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From the hip-hop artist who scares Kanye West to the funniest teens on the telly and the launch of Tom Ford's must-have womenswear label, here are 20 highlights for the next season

1. Celebrity offspring

It's easy to be envious of second-generation celebrities. Not only do their genes mean that without even trying they look vaguely famous, but they also get an unfair leg-up when it comes to money and contacts. While most of them squander their good luck, there's a batch of famous names who are annoyingly impressive. Though both Julia and Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld, children of French Vogue editor Carine, have done the obligatory modelling stint, they've both now struck out on their own. Vladimir, 28, has launched Feedback, a company that stages pop-up art shows, big sister Julia, meanwhile, works as a consultant art director. Elsewhere, Holly Branson has dropped out of medical school to work as publisher on entertainment magazine Maverick for dad, Richard. Max Minghella, 24-year-old son of Anthony, is co-starring in David Fincher's film The Social Network, The founder of Facebook. David Bowie 'son Duncan Jones caused a stir with his directorial debut, The Moon , and his latest film, Source Code, is out next year. Connected and gifted. There really is nothing to like about these people.

2. Life in modern homes

Holiday lettings company Living Architecture allows people to experience what it is like to live, eat and sleep in a space designed by an outstanding architectural practice. Created by Alain de Botton, author of The Architecture of Happiness, the non-profit foundation has commissioned some of Europe's leading architects to design five houses in Suffolk, Kent, Norfolk and Devon, which will be available to rent year-round, with prices starting from £20 per person per night. The company sees itself as "an educational body, dedicated to enhancing the appreciation of architecture". The first two properties (both sleeping eight and available to rent from October) are the Balancing Barn in Suffolk and the Shingle House in Dungeness.

• living-architecture.co.uk

3. Daniel Sloss

Most teenagers spend their time making sure their mates don't laugh at them, but Daniel Sloss started his comedy career at 16. Four years on, the Fife prodigy, whose material riffs on computer games and teen angst, has just had his own TV pilot on BBC3. Now a festival regular from Latitude to Edinburgh, he's also performing a series of solo shows this September in London, Nottingham and Glasgow, as well as appearing on The Rob Brydon Show and Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow â€" expect to see a lot more of him.

• Daniel Sloss is at the Soho Theatre, London, from 20-25 September (danielsloss.co.uk)

4. Rory Kinnear

His features may not scream "leading man", but 32-year-old Rory Kinnear has been the worst-kept secret in acting for the past couple of years (the 2009 Olivier award really blew his cover) and his Hamlet at the National Theatre this October is set to be the hottest ticket since… well, since David Tennant was Hamlet. If you don't get to see him on stage, you'll scarcely be able to miss him on the box in the coming months: as well as his current role in Vexed, he's set to star in the BBC's new adaptation of Women in Love and also Mark Gatiss's comedy drama, First Men in the Moon.

• Hamlet is at the National Theatre from 1 October (nationaltheatre.org.uk)

5. Collected letters

The letter may not be the most cutting-edge of literary forms, but this autumn there is a triple reminder of the nosy pleasure of being able to read the epistles of others. Next month, Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin (Jonathan Cape, £25) is published. Then, in October, we have Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica (Faber, £22.50), a collection of the poet's missives to his lover of 40 years. And in November there's Saul Bellow: Letters (Viking, £22), featuring the master's correspondences with a range of fellow writers, from Faulkner to Amis.

6. Truly local food

Call it the Noma effect: the impact on luxury restaurants everywhere of the success of Copenhagen's Noma, This year called the world 'best . Its commitment to use only ingredients from within its region has forced ambitious chefs to rethink what "local" really means. Witness this year's biggest opening, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal at London's Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Food at his flagship restaurant, the Fat Duck, is littered with international ingredients, but his new venture will concentrate on British dishes "celebrating the very best of British produce".

• Dinner at Heston Blumenthal in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel , London, opens on 1 December

7. Bee keeping

Keeping chickens just isn't enough of a challenge any more: for back-garden farmers it's all about bees now. We're already coveting Omlet's beautiful Beehaus, and considering one of Zootrain's one-day introduction courses to beekeeping this September. Then there's Gloria Havenhand's book, Honey, to tell us how to plant a bee-friendly garden… But it's mostly so we can put on our best Eddie Izzard voice and yell: "I'm covered in bees!"

• Omlet.co.uk; zootrain.com; Honey by Gloria Havenhand (Kyle Cathie, £12.99)

8. Nicki Minaj

Kanye West is so in awe of fellow rapper Nicki Minaj's potential that he called the 25-year-old New Yorker "the scariest artist right now". A graduate of the performing arts school immortalised in Fame, Minaj has an outrageous sense of theatre that has made her stand out in a hip-hop world short on female artists offering more than straight sex appeal. Having stolen the show with guest spots on tracks by Mariah Carey, Usher and Christina Aguilera, she steps into the spotlight this autumn with her own much-anticipated debut album, Pink Friday.

• Pink Friday is released on 23 November

9. Tom Ford Women's Wear

10. Back to School "style

Knee socks with brogues, pleated woollen skirts and chunky cardis. Blazers and berets, duffle coats and prim Princess coats… Fashion's idea of school does seem to be based upon a model last seen in the 1960s, nonetheless it's charming. The easiest way into it? Buy a satchel.

• Satchel, £ 98, from Urban Outfitters (urbanoutfitters.co.uk )

11. The Inbetweeners

If you've never seen The Inbetweeners, you can get the gist from the two-and-a-half-minute catch-up film on E4's website. Four gawky schoolboys sit around a drab sixth-form common room talking about what they did in the summer holidays. Gangly dimwit Neil nearly cheated on his "wank girlfriend", Hayden Panettiere, with Fearne Cotton; cocky fantasist Jay claims to have been at a Thai kickboxing camp (but was actually at his nan's); lovestruck Simon is still mooning over the unattainable Carli; and posh nerd Will is worried about his exams, as last time he sat one he shat his pants. And no, not metaphorically.

This is the level of humour at which writers Iain Morris and Damon Beesley's very loosely autobiographical hit series operates. Nob jokes, bollock jokes, poo jokes, gay jokes and hitherto-unknown-to-us "clunge" jokes. It's not particularly sophisticated, but then nor are 17-year-old boys, or the predicaments they get into â€" projectile vomiting over a love interest's little brother, buying shoes off a tramp to get into a nightclub, being cuckolded by a French exchange student. It may be extreme, but as a show that conveys the mundanity, inanity and routine humiliation of teenage life â€" as opposed to the melodrama and perfect complexions in Skins â€" it couldn't be more painfully accurate.

The show has become such a success â€" it won the audience award at this year's TV Baftas and Bird picked up best actor at the 2009 British Comedy Awards â€" that a film version was almost inevitable (the funding is in place, Bird confirms, the organisation less so). In the meantime there's the third series that starts on E4 in September and, with the boys in the last year of school, the stakes are higher than ever. Will Simon pull Carli? Can Jay stop fibbing? Will Neil betray Hayden? Can Will get through his exams without changing his trousers? If you haven't seen The Inbetweeners, it could be time to take the clunge.

12. Shcherbaty smile

The sort of delightfully wonky smiles that make American dentists shudder have become fashion's most coveted accessory. While Georgia May Jagger graced her first Vogue cover this year, and Vanessa Paradis had her biggest cinema hit for years with Heartbreaker, some of the most-influential fashion houses have also fallen for the charm of the gap-toothed model. Lara Stone Dutch supermodel and wife of David Walliams, is the face of Calvin Klein this season; Australian Abbey Lee Kershaw stars in both Chanel and Mulberry ads; and American model Lindsey Wixson does the honours for Miu Miu.

13. Gaming Heaven

All the major video game consoles began intriguing additions in the next 6 months. First up PlayStation Move the controller motion sensor games similar to Nintendo Wii, from September this year. November sees the launch Kinect for Xbox 360 , which lets gamers do away with a controller altogether, playing solely through gestures and spoken commands. You'll have to wait until March 2011 for the Nintendo 3DS, but this new portable console promises 3D effects without the need for special glasses. Nintendogs will never be the same again.

14. Jaime Hayon's wire chair

Hayon has long been the superstar of industrial design, but this September sees the launch of his first complete furniture range for the UK-based Sé (se-london.com). Witty and unusual â€" but not too witty or unusual â€" our favourite is his wiry armchair.

15. Sarah Silverman

At age 2, Sarah Silverman makes her family laugh by saying the word "to fuck". It 's been funny for almost 40 years, but it' s only now, after the publication of her autobiography, bedwetter, and its main role in the film, Sarah Polley 'Take this waltz that Britain is really ready to pay attention .

To recap, Silverman's the lady who dresses like a teenage boy and does jokes such as: "I don't care if you think I'm a racist. I just want you to think I'm thin." She's the comedian whose sitcom, the Sarah Silverman Program, featured her awkward one-night stand with God. She's the woman who, as a bedwetting teenager suffered depression so bad she dropped out of school for a year and took 16 Xanax a day. "It happened as fast as a cloud covering the sun," she writes in The Bedwetter. At 13, as she sat in her therapist's waiting room, his colleague rushed in screaming that he'd hanged himself. "There needs to be some protocol for how we tell depressed teenage girls that their shrinks have killed themselves," she says. At 22, she wrote for US show Saturday Night Live. At 26, she was acting in Seinfeld. In 2008, her musical video message for then-boyfriend, talkshow host Jimmy Kimmel, went viral. And with "I'm Fucking Matt Damon", suddenly, she was famous.

Her humour unwraps taboos using indie guitar and comments about her beloved Jewish family. She's become one of the most successful comedians in America. And this autumn, she'll finally make her mark over here.

Bedwetter: Stories of courage, redemption and the Pea is out next week. Take This Waltz (which Silverman opens with the line, "I look in the mirror, and I wanna fuck myself") opens early next year

16. Electric family cars

This Wednesday, online ordering starts for the Nissan Leaf, one of the most radical developments in motoring in recent years. The car will cost £23,990 and production is set to begin in November in Sunderland. From the outside it may not look particularly futuristic, but what lies beneath is truly ground-breaking â€" it is the world's first mass-production all-electric family car. An eight-hour charge will give you about 100 miles of motoring and a top speed of 90mph, but there's no tax, no fuel, no emissions, no sound and virtually no cost.

17. Camouflage nails

As nail-watchers know, where Chanel leads other varnishes follow. This autumn, it's producing a limited-edition collection of camouflage shades. Star manicurist Sophy Robson will be creating camo designs at the Chanel store for Vogue's Fashion's Night Out, and sees the trend exploding in time for winter. "I guess it's all part of the 90s revival," she says.

• Fashion's Night Out is on 8 September (sophyrobson.com)

18. Futuristic hotels in Rajasthan

"We are seeing Indian hotels experimenting with some really exciting modern architecture," says Mandy Nickerson of Bales Worldwide. There 'hotel Devi Ratn in Jaipur (deviresorts.in / deviratn ); Mihirgarh in the desert near Jodhpur (mihirgarh.com ); and the Raas, situated within the city walls of Jodhpur (raasjodhpur.com), which is plush new build designed to resemble forts. "They're a far cry from the old-school colonial hotels of yesteryear," she says.

19. A Sauvage

The buzz around 27-year-old tailor Adrien Sauvage started back in February when GQ magazine started tweeting about him. This autumn sees the launch of his label, A Sauvage, with debut collection "This is Not a Suit" â€" it's full of unfussy, beautifully cut suits and blazers. His designs bear out the idea behind the collection: this is not a suit, it's a way of life.

• A Sauvage from matchesfashion.com

20. Bill Granger

He's the poster boy for brunch and the man the New York Times christened the "egg master of Sydney". But for a long time restaurateur and food writer Bill Granger was someone we Brits could only admire from his luscious home-style cookbooks, with their pleasingly achievable recipes. But now he's over here, living in London, with his wife and business partner, Natalie, and their three girls, Edie, Ines and Bunny.

So why the big move? "I think it was a bit of a midlife crisis thing," says Granger. "Most people with growing families move to the country â€" we decided to move to one of the busiest cities in the world." He also counts London's booming foodie scene as a reason: "It feels like a really exciting time for restaurants, particularly in the capital, and food producers in the UK. I wanted to spend some time here and get a real feeling of what was happening before I strode in and started doing my own thing."

Granger feels he is turning over a new leaf with the move. "I've tried to reconnect with my creative side," he says. "I've been cooking more instinctively again." His new book, Bill's Basics, is a reflection of this. It's a one-stop manual of all the unfussy, much-loved recipes he has become famous for. He is also making a TV series and has plans to open his own restaurant in London soon.

With this last project he wants to go back to basics, too. "I'd like to open a little kitchen and dining room, somewhere that's very pared down and not over-designed. I want that excitement of opening somewhere that's close to my heart again, somewhere I feel really passionate about." He couldn't have chosen a better place to do it.

• Bill's Basics(Quadrille, £ 25), on September 3, Bill Granger 'new show will be at the Good Food Channel in the autumn

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