Editor’s letter
Iwas in Paris, jostling through the crowd to find my seat at Loewe, when an old colleague told me ELLE Australia was relaunching in print after closing four years ago. They floated the idea of me editing it, which I was still thinking about when, a moment later, I bumped into the infectious Sophie Wilde. She was sitting front row, and we chatted about the monster success of her first leading role in Talk to Me, the A24 horror film that was taking over the world. I walked out of that show thinking if I were given the opportunity to edit ELLE, I would put her on the first cover.
Sophie is everything I think of when I think of ELLE: fiercely intelligent, brimming with personality and effortlessly stylish. The same applies to so many other women we’ve profiled in this issue: Angourie Rice, who we caught up with fresh off the back of Mean Girls (page 78), and the mononymous mega-model Akon, whose fairytale-like trajectory has taken her from a desk job at the ATO to the runways of Paris, where she’s walked for Louis Vuitton and Chanel, among many others (page 132).
In the spirit of heroing the ‘Bright Young Things’ of Australian fashion and culture, this issue is also brimming with the next generation of great Australian writers. Bri Lee, who I’m thrilled to announce is our contributing culture editor, penned two original essays for this issue, including one about her life-changing trip to Antarctica (page 232). Elfy Scott interviewed young creatives and asked them how the cost of living crisis is impacting their industry (page 106), and Diana Reid had a one-on-one with an authenticity coach to explore why we’re all so obsessed with being ‘authentic’ (page 238).
There are so many other magical gems in this issue, too many to name, and I hope you take your time poring through them. Ultimately, this issue is a love letter to Australian women, and we hope you see yourself — smart, stylish, complex — reflected back to you in our pages.
Welcome back to ELLE. We’ve missed you.