The majority of Love Island relationships are fairly fleeting. This is news to nobody.
That sobering flight back to the UK and first week of press rounds in London are make or break hurdles in most Love Island relationships, and the majority trip, fall, and never get back up again. That goes for the platonic Love Island relationships, too, by the way. Besties inside the villa doesn't necessarily mean besties outside the villa. Sometimes a holiday bromance is just a holiday bromance, broski.
That appears to be the case for Love Island 2023 villa besties, winner Jess Harding and 'Messy' Mitch Taylor. Despite those bizarre few days where Mitch tried to explore something romantic with Jess – sometime in between Molly Marsh and Abi Moores / Ella Barnes (wow, this lad really had a thing for blondes this summer, didn't he?) – the pair were inseparable OG besties for almost two months inside the Majorcan villa. They had each other's backs in rows and they called each other out where necessary. That's better than most couples inside that gaff.
But since leaving the villa the pair haven't really appeared on one another Instagram pages – which is always a bit of a red flag in our book.
We do know that as well as being close with Mitch, Jess's other LI bestie was, of course, Mitch's villa gf Ella. Naturally, we couldn't help put two and two together. Did Mitch and Ella's recent split announcement have something to do with why these villa besties drifted? After all, Jess and Ella did go on holiday to Marbella with each other just days after the split was made public knowledge.
Closer online recently caught up with the Love Island queen following the announcement of her upcoming In The Style collection, where as well as giving us a few teasers re her new "summer party vibes" range, she spilled the tea on how her fave Love Island boy (other than Sammy Root, obvs) was doing in the weeks since the show wrapped – and it's safe to say that things have changed.
A transparent Jess exclusively revealed, "Obviously, I was really close with Mitch in the villa, I’ve not really spoken to him since coming out – a lot.
"He speaks to Sammy a lot, he speaks in the boys’ group chat, but he’s all good. Like, no hard feelings, just when you come out, you’re so busy. It’s hard to be messaging someone 24/7 and balancing it is difficult."
We also took the opportunity to ask the Love Island winner how Mitch's ex Ella was doing following the break-up. With a positive shift in tone, she revealed, "Yeah, do you know what, she’s good. I think when you do that experience with someone, you come out together, so I just think it’s more so the fact like sometimes it’s harder, do you know what I mean? But she has to, going forward, go through that on her own. But I think she’s absolutely fine – we went to Marbella on the weekend. It was the girls’ holiday you need after a break-up. Bless her. She’s on cloud nine."
We're getting whiffs of girl code in these answers – and fair. There's a reason they don't call him 'Neat and Tidy' Mitch, you know.
Jess's In The Style collection is set for release in October 2023.