Burberry profits fall in 'challenging' market

Fashion firm Burberry has reported a fall in full-year profits and said it expects the "challenging environment for the luxury sector to continue".

Pre-tax profits for the year to 31 March fell to £415.6m, from £444.6m last year. Revenues fell 1% on an underlying basis to £2.5bn.

The firm also said this year's profits would be at the lower end of forecasts.

Burberry plans to revamp its retail operations and is aiming to make annual savings of at least £100m by 2019.

Chinese market

The group, famous for its trench coats and distinctive check pattern, has been hit by a slowdown in Chinese tourists visiting its stores in Europe, and weak demand in Hong Kong.

While group like-for-like sales were down 1%, the company said if results from Hong Kong and Macau were excluded, then sales would have been up by 3%.

The company said Hong Kong, which accounted for 9% of its global retail and wholesale revenue, had suffered a "significantly lower footfall".

It expects the majority of its future growth to come from Chinese customers, who already account for 40% of Burberry's retail sales.

The company said it was focusing on improved service, as well as bespoke products and campaigns for this market.

John Botham of Invesco Perpetual said: "The growth in Chinese consumer spending has slowed and that is an issue for Burberry.

"Another issue is traditionally Hong Kong has been the place Chinese people have travelled to on holiday and increasingly they are travelling to Japan and that is a place where Burberry isn't particularly strong."

British heritage

Burberry said that after relaunching its trench coat and scarves it would now focus on bags, which is an area growing faster than clothing.

In November, it announced it was unifying three lines under a single Burberry label and planned to develop a manufacturing and weaving facility in Yorkshire.

It is aiming to highlight Burberry's British design heritage emphasising that all the products are designed and developed in London.

Burberry chief executive Christopher Bailey said: "While we expect the challenging environment for the luxury sector to continue in the near term, we are firmly committed to making the changes needed to drive Burberry's future outperformance, underpinned by strong brand and business fundamentals."

No senior manager changes were announced, despite reports that Burberry was looking to bring in support for Mr Bailey, who has been managing the creative and business side of the company since the previous chief executive, Angela Ahrendts, left in 2014.

'Great brand'

Burberry's business is split into wholesale, which sells clothes to other retailers, and retail, which consists of its own branded outlets.

It plans to relaunch its online shopping site, and introduce a customer app to drive sales.

Burberry's shares slid 2.71% to 1112p after it said that full-year profits in 2017 would be "towards the bottom of the range of analysts' expectations".

Steve Clayton, head of equity research at Hargreaves Lansdown, said this, together with cost cutting, offered little comfort in the short-term.

"There is a great brand at the heart of Burberry, but it needs stronger Chinese demand to shine.

"The reductions in longer term market growth expectations are disappointing, but reflect the new reality," he added.

What is India's style today?

Contemporary Indian designers create an extraordinary spectrum of fashion, from ornate bridal ensembles to minimalist daywear. Today, they are faced with the challenges as well as the opportunities of carving out a space in a market that also produces a large amount for international brands – many of which, such as Zara and H&M, are planning expansion across the country.

Amid India’s rapid globalisation and economic development, fashion provides a lens onto culture and the transforming fabric of society, according to Parmesh Shahani, director of Mumbai’s Godrej India Culture Lab. “Fashion’s enormous aesthetic diversity is a reflection of the polyphonous nature of our society, which now, as always, is in the midst of an exciting churn,” he says. “It also has roots, which is why we see tradition holding its ground: whether in women wearing, and re-imagining saris, or men wearing the mundu, and in a lot of bridal fashion.

In a society defined by sharp contrasts between ancient tradition and uber modernity, Indian style is displayed in a mixing of ethnic and Western fashions. Kurtas are worn with jeans or redefined as linear, minimal dresses, lehengas are given peplums and kick flares, and saris are reinvented as ‘sari-gowns’ or styled with sharp blazers and classic white shirts. Endless permutations of garments, colour and excess or absence of decoration allow individuals to explore their Indian identity. In this way Indian fashion produces tradition as much as modernity, one of the unique characteristics of the national style.

Here comes the bride

At the forefront of the traditional market are the bridal designers, catering as they are to weddings and key celebrations that cement social and cultural bonds. According to The Business of Fashion’s Imran Amed, Condé Nast estimates the worth of the Indian bridal market at $38 billion per year. Anthropologist Professor Christiane Brosius attributes the bridal industry’s exponential growth to post-1994 liberalisation, which created a burgeoning middle class and a new mood of pride in being Indian, expressed though luxury and conspicuous consumption.

JJ Valaya, one of the most successful Indian designers today, uses opulent embroidery in occasion-wear influenced by the grandeur of royal Indian history. He says of his design ethos: “As an Indian designer, I have always felt that our prime responsibility should be to keep the India that was alive within the India that is (or the one that will be)… No easy task, given the present fetish for minimalism and yet, I’ve always believed that Indians at heart are maximalists and so, will always remain connected with elegant excess.”

Whilst bridal wear dominates the business of Indian fashion, new generations of designers are producing innovative designs. Many grapple with the question of maximalism versus minimalism as an essential part of Indian culture. Some are reinventing traditional embroidery and appliqué skills in garments free from Bollywood bling, yet retaining the quintessentially Indian high embellishment aesthetic, using traditional craft skills.

Fabric of society

Rahul Mishra won the prestigious International Woolmark prize in 2014, and has showed at Paris fashion week for the past three seasons. His sophisticated designs express themes of sustainability and livelihoods through intricate tessellated embroideries by artisans in rural Bengal. Of his most recent Paris collection Mishra says: “The idea was to focus on the age old artistry and techniques and to create a completely modern look, a look with a touch of surprise and newness.”

Mishra is an alumnus of The National Institute of Design, renowned for a curriculum that places Gandhian ideals of social good at the heart of design. Although fashion is often perceived as a frivolous indulgence, especially in a country where poverty levels are still high, many designers see themselves as part of the solution through design-led textile development.

Textiles have long played a part in defining cultural and national identity. Mahatma Gandhi believed hand spinning and weaving of khadi was essential to India’s economic development and freedom from colonial domination, developing this belief into the political movement of Swadeshi. A notable group of designers work within the legacy of Gandhian philosophy, placing emphasis on Indian textiles and craft traditions.

Abraham and Thakore are at the forefront of this ‘New Swadeshi Movement’. Like many designers working with handloom, their creative vision forms an alternative to Bollywood bling. Their AW/13 collection Shaadi Redux (Wedding Revived) used the rich sheen of handwoven Benares silk to create classic Indian shapes like kurtas and Nehru jackets with traditional motifs replaced by graphic patterns. David Abraham explains: “We wanted to see how we could use the complex hand jacquard techniques of Benares ancient weaving traditions to create a modern linear design language that stayed away from the Orientalist clichés of paisleys, peacocks and lotuses.”

“People are re-imagining their Indianness to include our textile heritage” says Parmesh Shanahi. “Moreover whether you're wearing a handwoven kurta with jeans, or a high end couture piece – both are considered cool. Our crafts are lived crafts, and as we begin to re-appreciate this and include them in our daily lives, it will be good for all – for the craftspeople who can have better livelihoods, and also for us, we will be able to fashion our future aesthetics from a place of rootedness.”

As part of its India season, London’s V&A museum is showcasing Indian textiles in The Fabric of India exhibition. It includes contemporary examples of how traditional textiles are defining the aesthetics of high fashion. In turn, as a repository of exemplary antique Indian textiles, the V&A archives inspire contemporary designers. Rajesh Pratap Singh, known for his well-cut day wear made from khadi, handloom and indigo-dyed denim points to a fine khadi shirt in his studio. “On my visit to the V&A textile archives from the 18th and 19th Century I saw a khadi muslin, flawless and beautiful in its execution,” he says. “This gave me the impetus to further innovate on the in-house khadi developments we have been undertaking at our weaving unit in Rajasthan.”

A design language of the ‘now’ requires responsiveness to broader social issues. Some designers are commenting on environmental pollution by turning to Jugaad, a traditional approach to repair and reuse of materials, aligning it with global concepts of up-cycling. Amit Aggarwal’s avant garde, sculptural, intricately constructed clothing, incorporates recycled materials elevating them to conceptual high fashion. For AIFW SS/16 waste polythene bags were interwoven with ‘gamcha’, coarse, handwoven towels commonly used across India. “I've enjoyed working with materials that are a byproduct of industrialisation and mixing these with traditional crafts,” Aggarwal explains. “I am fusing contrasting identities to create a special language of clothing.”

This is evident in the reinvention of the sari, that most traditional of Indian garments. Designers like Kallol Datta and Arjun Saluja recreate the sari with Japanese design concepts of deconstruction, or tailor it in Western traditions of cut and construction. “They express their Indianness in non-obvious ways,” Parmesh Shahani says. “Kallol often references his very strong Bengal connection, it might appear in the bright red of a sari border for example.”

Informed by a rich craft heritage and a culturally diverse population, Indian fashion today is more than a sum of its parts. Its designers blend a vast array of influences, in the process forging a design language as surprising and intriguing as India itself.

Fashion turned on its head

The glorious autumn sun has been shining in Paris and so have the ideas, with the early shows stirring the imagination. Big characters and big gestures have dominated the catwalk –from the youngest designers to the most seasoned pros. They have raised the stakes in Paris and this season the impact on the audience is just as big at both ends of the scale. 

Electric eccentric

“Lo-fi sci-fi with a high-fi finish” was how John Galliano’s latest collection for Maison Margiela was described. This meant a wildly off-kilter take on ladylike elegance in which classics were tarnished with streaks of paint and shattered mirrors to give galactic textures. Galliano’s love of Japonaiserie returned with cyber geishas in abstracted obi knots. To the soundtrack of FKA twigs’ Glass and Patron, Galliano proved that his wanton fantasies mixed with Margiela’s codes of deconstruction are a winning combination. 

At Dries Van Noten, the mix was just as heady as a string quartet played Kraftwerk and the clothes combined 1950s prim and proper with 1980s bold and zany New Wave. This came together in Van Noten’s signature prints, turned up louder than before, bolstered by printed tattoo body suits. It was a riot of colour that also communicated freewheeling eccentricity. At Lanvin, Alber Elbaz was inspired by a woman fraying at the edges – quite literally, as seams frayed with threads, edges were left raw and sequins and bows were applied haphazardly as though in deliberately bad taste. But that’s when fashion is at its most interesting – when what is considered to be wrong suddenly feels right. Elbaz took Lanvin down a messier and exposed path but that lady certainly looked a lot more exciting.

Odes to woman

You can never read too much into a show’s press notes. Half the time, it’s pretentious waffle that barely correlates to the collection on display. But you had to pay attention to Rick Owens’. His show began with the vocalist Eska singing UNKLE’s arrangement of This Land from the film Exodus. Then all of a sudden, female models – or rather, dancers – came out with other women strapped to their backs like a backpack. Or they were tied to the front, hanging upright or upside down, as though in a baby sling. They strode powerfully, looking like they were completely unburdened by the weight of another human being. The volumes of the clothes echoed those of the dancers’ human weights, gathering up in the front or jutting out in the back. To raucous applause, Owens took his bow and dashed out of the building: no interviews, no comment. And so the notes were all we had.

Apparently it was about “nourishment, sisterhood/motherhood and regeneration: women raising women, women becoming women and women supporting women.” The straps binding woman to woman – rather than methods of restraint – were about “support and cradling” or “loving ribbons”. You left the show wanting to probe Owens more deeply but the words on the press release were heartfelt at the very least. Your heart couldn’t help but soar even if on social media, the sight of a human strapped to another was reduced to facile jokes. 

Olivier Rousteing at Balmain had a more simple approach to addressing women. By lavishing them in fluid ruffles and flesh-tone bodycon dresses (inspired perhaps by Balmain’s campaign star Kim Kardashian’s contouring skills?). His notes spoke about Balmain’s upcoming collaboration with H&M as a way of reaching out more widely: “And, with an ever-more diverse group of beautiful women of all ages and backgrounds – from film and music icons to eager young shoppers at one of the world’s largest retail chains – choosing Balmain for their most important moments, it will be clear that this historic house’s evolution continues along an exciting pathway.” Diversity and female empowerment: these have been Rousteing’s values at the house ever since he began and they will reach out far and wide come November. 

Fortune favours the bold

Who has the chutzpah to come out with a white horse followed by a child wearing giant fabric cravats? Or send the fashion crowd to a tacky Chinese restaurant out in Belleville, near the Périphérique ring road? Paris' young fashion designers are grabbing people's attentions early on this week. On the back of winning the runners up LVMH Prize, Simon Porte of JACQUEMUS showed his most pensive collection yet which began with a child rolling a giant ball out into the middle of the cavernous warehouse and also featured the designer himself leading a white horse. It was like a dream or a Michel Gondry film, interrupted by clothes that showed a new-found maturity in Porte's deconstructed shirting.

Likewise another buzzed-about young label, Vetements refined their designs with a nostalgic trip back to what they know and love, shown in a kitschy Chinese eatery. Oversized floral dresses, vinyl housewife aprons, thrash metal hoodies and a hilarious graphic that mimicked Leo and Kate in Titanic ensured that Vetements' cult status will continue to grow.

When fashion kills

Giving new meaning to the phrase ‘fashion victim’, a 35-year-old Australian woman had to be cut out of a pair of skinny jeans after developing a condition called compartment syndrome. It’s not the first time someone has succumbed to a dangerous style trend: “They’ve always been around, since the Stone Ages,” says Summer Strevens, the author ofFashionably Fatal. “It’s when fashion is taken to an extreme; I call it vanity insanity.” Here are five of the deadliest fads in history.

Corsets

The undergarment that shrank waistlines long before Spanx had an influence on language as much as women’s bodies: it spawned the term ‘strait-laced’, lending a Victorian respectability to its wearer, as well as ‘loose women’ – implying that those who were corset-less had morals as free as their lacing. In her book, Strevens says that “corsets caused indigestion, constipation, frequent fainting from difficulty in breathing and even internal bleeding… inhibited breathing, giving rise to the Victorian ‘heaving bosom’, was indicative of pressure upon the lungs, while the other internal organs, forced to shift from their natural position to accommodate the new skeletal shape, were subject to damage.” In 1874, a list was published attributing 97 diseases to corset wearing, including heightened hysteria and melancholy; between the late 1860s and the early 1890s, Strevens says, the medical journal The Lancet published at least an article a year on the medical dangers of tight lacing. And it didn’t end with breathing difficulties or organ damage: in 1903, 42-year-old mother-of-six Mary Halliday died abruptly after a seizure. The New York Times reported that during her autopsy, “two pieces of corset steel were found in her heart, their total length being eight and three-quarter inches. Where they rubbed together the ends were worn to a razor edge by the movement of her body.”

Crinoline fires

The structured petticoat did more than just enhance a silhouette. During the 19th Century, at the peak of the crinoline’s popularity, there were several high-profile deaths by skirt fire. In July 1861, the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow rushed to help his wife after her dress caught fire. According to the Boston Daily Advertiser, “While seated at her library table, making seals for the entertainment of her two youngest children, a match or piece of lighted paper caught her dress, and she was in a moment enveloped in flames.” She died the following day. Oscar Wilde’s two half-sisters also died of burnsafter they went too close to an open fire in ball gowns. One case, in 1858, prompted the New York Times to proclaimthat “an average of three deaths per week from crinolines in conflagration, ought to startle the most thoughtless of the privileged sex; and to make them, at least, extraordinarily careful in their movements and behaviour, if it fails… to deter them from adopting a fashion so fraught with peril”.

Stiff collars

Invented in the 19th Century, the detachable collar meant men didn’t have to change their shirt every day. It was also starched to a stiffness that proved lethal. “They were called ‘father killer’, or ‘Vatermörder’ in German,” says Strevens. “They could cut off the blood supply to the carotid artery. Edwardian men would wear them as a fashion accessory – they’d go to their gentleman’s club, have a few glasses of port and nod off in a winged armchair, with their heads tilted forward. They actually suffocated.” One 1888 obituary in The New York Times was headlined ‘Choked by his collar’: a man called John Cruetzi had been found dead in a park, and “the Coroner thought the man had been drinking, seated himself on a bench, and fell asleep. His head dropped over on his chest and then his stiff collar stopped the windpipe and checked the flow of blood through the already contracted veins, causing the death to ensue from asphyxia and apoplexy.”

Mad hatters

The expression ‘mad as a hatter’ was in use 30 years before Lewis Carroll popularised it with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Mercury poisoning was an occupational hazard for hat makers in the 18th and 19th Centuries: the chemical was used in the production of felt, and prolonged exposure led to what was termed the ‘mad hatter disease’. Symptoms included tremors and pathological shyness and irritability – leading to doubts that Carroll’s eccentric milliner was a sufferer, with an article in the British Medical Journal suggesting “it could scarcely be said that the Mad Hatter suffered to any great extent from the desire to go unnoticed”.

Killer heels

Said to have been inspired by a 10th Century court dancer who wrapped her feet in silk to perform for the Emperor, Chinese foot-binding was officially banned in 1912. Yet some continued the practice – a means of displaying status, revealing that a woman didn’t need her feet to work – in secret. The British photographer Jo Farrell has documented the last surviving women with bound feet for her Living History project. She told the BBC: “I feel so many people talk about how barbaric the tradition was, but it was also a tradition that empowered women. It gave them a better life… one of the most important things that came across was that they have a pride in what happened to them.” Reshaping feet is not restricted to China, however – according to Strevens, “in earlier centuries, ladies of fashion were known to have had their ‘little’ toes amputated, slipping their feet into ever-more-pointed fashionable footwear”. She argues that while historic practices might sound barbaric, women today are still enduring pain for fashion, referencing “the contemporary vogue for the surgical shortening, even amputation of healthy toes, in order to fit into today's sky-high stilettos”. There are still plenty of fashion victims in the 21st Century. “Although we haven’t got corsets or crinolines any more, there are now people having their ribs removed to get a smaller waist.”

Fashion’s dark fairytale

“Life to me is a bit of a Brothers Grimm fairytale,” Lee Alexander McQueen once said. The British designer’s life was certainly a rags-to-riches story – from cockney cabbie’s son to globally acclaimed fashion star. Like the best-known fairy stories, too, there was a dark, troubled side to his life, culminating in his tragic suicide in 2010. And fairytale Gothicism certainly infused the creative vision of this enfant terrible of fashion – just as the Gothic influenced the stories of the German Brothers Grimm, who together collected and published folk tales during the 19th Century, among them Cinderella, Rapunzel, the Frog Prince, Snow White and Hansel and Gretel.

McQueen’s meticulously crafted designs and theatrical catwalk shows pushed the boundaries of fashion into art, making him one of the most visionary designers of his generation. And now a major retrospective, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, comes to the Victoria & Albert Museum in the designer’s hometown of London, a new version of the sell-out exhibition that showed in 2010 at the Costume Institute in New York. The show highlights the designer’s fairy-tale narratives and themes of magical transformation. “McQueen was a masterful storyteller,” Kate Bethune, who is on the curatorial team for the V&A show, tells BBC Culture. “His catwalk shows were integral to his creative vision as a designer and often involved elaborate narratives.”

The Girl Who Lived in the Tree, his autumn/winter 2008 collection, is inspired by a 600-year-old elm tree in the garden of the designer’s country home. The catwalk show told the story of a feral girl who climbs down from the tree to meet a prince and become a queen. “It was one of McQueen’s most lyrical and beautiful collections,” says Bethune. “It included some of his most opulent designs crafted from sumptuous silk, embellished with Swarovski crystal.” In his autumn/winter 2002 collection, a model in a lilac cape with voluminous hood, leading two wolf-hybrid dogs, opened the runway show. And of a fashion shoot for AnOther magazine directed by McQueen (and shot by Sam Taylor-Johnson), the designer said: “It’s very Grimm’s fairytale. He’s Dick Whittington, she’s Puss Without Her Boots.” There’s a pantomime-style playfulness about the idea, but the photos carry an undercurrent of horror that was the trademark of the Grimm stories.

“Many of McQueen’s designs were imbued with a strong Gothic sensibility,” says Bethune. “He loved the Victorian era and its attendant melancholia.” She singles out his graduate collection, in which he famously included human hair in the linings of jackets. And it’s no surprise that McQueen felt a kinship with American film-maker Tim Burton, who is also known for his works of dark fantasy. In fact, McQueen’s entire autumn/winter 2002 collection, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, including a famous black parachute cape, was inspired by Burton

Shapeshifter

The designer’s ‘macabre iconoclasm’ is explored in the book that accompanies the exhibition, Alexander McQueen, edited by Claire Wilcox. Contributor Catherine Spooner writes: “Gothic provided [McQueen] with a distinctive idiom that he explored and refined over successive collections.” He also plays with the “aesthetics of disgust”, and makes references to haunting and undead elements, and presents “the past as Gothic trauma” by memorializing his own ancestor, executed as a witch at Salem in the autumn/winter 2007 show In Memory of Elizabeth Howe, Salem, 1692. It’s easy to see where the notion of the designer as a tormented genius came from.

Shapeshifting is another recurring fairytale trope in McQueen’s work. In folklore and mythology, an entity may be physically transformed into another being or form, often through a magical spell cast by a witch or sorcerer – from frog to prince, for instance, or from queen to witch. As Spooner writes: “The metamorphic body is... a feature of traditional fairytale and this was another of McQueen’s interests, appearing in Gothicized form.” She explains how “abhuman” motifs are everywhere in his work. Separated from normal human existence, an abhuman figure is continually on the verge of becoming another species. McQueen used this idea by incorporating antlers into a bridal gown, and evoked mythical creatures, including unicorns in his pieces. McQueen himself was often photographed with skulls or crowned with an antler trophy, or with his beloved kestrels.

Feathers of peacocks, ducks and pheasants were frequently incorporated into his garments and headpieces, one of which – by milliner Philip Treacy – resembled a swarm of red butterflies. The famously out-there, python Armadillo shoe, measuring a towering 12 inches high; a black ball gown that seems to transform into a black swan – examples are everywhere in McQueen’s work. Other hybrids crop up – animal-women, moth-women. And in the masterful spring/summer 2010 collection Plato’s Atlantis, it is aquatic hybrids, the silk garments emblazoned with digital reptile prints and the models in vertiginous, claw-like shoes. It was the designer’s last, fully realised collection.

Warrior princesses

There was something otherworldly about the models in Plato’s Atlantis, stalking the catwalk in their towering heels, but there was also a strength about them. The fearless warrior princess is a fairytale archetype that has proved popular in contemporary interpretations of the Grimms’ tales, notably in the film Snow White and the Huntsman. And the warrior princess is also a figure in McQueen’s work. The designer collaborated with jeweller Shaun Leane to create the Coiled Corset for autumn/winter 1999. Leane was a friend and frequent collaborator who, having worked with McQueen already on an African-inspired neckpiece for Björk’s iconic Homogenic album cover, was then asked by the designer to create a similar piece, but for the whole torso. Leane tells BBC Culture: “He said to me ‘nothing is impossible’. I spent 16 hours a day for 10 weeks creating the piece... I had to cast the model’s body in concrete first to create a mould and use this to hand-shape and coil every wire to fit exactly to her body. To me Lee was a genius. He changed silhouettes in fashion, he pushed boundaries that others wouldn’t to provoke people’s understanding of what fashion should be.”

Whether metamorphosing into a wild reptile-woman or wearing steel body armour, there’s no doubt that these creations present women in a powerful, Amazonian – and scary – light. According to Andrew Wilson, author of the biography, Alexander McQueen: Blood Beneath the Skin, this stemmed from violent, traumatic events in McQueen’s own childhood. “He wanted to dress women in a way that scared men,” Wilson has said. “The women that walked his catwalk were in creative armour. It explains everything.”

This Cinderella-ish empowerment is a theme of playwright James Phillips, whose play, McQueen , steps into “the fairy story landscape of McQueen’s mind... where with a dress a tiny urchin can become an Amazon.” The action of the play centres around a girl who breaks into McQueen’s house to steal a dress and gets caught red-handed by the designer. “He sees something in her that inspires him,” Phillips tells BBC Culture. “The two go on a quest across London, from west to east. It’s about surviving the night, creativity and about how beauty can save us or kill us, and how those two things may be linked.”

One photographic portrait of the designer shows his face half in light and half in shade, which, according to Catherine Spooner, is “a fitting tribute to the rich and complex Gothic fictions that McQueen enjoyed spinning in his work.” Certainly he was a complex man, full of stories. As the V&A’s Kate Bethune puts it: “Although McQueen’s aesthetic is dark in places, and it was sometimes laced with references to mortality, he had a very positive attitude toward death. He once commented that, although death is sad and melancholy, it is a natural part of the cycle of life that leaves room for new things to follow.” Now that his successor Sarah Burton is at the helm of the McQueen fashion house, the story continues. She even designed the princess-bride dress for the royal wedding of William and Kate in 2011. A fairytale ending – for the McQueen brand at least.

Justin Bieber starts following Selena on Instagram again!

Canadian pop singer Justin Bieber cannot get over his ex girlfriend Selena Gomez , or so it seems. Months after Gomez finally put their relationship rumours to rest by saying that she is “just tired of talking about it”, Bieber has started following her back on Instagram.

“She’s definitely been on his mind a lot. Following her on Instagram again is his way of letting her know that he’s thinking about her,” a source close to Justin was quoted as saying by Hollywoodlife.com

Art including folk music suffering due to Bollywood: Shujaat Khan

Shujaat Khan, the celebrated Sitar player, feels Bollywood is harming art including folk music. He added that its music does not inspire him anymore.

“There is too much of Bollywood for now, and because of that every art is suffering in this country. I am not saying it is a bad thing, but our folk music suffers because of Bollywood. It sometimes gives us lovely music, but sometimes it damages,” he said.

The 56-year-old sitarist said he was ‘self-content’ with his achievements.

“I travel world over and perform 100 concerts a year at the best festivals and best concerts where even Amitabh Bachchan cannot go. I performed at the Royal Albert Hall in London. I also performed at Carnegie Hall in New York. He (Bachchan) is a great person, but I am saying we go to places where Bollywood doesn’t go,” he said.

“Bollywood doesn’t inspire me. A three-minute song doesn’t inspire me. If I heard artists like Ravi Shankar, Vilayat Khan, Bhimsen Joshi, Amir Khan Saab, I get inspired, for they perform for at least one-and-a-half hours, maximum.”

Khan, who is in the city to participate in the Fakiri-Bangalore Folk Festival presented by Phoenix Market City, from June 10 to 12, said he enjoyed the music of RD Burman because of his innovations.

“I enjoyed the music of RD Burman because of his innovations. I too like to innovate. I was the first musician to play a musical instrument and sing as well. I sing qawali, Sufi and folk songs,” he said.

Asked to comment on young Bollywood composers who have impressed him, Khan, son of legendary sitar player Ustad Vilayat Khan, said, “Even earlier when I was associated with Bollywood, I did not enjoy a particular music director or a singer. I used to pick songs which I liked, but performed by different composers. So, I cannot pick on one director among the young lots of today. I don’t follow one music director.”

Watch Shujaat Khan perform Hazaron Khwahishein by Mirza Ghalib here:

video:https://youtu.be/K8Z2JC4WFtU

Drake's 'Views' spends 7th straight week atop Billboard chart

Canadian R&B singer Drake held onto the top spot of the weekly US Billboard 200 album chart for a seventh consecutive week on Monday, becoming the first male artist in more than a decade to achieve the feat, according to Billboard.

Drake's album "Views" sold another 121,000 units for the week ending June 16, comprising album and song sales and more than 110 million streams, according to figures from Nielsen SoundScan.

Billboard said the last male artist to spend seven consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the album chart was rapper Eminem with "The Marshall Mathers LP", which spent eight consecutive weeks at the top of the chart in 2000.

The Billboard 200 album chart tallies units from album sales, song sales (10 songs equal one album) and streaming activity (1,500 streams equal one album).

Streaming activity for Drake's fourth album on platforms such as Spotify and Apple Inc's Apple Music has consistently soared past 100 million streams each week since its release in late April.

Drake held off new albums from pop singer Nick Jonas and hip hop artist Jon Bellion.

Jonas' third solo album, "Last Year was Complicated", debuted at No. 2 on the chart with 66,000 units sold, while Bellion's first album, "The Human Condition", entered the chart at No. 5 with 40,000 units.

On the Digital Songs chart, which measures online sales of singles, Justin Timberlake's upbeat summer song "Can't Stop The Feeling!" held the No. 1 spot with another 124,000 copies sold.

Taylor Swift world's highest paid celebrity: Forbes

At the tender age of 26, Taylor Swift is the world's highest-paid celebrity, pulling in a whopping $170 million over the past year, Forbes magazine said Monday.

The pop diva's take from June 2015 to June 2016 is the highest total of her young career, the magazine said, more than doubling her previous record of $80 million last year.

She out-earned other famous musicians including Adele ($80.5 million), Madonna ($76.5 million), Rihanna ($75 million) and Bruce Springsteen ($60.5 million).

The "Shake It Off" singer also outpaced rival Katy Perry who was last year's top-earning musician at $135 million, according to Forbes magazine's annual list of 100 highest-paid celebrities.

Perry dropped to number 63 on this year's list, earning a mere $41 million.

Swift's huge earnings were largely thanks to her "1989 World Tour" during which she smashed the Rolling Stone's North American record, grossing $200 million on the continent en route to a quarter of a billion worldwide, the magazine said.

Coming in at number two on the list this year was the boy band One Direction, ($110 million), followed by author James Patterson ($95 million).

Taylor's former beau, musician Calvin Harris, also made the cut coming in at number 21 ($63 million).

"The world's 100 highest-paid celebrities pulled in $5.1 billion pretax over the past 12 months, more than the GDP of Belize, Gambia and Bhutan combined," Forbes said.

Magazine editor Zack O'Malley Greenberg said live entertainment continues to be a major cash draw.

"From soccer games in Spain to concerts in China, fans are willing to shell out to see big names - and this is driving the celebrity economy to ever greater heights," he said in a statement.

On the Hollywood front, Jennifer Lawrence was the industry's highest-paid actress for the second consecutive year, earning $46 million, a slight drop from the $52 million "The Hunger Games" star banked the year before.

Actor Dwayne Johnson wrestled the highest-paid actor spot from "Iron Man's" Robert Downey Jr., earning $64.5 million, largely thanks to the billion-dollar "Fast and Furious" franchise and the surprising success of 2015's "San Andreas" movie.

Many athletes also made the list, including Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo ($88 million), tennis man Roger Federer ($68 million), and German race car driver Sebastian Vettel ($41 million).

Oops! Britney does it again

Britney Spears is hitting up pop culture one more time, releasing a new album, singing retro karaoke hits and about to take the MTV Video Music Awards (VMA) stage for the first time since 2007.

Spears, 34, who became a teen pop phenomenon with breathy, sexually-charged hits like "Toxic" and "Oops!.. I Did it Again," released new album "Glory" on Friday ahead of a much anticipated return to the VMA show on Sunday in New York.

She also became the latest superstar to ride, sing and chat with US talk show host James Corden for his viral "Carpool Karaoke" segment, where both donned the schoolgirl uniforms that shot her to fame as a 16-year old in the 1998 music video for "... Baby One More Time."

Spears dominated pop music before undergoing a personal and career meltdown in 2006-2007 that included shaving her signature blonde locks, losing custody of her two children and being placed under a court-ordered conservatorship.

She made a comeback in late 2008 and for the past three years has been performing a nightly show in Las Vegas. But the new album and the anticipation surrounding her VMA performance have thrust her back in the national spotlight.

Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield said "Glory" was "another fantastic comeback" for Spears, in which she "goes back to the fizzy electro-stomp mode she does best."

"Glory" was top of the iTunes charts in more than 40 nations on Friday, including Saudi Arabia, Chile and Russia.

Billboard's Jennifer Keishin Armstrong said that with the single and music video for "Make Me", Spear had "reclaimed her standout talent, a distinctive dance style that combines cheerleader precision with slinky bits of burlesque."

Spears will perform "Make Me," with rapper G-Eazy, at the live VMA show, her first appearance there since her halting performance of "Gimme More" in 2007 when her career hit a low.

"She has had such a huge impact on this show throughout her career, so for us to have her back is a no-brainer," said Garrett English, executive producer of the VMA show.

"She embodies what the VMAs is to a large extent and she has had some of the biggest moments on this stage, and I think Sunday night will be the same," English added.

Spears is also to be the subject of a 2017 TV biopic for the Lifetime cable channel that will chart her rise to fame along with her stumbles, and her romances with Justin Timberlake and ex-husbands Jason Alexander and Kevin Federline.

Behind rock’s favourite fashion

One should either be a work of art or wear a work of art,” said the famously flamboyant Oscar Wilde, who loved nothing more than to lounge foppishly in a silk paisley smoking jacket and cravat. That Wilde and his demi-monde friends loved paisley – the painterly textile pattern that resembles a teardrop or seed-shaped vegetable – is no surprise. More surprising is how paisley has endured, and how the apparently immortal print has been enjoying yet another peak of fashionability – the catwalks of London, New York, Milan and Paris have all seen a flutter or flash of it in recent seasons.

“Paisley has been a popular motif in fashion for centuries,” Jeremy Langmead, of luxury menswear e-tailer Mr Porter , tells BBC Culture. “And especially in the West following the hippie-inspired styles of the 1960s and 1970s, which have been having a resurgence of late with brands such as Saint Laurent, Burberry and Gucci adopting paisley. Etro, the Italian brand, has also long-used the design in its menswear, especially in suit and jacket linings.” In womenswear, too, designers from Dolce & Gabbana and JW Anderson to Raf Simons at Jil Sander have incorporated paisley in recent years.

From its ancient Persian and Indian origins with its hidden messages and mysterious symbolism, the iconic motif has had quite a journey. The paisley pattern has travelled the silk routes from East to West, adorned the bandanas of cowboys and bikers, been adopted by the 19th Century boho set, been popularised by The Beatles, ushered in the hippy era and become an emblem of rock ‘n’ roll swagger and swank.

Now various paisley designs are among the many beautiful prints and garments showcased at Liberty of London, an exhibition this autumn at the Fashion and Textile Museum that showcases the textiles of the influential design company and store. Liberty’s archivist Anna Buruma explains: “Liberty has been associated with paisley style from the beginning when they sold fabrics, porcelain, rugs and shawls from the East. Paisley-style shawls are shown in the early catalogues and when they started printing their own fabrics in the 1880s, paisley designs are very much in evidence.”

From East to West

So what is behind paisley’s incredible longevity? Its symbolic power has probably played a part. The original Persian droplet-like motif – the boteh or buta – is thought to have been a representation of a floral spray combined with a cypress tree, a Zoroastrian symbol of life and eternity. The seed-like shape is also thought to represent fertility, has connections with Hinduism, and also bears an intriguing resemblance to the famous yin-yang symbol. It is still a hugely popular motif in Iran and South and Central Asian countries and is woven using silver and gold threads on to silks and fine wools for weddings and other celebrations.

Imports from the East India Company via the ‘silk routes’ brought the textile pattern to Europe in the 18th and 19th Centuries, and following the arrival of luxurious Kashmir shawls (some of which cost the price of a small house), the pattern took the continent by storm. The shawls were soon imitated throughout Europe, notably in Wales and the town of Paisley in Renfrewshire, Scotland. From that point onwards the English term for the motif was ‘paisley’, though it is also known in the United States among quilt-makers as ‘Persian pickles’ or in the Welsh textile industry as ‘Welsh pears’.

It was in the 19th Century that the paisley pattern first attracted a rebellious, progressive following. Its story was part of a wider “dialogue” between eastern and western cultures at the time, says Dennis Nothdruft, the curator of the Liberty in Fashion exhibition. “It was a cultural exchange, and also an industry.” In the Victorian era, trade between Britain and India was buoyant, and Liberty’s forward-thinking founder Arthur Lasenby Liberty, a friend of Oscar Wilde “who had real flair and exquisite taste”, as Nothdruft tells BBC Culture, quickly expanded thanks largely to a paisley-orientated collection. William Morris and the Arts-and-Crafts movement adapted the print, with William Holman Hunt and other Pre-Raphaelites depicting sumptuous paisley textiles in their paintings. It became an integral part of the Aesthetic Movement and the Art Nouveau Movement – and shorthand for sophisticated, arty bohemianism.

Far-out fashion

The next surge in paisley’s fashionability came in the 1960s, helped along by The Beatles – in their Eastern-influenced phase the band were paisley mad, and John Lennon even painted his Rolls-Royce with the pattern. It became emblematic of the ‘summer of love’ and the often eye-watering aesthetic of the psychedelic era, its vertiginous acid-trip patterns and mind-melting colours chiming with the hippy zeitgeist.

“It had a certain mystery and eastern promise about it that suited the times,” says textile designer and artist Sarah Campbell, who during the 1960s and ’70s created some of Liberty’s best-known interpretations of the print with her design partner Susan Collier, including the swirling, intricate Splendide. “Because of paisley’s origins, there has always been a sense of exoticism and luxury about it. It’s an organic motif that is also stylised and has a complexity and depth to it – we called the designs ‘paisloid’ because they were adaptations of traditional paisley.” Liberty ‘paisloids’ were used extensively by some of the top designers of the era including Jean Muir, Bill Gibb, Yves Saint Laurent, Biba and Bill Blass.

Ever since then paisley has been a firm rock ‘n’ roll favourite, resonating with its early Eastern symbolism, its progressive, 19th Century boho aura and its unruly 1960s free-love connotations. It has been sported – with the requisite strut and swagger – by David Bowie, Prince (who named his record label and studio Paisley Park), Paul Weller, Bobby Gillespie, Liam Gallagher and Florence Welch, among many, many others. Gallagher even founded a clothing brand, Pretty Green, that specialises in the print. “It has a certain richness to it, an over-the-top quality,” says curator Nothdruft. “It has that flamboyant connotation, it’s a look that says ‘notice me’. Paisley pushes the envelope.”

Fertility symbol

Mr Porter’s Jeremy Langmead agrees about the print’s subtext: “Throughout the decades, paisley has always been a popular print for men’s ties. I’ve always found it intriguing that a design that is purported to derive from Indian fertility symbols has always been prevalent on an item of clothing that, by its very nature, acts as an arrow pointing down the torso of its wearer to his groin.”

There is certainly an arty sensuality about the glamorous Etrobrand, the Italian label where paisley’s heritage and currency come together as a signature. Designer Veronica Etro tells BBC Culture that the paisley print is “central to Etro’s past, present and future.” Her father started the company creating luxury textiles in 1968, and paisley soon became the “symbol” of the brand, she says. “He travelled a lot around the world, and these exotic travels greatly influenced the original designs, bold colour and rich embellishments of the Etro fabrics.

“My father’s grandmother used to wear a rich paisley morning coat and the pattern truly caught his eye and attention. Paisley’s journey, over the course of thousands of years, is very inspirational to me. I love symbols that are rich in history... What I love about it is also that it has a deep meaning: it symbolises the tree of life, the seed palm, thus fertility… it always remains appealing, exotic and cool at the same time: think about Janis Joplin, David Bowie, Mick Jagger, wearing this decorative pattern – it has this rock vibe in it.”

The rich symbolism and rebellious aura that surround paisley have kept it alive, it seems. But perhaps the real secret to the print’s immortality is how it combines conformity with unruliness, how it blends its rich historicism with a powerful adaptability, and how it is open to endless and unexpected re-invigoration and re-interpretation. Veronica Etro is keen to break new ground with the pattern, she says. “To develop further its boundaries without really breaking with the past – but looking to the future.” Classics scholar, forward thinker and snappy dresser Oscar Wilde would no doubt have approved.

What’s the perfect wedding dress?

As an arena of fashion, bridal wear is so loaded with cultural and style references – not to mention a baffling diversity of choices – that it can be difficult for a bride-to-be to decide exactly what kind of dress she really wants to wear.

The bride should follow her intuition, according to influential, New York-based bridal-wear designer Amsale Aberra, whose designs have helped shape what is considered chic in bridal styles over the past three decades. The designer, who has also created costumes for film and television, was the subject of a recent reality TV series in the US, Amsale Girls, and has become known for the ‘forever modern’ look of her gowns.

It was Amsale’s search for a gown for her own wedding day in 1985 that led her on the path of becoming a designer. “I got my start right after my own wedding,” she tells BBC Culture. “I was looking for a very simple gown for myself and found little in the way of clean, sophisticated gowns. I thought ‘I can’t be the only person searching for something like this.’ It was then that I started my business and was delighted to learn that my intuition was correct and that others shared my taste.”

Amsale, who came to the United States from Ethiopia at the age of 19 initially to study art, also points to her upbringing as a contributing factor in her eventual career. “I grew up in a very caring, family-oriented environment. But in Ethiopia in those days, fashion design wasn't considered a profession. I had a strong interest in clothing. Because many of the fashions I liked were not available there, I used to make my own clothes. When I came to the US that skill turned out to be quite unexpectedly useful.”

Minimalism to the max

The designer’s ‘less is more’ approach for her own wedding dress has become increasingly popular, with bridal-wear designers from Amsale to Vera Wang offering fluid, clean silhouettes and less embellished looks – a far cry from the overload of frills that had defined the wedding dress in the past. For unconventional bridal styles, bold minimalism has always worked well – from Bianca Jagger in her iconic 1971 white suit and wide-brimmed hat when she got married to Mick Jagger to the recent nuptials of Solange Knowles, who wed in a variety of modern, sleek styles, including a dramatic, plunging jumpsuit.

It’s perhaps no surprise that the decade that has influenced Amsale is the 1950s, known for its show-stopping silhouettes and clean lines. “Within that period Dior and Balenciaga [were] the most influential,” she says. But she is keen to stress that for her, the perfect wedding gown transcends fashion. “I try not to focus on trends,” she says, concentrating instead on “creating timeless gowns that a bride can look back on 20 years later and still love as much as she did on her wedding day.”

Still, even with the most pared-back looks, couture-style detail plays a key role. Amsale’s Mercer dress, for instance, is unfussy and minimalist, but with an outsized, angular, origami-style bow at the back. “Often, when designing, I like there to be a single focal point,” says the designer. “With the Mercer dress the bow is that key point… and the scale is very important.”

So how has the bridal-wear industry changed since Amsale began her business in the 1980s? “The main change I've noticed has been that as women have become more independent, they have taken over more control of the design and planning of the wedding from their parents. More recently it seems that not only the bride but also the groom has gotten more involved, and increasingly the couple's circle of friends. And brides have more choices, there is more diversity.”

When she was asked to design dresses for film and television – she has designed for The Runaway Bride, 27 Dresses, The Hangover and Grey’s Anatomy among many others – Amsale did not hesitate. “I like to approach movie weddings as though they were real weddings, and conversely I like to think of real weddings as fantasies, so in the end there is no big difference for me between the two.”

From the aisle to the runway

Like Amsale, British designer Alice Temperley designed her own wedding dress. “The theme of my wedding was Ethereal 1920s, and the celebrations were in the place I grew up in Somerset,” she tells BBC Culture. “We had a colourful mix of 220 great friends celebrating late into the night in the beautiful orchards of my parent's cider farm. My own dress was created out of antique French lace that I carefully collected for years scattered with original 1920s 2mm sequins I had since I was a child.”

In her bridal collections, Temperley draws on a variety of influences. “I look to many different places and eras. In particular I look to the ‘20s and ‘30s for silhouettes, and to Victoriana pieces for detailing.” Her favourite is her Temperley Bridal Classic Jean gown, she says. “Because of the intricate embellishment and beading. I love the attention to detail and ‘20s silhouette.”

The bridal gown is such a rich aesthetic vein that many non-bridal-wear designers continue the convention of ending their catwalk shows with a showstopper wedding dress as a triumphant finale. Even enfant terrible of British fashion Gareth Pugh – whose outrageous, sculptural creations have adorned the likes of Lady Gaga and Kylie Minogue – has designed a bridal gown, for his friend the fashion director Katie Shillingford. The result was a stunningly romantic creation with intricate detailing, recently exhibited at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum.

The dialogue between designer and bride-to-be is intrinsically important, according to Pugh. “It’s definitely a conversation,” he tells BBC Culture. “With Katie we had a lot of meetings where we just sat down and talked. We then went through things that I had previously made, tried things on, threw ideas around, looked at fabric options, and colour… I was very aware that she needed to be involved in the creation of the dress in order to feel connected to it, rather than simply being presented with a few sketches. 

“Katie has a very specific sensibility, and I wanted what we did to be right. As a designer it’s very important to listen to what the bride-to-be wants, rather than trying to push an idea on her that she doesn't feelcomfortable with… luckily though, we were both very happy with the final result.”

So does Pugh think that a wedding dress makes a statement about the bride’s sense of identity? “Ultimately, everything we choose to wear is an expression of who we are. A wedding is a meaningful and significant day for those involved, and as one of the traditional centrepieces of the event, the dress should be meaningful and significant to whoever is wearing it.

Super model Sofia Hayat now a nun

In a surprising turn of events, former Bigg Boss contestant and model Sofia Hayat has become a nun, and goes by the name Mother Sofia now.

A wild card entry on the seventh season of the reality show in 2013, Sofia featured with Candy Brar, Asif Azim, Ajaz Khan and Vivek Mishra, reports Hindustan Times.

Earlier in April, Sofia had posted a message on her Instagram account that indicated a change in heart. “We are beautiful without makeup...hair colour...fashion... We are perfect as we are. I’m sorry I gave you the impression otherwise. I am changed. I love you all. Gaia Sofia Mother.”

The past month also saw a flood of pictures expressing her new-found spirituality.

At one point, Sofia wrote, “When I was 16, I used to admire people with luxuries. Now I admire people with inner peace.” Her other television stints include Welcome: Baazi Mehmaan Nawazi Ki.

The British model-actor-singer was named the new ‘Curvy Icon’ by Vogue Italia in 2012. She was listed No 81 on FHM’s list of sexiest women in the world in September 2013.

New male contraceptive jab ‘shows promise’

A male contraceptive jab which lowers sperm count has proved 96% effective in a new study – almost as effective as the female pill.

The groundbreaking trial could lead to the rebalancing of the burden of responsibility for birth control between the genders after a decade where the obligation has been increasingly borne by women.

Yet a significant number of side effects, including depression, acne, and heightened libido caused 20 men to drop out and ultimately led to the trial stopping early.

The injection was 96% effective at preventing pregnancies among couples during a year-long trial, with only four pregnancies taking place out of the 266 couples that tested out the drug.

The resulting pregnancy rate of 1.57 per 100 users is comparable to that of the combined contraceptive pill, which has a rate of less than 1 pregnancy per 100 women who use it.

Hepatitis, HIV patients more likely to commit suicide post hospitalisation

People suffering from Hepatitis or HIV AIDS are more likely to commit suicide after being hospitalised, finds a new study.

The study, published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry investigated associations between infectious diseases and the risk of death by suicide.

Researchers studied those aged 15 and above and the infections were divided into categories like bacterial, viral, others and infection type such as sepsis, hepatitis, genital, central nervous system, HIV or AIDS.

There were about 8,09,384 (11.2%) individuals hospitalised with infection during follow-up. Among them, 32,683 suicide cases came up, and of those 7,892 (24.1%) individuals had been previously diagnosed with infection during hospitalisation.

Study results suggest hospitalisation with infection was linked to a 42% higher risk of suicide death compared to those individuals without infection. Also, the study suggested that more the infections, longer the treatment and higher the apparent risk of death by suicide.

“Our findings support linking infections, proinflammatory cytokines and inflammatory metabolites to increased risk of suicidal behaviour,” said Lena C Brundin, researcher at the Van Andel Research Institute in the US.

They also noted that an association between infection and suicide could also be an epiphenomenon or be impacted by other factors. The psychological effect of being hospitalised with a severe infection might affect the risk of suicide.

“Our findings indicate that infections may have a relevant role in the pathophysiological mechanisms of suicidal behaviour. Provided that the association between infection and the risk of death by suicide was causal, identification and early treatment of infections could be explored as a public health measure for prevention of suicide,” the study concludes.

Standing up for beliefs can make you feel confident

Going with the flow might appear easier when confronted with unanimous disagreements.

However, standing up for your beliefs, expressing your opinions and demonstrating your core values can be a positive psychological experience and make you feel confident about yourself, a study reveals.

The findings showed that when trying to reach a goal, evaluating high resources and low demands leads to a mostly positive, invigorating experience called a challenge, which corresponds with feeling confident.

Low resources and high demands lead to a much less confident state called a threat, which may produce feelings of anxiety.

There can be a clear divergence between what people do and say and how they feel, the study said.

“People can show conformity, but going along with the group doesn’t mean they are going along happily,” said Mark Seery, Associate Professor at the University of Buffalo, in New York, US.

“The external behaviour isn’t necessarily a good indication of their internal experience,” Seery added.

To provide insights into what it’s like being alone against the group, the team tapped into the experience of participants using psychophysiological measures, and by assessing their cardiovascular responses.

The team, thus, got a sense of how people are evaluating personal resources versus the demands of the situation while in the act of potentially conforming.

The researchers assigned participants into one of four experimental conditions, each with a goal to either fit in with a group’s political opinion or assert their individuality, and with a group that either agreed or disagreed with participants’ opinion on the issue.

The results showed that when participants’ goal was to fit in with a group of people who disagreed with them, their cardiovascular responses were consistent with a psychological threat state.

In contrast, when the goal was to be an individual among a group of people who disagreed with them, their cardiovascular responses were consistent with challenge.

“You may have to work to reach a goal, but when you experience a challenge, it is more like feeling invigorated than overwhelmed. It is consistent with seeing something to gain rather than focusing on what can be lost,” Seery noted.

The study, published in the journal Psychophysiology, has interesting implications, especially in an election year, when someone can be surrounded by family members, coworkers or even neighbourhood lawn signs that run contrary to one’s personal opinions.

“It could easily be overwhelming to face a group on the other side of an issue or candidate, but the study suggests that reminding yourself of wanting to be an individual can make it a better experience, challenging instead of threatening, invigorating instead of overwhelming,” Seery concluded.

Depression in HIV patients increasing risk of heart diseases, reveals study

Human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV)-infected individuals already suffering from depression are at an increased risk of experiencing a heart attack than those without the mental health condition, finds a study.

The findings showed that HIV-infected patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) — a mood disorder causing a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest — had a 30 per cent greater risk of having an acute myocardial infarction (AMI) or heart attack.

With the advent of highly effective antiretroviral therapy and improved survival, people with HIV-infection are living longer. However, they are now at an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases (CVD).

This elevation in heart attack risk decreased by 25 per cent after further adjustment for other variables, such as hepatitis C infection, kidney disease, alcohol or cocaine abuse or dependence and haemoglobin levels, the study said.

“Our findings raise the possibility that similar to the general population, MDD may be independently associated with incident atherosclerotic CVD in the HIV-infected population,” said Matthew S. Freiberg of the Vanderbilt University School in the US.

There is an urgent need to identify novel risk factors and primary prevention approaches for CVD in HIV, the researchers concluded in the paper published online by JAMA Cardiology.

For the study, the team included 26,144 HIV-infected veterans without heart disease at baseline (1998-2003) participating in the US Department of Veterans Affairs ‘Veterans Aging Cohort Study’ from April 2003 through December 2009.

Sleep Compatible? How To Deal With Conflicting Sleep Patterns

Sleep incompatibility is an age-old problem among couples. You know the story: one of you wants to stay up until the early hours binge-watching Netflix, the other is dancing around the kitchen to breakfast radio by 6am.

And often the problem doesn’t get detected in the early days (when you’re up all night having sex, anyway). It’s only when you move in together that the reality hits: the ‘morning lark’ is doing an impression of a nodding dog on the sofa by 9pm, the ‘night owl’ huffily burying their head under the pillow at “some ungodly hour of the morning” to the crashing sound of the dishwasher being unloaded below.

So, if successful relationships are all about compromise and meeting in the middle, shouldn’t we be synching our sleep schedules like we might our iPhone calendars?

Not according to the sleep experts.

Larks v owls

In 1976, there was a flurry of interest in the old notion of “night owls” and “morning larks” when researchers came up with the pioneering Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire, comprised of 19 questions to determine a person’s chronotype (their propensity to sleep at a particular time during a 24-hour period).

The upshot was that you’re either “a morning person”, “an evening person”, or “somewhere in between”. But more recent research, reported in The Atlantic, has indicated there are not two basic chronotypes but four. In addition to ‘larks’ and ‘owls’, scientists at the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences identified ‘hummingbirds’ as those who had energy peaks in both the morning and the evening, and ‘lazy birds’ as those who felt lethargic during those periods.

Meanwhile, in an interview with The New York Times, Till Roenneberg, a professor of chronobiology at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, compared chronotypes to thumb prints, suggesting there are an infinite number because everyone is unique.

So, with so many variations on the ‘lark-owl spectrum’, it’s hardly surprising few of us find our perfect chronotype match. And although research shows chronotype is affected by factors, such as gender and age (parents: add to that, kids!), it’s largely dictated by genetics. And try as we might, it’s hard to argue with the gene pool.

HERO IMAGES VIA GETTY IMAGES

To further complicate things, our individual internal body clocks, which control our circadian rhythms, have become increasingly screwed over the years.

According to the Institute of General Medical Sciences, the body’s ‘master clock’ (SCN) controls our circadian rhythms, which take their cue mainly from light – and this ‘master clock’ controls the production of melatonin, a hormone that makes you sleepy:

“Since it is located just above the optic nerves, which relay information from the eyes to the brain, the SCN receives information about incoming light. When there is less light—like at night—the SCN tells the brain to make more melatonin so you get drowsy.”

Then along came the lightbulb. Ever since its invention – and since then the glare of TVs, and now laptop, tablet and smartphone screens – those natural signals have become significantly weakened.

It’s no wonder we’re having trouble sleeping. So, rather than trying to switch our schedules to the opposite end of the lark-owl spectrum to fit in with our partner’s demands, we should be making a joint effort to reset our body clocks to fit with Mother Nature’s schedule. After all, better sleep equals a happier relationship.

Here are some tips for when your sleep schedules just don’t marry:

Use Dim Lighting

Andy Cox via Getty Images

“If you don’t want to sleep separately, be considerate. Replace any bedside lamps with reading lights as they are less disruptive,” says chartered physiotherapist and author of The Good Sleep Guide, Sammy Margo. “You should also both invest in an eye mask to block out all light.”

Wear Earplugs

Image Source via Getty Images

“Earplugs are ideal for blocking out noise but as one of you needs to be able to hear an alarm, it’s probably best if only one of you wears them,” says Margo. “As we sleep more lightly in the morning, it’s easier for a lark to sleep through when an owl goes to bed than it is for an owl to sleep wakes up.”

Plan Ahead

SolStock via Getty Images

“Larks who sleep with owls should try to put their clothes out ready the night before in another room so they don’t rustle around in the morning when they’re getting dressed,” suggests Margo. “Owls should return the favour at night by getting ready for bed in another room.”

Caiaimage/Chris Ryan via Getty Images

Try and work out the most conducive way of sleeping for the least amount of disturbance, such as a clear pathway around the bed so nobody crashes into anything when they’re creeping around, or putting the morning lark closest to the window. 

“Work out which side of the bed you need to sleep at so the owl doesn’t have to pass the lark’s side of the bed at night,” adds Margo.

Go Camping

Tetra Images - Mike Kemp via Getty Images

Your best chance of finding a happy medium without compromising your own natural sleep times is by resetting your body clocks with nature’s own cues. 

A 2013 study found that a week-long camping trip could reset a person’s internal body clock. 

“After camping, the night owls in the group showed the greatest shifts in the timing of their internal clocks… Night owls looked more similar to earlier morning types,” said study researcher Kenneth P. Wright, Jr., an associate professor of physiology at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Sleep Separately

Daly and Newton via Getty Images

“If incompatible sleeping habits are keeping you awake at night, and this is causing you to feel anger and resentment during the night and to feel irritable, tired and moody during the day, the sensible advice is to sleep in separate rooms,” says Margo. 

It might sound like the beginning of the end but if you make time to have sex at other times than the usual obligatory bedtime hook-up, you could even shake things up a bit. And research does suggest that those who sleep well have better sex lives.