Table of contents for Issue 24 in renegade COLLECTIVE

JESSICA STONES, PR & EVENTS MANAGER I CAN’T START MY DAY WITHOUT… a strong latte, aka my best friend. MY GUILTY PLEASURE IS… letting my dog Pickle snuggle in bed with me (despite how much my husband objects). THIS YEAR, I’M DETERMINED TO… make sure every person in Australia knows of The Collective. OCCASIONAL IN-HOUSE POOCH WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE THING ABOUT COLLECTIVE HQ? I love it when my pal Benny is in the office too – we play and play and annoy the team while they’re working. WHEN JESS (AKA MUM) IS AT THE OFFICE, WHAT DO YOU GET UP TO AT HOME…? I get into my night robe, lay by the heater and sleep all day. WE KNOW YOU ATE LISA’S LUNCH… ON TWO OCCASIONS. ANYTHING TO SAY FOR…

Every solo traveller knows the tone. It’s often one of pure shock, mixed with concern and a pinch of sadness thrown in for good measure. “A table for one?!” the maître d’ asks, face puzzled. If you somehow make it past the gatekeeper and, shock horror, to a table of your own, too often you’re treated not just to your meal but also an array of sympathetic looks from fellow diners who constantly glance over, thinking your companion must be stuck in one hell of a traffic jam. But there’s no shame in getting your grub on alone according to Dutch initiative EENMAAL, which has created the world’s first one-person restaurant. “Most people do not like [eating alone], sometimes they feel embarrassed or other diners are staring at you,” says…

It’s Tuesday night and, in the name of research, I’m watching YouTube videos of Marianne Williamson on repeat. What on earth do you ask the woman who Oprah herself turns to for spiritual counsel? Will my questions be profound enough? Just as the fears of inadequacy begin to run riot through my mind, the words Marianne has arguably become most famous for pop into my inbox: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” Penned in her 1992 New York Times bestseller, these two lines are commonly misattributed to Nelson Mandela and, when I bring it up the next morning, Marianne doesn’t seem too fazed, implying she’s merely a portal for someone’s (or something’s) much higher message, anyway. (Despite…

noun 1. A UNIQUE INDIVIDUAL, brand, animal or subject that has a LARGE FOLLOWING and recognition throughout social media. 2. An individual who frequently views SOCIAL MEDIA and scrolls through posts and images at a HIGH RATE. There’s a new breed of celebrity and it came about in an instant. Photographer Kristian Taylor-Wood is lending an eye to a group of influential, offbeat social media stars who are using their popularity in very different ways. “As technology and the digital era become more and more integrated into our everyday life, we are finding our inspiration and entertainment from new sources,” he says. Fresh to the hall (or feed) of fame… dj tigerlily WHO: Dara Hayes WHAT: Half-DJ, halfmermaid, making a splash in the EDM scene BACKSTORY: This Sydneybased lady of…

SASHA WHITE CO-FOUNDER, MR & MRS WHITE ‘I DECIDED OUR KIDS WOULD BE FRONT AND CENTRE OF OUR BUSINESS’ I’m very blessed to run a business alongside my husband – designing and making handmade furniture and soft furnishings. Our business has always been about family and our girls, Selah (3 years old) and Oak (8 months), have gone on that journey with us. We had a realisation early on that we always wanted our kids to feel part of it and not separate to it. The furniture and design industry can be very exclusive and superficial, filled with cold and unwelcoming showrooms topped with unfriendly staff. We wanted to do things differently. From the early days of moving into our first showroom we always brought Selah along. Now with two…

Meet Katherine Sabbath, Heisenberg of the sugar-sphere. Highschool teacher by day, sweet sorceress by night, this self-confessed “bake-aholic” creates the craziest of cakes for her beloveds (and since last year, a good chunk of her home city of Sydney), sharing her designs with an 163k-strong, utterly tantalised following with a video series and cookbook on the horizon. All thanks to her hobby and the power of a ‘like’. We caught a whiff of what’s cooking… DID YOU EVER DREAM OF MAKING A CAREER OUT OF DESSERTS? Actually, not at all! I always thought I’d be a high-school teacher until the end of my days. It wasn’t until I started sharing my work with others and the wider Instagram audience that I realised there was a huge market of creatives out…

Noted industrial designer Raymond Loewy called the contour Coke bottle the “perfect liquid wrapper.” “Pleasing to the hand, cold to the touch and in doing what it did – which was to deliver a beverage – it did it perfectly,” adds Coca-Cola Director of Heritage Communications Ted Ryan down the line from Coke headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. Ted is heavily involved with the company’s celebrations of the bottle that has played a significant role in defining 20th and 21stcentury design and popular culture. “The bottle has been celebrated in art, music and advertising,” he says excitedly, before zeroing in on artist Andy Warhol. “He was looking for a mass-produced item that meant something to everybody, to make his art mean something to everybody.” While Warhol is probably the most famous…

Issue 24 I’m writing to you from the beautiful Lake House in Daylesford, Victoria, where last night I had the most amazing evening with 60 local business owners. I was asked to speak on the power of collaboration, engagement and community. Well, that was a no-brainer as it’s one of my all-time fave topics and largely how we have grown The Collective community in such a short space of time. I bring this up because no matter how big and busy life can become, I personally love more than anything to spend time with groups of people in a single community who are inspiring and supporting each other to do extraordinary things. I have always been a big believer in the power of community, be that geographical or otherwise, and…

Ten years ago, New Mexico-native Stella Maria Baer was feeling restless. “For some reason I felt compelled to make a painting of a tree planted in the sea,” shrugs the artist now shacked up in New Haven, Connecticut, with husband Seth and Fox, the sheepdog. She hadn’t painted before, but nevertheless drove to an art store and then home again hauling an easel, canvas and oil paints. “It was a terrible painting and I’m not sure where it is now,” she laughs. “But that was the first time I painted something.” And it wouldn’t be the last. A stint assisting contemporary artist Titus Kaphar (“The lessons I learned from Titus are endless, but the greatest one I think was the idea that work is something sacred”), a series of quirky…

“There are so many benefits of ‘plantifying’ your workspace – I know plantify isn’t a word, but it should be,” says Tess Robinson, creative director and founder of Sydney-based design and brand agency, Smack Bang Designs. “Plants not only add visual charm to your environment, they’re known to spruce your psychological wellbeing and creative performance as well.” Tess’ five reasons to go green: PRODUCTIVITY PLUS Scientists at the University of Exeter in the UK conducted a series of experiments that proved plants improve creativity by 45 per cent and overall wellbeing by 47 per cent. The same study also showed that plants boost your ability to concentrate and focus, spurring further productivity. SAYONARA STRESS Increasing your leaf levels means decreasing your cortisol levels. Working surrounded by an indoor rainforest creates…

DVF the incredible Her admission comes as a shock. “In the beginning, you know, I never thought of myself as a designer,” says Diane von Furstenberg. “I was just a woman trying to make dresses for other women.” That, coming from the person Newsweek branded as “the most marketable woman since Coco Chanel” back in 1976; who has since become an undeniable fashion influence the world over with designs sold in more than 85 stores across 70 countries; who once ‘sat’ for Andy Warhol; is the face of the Council of Fashion Designers of America and, arguably, is the quintessential embodiment of the American dream. “I had always seen the wrap dress and its success as something that paid all of my bills, that gave me my independence,” Diane tells…

It’s a cold Sunday morning in Sydney and I’m about to walk along a cliff with a bunch of strangers from the Internet. Surprisingly, the most frightening part about this whole scenario is what to wear. I’m about to take part in my first ever InstaMeet – a series of catch-ups between Instagram users around the globe – and this one just happens to be co-hosted by one of the world’s top street-style photographers, Lee Oliveira. So, no pressure. As recently as five years ago, it was seen as odd, even reckless, to meet up with online contacts. But very quickly, forming reallife relationships with people that we’ve met online is becoming commonplace. We now network on LinkedIn, meet dates on Tinder and find our housemates through Facebook. And so…

And now, her lessons are ours once again: this time, in business. Because, when it came to the CUT-THROAT WORLD of fashion, Sarah Jessica Parker refused to launch a shoe line until she found the PERFECT business partner. It was a LESSON she’d learned the hard way. Finally, Sarah Jessica Parker has found the one. Since becoming the most famous shopaholic on television, we’ve watched as SJP has been through break-ups, makeups, failed relationships and reunions, all the while taking notes on what we should and shouldn’t do in our own lives. So it was with much interest to hear that she’d finally found this particular Mr Right – and no, we’re not talking about her love life (she’s been married for 18 years already). But rather, her search for…

GET SMART If only there was skincare smart enough to understand the unique needs of your skin and respond to it with one simple action. When Clinique Smart Custom-Repair Serum touches your skin, it knows exactly what to do for you, meaning you don’t have to worry about it. That’s the brilliance. Damage such as fine lines, wrinkles and uneven skin tone transmit a unique set of signals and Clinique Smart Custom-Repair Serum understands every one of them. As soon as these signals are detected, it starts to repair your skin, including the damage you can’t see. It’s a completely different set of signals for dullness or loss of elasticity and Clinique Smart knows those too, so no matter what your unique needs are, it will support your skin in…

It’s 2005 and the Australian Fashion Innovators (AFI) office is abuzz on the back of the Mercedes-Benz Start Up. AFI ran the event across Australia; an edgy stepping-stone fashion design competition that seeks to unearth the next big thing. The winnings? A spot in the New Generation show on its big sister runway, Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia. And the lucky recipients? Two 21-year-old Melbourne guys, one Greek and the other Italian. New Generation showgoers applauded looks from TRIMÄPEE, Peter Strateas and Mario-Luca Carlucci’s menswear label at the time, featuring an urban, edgy streetwear aesthetic – think subculture vibes and dark layers of drapery. And they were being noticed by all the right stores. But six years later, the run was over and, unexpectedly, Peter and Mario-Luca quit. “We felt like…

PHOTO SERIES TESS LEOPOLD “I want to captivate, engage, challenge and create an element of difference – of art. That’s the essence of what I do,” says photographer Tess Leopold of her life behind the lens. CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THIS SHOOT? It was so special as I was working with such an incredible team. Shooting with the beautiful Billie Edwards and Emily Gurr, we headed out into the Byron Bay hinterland where we came across the perfect landscape for our creative direction. Make-up [artist] Penny Antuar was along for the ride and stepped in when even the slightest hair was out of place! Capturing moments of a beautiful story, the girls brought this to life in a way I could have only hoped for. WERE THERE ANY OBSTACLES?…

It all started with one couple, one dream and a humble herb farm in the Adelaide Hills. It’s been 30 years since Dr Jurgen Klein, a biochemist and naturopath, and his wife Ulrike, a horticulturist and botanist, arrived in Australia in pursuit of a fertile patch of dirt in which to grow their dream. This little patch of dirt would eventually become the birthplace of natural skincare brand, Jurlique – a phonetic combination of their names – which today grows 32 different herbs, from marshmallow (to provide hydrating and softening benefits to the skin) to spilanthes (to soothe the skin), for a skincare brand that’s now stocked in more than 1200 stores in 20 countries. “Predominantly we grow European herbs, as they quite like the Adelaide Hills for its cooler…

For the amount of money that we’ve spent on marketing, it’s obscene how many people are using HotelTonight,” laughs Jared Simon, who started his career in corporate finance prior to realising “life was supposed to be enjoyable”. And with 13 million worldwide downloads of the last-minute hotel-booking app, we’re inclined to agree. “I certainly learned that I was not long for that world,” he says, having turned to travel in a stint with online agency, Orbitz. “Frankly, I just fell in love with the industry… and hotels specifically. I think that the experience of staying in a hotel is automatically a fun experience. Some sort of magic that happens – I don’t know what it is, but I wanted to be part of it… 12 years later, here I am”.…

It may be the most unique human-wildlife relationship in the world,” says Jaisal Singh, speaking of his latest ecotourism venture. Jawai is a luxury safari camp located in the Pali district of Western Rajasthan in India, the ancient hills home to countless leopards, antelope, hyenas, sloth bears and colourful birdlife. But what truly sets this region apart is the relationship between those animals and the local community. “It’s astonishing to see them co-existing in complete harmony,” says Jaisal. Leopards often spell disaster for poor rural communities, killing valuable livestock and, occasionally, humans. But on the private land of Jawai, despite the safari’s close proximity, there hasn’t been a leopard attack in more than 150 years. In 2013 Jaisal, a keen conservationist and founder of tourism company SUJÁN, visited the area…

[We’re] NOT TRYING to create some GASTRO TEMPLE, we’re trying to create really good, FUN PLACES to hang out. You hear it before you see it. A cast-iron pot makes its way to the table, simmering with the promise of a sweet-and-salty seduction. A cast-iron pot makes its way to the table, simmering with the promise of a sweet-and-salty seduction. Smothered in honey, oregano and lemon, this morsel has the mouths of critics uttering “to die for”, “a dream” and “hot, hot, hot!” and I can personally attest this slab of delicious fried Greek cheese will tantalise the most discerning of tastebuds. Sizzling saganaki, anyone? “We’re doing our job of making everybody in Sydney happy with that cheese,” laughs Jonathan Barthelmess of the dish that helped give his restaurant its…

WINNER! This is just a little note of appreciation from a girl who has been reading The Collective since the beginning, and just landed her dream job thanks to the inspiration inside the pages. My mum passed the first issue on to me when I arrived to meet her on a holiday in Bali. She said she’d read it cover-to-cover on the plane and thought it would give me the inspiration I needed to make my next move. My second day into the holiday, it was raining so heavily that we were forced to stay indoors, so I started to read this so-called beacon of inspiration and hope – and before I knew it, three hours (and the pouring rain) had passed. I have re-read that magazine cover-to-cover so many…

How my life began as a rock band photographer. WITH PHOTO JOURNALIST SARAH MCCOMB-TELFORD It all started when… My cousin and I were having lunch together at my parents’ house and without her looking at me, I took a photo of her with a strawberry in her mouth. It looked really cool and she actually loved the photo. Fiona then said to me, ‘Sar, you have always had a natural gift taking photos; you should do a course or something’. The next day I took her advice and did something about it; six months later I finished the course with high distinctions and was given the opportunity to stay at a friends’ house in a place called Calgary in Canada for a holiday, where a festival called the Calgary Stampede…

SPANX IN STATS OWNERSHIP: 100 per cent owned by Sara Blakely INVESTORS: None ANNUAL REVENUE: US$250 million PROFIT MARGIN: 20 per cent DEBT: None STAFF: 194 (32 men) VALUATION: US$1.1 billion When a newcomer joins team Spanx and has their first face-to-face meeting with founder Sara Blakely, she tells them to close their eyes – just as she tells me to do during our interview. It’s certainly disconcerting but there’s a method to her mind game. “Close your eyes and think, if no one showed you how to do your job, how would you be doing it? Sit quietly and think about that,” she says seriously. “Because when you do think about it, everything we do in life is because we’ve been shown how to do it by someone else…

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FILE AWAY: Create a strategy for your filing that works for you and stick to it. For example, all my receipts are stored in months and all my wholesale orders are stored in alphabetical order. BOXES ARE YOUR BEST FRIEND: Everything on your desk needs a home. I always store my invoices and bills that need to be paid that week in a black box on my desk – they’re really easy to access and it keeps everything organised and structured week-to-week. DECLUTTER: Get rid of anything and everything you do not need! ORGANISE YOUR LIFE: Utilise your diary daily. Write down appointments, reminders and everything in between. Check your diary every morning before you start your day and tick off the boxes as you go. It’s such a satisfying…

THE BUYER – TENEILLE FERGUSON ON A DAILY BASIS I’M RUNNING THE WOMEN’S INTERNATIONAL AND AUSTRALIAN DESIGNER BUSINESS AT MYER. I’m constantly seeking out new brands to appeal to customers as well as engage with the visual merchandising and events team to create excitement and theatre in our stores. HISTORICALLY WE’VE MERCHANDISED THE DESIGNER FLOOR INTO TWO SECTIONS: Australian Designer and International Designer. However, we’re currently mashing this up and re-laying the floor based on aesthetic. This will make much more sense to our customer; when they’re looking for a fabulous gown they only need to go to one location to find a curated edit from Maticevski to Oscar de la Renta. WHEN SCOUTING A BRAND I look for a point of difference, commerciality, price, current stockists and ‘cannibalisation’ –…

Standing in front of the Repetto store at 22, Rue de la Paix in Paris’ Opera district, it’s hard not to feel like a child again. Depending on the timing of your visit, you might find yourself staring into a sparkling winter forest, complete with falling snowflakes, or at tiny ballerinas twirling inside oversized music boxes. Or perhaps colourful painted dancers or hundreds of pointe shoes hanging like pieces of art. Whatever you find, you’re guaranteed to see something charmed, which is exactly what CEO Jean-Marc Gaucher has sought to create. From its beginnings in 1947, the renowned ballet brand has always been about fulfilling dreams. It was in the aftermath of World War II that founder Rose Repetto created the first pair of ballet shoes for her son, renowned…

I believe a lot of what you need to know about living, you can learn from the world’s greatest entrepreneurs. If you’re looking for an example on which to base your life, then you only need to turn your attention to the commercial visionaries of our century – Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, Richard Branson and the like. Sadly, there are many people who would view these examples in a purely capitalistic and, in my mind, slightly cynical way. But, focusing purely on fame and fortune overlooks the greatest examples these entrepreneurs set. It belittles the real lessons they embody. The lives and actions of these business leaders do not show us the importance of wealth, infamy or power. Instead, they personify the most important ingredients that underpin any personal endeavour:…

There’s a worldwide network of patrons spread out across 78 chapters where, each month, every member donates US$100 of their own money to their chapter. That’s when the magic happens, as each group gives away a US$1000 grant, no strings attached. You could call it awesome, but they already have. Absolutely any individual or group can pitch for cash, whether it be guerrilla installation of swings around a city, a sculptural blanket fort, or Awesome Foundation creator Tim Hwang’s favourite: a cotton candy cannon. “There’s a kid who went to MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology], who’s basically a genius for cotton candy machines,” says Tim. “He made his first cotton candy machine when he was 12, had a patent on cotton candy machines at 16 and pitched us a project…

There’s a calm but determined look on the face of Adam Mead. His team is preparing for a Friday lunchtime rush at Locale, the fine-dining restaurant at the heart of the renowned De Bortoli Yarra Valley Estate in the countryside, an hour outside of Melbourne. While a sense of professional busyness permeates the kitchen, at the front of house all is calm and as it should be. The crisp linens are folded, the cutlery is polished and the glassware glints in the winter sunshine. As the first guests arrive, they’re met with a tantalising smell wafting from the kitchen – a mouthwatering hint of the dishes that Adam will present in the next few hours. Adam, at the helm of the kitchen, quietly directs and supervises his culinary team as…