frankie Magazine Issue 102 - Jul/Aug 2021

We’ve known this since we were wee ones, poring over the Scholastic Book Club catalogue for the perfect after-school reading material. Would we join Kristy, Mary Anne, Claudia and co. on their adventures in child-rearing and early entrepreneurship, or get spooked by ghostly next-door neighbours and malevolent dummies come to life? Perhaps an excursion through the human bloodstream would be more intriguing, or learning the history of the Terrible Tudors and Groovy Greeks. Immersing ourselves in a curious new world is still one of the top ways we get our kicks (also up there: digging into a fresh jar of peanut butter and whacking on some trackies after a long day in stiff jeans), and we have endless appreciation for the imaginative minds who dream them into being. That’s why we…

Dearest frankie, Deirdre Fidge nailed it: the time IS now. In my late teens/early 20s, having discovered adulthood and independence (and a pay cheque), I had a taste for all things expensive. “Champagne-drinker on a beer budget,” my mum often scoffed at me. It all changed at 22 with one dress. It was beautiful, short, sexy and made of a gold, slinky material. I wore it once to a New Year’s Eve party, got it dry-cleaned and ever so carefully tucked it in my wardrobe, still in the plastic and safe for some other ‘special occasion’. A year or so later I pulled it out, having completely forgotten about it. Alas, the moisture generated by the plastic had caused the material to break down, and all the glitzy gold had…

kowtow’s winter duds Wellington label Kowtow has made a promise: to leave the planet in the best shape they can. That’s why their winter ’21 collection is made entirely of fairtrade organic cotton. With the glory of mother nature and explorers like Sir Edmund Hilary and Junko Tabei in mind, they’ve whipped up a wardrobe of bold and textured threads, perfect for crossing rugged terrains or simply flouncing around in a flower-filled garden. To see more quilted vests, puffed sleeves and pleated skirts, head to au.kowtowclothing.com bianca mavrick jewels It’s official: we have the hots for these glossy chain-link bracelets from Brisbane lady Bianca Mavrick. It’s a little more than a crush – we’re just about ready to whack them on a poster and blu-tack them to the wall so we can gaze…

Someone once said “nothing good ever happens after midnight”, but I’m going to call bullshit on that and revise it to 9pm (potentially even 8pm in winter). At exactly that time, my body begins shutting down for the night like an overloaded browser with 100 tabs open. If I’m at a dinner, I start to tune out of conversations, focusing instead on stuffing my face with roast potatoes to prevent my snoozy head from falling onto someone’s shoulder. If I’m at a party, I try to dance it off (even though my limbs feel like marble table legs), until I realise I’m solo-swaying in an empty room. If I’m at a gig, I rest my eyes… just for a bit… until BAM! The encore is over and I’m being swept…

If every shampoo commercial is to be trusted, frizz is the single greatest enemy of good hair. When Ella Benore Rowe worked in salons, the message was the same. “The attitude towards curly, thick and coarser hair was, ‘It’s too boofy! It’s too frizzy! Cut the weight out of it!’” she says. “There was a de-frizz message everywhere you turned.” As the proud child of an Anglo-Australian dad and Papua New Guinean mum, Ella’s tresses are a mixture of both her parents’ locks: she has two or three different curl patterns, both wavy and straight sections and – you guessed it – a fair bit of frizz. For a long time, Ella has railed against the notion that her natural hair is unattractive. She grew up in an affirming home environment…

No, I will not speak up. I am a mumbler. This isn’t something I would have specifically called myself, but it’s certainly something I’ve been called by others. Often. Including as part of my wife’s impression of me, which was as illuminating as it was entirely unrequested and impossible to erase from my memory. Apparently I spend a lot of my day walking around the kitchen, mumbling my way through an invisible to-do list and admonishing myself for every task left undone. But is mumbling so bad? Sure, it’s infuriating for anyone having a conversation with me, but it’s already infuriating to have a conversation with me, so that’s just a matter of scale. I suppose I can understand why people don’t like mumbling, though. If we’re talking, you would probably like…