Fashion weeks come thick and fast this time of season, as designers set out their stalls and inhabit everything from cathedrals to airport hangars in a showcase of their collections for the coming autumn/winter. Weeks are sometimes condensed into long weekends, as the design world flits from North American cityscapes to the picturesque environs of Europe, on this occasion a little more spartan and windswept than usual. Hot on the heels of New York Fashion Week, London’s long weekend was disturbed by Storm Dennis and coronavirus, meaning hand sanitisers, a significant drop in Chinese visitors, and big coats in an attempt to ward off the torrential rain and gusty winds of up to ninety miles per hour.
Fashion persists however, and at London Fashion Week big names like Tommy Hilfiger and Christopher Kane rubbed shoulders with up-and-comers, from the Victorian funereality of a debuting Yuhan Wang to the relaxed tailoring of Eftychia. Concepts skirted both high and low: Kiko Kostadinov’s geometric patterns drew from early twentieth century Gestaltism, Natalia Alaverdian’s A.W.A.K.E. Mode portrayed a ‘Soviet aerobics class, sent to space’, with nods to The Royal Tenenbaums and 2001: A Space Odyssey, local favourite Richard Quinn revelled in floral prints and bejewelled gimp masks, and at Fashion East custom Nike boots clashed with used make-up wipes and a crown made of Cheetos. Molly Goddard offered a distinctive take on wearability, mixing cosy knits with vibrant, voluminous tulle dresses, and the Vienna-based Petar Petrov brought his sharp suits and silkwear for the first time to the English capital. Meanwhile Vivienne Westwood’s runway show was stuffed with agitprop, Victoria Beckham raised the hem in a tone of gentle rebellion, and at Burberry, Riccardo Tisci took a trip down memory lane, with an ode to all things equestrian.
On to Milan, and while the weather wasn’t as wet, the coronavirus continued to put a dampener on proceedings. Milan Fashion Week opened with a special show dedicated to China, as organisers reported an 80% decrease in buyers and designers from the ailing country, which under normal circumstances comprises approximately one third of the global luxury market. When the runway shows commenced on Wednesday proper, Gucci was back in its traditional opening slot, as Alessandro Michele opted to present his collection in the round, with peeks behind the scenes, and a palette of wan and buttoned-up looks drawing from childhood.
A retinue of big-hitters followed: contoured austerity from Jil Sander, utilitarian chic at Prada, ‘soft power’ and old jet-setting glamour at Fendi, intrecciato, long skirts, and fringed shearling at Bottega Veneta. Simone Rocha, Craig Green, and Richard Quinn were joined by JW Anderson in a vast industrial space as Moncler Genius made the most of its roving band of collaborators. Moschino drew inspiration from Marie Antoinette’s ‘Let them eat cake!’, Marni figured the madcappery of Alice in Wonderland, and Etro traversed the South American plains with a bohemian paean to the gaucho. Finally Giorgio Armani was supposed to bring the week to an elegant close, but as the coronavirus hastened its spread in Lombardy, the afternoon hung heavy with evening attire as the show streamed out from an empty theatre. Ten towns in the region were placed under quarantine, schools were closed, and the virus also shut down Venice Carnival and a weekend of sport. On the fashion front, the headline news as the weekend fizzled out followed the announcement that Raf Simons will join Miuccia Prada as Prada‘s co-creative director.
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Between 1957 and 1961, the archaeologist Ralph Solecki and a team of scientists from Columbia University, aided by local Kurdish workers, excavated Shanidar Cave in the Bradost mountain range, in Erbil Governorate in the autonomous region of Kurdistan. They unearthed ten Neanderthal skeletons, the remains of eight adults and two infants dating approximately 35,000 to 65,000 years old, as part of a Mousterian layer which also furnished the archaeologists with animal remains and stone tools. These finds made Shanidar Cave one of the most important sites for the study of Neanderthal build, technology, and culture, and subsequent soil analysis allied to the interpretive flair of Solecki made Shanidar equally contentious: pollen samples from medicinal plants found around the body of the Shanidar 4 skeleton, known as the ‘flower burial’, led Solecki to suggest that Neanderthals ritually buried their dead.
Today the ‘flower burial’ theory has been largely supplanted, with the pollen deposits around Shanidar 4 attributed to burrowing rodents instead, and the original Shanidar skeletons are believed to have been lost during the Iraq War, though casts remain at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. Now researchers from the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Liverpool John Moores, and Birkbeck have reopened the old Solecki trench and uncovered an additional skeleton, which writing in the journal Antiquity they have named Shanidar Z. The archaeologists renewed work at the site in 2014, before being interrupted by the spread of ISIS. The new bones were uncovered between 2018 and 2019. They consist of a complete skull, squashed by thousands of years of sediment, and upper body bones almost to the waist. Provisional analysis indicates that the specimen is more than 70,000 years old, with the teeth of an adult around or beyond middle-age.
Shanidar Z is the first articulated Neanderthal skeleton to emerge in more than a decade, meaning the first Neanderthal bones in more than a decade uncovered intact with the parts all anatomically arranged. The skeleton’s close proximity to Shanidar 4, its posture with the left hand curled and placed underneath the head, and evidence of digging around the site all suggest that Shanidar Z was deliberately buried. Lead author Emma Pomeroy said:
‘So much research on how Neanderthals treated their dead has to involve returning to finds from sixty or even a hundred years ago, when archaeological techniques were more limited, and that only ever gets you so far. To have primary evidence of such quality from this famous Neanderthal site will allow us to use modern technologies to explore everything from ancient DNA to long-held questions about Neanderthal ways of death, and whether they were similar to our own. In recent years we have seen increasing evidence that Neanderthals were more sophisticated than previously thought, from cave markings to use of decorative shells and raptor talons. If Neanderthals were using Shanidar cave as a site of memory for the repeated ritual interment of their dead, it would suggest cultural complexity of a high order.’
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On Friday Grimes released Miss Anthropocene, her hotly anticipated fifth studio album. The release was buttressed by an interview with The Face, in which Grimes expounded her Balenciaga-clad digital avatar WarNymph, and impromptu question-and-answer sessions conducted via Twitter and Twitch which covered everything from style icons and potential collaborations to baby names. Variously figured as ‘a concept album about the anthropomorphic goddess of climate change’, an ’embodiment of human extinction depicted through a pop star demonology’, and an embrace of villainy while simultaneously encouraging climate engagement through an emphasis on fun, the long gestation of Miss Anthropocene stretches back to the release of Art Angels in 2015, and was punctuated by the death of Grimes’ manager Lauren Valencia last July.
The release of Miss Anthropocene has been preceded by five singles: ‘Violence’, a piece of sweetly sadomasochistic electropop which personifies the relationship between Earth and humanity, the dolorously ethereal ‘So Heavy I Fell Through the Earth’, ‘My Name Is Dark’ redolent of Visions with nu-metal flourishes, ‘4ÆM’ with its swirling oriental drum and bass, and ‘Delete Forever’, a folksy lament for the opioid crisis. Three of Grimes’ albums – Art Angels, Halfaxa, and Visions – appeared on Culturedarm’s list of the best albums of the past decade, while Miss Anthropocene has been met with mostly positive reviews.
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Almost sixteen years after ‘The Last One’ saw Ross and Rachel get back together – while Monica and Chandler moved out to the suburbs, Phoebe settled into married life with Mike, the gang said goodbye to the big purple apartment, and Joey began contemplating an ill-fated switch from New York – fans of Friends, the hit NBC sitcom, will be relieved to learn that the show was only ever on a break. Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, and David Schwimmer revealed this week that Friends will return for a one-off special, set to air later this year on HBO Max.
Last summer, as WarnerMedia filled out some of the details regarding its impending big-budget streaming service, it was announced that Friends would be leaving the US version of Netflix, with all ten seasons to air exclusively on HBO Max. The news was part of an industry-wide shakeup, with The Office also set to depart Netflix for NBCUniversal’s fledgeling streaming service Peacock, while Netflix acquired global streaming rights to Seinfeld. Friends left Netflix at the end of 2019, and with the launch of HBO Max not happening until May, in the meantime DVD and digital sales of the show have approximately tripled.
The Friends special will reportedly be unscripted, and filmed on the show’s original soundstage, Stage 24 on the Warner Bros. Studios lot in Burbank. Ben Winston, executive producer of The Late Late Show with James Corden, will direct the special and produce alongside the show’s original producers Kevin Bright, Marta Kauffman, and David Crane. The cast will also get production credits, with Emma Conway and James Longman to serve as co-executive producers. WarnerMedia apparently paid a total of $425 million for five years of the streaming rights to Friends, and the cast will earn fees in the region of $2.5 million for the episode, meant to establish HBO Max on firm footing, with all the cosy familiarity of big cups of coffee and a velvet orange couch at Central Perk.
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It’s happening….. @HBOMax @jenniferaniston @courteneycoxofficial @lisakudrow @mleblanc @_schwim_
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As the pair headed into their first fight for the WBC heavyweight title, at Staples Center in Los Angeles in December 2018, the question on boxing fans’ lips was whether Deontay Wilder‘s awesome punching power would translate against a quality opponent, or whether Tyson Fury possessed the fighting smarts and the in-ring fitness to complete a remarkable comeback. The answer they received was muddled: after twelve rounds, the fight ended in a split draw, with the scorecards reading 115-111 for Wilder, 114-112 for Fury, and 113-113. Wilder had managed to drop Fury twice, with a couple of combinations in the ninth and twelfth rounds, but many observers believed that Fury had done enough to obtain the decision owing to a steady pattern of work on the outside.
Instead Wilder retained and fans hoped for a rematch. Eventually amid the usual contortions and a couple of interim matchups, both parties confirmed an unprecedented co-promotional bout. The rematch took place on Saturday night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Paradise, Nevada. Wilder headed into the fight as the slight favourite, but in a stunning turn of events it was Fury who emerged victorious thanks to a seventh-round technical knockout. Fury dominated from the outset, establishing his jab while managing to evade Wilder’s unseemly thrusts. In the fourth round, a big right hand floored Wilder, as blood began pouring from his left ear. He was felled again in the fifth, as Fury began to work the body, and with Wilder bleeding also from his mouth the fight was stopped midway through the seventh round, as his corner threw in the towel to save him from further punishment. Fury therefore adds the WBC belt to his The Ring magazine and lineal titles, another chapter to one of the most compelling stories in modern sport. With a total take of $16,916,440, the fight also broke the state of Nevada’s record for a heavyweight boxing gate.
