Posts in category: Life Style

Mira Nair: I am not into being an ambassador and saying my country is so wonderful, so rich. I don’t approach filmmaking like a Benetton ad. The point is to plunge into the layers of life in front of you and extricate the humanity that is local to that place. And to do it in a way that is so truthful that it becomes universal. The point is that we’re not islands among ourselves; we are actually all utterly human. That said, as an Indian filmmaker living in New York, then in East Africa, I was always in these places where I was a novelty, where I may have been forced to explain myself. But I grew up with a kind of fierceness, that I’m not going to justify myself or give you lessons on my bindi. I refuse to let people who haven’t lived in our streets take our culture and bugger it up.

Where much of Indian hip-hop has chased Western aesthetics with token Indian flourishes, Bijoy Shetty is developing an alternate visual grammar. Photographed by Rohan Johnson.

Bijoy Shetty: Sadly, colonisation is in our DNA, where we assume that Western culture is the superior one. But in all honesty, I’ve benefited from that perception. With ‘Big Dawgs’, a lot of the reaction was because they never thought that an Indian could rap like this. It’s not like this tremendous video with high production value. It’s just the shock of it being an Indian rapper and an Indian music video that has taken it wherever it’s gone. But once that novelty wears off, does your work have a strong enough identity to keep the viewer’s attention? That’s what really matters.

Vogue India: Mira, you’ve spoken about how your primary influence is the street, whether it’s where your stories come from or your tendency to cast non-actors in your films. Bijoy, hip-hop was born on the streets of the Bronx. Can you talk about what the street means to you as a ­ character, and how you look to it for inspiration?

If finances and opportunities may have felt like they are trapped, you, Aquarius, have not been flowing. And let’s snap out of this woo-wooness for a bit. Think hard. Now answer this: what happened to the idea that popped into your head? Did you give it enough time, energy and effort before it fizzled out, or did you lose steam and interest even before it had the time to take off? You said no, you stood up tall and now you are sticking with it, Aries. Any indecision that you may have felt trapped in in your past is now slowly fading away because you are realising that unless you stand up and make a definitive choice, this loop is going to feel never-ending. And this is when the tables begin to turn in your favour. You may be tired of the loop, but tell me, Cancer, are you really looking into the far distance in your fleeting moments? Are you so stuck at the wins that you are perhaps looking at it as coming in at any cost? Remember, darling, tonight is a full moon and for the next couple of days you are likely to feel full and all over—but don’t let that take charge of what you say and how you express things. Remember that when you have nothing good to say, choose to say nothing at all.

Read on for what the stars have in store for you, and make sure you check out your sun, moon and rising signs for the complete picture.

You said no, you stood up tall and now you are sticking with it, Aries. Any indecision that you may have felt trapped in in your past is now slowly fading away because you are realising that unless you stand up and make a definitive choice, this loop is going to feel never-ending. And this is when the tables begin to turn in your favour—when you take your pick, the universe upgrades what is on offer automatically—much like a social media algorithm, only with cosmic notes.

Cosmic tip: Wait before acting, taste your inner landscape before you get onto that ride.

Turbulent waters on the surface need not mean unstable foundations underneath, Taurus. No matter how choppy the seas feel up above, the deeper you go, the more silent it gets—always remember that. So while you are trying your best to skim through the surface, also remember that you must safeguard your sanity as a priority and you must choose your mental peace and freedom as your main themes in life. You may not be as trapped as you feel you are—explore outward—the world is yours.

Cosmic tip: It may be time to make a choice and stick it out to see lasting rewards.

On November 5, the super full moon, the biggest and brightest of the year, will come closest to the Earth in its orbit. Its attraction is therefore tenfold, and with it, our feelings and sensations. This is particularly true for the four fixed signs—Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius—that fall in the middle of each season, but that doesn’t mean the other signs won’t feel anything. Below, a detailed impact of the super full moon on each zodiac sign by astrologer Léa Baixo.:

The influence of the November 5 super full moon on each zodiac sign

Aries: You don’t have to prove anything; your value already exists

The super full moon in Taurus illuminates your relationship with security, money and self-esteem. For the past two weeks, you may have been feeling discomfort: fear of missing out, doubts about your legitimacy or feelings of not being enough. But the full moon reminds you of an essential truth: your value doesn’t depend on how productive you are or how others see you. The energy of this moon teaches you the solidity of knowing what you want without needing to prove it. It invites you to reconnect with the pleasure of receiving, to savour comfort without guilt. This isn’t materialism: it’s rooted self-love. Here, you learn to build inner security before outer security. You won’t find peace by accumulating more, but by recognising that you are already complete. “True wealth is the serenity of knowing that you are already enough.” This sentence sums it all up: life doesn’t wait for your perfection, but for your confidence.

Key message: Every morning, write down “I deserve…” and end the sentence with three truths. Choose one to honour during the day. This simple ritual re-programs your relationship to value and naturally attracts abundance.

Taurus: You no longer have to play a role: the world wants to see you for real

The super full moon in Taurus sheds light on your identity. For the past two weeks, you may have been feeling that your image, your posture or even your rhythm no longer resembles you. This moon acts like a mirror without make-up. It invites you to stop playing a role and return to your authentic self. If you’re feeling tired, irritable or out of alignment, it’s because you’re still carrying too many of other people’s expectations on your shoulders. This moon’s energy teaches you to slow down and put down roots. You no longer need to be perfect. Your true power lies in your constancy, your gentleness, your inner calm. This full moon invites you to reclaim your body, your voice, your image. It’s an inner rebirth, that of someone who no longer hides behind what they do, but simply remembers who they are. What you hide exhausts you. What you assume sets you free. You don’t have to prove anything. Your authenticity becomes your most magnetic charm.

Key message: Every morning, before your phone, place your hand on your heart and ask yourself, “How can you be true to yourself today?” Then act on the answer. This is how your outer world will realign you with your essence.

Gemini: Let go of control; emptiness is a door, not an end

The super full moon in Taurus closes a profound cycle. For the past two weeks, you’ve felt that something is coming to an end: a relationship, a habit, a way of thinking. It’s not a loss, it’s a shedding. This moon’s energy invites you to embrace slowness, to stop fighting against what’s fading away. This cycle marks the silent healing that cannot be seen, but can be felt. You learn to trust life without understanding everything. This moon prepares you for rebirth. Emptiness is not a punishment: it’s the space the universe clears before your new beginning. It’s not the end of a story, it’s the breath between two chapters. Take a breath. Everything is already falling into place.

Your early twenties are strange years. You’ve just stepped out of the cocoon of adolescence but are expected to walk through adulthood like you know the map. You look at older adults and assume they’ve cracked it; you look at teenagers and miss the version of yourself that seemed lighter, freer. Somewhere between chasing jobs and chasing meaning in the ‘real world’, you start to lose your footing.

I used to think this stage was supposed to feel confusing and heavy. Strangely, I’m enjoying my twenties more than my teenage years or even childhood, and the reason is simple: learning the art of laughing at yourself.

For as long as I can remember, I wore perfectionism like a second skin. I was ‘the good one’: the diligent student, the model daughter, the girl who never got it wrong. It looked enviable, but it was exhausting. Every choice was weighed against reputation; every slip felt catastrophic. By the time I was a teenager, that pressure had hardened into anxiety. I cared too much about what people thought—especially what I thought of me. Looking into the mirror became an exercise in criticism: my posture, my skin, my tone, my words. Everything needed fixing.

The turning point came with one liberating thought: I’m not that important. The world wasn’t scrutinising me half as cruelly as I was scrutinising myself. Nobody was watching every move, and even if they were, they’d forget it by dinner. We scroll past hundreds of stories and reels a day; how many do we actually remember? Everyone’s caught up in their own loops, their own insecurities. So maybe it’s okay if my story isn’t perfectly edited.

Around that time, I stumbled on a reel that changed my perspective entirely. It referenced a scene from Friends: Ross stuck in Mona’s bathroom, frantically trying to pull on his pants. To him, it was mortifying. To the audience, hilarious. That contrast made me wonder, what if I could see myself the same way?

So I began treating my life like a sitcom. Spilled coffee on my shirt before an important meeting? Cue the laugh track. Sent an awkward text? Just another cringe episode. Missed a deadline? A clumsy subplot. What once felt catastrophic began to feel comical. I wasn’t the tragic protagonist anymore, just a character in a story worth smiling at.

According to psychotherapist and wellness coach Harleen Bagga, founder of Soul Therapy, Hyderabad, laughing at yourself can be both a healthy mechanism and a mirror for self-awareness. “It’s a way of embracing imperfections and finding room for growth,” she says. “When done with the right intent, it builds emotional resilience, helping the nervous system respond instead of react.”

Bagga adds that humour can also turn defensive: “Some people use it to mask inadequacy or avoid confrontation. Intent matters because while laughter boosts dopamine and lightens the mood, if it’s rooted in self-deprecation, it can reinforce low self-worth.”

The ’90s blowout has officially reached peak saturation. Scroll once through your feed and you’ll see her. She’s got the same glossy, chest-length curls that bounce just so and the soft middle part. It’s beautiful, but somewhere between the velcro rollers, high-tech hair tools and the army of Instagram tutorials, individuality got left behind.

When I walked into the salon last month, my stylist confidently stated, “The usual bouncy blowout?” That’s when I realised that I didn’t know what my hair could look like beyond this. So I decided to rebel against my algorithm with a one-month experiment. Each week, I’d try a completely different blowout and track how it changed the way I looked and felt. If you need hair inspiration, here are the blowouts to try:

Week 1: Sleek glass finish

Stick-straight and mirror-shiny, this look felt like a power suit for my head. Paired best with a centre part and a sharp outfit, it’s chic, but it does demand some maintenance (hello, frizz serum). I used a smoothing serum, a paddle brush and a flat iron section by section until my arms felt like the Hulk’s. Entirely worth the two-hour effort and arm workout.

Week 2: The French girl tousle

“I was dead against writing a memoir, to be very honest,” he adds. “I was made to by my American agents, who were like, ‘You’ve won an Emmy, now write a memoir.’ I said I would do it if they let me write a book about failure, about cluelessness.” Das doesn’t want you to read his book and imagine he’s a guy who has got it all figured out. He’s walking you through his life, his dizzying highs and his palpably scary lows to remind you that, even after selling out the NSCI Dome in 20 minutes, winning an Emmy, writing a memoir, being cancelled for sedition, writing jokes for Shah Rukh Khan, writing and directing a movie for Aamir Khan… he’s still the kid in the corner of the party, wondering “How the hell did I get invited to this thing?”

If there’s one thing I would envy Das for, it’s his conviction in his craft. Not everyone can sit on a film script for 12 years, believing—dare I say, knowing—that it’s ahead of its time, but that’s essentially the origin story of Happy Patel. Das wanted to write a Johnny English-esque Indian spy comedy, the sort of ridiculously silly movies that still take the action very seriously. In 2010, when he first went out to narrate the script for various producers and directors, he was met with blank stares. Then came Tiger, Pathaan and the Indian spy universe, and Happy Patel’s alternative edginess finally had a mainstream reference point. Aamir Khan, whom Das hadn’t spoken to since Delhi Belly, scooped it up and the film is teased to release in 2026. True to form, Das isn’t sitting with his legs up; he is still very much at the drawing board, figuring out his next big thing. There’s a YouTube series in the pipeline he can’t talk much about, except that “no platform would have the guts to greenlight it, so we went ahead and made it anyway. We know the audience is there, so we’re just taking it directly to them.”

Every chorus begins as a single melody. Then comes the layering of other voices, other instruments, a widening of sound. That’s what transformation looks like in craft: not a break from the past, but an expansion of it. When Karishma and Avantika Swali founded Moonray in 2021, they set out to create a brand rooted in responsibility and craftsmanship. Now, we have Chorus: a natural next chapter that carries the brand’s spirit while opening space for more voices, mediums and shared possibilities.

“When Avantika and I started Moonray, it was imagined as a joyful, welcoming space where craft and consciousness could meet naturally,” Karishma Swali tells Vogue India. “As we grew and looked deeper into our work at Chanakya—and its four decades of education and cultural preservation—we began asking broader questions. What began as Moonray was ready to evolve into something more expansive.”

SND

SND

That expansiveness takes tangible form at Chorus, the duo’s new flagship in Mumbai’s art district, Kala Ghoda. Spread across three levels, the space blurs the boundaries between art, design and daily ritual. The ground floor houses Chorus Edition, their couture arm; Chorus Concept, a platform for handcrafted textiles, ceramics and glassware; and Chorus Wellness, a line of soaps, candles and oils. Upstairs, Chorus Café extends the same craftsmanship to food, offering reflective moments like the Chorus High Tea, where sharing itself becomes part of the brand’s ethos.

Corseted dresses softened with diaphanous overlays; surfaces shimmering with handwork that bridges centuries; cotton cords wound with mathematical precision; metallic threads that catch and refract light; and natural raffia woven into lace-like lattices. The label’s signature denim remains central, made from organic raw cotton and dyed through traditional indigo processes that yield a colour only time can impart. From the rain-fed kala cotton weavers of Kutch to the heritage looms of Tamil Nadu, these partnerships root Chorus in a shared lineage of creation.

DRIU CRILLY & TIAGO MARTEL

DRIU CRILLY & TIAGO MARTEL

That continuum traces back to the Chanakya School of Craft, the Mumbai-based institution that Karishma Swali has led since 1988. As part of the larger Chanakya ecosystem, Chorus emerges as its creative extension by translating the school’s four-decade legacy of preservation, education and innovation into contemporary design. Established to safeguard traditional techniques while nurturing experimentation with modern forms and aesthetics, Chanakya’s philosophy of bridging heritage with invention continues to guide Chorus at every level.

Inside the store, embroidered artworks like “The Offering” honour the artisans behind each piece, while ceramic installations and handwoven panels turn the process into design. “For us, [Chorus] is a reminder that creativity is never a solitary act. Every person brings their own rhythm, and when those voices meet, something fuller and more alive takes shape,” says Karishma. In the end, Chorus feels less like a rebrand and more like a continuation.

Also read:

Every red carpet look from the 2025 LACMA Art + Film Gala

From Kutch to Tamil Nadu, these women are preserving their identity through embroidery

Forces of Fashion 2025: 39 of India’s best designers come together for a Vogue showcase like no other

Sushmita Sen’s latest outing balanced power and poise in equal measure. Styled by Theia Tekchandaney, she wore an ivory Malta silk jacket by Rohit Bal that was hand-embroidered with tonal florals that climbed delicately across the surface. The longline silhouette, marked by a high collar, fitted bodice and flared panels, spoke to the designer’s approach to tailoring, while the threadwork added dimensional richness. Beneath, a layer of black offered visual depth, underscoring the luminosity of the ivory base. It’s the kind of construction and surface detail that has long defined Bal’s vocabulary.

Her jewellery delivered a counterpoint: diamond and gold chains, cascading into a sculptural pendant set with rubies and aquamarines. The layered composition created movement and opulence without excess, the saturated stones cutting through the monochrome palette. A wavy updo with loose tendrils framed Sushmita Sen’s face, while makeup was defined by sculpted brows, smoky eyes and a bold, matte rose lip that completed the arresting look.

From Vogue’s fashion desk:

“When wearing an anarkali jacket/ coat as subtly decadent as this ivory Rohit Bal number, why not pair with a lace ivory sari inside to create layered opulence. Work with a tone-on-tone layering. Ditch any neck or wrist jewellery, instead don a subtle pearl or diamond earring. The coat ought to be your focal point and let the silhouette do all the talking,” says Vogue India fashion associate Divya Balakrishnan.

Some trends are more successful than others. Some do not last over time, and others, on the contrary, manage to be eternal, as is the case with low-heeled pumps. This accessory has positioned itself as a closet staple that, with an elegant touch, transforms any style.

Given its success in the midst of the Winter 2025 fashion trends, we started a tour through the street style and catwalks to gather ideas on how to wear them, just as the experts do, because they are a garment that transcends in terms of sophistication. Their classic design remains, and the height of their heel allows comfort to never be lost.

Low heels are at their best, and we should take advantage of them. We could talk about different ways to combine them. With pants, for example, they will be an essential element for formal occasions, while with dresses, they will give dynamism. New options appear, so we select the most appropriate for winter 2025.

Low heel pumps with midi skirt

Low heel pumps shoes to wear midi skirts in fall 2025.

Spotlight/Launchmetrics.

This is a fusion that transitions from office to street style seamlessly. The base of this one is a midi skirt in brown colour that exceeds the current trends, and a leather bomber jacket in the same shade is added, creating a total avant-garde look. The elegant touch is given by the fashionable shoes, pointed pumps with low heels that do not skimp on style and add comfort.

Low heel pumps with jeans

Low heel pumps with straight jeans for a formal look in fall 2025.

Christian Vierig

Don’t you give up just yet, Capricorn! Don’t you say bye now, don’t you walk out of that door now, and don’t you slump off now. You are 99% there—now that 1% may feel like a Herculean feat, but this is the life-changing moment you have been working on. Give it your all this month, and as Saturn, your ruling planet, turns direct at the end of the month, things will ease off. You will see daylight, and life will feel sprightly once again. Are you checking off what you need to first, and then are you also referring to your guidebook for your next steps? Aries, you’ve been up to some marvellous work, and while you are here feeling all zen today, you must remember that it is your back-end team that allows you the luxury of a brief moment of peace. If your life feels like it is drowning in sameness, then listen up, Leo—is it really? Your ideas are afloat, but are you drowning yourself in overthinking or conjuring the worst-case scenarios in your mind? Your creativity will come back online if you allow yourself to be, to see each situation with childlike curiosity and with a mind that questions everything as though it is the first time it has encountered things. You know you love working towards your goals, and you know, Cancer, very little excites you as much as your vision, goals and that inner landscape coming to life. What is my task, you ask? Your task is to allow your nouveau-ness, your excitement and your visions to mature and fuse with your wisdom.

Read on for what the stars have in store for you, and make sure you check out your sun, moon and rising signs for the complete picture.

Are you checking off what you need to first, and then are you also referring to your guidebook for your next steps? Aries, you’ve been up to some marvellous work, and while you are here feeling all zen today, you must remember that it is your back-end team that allows you the luxury of a brief moment of peace. This is your time to not look at stillness as boredom, but rather an upgrade where you are left with more room to do what you really want to do while seeking support for all else that needs you to show up, but perhaps can have someone or something else deal with the nitty-gritties.

Cosmic tip: Be grateful that the cabbie takes you places while you look out of the window and soak all the scenic beauty in, or check that presentation off.

You got into this expecting fireworks, transitions and amazing changes lined up for you; however, is the royalty now wearing off, Taurus? Are you beginning to notice the routine and the work this takes to keep showing u, or the mundaneness of life that once felt calming is now getting robotic? You are not trapped, and this is your cosmic reminder. You are free to explore the world, but for that, you must be willing to explore your strengths and delegate your weaknesses. You must be willing to ensure that as you align with your heart, you are also taking a more sustainable route forward—one that you can outlast instead of burn out on.