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If girlhood was something we rushed through or never really got, it’s almost funny how loudly it has reappeared in our thirties. Open any of my group chats and you’ll find the same language looping like a chorus: “the girls are going out”, “call the girls”, “girl, listen to me”, “I need the girls on this.” Nobody types, “Dear women, shall we gather?” We’re the girls.

The rest of my life is aggressively adult. I am the emergency contact for myself. I have doctors’ numbers saved. I understand the difference between different types of insurance. There are tabs open on my laptop about funds, legal structures, compliance, insurance, and personal growth. When shit hits the fan, there is no older adult stepping in to fix it. The older adult is me.

And yet, the moment I step into a living room where my closest friends are sitting cross-legged on the floor with iced coffee, the entire energy shifts. Shoes off, bra unhooked, eyeliner smudged. We are thirty-somethings, but the vibe is unmistakable: we are the girls, and we are home.

There are the shrieks and groans and dramatic re-enactments. There are the outfit approvals. There are the screenshots (so many screenshots) of texts and DMs we would never admit to caring about in public. There is the forensic analysis of a three-word reply from someone’s situationship. There are the unhinged voice notes dissected line by line. There is the “Okay, show us the new thing you bought, do a haul.”

It’s not that the problems are smaller now. If anything, they are bigger. We’re talking about IVF cycles, break-ups with people we thought we’d marry, burnout so severe it makes us forget our own email password, parents’ illnesses, financial anxiety, careers that look shiny from the outside but are actually hollow. There are no school exams left to blame. We are in the long, unglamorous middle of our lives. I write about all of this and the invisible labour, the emotional math, the unassuming ways in which women shrink themselves to fit rooms that were never built for them in my debut book, The Girls Are Not Fine, out on April 30.

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The haldi, paired with a welcome lunch, kept the energy relaxed. Rawat wore a multicoloured halter jumpsuit in yellow, orange and green, while Verma wore a floral yellow kurta with a dhoti. Matching tinted sunglasses ran through both looks. The decor moved away from marigolds to wildflowers.

The sangeet became a live performance, with Verma and his friends playing across genres, from rock and metal to Bollywood classics. For the evening, Rawat stepped into a mint green lehenga with gold and silver embroidery and sequins, paired with green and mixed-metal jewellery, while Verma opted for a black Indo-Western set with a gold-work coat designed for movement. The stage itself was constructed as “disco mountains,” and the dance floor stayed full through the night.

From there, the first after-party, “Bollywood and Beats”, carried the evening forward with live percussion and a more open-ended flow. The next morning moved at a slower pace.

Traditions stayed, but were handled differently. Rituals were kept private, limited to immediate family. Rawat arrived with her own baraat, cutting into the groom’s procession midway. The two merged into one before the ceremony began, catching Verma’s side off guard. “It really surprised them,” Rawat says. “It was a lot of fun.” Instead of a conventional entry, she walked down the aisle to a recording of her own vows.

The ceremony took place as a summer mountain sundowner across the central lawns. A custom trefoil arch mandap was built from scratch and set against the property’s grand staircase. Flowers were kept to soft pinks, creams and purples, layered with eucalyptus and ferns.

For the pheras, Verma wore a sage green sherwani. Rawat wore a pink tissue lehenga with antique gold dabka embroidery and stonework. Her hair and makeup, by Tisha Gunjyal, stayed minimal, with loosely tied hair inspired by Madhubala. “We wanted it to feel romantic and deeply heartfelt,” she says.

The baraat began in the afternoon and carried into an evening ceremony accompanied by live flute, sitar and tabla. The groom’s procession featured playful elements, while the bride’s side arrived midway, cutting into the baraat and merging the two into one. “It really surprised Raghav’s side of the baraat, which was a lot of fun,” Rawat notes. For the ceremony, Verma chose a sage green sherwani, leaning into a more regal, classic mood, while Rawat wore a pink tissue lehenga with antique gold dabka embroidery and stonework. Her hair and makeup, by Tisha Gunjyal, stayed soft and minimal, with loosely tied hair inspired by Madhubala and a barely-there finish suited to the sundowner pheras. “We wanted it to feel romantic and deeply heartfelt,” Rawat explains. “Overall, it was an emotional and wonderful ceremony, exactly how we had imagined it.”

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In 2007, event designer Raul Ávila, the man in charge of transforming the Met Gala interiors, was getting ready to take on fashion’s biggest night. Tasked with primping up the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the hundreds of guests who attend the annual fundraiser for the Costume Institute, Ávila set a high standard for himself from the very beginning.

“It was my first year, and I wanted to do something completely different,” Ávila previously said in an episode of The Run-Through With Vogue. “I wanted to do something that no one’s seen before.” That year, the theme was “Poiret: King of Fashion,” in celebration of the early 20th-century designer Paul Poiret. So for the Great Hall installation—a major showpiece that guests see upon entering—Ávila built a Poiret-inspired gilded birdcage that was about 20 feet high, with two live peacocks inside. (During preparations for the night, one of them flew away, leading to a chaotic scene as people chased her to get her back in the cage.) Since then, year after year, Ávila has raised the bar with his transcendent designs.

In 2019, for “Camp: Notes on Fashion,” he created a 25-foot-tall flamingo centrepiece comprised of 30,000 flowers. In 2018, he built a recreation of a papal crown, made out of roses, for “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination.” In 2013, Ávila and his team flew in a chandelier from London and rigged it with aluminium “razor blades” for that year’s punk-themed bash.

In 2024, Ávila and the Vogue special events team turn the Temple of Dendur into an enchanted forest. Last year’s event—“Superfine: Tailoring Black Style”—took inspiration from famed artist Cy Gavin’s narcissus flower motif, which was a nod to “self-recognition,” and sparked a floating tower of narcissus flowers as the Great Hall centrepiece.

The theme for the 2026 Met Gala is “Costume Art,” and the event will take place on Monday, May 4. Until then, take a scroll through the Met Gala interiors throughout the years, from 2005’s Chanel-themed night to the most recent event in 2025.

Superfine: Tailoring Black Style

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Isha Ambani’s recent appearances have made a strong case for couture as a wardrobe of shifts rather than signatures. Across events, she has moved between new-season Dior, Chanel haute couture and vintage Valentino, choosing pieces that differ sharply in construction, surface and silhouette.

For the Fenty Beauty pop-up after-party, she wore Dior Spring 2026, Jonathan Anderson’s first womenswear collection for the house, styled by Dani Michelle. The look is built on a split structure: a short embroidered dress that drops into a sheer lower extension, with a long black bow at the neckline, breaking the blue surface before the fabric opens out. Hair by Mike Desir was worn loose, with makeup by Tanvi Chemburkar kept fresh with flushed cheeks and a pale pink lip.

At a luncheon with Rihanna shortly after, she moved into Chanel Spring/Summer 2026 haute couture. This one works differently. A sheer long-sleeved top sits over a tonal inner, with a pleated skirt falling straight from the waist. The detail is pushed to the edges, small drops along the cuffs and hem, a single motif near the pocket, while black-and-white footwear acts as a small interruption to the red.

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Denzel Washington first made the role iconic in Tony Scott’s 2004 film. Now, Emmy winner Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (Watchmen, Ambulance) steps into the shoes of John Creasy, a former Special Forces mercenary haunted by PTSD who is desperately trying to rebuild his life far from combat. When the daughter of his dead mentor becomes a target, Creasy is pulled back into the violence he had been trying to leave behind, this time on the unforgiving streets of Rio de Janeiro. Drawing on both A.J. Quinnell’s original 1980 novel and its sequel, The Perfect Kill, the seven-episode series has room to go deeper into Creasy’s trauma and moral fractures than any film adaptation has managed. Billie Boullet, Alice Braga, Scoot McNairy and Bobby Cannavale round out the cast.

Streaming on Netflix

One of the most exciting Indian OTT premieres of the month, Glory is the kind of sports drama that uses its arena as a lens, not a backdrop. Set in the competitive world of boxing, the series follows the aftermath of the suspicious death of a young, promising boxer named Nihal Singh, turning what begins as a tragedy into a layered murder mystery that implicates his coaches, rivals and family alike. Pulkit Samrat and Divyenndu lead a strong ensemble that also features Suvinder Vicky, Ashutosh Rana, Sikandar Kher, Jannat Zubair and Sayani Gupta.