How Olivier Rousteing has turned a small, classic French couturier into the favourite fashion house of Kim Kardashian and Rihanna

Tech companies use the insights of behaviour design to keep us returning to their products. But some of the psychologists who developed the science of persuasion are worried about how it is being used

Two hundred outfits, four days in Naples, several hundred super-rich clients and Sophia Loren: Luke Leitch goes inside Alta Moda, Dolce & Gabbana’s attempt to disrupt the world of couture

Millions of Chinese children have been left behind in the countryside by parents drawn to the cities in search of employment. Alec Ash travelled to a remote village in the mountains of Guizhou to meet some of the victims of rapid development

How does an autocratic regime divert attention abroad from its human-rights record and discourage the opposition at home? In the case of Azerbaijan, through lavish extravaganzas and high-end lobbying

The world’s most famous school aspires to become an agent of social change; but, as old boy Christopher de Bellaigue learns when he goes back, it is also an increasingly effective way for the global elite to give its offspring an expensive leg up in life

Slash fiction – a branch of fan fiction that imagines straight heroes getting together – is strangely popular among straight women. Helen Joyce examines the light it sheds on female sexuality

When he took the Nairobi-Mombasa train, Daniel Knowles saw a side of Kenya that is disappearing – which, in some ways, is just as well

Alexandra Suich meets Lyft’s co-founder, John Zimmer, and asks why Silicon Valley is so obsessed with winning

Wolves are breeding rapidly across Europe. In central Greece, Adam Nicolson finds shepherds and conservationists at odds over how to deal with their incursions