THE PURSUIT OF EASE BY GRACE O'NEILL AND HOLLY GIBSON
For the last two years we haven’t been in the throes of war, but at times it’s felt close. The idea that in amongst that chaos we should still spend time seeking out pleasure for pleasure’s sake
LAST ONES STANDING BY DAN ROBERTS AND ANNA VIDOVIĆ
Fast fashion is not sustainable. In truth, our perpetual pursuit of the new is about as sustainable as coal. However, many of us are using this knowledge to make more virtuous choices about how and where we shop. Our future is hardly bleak or unexciting. Quite the opposite. It is hopeful. It is honest and full of integrity.
MIND YOURSELF BY JACQUI LEWIS
A key aspect of evolution relevant to our modern world and the current digital landscape is the often missed art of being present. Our conditioning in modern society comes from workaholics addicted to social media, who fail to prioritise their emotional, physical and spiritual health. However, we can individually change this, increasing our capacity for clarity, creativity and joy, and finding a more sustainable way of being and doing.
LOST ROMANCE BY JAMIE HEATH, ADY NESHODA AND ISABELLE TRUMAN
‘90s nostalgia is more prominent than ever. But, more often than not, rewatching the rom-coms that permeated our culture in our most formative years leaves a sour taste in the mouth. Stories matter—and the way they’re told and who’s telling them influences our society more than we realise.
EN ARRIÈRE, EN AVANT- A PROJECT WITH THE AUSTRALIAN BALLET AND CHANEL
With exclusive access to the company’s archives—established with the assistance of Chanel—Side-Note and Darren McDonald travel through the last six decades of The Australian Ballet.
A BROKEN SYSTEM BY ISABELLE TRUMAN
If a young woman isn’t safe in the very building created to house those entrusted to keep young women like her safe, it’s clear there’s a huge systemic problem. Now that Brittany Higgins has opened up the Me Too conversation in Australia, where do we go from here?
PEOPLE OF NOTE: Gretta Ray
To call Gretta Ray’s career charmed would do a disservice to the years of effort she has exerted in pursuit of her goal. But magic? Well, there’s a certain dose of that present, a dash of pixie dust she carries around on her shoulder and let’s find its way into every encounter.
PEOPLE OF NOTE: Chanel Contos
Chanel Contos is taking on Australia’s antiquated approach to consent education—and winning. Side-Note catches up with a true woman of note.
PAS DE DEUX – A PROJECT WITH CHANEL BY DARREN MCDONALD AND GRACE O’NEILL
In celebration of Chanel’s living heritage partnership with the Australian Ballet, Side-Note joins forces with prima ballerina Amber Scott and photographer Darren McDonald.
RETURN TO COUNTRY BY CHARLEE FRASER AND NICOLE BENTLEY
Model and First Nation Fashion + Design ambassador Charlee Fraser discusses her poignant, transformative journey of cultural discovery.
WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE BY ISABELLE TRUMAN
When it comes to the way we view and respond to cases of violence against women, our response is overwhelmingly influenced by the way the story is told to us through media and the language used to describe the occurrence. For too long, words have discretely shifted the blame from the perpetrator onto the victim. But used correctly, words can be a political force.
MALLORCAN YOUTH CULTURE BY BEN MORRIS
Ben Morris documents Mallorcan youth culture, exploring with Nina Cohen, what it is like growing up in and being in that stage of life where all ideas are exciting and possibilities are endless, on an island with such a schizophrenic personality.
PEOPLE OF NOTE: Gabrielle Penfold in partnership with Emma Lewisham
A modern woman in many ways (Penfold’s break, and subsequent momentum has been helped along by social media), the 27 year old is quick to affirm her reverence for tradition, preferring to sell her work by way of galleries rather than DM’s. Instagram has proved a seminal and ongoing asset to her commercial success, and yet, Penfold is adamant “I don’t want to be an influencer, I want to be an artist.”
SEX, LIES, AND RED TAPE BY GRACE O’NEILL
Instagram’s increasingly strict “community guidelines” have been slowly pushing sex workers and sex educators off its platform. It’s the latest Silicon Valley scandal to call into question who gets to decide which voices we see and hear online.
PEOPLE OF NOTE: Nathalie Morris and Carlos Sanson Jr
When we catch Nathalie Morris and Carlos Sanson—breakout stars of the breakout Australian dramedy Bump—they’re on the Pacific Highway, headed back from a four-day short film shoot on New South Wales’ South Coast. In person, the pair mirror the same easy chemistry that has made Bump such a blockbuster success. The series—a Stan original created by Australian TV veteran Claudia Karvan—broke viewing records within days of its January release. It was quickly renewed for a second season. The story hinges around a ‘will-they won’t-they’ love story between teenagers Oly and Santi (Morris and Sanson), who are in their final year of high school when their lives are upended by Oly’s cryptic pregnant—a phenomena in which women don’t know they are pregnant until they give birth.
STAND FOR SOMETHING – ZIGGY RAMO BY VANESSA SWEDÉRUS, RHYS RIPPER AND GRACE O’NEILL
Ziggy Ramo recorded his year-defining album, Black Thoughts, in 2015 — but he held on to it for five years, told by the music industry that an Australian public so in denial about their own racist past (and present) couldn’t handle its contents. On May 25th, as a global race reckoning began to take shape, he uploaded the album in full —it’s gone on to be dubbed the most important Australian album of 2020. Grace O'Neill spends an hour in conversation with the magnanimous rapper.
THE SOCIAL DILEMMA – YAN YAN CHAN BY PIERRE TOUSSAINT & GRACE O’NEILL
Social media gets a bad rap these days. Justifiably so, for anyone who has seen The Social Dilemma and then fallen into a dark hole of existential despair, convinced Facebook is slowly melting our minds and chipping away at the foundations of modern democracy. But our ‘social media = bad’ conversations tend to lack a little nuance. Grace O'Neill talks to Sydney Creative and Digital Influencer, Yan Yan Chan on the evolving dynamic that is social media.
THE LOST ART OF DIALOGUE BY GRACE O’NEILL
I still believe that the only way to real progress is to effectively out-argue the people we disagree with; I believe that treating straight white men as if they’re ‘the enemy’ is childish and unhelpful and I believe that many complicated social issues have been reduced to opaque good/bad binaries, and that this is driving people further along the extremes of the political spectrum. Grace O'Neill considers American politics, now.
HOME GROWN BY KELLY GEDDES AND LAURA AGNEW
“Prosperity is not a thing to grab, but an idea to cultivate; a mindset and a way of life”, Laura Agnew maps her path to Permaculture.
STATELESS BY NADINE VON COHEN
Imagine you’re a pregnant refugee with chronic pain and little to no English. You’ve spent the last seven years in a prison camp and all you know of Australia is the inside of a detention centre. Writer and refugee advocate, Nadine Von Cohen documents who she's fighting for.
STILLNESS IN MOTION BY ISAAC BROWN & GRACE O'NEILL
Grace O'Neill talks to Australian model, Agi Akur on the changing pace of her profession.
THE BEST OF MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Curated by Publicist and Producer, Jess Carrera, SIDE-NOTE wraps up the best of MIFF 68½, the digital iteration of Melbourne's acclaimed International Film Festival.
I HAVE MEASURED OUT MY LIFE WITH COFFEE SPOONS BY VICTORIA PEARSON AND ANNA POGOSSOVA
There is a semi-deflated black orb gathering dust on a shelf in my home that taunts me whenever it veers into my eyeline. Its pearlescent sheen and accompanying yoga mat are silent and still, but may as well be shrieking and shaking with the force at which I’m confronted by their daily cry: We have been abandoned. Victoria Pearson considers how history will remember our time.
SENSE OF AN ENDING BY GRACE O’NEILL
Even for women who hadn’t bought a magazine in years – and of those, we know, there are many – there was a sense of something ending on Tuesday. In one deft manoeuver three of the final stalwarts of the Australian fashion magazine landscape were wiped out. Harper’s BAZAAR, ELLE, InStyle. Gone, gone, gone. Grace O’Neill laments our loss.
ESSENTIAL WORK BY DEREK HENDERSON & GRACE O’NEILL
If there’s any kind of creative legacy that marks this moment we’re in, we hope it’s this one: a return to something delicate, understated and familiar.
A Place To Call Home by Michael Brunt
Farmland hugs the cliffs that wrap and wind their way around the impending shore. Your nostrils are greeted with the distinct, rare blend of cow manure and sun-dried seaweed. The breeze picks up and you know you’re home. Photographer Michael Brunt explores the blueprint of identity in 'A Place To Call Home'.
MADE UP BY DEREK HENDERSON AND MATILDA DODS
Make up, and the beauty industry when subtracted from narratives of both mass consumerism, and oppressive beauty standards, contains the potential for rebellious lightheartedness. The personal is political, but that does not mean that either can’t be fun. The new identity of the beauty industry is fun, embracing its inherent frivolity and its revolutionary potential as a political force.
THE TIME BEFORE BY PETER VAN ALPHEN
There is nothing like the sweet, latent promise of good times; the tickle of butterflies in your stomach, the extravagant ideas about where the evening will take you, or with whom.
SHE’S LIKE THE WIND BY DIVYA BALA AND LEVON BAIRD
Once, summer meant endless feverish days bookended by the briefest winks of velvet night; a humming cicada song over a metronomic percussion of ice cubes against sweating glass; salt waves that washed overhead like a pulse and the echo of heat from every side and from below.
IN HONOUR OF UNCELEBRATED LAST TIMES BY LAUREN BRUMLEY
When habits vary or trends fade, we’re not always aware of the change. Tastes may shift, but there is still a finality to them. We just may not notice the transition.