The Register - Autumn Edition

The dinner jacket is doing serious heavy lifting this season, from the reliably handsome Black Hampton Wool Dinner Jacket through to the shawl-lapel version for men who find peak lapels a touch too sharp, and the unlined Cigar Black Randwick. But it's the velvet that's really having a moment - bottle green, chocolate brown and midnight options across shawl lapel, double-breasted smoking jacket and classic single-breasted cuts, which is either the most old-fashioned or the most quietly rebellious thing you can wear to dinner in 2026, depending on which relative you ask. If you're the sort who needs the theory before the trousers, our own guide to decoding the dinner jacket is worth a read before you commit.

The whole thing was shot at Neston Park, a Grade II-listed pile near Corsham dating from around 1790, assembled by the Fuller family - yes, that Fuller family, the London Pride one - and, more relevantly to a certain kind of viewer, the house that plays The Falconry, seat of Lord Tony and Lady Monica Baddingham, in Disney+'s Rivals. Garden parties, helicopter landings, and "socially combustible weekends" is how the estate's own filming history is politely described, which is also, frankly, an accurate summary of most Favourbrook dinner parties we've heard about. Read the full story behind the shoot, and the house, here.

The Art Of Arrival: Key Autumn Jackets For Her

If the menswear collection is built on the jacket, the womenswear one goes a size up and builds on the coat, which feels like the correct hierarchy of outerwear ambition. Think brocade and jacquard woven exclusively for Favourbrook, silk velvet in both plain and French embroidered finishes, and the silk that sits quietly beneath it all, across a palette of claret, prune, olive, bronze and midnight - colours that sound like they were named by someone standing in a wine cellar, which we mean as the highest compliment.

The standouts are the coats that do the most talking before you've said a word: the Carnaby, in black silk velvet with French floral embroidery, or in a rust colourway for anyone who's decided beige is over; the Whitehall, cut long in dark green or a striking royal blue silk velvet; and the Westminster, which comes with gold floral embroidery so lavish it borders on architectural. For those who find plain velvet a little too well-behaved, there's a Carnaby in khaki-lilac silk satin with a genuinely psychedelic paisley print, and a teal silk satin version that will make every black coat in the room look faintly apologetic. If eveningwear layering is more your immediate concern, the season's separates guide has you covered too.

Last Orders: London's Best New Hotel Bars

London's hotel bar scene has spent 2026 in a state of genuine, slightly exhausting reinvention, which is our excuse for the amount of "research" that went into this list. Here's where to drink through autumn.

Bobbi's Bar, St. Clement

Nick Jones's first hotel since leaving Soho House opens fully this September on the Strand-adjacent stretch of Temple, and Bobbi's is its late-night engine room - open until 3am, with rumours of a 5am licence pending. Jones's own pitch is "like if Claridge's and Chiltern Firehouse had a baby," which is either the most honest or most alarming sentence a hotelier has said all year. Interiors come from Eagle + Hodges, all wood panelling and glowing bottles, imbued with the faint danger of staying one drink too long.

stclement.co.uk
St. Clement, 180 The Thames, 12 Temple Place, London WC2R 2NF

Eagle Bar, The Chancery Rosewood

Housed in the old US Embassy on Grosvenor Square - restored under Sir David Chipperfield, interiors by Joseph Dirand - Eagle Bar's rooftop terrace is presided over by a genuinely enormous 35-foot gilded eagle, sculpted from B-52 bomber aluminium and left behind by the Americans as, presumably, the world's most extravagant leaving gift. The Three Martini Lunch, at £35, is not for lunch and not for the faint-hearted, but Broadsheet called the whole rooftop "a triumph" that "wears its American legacy on its sleeve," which we couldn't agree with more.

rosewoodhotels.com/en/the-chancery-rosewood/dining
The Chancery Rosewood, 30 Grosvenor Sq, London W1K 9AN

Whiteley's Bar, Six Senses London

Six Senses' UK debut occupies London's first ever department store, now restored with Art Deco flourishes by AvroKO, and its cocktail programme leans, unsurprisingly for a wellness-brand hotel, faintly medicinal in the best way. The signature Clouds Over Islay pairs Bruichladdich single malt with a lemon hydrosol distilled at the hotel's own spa-side "Alchemy Bar" - essentially an in-house apothecary - because apparently a normal citrus twist wasn't going to cut it.

sixsenses.com/en/hotels-resorts/europe/united-kingdom/london
Six Senses London, 1 Redan Place, Bayswater, London W2 4SA

The Delany Drawing Room, Dukes London

Reopened this August after refurbishment, Russell Sage Studio's whisky lounge takes its inspiration from the 18th-century botanical collages of Mary Delany, which sounds like a stretch until you're sat in it with a dram from the 160-strong list. The signature Count Camillo's Cousin, a Negroni riff aged in-house in a Dukes small cask, is reason enough to visit, but the real draw next door is Dukes Bar itself, where Ian Fleming reputedly drank his way toward inventing the Vesper martini, and where the two-martini limit is still, gloriously, enforced.

dukeshotel.com/the-delany-drawing-room.html
Dukes London, 35 St James's Place, London SW1A 1NY

The Martini Bar, Hawksmoor St Pancras

Hawksmoor took over the old Gothic Bar inside the 1876 Midland Grand building and turned it into what The Nudge calls "a cathedral that now happens to serve steak" - soaring arches, gilded ceilings, velvet booths, the works. The House Martini is a mere £12 - £10 on Mondays - which CLASS magazine reasonably pointed out is "industry shattering value" when hotel bars elsewhere are charging double or triple. Order the Vesper's Vesper as a nod to next door's history, and don't skip the caviar-topped hash browns.

thehawksmoor.com/locations/st-pancras
St Pancras London, Euston Road, London NW1 2AR

Lyaness, Sea Containers

Not new, but newly crowned: Ryan Chetiyawardana's South Bank icon took Hotel Bar of the Year at the 2026 CLASS Bar Awards, ending the Connaught Bar's long reign, while its Unfiltered Martini - built on fermented Maris Piper potato and served with flavoured boba pearls in place of olives - won Cocktail of the Year outright. "There was something amazing about a martini riff where the sole two ingredients were potatoes and barley," says Chetiyawardana, and honestly, fair enough.

lyaness.com
Sea Containers London, 20 Upper Ground, London SE1 9PD

Honourable mention to The Spy Bar at Raffles London at The OWO, whose Sotiris Konomi was named Bar Manager of the Year at the same awards - housed in the former MI5/MI6 building's Room 007, it's the only non-members' bar in London that bans photography, so bring a notebook and your best poker face instead.

Gallery Season: The Best UK Art Exhibitions Before Christmas

Nothing says "sophisticated autumn" quite like queuing for a timed entry slot, so here's where to spend your culture budget between now and the Christmas break.

The Bayeux Tapestry

10 September 2026 – 11 July 2027, British Museum, britishmuseum.org

The tapestry leaves Normandy for the first time in nearly a thousand years while its home museum is renovated, and it has very nearly sold out already (Forbes). Tickets run £27–£33, which the BBC drily notes is "almost triple" the €12 it usually costs to see in France - for a slot capped at 40 minutes, so don't dawdle over King Harold's moustache.

The 90s: Art and Fashion

8 October 2026 – 14 February 2027, Tate Britain, tate.org.uk

© Chris Ofili, courtesy Victoria Miro, London

The most on-brand show of the season by some distance: Edward Enninful curates nearly 70 artists, photographers and designers spanning the YBAs, Juergen Teller, and runway work from McQueen, Westwood and Galliano. Time Out predicts the opening party will "give the Met Gala a run for its money," which is either a threat or a promise depending on your invitation status. £22, or £5 if you're 16–25 and smug about it.

Renoir and Love

3 October 2026 – 31 January 2027, The National Gallery, nationalgallery.org.uk

The most significant Renoir show in the UK for two decades, built around flirtation, seduction and courtship - appropriately, given how hard it is to get anyone to commit to a gallery trip in October. Bal au Moulin de la Galette makes its UK debut on loan from the Musée d'Orsay, hanging near the National Gallery's own The Umbrellas - arguably still the greatest menswear moodboard the Impressionists ever produced. £20–£25.

Tim Walker's Fairyland: Love and Legends

From 9 October 2026, National Portrait Gallery, npg.org.uk

Walker's biggest museum show yet, tracing over fifty years of queer history and culture through 250 new portraits, with sitters from Ian McKellen to Chappell Roan, shot in styles that nod to both Holbein and Avedon. Walker says he's "purposefully reclaiming the word 'fairy'" for himself and his subjects, which is the kind of sentence that makes a wall label worth reading for once.

Painting the French Riviera

2 October 2026 – 31 January 2027, Royal Academy, royalacademy.org.uk

Monet, Matisse, Picasso and Cézanne all did their bit to sell the Côte d'Azur to the rest of Europe, and this show is the ultimate marketing brochure -Time Out calls it a "SAD-beating coastline" for good reason, given what November has planned for the rest of us. £24–£26.

Aphrodite: The Making of a Goddess

8 October 2026 – 11 April 2027, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, ashmolean.org

The regional pick, and unexpectedly the most fashion-literate show of the season: three millennia of the goddess of love and beauty, ending with Jonathan Anderson's Loewe dress as worn by Beyoncé on the Renaissance tour, staged opposite a mound of discarded clothing by Michelangelo Pistoletto. £16.80.

Also worth your Saturday, and free: the V&A's The Burberry Trench: Crafting an Icon (21 September 2026 – 3 January 2027) marks the brand's 170th anniversary with 19 archive runway looks and Hardy Amies's own personal Burberry car coat, personalised label and all - no ticket required, no excuse not to go.

The Long Read

Stop scrolling and start reading, ideally somewhere with good lighting and a stiff drink from one of the bars above. This month it's 'How Hermès Unharnessed Fashion' by Lauren Collins in The New Yorker, a profile of Nadège Vanhée, the quietly radical artistic director who has spent a decade nudging Hermès womenswear from equestrian reticence toward something considerably kinkier - think a sequinned catsuit sharing a runway with a nubuck coat, and Miley Cyrus visibly startled in the front row. But the real pleasure is Collins's reporting on the house itself: a $190 billion-dollar empire that employs a full-time paleographer to decode its own century-old ledgers, once returned Jeffrey Epstein's charity-auction bid rather than sully itself, and reportedly sources manure for its window displays from an actual cavalry regiment, purely for authenticity's sake. All this while the Birkin waiting list spawns its own grim cottage economy of "pre-spend" bribery and pilgrimage-grade special orders. Funny, forensic and quietly damning - essential reading for anyone who thinks they understand luxury, and a useful reminder that we're all, in the end, just very well-dressed customers.