A "friendship blind date" over a meal could be a new way to make friends. VCG

Meals for mates

In a world where swiping left and right on your phone is the norm for making connections, two students from Glasgow, UK, chose to ditch the algorithms and take a more traditional approach: they created a society focused on bringing people together over shared meals.

The result? "Dinner with a Stranger", an initiative that quickly gained popularity, attracting over 200 eager participants within its first month.

The idea was born out of a simple coffee outing between two young women, 21-year-old Juliette Sartori and 22-year-old Mary Yiorkadji, who, despite being surrounded by people, found themselves struggling with loneliness.

Inspired by their own conversation, they decided to organize similar meetups, uniting young people facing the same issue of loneliness and fostering friendships in the cozy ambiance of restaurants.

Unlike mainstream platforms that rely on algorithm-based matching, this initiative adds a personal touch: participants complete a personality quiz that covers topics like favorite movies, dream vacation destinations, and go-to karaoke songs.

And it works. For example, Vanya, 19, and Hannah, 20, both second-year students at Glasgow, crossed paths through "Dinner with a Stranger". Since being paired up in December 2024, they've formed a strong bond, becoming best friends and later roommates.

"It's more of a modern way of making friends," Sartori said in an interview with the BBC. "It's taking the idea of meeting someone online from a dating website and turning it into friendships by seeing how well you mesh with that person."

Soft colors like sage green are commonly featured in spring outfits. VCG

Springtime palette

With the arrival of spring, flowers bloom in soft pink hues, brightening cities with a vibrant burst of color. Fashion brands are drawing inspiration from nature's palette, incorporating the season's colors into their collections.

The rise of the "light spring" aesthetic has captured the imagination of young people, amassing over 100 million views on China's lifestyle-sharing platform Xiaohongshu (RedNote) under the hashtag "light spring outfit". This trend, spanning everything from hair colors to clothing, represents a fresh and rejuvenating approach to style.

In stark contrast to autumn's cozy "Maillard style", which features warm, earthy tones like caramel and coffee, the light spring trend embraces soft pastels such as powder pink, sage green, and pistachio white. This harmonious mix of colors creates a visual symphony of elegance and tranquility that mirrors the awakening of spring.

The origins of the light spring fashion can be traced back to the seasonal color theory popularized by Carole Jackson in her bestselling book Color Me Beautiful, published in the 1980s.

Jackson's exploration of the color palettes associated with the four seasons has become a guiding principle for selecting colors in makeup, clothing, and accessories.