Lifestyle Desires — Australian living

Cold flavoured sparkling water cans and a glass on a kitchen bench

The cold can has become our clean little vice

Sparkling water now feels like the cleaner little vice of 2026: fizzy, flavoured and just indulgent enough for the after-work bench.

Henry Macarthur· 8 min read

A model in pale tailoring, caught between fashion week appointments

style

Paris wants a showroom. Australia wants proof

ANZGOG State of the Nation uterine cancer awareness report cover

wellbeing

The cancer too many women still cannot name

home

The Ikea sleepover wasn't really about Ikea

Style

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Paris wants a showroom. Australia wants proof

Australian designers in Paris are being sold as an export story, but the new AFC showroom also asks whether local fashion can survive on attention.

Woman in an elegant dress looking out towards the Sydney Harbour Bridge

Chanel Sydney runway: Australia gets the mirror test

Tailored wedding couple outside a civic building with stone columns

What Dua Lipa’s bridal suit knows about weddings

After the noise, Jordan Gogos sounds clearer

Woman practising yoga beneath Sydney's Martin Place archways

Alo lands in Sydney, and the matching set follows

Home

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The Ikea sleepover wasn't really about Ikea

Ikea Sydney sleepover drew 5,000 hopefuls because $19.95 bought more than a bed: it offered a brief, playful version of home.

Home goods displayed on wooden shelves inside a decor store

What Kmart's K Home gamble says about us

When the guesthouse becomes the showroom

Cozy living room with art and layered furniture, chosen to reflect Australia's move beyond plain white walls

Australia is over its white-wall hangover

Travel

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Sunset view from a plane window above the clouds, evoking the aspirational mood of a bargain holiday

When the bargain holiday stops feeling clever

Families and travellers on a Bali beach, the ordinary holiday at the centre of Australia's status argument

The holiday you sneer at is telling on you

Vintage camera resting on a folded travel map, a visual case for swapping apps for dedicated travel tools

The trip gets better when your phone gets boring

Travel documents and planning materials before a trip

The 2026 travel paperwork to check before you book

Travel toiletries and beauty essentials spread out before packing.

What the bathroom floor knows before a trip

A room at Castello di Reschio looking onto the Umbrian landscape.

When a beautiful hotel follows you home

Relationships

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A woman sits alone at a warmly lit bar with a glass of wine

What solo-maxxing says about the price of being coupled

Solo-maxxing is turning dating costs into a relationships question, with $200 date nights making single life feel less like failure.

Students gathered around a table in discussion

What young Australians are asking sex ed to finally admit

A couple in conversation over wine at a cafe table

Dating in white spaces can cost more than love

A couple walking through a city at night, the kind of ordinary date that now comes with a visible price tag.

What free petrol says about dating now

A mother and child share a quiet moment at home, held close in black and white.

The bill comes due when you become the cycle-breaker

Culture

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A vintage cinema projector, suited to an essay about Hollywood’s processed feel

The sausage-factory line is rude because it feels true

Tarantino’s Hollywood rant lands because viewers already feel the franchise fatigue: over-managed films, couch viewing and too much polish.

A clapperboard held against a dark film-set background

What YouTube’s Gen Z directors are doing to Hollywood now

Sydney Harbour glowing at night during festival season, with the Opera House, Harbour Bridge and CBD lit across the water

When Vivid’s drones faltered, Sydney kept staring

An older painter at work in the studio, a more grounded image for a story about the suffering-artist myth.

Why the suffering artist myth still flatters us

Food & Drink

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The cold can has become our clean little vice

Amber-lit restaurant dining room with tables set beside tall windows

What Melbourne’s best-designed restaurants are really selling now

A can of La Campagnola tomatoes on a kitchen counter with soft lighting.

Why tinned tomatoes still decide how dinner tastes

Rows of agave on a sun-bleached Queensland farm, where Australian distillers are betting the plant can anchor a local spirits future.

The prickly plant changing Australia's pour

A chilled glass of horchata with cinnamon sticks, echoing the cold creamy café drink at the centre of the story

Horchata slips into the café script

Exterior of a Guzman y Gomez restaurant, used as the hero image for coverage of the chain's US exit.

Guzman y Gomez could conquer Australia. America was another story.

Community

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Woman seated on floor against a wall, conveying housing insecurity and distress.

What the rental crisis is doing to women who need to leave now

Australia's rental crisis is changing what it means to leave a violent home, forcing women to weigh safety against rents, paperwork and nowhere to land.

A young man lies on a bed reaching for his phone near a window — the suspended animation of adulthood in a childhood room.

Late 20s and living at home: the cost no one's counting

Woman working in a rural field, echoing Rachel Ward's shift from glamour to farm labour.

Rachel Ward found purpose where glamour ran out

Power lines and regional landscape on South Australia's Yorke Peninsula

The sea-change dream starts to flicker

Open farm country outside a small Australian town, a stand-in for the scale around Robinvale.

In Robinvale, half the town disappears when the census arrives

Wellbeing

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The cancer too many women still cannot name

Uterine cancer is rising in Australia, yet awareness is thin. The gap is about symptoms, language and how women are heard.

Hands gathered together, suggesting community support and shared recovery

What Western trauma talk misses when recovery looks different

A shopper stands in a supermarket aisle surrounded by packaged foods.

What junk food learned from Big Tobacco

A semaglutide injection pen on a plain clinical surface

What GLP-1s are asking women to believe about cancer

Beauty

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Collagen supplement bottle with capsules and dried flowers on a dark surface.

Why collagen supplements still sound more certain than they are

Interior of Mecca's Bourke Street flagship in Melbourne with consultation counters and multi-level beauty displays.

Why Mecca thinks beauty still needs a room

A woman holds a small hand mirror indoors, echoing the self-scrutiny behind the GLP-1 look.

What Wegovy is doing to beauty standards

The chatbot beauty standard was always going to end up in a surgeon’s office

The beauty mega-merger that just fell apart

Beauty products arranged in warm light to illustrate the Marc Jacobs Beauty relaunch feature.

The lipstick drawer remembers Marc Jacobs Beauty

Money & Career

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A mother and daughter sharing a quiet conversation at the kitchen table

What teaching a daughter to get rich really sounds like

Jannese Torres is building a million-dollar portfolio for her daughter — and rewriting the family script about who gets to have the grown-up money conversations.

Bright Melbourne-style living room interior, echoing the domestic space renters are now better equipped to ask more of.

What Victoria’s rental reset changes for renters

A worker at a desk in a workplace setting.

What disclosing a disability at work costs, and what it shouldn't

Payroll and superannuation paperwork on a desk

The super rise you notice late, and the payday shift behind it

What the Saturday auction sounded like after investors stepped back

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