EDITOR’S LETTER

I’m going to presume you read last week’s letter filed from the back seat of a car stuck in Milan Fashion Week traffic. (No? Why ever not?) This week’s is a semi-continuation coming live from the back seat of my Paris Fashion Week car straight after the Balenciaga show. Everyone’s favourite oddball/genius Ye opened the show, stomping around a giant pit of wet mud dressed in a supersized flak jacket and bovver boots as a soundtrack of… Is Terminator-terrorcore a genre? Models followed behind, their gowns caked in sludge, their steps perilously close to the edge of the pit. Inches from slipping into an abyss of slop. Creative director Demna said it was a metaphor for ‘digging for the truth’ but from my frow seat it looked like a depiction of the Right Now. Cost-of-living crisis? Nuclear apocalypse? Shit-strewn British beaches? It was all in there.

Anyway, this hellscape made me think about escape. About how we could really do with a global coming-together. (See where I’m going with this?) Yes, it’s only six weeks until the World Cup and I don’t think it can come soon enough. Just imagine: conversations about interest rates temporarily swapped for drunken debates on the perfection of a 4-2-3-1 formation (I had to google that bit). Maybe — just maybe — it’s the salve that we all need.

Regular readers of this page (No? What is wrong with you?) will know about my disinterest in most things football. That is, apart from the World Cup. Yes, I am one of those annoying dilettantes who for four weeks every four years suddenly becomes a football fan. It also happens with the Euros, which is where I first saw our cover star, Bukayo Saka. Recently voted Player of the Year, all eyes are on the 21-year-old as he puts on his England shirt again for the World Cup in Qatar. Reading our interview with Saka might just dare you to dream again.

Not into the beautiful game? We also have Graham Coxon, the King and Tom Hardy jiu-jitsu fighting. Sounds like a Men’s Edition to me.