I trawled the streets of Bondi looking for someone who knew how to wear that suburb, and after an hour in heels I was ready to give up - and then I saw her. Simple and yet to the point, she had arranged the perfect meeting between casual and chic...


Lisa Nguyen, 22, Media & PR rep for Wayne Cooper.

scarf: handmade.
jeans: Lee.
sandals: Givenchy.
earrings: Chanel.
sunnies: Dolce & Gabbana.


words: Seema Duggal
photo: Bobby Reynolds

Crusoe’s Daughter
by Jane Gardam

You know how when you’re 15, everything is SO important? You don’t just read a book; you fall madly, passionately and desperately in love with a book. This is a time defined by periods, breasts, boys and BFFs – a time when a book about a young girl learning about sexuality hits the mark exactly. Although if I’m honest, we may be past 15, but it’s STILL all about periods, breasts, boys and BFFs. It’s just that now, there are cocktails involved, the boys have facial hair and the panic about periods is NOT getting them. But I digress.

Jane Gardam’s “Crusoe’s Daughter” is the story of Polly Flint, an intelligent but isolated girl at that clichéd “verge of womanhood”. I read it at exactly that same moment in my life; that time when the body is the enemy.

“I found that blood was pouring all down my legs. . . . Aunt Mary … drew herself up to the height of the ceiling and said, 'I shall get Frances,' and vanished, and I stood drunk and shaking.”

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Morning, why do you weave

Shadow amongst the light

with trickery up your sleeve?

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Prepare yourself for some of the best Thai food in Sydney. At Surry Hills' Spice I Am, you will be tempted to order everything because as you look around you, it will all look so pretty and exciting. But restrain yourself, I beg of you! Two dishes in and you will start to feel like Violet Beauregarde, bursting at your rotund blueberry seams. Save it for another visit.

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With a career that spans the pages of Vogue right through to advertising campaigns for the likes of Absolut, photographer Steven Chee is the man behind the lens of some of Australia’s best editorial. He has the ability to extract both the beauty and the mystery in his subjects, and his picture-perfect eye evokes a sense of transportation in the viewer, making the dreamlike imagery seem closer than reality. From the elegant to the provocative, Steven Chee captures each and every moment just as it should be.

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Situated somewhere between performance and political activism lies Version 1.0, a Sydney theatre company that casually skips over the line dividing art and current events. Whereas most visual stimulation taps into our psyche and greater sociology, Version 1.0 creates shows that present a side of the story which you won’t hear from the newsreaders.

Its latest piece is called This Kind of Ruckus, a drama that explores the themes of gender, power, control and violence, and the aftertaste of remorse in the fight-make-up-break-up cycle lurking within dysfunctional relationships. Counselling, structured gender roles and stuffed animals and flowers offered as inadequate apologies are blended with commentary on the recent high profile sexual assault scandals involving the nation’s rugby league players to create a performance which is always relevant, but even more so today.

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