Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 128- Nov/Dec 2025 i frankie Magazine

That’s a quote from clinical psychologist Rachel Harker who, on page 56, chats to writer Cait Emma Burke about the elusive spark that so many of us seek, yet struggle to find: connection. It’s a concept that we’ve been thinking about a lot at frankie HQ lately, due to rising public concern over the loneliness epidemic. I’ve been pondering the topic in my spare time, too. Just recently, I was sitting in a beer garden with my brother when a soft-spoken man approached us and asked if he could join for a while. Over the next few hours, we chatted with the man about our hometowns, movies and life in general. When it was time to go, I thanked him for introducing himself to us and he thanked us for…

Wandering down Brunswick Street in Melbourne/Naarm is a feast for the senses of creative types. Fancy a perfectly poured latte? An artisanal candle? A parade of Fitzroy’s most fashionable folk? This hipster-y strip has you covered. But wedged among the slow-fashion boutiques and buzzy bars is a store that looks like it slid straight off a spaceship: Fabric Lab. The shop stocks textiles in all kinds of colours, textures, weaves and materials, from shiny lurex and pearly brocade to crinkled satin and shimmering velvet. It’s run by Aryia Fu, who moved to Australia almost a decade ago to study graphic design and fashion. During her studies, Aryia struggled to find creative fabrics to suit her projects. “I always had to make my own fabric, and do layering, bonding and all…

In 2005, I began working in an adult store in Brisbane/ Magandjin; its butter-yellow colour was synonymous with the trade. I was 22. I had a fine arts degree that I didn’t know how to use, and a need to be a writer even though I wouldn’t pick up a pen for years. It was in the last dying days when porn was still bought from a store. My favourite customers were the ladies. The best of all? The elderly ladies who would cautiously step in, all cardigans and white hair, and glance to where I would be seated behind a desk and say, “Oh! I’ve come to the wrong place – didn’t there used to be a curtain place here?” I’d come round the counter and say, “Now you’re…

PANA ORGANIC – CREAMY HAZELNUT Raw vegan chocolate usually isn’t my jam. I don’t need chocolate to be healthy; I just want it to taste good – which, without dairy, is evidently harder than you’d think! My (vegan) beef with it is that raw chocolate often employs coconut milk to be the creamy base note in blocks that aren’t coconut-flavoured! Something I find distracting at best, nauseating at worst. Either they’re getting better at taking the coco out of the coconut (it’s an actual process, called deodorising) or this block’s saving grace is being 35 per cent hazelnuts because, somehow, I wasn’t complaining. This tastes like the insides of a Ferrero Rocher. A little crispy (thanks to the toasted hazelnut pieces) and instantly melty, dissolving on your tongue into a…

What tools and techniques do you use? I use a mechanical pencil to draw in my sketchbook and an Apple pencil to ‘e-paint’ in Procreate. I’ve experimented with watercolour, pastels and pencil crayons but love the freedom of working digitally. I can set up shop anywhere and sink right in and out of a piece with no prep or clean-up. When did you realise art was the thing you wanted to do with your life? I had a miscarriage in 2016. Art and illustration helped as a meditative practice. I started setting a timer, drawing and listening to art podcasts. I loved making art as a kid and quickly rediscovered the immense joy and fulfilment it gave me. I started sharing on Instagram and realised it could spread joy to…

The first time someone asked me if I was “the nanny”, I was wearing loafers, a vintage crochet lace blouse and sky-blue dress pants. The ensemble, once playfully described as “what Elton John might wear to a christening”, was admittedly high-fashion for a 6.50am playground excursion. But as a modern parent with too many balls in the air to even call it juggling, I was grabbing a coffee before daycare drop-off so I could rush to an early-morning media event. Looking fabulous wasn’t necessarily my plan. I hadn’t considered what other people might think – just picked out an outfit I enjoyed and rushed out the door. But as I sat at the edge of the playground, waiting for my almond iced latte, a woman with aggressive eyebrows slid into…

One of the first things I developed for the Ottolenghi stores was a version of yo-yo biscuits. They proved a hit, and I was soon casting around for another Aussie treat to add to the display. Lamingtons? Too obvious. I racked my brains, but nothing seemed quite right. And then I heard Kevin Rudd, newly elected prime minister of Australia, saying in his victory speech that he was looking forward to “a strong cup of tea and an Iced VoVo”. I had my answer! But not as Kevin Rudd would have recognised it. Traditionally, an Iced VoVo is a biscuit, but I had in mind an individual cake with the trademark topping of red jam and coconut. The sponge took some time to develop – it had to be soft,…

Augie, 14 Climate change is a big question. It’s way too much to think about. If it were put into smaller ideas, it would be more manageable to think about, but we just get bombarded with all this information – none of it positive, or solution-focused, or helpful, and we’re told “so yeah” and it’s hard not to disengage, or just think “what’s the point?” or not to avoid it, and sometimes I think that’s deliberate to keep us scared, keep us outside. I’m not concerned by AI. It is a powerful tool that humans can use to their advantage. It’s not great that it can create any image because people can be impersonated or impersonate someone or something and make a lot of bad things happen. It’s not enough…

ELLY-MAY BARNES Elly-May Barnes was born into a musical family – she’s the daughter of Jimmy Barnes. Elly-May’s music career started at two years old, when she sang with her siblings Mahalia, Eliza-Jane and Jackie in the children’s musical group The Tin Lids. Just a decade later, at 12, she began singing back-up vocals for Jimmy. “Music has always been my life, so once I hit the road with Dad, I never looked back,” she says. Having grown up surrounded by a huge variety of music, it’s no surprise that Elly-May began to work on her own stuff. “I started writing songs with friends and working on my own things, and then finally released my debut album, No Good, last year,” she says. “I was really proud of myself for…

TYLER MCGILLIVARY There seems to be a stereotype that frankie folks only care about smelling flowers and sipping tea and feeling nostalgic. And what can we say – the rumours are true! (Not really, but we’re about to look pretty guilty.) We’re currently smitten with Tyler McGillivary’s ‘Cartoon Garden’ collection – a love letter to the animated works of our childhood, like FernGully, Thumbelina and Studio Ghibli, interpreted through Tyler’s playful, girly style. Think painterly prints, ruffles and pleats, and of course, an abundance of florals. tylermcgillivary.com HOW CHARMING Did you know that pinot noir is dubbed the ‘heartbreak grape’ because it has super-delicate skin and is sensitive to harsh weather conditions, making it a real pain in the arse to grow? We too are delicate, sensitive pains in the…

Tell us about your photography background. I would always have a camera with me when I was a teenager, while hanging out with friends or going to parties. And it feels a little bit self-indulgent, because all I would do the next day was upload the photos to Facebook. But then in 2011, I finished high school and went overseas for about a year, did some work in the US, and went backpacking around Europe. That’s when I first set out to properly photograph what I was doing. I bought my first film camera and from there, I always took a camera overseas with me. In 2018 I went to Japan and took photographs that I absolutely loved, and had people asking me if they could purchase them as prints.…

I first used a photobooth in 1974, when I was 12. The first time I went to Chadstone Shopping Centre without an adult, I went with a friend who lived up the road from me, Helen Lloyd. Both of us wanted to use a booth, so we thought, “Let’s go there and we’ll take photos without a grown-up standing over us.” She had 60 cents, and I only had 20 cents, so I got one of the four photos and she got the other three. That photo is still absolutely perfect – as beautiful as the day it came out of the machine. You cannot get that sort of longevity with a digital photo. When I was living in the UK in the late 1980s, photobooths were everywhere. There was…

I was single for the entirety of my 20s, something I once considered a sign of my abject failure as an adult. If I had to distil what I was looking for in those years – throughout all the failed flings, unexpected ghostings and objectively lovely men I ended it with after a handful of perfectly satisfactory dates – it was a deep, undeniable romantic connection. Ironically, during my search for this connection, I felt deeply disconnected – disconnected from my true desires; disconnected from the types of people I should be dating; and disconnected from those around me, who seemed to be falling in and out of long-term romantic connections with what looked like ease. It’s hard to define something as nebulous as ‘connection’, but I now know I…

There was this girl a few years above me at school who was very good at basketball. It was an academically selective school with an average student height of about 160cm, so it wasn’t exactly the most competitive pool, but she was real-world good. She was offered a full sports scholarship to Stanford University after graduating, and ended up signing a contract with the WNBA. I remember her coming back to assembly years later to tell us all about it. Recently, she came up in conversation with my friends: where was she now, that certified sports prodigy? Had she made the Olympic team? Was she making millions and/or dating a Kardashian? But a deep dive online revealed that the answer was d) – none of the above. Instead, she seemingly…

How did OK Soup Studio start? It’s rather difficult to trace the exact starting point of OK Soup Studio. More so, it feels like it was born very naturally and unintentionally at the convergence of all my hobbies and passions. In my late teens I became very passionate about sustainability, especially in the fashion world, and started shopping only secondhand, upcycling my clothing and mending items for friends. I taught myself how to block-print as a fun hobby while working at a coffee shop, then released my first block-printed collection while working a job in construction. The collection was tote bags made from thrifted pillowcases that I printed with far too intricate a design for the wildly low price I sold them at, but I was hooked. It took another…