Indholdsfortegnelse for June/July 2020 i Vogue Australia

IT’S THE PANDEMIC phrase repeated over and over these days: we’re in a war, we’re fighting a war. It may not be a war that’s raining down bombs and bullets, but there are strangely similar parallels to the last great conflagration of the second world war: a lethal enemy is being fought on the home front as we shelter, in families, in communities, by heroes and heroines on the front lines in hospitals and care homes. And meanwhile, it’s precisely the World War II generation – our grandmothers and great-grandmothers who lived through it – who we’re all being called upon to protect. As the 1940s speak to current times with a startling new relevance, what that era has to teach us is suddenly a fascinatingly useful area to explore.…

AMID A STREAM of photographs of the sunset and outfits of the day, a woman, roughly drawn in pen, is trapped between a glass pane and a curtain. Crouched on the floor, she appears to be using the tension of the pane against her body to lift the curtain or break through the glass, but her efforts are in vain. “The glass is called the past and the curtain is called the future,” explains Liana Finck (@lianafinck), cartoonist, author and New Yorker contributor, who posted the illustration to Instagram in January and has amassed more than 11,000 likes. “You can walk through the curtain, but you can’t see through it, and you can see through the past [but you can’t access it anymore],” she says. “That felt like it explained…

THE COVER OF My Dark Vanessa is a pretty shade of peach. It is the kind of cover that would beautify a bedside table. Or ask to be Instagrammed. But 50 pages into this debut novel by American author Kate Elizabeth Russell, I find myself shutting it in a drawer between readings so I don’t have to think about it. For a day, I can’t find it and I am glad – the story unfolding behind that bright cover is so dark, and relentlessly harrowing. One critic said it was an “exquisite, often nauseating” novel. Another called it a story that “unmoors you from your lived reality, grips the very core of you and doesn’t let go”. Which is why, the next day, I’m frantically searching for it, because I…

EVEN THE MOST well-versed beauty junkie has likely never spared a thought for enzymes. If they did, it probably only went so far as the fruit enzymes found in pineapple and kiwi-fruit scrubs, which indeed make neat exfoliators. Until recently, there’s been little spotlight on the vital role naturally occurring enzymes play within the skin itself, particularly their knack for maintaining overall clarity and texture when it comes to our faces. What if these tiny proteins that live in the skin’s barrier layer were the answer to a brighter, clearer complexion? Lancôme stands to answer this call with its latest launch, Clarifique Refining and Brightening Dual Essence, and the whip-smart team of scientists and in-house experts it assembled to uncover how seemingly insignificant enzymes can unlock better skin. To understand…

FACE TIME Delighting in the small pleasures, like liquid silk, is a way to be present, and elevates any virtual check-in. NOW STREAMING The trailing frills of Givenchy’s strawberry column dress are evidence objects of beauty can be admired for what they are. Occasions will return in time. ONLINE ROMANCE A time of pause gives reason to fall back in love with fashion and really consider designers’ feats in sculpting perfect forms, like Dior’s blood-red bias gown. RETRO FILTER Nostalgia shouldn’t be a dirty word. It brings us the warmth of happy times past, as Louis Vuitton’s swirling 70s print and Prada’s penny loafers call up. HIGH-SPEED CABLE When we reflect on this era of fashion, Bottega Veneta’s slinky knit in zippy blue will surely be a time capsule of…

I am a Capricorn with a Capricorn rising, which I think is important to tell you before we go any further. You can imagine what my life looks like. I’m a to-do list writer and a vision-board maker and a person in possession of a five-year plan broken down into monthly instalments. I am someone who has never, not once in the years since I was taught to use my opposable thumbs in the manner in which God no doubt intended, left my bed unmade. It’s a double Capricorn thing. All this is to explain that I had a plan for 2020. We all did, didn’t we? My plan was going to involve what plans usually do: ambitious goals, big changes, small steps towards figuring out what it all means…

FIONA LOWRY Vogue Australia enlisted Archibald Prize-winning artist Fiona Lowry to paint Cate Blanchett specially for this issue. The final product took two weeks to complete after Blanchett was photographed at home in the UK. “To have her appear as herself in one of my paintings was incredibly special,” says Lowry. “For me it’s a moment of surrender,” she continues. “There was a moment during the crisis where everything we had planned had to be let go of, and when that acceptance came it was so beautiful to have stillness and quiet. My work is often about capturing someone going through an experience, and this work also speaks to this idea.” DEAN DREW In this issue, model Lily Nova stars in Vogue’s very first virtual fashion shoot, ‘Screen queen’, from…

I HAVE SPENT the past decade studying numbers, bugs and humans from various angles, and only scratched the surface of what there is to know. I am a humanitarian-idealist camouflaged as an epidemiologist. In 2007, I started my career as a 23-year-old at NSW Health, where I worked on outbreaks like swine flu (H1N1), but mostly we looked at chronic diseases: cancer, heart disease, diabetes. It was dull, and I wanted more. I had seen sweaty medics in oversized white T-shirts working in Ethiopia on TV when I was in primary school. I was dismayed that the fear of blood and guts prevented me from studying medicine and joining them. Nevertheless, I was determined to usher the world toward peace somehow. At a conference in Sydney in 2009, a jumpy,…

OLIVIA DEJONGE IS not the only young person to cite Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996) as a favourite film, but she might be one of the few who went on to be cast by him in a lead role at the age of 22. “When I first met him, I was so, so nervous,” she says over the phone, in quarantine in Queensland after production on Luhrmann’s upcoming, as yet unnamed, Elvis biopic was paused because of coronavirus concerns. A fortnight earlier, Tom Hanks, playing Elvis’s manager Colonel Tom Parker, had been diagnosed with Covid-19 in Australia. “I did one audition and that was it,” she remembers of being cast alongside Austin Butler, who plays the King. “I got super-lucky.” Luck may not have too much to do with…

A FEW YEARS back, much fuss was made of the infamous 10-step skincare routine borne out of South Korea. At first glance, it seemed laborious – even indulgent – but slowly, the rest of the globe began to understand that a multi-step regimen is as much about the necessary pause point it provides at the beginning and end of your day, as it is about a glowy complexion. “Often, the simple act of setting aside a couple of minutes for yourself in the morning and evening is all it takes to destress and decompress. I love to bookend my day with a purposeful, thorough cleanse. It’s detoxifying for both my complexion and my mind,” explains skin expert Melanie Grant, founder of Melanie Grant Skin Health. If this year has taught…

SURELY THE BIGGEST buzzword of 2020 is ‘pivot’. It’s been used to explain how individuals, businesses and governments have all shifted course in the wake of Covid-19. For Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) in Melbourne, the word offers more than a simple cliché, however. It describes how the organisation has turned valuable knowledge from existing work into something that will possibly be a game changer in the fight against Covid-19. It started, explains institute director Professor Kathryn North, with research they were already doing around the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (or BCG) vaccine. While typically given to children in Third World countries to combat tuberculosis, in recent years researchers noticed it also boosts immunity, which continues into adulthood. “There have been studies looking at adults with influenza and other types of viral…

“It’s our responsibility to protect and explain this crazy time to our children and to focus on being more patient and supportive of each other” GROWING UP, MY parents always taught me the importance of kindness, and with my children, I’ve always said the same thing: it doesn’t matter how smart you are, how you look or how you dress, what’s most important is that you are kind to other people. When I was at school, I was quite an awkward teenager; I didn’t have a huge amount of friends, and looking back I recognise that I was bullied at times. I would never want anyone else to feel how I was made to feel. So when Harper started school, I said to her: “If you’re ever in the playground…

IN FASHION, THE moments when the sands have shifted arrive often, and unfortunately, on the coattails of disaster. Wars, depressions and recessions have given rise, phoenix-like, to the ideas that altered fashion’s course. In 2020, our number is now up: the Covid-19 pandemic is indiscriminate in spread and the areas of life it touches, and it has unmoored everything. Production schedules have stalled, globally reliant logistics chains have unravelled, spending has waned, along with social media solipsism that a distracted public doesn’t have the stomach for, all distending into an industry facing upheaval. The old co-ordinates are useless; the time is now to punch in a new set and try with intent and purpose to set course for new shores. But what kind of landscape awaits when we arrive? Fashion…

1. ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST AT 100: A CENTURY OF STYLE (ABRAMS, 2019) “I have multiple personal connections to this book – AD editor-in-chief Amy Astley is a dear friend and the publication has featured both my Brooklyn and Amagansett homes. But I’m a voyeur at heart, and this book gives you a glimpse into the homes of larger-than-life A-list celebrities from Marlene Dietrich to the Obamas.” 2. FRANÇOIS HALARD: A VISUAL DIARY, BY FRANCOIS HALARD (RIZZOLI, 2019) “This book from the legendary French photographer is a must-have visual reference that I turn to again and again. Each space feels like a study in design history – I find myself diving into each image and dissecting its many rich layers. While my personal style is different than many of the spaces depicted,…

Melanie Grant’s golden rules of skincare. LESS IS MORE: “The temptation to use more is always there, but if you’re using the right products, they’ll work hard on your behalf.” PERFECT PAIRS: “When your regimen is strategic, you’ll likely pair ingredients correctly without any planning – think of antioxidants like vitamin C, E and ferulic acid during the day, then opt for retinols and resveratrol in the evenings. AHAs are usually gentle enough for all skin types – they’re great in small quantities in your evening cleanser or exfoliating lotion.” LOVE LAYERS: “The general rule of thumb with layering products is to go from lightest to heaviest. After cleansing, apply essences and lotions, then serums, then eye care and then your richer creams and SPF. It’s best to wait a…

Artist Fiona Lowry was a fan of Cate Blanchett’s impressive body of work long before she was asked to paint her for this special issue of Vogue Australia, and it would seem the feeling was mutual. Yet despite Blanchett also being a lover of the fine arts – and no doubt aware Lowry had won the 2014 Archibald Prize for her ethereal portrait of Penelope Seidler (at that point, she was only the ninth female winner in the competition’s then 93-year history), the two creatives had never met. It was a group call, facilitated by several members of Vogue’s fashion team in April, that finally brought the two talented Australians together. “What was memorable from that moment was hearing Cate enter the call,” recalls Lowry, who is based in Sydney.…

CANCER 22 JUNE–22 JULY Taking on too much, including other people’s work and problems, could sap your energy, so put yourself first. Stop chasing the wrong things and the right things will find you; put personal plans on the front burner so you can make them happen. Insights into a close connection may help you decide which step to take next. STYLE ICON: Margot Robbie LEO 23 JULY–23 AUGUST Love and money may be in short supply now, so be cautious and don’t push your luck. Any part of your life that has felt lacklustre lately is due for renewal. Even your attitude is ripe for a makeover. After some recent turmoil you’re set to think big and be decisive, and get some major ambitions underway. STYLE ICON: Jennifer Lawrence…