ELLE UK

We’re heading into travel season – the days are longer and summer holidays are finally in sight. Meanwhile, my editor peers and I have a month of cruise runway shows in far-flung locations including Seoul, Mexico City and Los Angeles to look forward to. Escapism, of all kinds, is in the air. When I was growing up in Virginia, long before I crossed the Atlantic and eventually joined ELLE UK, fashion and its imagery were my gateway to the destinations I longed to visit. I’d see images of Naomi Campbell in Vivienne Westwood and imagine I was in London. Or I’d flip through archival Yves Saint Laurent and dream of Paris. Much like a great novel or art exhibition can introduce viewers to new worlds, there are many ways for the…

PAGE 118 DR EWOMA Award-winning medical and cosmetic doctor, and founder of aesthetics clinic Skndoctor, Dr Ewoma Ukeleghe left the NHS in 2018 to pursue her own practice. As she trained at the University of Liverpool School of Medicine, her work is rooted in science. She sums up beauty as being ‘a collection of self-care rituals that make you feel your most gorgeous self, inside and out’. Also an ELLE contributing editor, she joins our judges for the Future of Beauty Awards. PAGE 140 IXTA BELFRAGE The cook and ELLE contributing editor Ixta Belfrage is the bestselling author of Mezcla: Recipes to Excite, which contains an ELLE team favourite – prawn lasagne with habanero oil. With influences from England, Italy, Brazil and Mexico, she believes cooking should be free from rules. ‘I love tasting as…

AT THE BEGINNING OF THE RENOWNED TRAVEL WRITER SARA Wheeler’s brilliant new memoir Glowing Still, she unearths the notebooks in which she has recorded her far-flung trips over the years. The diaries are battered, with destinations scrawled on the spines (China, Serbia, Fiji, Norway). She writes: ‘Sensations rose like milk to the boil when I re-read the tattered notebooks, and I found it tender to be in the company of my younger self.’ I experienced a similar feeling on a recent visit to my storage unit in highly unexotic Hoxton, in east London. Looking for a coat that I could not find (inevitably, I am sure, at the bottom and in the back, such are the rules of Sod’s Law), I ended up rummaging through boxes where it definitely would not…

listen: Cleo Sol The singer-songwriter makes her Royal Albert Hall debut on 25 May, after a sell-out show at Koko. Bask in her soothing vocals and let your worries melt away. play: Why I… Move Have you heard? We’ve launched a podcast with Nike, exploring how movement makes us feel. ELLE editors Hannah Nathanson and Natasha Bird are joined by guests including Clara Amfo and Munroe Bergdorf, and Nike trainers and coaches Dora Atim and Sam Vora, who’ll inspire you to leap off the sofa. buy: Ludicrously capacious bags Thank television’s ‘Succession’, and its now-notorious lampooning of outsized bags, for bumping statement totes to the top of our talking points this season. Serendipitously, designers have been blowing bags up to dizzying proportions, from monogrammed Vuitton to slouchy Chloé or the Loewe we wanted right off…

‘I‘D CLIMB A MANGO TREE AND EMBROIDER UP THERE FOR HOURS,’ says Kingston, Jamaica-born Rachel Scott, describing her favourite pastime growing up. The founder of emerging brand Diotima attributes her love of fashion to her mother – ‘She had a boutique named Gaychel’ – but it was her own aptitude for making that provided her with a gateway into the industry. ‘As a teenager, I’d sew myself the tiniest skirts and shorts,’ Scott says. ‘Style is part and parcel of growing up in Jamaica.’ This year – just shy of Diotima’s third anniversary – the brand is one of the semi-finalists for the prestigious LVMH Prize, and has already won fans including singer Ari Lennox, ELLE cover star Letitia Wright and tastemaker Marjon Carlos. The label celebrates Scott’s heritage: the same…

ARLO PARKS IS IN LOVE. YOU CAN HEAR it in the gentle juxtaposition of sultry, daydreamy pop and unexpected rock-infused moments that permeate her second album, My Soft Machine. (‘I really wanted to hold up a mirror to people,’ she says. ‘I want someone in their sixties to listen and think, “Oh my god, I remember the first girl I fell in love with!”’) But it’s also in her voice today – softly-spoken but assured – as she contemplates what love means. ‘To me, it is this sense of support. It’s moving through life with somebody and feeling understood by them. It’s about light and shade: you grow together, while allowing each other the freedom to be their own person, to have their own dreams.’ Towards the end of last year,…