ClaimDream

Choosing design themes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons can be difficult, but one of the best ways to carry any aesthetic throughout an island is to make use of the cutest villager house exteriors. Although there are seemingly endless design options in New Horizons, there are only a few buildings in the game. Of these, only player houses can be customized to fit in with the rest of the island’s décor. The lack of design choices for buildings like Resident Services or the Museum can feel limiting at times, but fortunately, players have many more options available when selecting villager homes, the most common buildings in the game. As many as 10 New Horizons villagers can live on an island at one time, each with their own house design. With almost 400 recruitable villagers in New Horizons, there are plenty of cute villager home options available, no matter the island theme.

There are a variety of motivations for selecting which New Horizons villagers should move to an island, with some players looking for a specific personality type or animal species. One of the most important details to consider for decoration purposes, though, is what the exterior of the villager’s house looks like. Each villager’s house in Animal Crossing: New Horizons is unique from the others, inspired by its individual villager in color and design. Their houses’ interior designs in New Horizons can change depending on items they receive or when they move onto the island. However, every villager’s house exterior will always be the same.

Related: Animal Crossing Design Ideas To Get Ready For Fall 2021

Outdoor decoration is such a large part of New Horizons, and villager house exteriors make a great source of inspiration for designing an island. The huge variety in house styles is created through different combinations of roofs, doors, textures, house shapes, and colors. There are so many details to choose from, but just as with the villagers themselves, some house designs are more helpful to certain themes than others. These Animal Crossing: New Horizons villager house exteriors are some of the cutest ones available in the game.

Diana is a deer villager in New Horizons with a clean exterior that’s elegant and regal, perhaps as a credit to her appearance-obsessed, snooty personality type. Although the stone-like texture makes the house feel warm and inviting, it is the smaller details that really make the house visually intriguing. The consistent arches and delicate design on the white iron grill door make Diana’s house a great option for players that want to bring a classier building to their island.

Drake, the lazy duck villager, has appeared in every Animal Crossing game since Animal Crossing: Wild World. His house’s exterior and interior have evolved subtly throughout the games, generally sticking to a camp/cabin aesthetic. In New Horizons, Drake has a beautiful pine or forest green house with brown, wooden trim and a wooden door. The earthy tones and accents on this house make it perfect for a natural or forest-themed New Horizons island, which Drake is sure to enjoy.

In New Horizons, Pekoe is a normal cub villager with a really cute home. The Eastern-style house has a great color combination of red, white, black, and gold. Pekoe’s window and imperial door have intricate designs, and her red lantern complements these details perfectly. Its unique shape with sharp edges makes this house a perfect option for a New Horizons island with a city aesthetic. Alternatively, Pekoe’s house would make the perfect addition to a more rural, traditional neighborhood as well, especially one that makes use of New Horizons’ many Asian-styled decorations.

Related: ACNH Tips For Making Your Island More Welcoming To Visitors & Villagers

Étoile is a normal sheep villager who was introduced to New Horizons a year after the game’s release. As of now, she can only be invited to join an island through her amiibo card, but her house is definitely one of the cutest ones available. Étoile’s design is based on the Sanrio characters Kiki and Lala from the Little Twin Stars series. Kiki and Lala are often depicted with blue and pink hair respectively, which explains the pastel pink and pale-blue coloring of the house’s exterior. Étoile’s New Horizons home would fit in well with a fairycore theme or an island with a colorful and whimsical aesthetic.

In New Horizons, Ed is a smug horse villager. He is vivid blue in color with a bright yellow mane and tail, which starkly contrast with his mostly white house. Aside from its aqua tile roof, this home is a blank canvas with clean lines. Its sleek design would look great anywhere on an island, whether placed on a high cliff or on an New Horizons beach by the ocean. This home can be adapted to fit almost any island theme, especially if players gift Ed with a wreath to brighten up his front door.

One of the most visually unique and long-standing villagers in the Animal Crossing series is Tangy, the peppy cat. Her house mimics her orange and green coloring, which itself mimics citrus fruit with a leaf attached on top. The white trim gives it a crisp feel, complementing the other bright colors well. Tangy’s house would be perfect for a tropicore island, especially during the New Horizons summer season when the grass is the brightest green. Adding palm trees, fruit-themed furniture, or bright flowers around Tangy’s house would make it pop even more.

Related: Animal Crossing’s Best Design Tricks With Glitches

In New Horizons, Ava is a normal chicken villager with a unique house. This house’s geometric design is carried throughout the square, boxy building with its brick accents and the designs on the window and door. The red bricks match the curved shingles on the roof very well in color and style, bringing the whole design together. Ava’s house is very neutral and the brick accents would stand out in any environment, making it a great addition to any New Horizons island.

Pancetti is a snooty pig villager in New Horizons. Although her house is fairly standard with few notable details, it is the interesting color palette that immediately draws the eye. The muted mustard yellow, burnt-orange exterior with mahogany trim highlights the unexpected blue of the house’s simple door perfectly. Pancetti’s house would look beautiful in a cozy, autumnal theme, especially when the leaves are most colorful in ACNH’s mid-to-late fall season. There are so many cute villager home exterior designs available in Animal Crossing: New Horizons that are sure to inspire creativity for many seasons to come.

Next: Why Animal Crossing’s Brewster & The Roost Cafe Update Is A Big Deal

Coldplay and BTS have finally released the music video for their new collaboration, ‘My Universe’.

• READ MORE: Coldplay and BTS’ new song ‘My Universe’ is a celestial ode to unity, hope and the power of love

The clip, helmed by iconic music video director Dave Meyers (who recently worked on Ed Sheeran’s MV for ‘Shivers’), stars the two bands as outlaws trying to bring back music in an alternate universe where it is forbidden.

The joint single was released on September 24, and was co-written by both bands alongside Swedish hitmaker Max Martin. The song is also the second single to be lifted from Coldplay’s forthcoming studio album ‘Music Of The Spheres’ following their hit comeback song ‘Higher Power‘.

Meanwhile, ‘My Universe’ is BTS’ fourth single of 2021, following their Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping singles ‘Butter’ and ‘Permission To Dance’. Earlier this year, the boyband also released the Japanese-language track ‘Film Out’, from their compilation album ‘BTS, The Best’.

Over the past week, the two bands also released a documentary titled Inside My Universe, which chronicles the making of ‘My Universe‘. They also unveiled an acoustic version of the single, as well as a ‘Supernova 7’ remix.

Coldplay recently performed ‘My Universe’ at the New York leg of Global Citizen Live over the weekend. While BTS were not physically at the concert, the group were featured as holographs on a backdrop while Martin sung in both English and Korean.

In other BTS news, the South Korean boyband are set to hold their first in-person concerts for the first time in two years, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.The septet are set to bring their upcoming online concert ‘Permission To Dance On Stage’ live to Los Angeles, California this November and December.

The post Watch Coldplay and BTS’ epic music video for ‘My Universe’ appeared first on NME.

It seems as though handbags have been getting progressively smaller over the course of the last decade, so much so that we eventually ended up at Jacquemus’s (in)famous Le Chiquito bag, which measures at just 3.5 inches high. Probably big enough for a 50p coin and packet of chewing gum. For those who have despaired at the trend’s lack of practicality, you’ll be happy to learn that XXL bags are back for A/W 21. I mean, they never really went away, but we’re just happy that fashion brands have finally realised that bigger is definitely better in the bag department. Just give the people what they want.

From oversized crossbodies to roomy structured styles, there’s so much to choose from in the XXL-handbag stakes. On the high street, we would recommend checking out COS for big bags, particularly shopper silhouettes in both leather and smocked fabrics. On the upper end of the market, you have brands such as Dragon Diffusion bringing a luxury spin on the classic woven tote while the likes of Loewe and Chloé are embracing classic raffia and canvas fabrics. So many big bags, so little time. 

So if you’re in need of a bag you can fit everything except the kitchen sink in, scroll down to see and shop our XXL-handbag edit. 

Next Up: Autumn 2021 Trends: The Only Fashion Looks You Need to Know

Whether you’re an autumn person or not, I think we can all agree that any new season is an exciting time to mix things up when it comes to things like your wardrobe and beauty routine. And I’m not saying you have to get completely new clothes and swap out all your makeup products for new ones—the cool thing about seasonal transitions is that tiny changes can make an impact, too.

That might mean buying a few new items of clothing or accessories to mix in with your tried-and-true basics. Or trying out a new lipstick, eye shadow look, or even a new nail polish color. The latter is one of my favourite ways to change things up because it’s pretty low-lift in terms of effort and it can be a subtle change. Opting for an autumn-inspired nail colosr instead of your usual at the salon is pretty easy, right? And it’s a lot more temporary and effortless than trying out a new haircut or creating a dramatic eye-makeup look.

For me, autumn is the best time to really commit to some dark nail colours. The weather is cooler, the leaves are a pretty red/orange/yellow, everything feels cosier—all of this calls for some dramatic and deep hues. Am I wrong here? Take a look at some nail polish options below as inspiration for your next salon or at-home manicure.

It’s nearly impossible to be anonymous in our hyper-connected world. While millennials have been flouted as early adopters of technology to a detrimental degree, Gen Zers were born into the age of digital media. They know that what gets published on the internet stays on the internet. That’s a fact of the 21st century that many young people have embraced, including actress, singer, and activist Amandla Stenberg. 

Stenberg is many things, but she’s certainly not your average starlet. The 22-year-old began her career with Disney at age 4 and burst onto the young Hollywood scene as Rue, the beloved tribute from District 11 in the first Hunger Games movie. More recently, Stenberg played Starr Carter in the fantastic 2018 adaptation of The Hate U Give, which garnered even more visibility for her as a voice of Gen Z and as an activist in the broader Black Lives Matter movement.

After a year of keeping busy behind the scenes amid the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, Stenberg is back in the spotlight, starring as Alana Beck in the film adaptation of Broadway smash hit Dear Evan Hansen. A confident, hyper-involved, type A valedictorian, Alana follows in the footsteps of Grease’s Patty Simcox and Election’s Tracy Flick—with a notable twist. Alana has always been played by a Black woman, as originated by Kristolyn Lloyd when the show debuted on Broadway in 2016. Stenberg considered this critical casting element as she stepped into the role. “Within the Black community, conversations about mental health are not normalized culturally,” she explains. “There’s a societal pressure to prove yourself, especially if you have the experience of being the person in your family to achieve upward mobility or the child who carries the responsibility in your family.” With this insight top of mind, Stenberg embraced the opportunity to dig deeper into her character’s psyche through song.

Alana’s presence is secondary in the stage performance, serving mostly as a vehicle for comic relief. However, fans of the original will be delighted by the new life that Stenberg breathes into her character with an expanded role and original solo. “I remember reading the script and already feeling very connected to her, thinking this girl is super cool and weird,” Stenberg divulges, noting that it was easy to draw parallels between the two. “I was a super–type A student,” she shares, “Like, really hard on myself and intensely academic. My grades felt like life and death for me.” In addition to the pressure of being a 21st-century teen, Stenberg had to contend with the pressures of coming of age in Hollywood, a double-edged sword hardly imaginable by the students in Dear Evan Hansen’s high school setting. 

Through close partnership with screenplay writer Steven Levenson and creators Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, Stenberg penned “The Anonymous Ones,” which reveals Beck’s internal struggle with anxiety, perfectionism, and climbing the ladder of success. “When I was cast, [Pasek and Paul] came to me pretty immediately and said, ‘We have this opportunity to expand this character on the screen and to explore her more. So who do you want her to be? What do you want to communicate through her?’ and invited me to collaborate on the song,” recalls Stenberg, who appreciated the ability to explore her character emotionally through the power of music.

Stenberg was in her element writing the song with Pasek and Paul, which was executed not just over Zoom but also across time zones, with two-thirds of the team stateside and Stenberg in Denmark. (She is half Danish.) “A lot of our Zoom sessions were late at night for me, which I loved because I’m a night owl. It was just me and Ben Pasek and Justin Paul and many, many cups of tea. We spent nights debating over lyrics, and there were many moments of spontaneously breaking into ‘Kiss From a Rose,’ by Seal. That’s musical theater work,” she explains with a note of playfulness. “Bursting into song or just genuinely being foolish was preordained, and I’m proud of how it turned out.”  

Not only does the song specifically shout out the use of Lexapro, a common prescription antidepressant, but it also prompts listeners to take stock of their personal struggles and coping mechanisms. “We decided to focus on her journey with mental health,” Stenberg explains, astutely noting that, whereas Evan has this feeling of isolation throughout the film, this was an opportunity for Alana to bring in another perspective, one which not only subverts the type A character archetype but also lifts the veil on what it’s like to feel pressure and worry as a young Black kid. “That was something we talked about a lot in the construction era of the character,” shares Stenberg. “Pasek, Paul, and Steven Levenson and I talked about how it feels to be a Black kid with that weight on their shoulders who is struggling with depression and anxiety.” This is something Stenberg knows a thing or two about from her personal experience growing up in the limelight. In writing “The Anonymous Ones,” Stenberg empowered her character to communicate the anxieties that bubble under the surface. Though the song is not lyrically complex, the message is strong: “It’s a challenging process and experience to be a human being and to be vulnerable to other human beings,” explains Stenberg. “I hope that people connect to it or feel seen by it. That was the main priority for me—that the kids who already have a connection to the [Broadway show] feel further seen and understood by the song.” 

Although Alana’s vulnerability is simultaneously unexpected and striking, Stenberg’s version of the character is not a foil to Evan Hansen, the titular character and antihero protagonist reprised by the inimitable Ben Platt. Rather, Beck is a mirror, reflecting the usual coming-of-age trope: Appearances can be deceiving. “There are actually tons of people who feel similar [to Evan], and Alana reveals herself to be one of those people, even though you might not assume that about her,” she clarifies.

The film, which is equally heavy as (if not more so than) the original show, debuted on September 24, but Stenberg and I caught up earlier in the month over Zoom. Between the New York Fashion Week frenzy and preparing for her trip to the Toronto International Film Festival, she talked with me about Dear Evan Hansen and her character as well as her personal style and, crucially, her passion for speaking up about mental health. “It was really exciting for me to play a Black girl with anxiety and depression,” she shares. “It has taken years for me to arrive at the point where I can seek out the help and treatment that I need because that treatment is not super normalized. So to play a Black girl that’s on meds was really gratifying.”  

It’s no coincidence that we sought out Stenberg for Who What Wear’s October cover (in addition to her expanded role in the highly anticipated film, it is Depression and Mental Health Screening Month), so it was wonderful to be able to have a conversation that was refreshingly candid, vulnerable, and a bit therapeutic. We called in from our respective dwellings in Brooklyn, and Stenberg elected to make this a video-free interview. That’s just one way she chooses to set boundaries and preserve her stamina during this busy period of publicity and high visibility. 

It’s not lost on anyone that music plays a significant role in how Stenberg takes care of her mental health. Notably, several of her past projects have featured her singing, whether in character or over the credits. The timing of Dear Evan Hansen is also prescient, aligning with Stenberg’s release of her first original single and music video that she produced and wrote herself. “I’m in this really exciting moment where I’m less afraid or, at least, feel developed enough as a musician to show that off to the world,” Stenberg emotes. Although, she is still debating over the song’s title, which she acknowledges is a critical item on her vast to-do list.

Of course, it comes as no surprise that Stenberg’s musical tastes are excitingly eclectic. Obviously, she can do musical theater, but the self-proclaimed “raver kid” describes her sound as house, emo, and alternative R&B, with a few bars of rap thrown in. “I live in New York City and DJ events and raves. That culture is inevitably intertwined in queer culture, which is really important to me and the way that I express myself,” she confides. 

Since relocating from her home in Los Angeles to NYC, Stenberg has found support and strength in her social circle, which is mostly comprised of similarly minded queer folks like herself. “I think therapy is critical for everybody. Everyone should be in therapy. That’s kind of my belief system, and it’s really normalized in my immediate community, which is nice,” she shares. “I have a really tight-knit queer community mostly comprised of people of color, and we definitely process things together. That has done wonders for my mental health. It’s also something me and my partner have removed the taboo around.” By incorporating regular talk therapy sessions into her overall self-care routine, Stenberg is able to maintain a baseline instead of seeking help solely in times of strife. She continues, “Therapy is not just something you do in moments of conflict or low moments, but rather as a continual practice that you lean on to stay actively working on yourself and your relationships.” 

Being vocal about one’s mental health needs is still challenging for many people. That pressure is magnified for those with public personas, like Olympian Simone Biles and tennis superstar Naomi Osaka. This summer, both women were at the top of their careers, performing at the pinnacle of their professions, when they chose to take a step back. Biles sat out a few events during the Summer Olympics in Tokyo following a scary encounter with the “twisties,” and Osaka dropped out of the French Open after choosing to forgo the routine press conferences. Both women cited the need to attend to their mental health as their priority.

The world—and Stenberg especially—took note. “I can’t imagine what being at that sort of critical juncture in your life, having so many eyeballs on you, and being under that amount of pressure must feel like, literally competing in the world games,” she reflects. “Deciding to be vulnerable and public about the fact that you need to attend to your mental health… I’m grateful for their bravery. It seems really terrifying.”  

As a card-carrying member of Gen Z, Stenberg is also a big fan of mental health TikTok. “I see so many conversations centered on mental health and neurodivergence in general,” she recalls. “Using the internet as a place of communion to discuss the fact that struggling with mental health is normal and thinking of mental health as something you need to tend to as actively as your physical health is a cultural shift that I find refreshing.” On a more analog note, Stenberg also pursues inner peace through music, alone time, and something she and her mom call “pajama days,” which are filled with comfy clothes and marathons of I Love Lucy. Though, that could probably be translated into a TikTok trend, too. 

Given Stenberg’s busy schedule, it’s understandable that digital still reigns supreme in her universe. She loves virtual reality and uses it to keep up with her family and friends. “I’ve always been an internet person,” she acknowledges. “I used to be a blogger, and I’ve always spent time in online communities.” Interestingly, this has had a huge impact on her style, which has plenty of E-girl elements, like fun makeup and flashes of skin. “[My family] ends up spending a lot of time together in VR, like neon fairy princesses running around space. I just want to look like an avatar,” she says. “And that’s what the shoot reminded me of.”

Ah yes, the photo shoot. Who What Wear worked with stylist Rachel Gilman to serendipitously style Stenberg as the E-girl of her dreams, complete with looks from Nanushka and Elliana Capri, Amina Muaddi shoes, and early 2000s–inspired makeup by Steven Canavan. While, as Gen Zers say, “that’s the vibe,” Stenberg has only recently become comfortable with her “work style,” which includes doing red carpets and going to events. “In moving to New York, I wanted an opportunity to start from scratch and have my style be a really authentic reflection of me,” she says. So Stenberg has started collaborating with stylist Kyle Luu, who she describes as occupying the same world, personally and creatively, and she most recently donned memorable looks by Gucci and Thom Browne at TIFF and the Met Gala.  

With Dear Evan Hansen, mental health, and personal style fully dissected, Stenberg and I parted ways, on to the next items on our endless to-do lists. For one of us, taking a proactive COVID-19 test before TIFF lied ahead; for the other, writing this article; and for both, checking in with our therapists.