MAKING THE CUT

We’ve scanned the zeitgeist for what to read, watch, wear and drink now.

1 Home

Australian kitchen appliance brand Breville (breville.com) has partnered with Aboriginal designer and curator Alison Page to create a series of home products, including a kettle (above), toaster, blender and coffee machine, decorated with paintings by First Nations artists. The appliances are available at David Jones (davidjones.com) and have been featured in an exhibition at The National Museum of Australia, alongside traditional First Nations tools, to reveal the long and rich history of this country’s culinary culture.

2 Podcast

What makes a cult? A charismatic, controlling leader? Unquestioning devotees? Rabid evangelism? All of the above? In Sounds Like a Cult, hosts and journalists Amanda Montell and Isabela Medina-Maté seek to understand whether some of the ordinary cultural icons of our time are, in fact, cults. Everything from multi-level marketing to Soul Cycle is thoroughly and hilariously analysed every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts.

3 Streaming

For those left wanting more after the final season of Game of Thrones comes a prequel about the ancestors of the Targaryens. The House of the Dragon – set 200 years before Daenerys (the mother of all dragons and aunt of Jon Snow) arrived on the scene – is based on George R.R. Martin’s Fire and Blood. Starring Emma D’Arcy (Truth Seekers) and Matt Smith (The Crown, above with D’Arcy) the episodes will hit Binge from 22 August.

4 Beauty

The conundrum of when to apply serum or mist looks like it might finally be solved. The answer? Put the serum in the mist, which is what Chanel has done with its Revitalizing Body Serum-In-Mist (above, $120; chanel.com.au). With 97 per cent naturally derived ingredients, including red camellia, the mist has antioxidant properties. Also in the same innovative category is Pure

Serum Mist from Skin Inc. ($103; sephora.com.au).

5 Drink

A favoured drink of bohemians in the late 19th century, before bouncing back in the 1990s club scene, the green, anise-flavoured spirit, absinthe, has overcome bans to be noticed again in a big way. Its hallucinogenic effects are no longer a thing but the flavours are strong. Try Absinthe Minded from Earp Distilling Co. (from $89; earpdistillingco.com).

6 Movie

Writer and director Jordan Peele turned the idea behind Stepford Wives into a perfectly horrifying allegory about racism in 2017’s Get Out – and won an Oscar. Now he’s back with another horror movie, Nope, a sci-fi tale about a small town that experiences an abnormal event so terrifying the human response is a firm “nope”. Starring Get Out’s Daniel Kaluuya (above, centre), Steven Yeun and Euphoria’s Barbie Ferreira, Nope beams down into cinemas on 11 August.

7 Style

Low-rise “bumster” pants. The skull scarf. A dress spray-painted by robots. Armadillo heels. British designer Alexander McQueen, known in the late 1990s as the l’enfant terrible of fashion, created all of them. Although he died at just 40 in 2010, his culturedefining pieces live on and now they’re coming to Melbourne. The exhibition Alexander McQueen: Mind, Mythos, Muse, features more than 100 of his designs along with 70 artworks that influenced him. Opening on 11 December at the National Gallery of Victoria Gala, the exhibition will run until 16 April 2023 (ngv.vic.gov.au).

8 Book

The Nigella of Millennials, bestselling author and home cook Julia Busuttil Nishimura has released her third cookbook, Around the Table. It’s brimming with easy recipes that have been influenced by the Melburnian’s Maltese heritage and Japanese family – ginger cake with cream cheese icing is just one highlight.