Top tips on how to stay dry and stylish from those who know how. Plus this autumn’s best rain gear, from practical jackets to puddle-proof boots

Associate fashion editor for the Guardian

Copies of popular cosmetics and skincare products more likely to contain toxic substances, Trading Standards warns

Mercury, lead and methanol have been found in counterfeit beauty products seized across the UK, Trading Standards has said.

There is a rising problem with fake beauty products, with scammers selling copies of popular and expensive brands. Cosmetics, skincare and perfumes are now among the watchdog’s most commonly investigated fakes.

Copies of popular cosmetics and skincare products more likely to contain toxic substances, Trading Standards warns

Mercury, lead and methanol have been found in counterfeit beauty products seized across the UK, Trading Standards has said.

There is a rising problem with fake beauty products, with scammers selling copies of popular and expensive brands. Cosmetics, skincare and perfumes are now among the watchdog’s most commonly investigated fakes.

In the late 2010s, a movement argued that no one body type is superior than another. Now in the GLP-1 age, people are still pursuing thinness - and just not talking about it

Vogue World Milano was held beneath the vaulted glass domes of Italy’s oldest shopping arcade, featuring Gigi Hadid in archival Valentino couture and robots dancing on the catwalk while Miuccia Prada scowled at them. A splashy event staged in the midst of a month of fashion shows in New York, London, Milan and Paris, in which 97.5% of models were a US size four or under, what ticked people off most was the presence of trillion-dollar pharma company Eli Lilly on the list of sponsors.

Eating disorder advocates spoke out against the association between an aspirational fashion show and the manufacturer of the weight-loss drugs Zepbound and Mounjaro.

High fashion looks without a big budget? Follow our frugal guide to pinch the biggest autumn/winter ‘26 catwalk trends for free

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Dark mornings, darker evenings and the end of Celebrity Traitors. It’s easy to feel a bit meh at this time of year. However, without sounding too TikTok life coach, just as you are encouraged to winter-proof your morning routine (light a breakfast candle, make your favourite cup of tea) to start your day on a brighter note, the same approach could be applied to your wardrobe. An outfit you look forward to wearing to the office or an accessory update that can make a long-term favourite piece feel new again, can help put some much-needed pep in your step. That’s even when the forecast reads five days of rain in a row.

The autumn/winter 2026 collections shown on the catwalks way back in February (yes time works funny in fashion) have finally hit shop floors, and high-street brands have been quick to pay homage. But there are plenty of styling tips and tricks you can borrow for free. Here are nine to get you started …

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For even more impact, contrast an OTT coat with casual basics or classic tailoring

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.”

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.

Thanks to Jilly Cooper, tartan and tweed, waxed jackets and wellies are a style vibe right now

British heritage, in fashion terms, is a country where it is permanently October. A conker-brown and pleasant land, if you will. Brand Britain in the style sense comes into its own in autumn: roaring fires, muddy lanes, damp dogs. Waxed jackets and chunky knits, tartan and tweed, jaunty scarves to banish draughts. Clothes for going on a hearty walk, but with a hip flask in your pocket. Fashion has been mining this seam since long before Brideshead Revisited made battered evening dresses and Oxford bags look romantic, and it keeps returning, because trad British style is satisfyingly utilitarian while also being loaded with enough backstory (class, history, eccentricity) to be intriguing and reinventable.

Also: Rivals. It has taken considerable restraint for me not to mention Rivals in the whole of the first paragraph, because it is now a matter of mere weeks until we get our next Jilly Cooper fix and I, for one, cannot wait. Cannot wait for Cameron stalking the corridors in her foxy power suits, for Taggie in her cute jeans and jumpers, for Valerie in head-to-toe tweed and an aggressive amount of blusher. The success of Rivals has done for old-school British dressing what Emily in Paris did for the beret, only with better jokes and more adultery. Jolly hockey sticks style is the new French girl chic. This fantasy is homegrown, which makes it both more embarrassing and harder to resist. Just as Emily and her friends and frenemies are a camp send-up of fashionable Paris, Rivals is a fond, nostalgic semi-parody of the British wardrobe. The show’s costume designer, Ray Holman, has drawn on original 1980s pieces from Dunhill and Mulberry for inspiration. With Liberty fabrics, nods to polo uniforms and sturdy waxed coats, he has brought the Sloane ranger back into the fashion conversation for the first time in years.