High summer and I can’t get my mind off swimming: in the sea, lakes or pools, anywhere will do. It’s not just cutting the heat with that delicious cool; it’s the whole change of state, the shuffling off of gravity and just floating around. And if I can’t swim, I’ll settle for gazing at pictures of places where I might one day take the plunge. “Swimming,” writes Rosalind Jana for HTSI this week, “has always been a draw for artists, from Seurat’s bathers and Matisse’s blue cutouts to David Hockney’s famous pool paintings.”

She brings together the pick of new exhibitions focusing on our love of water. Tarka Kings’ Mornings at the Lido is an especially evocative set of drawings focused on London’s Serpentine. Kings has been swimming in the lido in Hyde Park for five years – come freeze or shine – but when it came to capturing how it felt she struggled to find a focus. Her depictions of those transitional moments before and after are, as Jana says, “full of mundane magic”. Meanwhile, look to the layered paintings of Modupeola Fadugba depicting lifeguards and swimmers in Accra, Abuja, Lagos, Dakar and Philadelphia as well as the Harlem Honeys and Bears, an all-Black senior synchronised swimming team. London’s Design Museum is currently showing Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style, looking at the evolution of swimming design, from pool architecture to bikinis since the 1920s. As Iris Murdoch once said, “swimming, like dying, seems to solve all problems: and you remain alive.”

Nothing says la dolce vita quite like a classic wooden-hulled Riva speedboat, made by the Italian firm from the 1960s to the 1990s. The mahogany originals, of the kind Roger Vadim once gave to his wife Brigitte Bardot, are now highly collectible. The most desirable can cost around $1mn – not bad for a company that started as a fishing boat repair business in 1842 on the shores of Lake Iseo. 

Should you be on a day trip to Positano, make straight for CB Positano, a 45-year-old emporium that has become a social media sensation since 2023. First opened as Nadir by siblings Nino, Sandra and Anna Maria Buonocore in 1980 (when they were just 20, 17 and 18), the store is loved for its one-of-a-kind ultra-feminine dresses, bags, aprons and notebooks. Nino now acts as president, and Sandra and Anna Maria still design and cut the pieces with a team of local artisans and tailors.

If CB Positano benefited from the post-Barbie “cocotte” and “princess-core” trends, the female suitmakers in Jessica Salter’s story about the made-to-measure women’s tailoring revival are channelling a very different vibe. Take Hattie Glendenning’s Hax in Mayfair, “where many patterns are adapted from men’s blocks but carefully designed to flatter a female body”, or Isabel Glanville’s high-waisted and wide-legged or voluminous cross-pleated trousers: “I wanted to use the same techniques that have been used on Savile Row for 200 years, but in my own way,” she says. “My hope is that the trousers are treasured for years.”

There used to be a joke about how terrible New York’s Mexican food was, but the city has come a long way over the past two decades with an influx of Mexican chefs. As New York-based food writer Jay Cheshes puts it: “The new abundance reflects the deepening in recent years of the cross-cultural bonds between the city and the country’s neighbour, which has become a magnet for expats in this age of remote work.” New competition seems to appear by the week, so we sent Jay out on the streets to find the Big Apple’s best taco joints to know now (Trump Tower not included) – and put their chefs to the test.

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THREE MORE STORIES TO READ THIS WEEK

Boat shoes are back – get on board The nautical style is now a staple of city living. Here are the best styles Introducing Larder, the kitchen you can carry on a Lime Bike The portable pantry aims to bring fresh food to the heart of the community The big match-day drink rethink From VIP boxes to fan zones, the half-time pint has gone haute

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