If this is what the Ellery girl’s bedroom looks like then we don’t want to be friends anymore – we want to be her! A tessellated maple roof is held up by a triangular wave of mirrors, and a g-l-o-r-i-o-u-s wardrobe which is momentarily full of Kym’s Fall 2012 collection, ‘Grand-cremaster Flash’, and exclusive styles are soon to be introduced.

Gold tinselled garments hang, so structured they look like sculptures. Acid washed tees and sheer black singlets drape either side, and then the collection moves onto the iced-out blues and cool nudes. It’s truly the gallery-experience that Kym strived for.

The single fitting room, swathed in Belgium linen, is super roomy. And when you’ve finished examining yourself in the most perfect floor-length, split-to-the-thigh number, and $880 pony-hair heels, you’ll make your way to a star-shaped rose wood counter which is sectioned with grey-toned mirrors so you can watch yourself hand over your credit card twice. Still, you won’t feel guilty, you’re practically investing in fine art.

The name Yotam Ottolenghi may not carry the global currency of Jamie and Nigella, but walk into one of Ottolenghi’s London restaurants and you’ll feel like you’ve slipped between the pages of some blockbuster food porn. Stark white surfaces act as blank pages to perfect messes of salad and tornadoes of meringue, without the food stylist’s inedible slicks.

Kitchen by Mike might be Sydney’s answer to Ottolenghi. It’s the foodie housemate to the Hamptons-holiday-homeware-store of Koskela. In amongst the mega-barns of industrial Rosebery, this freshly scrubbed warehouse is laden with Michael McEnearney’s vibrant salads, freshly baked foccacia and slooooow-cooked delights.

The menu is refreshed daily (check facebook each day to see what’s on), highlighting the finest produce of the season. So, right now ripe and heavy figs and peaches are the pin-ups. The salads, bought by the scoop, are stand-outs. If you’re a fan of flesh, you might find some chunky little Iggys baps loaded with pulled pork and rhubarb chutney. All washed down with wholesome milk bottles of banana smoothie or a fresh watermelon, mint and ginger juice. Or slightly-less-but-still-pretty-wholesome bottles of craft beer (Murrays Whale Ale) and organic wine.

Classy product in a casual canteen setting. Stick that on your page 3 and phwoar about it.

What happens when a cashed-up Belfast hard man has nothing to do but kick around Thailand and have sex with tourists for the foreseeable future? Well, pretty much what you’d expect. But not quite. The clever thing about Melbourne writer Chris Flynn‘s debut novel is the way he reverses the old trope of events conspiring to throw the protagonist’s mundane life into chaos.

The hero of A Tiger in Eden, Billy Montgomery, has just escaped the violence of Ireland in the mid ’90s. He has spent most his life blowing shit up and bursting skulls. Now he’s on the run from the law and is forced to exist in near total tranquillity. How he deals with that tranquillity is the focus of the book.

Billy spends equal time working on his tan, getting his rocks off, beating people up and then getting philosophical about it. None of it would work if Flynn hadn’t got Billy’s voice totally right. It helps that Flynn grew up in Ireland and knows exactly how to make Irish verbal tics work on the page. He paints Billy as a man whose small horizons are expanding and, in the end, Billy’s fascination with the way things work makes him an endearing character to kick around Thailand with.

English Angora rabbits are cotton balls that eat carrots and make poop. They’re raised for their wool – one of the finest, fluffiest and warmest wools known to man. It’s ethereal wool, so soft and so light that it almost doesn’t exist. Stroking an English Angora is like waving your hand in front of a heating vent or caressing a cloud. Or, more concretely: sheep wool is a paper towel, English Angora wool is an aloe vera tissue.

The actual animal beneath all that fluff is an excruciatingly polite animal. If bothered by excessive patting, they will nip you ever so lightly as a friendly warning (like true gentlemen). If about to give birth, they will pluck wool from their own chest to prepare a bed for their brood (like nice ladies). Unlike the tactless cat, English Angoras refuse to regurgitate fur balls, leading to potentially fatal complications for the rabbit. This condition is known as wool block. It’s also known as impeccable manners. English Angoras will even let you spin the wool straight off their back. Failing that, they are equally content with clipping, shearing and plucking. In fact, they’re pretty much content with anything.

There is a fine line of care and maintenance separating a healthy English Angora rabbit from a macabre plush toy. Keep them inside and keep them cool. Fibre-heavy pellets or chunks of pineapple should be added to their diet to prevent wool block. Weekly grooming is a must, otherwise your rabbit will become knotted and matted and will lose its brand-new-trackies feel. Make sure you wash them from time to time, as things like carrots and grass may stain their coats. According to a label on an angora sweater, dry clean only.

Marie Tussaud may have thought she was the ultimate wax when she decided to make life-like sculptures of Rousseau, Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin in the 1700s. But here we are in 2012, in need of some wax stimulation yet again. And you will find it in these here candles that become massage oil that become body balm.

Yes, the Kindle Kandle is a massage candle designed and made in Melbourne from a natural blend of cosmetic-grade soy wax, scented oils, shea butter and vitamin E. It can be used in three ways: As a regular candle, available in six scents including Orange & Mango, Shannonpea, Tahiti Rosette, Cane Sugar, Gardenia and Butter Bean; As a massage oil for yourself or your significant other once the wax has melted; Or as body balm once the wax cools down.

Something Else just dropped their new collection ‘Metamorphosis‘ and it’s wild. Not only are Natalie Wood’s established lines and cut-out-shapes ever present, but the prints of variegated florals and foliage are some of the label’s best work. The digital botanist behind all of that is their art director George Barnes.

We had a chat to George about his skills, which also include the sonic variety, so we got him to make us a mixtape – from wax! Treat it as the soundtrack to the collection.

Hayley Morgan: The floral prints are really unique in the way that they’ve been manipulated. What’s the process behind this?

George Barnes: The majority of the floral prints are screen printed. We played around with the designs, got them somewhere we liked them then decided on colour combinations… The colour selection is a really important part of the process.

HM: Were any other artists involved in creating the artwork for the collection?

GB: We always collaborate with a variety of artists each season and are always on the search for new artists from all over the world to work with. This season I worked alongside Christina K, Vissukamma Ratssphong and Georgina Cullum. We have some really exciting collaborations coming up in the new season

HM: Digital prints have exploded in fashion in the last 12 months (correct me if I’m wrong). Who’s impressing you?

GB: Yes every thing is digital these days! There are some really beautiful prints out there. I’d have to say my favourite textile designs come from Givenchy and McQueen. (more…)

In the 60s and 70s, San Francisco was a city caught up in (if not at the actual epicenter of) the free love movement. We Were Here chronicles the dramatic effect AIDS had on that metropolis, transforming it from a free-spirited Gay Wild West into something more sinister. The images recounted herein sound like something out of a sci-fi horror film: strange sores and lesions covering the bodies of previously virile young men, untreatable and unexplainable; a room full of doctors sobbing; going to your local coffee shop to learn the barista who was there last week has mysteriously vanished.

Using interviews with just five long-time residents and some archival footage, David Weissman crafts a dynamic narrative. This is a city where at one time 50 per cent of the gay men were HIV positive, and more than 15,000 died over the course of 15 years – so you know it’s going to be full-on. But that shouldn’t scare you off, because it is also packed with humanity and hope.

“None of my friends are around from the beginning,” says Daniel. “I miss a lot of them a lot”. All the interviewees are fantastic, but east coast transplant Daniel Goldstein really shines – not just for the number and variety of personal tragedies he suffered, but also for his refusal to surrender to disinterest or depression, (more…)

Do people still use playing cards with pictures of naked ladies on them? I imagine the answer is ‘yes’, but still, in an age where anyone with broadband has a millennium’s worth of muck at their trembling fingertips, there’s something grubbily nostalgic about the whole concept. Like finding a second-hand porn mag underneath a bush near a train station, say.

To be fair, Arlene Textaqueen’s attempt at the form, Textanudes, has a lot more integrity than most softcore novelties, seeing as these cards show “portraits of women and queer performers” in a range of revealing yet defiant poses. As you may have guessed from someone called Textaqueen, her speciality is illustration using felt tip, and the combination of bold colours and bare breasts is undoubtedly more arty than porny – more Egon Schiele with a Sharpie than Girls Gone Wild.

Welcome to the future. It’s 1994 here and gender (socially defined differences between men and women) doesn’t exist. In Teen Witch, ‘The Crush Issue’, printed on full-on colour, glossy pages (formatted as annoyingly/amazingly as Duke magazine), are the stories and artworks of neon-online-beings.

The first article ‘Too Hot For Youtube’ is about Rhonettahot. A recently-purged Youtube account that was a ‘camwhoring-as-an-artform’ video diary of a failed American Idol star, who turned into a truck stop prostitute with purple lipstick and a blonde fright wig. She mostly filmed herself yelling about how famous and beautiful she is. There’s a spot-the-difference with a picture of the #HDBOYZ. Hatsun Miku gets a shout out, and there’s the long awaited ‘Teen Advice with Molly Soda‘.

This is all the brainchild of Zain Curtis, a young Chicago club kid who oozes creative juice all up in the Internet; he’s kinda like if S4LEM, Nicki Minaj, and Ryan Trecartin had a gay baby but left it in the trash can at a 90s rave, where it was raised on smart juice and Special K. The authors and subjects are all crazy-good writers, musicians, performers and tweeters who’re all seemingly best friends. I can’t tell if they’ve met IRL or not, but it would be cooler if they hadn’t. So deeply dialed into their virtual-mall-goth world, I wonder if they realise how incredible they are? Of course they do.