The floral midi dress is dead, long live the floral midi dress.
This was the somewhat mixed message John Lewis sent as it unveiled its latest fashion collection on Tuesday, saying it was time to move on from the trend.
Instead, its new fashion director, Queralt Ferrer, is championing relaxed separates, tailoring and statement prints.
Explaining the noticeable absence of ditzy florals, Ferrer said: “That was one of the main items that we thought we’ve got to move on from. It’s not easy because customers love them, but it’s a trend that has been around for too long and they were everywhere across the high street.”
‘More exotic botanical garden’ – one of the new pieces from John Lewis Photograph: Daniel Fraser/David Parratt
Ferrer isn’t wrong about the trend’s saturation. A floral midi and trainers has become the de facto uniform across the country.
It’s spied everywhere, from the school gates to modern workplaces. Spanning multiple generations, Gen Z choose high hemlines, while a midi is the go-to for millennials and boomers alike. Everyone from the TV presenter Holly Willoughby to the Princess of Wales and model Emily Ratajkowski have been pictured wearing them.
Swap the trainers for heels and you have a favoured styling formula for wedding guests, appearing just as regularly at local register offices as at French vineyards.
It’s a bold move from John Lewis to attempt to cancel a fashion item that for many has become a wardrobe staple akin to a Breton stripe top or white shirt.
As the retailer’s first director of design for fashion, Ferrer is part of its strategy aimed at reaching £400m in profits by 2025. With the cost of living crisis becoming ever more pertinent, its fashion offering needs to work hard to entice cautious consumers.
Justifying her floral midi cull Ferrer said: “Our customer still loves a floral dress – and of course, we listen to her and make sure we have what she likes. But we don’t want her to just keep buying what she already owns.”
In its place, customers will find more statement silhouettes with punchy graphic prints. Similar to floral motifs on the runways of Michael Kors and Prada, they are more exotic botanical garden than romantic English country cottage.
Considered shopping seems to be the key takeaway from Ferrer’s debut collection.
The John Lewis collection is putting more emphasis on tailoring. Photograph: Brian Daly/David Parratt
Speaking last October, four months into her appointment, she said her first port of call had been to revamp the brand’s tailoring department. It is an area she continues to focus on, with wafty linen suits in bold colourways forming a key part of the latest lineup. These are pieces that can be easily mixed and matched, appealing to those consumers who need to consider each purchase carefully. Other retailers including Marks & Spencer, Reiss and Jigsaw are also championing separates over dresses.
By slimming down the floral dress offering and focusing on more relevant and considered pieces, John Lewis says it aims to become “a more significant player in fashion”.
The company, which reported a loss of £99m in September, finds itself under increased pressure from M&S, which in January boasted its biggest share of the clothing market in seven years after a festive boom. According to a forecast by Retail Week, it is set to overtake John Lewis in the ranking of the biggest UK retailers by 2026.
BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva visited Brazil’s northern condition of Roraima on Saturday following the authorities declared a public wellness crisis for the Yanomami people in the Amazon, who are suffering from malnutrition and illnesses such as malaria as a consequence of illegal mining.
At the state capital, Boa Vista, Lula claimed the way the Yanomami are taken care of is inhumane. The fast measures to be taken by the authorities are advancement in transportation and the employment of a lot more medical practitioners and nurses to do the job in the region, he reported.
The decree signed by Health and fitness Minister Nisia Trindade late Friday has no expiration day and will allow for using the services of extra staff. It determines that the workforce in demand has to publish reviews relating to the Indigneous group’s health and fitness and basic properly-staying.
Lula also designed a multiministerial committee, to be coordinated by his main of workers, for an original time period of 90 times. The governing administration staff went to Boa Vista as a lot of unwell Yanomami have been admitted to specialized hospitals there.
The Yanomami stay in the biggest indigenous location in Brazil, with more than 9 million hectares (22 million acres) and a inhabitants of all-around 30,000, in the northern place of the Amazon rainforest, shut to the border with Venezuela.
In new several years, professionals experienced sounded the alarm about humanitarian and sanitary crisis using shape. The report “Yanomami Below Attack,” created by the nonprofit Socio-Environmental Institute, factors out that in 2021 the location was liable for 50{515baef3fee8ea94d67a98a2b336e0215adf67d225b0e21a4f5c9b13e8fbd502} of the malaria situations in the state. The same report mentioned that additional than 3,000 kids had been malnourished.
Illegal mining is the principal root of the problems confronted by the Yanomami people today. Activists accuse miners of dying threats, sexual violence and liquor and drug abuse, particularly against Indigenous young children. The exact same report reveals that the region had far more than 40 illegal airstrips made by miners and that they had taken about some of the federal government well being centers installed in the location.
“The mining activity variations the soil, making puddles which are favorable for the malaria mosquito, and other ailments as properly. Several miners also carry disorders with them. It is a sanitary and humanitarian crisis,” said Estêvão Benfica, geographer and one particular of the Socio-Environmental Institute scientists.
Benfica also reported there is lack of personnel and standard resources to identify malaria in its early levels, which worsens the predicament. The significant charge of ailments disables the Yanomamis to perform in their land, creating a substantial neighborhood which simply cannot sustain alone economically.
Another issue was the political method through the several years of previous President Jair Bolsonaro’s federal government, when the variety of overall health staff lowered and four wellbeing models have been shut down, leaving hundreds of Yanomami with no professional medical consultation.
Previously this week, the Well being Ministry experienced previously selected a crew for a distinctive well being mission in the Yanomami region. Lula scheduled an emergency excursion to Roraima condition following a report by impartial regional information site Sumauma, featuring shocking photographs of malnourished children.
In accordance to the report, during the previous 4 yrs of Bolsonaro’s authorities, the dying of kids age 5 or fewer experienced jumped 29{515baef3fee8ea94d67a98a2b336e0215adf67d225b0e21a4f5c9b13e8fbd502} in comparison to the prior govt. The exact report shows that 570 Yanomami kids died concerning 2019 and 2022 from curable diseases.
Ukraine is in full control of the eastern logistics hub of Lyman, Kyiv’s most significant battlefield gain in weeks, which a senior official said could provide a staging post for further gains to the east, Reuters reports.
“As of 1230 (0930 GMT), Lyman is fully cleared,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a short video clip on his Telegram channel.
There was no comment from the Russian armed forces on Sunday on the status of the city. The Russian defence ministry said on Saturday it was pulling troops out of the area “in connection with the creation of a threat of encirclement”.
The latest stinging setback for Russian President Vladimir Putin came after he proclaimed the annexation of four regions covering nearly a fifth of Ukraine on Friday, an area that includes Lyman.
Kyiv and the West have condemned the proclamation as an illegitimate farce.
Russian forces captured Lyman from Ukraine in May and had used it as a logistics and transport hub for its operations in the north of the Donetsk region.
Losing it is Russia’s largest battlefield loss since Ukraine’s lightning counteroffensive in the northeastern Kharkiv region last month.
Serhiy Gaidai, governor of the Luhansk region that neighbours Donetsk, said control over Lyman could help Ukraine reclaim lost territory in his region, whose full capture Moscow announced in early July after weeks of grinding advances.
“The liberation of this city in the Donetsk region is one of the key factors for the further de-occupation of the Luhansk region,” Gaidai wrote on the Telegram messaging app on Sunday.
Key events
Summary
It is 2pm in Kyiv, here’s a rundown of the latest news
Ukraine is in full control of the eastern logistics hub of Lyman, Kyiv’s most significant battlefield gain in weeks, which a senior official said could provide a staging post for further gains to the east, Reuters reports.
The Pope has said it is “absurd” that the world is facing a nuclear threat over Ukraine. Calling for a ceasefire “in the name of God”, he appealed to the Russian and Ukrainian presidents to find a way out of the crisis.
The US defence secretary Lloyd Austin has welcomed the capture by Ukrainian forces of Lyman, a key Russian stronghold in eastern Ukraine. Austin said he was “very encouraged” by the Ukrainian victory on Saturday, which is an embarrassment for Vladimir Putin, who declared on Friday that the city – in the Donetsk region – was Russia’s “for ever”.
Germany’s defence minister, Christine Lambrecht, made a surprise visit to Ukraine – her first since Russia’s invasion in February – as Kyiv urged Berlin to send it battle tanks. Lambrecht visited the southern port city of Odesa on Saturday and met her Ukrainian counterpart, Oleksii Reznikov, the German defence ministry said.
Russia has now restricted access to the music-streaming app SoundCloud, Reuters reports. SoundCloud was accused of distributing “false information” about the war by communications watchdog, Roskomnadzor (RKN). It follows existing bans on Facebook and Instagram.
The Nord Stream 2 pipeline is no longer leaking under the Baltic Sea because an equilibrium has been reached between the gas and water pressure, pipeline spokesman Ulrich Lissek told AFP. The British prime minster, Liz Truss, has said the series of explosions that severely damaged Russia’s gas pipelines were an act of sabotage.
Belarus is preparing to receive Russian soldiers and equipment, the Kyiv Independent reports.There are about 1,000 Russian soldiers in the country.
Russia failed to win enough votes for re-election to the ICAO’s governing council. The French representative told the assembly after Saturday’s ballot: “When we have votes in our countries, if we don’t like the result, we don’t ask for another vote.” Russia had a place on the UN aviation agency’s 36-member council as one of the “states of chief importance in air transport”.
The head of Russia’s region of Chechnya said Moscow should consider using a low-yield nuclear weapon in Ukraine after its battlefield defeat in Lyman. Ramzan Kadyrov said in a message on Telegram addressing Russia’s loss of its stronghold: “In my personal opinion, more drastic measures should be taken, right up to the declaration of martial law in the border areas and the use of low-yield nuclear weapons.”
Russian authorities informed the International Atomic Energy Agency that the head of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was “temporarily detained” for questioning. Ihor Murashov was detained on his way from the Russian-occupied plant – Europe’s largest – to the town of Enerhodar at about 4pm on Friday. Russia is trying to transfer the Zaporizhzhia plant to the Russian energy firm Rosatom, the head of Ukraine’s atomic energy company, Petro Kotin, has told the BBC.
Turkey, which has been at the centre of mediation between the west and Russia, rejected Russia’s annexations in Ukraine, calling the Kremlin’s move on four regions a “grave violation” of international law.
Ukraine declares full control of Lyman
Ukraine is in full control of the eastern logistics hub of Lyman, Kyiv’s most significant battlefield gain in weeks, which a senior official said could provide a staging post for further gains to the east, Reuters reports.
“As of 1230 (0930 GMT), Lyman is fully cleared,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a short video clip on his Telegram channel.
There was no comment from the Russian armed forces on Sunday on the status of the city. The Russian defence ministry said on Saturday it was pulling troops out of the area “in connection with the creation of a threat of encirclement”.
The latest stinging setback for Russian President Vladimir Putin came after he proclaimed the annexation of four regions covering nearly a fifth of Ukraine on Friday, an area that includes Lyman.
Kyiv and the West have condemned the proclamation as an illegitimate farce.
Russian forces captured Lyman from Ukraine in May and had used it as a logistics and transport hub for its operations in the north of the Donetsk region.
Losing it is Russia’s largest battlefield loss since Ukraine’s lightning counteroffensive in the northeastern Kharkiv region last month.
Serhiy Gaidai, governor of the Luhansk region that neighbours Donetsk, said control over Lyman could help Ukraine reclaim lost territory in his region, whose full capture Moscow announced in early July after weeks of grinding advances.
“The liberation of this city in the Donetsk region is one of the key factors for the further de-occupation of the Luhansk region,” Gaidai wrote on the Telegram messaging app on Sunday.
Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins’s pro-Western centrist party has won elections in Latvia while parties supported by the Baltic state’s large Russian-speaking minority have suffered major setbacks, AFP reports.
With almost all ballots from Saturday’s vote counted, Karins’s New Unity party was in first place with 18.94 percent while the Harmony party, traditionally backed by Russian speakers, may not have won enough votes to enter parliament.
Harmony came first in the last election in 2018.
The results showed other centrist parties coming second and third and just one party associated with Russian-speakers, Stability!, scraping past the threshold to enter parliament with 6.75 percent.
The Russian-speaking minority in Latvia makes up around 30 percent of the population.
AFP has an interesting report on Germany’s rush to find home-grown energy and escape reliance on Moscow. Here’s a taste of it:
Germany’s most strategically important building site is at the end of a windswept pier on the North Sea coast, where workers are assembling the country’s first terminal for the import of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Starting this winter, the rig, close to the port of Wilhelmshaven, will be able to supply the equivalent of 20 percent of the gas that was until recently imported from Russia.
Since its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has throttled gas supplies to Germany, while the Nord Stream pipelines which carried huge volumes under the Baltic Sea to Europe were damaged last week in what a Danish-Swedish report called “a deliberate act.”
In the search for alternative sources, the German government has splashed billions on five projects like the one in Wilhelmshaven.
Altogether the new fleet should be able to handle around 25 billion cubic metres of gas per year, roughly equivalent to half the capacity of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.
Lyman is now “fully cleared” of Russian forces, Zelenskiy has declared in a short video on his Telegram channel.
The Pope has said it is “absurd” that the world is facing a nuclear threat over Ukraine, Reuters reports.
Calling for a ceasefire “in the name of God”, he appealed to the Russian and Ukrainian presidents to find a way out of the crisis.
This is Robyn Vinter, taking over the Ukraine blog for a while.
Russian shelling of the Kharkiv region is continuing alongside urgent attempts to demine the area, its governor says.
Governor Oleg Sinegubov said on Telegram that shelling had been particularly heavy in the city of Kupyansk and its surrounding area as well as Vovchansk and the village of Gatishche in Chuguyiv district.
A 71-year-old woman was hospitalised with an injury during the day in Kupyan district, he said the regional centre of emergency medical assistance had reported.
He also said that 704 explosive devices had already been neutralised in the last day.
Mark Hamill at the world premiere of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in Hollywood. Photograph: Valérie Macon/AFP/Getty Images
Star Wars actor Mark Hamill has said Ukraine needs more drones to fight off the Russian invasion and compared Moscow to the dark side of the Force in the film series.
Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in the films, was made an ambassador to the United24 project – which Ukraine set up to elicit donations of drones to the Ukrainian army – by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
He told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg that he had discussed parallels with the cult films and the current war in Ukraine with Zelenskiy.
“[Zelenskiy] did reference the movies and it’s not hard to understand why,” Hamill said, “I mean, Star Wars was always a fairy tale for children and fairy tales are morality tales of good versus evil, where good is clearly defined, evil is clearly defined and it’s not hard to extrapolate an evil empire with Russia invading a sovereign nation.”
Asked whether the platform would be used to supply lethal technology, he answered: “Ukraine needs drones. They have some drones, but not nearly as many as the Russians.”
Hamill also paid tribute to President Zelenskiy, saying: “I was really fascinated with this man… because he’s been absolutely heroic. And the Ukrainian people have been inspirational. He’s an amazing man.”
Hamill said participating in the project was “a chance to use [the popularity of the films’] for good and I feel a great responsibility to try and do everything I can to further the Ukrainian cause.”
Luke Harding reporting in Kyiv has contrasted Ukraine’s success in Lyman with the propaganda about the state of the war on the streets of Moscow. He writes in The Observer today:
The banner hanging near Red Square was triumphant. It read: “Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Russia! Together for ever!” On Friday Vladimir Putin formally announced the annexation of these Ukrainian territories and celebrated with a victory concert in Moscow. Russia’s president addressed a cheering crowd waving white blue and red tricolours. “Welcome home,” he said. “Russia! Russia!” they replied.
For ever turned out to mean less than 24 hours. As workmen dismantled the stage, put up on the cobbled square outside the Kremlin, Ukrainian troops marched into the eastern city of Lyman, from where Putin’s army had just made an inglorious retreat. At one point Lyman’s liberators even performed a victory dance, hopping cheerfully from side to side along a sandy forest path.
They were, according to the Kremlin’s version of reality, encroaching on Russia’s sovereign territory. In his angry west-bashing speech on Friday, delivered before Russia’s supine government, Putin had declared that Donetsk province which includes Lyman would be officially incorporated into the Russian federation. It was, he suggested, a restoration of historical Russian lands.
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In its continued information war, Russia has now restricted access to the music-streaming app SoundCloud, Reuters reports.
SoundCloud was accused of distributing “false information” about what Moscow calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine by communications watchdog, Roskomnadzor (RKN). It follows existing bans on Facebook and Instagram.
“Roskomnadzor restricted access to the SoundCloud service in connection with placement of materials containing false information regarding the nature of the special military operation on the territory of Ukraine,” the Interfax news agency reported on Sunday, citing RKN.
It said the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office had ordered the blocking of service. The ban-worthy information apparently related to warfare methods, including “attacks on civilians, strikes on civilian infrastructure, about numerous civilian casualties at the hands of Russian soldiers”.
