Clogs, chore jackets, straw hats and woven baskets are the look of the season. But are the brands and people embracing this aesthetic really doing any gardening?

Lately, it feels like you can’t move for clogs. Everywhere you look, it’s straw hats, dungarees, floaty dresses, chore jackets and basket bags – and that’s in city centres, not garden centres. This is the rise of “allotmentcore” – somewhere between the linen-clad luxury of the “coastal grandmother” and the whimsical outdoorsiness of “cottagecore” – and it’s coming for all of our autumns.

“I’d describe it as Little House on the Prairie meets Felicity Kendal in The Good Life, meets Bill and Ben,” says Mal James, professor of fashion design at the University of Edinburgh. “With the overall style of an imaginary love child of Monty Don and Pamela Anderson, the reinvented queen of garden chic.” It’s true that Anderson – once most famous for sporting a high-leg red swimsuit – has more recently become a pioneer of the allotmentcore style, living “romantically” in midi dresses and bandanas, frequently clutching floral bouquets. Popular brands include the family-run Carrier Company from Norfolk, Danish designers Skall Studio and Welsh-founded lifestyle label Toast. As online fashion publication Who What Wear put it: “If it looks like you’re ready to sport a pair of pruning shears at any moment, you’ve got the look right.”

As John Lewis reports a 96% rise in searches for CD players, music fans share their reasons for ditching streaming

CDs appear to be having a resurgence. John Lewis said searches for CD players are up 96% since July, while another report on trends in music and film this year found that CD sales are up 16%.

With this in mind, we asked music fans why they favour discs over other formats, and if it is a new preference or a lifetime habit.

As John Lewis reports a 96% rise in searches for CD players, music fans share their reasons for ditching streaming

CDs appear to be having a resurgence. John Lewis said searches for CD players are up 96% since July, while another report on trends in music and film this year found that CD sales are up 16%.

With this in mind, we asked music fans why they favour discs over other formats, and if it is a new preference or a lifetime habit.

With a footprint of less than 40 sq metres, the Melbourne project required careful planning – and some spatial trickery

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Last week on a balmy spring evening, Ronnen Goren and his partner had dinner in a small pavilion on their terrace for the first time. Inside, an Aga stove was keeping their home warm. They could have retired to their sunken lounge room and cocktail bar for a nightcap, had the mood struck.

This domestic scene took place in a semi-subterranean former laundry in inner Melbourne – a space of less than 40 sq metres that was renovated at the end of 2024. On 29 October, the “exuberant” reimagining of the damp basement space in Toorak, on the grounds of the heritage-listed Quamby apartment complex, received the Emil Sodersten award for interior architecture at Australia’s National Architecture awards.

Demi Moore’s haute-couture maven attracts the attention of a gang of contemporary Robin Hood type clothes robbers in Riley’s fashion biz satire

Here is an entertaining, if very exhausting fantasy-caper about the fashion biz from Boots Riley, a madcap mile-a-minute melee of unadulterated ker-aziness. You might need a couple of ibuprofen and a lie-down afterwards. Demi Moore perhaps thought she was here getting a gamey starring role, comparable to her Oscar-nominated turn in the beauty-industry satire The Substance. In fact, the way the film is structured and edited, Moore is hardly more than a returning cameo, though a potent one.

She plays Christie Smith, a billionaire couture designer who has an office in a trendily designed city block which leans over at an experimental angle. Christie is the object of obsessive attention from “boosters”: supercool young outlaw women who, nettled by her arrogance, shoplift her clothes from upscale stores and sell them on at knockdown Robin Hood prices. They are Corvette (Keke Palmer), Sade (Naomi Ackie) and Mariah (Taylour Paige), the latter having the ability to, by holding her breath, turning herself into a white woman who is less likely to be challenged in a store; an interesting metaphor for what Frantz Fanon might have called black skin, white masks.

Elena records messages for Ayo because they’re often apart, but he would prefer a simple text or chat on the phone. Is he right to call her out?

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I haven’t got time to listen to 10-minute messages. I’d much prefer a simple text or phone call