Various models promise to tone down decibels or help you focus on a friend. But the experience may not suit you

When something is a must-have accessory for Taylor Swift fans, it’s faster to say everyone’s got some: within a certain age range, that is.

Loop earplugs, designed to protect the ears, came to market in 2016 and the company has tripled its revenue since, reaching €126m (£107m) in 2023. These aren’t any old foam earplugs, but little nifty silicone ones that come between the roar of the crowd and your two-in-a-lifetime eardrums.

Come for the live action, stay for the double-breasted get-up of Poland’s Michal Probierz as football and fashion collide

In the words of Gareth Southgate: “Whenever you put something on, you’re making some sort of a statement,” and it seems the managers currently battling it out at the Euros feel similarly. Because while the high fashion – the catwalk appearances and designer togs – might be reserved for the young-gun players, there has already been a lot to note on the sidelines.

“Football managers are tactical masterminds,” says Daniel-Yaw Miller, sports correspondent at industry publication the Business of Fashion. “There’s not a single element of their preparation that is left to chance — for many of them, that includes their sartorial choices on the touchline. Over the years we’ve seen managers dress in certain ways to communicate their authority and the style of their player management.”

Will I ever look as elegant as Audrey Hepburn? Ask me once I’ve finished licking my nostrils and pinching my jowls

A brilliant author and artist recently opened my eyes to the wonderland of jaw exercise videos. Smiling women in pastel-coloured vest tops chew the air, stretch their lips and tilt their tongues towards their perfectly formed noses. Angry men in blue polo shirts push tennis balls into their chests. People in medical scrubs try to lick their nostrils. Women with perms pinch at their jowls as if they are trying to crimp a pasty. It’s wild out there.

Now, I worked in consumer media and advertising long enough (for more than 30 seconds) to know that pretty much anything that says it can change your face, or life, or relationship, will do nothing of the sort. In my heart, I recognise that my face is my face, a slowly collapsing combination of genetics and expressions that has changed very little since I was about three. Look at my first nursery portrait – in which I am sitting in a pink nylon jumper in front of a marble-effect backdrop – and you can see 39-year-old Nell smiling back at you. Yet the promise of a new, sharp, Hepburn-esque jawline, created from nothing more than a five-minute routine at my desk, is so tantalising – so deeply penetrates a lifelong desire to look like someone else – that I am struggling to resist.

He has worked with Miu Miu and shot Zendaya for Luca Guadagnino. But Alessio Bolzoni also makes artworks – from strangers’ bottom halves to people striking twisted poses while concealing their faces

Halfway through our interview, I tell Alessio Bolzoni that he is unusual: a fashion photographer without an ego. He snorts with laughter. “There’s no way you can do the work and share it with people without a bit of ego,” he says. “But I try to talk to it and work with it.”

Bolzoni’s ego has certainly been stroked recently: he worked on campaigns for brand-of-the-moment Miu Miu and took some very sweaty and sexy on-court shots of Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor to promote Luca Guadagnino’s stylish tennis film Challengers . But alongside this, the Italian-born photographer also produces artwork. An exhibition, There’s a Fine Line Between Love and Hate, You See, opens this month at VO Curations gallery in London.

Blow to London’s fashion scene as British creatives find it makes commercial sense to move shows to Italian city

Milan men’s fashion week is where all the big Italian names converge. It’s where Prada dictates what trouser shape everyone will one day be wearing and where Gucci drops the next it-bag. But as the shows got under way at the weekend an unexpected new trend was emerging: the great fashion Brexit.

Just four months after making his debut as creative director of Dunhill at London fashion week, Simon Holloway instead chose the Italian capital for the brand’s spring/summer ’25 show. On Sunday he aimed to recreate “the sense of a beautiful spring day in England” by showing in a garden in Milan.

The house’s menswear show drew on youthful spirit, while Fendi got ready to mark 100 years with a new crest

They have been been ridiculed as snowflakes and “too woke” by some, but Prada’s co-creative designers think gen Z are a generation to be celebrated.

Speaking backstage after their latest menswear show, which took place on Sunday afternoon at the Prada Foundation in Milan, Miuccia Prada said: “Youth is the future. It is hope. We wanted to do something that would express youthful optimism because the times are so bad.”

The pioneering designer and activist has been making waves for decades. Now she’s back with an urgent message – and this time she won’t take no for an answer…

Katharine Hamnett has been plotting. On the cracked, peeling screen of her battered iPhone, she’s scrolling through what she hopes to be the blueprint for, come polling day, a ballot box-based revolution. It’s a PDF with an array of mocked-up billboards, each emblazoned with a policy or slogan. A designer and campaigner renowned for her political punchiness, she has made the text snappy and succinct, all in trademark capital letters. “In here is everything that’s missing,” she laments, “from this so-far awful election. Both main parties want us to feel like progressive ideas are in the bin. Forgotten. We mustn’t let them.”

She reels off a selection: “Vote freedom to protest; vote free education; vote save the NHS; vote let aid into Gaza now.” There are plenty more. “Vote legalise, nationalise and tax marijuana; vote help refugees; vote ceasefire; vote good, free public regional transport; vote roller-discos.” Yes, roller-discos. “I did some research while working with Podemos in Spain. They foster community and solidarity. Isn’t that fun?” Another, her overarching mantra: “Our vote is the most powerful tool to get the world we want. I want that one all over.”

This 1940s Brazilian home, filled with items reflecting the eclectic taste of its owner, is as breath-taking as the view

I’ve always dreamed of living in front of this view. I think it’s such a luxury to have this postcard in my living room,” says Isabela Capeto of her flat overlooking one of Rio de Janeiro’s most iconic landmarks: the Sugarloaf Mountain.

A fashion designer, Isabela moved here eight years ago. She was completely mesmerised by the view and also fell in love with the original vintage style of the 1940s building, which has wooden parquet floors in two shades, as well as high ceilings and lots of light coming in through the large windows.

The term for England footballers’ wives and girlfriends first exploded in 2006 in Germany. The new generation watching the Euros are turning the old stereotypes on their heads

When England take to the pitch for their first game on Sunday night in Germany, eyes will be trained not just on the players but on the team sitting in the stands, cheering on the squad – the wives and girlfriends of the players, the so-called Wags.

The acronym Wags first appeared in the Sunday Telegraph in 2002 – apparently coined by the staff of a Dubai hotel where the players’ wives and girlfriends stayed. Still a relatively new phenomenon, it exploded like a glitterbomb on to the resort of Baden-Baden, where the England squad were based during the World Cup in Germany in 2006.