Why Did Sabrina Carpenter Make a New Album So Quickly After ‘Short n' Sweet'?

On Aug. 29, Sabrina Carpenter will release her seventh studio album, Man's Best Friend. It arrives exactly 359 days after her last record, the massive Short n' Sweet.
That's an unusual move these days, when stars typically wait longer between releases. Plus, Carpenter is still touring behind Short n' Sweet, hitting the festival circuit this summer before launching another North American leg in the fall. In her new Rolling Stone cover story, she explained why she's moving fast.
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'If I really wanted to, I could have stretched out Short n' Sweet much, much longer,' she told RS. 'But I'm at that point in my life where I'm like, 'Wait a second, there's no rules.' If I'm inspired to write and make something new, I would rather do that. Why would I wait three years just for the sake of waiting three years? It's all about what feels right. I'm learning to listen to that a lot more, instead of what is perceived as the right or wrong move.'
Carpenter also said that her decision was influenced by her favorite artists from past decades, like ABBA, Dolly Parton, and Linda Ronstadt. 'They would release a 10-song album every year,' she said. 'I'm like, 'When did we stop doing that?' Writers write, they make music, and they release music. I understand the beauty of disappearing. My last two albums both took two and a half years to make, and they needed to. I just think every project is different. It just has to feel right.'
Her producer, Jack Antonoff, agrees: 'I think, as a culture, we got a little obsessed with marketing,' he added in the RS story. 'The lesson to me, which we talked about when we're making this, is that listening to anything besides the music as a guide is ridiculous.'
Elsewhere in the story, Carpenter discussed her new single 'Manchild,' how she maintains a healthy lifestyle on the road (cold-plunging and rarely drinking alcohol), and how she uses humor as a device. She also addresses the internet's obsession with her love life and the more sexual parts of her show, and how it feels to live in a time in which 'women have been picked apart more, and scrutinized in every capacity.'
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30 minutes ago

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‘If men couldn't have sex with me, they didn't know what to do with me': Alanis Morissette on addiction, midlife liberation and the predatory 90s

Alanis Morissette asks which version of her I wish to hear from: 'The hormonal bitch who has a lot to say? The people-pleasing, kind, amenable part? They're all here.' It's 9am in sunny Los Angeles and the ­Canadian-born singer-songwriter is ­wearing a slouchy top, her wavy hair loose. She's long been aware of these different 'parts', that her life is full of contradiction. 'I have 14 different opinions about one thing.' It's why, aged 19, she wrote Hand In My Pocket (lyrics include: I'm high, but I'm grounded / I'm sane, but I'm ­overwhelmed), one of several anthems on Jagged ­Little Pill, the album released 30 years ago this month. Back then, in the unenlightened 90s, people found this sort of talk unnerving. 'They were like, 'Whoa, that's scary. What are you talking about?'' 'They called it my 'psychobabble'. I'm like, 'I'm going to stay the course with my psychobabble.'' It's what she sees as her 'karmic assignment' and feels not a little vindicated now that these ideas are welcomed by the mainstream. There's a whole seam of psychotherapy that views the mind as composed of distinct 'parts', called Internal Family Systems. Morissette speaks at the symposiums, as well as summits on trauma, or wholeness verses wellness, career, art and feminism. She hosted a podcast devoted to this stuff. 'The healing arts,' she says, adding drily: 'I am from California, never forget that. California, because if I were in any other state my head might explode.' Morissette hair-whipped into our consciousness, a waif with a wide smile belting raw honesty in an outsized mezzo-soprano, with You Oughta Know. It wasn't just the 'psychobabble' that caused consternation. It was the unsettling range of female emotion, the androgyny, the 'monstrous feminine'. 'I used to say, 'I'm on the frontlines, I get my head chopped off.'' Jimmy Fallon compared her to a troll doll. Rolling Stone called her 'rage-filled', put her on the November 1995 cover with the headline Angry White Female. Purists cleared their throats over the use of 'ironic' in her track of that title. The New York Times declared the things she described – 'a black fly in your chardonnay', 'rain on your wedding day' – 'distinctly unironic'. Morissette said yes, she was sometimes 'the malapropism queen'. But her fans understood. And 33m of them bought Jagged Little Pill, so. Since then, she's sold 75m records, released 10 albums, most recently The Storm Before the Calm, featuring 11 guided meditations. She's acted in films, led healing workshops, raised awareness on issues such as sex abuse, postpartum depression, disordered eating, addiction. We've met because this Friday evening she will step on to Glastonbury's Pyramid stage. She's never been to Glastonbury – which seems incredible; in so many ways she might have been hatched in a tent in the Healing Field – but as an artist, she says, 'It was bucket-listy.' She's grateful to still be able to perform work from her 30-year oeuvre without compromising herself. It's because she still believes every lyric, she says, 'value systems-wise and in terms of passions'. There's only one she's iffy about. It's a song about partnerships called Not the Doctor, which says, essentially, 'I don't want to worry about your stuff. Your stuff is your stuff. My stuff's my stuff. Never the twain shall meet.' She pulls a face. 'Now I've been married 15 years, I'm like, Oh, the twain shall meet. The twain are very much meeting every day.' This morning she's at her desk in the home she shares with the rapper Souleye (whom she met at a meditation retreat in 2009) and their three children, sons Ever, 14, and Winter, five, and daughter Onyx, nine. Also in the house, 'so many dogs and animals, holy fuck'. The camera her end tips up from time to time creating a sensation for me of being capsized. * * * I first met Morissette five years ago when she was in London for the launch of her album Such Pretty Forks in The Road. She was breastfeeding her youngest, then a few months old, and grappling with 'lacto-menopause' (What's that? 'It's a fucking shitshow'). My takeaway then: Morissette doesn't do half measures, but she does do gallows humour. She had been living in Berkeley, California, enjoying the community spirit, people dropping round with smoothies and hot soup. She found the microclimate calming on her nervous system when the energy in LA got too much. 'There's a lot of unfinished trauma in LA,' she told me then. Before moving to Berkeley, she'd been in the western suburbs of LA for 24 years. They then lived in Malibu, but were driven out by fires in 2019. She has occasionally tried to live outside the state, 'briefly' on Bowen Island, Vancouver. And she tried New York for a year. 'But that Pacific Ocean, it keeps pulling me back,' she says. Yup, she's 'a Californian girl through and through'. By January this year, they had been living in Pacific Palisades in LA for just a few months when the wildfires tore through their neighbourhood, writing off their house and 85% of their belongings. More than 200,000 people were displaced. Many of her friends fled to New York, whole communities upped sticks. It was the ocean, the communal living vibe, the general feeling the feels that made her want to stay in California. The family initially found a temporary solution, living 'communally' with four friends between January and May. About a month ago, Morissette worked 'feverishly' to find the house she's in now, a block from where she used to live, surrounded by hills, 'room-mating indefinitely' with a friend who lost his home in Altadena, north LA. She says a heaviness persists in the city, 'a grief'. She avoids the devastated areas, even if it means taking long detours, 'because when you drive through Sunset all the way down, it's still surreality'. She says her mind can't compute what her eyes are seeing. And the beach is out, because any time she contemplates going in the water she remembers, 'it's likely filled with toxins' from the ash. 'It's a different city now, but it's always a cool city. I'm pretty in love with Los Angeles.' A few days after we speak, the city lit up again, this time with protests against Donald Trump's immigration raids, which spread across the country after the US president's deployment of the national guard. The night before Morissette and her family left for Norway for the first date of her summer tour, a curfew was imposed by the LA mayor. I ask about living in Trump's America, and she says (with a touch of sarcasm) that she was looking forward to this part of the conversation. 'The gift of travelling the planet is I get glimpses of how the international community perceive America,' she says. She has a way of summing up how Canadians respond to rudeness. They are, 'Nice, nice, nice. Then piss us off on the wrong day and we explode.' Is this prime minister Mark Carney's way of doing business with Trump? She laughs. 'It becomes a hard no. We try to be amenable, but then it's a very hard no. Unequivocal. So that's kind of our thing, culturally. We came by it honestly.' * * * Morissette's tour will take in cities all over Europe including London, Dublin, Belfast, Cardiff and Glasgow. She says when she's touring, she's pretty nocturnal, going to bed as late as 4am. Mornings are sharpened with a bulletproof coffee and she practises 'intuitive' intermittent fasting. When she's at home, she 'putters – you know, organising and cleaning with no agenda. I'll get back to you on what that means neurobiologically.' She says her awareness is 'diffuse' while she does this, which is 'instantly feminine'. 'You can be aware that your child just stubbed his toe, the dog needs his food, the husband needs a snug. That's the divine feminine capacity.' Her mentor, the late author and addiction specialist Pia Mellody, once said vacuuming was her spiritual practice. 'I was like, 'That's mine, too!' So, if you see a clean environment, it means I was meditating.' While we talk, her husband, whose real name is Mario Treadway, is padding about somewhere in the house. He's released nine albums, and there's some thematic crossover with his wife in terms of an interest in spirituality, 'inner child work' and mental health (he lost an older brother to suicide). Certainly, from the outside – see Instagram – their home is a sweet, functioning environment. He's the kind of husband who wears a Patriarchy Hurts Us All T-shirt and makes juices (spinach, celery and lemon) for breakfast before shouldering his share of the children's home schooling. As musicians, they 'make sense to each other', Morissette says. 'I'm not strange to him. I'm not weird or freakish.' But they put the work in. She can't imagine how relationships manage without couples counselling. 'I'm a huge couples therapist person. I have been for ever.' Her non-negotiable is that the therapist be 'trauma-informed' and 'addiction-informed'. 'I can't be supported by someone who doesn't look through those lenses.' Any addiction, if we keep going with it, we're dead. It is great for 20 minutes, then you're dead She's long been frank about addiction, deliberately so. 'I call addiction 'relief-seeking measures that kill you eventually'.' Work, love, sex and shopping, 'those are the chestnuts' for her. They are 'Whac-a-Mole', in that as soon as she's bashed one, another pops up. Being a workaholic is 'especially' hard. 'Because the number one priority is being clicked into some seed of productivity. There's no worth in just being. And it's a higher power thing, so work addiction is also called the praise addiction.' For instance: 'If I said, 'Oh, I did heroin till four in the morning and totally blacked out,' people would be like, 'Oh shit. Bitch needs some help.' But if I said, 'I've been working my fucking ass off for this deadline and I finished at 4.15am,' people would be patting my back and be, like, 'Good work, girl.' It's equally corrosive. Because any addiction, if we keep going with it, we're dead. It is great for 20 minutes, then you're dead.' She's joking about the '20 minutes' and at the same time very much not joking about the 'dead'. She describes herself as part of the 20% of the population who are 'highly sensitive' as well as part of the 4% who are 'empaths' – meaning she'll walk into a room porous to everyone else's issues, pain and general unresolved junk. It's a cursed trait, she says. Society loves the 'yield' of the sensitive person: 'They love the songs, the photos, the art. But they don't love the human.' Without therapy, she 'would not be alive'. She was suicidal? 'All the time. I still struggle with it. I have an anxious, depressive tendency. Those who are sensitive are much more susceptible to their environmental information. If you put a highly sensitive person in an environment where they're brow-beaten or reduced, they'll basically want to kill themselves. It's the worst. If you put a highly sensitive person in an environment where they're supported, championed and listened to, they thrive.' For her own children, Morissette has tried to create an environment where their 'multiple intelligences' are nurtured. A word about 'multiple intelligences' for the uninitiated. It's a theory developed by the US psychologist Howard Gardner, who identified eight different types of intelligences alongside the old 'academic, sit in your chair and get good grades in a test' type. Morissette is a fierce advocate of the intelligences. I'll let her take it from here: 'My job has always been to understand an entire model through clinical training and otherwise, and then update it. Expand it. So when I interviewed Gardner on the podcast, I said, 'Can I update the multiple intelligences?' And he said, 'You can do whatever you want, Alanis.'' 'So now I have 16 intelligences. Not only do I use that as a template when I'm home schooling, but I also use it as a template if friends come to me worried about their kids. Or if we're talking about the conventional curriculum in public schools, or what the government's up to with education. I constantly reference multiple intelligences, because so many kids say, 'I'm really dumb.' And it kills me. I'm just like, 'What do you mean? Where are your intelligences? Where do you spark up? Where do you jump out of bed in the morning?' And it might be physical intelligence. It might be that you're meant to do backflips in a way that I'll never do. I'll need a stunt double for that. So I go through it with anybody who's across from me and seeking support.' She calls home school 'unschool', and the kids are allowed to opt into the mainstream the moment they choose. Ever, for instance, chose to go at seventh grade. I ask her to give me a flavour. 'Like, Winter will be singing to us his whole day, channelling his stream of consciousness. And then Onyx is twirling around the room. Artistry as a way of life is so normalised in our family. It's not like if one person's loving their academic moment, that isn't recognised. If someone's loving the backflip they just mastered, we're like, 'Awesome!' So there is a celebration of process here. Destination is fun, but process is everything. We value that here.' Morissette calls the people who help the family the 'caregiving gang', certainly a nicer way of putting it than 'nannies and tutors'. Everybody in that gang knows about the multiple intelligence system. 'What I've done is laminated maps and posters to indicate what each might look like. For example, musical intelligence might look like Souleye in the studio writing a song. He'll bring Onyx in, and she'll write a song, and he'll record it.' Naturalist intelligence is another. The family have a farm in northern California where they keep cows, turkeys, ducks, snakes 'and tons of chickens. Onyx is super knowledgable, to the point where, when I don't know a thing about an animal, I just turn to her. So we've got our naturalist intelligence there, our animal empath. I can't even keep a plant alive.' She loves the tranquillity of the farm, the peaceful escape. 'I love anywhere where there's a vortex,' she says. For a second, I think: vortex? The internet informs me that there's an alternative definition. A vortex in this context is 'a state of alignment with one's desires and source energy'. Morissette says she gets 'a little word salady sometimes. It's a linguistic issue.' She loves words, loves using them, 'but sometimes I play with them a little much'. She'll create words – tangentalise, decohesify – that intuitively seem to fit. How does she talk to her kids about the postpartum depression she experienced after all three were born? 'I apologise all the time. They'll say, 'I remember that whole era,' and I'll say, 'Well, I wasn't exactly available to show up for you in the full way that I wanted to.' I am pretty transparent about how I failed them. And my running joke, which is not a joke, is that I have accounts set up for their potential college fees, if that's the route they take, but I also have whole accounts set up for their therapy, because they're going to need it.' My hair is a band mate. It's a way of expressing and flailing and raging. It's a friend who protects me when I'm feeling vulnerable on stage She says interest in postpartum depression is better than it was, say, 30 years ago. 'But 'interest' isn't salve. Being interested in someone's suffering isn't the same as showing up for it. There's not a lot of education around anything feminine, but this one especially. So, it's rugged. But I really consider myself a sort of existential cockroach. There's a tenacity – I don't know where it comes from, probably my parents – to keep going.' She puts on a voice here of someone asking a question after the birth of Winter, when she was 45: ''Why would you get pregnant again if you've already been through it twice and it gets progressively worse?' I'm like, 'Well, look at my children. I'll do anything for these kids. To meet them, even, I'll suffer anything.'' She pauses then adds: 'It's also a generation X thing. We're known for our white-knuckle approach to fricking everything.' She's tugging the ends of her hair. I should say something about her hair. It's still long, brown, middle-parted and what the kids would call iconic in the way Janis Joplin's was, too. Morissette helicoptered it on stage, semi-dreaded it in You Learn, wore it as her only clothes in her video for Thank U. 'I mean, my hair is a band mate,' she says. 'It's a way of expressing and flailing and raging. It's like a typewriter, it speaks on my behalf. Without me, even. It's a friend who protects me when I'm feeling vulnerable on stage. If you have 80,000 or 200,000 people looking, a well-placed moment of deep' – she mimes retreating behind her hair – 'and then I'm back' – she mimes re-emerging – 'It's a pretty way of hiding. The perfect tool for an introvert. And I've always felt androgynous, so in some ways my earrings or my hair length can remind someone that it's a female body.' She doesn't mind when it's long and greasy, she likes the 'aesthetic of dirty chic' (I fear Glastonbury may test even the steeliest Californian). Plus, her hair supplied a fierce and tangible shift from the way she'd been moulded as a child star back home in Canada. * * * Born in Ottawa, Alanis Morissette was one of three children of teachers Alan Morissette and Georgia Feuerstein; her mother's family escaped the Hungarian revolution when she was 10. 'Basically, they were on a train, someone leaned over and said, 'Hey, we just want to let you know that every family getting off at the next stop is being taken away to be killed. Your family might want to jump off.' They did, looked back from the field, and saw everyone being executed.' Morissette has an older brother Chad, and a twin, Wade. By all accounts she was a child in constant motion, always spinning, singing. 'My twin brother used to joke he would be playing soccer while I was writing songs about fate,' she has said. She tells me two clear things about her early life. One that she had a 'prophetic' vision of herself travelling the planet and singing. 'That's what I saw as a very young person.' The second is that her 'psychological leanings' were always there. 'We all have our funny roles in our family, and my role was the 'psyche understander' and the conflict resolver. Some might think that made me the peacemaker, but really, I was just the family therapist. Which is exciting, but also horrifying.' (Does she still have that role? She laughs. 'I quit.' She mimes handing out other therapists' numbers, 'Here's a couple of business cards.') At the age of 10, Morissette – Lady Di hairdo and roll-up jeans – appeared in five episodes of the Nickelodeon kids' series You Can't Do That on Television. She used the money she earned to make her first album. At the same time, she was a competitive swimmer with a punishing training schedule. Not long after, she was signed by MCA, who turned her into a cringy pop princess bopping with Paula Abdul-style dance moves in a crucifix and bra top. She even opened for rapper Vanilla Ice. She was cutting records in studios until 3am and still attending school – even if the classroom desk was just a chance to catch up on sleep. Behind the teen gloss, of course, were the predatory men, the exploitative financial deals, the criticisms about her looks and weight. All this, in an era that celebrated size zero, cemented a severe eating disorder. After high school, she learned to play guitar and started writing songs. Aged 19, she moved to LA and spent her days trying to navigate a culture where no one asked her a question and just writing, writing, writing on the beach. Music was suddenly an outlet. Her lyrics were, 'psychologically, spiritually, emotionally informed'. She was signed by Madonna's label Maverick and Jagged Little Pill was released when she was 21, selling half a million copies in one week. Nonetheless, it was a 'rough time' to be a solo artist. 'There was no one to hide behind. What I found in terms of the lovely patriarchy, was that at that time if men couldn't fuck me, they didn't know what to do with me.' When she looked around her in the musical landscape, the people who seemed successful were 'secure in their loudness, à la Courtney Love. That seemed to be valued. I was like, 'OK, I'm going to pretend to be an extrovert for the next 25 years.' So, tequila – anything that allowed me to be the life of the party – or if I was doing a talk, Xanax. Anything that would help me pretend I'm not me.' I'm working micro-feminisms into every board meeting She takes a deep breath and says as if speedily wrapping up, 'And that's why perimenopause is so great, because now there's zero desire to present as something that I'm not. I spent 25 years trying to be someone who didn't have this temperament. At 51, I feel this is just what it is like.' She says that menopause is 'rough and amazing, both'. She interrupts herself to ask if I know about the micro-feminism trend, 'where you just impose the feminine on everything. It's anything's like, 'Oh, I need to talk to a doctor, because she'll tell me … ' I do it all the time. If someone sees a bug, 'Oh my gosh, she's gorgeous.' Because, obviously, patriarchy would have it be such that every fucking thing is male, including the creatures. I'm working those micro-feminisms into every board meeting.' She hates that the hyper-sexuality of the 90s and 00s is back. That 'size zero' is back. 'We thought that whole era was done, right? We sorted this out! Didn't we? Oh, we didn't. We dropped the ball. The collarbone thing came back in … and the hyper-sexualization thing is so boring.' She laughs: 'Of course, a perimenopausal woman's going to say that, right? My procreative imperative is, thank fucking God, chilling out. There are gorgeous things that come along with that – less people-pleasing, more directness. But I'm still in the middle of it. And that can be disconcerting. Most of my friends are in the middle of it, too, so we cut each other a lot of slack. My menopausal women friends are like, 'Honey, it gets fucking great.' It's the best news.' Morissette believes medicine should embrace all the woo-woo, including psilocybin (the hallucinogenic compound found in some mushrooms) or MDMA treatments for PTSD. 'I think it's all fantastic. The future in medicine – pharma is not maybe going to be so happy hearing this – is prevention, heading things off at the pass; understanding things hormonally, emotionally, circumstantially, relationally to past traumas. So that includes microdosing, ketamine, or whatever you need to do. We've come a long way; people know how to do this now, so I'm excited.' Does this mean her view of sobriety is nuanced? 'There are some people who would get very mad at me for implying at all that it's nuanced. Because for those of us who were drinking at seven in the morning, well there's nothing nuanced about that. So, I guess it depends. For me, it's whichever addiction is bringing you to death very fast. Which one is it? Which one's ruining your relationships? And then there's the Whac-a-Mole approach, which is, 'OK, I've stopped not eating. And now I'm working my ass off. Oh, yeah, and I took a few too many pills.' The Whac-a-Mole, that's what we have to keep an eye on.' She's looking ahead to Glastonbury, which is part of what she calls her 'summer of communalism'. She'll be travelling with her family and ever-expanding caravan of friends. When she takes to the stage, that long hair billowing, she expects to be wide-eyed, taking in the crowd in front of her, and 'beholding the shit out of everything'. • Tickets for Alanis Morissette's European tour are available to buy here. • In the UK, Action on Addiction is available on 0300 330 0659. In the US, call or text SAMHSA's National Helpline at 988. In Australia, the National Alcohol and Other Drug Hotline is at 1800 250 015; families and friends can seek help at Family Drug Support Australia at 1300 368 186 • In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@ or jo@ In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at

Cosmopolitan

2 hours ago

• Cosmopolitan

15 ways to wear gingham outfits, as the picnic print becomes everyone's favourite summer staple

It's official: summer is fully in bloom. What does that mean? Well, apart from setting out to find the perfect nostalgic pair of jelly shoes and strategising ways to make denim work in this heatwave, we're also thinking a lot about how to integrate gingham into our wardrobes. And when we say 'gingham', no, we're not meaning just any old check print (nor are we referring to houndstooth, tartan, or plaid, thank you very much). We're very specifically talking about g-i-n-g-h-a-m: the picnic tablecloth print, turned beloved summer wardrobe pattern. Lately, gingham has been everywhere: from Bella Hadid x Frankies Bikinis prairecore bikinis and midi dresses to Copenhagen fashion influencer-style gingham blouses and scrunchies. But there are also plenty of other ways to style the trend if you want to branch out from swimwear and Copenhagen street style: whether it's festival-friendly bloomer shorts (y'know, the ones that have been soooo popular this szn), a voluminous bubble skirt, Sabrina Carpenter-esque retro capris, or even tailoring. Below, we've rounded up a whopping 15 ways to wear gingham, complete with shopping recs hand-picked by our fashion team. And, yep, we tracked down the perfect gingham bandana for ya... Thank us later! Behold: gingham bloomer shorts. Bloomies proved to be one of the dominant trends at Coachella this year, and the micro shorts with lacy fringing are undeniably comfy and generally easy to wash, making them a winner on practicality alone. Style with a peasant blouse or crop top and stick on a pair of cowboy hoots and, congrats, you've ticked the gingham, bloomie and western trends all in one... If you're anything like us, you're always looking for a summer staple that can take you from work meetings, to dinner, to a nice ol' winebar. And voilà: the gingham midi dress has got your back. Despite the summery pattern, the longer hem length is a bit more formal (dare we say...'grown up'?) and can work for all manner of occasions depending on your choice of accessories. We'd opt for heeled flip flops or kitten heels for a date/drinks, loafers for work, and jelly shoes for a summery casual day out. If you are looking to prolong the indie sleaze trend, well, we don't blame you! The late 2000s and early 2010s are a treasure trove of under-explored nostalgia, and a bubble skirt is an easy way to tap into this time period and the era's love affair with maximalist silhouettes (à la the peplum). The trick here is to let the skirt take centre stage, so try your gingham bubble skirt with a short-sleeved tee or a plain tank top. Product Details There's a reason that 'jeans and a nice top' was a generation's guiding motto for assembling an outfit: it just works! With a gingham top, you can easily summer-ify a pair of jeans, and bring a bit of sunshine to your outfit even if the British weather necessitates a more sensible fit. However, you can also go full gingham and try a pair of gingham trousers in a contrasting colour, styled with some sandals. This blouse features tie straps and a crinkled taffeta material with a red and white check pattern. We love a good shirt. You can style your gingham shirt over a pair of matching gingham boxer shorts (see below!) or use it as an eye-catching top to go with linen shorts or trousers, and a simple pair of trainers. Depending on your work vibes, you can also wear a gingham shirt with a pair of light trousers to the office: the sky's the limit. The Classic: Linen, Green Gingham. Our mid-length, flattering fit shirt meets lightweight linen in this cool-but-cute shirt. Pair with the matching boxer shorts for a co-ord look or throw over a white t-shirt and jeans. Designed in London, made in Turkey Product Details Slightly dropped shoulder Single buttoned, regular cuff Two pleats across the yoke Materials 100% Linen with Shell buttons. Made in Turkey. Fit Advice Take your normal size, intended for a slightly loose fit The model in image 1 is 177cm/ 5'9" and wears a UK10 The model in image 2 is 179cm/ 5'10.5" and wears a UK10 The back length of a UK10 is 71cm/ 28" Find out more about our Shirt Shapes and Sizing Product Care Machine wash at 30°C or below, on a regular cycle with similar colours. Hang to air dry after a quick shake, and to ease the ironing effort, always hang on a hanger. If possible, avoid direct sunlight unless the fabric is white, and never tumble dry. Ironing is optional due to the relaxed nature of the shirt but is recommended for a pressed finish. It's an easy fabric to iron: make sure the shirt is reversed, use low-medium heat, and finish by steaming. We would always recommend rolling instead of folding to help reduce wrinkles. Personalisation Whether it's for yourself or a gift, our monogramming service is the perfect personal touch to add to your WNU shirt. For inspiration and to learn more, take a look at our Monogramming Page As mentioned above, a pair of gingham boxer shorts can work well in a co-ord with a matching (or contrasting, if you're feeling wild) gingham shirt for a nice lunch date or a cute day out. You can also style with a baseball cap, t-shirt and trainers for a more low-key, comfy look (FYI, it works v well as an airport fit). If you're meeting friends or a date for an al fresco dinner or cocktails, a gingham mini dress can be a great option. There are so many different variations, from a more structured, strappy gingham dress to a short and sweet cutesy, gingham, mini dress with a peter pan collar. Regardless of the style, you can tap into a western/prairiecore vibe with a pair of cowboy boots or go more preppy with a pair of ballet flats or Mary Janes. If you're looking for a statement summer wardrobe piece, look no further. On holiday, everyone needs a lightweight pair of trousers, and selecting a gingham pair in an eye-catching colour is a great outfit hack. Dress up with statement jewellery and a strappy top and sandals, dress down with a pair of Birkenstocks, a denim jacket and a simple tee. This product has a smaller fit than usual. The easy pull-on style of these green and white gingham wide-leg trousers makes them perfect for pairing with dressed up or down outfits, made from a comfortable cotton blend with an adjustable elasticated waistband and side pockets. Regular fit Elasticated waistband Wide leg Cotton-blend Side pockets Short to fit inside leg 27" x 69cm. Regular to fit inside leg 29" x 74cm. Long to fit inside leg 31" x 79cm. XL Tall to fit inside leg 33" x 84cm. 65% Recycled polyester, 35% Cotton. Items with the curve logo are available in sizes 18 and above., Our tall collection is designed to fit women 5'10" and above. This has been proportionally increased through the body, leg and sleeve to achieve the perfect fit. Available in sizes 8-20. Midi skirts are a staple of two major summer trends: westerncore and boho chic. With gingham, you're taking things well up a notch. Wear with a peasant blouse and boots for the former, and a long tank top and a medallion belt (yep, those are back) for the latter, during festival season. You can also rock a more structured, contrasting top in a neutral like black or white and put on a pair of smart sandals and you've got the ideal look for a garden party, dinner at a friend's house, or a particularly trend BBQ engagement. 'Gingham' and 'tailoring' aren't words that immediately seem to go together but, like with peanut butter and jelly and other unlikely yet iconic duos, they work together perfectly. From blazers to waistcoats or smart trousers, there are a number of gingham tailoring options out there, which tend to work well when styled with smart sandals, loafers or ballet flats (the latter in leather/pleather, not mesh or jelly, if you're going into the office). We recommend opting for either a larger check and/or darker colours to make this one work appropriate, if that's your aim. Heading on a beach holiday this summer? An easy way to tap into the gingham trend is with gingham swimwear, either a one-piece or a bikini. Despite obviously having a purpose by the beach or pool, depending on the level of support required, bikini tops can also double up as a tiny crop top in a pinch (specifically in a laidback club or bar, or for a relaxed day of mooching). Level up your poolside look with a pair of heeled flip flops and a straw sunhat. Composition & Care While it's summer, we still need a cover-up from time to time. A gingham jacket works perfectly for chillier days when styled with regular capri pants and a t-shirt, or with a full gingham look (bonus points for contrasting colours). This one's great for the weekends or for nippy evenings on holidays. Gingham can serve major retro vibes and nowhere is this truer than when applied to gingham capri pants. Capri pants have had a major resurgence this summer for their 90s-chic energy, but a pair in gingham throws it back even further, channelling a Sabrina Carpenter 1960s nostalgia. Rock yours with with some matching headgear (see below), a crop top, and some espadrilles for a party-perfect, TikTok-ready look for when you're bopping around to Sabrina's latest single on the dance floor. House of CB is a leading British womenswear brand, internationally acclaimed for its feminine, luxury and versatile pieces. Scruncies are a fave for a reason, a way of delivering a fun hair look even when you're between washes. When it comes to the gingham trend, a fun hair accessory in the pattern can be an easy way to dip your toe in and see if the look works for you. Try it in a bright colour to inject some boldness into an otherwise lowkey look. Our red bandana scrunchie features a gingham edge trim. We suggest pairing it with our Macy tote bag, available in the same print. More about me Bandanas, particularly in gingham, are going to be a major hair look this summer. They work well with festival attire like handkerchief tops and short-shorts, or with a more westerncore look like denim shorts and cowboy boots, or even your bikini. Megan Wallace (they/them) is Cosmopolitan UK's Former Sex and Relationships Editor covering sexual pleasure, sex toys, LGBTQIA+ identity, dating and romance. They have covered sexuality and relationships for over five years and are the founder of the PULP zine, which publishes essays on culture and sex. In their spare time, they can be found exploring the London kink scene and planning dates on Feeld.

Yahoo

9 hours ago

• Yahoo

Benson Boone's Favorite Hobby Proves He's a Thrill Seeker On and Off the Stage

"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." Here's what you'll learn when you read this article: 'Beautiful Things' singer Benson Boone has a new album out called American Heart. The 22-year-old Grammy nominee didn't discover his singing talent until his junior year of high school. When he's not making music, Boone spends his time cliff jumping and enjoying a sober lifestyle. If his platinum-certified debut album from 2024 is any indication, Benson Boone is about to crash the charts again. His new album, American Heart, released Friday. The 22-year-old musician has previously said the 10-track record is heavily influenced by Bruce Springsteen and Americana music. He's out to prove there's much more to his artistry than the ubiquitous hit 'Beautiful Things.' The No. 2 single propelled Boone to superstardom and helped him earn a 2025 Grammy nomination for Best New Artist. 'I think I'm getting to the point where I just want people to know that there's more than just that song,' he told Rolling Stone in March. 'I think I'm a little past that point. But of course I still love the song. I'm still proud of it. And I'll be performing it for a while, so I hope that feeling sticks around.' It remains to be seen if any American Heart singles—such as 'Mystical Magical', which features interpolations from the late singer and actor Olivia Newton-John—will reach the same heights. However, Boone is undoubtedly one of the biggest names in music following his recent meteoric rise. Here are a few things you might not know about Boone's rapid success. Perhaps not surprising given his on-stage theatrics (see his front flip off a piano at the Grammys), Boone first showed promise as an athlete. Boone, the middle of five siblings who was born in June 2002, performed aerial stunts from a very young age. 'When he was probably 3 years old, we just could never stop from having him do backflips off the couch or flips wherever he could,' his father, Nate, recalled. Boone later competed as a diver at Monroe High School in Washington. He was pretty good, too, earning a sixth-place finish at the 2020 state championships. However, Boone's musical talent was an unexpected discovery. According to the Everett Daily Herald, he was a junior when a friend asked him to play piano and sing for a battle of the bands competition. Turns out his voice was made for the stage. As a senior, he played main character Buddy in a school production of Elf: The Musical. Boone graduated in 2020 and attended college for one semester but dropped out to focus on his new passion. Like many other aspiring music stars, Boone tried out for the reality TV competition American Idol. His Season 19 audition impressed judges Lionel Richie, Luke Bryan, and Katy Perry. 'I see American Idol, and I see you, and I see you winning American Idol if you want to,' Perry told him. While Boone, then only 18, was clearly an early favorite, we'll never know the true accuracy of Perry's vision. Not wanting to be forever associated with the show, Boone bet on himself and dropped out after reaching the top 24. In a recent interview, Boone revealed he spoke to Perry earlier this year about his decision to walk away. 'She was like really happy for me, also really worried about me. I think she understands that when you're starting to go through all this, there's just a lot of hate coming your way, a lot of people that want things from you,' he told The Scott Mills Breakfast Show. 'So, she was more just checking in on me. She was like, 'Leaving that show was like the best thing you ever did.'' Boone built a large following by posting clips of his music on TikTok, where he now has more than 8.9 million followers. Although you might say his biggest 'believer' is Dan Reynolds, frontman for the Grammy-winning rock band Imagine Dragons. Reynolds, 37, reached out to Boone via Instagram after his exit from American Idol and offered to work with him. 'I had never written any of my own music, so I flew out to Vegas for like three days to work with him,' Boone recalled. 'At the end of that, he said he really liked working with me and he really liked my personality, and so I literally packed up and moved to Vegas the next day. It was crazy! But yeah, he, like, has been my mentor through all of this.' The star vocalist went a step further—Reynolds helped Boone earn a record deal with his label Night Street Records in 2021. 'We sign artists so rarely at Night Street—it was one of those moments where you know you have no choice,' Reynolds told Billboard. The emerging artist's first single with label was 'Ghost Town.' Boone's ascent continued from there, with 'Beautiful Things' becoming a global sensation in 2024. The song reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 on the Adult Contemporary chart, setting a record with its 55-week climb to the top spot. Even sweeter, the hit song helped him land one of his biggest gigs yet as an opener on Taylor Swift's Eras Tour this past June. The thrill of performing for thousands of screaming fans still isn't enough for Boone. In his down time, the singer enjoys the extreme sport of cliff jumping. Although he's normally diving into bodies of water, he isn't too picky about his leaping locales. Large buildings will also suffice, as when Boone jumped from the Sky Tower in Auckland, New Zealand, in 2022—a plunge of 629 feet! Don't worry; he was tethered the entire time and completely safe. 'Maybe a part of me has a death wish, and I just don't know that part of me yet, because I don't want to die,' he told iHeartRadio in 2022. 'I really like Earth.' In addition to satisfying his need for an adrenaline rush, the activity helps Boone prepare for the stage, which he says provides a similar yet 'elevated' feeling. 'It's like a challenge to me, like how big can I make this song, how good can I hit, like how high can I go on this note?' he said. Raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Boone was instructed to abstain from substances including drugs and alcohol. Although he has distanced himself from the faith, Boone said this March he still maintains a sober lifestyle as a personal choice. Listen to American Heart on Amazon Music, Apple Music, or Spotify 'I have such an addictive personality,' Boone told Rolling Stone. 'I feel like if I started, I would do it so much that my health would just decline, and I wouldn't enjoy touring as much.' Boone was also taught to avoid hot drinks, according to Mormon tenets, but admitted to trying coffee on outings with his girlfriend, TikTok influencer Maggie Thurmon. He isn't a fan and compared the taste to 'burnt wood.' Ouch. If you needed any more proof of Boone's massive appeal, look at the blink-and-miss-it ticket sales for his 2025 North American tour. The string of 34 shows—which begin August 22 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and run through November—sold out in only 9 seconds (!) earlier this year. So, it looks like you're limited to the resale market if you want to see him live. Boone is currently prepping for the tour by following a consistent workout regimen, eating healthier, and undergoing vocal training. 'I'm gonna work on my voice and make sure I'm singing healthy, and I feel like I'm gonna be, like, physically very ready for this tour,' he told MTV. You Might Also Like Nicole Richie's Surprising Adoption Story The Story of Gypsy Rose Blanchard and Her Mother Queen Camilla's Life in Photos