Earlier this year, Dyson caused a huge stir with the launch of their CameraJet toothbrush. Priced at £419, it features a built-in camera and water jet for a more precise clean, using Gap Optical Targeting to target missed interdental spaces and remove plaque as you brush. So, a toothbrush and flosser in one, just far more powerful.
And of course, the internet had a lot to say. Many people questioned whether they were really ready to pay upwards of £400 for a toothbrush and whether they really wanted a camera inside their mouth—the jury is still out on that one.
Most people complained about the price tag, but Dyson’s offering isn't even the most expensive electric toothbrush on the market. Oral-B iO10 electric toothbrush comes in at a whopping £800. All this discourse raises a bigger question: when did investing in your oral health become so so expensive?
We’re living in a time where the pursuit of health, wellness and longevity—whatever you want to call it—seems to have no upper spending limit. Cold plunges, glucose monitors, health retreats, longevity supplements, peptide injections, hyperbaric chambers, and now oral care are all being optimised, and at a hefty price tag. And as someone who, in the name of journalism, has taken on a few practices, the bill at the end is certainly big.
Oral health isn't just about preventing cavities or keeping your breath fresh. Research has found it’s closely linked to our overall health, with studies linking poor oral health with cardiovascular disease and even certain cancers. It’s easy to see why gum health has become wellness’s latest target. Unsurprisingly, it appeals to people willing to drop serious money on their health, a group larger than you might think.
I’ve used a Spotlight Oral Care electric toothbrush for years and, my dentist and I agree, my teeth have never been in better condition. Once you go electric, there is no going back and all that. I definitely couldn’t, and I’m not alone. According to the Adult Oral Health Survey, 59% of adults in England use an electric toothbrush. But is there room to do more? Will a £400 super-toothbrush deliver better results? I suppose that’s what the longevity industry taps into: this intrigue, this idea that there’s always more we could be doing, and the pressure to do it for our health.
A more expensive toothbrush won’t fix poor brushing.
Dr Deepak, founder of Tooth Fairy
According to Niamh Turney, Senior Commercial Manager for Oral Care at Dyson, the answer is yes.“Most other toothbrushes just brush and miss the gaps between teeth. Many people then do not floss afterwards. Dyson CameraJet integrates flossing into the everyday brushing routine by using a camera to automatically detect and target gaps between teeth as you brush. It’s engineered to support overall oral health,” she explains.
I’m not even going to pretend I’m not intrigued. If there’s one thing Dyson has built a reputation for, it’s innovation. But do all those high-tech features actually make a real difference?
Dr Krystyn Wilczyński, cosmetic dentist, isn’t convinced. “You really don’t need to spend £300 to get an excellent clean. Once you have a good-quality electric toothbrush with an effective cleaning action, a pressure sensor and a two-minute timer, you’ve covered the features that matter most to me as a dentist,” she tells us.
Which is an important and refreshing reminder when it’s so easy to get swept up in the idea that more expensive automatically means better. Dr Deepak Aulak, founder of Tooth Fairy, argues that it always comes back to the basics. “A more expensive toothbrush won’t fix poor brushing. Brushing for two minutes twice a day, cleaning along the gum line and using the right pressure matters far more than the price tag. That said, a good electric toothbrush does make those habits easier. The best toothbrush is the one that suits your mouth and your needs.” He adds, “Anything above around £150, you’re often paying for features most people simply won’t use.” I suppose that’s the key takeaway. Find a toothbrush that does what you need it to do.
It feels strange to debate whether a toothbrush is worth more than £400 when millions of people across the UK struggle to access NHS dental care
It feels strange to debate whether a toothbrush is worth more than £400 when millions of people across the UK struggle to access NHS dental care. Government figures show that 60% of adults in England had not seen an NHS dentist over the previous two years, and oral health inequality continues to grow. You can even see that divide in electric toothbrush ownership: 47% of people in the lowest-income households use one, compared with 76% in the highest-income households.
Younger consumers, however, are embracing oral care for more aesthetic reasons. The goal of whiter and straighter teeth, brighter and picture-perfect smiles and easier access to oral cosmetic procedures have pushed oral care from a simple health habit into a beauty step.
So it’s no surprise that brands are responding by turning toothbrushes into sleek wellness technology, pushing the idea that toothbrushes—and even toothpaste—should do much more than simply clean your teeth. Whether that’s leaning into the beauty side or the longevity side.
It will be interesting to see how Dyson’s launch changes the category. Will toothbrushes become even smarter? Will they lean further into wellness? Or will they simply become another luxury gadget promising to optimise a routine that’s already straightforward?
So, how much is too much to spend on a toothbrush? That really depends on what you want from it. Innovation can be genuinely useful, whether that’s better battery life, more sustainable materials or features that encourage better brushing habits.
But no matter how smart the technology becomes, it always comes back to the fundamentals, which, as boring as it may seem, remain simple: brush properly, floss regularly and see your dentist when you should. The extras are, well, extras but also very nice if it’s in your budget.
The Best Toothbrushes for All Budgets
Dyson
Camerajet™ Electric Toothbrush With Flosser (ceramic Pink)
Spotlight Oral Care
Sonic Toothbrush in Black
Oral B
Io3 Matt Black Electric Toothbrush & Travel Case
Philips
Sonicare Diamondclean 9900 Prestige Electric Toothbrush
Philips
Philips Sonicare 2100 Electric Toothbrush Pink Hx4021/03
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Recently, a friend introduced me to the term “dopamine chasing”, and when I say introduced, what I really mean is, accused me of it.
She’s not wrong. In my search for… something—be that content to feed the ever-ravenous social media machine, or a sense of, if not meaning, then perhaps expansiveness—I have developed an insatiable appetite for experiences.
Sometimes it feels good, like I’m Mario jumping on toadstools to boost my reserves, except instead of toadstools, I’m collecting experiences. I imagine they’ll enhance my life; make me stronger, more interesting, better travelled, better experienced — whatever that means.
Lately, though, I’ve started feeling more like a lab rat, banging my paw against the reward lever even when it fails to spit out whatever got me onto this course in the first place.
I notice it on a micro level when I instinctively reach for my phone as a treat, and on a macro level when I plan trips of a lifetime. I’ve written before about treating travel as both an escape hatch from the ordinariness of life and a way of returning to that life as a better version of myself. It was on one such trip, which, though objectively extraordinary, somehow left me a little flat, that I started wondering what exactly I was after.
We’re a nation of truffle hunters, sniffing out the next thing that might make us feel something.
I’m hardly alone. Mastercard data shows that experiences now account for 23.3% of UK consumer spending, while 88% of Britons say they’re willing to cut back on “things” to afford more of them.
We’re a nation of truffle hunters, sniffing out the next thing that might make us feel something. From Arctic cruises and safaris to fully immersive brand worlds, we’re chasing bigger experiences, more intense emotions and increasingly elaborate ways to feel alive. But what does this relentless pursuit of pleasure tell us about the emotional state of modern life?
The obvious answer is that we’ve all fried our dopamine receptors. Dopamine has become cultural shorthand for almost every modern compulsion: why we scroll, shop, snack, swipe. We talk about dopamine hits, detoxes and addiction as though somewhere inside our brains laps a rapidly depleting reservoir of pleasure that we keep fecklessly draining.
“We often talk about pleasure as if it were one thing,” says Dr Eva Periche-Tomas, a clinical psychologist and senior researcher at the University of Oxford. In reality, she explains, reward involves several distinct processes: anticipating something, wanting or pursuing it, and actually enjoying it when it happens. Crucially, “these can come apart”. This goes some way to explaining the disconnect we can feel when we’ve spent months planning a holiday, wedding or night out, only to find the event doesn’t live up to our expectations.
Kate Moss backstage at a fashion show. We spend so much time anticipating extraordinary experiences, but what happens when the reality doesn’t quite live up to the expectation?(Image credit: Kyle Ericksen/WWD/Penske Media via Getty Images)
Why Doesn’t Anything Hit Like It Used To?
There’s an even more inconvenient feature of the human brain that puts the kibosh on holding onto that post-holiday glow, or feeling satisfied for any length of time: humans are exceptionally good at getting used to things.
Psychologists call this hedonic adaptation. Professor Sonja Lyubomirsky, a distinguished professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, has spent decades studying it. She also has a really good example of how it showed up in her own life. Despite being almost blind for many years, within a fortnight of having laser eye surgery, she adapted to her new, almost perfect vision.
Apparently, whether it’s those shoes you’ve been saving for or the miracle of sight, no matter how new, shiny, thrilling or, in Lyubomirsky’s case, legitimately life-enhancing, the emotional impact tends to diminish as it becomes part of ordinary life. So we rats start chasing the next fix.
This seems like a cruel component of life, and I was quick to decry “late-stage capitalism!”, but Lyubomirsky explains that always looking for the next thing isn’t necessarily a design flaw.
From an evolutionary perspective, a species that stayed content every time it secured food, shelter or a mate might not have been particularly motivated to seek anything else. Adaptation keeps us moving. The problem is that the same machinery operates when the “next thing” is no longer survival, but another restaurant reservation, purchase, trip or scroll.
When Did a Nice Life Stop Being Enough?
Until recently, writer Phoebe Lovatt tells me, she was a “big experience seeker”, moving between cities and searching for the next “expansive life chapter”. Now, with a young child, her life has become smaller geographically: more local, more routine. But social media means other possible versions of it still feel within reach. “I’ve got my mate in Mexico, my mate in New York, my mate in LA,” she says. “It just constantly gives you the sense that you are failing at having a rich life.”
I can see parallels in my own insatiable appetite for experiences. Somewhere between my first ‘grown-up holiday’ (to Benidorm, I might add) and my recent trips, I stopped being content with a tan and a good time and started expecting to come home transformed. The same goes for the once-humble weekend: it’s no longer enough for it to pass pleasantly; I need to have done something with it.
We can’t just be normal. We need to be exceptionally hot, exceptionally rich, exceptionally well-travelled.
Phoebe Lovatt
We know by now the perils of having access to everyone else’s lives, but I think we overlook the impact of having a live feed of everything we could be wanting. Phoebe describes this as a constant “contrast experience”: you can be content, pick up your phone, see a friend on a beach in Malibu and suddenly your own life feels mundane.
And the bar hasn’t only risen for what we do. It’s risen for who we’re supposed to be. “We can’t just be normal,” Phoebe says. “We need to be exceptionally hot, exceptionally rich, exceptionally well-travelled.”
Somewhere between having a nice life and living your best life, just living—something to be thankful for in itself—stopped being enough. Social media lets us press our noses up against the windows of the world’s most beautiful hotels, see what strangers eat for breakfast in Copenhagen, where they swim in Sicily and which facial they booked before going. Leisure has become another arena to demonstrate taste, curiosity, self-knowledge and our own exceptionalism.
Phoebe offers a simple test: would you still want to do it if nobody knew you’d done it? If you couldn’t post it, write about it, Substack it or fold it into the story you tell about yourself, would you be quite so invested?
It’s an awkward question for me; someone who’s made a career out of turning experiences into stories. But aren’t we all doing the same thing, to varying degrees?
Are We Experiencing Our Lives...or Reviewing Them?
Then there’s that age-old issue of living in the present. As if that wasn’t already slippery enough, we’re now so programmed to view experiences through the lens of how we’ll package them for an audience later that we’re drifting further from anything resembling ‘the moment’.
Before it happens, we anticipate and plan it; while it’s happening, we evaluate it; afterwards, we turn it into something: a story, a reel, a pithy little anecdote. Often, we’re doing all three at once.
Perhaps we’re not actually feeling less; we’ve just become used to only recognising the capital-F Feelings as proof that we’re feeling at all.
She uses language as an analogy: a limited vocabulary restricts not only what we can express, but what we can identify. Social media, she argues, has its own narrow vocabulary of what looks interesting, desirable or worth sharing.
Perhaps we’re not actually feeling less then; we’ve just become used to only recognising the capital-F Feelings as proof that we’re feeling at all. Awe. Transformation. Euphoria. The best night ever. The trip of a lifetime. Core memories. A perfectly pleasant weekend can’t compete.
All dressed up with nowhere to go? In our endless pursuit of pleasure, even the most exciting experiences can leave us feeling strangely underwhelmed.(Image credit: Getty Images)
Another thing sending us on a wild goose chase when we’re in hot pursuit of happiness is the endless checking.
Did I enjoy that enough? Was it worth the money? Did we make the most of the weekend? Am I relaxed yet? Am I happy?
According to Lyubomirsky, that kind of emotional quality control can be self-defeating. Research suggests that becoming preoccupied with whether we’re happy can actually undermine happiness, partly because our attention becomes fixed on the outcome rather than the experience itself. “If you’re sort of constantly asking yourself, am I happy yet?” she tells me, “that’s gonna undermine your happiness.”
There is a pathway to getting more pleasure from less.
Professor Elizabeth Dunn
I thought back to my last massage. Partway through, I started wondering whether I was relaxed. If you want to dash your own relaxation, there’s surely no quicker way than checking whether it’s working. Suddenly, I was hyper-aware of every sensation and, crucially, how unrelaxed I felt. The more I noticed it, the less relaxed I became.
Dr Nick Earley, a clinical psychologist, sees a related problem in the language of optimisation. Under sustained stress, our attention is already trained towards whatever requires handling next. Add constant stimulation and the pressure to squeeze every last drop from our leisure time, he argues, and we can end up “scanning for the next thing rather than inhabiting the one we’re in”.
Focus too intently on pleasure — or, in my case, relaxation — as an end goal, and you risk monitoring your progress towards it instead of actually experiencing it.
Could Less Actually Feel Like More?
It’s not all doom, though. Professor Elizabeth Dunn tells me about a study in which participants were given chocolate, then asked either to abstain from it for a week or given a large supply to eat freely. When they returned to the lab, the abstainers enjoyed and savoured the chocolate more. “There is a pathway to getting more pleasure from less,” Dunn tells me.
This ‘less is more’ approach runs counter to our maxxxing culture, and an economy largely organised around convincing us that the opposite is true. It might also explain why, alongside our drive for bigger and better experiences, another apparently contradictory desire is gaining cultural currency: to switch everything off.
Emma Breschi, who spent much of her twenties working as a model, has experienced the glossy version of the extraordinary life from the inside. “I think a lot of what we’re calling a search for excitement might actually be a search for connection,” she tells me.
What if We’re Looking for Pleasure in the Wrong Places?
Phoebe describes what she sees around her as a “crisis of meaning”. Work feels precarious, the future difficult to picture, the news relentless. At the same time, culture offers an abundant menu of things to buy, book, watch and experience. “No wonder everyone’s just kind of numbing out,” she says.
It’s tempting, when the bigger structures of life feel uncertain, to adopt a last-days-of-Rome mentality. I may not know what the world will look like in five years, but I can book the restaurant, plan the trip, buy the ticket. Life might feel out of control, but I can make Friday night really, really good.
The problem comes when we expect those things to provide not only pleasure, but proof: that our lives are interesting, that we’re using our time properly, that we’re happy. Phoebe talks about the odd expectation that ordinary people should now live like “a socialite or like a trust fund baby or a celebrity”. Twenty years ago, she points out, most of us didn’t know what rich people’s houses looked like. “It’s created a level of aspiration that’s impossible to reach,” she says, “and even if you do reach it, what does it mean?”
Pleasure is a long game.
Millie Gooch
Author Louise O’Neill knows a thing or two about arriving at the life you thought would make you happy. For years, she says, her happiness felt conditional: I’ll be happy when I find the right relationship, sell enough books, achieve the next marker of success. Eventually, on paper at least, she got there. “I had the man, the house, everything looked perfect,” she says. And yet she still found herself lying awake wondering: “Is this it?”
There is a difference, she realised, between “a life that looks presentable on social media” and actually feeling alive inside it.
Therein lies the danger of packing pleasure with so much existential weight. A holiday can be wonderful, a restaurant can be delicious, a party can be the best night you’ve had in ages. None of them can permanently satisfy us.
Searching for Ways to Feel Something
The more people I speak to, the less convinced I become that my original question — why doesn’t anything feel as good any more? — is the right one.
Millie Gooch, founder of Sober Girl Society and author of Hangxiety, thinks we have a tendency to confuse pleasure with immediate reward. Her work focuses mainly on alcohol, where the distinction is obvious: something can feel good now while leaving us feeling worse later. Her preferred measure of pleasure is less about the intensity of the immediate sensation than whether something leaves you feeling better overall. “Pleasure is a long game,” she says.
I like this idea, partly because it exposes how limited my own pleasure accounting has become. It also raises the possibility that in pursuing pleasure principally through intensity, I might’ve overlooked a much less glamorous source of it: frequency.
Professor Ciara McCabe, who directs the Neuroscience of Reward Group, studies anhedonia — the reduced ability to experience pleasure. One approach her lab recommends is deliberately scheduling small positive and social experiences, such as getting a coffee or going for a walk with a friend. The aim, she says, is to create “regular opportunities to experience joy”, rather than waiting for rarer, enormous milestones.
This feels counterintuitive in a culture that tells us to dream bigger, aim higher. Of the two posters I remember being pasted to my secondary school walls, one read: You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. The other said something about shooting for the moon because, if you miss, you’ll land among the stars. Neither seemed to be pointing me towards an adult life stuffed with more coffee dates.
And yet the science backs it up. Lyubomirsky studies savouring: deliberately directing our attention towards pleasurable experiences we might otherwise take for granted — the sun on your skin, the changing seasons, that coffee with a friend. The point isn’t to extract every last ounce of happiness from them, but simply to notice them.
I think a lot of what we’re calling a search for excitement might actually be a search for connection.
Emma Breschi
In my own pursuit of expansiveness, I got the idea that the opposite of an ordinary life is an extraordinary one; when that felt flat, I started questioning my capacity to feel anything at all. But the more experts I speak to, the more I get the sneaking suspicion that a life that feels fuller isn’t necessarily one packed with more extraordinary things, but one in which I’m able to pay more attention to ordinary ones.
Dr Nick Earley put my original question on its head: “The question isn’t how to find more stimulation. It’s how to become more present for what’s already happening.” It’s easy to seek more stimulation; it’s harder to sit down and soak in what’s already there.
I still want the trips of a lifetime. I want the thrill of wheeling my suitcase through an unknown airport, dinners where the table heaves with people and chatter as much as it does food. I want adventures that make the world feel bigger and my place in it smaller. I don’t think I’ll ever be the kind of person who can fill her cup with a brew of ‘mindful’ tea.
Thankfully, none of the people I spoke to suggested I should. What I’m trying to do instead is dial down the pressure I put on those experiences. Travel and sensory pleasures can delight me, surprise me, challenge me, disappoint me or simply give me a cracking night out. They can’t make my life meaningful on command. And constantly checking whether they’re working is probably one of the surest ways to miss them.
I’m not going to stop chasing pleasure altogether, but I might try taking my paw off the lever long enough to notice what else is already there.
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Summer, it's been fun but it finally—finally!—feels like colder temperatures have arrived. And if you're feeling a bit thrown for a loop after an unseasonably warm September, there's one hot-weather outfit formula that you can quickly Autumn-ify. All you need to do is substitute the "nice top" for a trophy jacket in the famous "jeans and a nice top" outfit formula.
In Paris, jeans became the "casual" vehicle by which to wear really quite fancy jackets during the day. Céline Dion kickstarted the "jeans and a trophy jacket" formula to greet the paparazzi stationed outside her hotel—and, since then, we've seen every hot jacket (tweed jackets; military jackets; leather jackets) coupled with jeans. The final ingredient in many cases is a nostalgic court heel (imagine!), making this a trifecta—jacket + jeans + heels—that you almost certainly have in your wardrobe. The trio is very '90s red carpet when celebrities didn't coordinate every look with a stylist but, instead, wore a mix of their own clothes and gifts from favourite brands, delivering less polish but way more personality.
Céline Dion
Céline Dion (Image credit: Getty Images)
Céline Dion's tour looks have been a collection of jaw-dropping gowns (not an overstatement!), but her on-the-street outfits have been just as captivating, particularly this peplum-waisted jacket paired with straight-legged jeans (Givenchy by Sarah Burton). A peplum waist might trigger alarm bells, understandably, but it's actually a very sensible partner for straight-up-and-down denim, providing not just contrast but sculptural interest.
Liberowe
Velvet Peplum Jacket
Jeanerica
Kyoto Droit 1990
Le Monde Beryl
Leather Petra Mules
Daisy Edgar-Jones
Daisy Edgar-Jones (Image credit: Backgrid)
Daisy Edgar-Jones has engaged in some on-point period dressing while promoting Sense and Sensibility. And while the corseted gowns and archival pendant necklaces were ravishing, it, again, was a jeans-and-jacket combination that captured our attention (her take on a modern-day Elinor). It felt like a particularly good way to wear a military jacket, which can feel slightly on-the-nose paired with tailoring. Instead, low-rise jeans with a very slight flare (perhaps even too slight to be called "boot-leg") were the perfect foil.
Mango
Jacket With Strip Collar
Abercrombie & Fitch
Slouchy Straight Jean
Gucci
Vittoria slingback pumps
Sarah Pidgeon
Sarah Pidgeon (Image credit: Getty Images)
Sarah Pidgeon put a trophy spin on everyone's favourite jacket. Her take on leather wasn't an oversized biker or a minimal blazer (very CBK) but, instead, a cinch-waisted, bell-sleeved style that had as much romance (and softness) as one can eke out of leather (bravo, Balenciaga!). The split-hem jeans, with frayed edges trailing under the spike of a court-heel stiletto, added a counterbalance of grunge.
Ducie
Bernadette Jacket
Arket
Coral Wide Jeans
Toteme
Nappa Kitten Pumps
Dua Lipa
Dua Lipa (Image credit: Backgrid)
A (Matthieu Blazy-era) Chanel tweed jacket is now the ultimate shopping acquisition (as well as his shoes, which are extremely hard to get your hands on or feet in). And Dua Lipa just demonstrated how to wear one if you manage the seemingly impossible—with nothing more, nothing less than jeans and pumps (take note that her jeans stop just below the ankle for a super-polished appearance).
Sister Jane
Fringe Tweed Jacket
Levi's
Ribcage Ankle Jeans
Charles & Keith
Aira Kitten Heels
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For garment workers in the dense industrial hub that surrounds Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, a typical day begins at 5am. They make breakfast for their families and clean the house before walking to work—a journey that can take up to an hour.
In Dhaka, the weather is both warm and humid—the temperature rarely drops below 26°C, and in the summer months it can reach as high as 45°C. During heatwaves, which are increasingly frequent and protracted as global warming’s consequences land, inside the factories, where T-shirts and trousers are made for the world’s biggest clothing companies, temperatures can be a sweltering 38°C.
And it’s not just in Bangladesh—across China, India and Vietnam, where much of the world’s clothing is produced, rising heat stress is threatening the lives and health of the people (mostly women) who work along the supply chain. Less than two per cent of them are paid a living wage to cut and assemble clothing under the immense pressure of volume-based production targets.
The speed of their labour is the last price component that can be squeezed in fashion’s seemingly bottomless search for the cheapest goods. Materials, electricity and logistic costs are relatively fixed, so when a fashion brand demands a lower price, labour is the only movable variable.
Now, ultra-fast-fashion brands and mass retailers, from Shein to Kmart, sell T-shirts for as little as £2.16. Before the retail mark-up is applied, the cost price might be just a third of this. And once fabric and overheads are accounted for, there are mere cents left for the people who construct and sew garments.
As heat adds another layer of stress and risk to jobs already fraught with zero-hour contracts (where there is no guarantee of minimum hours), no sick leave and hazardous working environments, the fashion industry is facing a reckoning over its treatment of workers.
(Image credit: Getty Images/Marie Claire)
“We wear bras, blouses, sarees and aprons in 40°C heat. It feels like being locked inside a pressure cooker at high flame,” says a 36-year-old sewing machine operator from India who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Sometimes, I think I’m like a broiler chicken—just waiting to burst.”
She has been working in the garment industry for nine years and has a number of strategies in place to meet her production targets, fearing scolding from line supervisors if she falls behind. She avoids drinking water to minimise toilet use and chews gum to suppress thirst. “I only pee at lunch or after I reach home,” she says. “That’s how I survive, by controlling my body.”
Another 39-year-old woman from India works as a fusing operator—a physically demanding job using a heat press machine to attach brand labels onto garments. She has been in the industry for five years and works at a factory that produces clothes for major international brands where the production pressure to meet high volume targets is intense. “If I go to the toilet, when I come back, my table is loaded with garment pieces and I’ll be yelled at. So I control myself from peeing to avoid scolding. I hardly drink water—only when I feel like fainting will I drink a little,” she says.
A 33-year-old tailor (also from India) who works six days a week to support her household describes the factory—which has no ventilation and only a few functioning fans—as a “furnace with no relief” in the summer months. She is on a day-pay contract with minimal security and no benefits and is expected to make 120 to 130 pieces per hour.
“If I don’t meet my piece count, I won’t get paid,” she says. “We don’t even have time to wipe the sweat off our faces. If we stop, the pieces won’t get done—and then the supervisor scolds us in front of everyone. That’s very humiliating.” As we have seen across Europe this summer, extreme heat is no longer a projected threat—it is already disrupting lives all over the world. Every one of the past 11 years has been one of the hottest on record.
If I go to the toilet, when I come back, my table is loaded with garment pieces and I’ll be yelled at.
(Image credit: Getty Images/Marie Claire)
The World Meteorological Organisation has confirmed that the global average surface temperature in 2025 was 1.44°C above the pre-industrial average.
In the worst affected places, temperatures are also rising at night, limiting the ability of anyone without air conditioning to experience a reprieve. But despite its prevalence, and the fact that it is the leading cause of weather-related deaths globally, heat is viewed differently to other extreme weather events. Because droughts, floods and bushfires are visually more dramatic, the threat they pose to human life is better understood.
By contrast, extreme heat is viewed as an annoyance, and experts say we are unprepared for its catastrophic health impacts and how unevenly it affects different social groups. Dr Harshita Umesh is the founder of Vaada Hope Foundation and a surgeon in training from Bengaluru, India.
Garment workers present at the hospital where she is a resident with a range of health problems, many of them compounded by the heat and their precarious working conditions. These include dehydration, headaches, fainting, cardiovascular strain, an inability to concentrate which results in injury, gastrointestinal issues from food spoilage and insufficient water intake, urinary tract infections, kidney stones and irritability that can result in violence from their managers.
To make matters worse for the women inside the factories, extreme heat’s impact on menopause, pregnancy and fertility is under-researched. “Garment workers usually drink very, very little water so that they don’t have to use the restroom. The consequences of that ends up being a urinary tract infection, it ends up being sepsis, it ends up being kidney stones, it ends up being people in the hospital,” Umesh says. Heat is “an underlying stress that exacerbates everything else around it”, especially for female garment workers who may already be in “a chronic condition of starvation and are under a lot of stress already”.
In two reports released at the end of 2025, human rights campaigners Amnesty International accused fashion brands, factory owners and the governments of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka of failing to ensure garment workers had the right to unionise and collectively bargain.
The harsh reality of these workers’ lives—powerless to demand better conditions and under such intense time pressure that bathroom breaks are out of reach—is just one part of the inhumanity in these jobs.
(Image credit: Getty Images/Marie Claire)
Garment workers usually drink very, very little water so that they don’t have to use the restroom.
Another is that they do not have paid sick leave, and Umesh recounts stories of women who present in hospital, needing treatment, but refuse it because they cannot afford to take the time off work. “If you have a quota to meet, you might not go to the doctor on time,” she says. Meaning something like a small injury to a finger can get infected and swollen. Usually, such an injury would be curable with medication and time, but if “you have to go back to work or your family will starve”, you will refuse treatment.
She recounts incidents of patients returning when the infection becomes too bad to ignore—if it’s spread to the bone, the only option to save their life is to amputate the finger. “Every garment we wear tells a story and it shouldn’t be one of blood, sweat and tears,” Umesh says. “Workers must be paid a living wage, not because the world is watching but out of respect for human dignity and life.”
To make an already difficult situation even worse, the solutions—air conditioning and extra fans—are compromised by how much they cost to install, old infrastructure that cannot physically support them and by pressure from the fashion industry to decarbonise the supply chain, which means using less electricity, not more.
Solutions are further compromised by global instability impacting fuel sources. In May, due to energy shortages linked to the Iran war, Bangladesh manufacturers were forced to turn off fans and air conditioning to save power while temperatures peaked. Pivoting to renewable energy from solar panels seems like a logical solution, but infrastructure and who shoulders the expense of installation remains a barrier.
While the issues of the industry’s environmental harms and contribution to global warming are entwined with the harm it perpetrates on workers in its supply chains —namely through over-production—there is an urgency missing from the industry’s approach to the health impacts of heat stress. Grace Forrest, the founding director of the human rights organisation Walk Free, believes the fashion industry is too focused on innovation to lessen its environmental footprint.
(Image credit: Getty Images/Marie Claire)
“Right now, harmful impact is far outpacing the delivery of effective and structural sustainability solutions,” she says. “Many of the ‘solutions’ will not address the human harms stitched into the fashion industry.”
Dr Hakan Karaosman is a supply chain expert and associate professor at Politecnico di Milano. He believes at least part of the solution is fashion brands changing their business models and accepting that they must pay a fair price. “We are seeing production as a commodity. We are seeing workers as a commodity. So we don’t really humanise the workforce,” he explains. “Let’s ask the workers how we can help them improve their conditions so they can be more dignified.”
The women who gave their voices to this article asked for urgent, basic interventions that are so simple it is heartbreaking to consider how difficult their working days are. “A glass of lime water—if [lime] is too expensive, then at least cold water. Something to make it bearable,” the 33-year-old tailor says.
Other requests include more frequent and unpenalised toilet breaks, air coolers or air conditioners during high-temperature periods, electrolyte water, better ventilation and roofs that are made of materials other than metal. The 36-year-old sewing machine operator asks for something that would help the people at the top—those making the decisions that impact the workers’ lives—have more empathy for them.
“Let the directors of these fashion brands sit in our seats—just for one hour,” she says. “Let them feel this heat, this sweat, this pain. Maybe then they’ll realise that they are killing us for their profits.”
I’ll admit, I’m a self-confessed perfume snob—and I’m very particular about the type of fragrances I wear. I like to smell elegant, understated and expensive, which usually means something nuanced, beautifully balanced and difficult to immediately decipher.
So, when a makeup brand branches into fragrance, I’m always sceptical. To me, it can often feel like a commercial play to drive sales rather than an exercise in olfactory exploration and genuine brand enrichment. However, Merit’s first fragrance, Retrospect, was one of the few exceptions to this rule. Despite ultimately being a skin scent, it is incredibly complex and nuanced, opening with a burst of bergamot, pear and ambrette before settling into something softer, muskier and more lived-in. It’s also incredibly good value for the quality, with 30% fragrance oil and a price tag of £72.
Today, Merit revealed its second fragrance: New Wave. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t be rushing to try it, but after the success—and, frankly, the perfumery credentials—of Retrospect, I made a point of getting my hands on it. And it really didn’t disappoint.
(Image credit: Lottie Winter)
First, the bottle. It’s the same molten, pebble-esque form as its predecessor, complete with that distinctive thumb-dent, but New Wave has been given its own identity with a slightly different lid and warm, golden juice.
Next, the fragrance itself. New Wave is an amber, but if that immediately makes you think of something powdery and sweet, you'd be mistaken. Yes, the amber character is apparent almost immediately, with a distinct vanillary warmth, but it's cut through by the dry, herbaceous quality of angelica seed. It’s slightly earthy and almost medicinal, stopping the amber underneath from becoming too plush or predictable.
This tension makes sense when you look at its construction. Master perfumer Dominique Ropion and perfumer Meabh McCurtin took the historic Ambre 83 accord, with its rich, resinous, vanillic character, as their starting point, then worked to make it feel lighter and more contemporary.
As it settles, the edges soften and orange flower starts to come through, but not as an overtly pretty white floral. Instead, it's more of a resinous floral: warm, slightly honeyed and almost balsamic, with the flower kind of absorbed into the amber rather than sitting on top of it. Ylang-ylang adds to that solar warmth, but I find the orange flower much easier to identify on my skin.
Then comes the dry-down. The sweetness recedes and the woods, ambroxan and other amber materials come to the fore, leaving behind something smooth, dry and distinctly ambroxy. There’s still a trace of that original warmth, but by this point it feels less like classical amber and more like warm skin against dry wood.
The base itself is extensive. Benzoin, labdanum, olibanum and patchouli sit alongside ambrofoam, ambroxan and musk; earthy cypriol and vetiver; tobacco; cedarwood and oakwood; then vanilla bean and tonka bean. On paper, it sounds as though it should be overwhelmingly rich. On skin, it’s remarkably controlled.
(Image credit: Lottie Winter)
For me, this is where New Wave stands out. It doesn’t progress neatly from bright top notes to a floral heart and finally a heavy amber base. The amber is there from the beginning; it's everything around it that changes. This feels particularly apt given it was initially inspired by an afternoon at the Musée Picasso in Paris, where the Merit team became interested in Cubism and Surrealism—and, specifically, the idea of knowing artistic rules well enough to break them. Ropion and McCurtin have essentially applied the same principle to classical amber perfumery: retaining its richness and sophistication while playing with the way we expect it to unfold.
New Wave is also an extrait de parfum, and its longevity reflects that. It has impressive presence when first sprayed, but it isn’t one of those fragrances that enters a room before you do. Instead, it develops slowly over several hours, becoming warmer, woodier and more intimate as the day goes on.
Retrospect was the fragrance that made me think that Merit deserved to be taken seriously as a perfume brand, and New Wave has confirmed it. The two smell very different—Retrospect is softer, muskier, and more intimate; New Wave is warmer, richer, and more assertive—but both show the same attention to composition.
At £79, it represents exceptional value for this level of perfumery. But more importantly, New Wave doesn’t smell like a fragrance created to capitalise on a successful beauty brand. It smells like the work of two very accomplished perfumers who were given enough room to make something genuinely interesting. And, for a perfume snob like me, that makes it a very easy recommendation.
I’ll admit, I’m a self-confessed perfume snob—and I’m very particular about the type of fragrances I wear. I like to smell elegant, understated and expensive, which usually means something nuanced, beautifully balanced and difficult to immediately decipher.
So, when a makeup brand branches into fragrance, I’m always sceptical. To me, it can often feel like a commercial play to drive sales rather than an exercise in olfactory exploration and genuine brand enrichment. However, Merit’s first fragrance, Retrospect, was one of the few exceptions to this rule. Despite ultimately being a skin scent, it is incredibly complex and nuanced, opening with a burst of bergamot, pear and ambrette before settling into something softer, muskier and more lived-in. It’s also incredibly good value for the quality, with 30% fragrance oil and a price tag of £72.
Today, Merit revealed its second fragrance: New Wave. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t be rushing to try it, but after the success—and, frankly, the perfumery credentials—of Retrospect, I made a point of getting my hands on it. And it really didn’t disappoint.
(Image credit: Lottie Winter)
First, the bottle. It’s the same molten, pebble-esque form as its predecessor, complete with that distinctive thumb-dent, but New Wave has been given its own identity with a slightly different lid and warm, golden juice.
Next, the fragrance itself. New Wave is an amber, but if that immediately makes you think of something powdery and sweet, you'd be mistaken. Yes, the amber character is apparent almost immediately, with a distinct vanillary warmth, but it's cut through by the dry, herbaceous quality of angelica seed. It’s slightly earthy and almost medicinal, stopping the amber underneath from becoming too plush or predictable.
This tension makes sense when you look at its construction. Master perfumer Dominique Ropion and perfumer Meabh McCurtin took the historic Ambre 83 accord, with its rich, resinous, vanillic character, as their starting point, then worked to make it feel lighter and more contemporary.
As it settles, the edges soften and orange flower starts to come through, but not as an overtly pretty white floral. Instead, it's more of a resinous floral: warm, slightly honeyed and almost balsamic, with the flower kind of absorbed into the amber rather than sitting on top of it. Ylang-ylang adds to that solar warmth, but I find the orange flower much easier to identify on my skin.
Then comes the dry-down. The sweetness recedes and the woods, ambroxan and other amber materials come to the fore, leaving behind something smooth, dry and distinctly ambroxy. There’s still a trace of that original warmth, but by this point it feels less like classical amber and more like warm skin against dry wood.
The base itself is extensive. Benzoin, labdanum, olibanum and patchouli sit alongside ambrofoam, ambroxan and musk; earthy cypriol and vetiver; tobacco; cedarwood and oakwood; then vanilla bean and tonka bean. On paper, it sounds as though it should be overwhelmingly rich. On skin, it’s remarkably controlled.
(Image credit: Lottie Winter)
For me, this is where New Wave stands out. It doesn’t progress neatly from bright top notes to a floral heart and finally a heavy amber base. The amber is there from the beginning; it's everything around it that changes. This feels particularly apt given it was initially inspired by an afternoon at the Musée Picasso in Paris, where the Merit team became interested in Cubism and Surrealism—and, specifically, the idea of knowing artistic rules well enough to break them. Ropion and McCurtin have essentially applied the same principle to classical amber perfumery: retaining its richness and sophistication while playing with the way we expect it to unfold.
New Wave is also an extrait de parfum, and its longevity reflects that. It has impressive presence when first sprayed, but it isn’t one of those fragrances that enters a room before you do. Instead, it develops slowly over several hours, becoming warmer, woodier and more intimate as the day goes on.
Retrospect was the fragrance that made me think that Merit deserved to be taken seriously as a perfume brand, and New Wave has confirmed it. The two smell very different—Retrospect is softer, muskier, and more intimate; New Wave is warmer, richer, and more assertive—but both show the same attention to composition.
At £79, it represents exceptional value for this level of perfumery. But more importantly, New Wave doesn’t smell like a fragrance created to capitalise on a successful beauty brand. It smells like the work of two very accomplished perfumers who were given enough room to make something genuinely interesting. And, for a perfume snob like me, that makes it a very easy recommendation.
We're deep in 2026, and the hype around reformer Pilates is showing no signs of waning, much to my delight. I've been practising the method religiously (trust me, I am evangelical about its benefits) and couldn't be more thrilled that it's well and truly hit the mainstream.
But just like anything popular, with great interest comes great responsibility. It's fair to say that reformer Pilates is a market that's being capitalised upon—and iterations have sprung up that I'm definitely sceptical about. Far from being a trend, Pilates is a centuries-old methodology that demands precision, technique and a deep understanding of the fundamental moves as a bare minimum—not only to bank the benefits, but also to ensure that we're not doing more harm than good to our bodies.
It follows, then, that the advent of home reformer beds is something I've felt conflicted about. On the one hand, I totally endorse home reformer beds making Pilates more accessible (hefty price tag aside), but on the flip side, the practice is all about tiny, preferably hands-on tweaks that can take a move from easy to eye-watering in a second—something that, IMHO, simply can't be replicated in a home environment.
It's fair to say, then, that I was dubious my mind would be changed on this—that is, until I tried NordicTrack's brand-new Ultra 1 reformer bed—their first designed specifically for at-home use. I was lucky enough to try one out in a 1-to-1 lesson with Reform RX co-founder and Pilates pro, Yvette McGaffin; find out if it won me over below.
I Tried NordicTrack's Luxe New Ultra 1 At-Home Reformer Pilates Bed—and I’m a Huge Fan
What is the NordicTrack Ultra 1 reformer?
NordicTrack's Ultra 1 reformer is the brand's first home bed offering. Building on the strength of its popular treadmill technology alongside the boom in home and online workouts, the Ultra 1 combines a sleek home bed with an integrated screen, allowing you to access online classes.
"The Ultra 1 Reformer is a studio-quality Pilates experience reimagined for the home," shares Yvette McGaffin, director of Pilates at iFIT and founder of Reform RX. "What makes it different is that we haven't simply taken a traditional reformer and put a screen on it; the whole experience has been designed around how people actually want to use Pilates at home.
"The Ultra 1 Reformer also brings together the physical experience of a premium reformer with the intelligence and content ecosystem of iFIT. So you get the feeling of being in a beautiful studio, but with the convenience and consistency of having that experience at home."
The result? A seriously stylish reformer that matches with substance: the classes are plentiful and tailored for beginners and advanced users alike, while the machine is intuitive and simple to get the hang of—more on this below.
NordicTrack's Ultra 1 reformer is the brand's first home bed offering, building on the strength of its popular treadmill technology.(Image credit: Anna Bartter)
What are the benefits of using the NordicTrack Ultra 1 reformer?
The mental and physical benefits of a consistent Pilates practice are well-established, and if you're a regular MC UK reader, you'll likely be acquainted with them. We're talking improved posture, core strength, balance, mobility and body awareness (to name just a few)—but the Ultra 1 goes beyond these advantages and offers something that's really at the heart of an effective Pilates regime: consistency.
"For me, the biggest benefit is consistency," agrees McGaffin. "Pilates is one of those practices where you really feel the benefit of doing it regularly, and life can make that surprisingly difficult. Even when you love your studio, getting there at a particular time, week after week, isn't always realistic.
"Having a reformer at home changes that. You can get on for 20 or 30 minutes when it works for you, before the kids are up, between meetings, or at the end of the day. And that ability to make Pilates fit around your life, rather than your life around Pilates, is where I think the real value lies."
Is the NordicTrack Ultra 1 reformer suitable for everyone?
It would be easy to assume that an at-home reformer bed would only suit those with some in-class experience, but McGaffin says this isn't necessarily the case.
"A really well-designed at-home reformer can be a wonderful place to start," she tells MC UK. "You don't need to be flexible, strong or 'good at Pilates' to begin. That's what the practice is for. The crucial thing is having the right instruction. Pilates has a language of its own, and if you've never used a reformer before, things like spring resistance, footbar positions and carriage movement can initially feel unfamiliar."
However, not all home-based reformers are created equal. If you're a beginner, look for one that is intuitive and preferably offers real-time feedback if you're unsure of spring changes and other tricks that more experienced users think of as second nature.
"For a beginner, those little details can make a big difference," agrees McGaffin. "You're not standing there wondering whether you've put the right springs on—the equipment and the instruction work together to give you that reassurance, so you can focus on learning the movement and building confidence."
Anna's first impression of the machine is that it's super chic, as well as smooth, seamless and sleek—no clunking metal or squeaky springs.(Image credit: Anna Bartter)
Can an at-home reformer bed ever be as effective as in-studio classes?
So, time for the million-dollar question: is a home reformer bed really as good as going to a class IRL? For me, the proof will be in the pudding (more on this below), but McGaffin offers an alternative view, too.
"I don't think anything completely replaces being in a room with an exceptional instructor, and I wouldn't want to pretend that it does," she reflects. "There's something special about an instructor being physically present, seeing your body and making those tiny adjustments. That's part of what makes Pilates such a beautiful practice."
That being said, there's no doubt that the way we work out has changed almost beyond recognition in recent years, with more and more of us choosing to exercise via online classes from home. According to research conducted by PureGym, around 25% of UK adults solely work out at home—raising the question: should we ditch the either/or mentality around the idea altogether?
"We've moved beyond the idea that home and studio have to compete with one another," agrees McGaffin. "A great at-home reformer can give you access to high-quality instruction, consistency and a genuine reformer practice in a way that fits around your life. For someone who might otherwise do Pilates once a week because of time or logistics, being able to practise three or four times at home can completely change the relationship they have with movement."
"For me, the real opportunity is making Pilates part of everyday life, not something you only do when you can get to a studio."
I tried NordicTrack's newest reformer bed, the Ultra 1—my honest thoughts
It's safe to say, as a Health and Fitness Writer, the very best part of my job is having access not only to the newest, most exciting wellness launches but also being lucky enough to meet expert trainers who have poured their heart and soul into the products I get to test.
So, it's with much excitement and a lot of gratitude that I arrive at a stunning venue in central London to try out the Ultra 1—and my instructor is McGaffin herself. We start strong, as she comments that I 'look like I do a lot of Pilates'—reader, she's not wrong. But Pilates is so much more than an aesthetic, so I know she's saying I appear strong, and she's about to put her theory well and truly to the test as she puts me through my paces on the bed.
My overall first impression? Well, without doubt, it looks super chic; you can tell that this is a seriously impressive machine, right off the bat.
"Aesthetics were important to us," shares McGaffin. "If you're going to have a reformer in your home, it needs to feel like something you want to live with, not something you want to hide away."
But more than this, it feels really good to use, too. It's smooth, seamless and sleek—no clunking metal or squeaky springs here. In fact, you can't see the springs at all—but you'll know from the screen whether you're using the right ones, which is super handy if you forget mid-movement.
"Rather than having exposed springs that you manually adjust, the springs are engaged using simple push-buttons, so changing your resistance is much more intuitive," explains McGaffin. "The machine then shows your spring engagement and footbar position in real time on the screen, so you have a clear visual cue that you've set the reformer correctly before you start moving."
So, it looks good, and it feels good—but does it feel like a decent workout? In a word: absolutely. I'm impressed by the range of sessions available on the connected screen (which you can tilt, pivot or swivel so as not to interfere with your workout) and also by the real-time feedback I'm getting. As a Peloton fan (six years and counting—and still going strong), I have no doubt that I'd make excellent use of the Ultra 1 at home as well.
Now to find the room for it...
Anna finds the machine hard to fault—and loves the fact that you can't see the springs at all, but can tell from the screen whether you're using the right ones.(Image credit: Anna Bartter)
Shop MC UK's reformer Pilates edit now:
Sweaty Betty Pilates Crew Gripper Sock 2 Pack
Aside from the bed itself, grippy socks are a reformer Pilates non-negotiable. Trust us: nobody wants their feet slipping around when attempting to look effortless in a hold.
Crz Yoga Butterluxe Halter Neck Crop Tank Top
I already own (and love) the Crz Yoga leggings, and this matching halterneck bra has been languishing in my basket for far too long.
NordicTrack Ultra 1 Reformer Pilates Machine
Ready to take the plunge? Here's the exact model I tested; it comes complete with a five-year frame and two-year parts and labour warranty, as well as a 30-day trial period, too.
Why is now a great time to launch the Ultra 1?
Why now? I asked McGaffin—and it's clear she's given plenty of thought to this very question already.
"We're seeing a really interesting evolution in Pilates," she tells me. "It's gone from being something many people discovered through a studio or a particular instructor to becoming a much bigger part of how people think about strength, longevity and wellbeing. I love that Pilates has become more accessible without losing what makes it special."
"After more than 20 years in this industry, what excites me most is seeing people discover that Pilates doesn't have to be intimidating or performative. You don't have to look a certain way, be incredibly flexible or already know what you're doing. You just have to start."
"For me, the future of Pilates is about bringing together great movement, great teaching, thoughtful design and technology that genuinely serves the experience. The machine should never be the hero. You are."
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