once again as an ode to her fans, releases the 10-minute version of All Too Well accompanied by a short film she directed herself (referenced in the bridge of The Manuscript). In the years following the Red Tour, Taylor has verbalised how she now looks forward to singing All Too Well live as it means so much more than what it was about when she wrote it. The fans have made it their own and now all Taylor remembers is the fans screaming back the lyrics to her louder and louder each night.
I saw this tweet by Booktuber Jack Edwards about the theme of The Death of The Author that this song highlights.
With the reference to All Too Well, and how the meaning of that song has changed over time, it is especially fascinating to see The Manuscript as the last song of the album. The album that Taylor has said is a “post mortem” of what she’s been through these last few years. In one of her speeches at The Eras Tour, Taylor called people discussing her personal life a “pubic autopsy”. So, to bear her soul and come out with such honest, brutal and real songs, and to share it so openly with the world is a nod to what she’s always done as an artist. But it’s also a nod to the reverence with which her fans treat her art. She may be recounting her relationships, dissecting her experiences and entertaining us, but it's because she knows the fate of these songs. They will become ours. Well first, they will become fodder to a lot of gossip and chatter, but that’s the price she pays. She is the author, but the lyrics will morph and become our stories. In her Instagram posts, she ends this album’s announcements with "Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it" and "And now the story isn’t mine anymore… it’s all yours". This emotional catharsis would have undoubtedly been liberating for her, but she is also releasing these albums for us to make it whatever we want it to be. In The Manuscript she sings, "And at last, she knew what the agony had been for". Because this is her purpose.