Disruption to online shopping could derail retailer’s successful pivot to cater to fashion-focused customers

In September 2019, as Marks & Spencer fell out of the FTSE 100 for the first time, its then chief executive, Steve Rowe, described the retailer as having a “reputation for frumpiness”. Just six years later, thanks to clever campaigns, unexpected collaborations and a focus on catwalk-influenced pieces, the retailer has transformed itself into the go-to fashion destination for high street shoppers.

Annual results, released on Wednesday, showed a 22% rise in pre-tax profits in the year to 30 March. Overall sales were up 6% to £13.9bn with fashion and homeware increasing 3.5% to £4.2bn.

The trick is to remember they have more in common than they have differences – and you’ll be seeing a lot of both this summer

Are you team spot, or team stripe? They resonate on different frequencies, in a subtle sort of a way. They are not exactly opposites, but they are not interchangeable either. Not chalk and cheese, but perhaps a bit like salt-and-vinegar and cheese-and-onion. Just different flavours.

A stripe is brisker, while a spot is giving whimsy. I guess there’s some old-fashioned gender stereotyping mixed up in that, because stripes are worn by everyone, whereas spots are almost exclusively found in women’s fashion. Stripes feel robust and functional, while spots are daintier, more playful.

Debate over ‘chic’ has erupted online as luxury-minded TikTokers push a definition that aligns with the Maga set

The idea of “chic” is a fashion-world cliche. At best it is a know-it-when-you-see-it vibe, at worst a lazy adjective chosen by a writer to describe something that reminds her of Jane Birkin. It feels inoffensive enough. But now, “chic” has become something of a lightning rod online – a shorthand for a type of conservative-coded aesthetic.

It began last month, when a creator named Tara Langdale posted a video to her TikTok following of just over 30,000 in which she sipped from a long-stemmed wine glass and read off a list of things she finds “incredibly UN-chic”. Wearing stacks of gold bracelets and a ballet-pink manicure, Langdale called out fashion choices like tattoos, Lululemon, visible panty lines, baggy denim and hunting camouflage as unchic, because, to her, these choices seemed “cheap”.

Piccioli’s appointment comes after the departure of controversial former creative director Demna in March

Pierpaolo Piccioli has been named creative director of the renowned Spanish couture house Balenciaga, the latest in a series of moves across the upper echelons of the fashion industry. The appointment follows the departure of controversial former creative director Demna to Gucci in March.

Under Demna, Balenciaga became known for a “memecore” approach to high fashion, creating novelty garments from towel skirts to handbags shaped like coffee cups. Piccolli’s appointment suggests a shift away from this approach at the respected fashion house, which was founded by Cristóbal Balenciaga in 1919.

Festival’s rules designed to protect ‘decency’ and seating arrangements stir controversy among those who read them

Not for the first time, organisers of the Cannes film festival, the ritziest and most photographed in the industry’s calendar, have decreed that various outfits will not be allowed on the red carpet this year.

An official statement released earlier this week stated that for “decency reasons” there will be “no naked dressing” – and no oversized outfits either – “in particular those with a large train that hinder the proper flow of traffic of guests and complicate seating in the theatre”.

Struggling label produces upbeat parade of greatest hits on home turf while Demna completes stint at Balenciaga

If rebirth is what you want then Florence, home of the Renaissance, is a good place to start.

Gucci, which has just switched designers after a period of plunging sales – 24% down in the last quarter of 2024, and 25% down in the first of 2025 – showed its latest collection in a catwalk pageant that began in the 15th-century Palazzo Settimanni, where the actors Paul Mescal, Viola Davis and Jeff Goldblum, a Florentine resident, had front-row seats, and continued outside to where Gucci employees and local fashion fans, seated in bars and cafes, watched an alfresco lap of the show. If you hit the factory-reset button in Florence, and make it glamorous, can you call it a renaissance button?

Say ‘I do’ to three wedding dresses that look way more expensive than their price tags

Maybe you are having your first barbecue of the year, or going for a long, lazy lunch. Whatever your bank holiday plans, light layers and accessories with personality are always a good idea

Our fashion expert rounds up her pick of the best phone straps, from beaded wristlets and cross-body straps to lanyards with recycled cases

• Jess Cartner-Morley’s May style essentials: life-changing jeans and the ultimate holiday shoes

You’re probably familiar with the concept of adding a finishing touch to your outfit: a belt that smartens up trousers, a great pair of sunglasses, statement jewellery that livens up a plain T-shirt. Well, now, there’s a new accessory in town: the phone strap.

For many of us, it’s a must-have. On a practical level, it means you don’t have to root around in your bag every time you need to check Google Maps for directions. With phone theft also an issue, it could keep your mobile safer.

A new season doesn’t need to mean a completely new wardrobe. From ballet shoes that last to secondhand shirts, these updates will fit effortlessly into your current lineup

• 15 colourful pick-me-ups to elevate your everyday

Spring feels like the perfect time to blow away the cobwebs – in life and in your wardrobe. After a winter of wool and heavy boots, the time is ripe for shaking up your look with a warm(er) weather update.

That doesn’t mean buying a whole new wardrobe: one of the things I enjoy about getting older is developing a wardrobe for each season that comes back year on year. Put clothes away between seasons: some items that make their way back out of storage were everyday favourites before then, while others may not have felt right for some time but now – lucky for you – they feel right once again. There’s something extra-fun about falling back in love with something from your own wardrobe.

Make it classy by swapping black and white for warm, earthy neutrals

This outfit looks so classy, doesn’t it? Understated, but with an indefinable air of poshness. Effortless, but elevated. But did you spot the best part? It’s in the small print. The clothes are from Uniqlo and the shoes are from Zara. The look is expensive, but the clothes aren’t.

Money isn’t everything, but some pricey clothes look cheap and some inexpensive clothes look luxurious, and I think we all know which side of that divide we’d rather be on. A great way to get it right is by picking the right colours – tonal warm neutrals are what you need for high style without high prices.

Whether you’re starting a Couch to 5K programme or gearing up for a marathon, here are three looks that will put some pep in your step

Whether you’re out with the kids filling a basket with chocolate treats or meeting with friends, here are three eggcellent Easter outfits that will give your Easter a stylish twist

Charity shops won’t take them. Councils incinerate them. Retailers dump them on the global south. We’re running out of ideas on how to deal with our used clothes – and the rag mountain just keeps growing

In February, a threadbare polycotton bedsheet landed on the desk of Simon Roberts, CEO of Sainsbury’s. A “protest by post”, it had been sent by the Sheffield-based designer, maker and eco activist Wendy Ward. “I purchased this from Sainsbury’s at least 10 years ago,” she wrote in the accompanying letter. “It has served me well. However, I have no sustainable options available for what I should do with it.” Beyond repair, it was too damaged to donate to a charity shop, she explained. She couldn’t compost it as it had been blended with polyester, and she couldn’t repurpose it as cleaning cloths, as, being polycotton, it wasn’t absorbent. And, she added, “I don’t want to put it into a textile recycling collection as the likelihood is that it will be shipped overseas or incinerated and not recycled.” Ward qualified her assertions with links to respected sources – as a sustainable fashion PhD student, she is well informed on such matters.

“The only action I can personally take,” she continued, “is to put it into my general waste bin. I don’t want to do this, as in Sheffield all general waste is incinerated as ‘energy recovery’. This isn’t a sustainable option as such processes have been shown to be as damaging to local air pollution as burning coal.” So, she concluded, “as Sainsbury’s is responsible for designing and manufacturing this product, making decisions to use polycotton with no consideration for what could be done once it reaches the end of its life, I have decided to return it to you. I would really love to hear what you decide to do with it.”

A ‘wear-once’ mentality and dirt-cheap offers have made fashion a leading pollutant. Can a new global ‘upcycling’ scheme change not only the industry, but how we think about dressing?

In 1942, the British government’s Board of Trade launched a Make Do and Mend scheme. It was one of several campaigns encouraging the public to save resources during the second world war by learning basic sewing skills alongside taking on bigger projects such as remodelling men’s clothing into womenswear. Today, Fashion Revolution, a non-profit social enterprise founded in the wake of the 2013 Rana Plaza factory disaster in Bangladesh, is gearing up to launch its own Mend in Public Day. This weekend participants from all over the world will be able to join free local community classes to learn how to mend and stitch.

However, this scheme is aimed at addressing not scarcity, but overconsumption.

Items taken from a mountain of discarded garments in the Atacama desert were sold for the price of shipping in a fightback against the ‘racist and colonialist’ dumping of unwanted clothing

Every week, Bastián Barria ventures into the Atacama desert in northern Chile looking for items of discarded clothing in the sand. About half of the hundreds of garments he finds are in perfect condition. He collects what he can and adds them to the two-tonne pile of clothes he has stored at a friend’s house.

On 17 March, 300 of those items, including Nike and Adidas shorts, Calvin Klein jeans and a leather skirt, were listed for sale online for the first time. The price? Zero. Customers had only to pay shipping costs. The first batch sold out in five hours, bought by customers from countries including Brazil, China, France, the US and the UK.

From gen Z’s interest in ‘natural’ materials to the darker ‘boom boom’ aesthetic of the Trump era, the trend wheel has turned back to pelts

I’ll admit it, Carrie Bradshaw in aviators and a fur coat, smoking and drinking beer while watching baseball, spoke to me. It was season two of Sex and the City, 1999. She was bruised from a recently ended relationship but on the brink of dating “the new Yankee” and I was a teenager, probably home from playing racketball and on the brink of Quorn sausages for dinner.

While it wasn’t the whole equation, the fur coat was certainly part of it. The way she could shrink into it and appear nonchalantly, breezily beautiful despite unwashed hair and an aching heart. I’m not proud, but I was young, and this to me then looked like something I wanted a piece of.

Ellie Violet Bramley is the Guardian’s acting fashion and lifestyle editor

How to quit the ‘buy now’ habit in eight easy steps – and shop smarter with forever in mind

• ‘If you pay more than £4, you’re being ripped off’: the fair price for 14 everyday items

Introversion is rarely useful, but it saved me a fortune in my younger years. So keenly did I loathe going to the shops that I just didn’t spend much money. I was perfectly happy, albeit a little bored and usually dressed in the same clothes.

Then online shopping happened. The lure of one-click, next-day consumables unleashed my inner impulse buyer like a starving castaway at a buffet. I never quite became a shopping addict, but the thrill of home delivery fuelled a period of slightly unhinged affluenza. My house filled with stuff while my bank account drained. I accumulated retro camera kit (70% unused to this day), expensive books about using said camera kit (100% unread) and an untold number of dresses that I bought only because I could send them back for free. I never did send them back, of course, and I never wore them, because I never wear dresses. But they were so pretty.

Almost two years on from film’s debut, Ryan Gosling character’s himbo look has reached the West End in London

Benedick in a bedazzled belt and matching sparkly shoes, Claudio clad in a gold lamé cropped co-ord. Much Ado About Nothing may be more than 400 years old but Jamie Lloyd’s current spin in London’s West End plants it very much in the modern day. Key to its contemporary update? The costumes, which look as if they have been plucked straight from a Hollywood red carpet.

Recently, menswear has been leaning into a new fun fashion era. Bland black tuxes are out. In their place? Everything from sheer chiffon shirts to sparkly jewellery. Greta Gerwig’s box office-breaking Barbie film, in which Ryan Gosling leaned into his himbo character Ken on and off-screen, may be approaching its two-year anniversary but its impact is still reverberating in menswear. No one, from the 72-year-old Jeff Goldblum to gen Z’s Timothée Chalamet, can resist. Even at this year’s Bafta awards, usually a more restrained carpet, a dazzling brooch was a menswear staple.

From Kim Jones’s rumoured last outing at Dior to Willy Chavarria’s political stance in France, here are the autumn/winter 2025 collections to know about

Trend forecasters predict wide-leg trend may be kicked out in favour of ‘indie sleaze’ narrow trousers

As the men’s shows drew to a close this week, something looked different on the catwalk. Trousers hugged calves. Fabric that once billowed around thighs clung tight. Shoes usually hidden by hems were now visible.

After several seasons in which wide-legged trousers had expanded beyond the catwalk to men who shop at Uniqlo, Muji, Zara and M&S and beyond, was the skinny, slimline, tapered trouser staging a comeback?

From Armani’s velvet revival to Canali’s layers, the menswear collections are full of ideas that can be recreated with things already in your wardrobe

It’s January, and the cliches are in full swing: it’s cold, dark, dry, you’re waiting for that next payslip … It doesn’t help that this month collides with the latest menswear fashion season. There’s nothing like scrolling Instagram with last night’s leftovers, watching a flurry of glamorous shows, parties and way out of budget trends trickle past you.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. There are plenty of quick, easy and, most importantly, affordable styling hacks you can adopt straight off the catwalk. Here are nine tricks to tap into now.

The luxury collection, created in partnership with Nigo, brings varsity jackets, abstract camo and wide-leg silhouettes to the Louvre catwalk

Pharrell Williams kicked off Paris fashion week on Tuesday night with a menswear show that cemented Louis Vuitton’s position as the new luxury leader in streetwear.

The collection was created in partnership with Nigo, a Japanese designer and one of the most influential figures in streetwear.

‘The world has become conservative,’ says designer Miuccia Prada as Milan men’s show tries to resist the algorithm

The day before the US presidential inauguration, it was impossible for Miuccia Prada to avoid the question. When designing her collection, just how much was fashion’s most radical intellectual thinking about Donald Trump?

Speaking backstage at her show on the opening weekend of men’s fashion week in Milan, the 75-year-old designer, who grew up a communist and believed, like many of her generation, that change would come not through capitalism but through revolution, could only laugh. “Is it an answer to what is happening? Yes,” she said. “The world has become conservative.” As for the clothes, it wasn’t so much an autumn/winter 2025 collection as a riposte to “the first season of artificial intelligence”.

Natural, fresh and cool. Linen is your ideal summer companion

Blue stripe dress, £79, arket.com

Thanks to excellent new tints, sticks and sprays, rising temperatures do not have to mean melting makeup

At the time of writing, my life and mood have been shifted dramatically by spring sunshine. And so too would my makeup if I hadn’t spent weeks testing new long-wear products designed to stop one’s face melting in the heat. Those of us with oily skin, an active lifestyle or a hormonal propensity for sweating or flushing, can also struggle to hold on to foundation, eyeshadow and more. But until recently, the term “long-wear” often meant dry, dragging, somewhat joyless textures and shades.

My best new discovery is Milk’s superlative Hydro Grip Gel Tint (£34), available in 15 shades; I wear number five and it’s perfect. Its light and comfortable texture and sheer, natural-looking, summery coverage betray what is extraordinarily dogged staying power. Used in place of foundation or tinted moisturiser, this has remained perfectly intact through tears, 16-hour days and a common cold – its glow never dimming. It has a flexible, stretchy gel texture that prevents cracking or caking as skin tires and dries. Concealer, blush, powders and anything else you care to throw on top layer over happily and smoothly (it has a similar texture to a primer). It’s an unequivocal 10/10 and I already know it’ll be among my best products of 2025. For a smidge more coverage with a comparable lifespan, try Maybelline’s impressive Super Stay 24h Skin Tint (£13.99).

Show dips into lucrative holiday market with butter-yellow, lilac and gold lamé outfits reflecting beauty of the backdrop

Chanel has a fresh-faced, avant garde new designer but it still stands for classic glamour. This was the loud and clear messaging at the first Chanel show since Matthieu Blazy took up his role. The show was held at Villa d’Este, the Lake Como palace hotel where Elizabeth Taylor, Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich holidayed and which Alfred Hitchcock, who filmed The Pleasure Garden there, pronounced the most beautiful place on earth.

The location, booked a year in advance, provided the theme: life in a grand hotel. Think White Lotus on Lake Como, art directed by Slim Aarons. First on to the pebbled catwalk weaving through the hotel’s terrace was a white bathrobe-style coat. Then there were capri pants in the butter yellow of the hotel parasols, and a lilac tweed suit to match the wisteria trailing overhead. Models swung tote bags big enough for pool towels, while gold lamé cover-ups glinted as dazzling as sun on the lake.

A season of debuts, intimate shows and memorable moments in the French capital