Come the first week of August, you’re either just back from somewhere or counting down to it.
This week’s edit is about small gestures and life improvements, a Cotswolds hotel for a reset, a collagen and protein popsicle to satiate your ice cream craving with less guilt (if there’s any!), sunset movement above the Mayfair rooftops, and two very different ways to spend a London evening, one behind a secret door, one deep in Tommy Shelby’s underworld. This is what we’re loving in this week’s Citizen Femme hotlist.
BOOK AN AUTUMN LIFE RESET HERE Hyll X The School Of Life
Since opening last September, the Cotswolds retreat Hyll has built its reputation on a radical proposition: switch off completely and, gloriously, do nothing. From mid-August, that ethos gets a literary upgrade via a partnership with Alain de Botton’s The School of Life. Each bedroom now comes with a curated menu of their books – Great Thinkers, Calm in 40 Images, the quietly devastating Art Against Despair-— alongside card sets in the lounges, including Pillow Talk for couples brave enough to actually talk. Co-owner Sarah Ramsbottom admits the School’s philosophy has always seeped into Hyll’s DNA. It’s the rare wellness gesture that treats your inner life, not just your complexion, as worthy of a weekend.
COOL DOWN WITH THESE POPSICLES Volonté x Pro Pops
Beauty-from-within has spent years trying to convince us that wellness should taste like chalk. Volonté, the London wellness café, has a better idea: what if it tasted like being nine years old on a hot afternoon? Enter Pro Pops, a new summer collection of chef-made popsicles from founder Vidushi Binani, the Le Cordon Bleu-trained nutritionist behind the café. The two beauty flavours – Raspberry Lemonade and Coconut & Lime – each carry 5,000mg of collagen and a hit of Vitamin C, are dairy- and gluten-free, and hover between 77 and 112 calories. No powder to stir, no gummy to forget. There’s also a Peanut Butter Chocolate version with 10g of protein for post-Pilates smugness. I love a supplement that behaves like a treat rather than a chore, and these are exactly the sort of nostalgic, no-effort ritual August was made for.
ENJOY A HIDDEN DINNER HERE Automat Mayfair
The best openings this year have all carried a whiff of the clandestine, and none more so than Automat, which you reach by walking through the Tanner Krolle leather-goods shop on Mount Street and out the other side. No signage, no fanfare – just a dim, burgundy-lacquered dining room that has built a devoted following almost entirely by word of mouth since it quietly reopened. A reboot of the beloved noughties Dover Street original, it reimagines early- and mid-century Americana through a London lens, with a menu overseen by a chef-director formerly of Noma. Expect the classics done properly: a very good burger, a lobster roll in brown butter, cheese toasties finished with truffle, martinis and a killer spicy margarita (a favourite, if you know me by now). It’s low-lit, a little conspiratorial, and exactly the sort of place you want to disappear into on a warm August night. Find it if you can.
BOOK THIS EXPERIENCE Peaky Blinders London
By order of the Peaky Blinders, the railway arches near London Bridge have been requisitioned. Opening this month, bookings run from 13 August, Peaky Blinders Underworld is the official, and considerably more ambitious, way to step into Tommy Shelby’s 1919 Birmingham. You enter through a faithful recreation of the Garrison Tavern, that post-war watering hole, which is free to all: draught beer, live music and light bites, no ticket required. Beyond it lies the paid Underworld proper – interactive gameplay, actor-led encounters, and recreated corners of the show including the Bookies, Chinatown and the Small Heath Fairground. There’s even the chance to earn your place in the gang, assuming you can prove you’ve got it in you. It’s a smart, atmospheric piece of theatre ahead of the spin-off series landing in 2027 – and, frankly, a very good excuse to buy a new cap.
ENJOY THESE EVENINGS The Sanctum Sunset Series, Mandarin Oriental Mayfair
Some evenings you want a martini; some you want to sweat out the entire year. For the latter, We Are Sanctum has taken over the Penthouse Terrace at Mandarin Oriental Mayfair for its Sunset Series, running monthly through September, which makes August’s session your next window. Held on a Tuesday from 7pm and capped at just fifteen guests, each 55-minute class follows Sanctum’s signature sequence: a music-led journey that folds kundalini, qigong, Zen Buddhism and somatic movement into high-intensity training and breathwork. The setting, one of London’s most elevated terraces, the sky going pink over the rooftops, does half the work. What I find compelling is the intent behind it: less fitness class, more communal ritual, a deliberate antidote to a summer spent mostly looking at screens. With only fifteen spots, book quickly!
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