Woman's Hour - Viktoriia Roshchyna investigation, The Names, Met Gala fashion

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

A recent investigation has unearthed previously unknown information about the death of a female Ukrainian journalist who had been looking in to war crimes in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Viktoriia Roshchyna, herself Ukrainian, was captured in 2023 whilst reporting from the occupied territories. She died in 2024 after a year in detention, where she was held without charge and without legal assistance. Editor on the Investigations team at The Guardian, Juliette Garside, joins Anita Rani to discuss the report. Have you ever wondered how much impact the name you were given has had on your life? Florence Knapp’s debut novel The Names begins with a dilemma; Cora is about to register the birth of her baby son, but should she call him Bear, the name chosen by her nine-year-old daughter Maia, Julian, which is her choice, or Gordon, the name she is expected to give him and also the name of her abusive husband and his father before him? Florence joins Anita to discuss her new book and the fateful decisions we make every day.It’s been a big week for Chelsea who last night won the Women's Super League title for the sixth year in a row, beating Manchester United 1-0 after a goal from Lucy Bronze. The victory marks the first Women's Super League title for Chelsea manager Sonia Bompastor, who took over from Emma Hayes last summer. It also follows a defeat against Barcelona in the Champions League over the weekend. BBC Sport’s Emma Sanders joins Anita to discuss Chelsea’s season.With the Met Gala fast approaching, we take a closer look at the business behind the red carpet with International Style Correspondent for the New York Times, Elizabeth Paton, and Fashion Editor for Glamour Magazine, Rosie Lai. A new play, Conversations After Sex, tells the story of one thirty-something woman’s life through vignettes following sporadic sexual encounters with a revolving cast of men. Anita explores the theme of intimate conversations with strangers, with the play’s main protagonist and producer Olivia Lindsay and psychotherapist Charlotte Jefferson. Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Emma Pearce

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. What life advice would you like to pass on to your children? Remember that failure is not a sign of defeat, but an opportunity to learn and grow. What challenges would you like to prepare them for? Death is part of life and we need to talk more about it. Dear Daughter is a podcast from the BBC World Service, sharing words of wisdom from parents all over the world. This is who we are, this is what we do.

Dear Daughter, listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning. How important is a name? What does it say about you and how could your name shape your life? Who you are even? In the programme today, I'll be talking to writer Florence Knapp about her brilliant debut novel, The Names, about three parallel lives of the same child

but with different names. So this morning I want to hear about how you feel about names, your own name. Do you like it? Have you had to explain your name, spell your name? Has it been a help or a hindrance in your life? Maybe you've ended up changing your name. And what about when it came to naming your own children? How did you go about it? Were they named based on family lineage or religious tradition? Or was it for creative flair to stand out, possibly even be fashionable? Well, there's a survey that's being conducted by Gransnet and they found that one in five grandparents hate their grandchild's name. The main reason is because they find it ugly. Is this you? Maybe you'd like to get in touch with us this morning or maybe you're one of the people on the planet who hired the services of a baby name

consultant because they exist too. Get in touch with me and share with me your naming stories. The text number is 84844. You can email the program by going to our website. The WhatsApp number is 03 700 100 444. And of course, if you'd like to follow us on social media, it's at BBC Woman's Hour. Also on the program, Conversations After Sex. It's a new play exploring how it's sometimes easier to be more vulnerable, intimate and honest

after a sexual encounter with someone you don't know. And we'll be looking into the business of fashion or rather the business of the red carpet at the Met Gala. And of course if you'd like to get in touch with us about anything you hear on the program, your opinions, thoughts and experiences are always welcome. That text number once again 84844. But first, you'll have heard in the news that the United States has signed a long-awaited deal with Ukraine, securing access to the country's energy and mineral resources.

The war between Russia and Ukraine is in its third year now and more is beginning to be known about what's taken place during it. I can bring you news now of an investigation that has unearthed previously unknown information about the death of a female Ukrainian journalist who had been looking into war crimes in the conflict. In 2023, Victoria Rostunia crossed the front line to report on the war from the occupied territories. At the time, she was the only journalist willing to go. She was captured and held for a year in detention without charge or legal assistance and then died. She was 27 years old.

Information on the circumstances of her death were barely known until the recent publication of a joint investigation by journalists from around the world, including editor on the investigations team at The Guardian, Juliette Garcide, who joins me now. And I should say that some may find the details in this interview distressing. Juliet, welcome to the program. Why did you want to look into the circumstances of Victoria's death? Hello Anita, thanks for having me here. We wanted to look into this because We wanted to look into this because it's a shocking case in itself, but also it's actually really symbolic of a very large scale problem that exists in Ukraine right now. There are 16,000 civilians currently in detention and most of them, like Victoria, without charge, it's arbitrary detention.

They don't have access to lawyers. Their families don't even know where they are, they're being detained together intelligence for show trials and there is no prospect of release right now. That's Victoria's story. What was she like as a person? Tell us a bit more about her. She was obsessed with journalism from a really young age. She was running around with a microphone. She started out as a court reporter. She was a tiny thing and she was incredibly brave.

She would walk up to big burly criminals trials and stick a microphone under their neck and under their chin and chase people down corridors. And also she grew up like many young Ukrainians in the shadow of war. Her father was a veteran of the Afghan wars, the Soviet wars, and she was 17 when Crimea was annexed. You know, she was a young adult at the start of the full-scale invasion and she was obsessed with reporting war crimes, encountering Russian propaganda.

That was her mission. She sounds incredibly brave, incredibly impressive, tenacious, but I understand that she would also walk towards spaces that most of us would turn away from. Yes, she was incredibly brave, but she took huge risks. And she had already been captured actually while reporting in the occupied territories in Ukraine in 22. She was released after a few days after recording a propaganda video but it didn't stop her. So when she was finally caught for the last time in 2023 I think we think she'd been back about four

times and she was doing really important work. One of the incredible stories that she was telling was about the torture and intimidation of workers at the Zapparisia nuclear power station and that's why she had gone back on her last mission. She wanted to find the garages, the basements where people in the nearby town were being detained by the FSB and coerced into keeping the power station running. So she'd already been detained once and then released. Some people listening to this might think was it irresponsible of her to go given the risk and also would she have been advised not to go?

She was definitely advised not to go and in fact when she when it was clear she was going to go back after her first detention her editor at the time stopped working with her and she then started freelancing for one of the big daily news sites which is run by a formidable editor Sevgil Masaeva who I think is very distressed by everything that's happened but you know Vika was going whether she was allowed to or not she would vanish for weeks come back and say I've got this brilliant report will you publish it and Sev Gill felt that the work was so important and so unique that she had to she had to publish it. So what happened? Avika and that's her nickname, Vixro's nickname, she ended up being caught.

What do we know about the circumstances of that capture and the detention? Well there are we've managed to find three eyewitnesses, so people who were in detention with her, two have been released and we don't know the fate of the other. But these individuals say that they heard Victoria's story from her. She was walking through a town near the power station. She thinks she was spotted by a drone. She was picked up by police. She was taken to the police station for a few days in that town and then she went a few hundred kilometers further south into Melitopol, which is a city, a big filtration center for the FSB. That's the

Russian intelligence services. She would have been considered a special case given the information she was trying to get. In particular, she was trying to name FSB officers responsible for the torture. And at that point, she is held for several months in Melitopol and there she says she was tortured. There were electric shocks, there were knife wounds in her arm, which she showed to a cellmate. And I think they were again trying to get intelligence and also get her to record a propaganda video which she refused to do. She was incredibly stubborn like many of the best investigative journalists. It was difficult to move her once she'd made up her mind about something. And she was due to be released?

So then she's moved into Russia at the beginning of 24. Friends are pulling strings, they even go to the Vatican. They talk to the Pope. Pope Francis has had back channels into Russia and he managed, they say, to get her name on an exchange list. And we pretty much know this is true. Her first contact with home was a four-minute phone call the year after her detention and she told her parents, they're going to let me go in September. But when the coach arrives full of Ukrainian prisoners of war on the 13th of September, she's not there. And she's not there the following day either.

And what we've been told by people who were in the prison with her is that she was taken down on the 8th of September. It's a long road home. She was taken down the stairs. She could walk at this stage. She needed a bit of help. She was very weak, very thin. She'd been on hunger strike, but she's

not seen again. And so all we have now is her body to tell the story of what happened next. How hard has it been to gain this information to try and understand and piece together what possibly could have happened to Victoria? It's very difficult. I mean, for people who've been released, who were in prison with her, Taganrog-Sizotu, the prison where she was last seen, was the most notorious of the prisons where Ukrainians are being held. People were systematically tortured, beaten twice a day, interrogated, electrocuted, put in an electric chair. I could go on. So you have to ask people to relive those experiences, which is very traumatic. And we also talked to former officials in the prison service

who are now hiding, they're in hiding, they're former Russian officials who told us how it worked and how it was organized. And we also spoke to some of the very few lawyers who are still operating inside Russia and the occupied spoke to some of the very few lawyers who are still operating inside Russia and the occupied territories to try and help people like Vika. So people took huge risks and huge emotional risks in talking to us. But they know how important it is not just to highlight her case but the fact that there are 16,000 Ukrainians languishing in Russian jails. You know they've been sent gradually transferred deep into Russia. They're being tortured.

And the blueprint that Trump, we've seen Reuters reports about what's in the Trump Peace Blueprint. It talks about economic deals, mineral deals, land deals. It doesn't even mention the release of these prisoners. So many people in Ukraine are calling for the unconditional release of these prisoners. So, you know, many people in Ukraine are calling for the unconditional release of these 16,000 before any peace treaty is signed. Yeah, the real people and the lives and all the families that are connected to them.

As a fellow investigative journalist, did you feel a duty to bring her story to life? Yes, I did. I felt, I know how important and powerful the individual story, particularly of a young woman doing this work, can be in bringing attention to a subject, but you also feel a closeness working with her former colleagues, people who knew her, and it's a very personal kind of reporting. How vulnerable was she and women in that line of work when they choose to step towards danger? She was incredibly vulnerable. She got an award for courage, an international award in 22.

And she didn't want to go to the ceremony. It was in Los Angeles. And she sent a message, and it's a really moving message. She was so young when she wrote it, but she described her and her colleagues, she said it's for all my colleagues, all the people, all the journalists who've died doing this work, all the journalists who've been captured doing this work. There are 30 Ukrainian journalists in Russian detention right now. And she described them as warriors on the information front and she said my mission is to counter Russian propaganda and to expose Russian

war crimes and she was aware that she could die doing it but she's still fully you know this was her mission. Have her family commented on her death and on the investigation? It's been very difficult for her family. Her father is the only member who's communicating and he's communicating a lot. We were with him throughout the investigation. He contributed an immense amount. He's not a public figure. And the great difficulty for him is that he refuses to believe that she's really gone. For months they were campaigning for the return of her body and it eventually came back to Ukraine in February. But at the time the body was labeled as unidentified male and it was very difficult for him to recognize that that was his daughter.

You know, it became clear through DNA tests that it was, but I think in his grief it's taking him quite a while to come to terms with what has happened. What will happen next then? So there'll be a final report from the prosecutors, but Ukraine has opened a war crime investigation into Vika's case and they are pretty keen, I think, to make this one of their test cases, their pilot cases, because Ukraine is determined to find out who is responsible for the death of its citizens and to bring prosecutions. When all this is over, when they can bring prosecutions either at the International Criminal Court or in other countries that do international prosecutions. So Germany

is doing some at the moment. So they're building the evidence and she is very likely to be, her case is very likely to be a test case. And so what we tried to do as part of our work was to name some of those responsible, which we have done in the Guardian this week. What does this do to the female investigative journalist community, if you like? What are the sort of ripples, what are the conversations when something like this happens to one of your colleagues? You are doing really important work, vital work, it's incredibly dangerous work. There are certain things that women can access and gain from doing this work that men can't but at the same time Incredibly vulnerable when you are put into certain situations

Yeah, I mean I've been in hostile environment training I did a course before I went to Ukraine and you are told that as a woman your risk profile is just so much higher than for a male reporter because the kind of abuses that can happen to a woman are different and there are more of them. But she was well aware of the risks. In Ukraine at the moment actually because so many men of working age are conscripted, journalism is being done by women, newspapers are being edited and run by women, the staff are women. So they, you know, they are the front line of the

information war and we know how brilliant and devious Russia has been in disinformation. And the occupied territories are an absolute black zone. There is no reporting there. They have arrested every journalist So, you know women are playing an incredibly important role In in in this conflict in explaining the conflict to the world. It's women doing that work Juliet Garcy, thank you for coming in and joining me to speak about Victoria And this report is part of a series of stories called the Victoria Project. I must ask you what is that? The Victoria Project is an international collaboration led by the NGO Forbidden

Stories in Paris who pick up the work of journalists who've been killed or who've disappeared and continue their investigations. Juliet Galside, thank you very much. 84844 is the number to text. I started the program by asking about your names and how you were named and how you feel about your name. I've got a few of your messages coming in, 84844 is the number. My name is Jennifer but I hate it because my mother used to say it so sharply when I was naughty so since a teenager, I've only answered to Jenny

I named my daughter Louise because I felt no one could say it sharply and ruth says I was a teacher So it was difficult to name our children without connotations. Our surname is button We named our daughter BB so it would stand out from the crowd and people would remember her it's worked throughout school She's now about to graduate from l College of Fashion so we're hoping her name will stand her in good stead in the fashion industry going forward. Yeah, BB Button. Would she have gone into fashion if she wasn't called BB Button? There's a question. Right, keep your thoughts coming in. The reason I'm asking you is because of my next guest. Have you ever wondered how much impact the name you were given

has had on your life and whether you would still essentially be the person you are today if you'd been brought up in different circumstances? Those are some of the questions posed by Florence Knapp's first novel, The Names. It begins with a dilemma. Cora is about to register the birth of her baby son. Should she call him Bear, the name chosen by her nine-year-old daughter, Maya, Julian, which is her choice, or Gordon, the name she's expected to give him and also the name of her abusive husband and his father before him. We follow the lives of Bear, Julian and Gordon to discover the implications that this decision has on

the boy's future and the lives of his family. Welcome Florence, I must say congratulations. Thank you so much. It's such a brilliant book and such a brilliant premise for a novel. What inspired it? Where did the idea come from? I think I've always been really interested in the things that shape us as people and the things that make us us and whether that's our kind of family and our people and the things that make us us and whether that's our kind of family and our upbringing or the friends that we end up kind of making and also our name because it feels like it becomes so we become so wrapped up in it and it feels like it and you know it's the first thing we're given in life

and then we carry it with us everywhere we go. But often people will hear it before ever meeting with us and bring their own kind of subconscious or conscious associations to that. And you know, maybe that affects whether we get called in for a certain job interview or whether we cross paths with a potential partner. But I've also been really interested in how it shapes our sense of self as well. So I kind of gave a brief overview whilst introducing you but how would you describe the way you've told the story in the three different timelines? So it spans 35 years and we revisit each one of the boys and the family around them every

seven years. And really it focuses in on the, by visiting them every seven years it really allowed me to just focus in on those moments that had been really, really defining for them as people. Whether that was something that happened in the lead-up to that or where we meet them at that seven year point. And I think it also, because I'm asking the readers to follow three narratives, it also was kind of nicer because it gives it a structure so that they know where they are rather than that I'm kind of handing them a bowl of jelly and kind of saying here do something with this and try and keep it all in your mind.

So I'll return to the subject of names in a moment because the book really is exploring how the circumstances we grow up in affect our lives. Why did you want to do that? Well, I think I think our upbringing is kind of key to who we are and it feels kind of endlessly fascinating because it's all those experiences that accumulate and that affect how we view the world and so just thinking about going back, sorry, returning to names, but if you think about Bear in the book, there's a scene where his elder sister's talking about how people respond to him, and she says that when she goes into a shop with him, someone will lean over a counter and say, what's your

name? And he'll say, Bear. And she says it's like holding a butter cup under their chin and saying, do you like butter? And everyone does, because it's that he just provokes this instant response in people where people seem pleased and delighted by him and if you kind of contrast that with maybe Gordon's experience of being in the world where already he's been named after his abusive father but then if he were to go into a shop and have that same thing of the shopkeeper leaning over and saying what's your name it's going to get a far flatter response than Bear does and so I think all these tiny things just shape our outlook and to me

that feels really fascinating. I completely agree and I don't want to give too much of the book away because you just have to read it because it is brilliant. Essentially Cora, who's the mother, decides, you know, based on the decision she makes at the point when she's off to register the name, it's the reaction that the husband has that then affects the rest of this child's life. Because in the book, Cora suffers terrible violence because she's in an abusive relationship with her husband. Why did you want to explore that? I didn't set out to write a novel about that. It was really about that, again, what we've been talking about,

about wanting to look at how someone's upbringing steers them. But about six months before I started writing the names, I'd been in a group of women where someone from a women's refuge came to talk to us, actually, Henu Cummings, who's just wonderful. And the things she told us that day were so incredibly harrowing and really, really stayed with me. And I think I tend to write to try and understand people and the world better. It's kind of how I process my own feelings about things. And it really moved me, me what she'd said and I couldn't get it out of my head and I had all those questions of what would have made the father the way he was and why would she not leave and what would the effect on the children

be to live with that. And so then when I came to write the names, they kind of, I guess it filtered into there in a fairly organic way just because it was what I felt an emotional pull to write about. How did you, so you were inspired when you heard this amazing woman talk about her own experience but how did you go about researching the abuse that can take place within a marriage and then go undetected for decades. Well I was actually put back in touch with her and she was incredibly generous with talking through the dynamic that can form around a kind of a character like Gordon and I was careful not to put any of the particular instances of abuse that were from real life

that she told me about because obviously those are real lives and it doesn't feel right to fictionalise them. But one of the things that I thought was particularly sad was that when I'd finished the book and showed Henny the manuscript, she's worked with thousands and thousands of families and she said, well, I've actually seen all of these things happen, none of it is new, which just felt really kind of incredibly shocking. Yeah, that was going to be my next question, what did she think about it when she read it? It is shocking. And the first bit of the book, there are moments when I had to put down the book, Florence, but then come back to it because it's so compelling and I need to know what happened to all these characters

But there are certain aspects of the characters lives and in their timelines in all three timelines that remain the same Sexuality for instance or their draw towards arts or medicine So what guided you when you when you were thinking about what's essential in a person and what might be the result of trauma? So I think with Maya, who's the elder sister in this scenario, what we see is that she's gay irrespective of her upbringing, but she has, I guess, different levels of ease with that depending on the upbringing that she's had. So in two of the narratives are the kind of father is very much off the scene and they're actually all together kind of more joyful kind of happy environments. And in the one where his presence is felt least, she's just, she's gay, it's not an issue, that's just who she is.

But in another one, she is where her development, I guess, has been arrested at 14 because of a really traumatic incident. In that situation, she is actually almost not able to think of herself as a sexual being in any way at all and it's only much later on in life that she maybe starts thinking, oh, could I be gay? And then in the narrative with Gorda where her brother has been named after the father and the father has stayed as a part of their life for much longer. It feels surprising because in some ways she's kind of very happy with being a gay woman and she has this wonderful woman that she lives with and she, but it's a complete secret from her family because she knows that her father wouldn't accept that in her. But actually it kind of makes perfect sense because she's

been groomed throughout her childhood to be incredibly good at keeping secrets and for her this is something she's just very very good at doing. Yeah, keeping it all to herself. How important are the names in the book? How long did it take to come up? Think about Bear and Julian and Gordon and Maya and Cora for instance. The names of the three boys felt like they were there just instantly right from the beginning because with Gordon I wanted a name that felt very like quite a serious name that could be handed down. And also there's a link with he as a teenager sees a bottle of Gordon's gin and just feels that kind of sense of ownership of, oh, yeah, my drink. And then with Julian, he's named that way because his mum thinks it might placate the

father to call him that because it actually, the official meaning of it is Skyfather, so it feels like a tribute, but she's thinking perhaps it will elevate him above all these kind of awful Earth fathers. And then with Bear I wanted a name that felt really expansive that he could grow into and yeah, they were kind of there right from the beginning, their names. I'm asking our audience and everyone listening to get in touch about their own names and how they feel about names. How hard was it to name your own children? You've got two. Well it feels like such a huge responsibility because I think it, I

think when you give a child a name it almost feels like you're creating a little nest that they're going to live in and that they, where that will become who they are. And I guess I wanted something that felt slightly unique to them but not so extraordinary that they would feel kind of that it was a hard kind of name to inhabit. And your book is being described, it's been described by one journalist as the best debut novel in years. What's it like to write something that's been so well received? It's really, really surreal. I mean, totally wonderful, but very unexpected,

because I've had a previous novel that didn't find a publisher. And I think really at the outset of this, all I wanted was to have a book out in the world that was a kind of tangible thing and so to have had such a lovely early reaction from the publishing industry has just felt extraordinary and kind of beyond my wildest dreams for it. Well it's well deserved because Florence is exceptional and it will stay with me for a very long time. Thank you so much for coming in to talk to me this morning. Thank you. Florence Knapp on her novel The Names and I must say that if you've been for a very long time. Thank you so much for coming in to talk to me this morning. Thank you.

Florence Knapp on her novel, The Names. And I must say that if you've been affected by anything you've heard today, then you can go to the BBC Action Line website where you can find links to help and support. Back to your messages about names. I am named Rudy after the band The Specials. A message to you, Rudy.

My dad was a huge fan. That's cool, Rudy's a great name. I named my daughter Delilah after the biblical reference to Samson and Delilah. That seemed to endorse racism and sexism in her condemnation. It spoke to my delusion in religion, but everyone asks if it's after the Tim Jones song. My name is Grace, my father's choice. My mother wanted to call me Kate, a name I would always have preferred. As a child, I struggled endlessly with a name. I would always have preferred as a child I struggled endlessly with the name as I felt I had to live up to the name with all its Connotations and felt I could I could never could only now years later. Do I feel I've grown into it?

Yeah, own your name. Grace is beautiful My name is Aurel as a child. It was a trial as children couldn't pronounce it nor many adults I hope I've pronounced it, right? I always knew I was in trouble if I was ever called my full name Aerial washing powders launched the same time as as a record on the radio were a bit uncomfortable But as an adult, it's a joy tough and unusual name and another one here. Hi, my formal name is Nicola But I'm known to friends and family as new that's the name I really identify with. Recently I've started using New for work. I'm interested in how it feels. Sometimes it's just right and sometimes it feels odd. 84844 keep them coming in.

What life advice would you like to pass on to your children? Remember that failure is not a sign of defeat, but an opportunity to learn and grow. What challenges would you like to prepare them for? Death is part of life, and we need to talk more about it. Dear Daughter is a podcast from the BBC World Service, sharing words of wisdom from parents all over the world. This is who we are, this is what we do. Dear Daughter, listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Now to football and it's been a big week for Chelsea who last night won the women's Super League title for the sixth year in a row, beating Manchester United 1-0 after a goal from Lucy Bronze. It marks the first women's Super League title for Chelsea manager Sonia Bonpastor who took over from Emma Hayes last year. But it also comes just after the team suffered a crushing Champions League defeat to Barcelona at the weekend. Sonja had this to say after last night's WSL victory. Yeah, obviously it feels amazing. But again, I want to thank my players. I want to thank the club just to have me on board and for us to be able to achieve that.

We've two more games left, I think that's a great achievement. I'm so proud of all the club, my players obviously and also my staff. Well BBC Sports' Emma Sanders joins me now to tell us more. Morning Emma. Yeah, good morning. Morning, you were covering last night's match, tell us everything. I was and it didn't really go Chelsea's way initially. Manchester United were the better team on the night,

but Chelsea had been helped out earlier in the evening by Arsenal's defeat at Aston Villa. So they knew that they only needed a point. And I suppose that might have contributed to their performance because it was a bit slow, it was a bit cagey, but ultimately they got that goal that they needed in the second half. And look, it always felt like a matter of time before they would win the title. So to do it with two games

fair, I think, was just a really, really great achievement for them. What was the atmosphere like? Yeah, it was a strange atmosphere because, like I say, Chelsea weren't playing well. A lot of people didn't really expect Wednesday to be the night that they would win the title. Nobody expected Aston Villa to beat Arsenal in midweek. And actually Sonja von Pastel, the Chelsea manager, admitted afterwards that they hadn't really entertained the idea of winning the title that day. They sort of expected, if you can say that, to win it at Tottenham on the weekend. So there wasn't loads of away fans there. It was a little bit quiet to begin with.

But as soon as that goal went in from Lucy Bronze, I think everyone knew what the outcome was. Chelsea weren't going to be throwing away a 1-0 lead, especially when the title was in their hands. So that atmosphere started to grow from that point on. OK, so they weren't playing well, but they won it anyway. But let's talk about the other game, losing to Barcelona. Yeah, I mean, it was a really difficult night for them.

Bonpasto was brought in to lead this Chelsea team towards Champions League success. She's won the trophy with Lyon as a player and a manager. She's one of the best coaches in Europe. So Chelsea were hoping that they would take that next step to get into that Champions League final. But Barcelona once again, for the third season in a row, just blew them away really.

And it was a bit of an embarrassment in the end from the Chelsea players. And you could see that they were hurt when they ran out on Wednesday. They really wanted to sort of turn that around and show that they're a much better team than how they performed against Barcelona. And obviously getting their hands on the trophy,

on the league title was the best way to do that. And their manager Sonja Bonpasta, we heard from at the beginning of this item, she'll be brought in on a four-year contract last May to win the Champions League, the one trophy that eluded her former, the former boss Emma Hayes. She'll be disappointed but proving a good start to the season? Yeah, a very good start to the season. They've already got two trophies, the Women's League Cup and now obviously the WSL title, they're still got two trophies, the Women's League Cup and now obviously the WSL title, the Ceylon for the treble, the Women's FA Cup final and Wembley next next month, they face Manchester

United again for that one. So look to come in the first season in the WSL as a foreign manager and to potentially win three trophies is is a really, really great achievement. But even yesterday after after that WSL title, when she was talking to us in the media, she was saying, you know, we want the Chamois League, there's still room to grow, we need to get better. So she is a perfectionist and she wants that European trophy.

And I think next season that will remain the priority. Emma Sanders, thank you very much for bringing us up to speed with all of that. 84844, more on your names. I'm female and my name is Charlie. I love having an androgynous name. I think I'm taken more seriously when emailing certain people, when I was selling my houseboat, every single person that came to view it got a shock when they were met by a five foot

two squeaky voiced female. Were they still looking for Charlie? Hello, my real name is Anne Elizabeth. Anne after my mother, Elizabeth possibly after Queen Elizabeth the second. However, my dad decided to call me Zabe. Oh, Zabi, pronounced Zabi. I've been called it all my life.

When I applied for jobs, I always use my full name. It sharpened me up for interviews. If you haven't already worked it out, Zabi is the middle of Elizabeth. Ah, I like the name. I deliberately named my girls with short names. Keep your thoughts coming in on all of this. Now, today is of course the first of May, which means one of the year's most talked about fashion events is fast approaching. The Met Gala, which takes place next Monday.

The biggest stars head to the Metropolitan Museum in New York to show off their highly anticipated outfits following a theme carefully selected by Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. And for the fashion houses and brands behind these ensembles, red carpets have become important events to showcase their best work, gain worldwide press attention and ultimately make money. But what of women's roles in the business of red carpets? Are they just clothes horses for brands or can they use their moment in the spotlight for themselves and possibly make some money for themselves? What are the economics of the red carpet for women? Well, joining me to discuss this is international style correspondent for the New York Times Elizabeth Payton and

fashion editor for Glamour magazine Rosie Lye. Welcome Rosie, welcome Elizabeth. Morning. Nice to have you both here. Okay so Elizabeth let me come to you first. So we'll talk about the theme, very important every year at the Met Gala and this year it's Black Dandyism inspired by a book by Monica L Miller. What does this mean exactly? How have you interpreted it? We've just been chatting about this behind the scenes. You know, what's interesting about this theme is it's the first theme since 2003,

which was Men in Skirts, where it's focused on menswear. So obviously, usually there's a big focus on womenswear as part of the exhibit, and this is a focus on menswear, but not just menswear, black menswear. And that means it's a real watershed moment. It's not something that the Mets ever done anything, anything like this really, would you say, Rosie? What do you think, Rosie?

Yeah, I think it's a super interesting theme because I'm really interested to see how women are going to interpret it since it's predominantly, it came from menswear. Black Dandism came from I think the 18th and 19th century. And it's really about, at the time, men putting together their looks in a very particular way, in a meticulous way, that showed off their fluency

in fashion, but also how cultured they are. And I think it's ultimately an approach to dressing that can be applied to women as well. What does it say about sort of where the Met Gala and I suppose Fashion in America is kind of talk what they're saying about race and queerness and identity? It takes a number of years for any exhibition to come together. So I know that this exhibition was conceived originally around 2020 and after the Black Lives Matter moment. But I think

it's incredibly important. I mean, there's been a lot of shows which have really focused on the sort of biggest names in fashion. This is an opportunity to look at some more underrepresented names in fashion, some rising stars in fashion and to see some of the biggest celebrities in the world possibly wearing some of their designs. Interesting. So Rosie, how do you see women interpreting this on the red carpet? What are you expecting to see? I think there's a literal translation of it where we're going to see a lot of tailoring,

potentially a lot of maybe exploded silhouettes of tuxedos. But at the same time, I think there are a lot of examples of celebrities who don't follow the theme perfectly. And it's just since this is about expression and kind of showing off your personality, it can come in so many different forms. I'm so excited to see potentially what Janelle Monáe is going to wear. I mean she's been doing black dandyism forever hasn't she? Yeah and also the dress code is actually tailored to you. So there's a theme and then there's that dress code which gives a little more flex for people to sort of interpret it so you can take on bold patterns, bold prints, you know, I think that will go beyond just tuxedos and

tailoring and we'll see some interesting designs too. I'm personally hoping that Grace Jones will grace the red carpet. Has she made Anna Wintour's cut? How important is that? Anna Wintour's cut? Just like what it's about being on the in list isn't it? How do you get on the list? So I guess the thing to remember about The Met is unlike most other big red carpet moments, the Oscars, the Golden Globes can, where it's the brands, the stylists, the agents and the talent who work together to conceive of a celebrity's look for that moment, you're

only getting on that red carpet and you're only wearing that outfit if Anna has said so. She will personally sign off on every single outfit to ensure it matches the theme. Correct. Every single outfit. Every single celebrity or every outfit? Every celebrity and every outfit will be personally picked by her and her team. So it is a very different event from most other red carpet events. So it's specifically curated. Yeah.

So what will this do? We mentioned brands earlier and what this black dandyism will hopefully kind of shine a light on smaller underrepresented brands that we've not seen. What can an event like this do for the brands? And what specifically does the Met Gala do for brands and the women wearing the dresses? Well, a key example of that, I would would say is Rihanna and Gua Pei because Gua Pei was a very well known you know couturier maybe in the east but because she wore that to China through the Looking Glass that year it just Gua Pei became a name on everybody's lips afterwards and this is what this platform can do.

Ultimately, it is a platform, a launching pad for a lot of brands, both big and small. And so I'm hoping to see a lot of that maybe for young black designers today as well. Grace Wells Bonner, you've got Bianca Saunders, even more established ones than, you know, from the past, but like Dapper Dan. Like I think there's so many of these opportunities to also educate audiences on All the talent that's out there and how did brands decide which talent to work with they decide with Anna But how it works so I can talk a little bit to the numbers for example

So a ticket to the Met cost $75,000 per person a table cost $350,000 per person and A table cost $350,000 per person. And a sponsor is around $8 million. So considering this is a charity event, that's a huge amount of money. They made $26 million last year. And a brand will buy a table, and then Anna will help them decide what talent can sit at that table.

And then of course, some of that money goes towards sponsoring brands that might not otherwise be able to be there by bringing them to the party. And what can it do for a woman wearing that brand and how much of it is about the brand and how much is it about the what it can do for the personal personal brand and give us an example. Well I think Loewe is a really good example of a brand that takes young actresses and actors and kind of puts them on this global stage and transforming them from being an actress to being a fashion icon. I think this is what red carpets in general, but the Met can do is to change people's perception of a certain actor or actress. Ambika Mod last year, who was in One Day,

she wore La Hueva and that was a moment for Britain, it was a moment for South Asian women, all of it. And so that's an example of that. But when it come, what, but how can, how would it then help the young woman in the dress? Like, I mean, of course the brand is gonna get something out of it, but can women use it to their advantage?

Definitely. I mean it's a challenging balancing act because you know there was a time when big big brands, blockbuster brands, would just throw millions of dollars at A-listers but actually they've realized especially in the social media age that people have different followings, different interests and actually the arms race now really is to pick the next big thing, the next big actress. I'm undecided as to whether an unknown starlet can make her career purely by red carpet dressing. She has to be, she has to have her foot through the door. But really strategic thoughts about how she styles herself, how she presents herself to the world. You will get eyeballs, you will get photographs, you

will get clicks and people will see that. And how does that then with for the brands Rosie filter down to as mere mortals? Because this is I mean, it's so unattainable. It's fabulous to look at but what's the impacts on the actual brand themselves when it comes to sales and the bottom line? I mean, ultimately it's brand awareness. It's also garnering a very loyal following for yourself. And you're also showing what your values are in the people

that you pick and where you're headed and the kinds of, the kinds of, if it's whether it's craftsmanship that you care a lot about, whether it's about diversity. And I think all of these are messages that you're sending in the talent that you're picking. But one thing I do think is for sure is that increasingly the red carpet is geared towards the Instagram age. You know, the time of sort of, there are a few elegant and demure ball gowns still floating around, but increasingly brands are very strategic and focused on not just what it looks like in that initial impact moment as they come out of their limousine and go up the Met Gala red carpet,

but then how will it be consumed by millions of people all over the world when they look at it via their phone. And how has that changed what they do? I think this is where why we're seeing a lot of archival pieces on the carpet because I think brands and audiences value storytelling and the more the deeper the story behind the look the more your piece is going to be talked about and and for longer right? So Kim Kardashian wearing Marilyn Monroe. Yeah, exactly. And that was dissected for weeks afterwards. And whether you like it or not, it became a moment for Kim and for the brand.

So she made it her moment. She's very good at making it her moment. Who else is very good at making it? Who else has used this platform? I would say Zendaya. Zendaya was the big example. Yeah, working with Laura Roach, her stylist, and I think they've been very strategic with June last year and Challenges last year, that amazing

Thierry Mugler bodysuit, sort of metal bodysuit, and lots of sort of very tongue-in-cheek flicks to whatever film she was taking a part in. Margot Robbie with Barbie. Now arguably she was already a big star, but I think she and her stylist absolutely raised the profile of that film by her strategic use of costume and wearing fashion at all the press junctures. So it's kind of flipping it round, isn't it? It's no longer just women wearing dresses and being clotheshorses. They're actually using it and empowering themselves and using that moment for their own gain. The right partnership or collaboration with a brand could garner these women millions and millions of dollars.

It's not chump change. It's been fascinating talking to you both. Thank you so much International Style Correspondent from the New York Times, Elizabeth Payton, and fashion editor for Glamour magazine, Rosie Lai. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Now a new play, Conversations After Sex, tells the story of one thirty-something woman's life through vignettes following sporadic sexual

encounters with a revolving cast of men. There's the daytime drunk lad whose mother is dying, the Brazilian gent who slept with all of his neighbours and the man who refuses to tell her his name. Well to explore the theme of intimate conversations and if it's sometimes easier to be more vulnerable and honest with strangers, I'm joined now by the play's main protagonist and producer Olivia Lindsay and psychotherapist Charlotte Jefferson. Olivia, Charlotte, welcome. Olivia, you play the character of She.

She has lost two loved ones and she's navigating grief and we follow her journey. Explain the premise. What's going on? A lot is going on. Thank you for having me, by the way. So we are kind of following a story of a woman who is navigating grief in very different ways. And it's set in an episodic kind of structure where it's lots of different conversations so it's 25 conversations in total and she is grieving through meeting lots of different people and having those conversations which she has with lots of different people and having those conversations, which she has with lots of different men. She revisits some and we kind of see, you know, the exploration of what happens to someone through grieving.

What does she get from these conversations? Why focus on those conversations, conversations after sex? Yeah, I think, you know, it's those moments that are so essential and I think it's also those moments that no one ever gets to see or talk about. And that's what's so exciting about Mark's writing. Mark O'Halloran, who's a phenomenal Irish writer, he writes so beautifully and so eloquently the moments that we have post, you know, coital situations and they're just really honest and raw and real.

And sometimes they're messy and sometimes, you know, they get out of control. But I think that's what drew me to the script. It was so honest. And I think it's those moments, you know, especially for men, not just women, I think it's also really important. You know, they both get things from these conversations. It's so essential. You say that in a way they're more intimate than the actual physical act.

They are, they very much are so. And I think it's those moments just before and just after, you know, sex that are the most intimate moments. It's those conversations, I think it's those moments just before and just after, you know, sex that are the most intimate moments. It's those conversations, I think, physically as well, that allow you to open up. And also it's easier sometimes to open up to strangers. I think there's less of... there's no pressure. You can just open up and you can just... Because it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter. You're never going to talk to them again. And it allows you to kind of release this emotional existence in you that you might not even know you had. And it just comes out. I'm going to bring Charlotte in because Charlotte is our psychotherapist. Hello, Charlotte. What is it about being in bed with someone that can allow some people to be

that vulnerable and raw and intimate and open, all of it? Yeah, no, absolutely. I think the first thing that it makes me think of really is that like, you know, that low stakes encounter and how it kind of enables such a high openness, you know, it makes me think about that there's actually no shared history here, is there? There's a there's a freedom to be experimental and there's a freedom to be experimental with our vulnerability and I suppose that within that we have a desire for connection don't we and I think we often have a desire for storytelling and owning our narrative and that there's that one-time encounter effect means that we don't have to manage our image you know and I guess that really contrasts doesn't it to the people that we're emotionally invested in? There's less baggage, there isn't the shared history, there isn't the expectations, you know.

I suppose there's an irony, isn't there, that emotional closeness to a person often means it's hard emotional transparency. So, you know, the more that we have to lose, you know, the harder it is to risk being fully seen. Yeah. Converser, I've got to ask, what advice would you give to someone who struggles to have intimate conversations with their partner? Yeah, definitely. I suppose the biggest thing I would wanna say is that that's a skill. You can absolutely practice that.

It's almost like this elastic band effect, isn't it? The more that you practice having small and honest conversations, the easier that's going to become. I suppose it's being curious and all the active listening and going in with no agenda. Set the tone but don't set the outcome. Use I statements because as soon as we start using we

and pointing the finger, that defences start to rise and that conversation starts to shut down. Olivia, why do you think she, your character, finds it easier to open up to strangers? You're nodding away when Charlotte was chatting there. I think because, you know, there's no expectation. And I think, again, with Mark's script, he's written a woman who isn't ashamed.

She's just being, she's present, she's here, she's grieving, she's exploring what to do with that. And I think, you know, it's so often there's a narrative around, you know, women sleeping with lots of people and how awful that is. And, and, you know, there's all these conversations about that. And I think it's actually can be very empowering. I think there's something to say about having, you about having these intimate and honest conversations with people that you may not see again. And I think with she, she's brave, she's honest, she is messy.

And then there are moments of sadness and it is heartbreaking, but it's also really funny and lighthearted. And I think for her, she's just existing. There's no judgment. And she doesn't care. And she doesn't care. She actually doesn't care. She's gone through such a deep, raw grief that she's kind of just allowing life to be. Yeah.

And we don't judge her. I think he writes her in such an empowering way that we're like, oh, okay, here's a woman who's really just exploring what it is to be sad and feel that and explore that. It could be a risky strategy for some women because she's in such a vulnerable, emotional state. Not everybody will be prepared to get involved and be able to do what she does completely. And I think that comes with having a certain, you know, toolkit and being prepared for that. I think if you're able to put yourself in a situation and open up to someone after one night stand or sleep with someone, you know, quite casually, you definitely have to have

precaution there. And I think it's, you know's imperative to be prepared for that emotional existence that comes with that. But I also think if you are prepared for that and you're open to having those conversations, you get a lot out of it. It's therapy. It's free therapy. And what's so interesting as well about the play is that the men need it just as much. If more. I'm gonna, I would just have to say, because Charlotte, I saw a screen in front of me, you can't see her.

She's been nodding away. And the minute you said it's free therapy, she just stopped. So I'm gonna bring you in, Charlotte. Is it free therapy? Go on. Well, I suppose, I was, go on, sorry. No, I was gonna just, no, carry on, I suppose I was... Go on, sorry. No, I was going to just... No, carry on, please. I'll ask you in a minute.

Well, I suppose I was thinking about this kind of before we joined the call, and I guess the first thing that I thought about was, you know, everybody's different, aren't they? So for some people, even if we take gender out of it, you know, absolutely, sex is the pinnacle of connection. But for other people, you know, the emotional intimacy and the emotional connection is the pinnacle of connection but for other people you know the emotional intimacy and the emotional connection is the pinnacle and I suppose you know there's there's definitely something about there's something about being able to be free with someone you know there can be expression and exploration it can be confidence building stress relief you know all of that good stuff but then I suppose for other people they can be left hurting they can be left anxious and vulnerable and not contained you know, all of that good stuff. But then I suppose for other people, they can be left hurting,

they can be left anxious and vulnerable and not contained. You know, they might even be craving a depth of connection that actually isn't getting fulfilled in these encounters. So I suppose therapy for me, you know, there's definitely mirrors here, isn't there, to what the therapeutic relationship can offer. We've got those core principles, haven't we, of, you know, this confidentiality,

there's a freedom of consequences in everyday life. There's a non-judgmental kind of core value there as well. There's emotional objectivity, there's focused attention. But I suppose the biggest thing, which is probably why I stopped nodding, is containment. And that that containment is so important in the connection because especially in therapy, you know That connection then is safe. It's reliable. It's boundary and I guess The kind of strangers element is that it hasn't necessarily got all of those really Core important therapeutic things. Yeah, Olivia Interesting know that you're absolutely right. And I think that's what's exciting about this play. I think you're absolutely right in the sense that there is no security there with

someone you don't know, but that's what's so exciting to watch, I think, from a theatre perspective. We never know what's going to happen next in these conversations. How much can you identify with she? I can identify with her a lot. I think I understand how easy it is to open up to people you don't know because there are no precautions as we've said you know that's a common theme here but I think you know what I find so amazing and especially with women specifically you know you go to the girl's toilets on a night out you meet someone in the toilet and you can tell them pretty much your whole life. And I think there's a power to that. And I think especially, you know, with... There's a power in the female toilet though. There's a big power in the female toilet. And even if you've just met them for two seconds,

the conversations I've had, especially with women, I don't know. And I've been able to have really deep, intellectually stimulating, emotionally stimulating conversations, actually maybe more stimulating with someone I don't know, because they're giving me such a different perspective on my existence. And with she, we see that. She also has, we also have an amazing actress Jo Herbert who is my sister in the play and you see the navigation of a sisterly relationship as well which is amazing. I want to thank you both for talking to me about this. Conversations After Sex

runs at the Park Theatre in London until the 17th of May. Thank you, thank you Olivia, thank you Charlotte. Christine's been in touch, says, I named my daughter Kathleen after a family friend and to honour our Irish heritage. She thought it was old fashioned and too unusual. Her name became Beanie, then Bean, which she still goes by at the age of 28. We like that. Do join me tomorrow for more Woman's Hour. That's all for today's Woman's Hour.

Join us again next time. I'm Hannah Fry. And I'm Dara O'Brien. And we are back for another series of Curious Cases. Where we investigate the scientific mysteries sent in by you. Are crows capable of complex emotions? What happens to our brains when we fall in love? And I was wondering, why do we lie?

I think that one might be aimed at you, Dara. How would you know? That's what a liar would say. We tackle the mysteries of the universe through audacious experiments and expert insight. Curious cases. On Radio 4. And available now on BBC Sounds.

What life advice would you like to pass on to your children? Remember that failure is not a sign of defeat, but an opportunity to learn and grow. What challenges would you like to prepare them for? Death is part of life, and we need to talk more about it. Dear Daughter is a podcast from the BBC World Service, sharing words of wisdom from parents all over the world. This is who we are.

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