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When fashion designer Priya Ahluwalia walked into the dress rehearsal of her autumn/winter 2023 London Fashion Week show in February, she couldn’t stop crying. Titled Symphony, the show was staged at a formerly baroque church hall, with models walking to jazz-infused renditions played by pianist Insxght and saxophonist Solaariss. “I was just so emotional,” the 30-year-old founder and creative director of Ahluwalia says. “It was like the culmination of a big deep dive coming together. That’s how I felt.” Ahluwalia rediscovered the music of her youth when designing the collection. “I don’t like to do things in an obvious way,” Ahluwalia admits. “As life changes, you listen to different things at different stages, so I thought about the visuals of what music sounds like when designing Symphony. “I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston was on the radio when I was born. So my mum finds that song really special and played it to me a lot. Sade’s Kiss Of Life was quite informative, and 50 Cent was also in there too. I remember getting one of his albums when I was 10 and thinking it was phenomenal. I also thought a lot about Prince, Queen, Freddie Mercury and even traditional Punjabi music.” Sound waves and musical notes inspired the lasered print on denim, jacquard patterns on mohair knitwear and track tops with accompanying shorts. Earthy shadows, reds and ochres were taken from the colours of album covers and illuminated cotton separates. Ahluwalia launched her eponymous fashion label in 2018 after graduating from the MA Menswear course at the University of Westminster, combining her dual Indian-Nigerian heritage and London roots, while also exploring the potential of vintage and surplus clothing. Around that time, Ahluwalia visited her father in Nigeria and says she noticed “paupers” wearing secondhand clothing from the UK. “I was really confused and started to ask questions about it,” she says – and it led to the publishing of her first book, Sweet Lassi, exploring the secondhand clothing industry in the Global South. “Finding ways for people to cherish their clothing forever has always been important to me,” Ahluwalia says. “Microsoft and I worked on a platform called Circulate in 2021, where we use AI to crowdsource and categorise people’s unwanted clothing. But now, I think consumers really see the value in learning about the things that happen behind the scenes of the clothes they are purchasing.” It’s why individual garments from the Symphony collection feature Digital ID technology — created and connected by the EON Product Cloud platform, powered by Microsoft Azure. Ahluwalia customers can scan with their mobile phones to discover their item’s unique story, including the design inspiration, production processes and origins of the sourced materials, helping consumers better understand how their clothes can be resold, reused and recycled. “This gives us the opportunity to really share exclusive content and information about a product. As a contemporary luxury brand selling items that are around £400, it’s important to provide our customers with more value and share the stories behind their clothes, whilst encouraging them to engage with sustainability.” But Ahluwalia doesn’t want to be pigeonholed as a sustainable designer. “I’m so much more than making the right choices,” she says. “I’m a designer first and foremost, who is also a creative director, filmmaker of Joy and Beloved, who works sustainably to explore and redefine the inherent beauty of blackness [and brownness] through an authentic lens. “The vision is that one day someone would be sitting on Ahluwalia in their front room, watching it, wearing it, smelling it and eating it. A whole 360. I would love Ahluwalia to be an example of how ideas that are not so rooted in Eurocentric values are expandable and amazing on a global stage for people to interact with in a global sense, like we see with many traditional European [fashion] houses.” So what’s next for the fashion house? “We’re doing a show at London Fashion Week in September, but I can’t tell you anything about it. The only thing that I can tell you is that we’re holding the show at the British Library, which I’m really excited about.” Discover more about Ahluwalia’s partnership with Microsoft and EON here: Ahluwalia Symphony Unlocked | Microsoft Unlocked. Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Experts reveal why you keep waking up at 4am, and how you can prevent it 10 last-minute gardening jobs before you go on holiday How often should you wash your bra?

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A mum who was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease aged 13 and had to have her colon removed eleven years later as it became pre-cancerous, giving her a “second chance at life”, is now an influencer bearing all to show it is possible to “live a beautiful, normal, happy life” with a stoma bag. Meghan Cary Brown, 31, a stay-at-home mum and content creator, from Charlottesville, Virginia, in the US, spent most of her teenage years in “so much pain” and had to “deal with bullying as well as being sick”. At 24, the mum of two, to Cora, three, and 23-month-old Colin, was told her colon was precancerous, causing her to “collapse on the floor crying”, just eight months after she had married Thomas Brown, now 31, a project manager. Meghan was in a “very dark place” and was “overcome with sadness” at the thought of getting cancer, so with some encouragement from her doctor, had her colon removed and had a stoma bag fitted. One year later she created an Instagram page, and more recently a TikTok, to share her story and raise awareness about life with a stoma bag with thousands of followers. Her postings include an open discussion of her experience, sharing bikini pictures and openly explaining she has worn “beautiful lacy wraps” for stoma bags in intimate moments with her partner, and it has “served as a healing mechanism” to make her realise she needs to “stop worrying so much” about the opinions of others. “I started posting as I wanted people to see that you can live this beautiful, normal, happy life with an ostomy bag, and when I was researching it I couldn’t see anyone my age talking about it,” she told PA Real Life “But the other reason was that it almost served as a healing mechanism for me – I think it was really powerful to just put myself out there on the internet. “Like, this year at the beach for the first time I wore a bikini with my bag on show and it felt amazing – I just thought life is too short.” After Meghan was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease she had to be home-schooled for a year because she “could not even get out of bed”. Meghan said: “My parents would find me lying on the bathroom floor because I could not get up and walk to the bed, I was in so much pain, and I had so much fatigue. “But it was also hard because since I was home-schooled, we didn’t have social media or anything, so no-one knew where I was, and there were lots of rumours spread about me – I had to deal with bullying as well as being sick.” Meghan was put on lots of different medications and had to deal with their side effects, such as giving her a “big moon face” as she retained water. She said: “I can remember having to get clothes three times my size and just breaking down crying. “That’s really difficult when you’re a teenage girl.” One year later Meghan was “in remission” for Crohn’s and was able to return to school. She continued taking “maintenance medication” which kept her symptoms at bay but, when she was in her first year of university, she began getting sick again. She explained: “I fell out of remission and it turned out I formed antibodies towards the drug I was taking so it was no longer working. “I had to inject myself at home while in college so it was really difficult.” Meghan also had to have regular hospital visits and aged 24, eight months after getting married, a routine colonoscopy showed that her colon was pre-cancerous. She said: “When they told me I had high-grade dysplasia deep within the tissue of my colon, and it was pre-cancerous, I was heartbroken. “I can remember standing in the kitchen when my doctor told me this over the phone, and it made me collapse on the floor crying because when you hear that word, cancerous, all you can think is that you’re going to die. “It was terrifying.” At the follow-up appointment Meghan was told she could have routine checks to make sure the cancer was not progressing or have her colon removed. She said: “I was adamant that I wasn’t going to have my colon removed – I thought my life would be over if I had that done. “I was in a very dark place and I was overcome with sadness. “But when I told my doctor my decision, he explained that I could have it removed now, or in a few years’ time I could be a mum with young children and have cancer. “That just put things into perspective for me – it made me realise it’s not just about me, so I decided to have it removed.” From that moment on, Meghan decided to live her life to the full. She said: “I decided I was going to look at this as my second chance at life – I had already been incredibly sick for 10 years – I told myself I was going to look at this as a positive thing. “Before, there were so many things I couldn’t do, like I had so much anxiety riding in a car because I couldn’t control my bowels and I was so worried that I wouldn’t be able to find a bathroom.” It took Meghan a few months to get used to having a stoma bag, and she explained what it is like day-to-day: “I change the whole system appliance every three to four days, and throughout the day I have no feeling. “I don’t have the urge to go to the bathroom, it just happens. “Throughout the day I’ll just go to the bathroom and empty my bag – I do this around six to eight times a day.” Meghan also had to adjust to having a stoma bag while being intimate with her husband. She said: “I wore beautiful lacy wraps made for people with bags, with a pocket to tuck it in, as it helped my body image because I felt pretty. “But honestly, now I’ve had my ostomy bag for almost seven years, we’re so comfortable with one another – if anything ever happens during intimacy, we just can laugh it off and move on.” One year after having her bag fitted she decided to create an Instagram account to share her story, where she now has more than 14,100 followers, and a further 19,400 followers on TikTok. Meghan said: “It really puts life into perspective and really made me realise life is so short. “I need to stop worrying so much about the opinions of others, or what other people are going to think – making my Instagram account made me realise this too. “I’m just so happy to be happy and healthy.” Read More Charlotte Dawson gives birth to her and Matt Sarsfield’s ‘rainbow baby’ How to sleep during hot weather, according to experts How to keep your pet safe and healthy during a heatwave Charlotte Dawson gives birth to her and Matt Sarsfield’s ‘rainbow baby’ How to sleep during hot weather, according to experts How to keep your pet safe and healthy during a heatwave