Mutton chops are back and everyone's drinking sloe gin

Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi — Actor Jacob Elordi and a contestant on the most recent season of 'The Traitors' are bringing back sideburns. Now, they're all over the tube

(Image credit: Warner Bros.)

One of my favourite players in the latest season of The Traitors was James, a gardener from Dorset whose countless different theories about who the culprits might be eventually caught up with him when he was (spoiler alert) banished right before the final. James may have been wrong 99% of the time, but that didn't matter. So were most of the Faithfuls, and he at least made up for his shortcomings with buckets of personality.

Another thing I adored about James was the extraordinary pair of sideburns which he sported. Perhaps it's a case of the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon (also known as frequency illusion), but I have since noticed plenty of chaps sporting mutton chops on the tube. 'What's happening?' I wondered. 'Are men secretly talking among themselves and deciding to grow out their sideburns? Going to their barbers and asking for their beards to be trimmed below the jawline, only? Have I missed the memo? Is this what we are doing now? Wait, is Harry Styles doing it?'

Jacob Elordi smoking a pipe in Wuthering Heights — Emily Brontë's brooding, mysterious Heathcliff comes to life again on February 13. Mutton chops at the ready...

If there is, indeed, a source for the return of the oft-maligned facial hair — much as I love James, I sincerely doubt it's him — the finger turns instead to Australia's sweetheart, Jacob Elordi, whose mutton chops will be blown up to the size of several human heads for those lucky enough to see the new Wuthering Heights at the IMAX in three weeks' time. He's since shaved them off for day-to-day life and a spate of fashion editorials, but anyone going to the cinema at the minute (with the BAFTAs beckoning, many are) is seeing him in all his Heathcliff-ian glory before the movie has even come out. And the sideburns... well, they are quite something.

There they are, long, proud and imposing, quivering as Elordi delivers his lines in a brooding northern accent on the Yorkshire moors. Mutton chops may have been too much for Bridget Jones ('I seriously believe you should rethink the length of your sideburns,' she told Mark Darcy in 2001) but for those of us who remember watching 1995's Pride and Prejudice, their allure — as sported by that particular tale's very own Darcy — will always live on.

Abundant purple sloes on a blackthorn in the autumn in the New Forest — Life in the sloe lane: As Dry January tapers off, treat yourself to sloe gin

‘Look at this,’ said my friend Patrick the other week, thrusting his phone under my nose. ‘I can’t see what you’re showing me, Pat. Stop waving it around. Calm down!’ It was a picture of the menu at Rochelle Canteen in Shoreditch. ‘Went with the fam,’ Pat mooed. ‘But look. Look here.’ There, at the top of the page where they list the drinks for the day, were our four favourite words in the English language. ‘Oh my,’ I replied. ‘How many did you have?’

Sloe gin and tonic has become the drink of the season. The berries enjoyed a bumper harvest last year, so it’s no surprise they are more abundant and popular than ever. Achieved by infusing classic gin with sugar and sloes in a sealed jar, the mixture is best paired with a lemon or elderflower tonic. If you’ve not yet broken your Dry January, let this be the drink that tempts you.

This feature originally appeared in the January 21, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.

Will Hosie is Country Life's Lifestyle Editor and a contributor to A Rabbit's Foot and Semaine. He also edits the Substack @gauchemagazine. He not so secretly thinks Stanely Tucci should've won an Oscar for his role in The Devil Wears Prada.