Selena's Birthday: Italy Said Yes First

Selena's Birthday: Italy Said Yes First

Selena Gomez turned 34 somewhere between a linen dress and a lemon grove, and honestly, Italy did most of the heavy lifting. The birthday photographs from her Italian celebration with husband Benny Blanco have been circulating with the kind of effortless-summer-in-Europe energy that takes approximately three stylists and one very good location scout to manufacture — and yet. White broderie anglaise, a claw clip doing exactly what claw clips are supposed to do, gelato that almost certainly existed off camera. La dolce vita as a mood board made flesh, and Selena Gomez as the woman who wore it best this July.

While the birthday dispatches were arriving from Tuscany or Positano or wherever the light was most flattering, the internet was briefly united in the gentler chaos of celebrity baby name discourse. Rihanna's Mikey Moon and Fawnie Golden have entered the conversation alongside the Kardashian archives, and Blue Ivy Carter — who was always the blueprint — presides over all of it with the quiet authority of a child who already knows she's won. The names are not mistakes. They are brand decisions made at the birth registration office, and you have to respect the commitment.

Tom Holland is having a very specific kind of moment — the kind where two separate professional pivots are happening simultaneously and both of them are actually interesting. The Fred Astaire biopic, which has been a slow-moving promise since 2021, apparently has an update, and it's encouraging enough that Holland felt moved to share it. Meanwhile, the reason he almost didn't return to *Spider-Man: Brand New Day* is exactly what makes the eventual yes worth something — director Destin Daniel Cretton pitched him a more personal story, gave him genuine creative input, and Holland only came back when the version on the table was one he'd actually want to watch. That is the correct answer. That is the only correct answer.

And somewhere in the background of all of this, Bella Hadid is moving product without trying. Her presence alongside Rihanna's Puma Speedcat sneakers during the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale has apparently been enough to accelerate their disappearance from the internet. Bella doesn't endorse things. She simply exists near them, and the rest follows. The granny nightie trend she's also allegedly endorsing — alongside Kaia Gerber and Olivia Rodrigo — is a separate, equally real phenomenon, which means this summer's It-Girl uniform is white linen, a vintage slip dress, and shoes that sold out before you finished reading this sentence.

Some summers just have a look. This is it.

*— Dua Mifsud*