Your new must-have accessory: a face mask
YOU’VE EITHER BEEN wearing one for weeks or not felt the need; but now new guidelines suggest we’re all going to have to find a face mask – and fast. New Government guidelines in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland suggest we should start wearing some sort of face covering in shops and on public transport where social distancing isn’t possible.
For the foreseeable future, wearing a mask will become part of our daily dress code, something we will automatically put on along with a coat or sunglasses before leaving the house. The Government has asked us not to buy medical-grade masks, to reserve them for frontline staff. So should we be shopping for something more stylish?
‘Masks as fashion statements are still contentious ground, which is why you are yet to see any major fashion labels rolling new stock off the lines,’ says Elizabeth Paton, international styles correspondent for The New York Times. A backlash over Off-white’s £69 monochrome mask – which sold out and was then spotted being sold online for three times its original price – may be putting some luxury houses off jumping into production.
But if masks as a luxe accessory aren’t a trend just yet, that hasn’t stopped a plethora of more style-conscious versions hitting the market to capitalise on the even bigger audience actively seeking them out.
On Etsy UK, for example, there was a 2,100% increase in face mask-related searches during March, versus the same time last year, which equated to roughly one search every 40 seconds, and there are currently over 320,000 masks on the site.
‘Not only is the rise in face mask sales helping small businesses stay afloat during this difficult time by using their skills to make in-demand products,’ says Etsy CEO Josh Silverman of the site’s offering, ranging from homespun retro-print cloth masks to more luxurious silk ones. ‘We also hope that the availability of non-medical, consumer masks will allow more medical and surgical masks to reach the people who need them most: frontline workers.’
The fashion brands that have started making masks have largely been doing so in conjunction with a charitable donation. The Vampire’s Wife, for example, created two silk masks in floral prints priced at £35, with 100% of proceeds donated to The World Health Organization Covidsolidarity Response Fund. Both sold out within hours of landing online.
Similarly, Baukjen has partnered with one of its manufacturers in Portugal to make non-medical masks for personal use. ‘We want to play our part in getting as many people as we can to wear masks, #masks4all,’ says the brand on its website. ‘To help make this possible we are totally transparent on how much we pay the factory, couriers and other related costs, as we do not want to make any profit from the sale of these masks #inthistogether.’
Government guidelines state that your mask, or face covering, should cover your mouth and nose while allowing you to breathe comfortably. Wash your hands before putting it on and after taking it off, and store in a plastic bag until you have an opportunity to wash it at 60°C, which you should do regularly – it’s OK to include it with your usual laundry.
Masks, it would seem, are set to become another part of our new normal. So maybe it’s OK to want one that makes you feel as good as it looks?
BLAME REESE WITHERSPOON (and a pair of tight, white, rather revealing 1990s throwback briefs), but Joshua Jackson is having a moment. Another moment. More than 20 years after the first one.
The former teen pin-up, now 41, is back on our screens as Reese’s long-suffering husband in the much-anticipated adaptation of Celeste Ng’s best-selling
Little Fires Everywhere, and it’s safe to say our collective lust is well and truly stoked.
For some of us, the fire never went out after we fell for 20-year-old Joshua as brooding, teacher-shagging Pacey in
Dawson’s Creek, the high-school drama with the most esteemed alumni of any fictitious educational establishment, including Katie Holmes and Michelle Williams. Katie and Joshua dated for the first two years of the show, and she refers to him as her ‘first love’ (us too, Katie). And though he ducked off to his native Vancouver and went under the radar for a few years in the ‘cult’ (read: not very popular) sci-fi series Fringe, when he returned as cuckolded Cole in the racy, soapy drama The Affair, some of us spent five whole seasons puzzling as to how Alison (Ruth Wilson) could ever choose whiney novelist Noah (Dominic West) over strapping yet sensitive Cole. When I met Joshua on the red carpet for the show’s second season premiere (charming, very tall, delightfully naughty twinkle in his eye), it was all I could do to resist giving precisely that pithy review. Fans (by which I mean me) also admire him for his serious adult acting credentials, of course. His recent turn as Michael Joseph – the lawyer who defended Antron Mccray, one of five teenagers falsely convicted and jailed for the rape of a jogger in Central Park in the 1980s – in Ava Duvernay’s acclaimed When They See Us, is a far cry from the teen melodramas of Capeside.
His latest role, as another lawyer, Bill Richardson, married to curtaintwitching busybody Elena (Reese) and father of their four teenage children, doesn’t immediately set him up for sex-symbol status; there’s a lot of Dad leisurewear, and those pants are definitely not intended to be a thirst trap. But there’s something about
Bill’s masterful handling of his hugely irritating wife that gives us the kind of sexy-but-wholesome comfort we need in these turbulent times. In fact, sexy but wholesome is Jackson’s specific genre.
In real life, the actor’s taste in partners has always been impeccable. There was public mourning when he split with Diane Kruger in 2016 after 10 years of paparazziperfect coupledom (Diane went on to have a baby with the actor Norman Reedus). Thankfully, two years later, he began dating one of our very own – 33-year-old British model and actor Jodie Turner-smith, star of the recent Queen & Slim. The couple married in December and, last month, she gave birth to their daughter. In a gushing Instagram tribute post to his wife, he thanked her for making him a father.
But just because he’s firmly off the market and a family man now, don’t let it stop you from indulging this thoroughly deserving crush; the actor himself endorsed it recently on US morning TV. When told of the breathless reaction to that underwear scene, Joshua merely twinkled and looked delighted. ‘I’m in my forties now. I enjoy being objectified.’ As you were.
‘Little Fires Everywhere’ is on Amazon Prime from Friday; see Paul Flynn’s review, page 87