Farage, Australian Fashion Week, Sydney 2025
Aje, Australian Fashion Week, Sydney 2025
Greedily, I’ve pulled out the tropical sunrise colours. Delicious gelato and deep coral set off with summer sunshine.
I want to wear the ruffles and the serene trailing robe-based dresses.
Aje, Australian Fashion Week, Sydney 2025
Iordanes Spyridon Gogos, Australian Fashion Week, Sydney 2025
Nagnata, Australian Fashion Week, Sydney 2025
Carla Zampatti, Australian Fashion Week, Sydney 2025
Carla Zampatti, Australian Fashion Week, Sydney 2025
FRESH ON THE COAST, AUSTRALIA IN SUMMER
The coast has a fresh quality, with ocean that looks almost minty in its bracing coolness. In the summer it is perfect, warmed sufficiently by the sun to be only a little cool and exactly what is needed for a quick dip to pick-me-up.
How else can you find this freshness? Eat salads, try Vietnamese or Italian using the best fresh ingredients. Use herbs in your cooking to brighten and add zest.
Focus also on your mindset – are you open to the new? Is your mind calm and ready to embrace whatever comes?
Life is a journey and it can be useful to write or paint or draw the summary of each day’s events. You can start a journal in a simple notebook or visual arts diary. Pay attention to the world around you but equally, pay attention and tune in to your inner world and personal voice within.
It gets hot. 40 degree heat in the summer so that without air-conditioning, your sweaty thighs are stuck to your seat. It’s humidity overload and you feel swamped by the heat.
Many of the houses and even quite new apartments have no airconditioning – and it’s expensive to run air conditioners all of the time. You never really get a full break from the heat, even at night you find you turn your pillow over and over and over looking for a cool spot.
We use fans as needed – those cheap pedestal fans that you set up in the corner of the room. Some houses have overhead fans though in terms of aesthetic tastes I think these are seen as dated and unattractive.
Some houses have backyard swimming pools.
Mornings
You can tell that the day will be a hot one just before the sun comes up. There’s a roasty heat pressing in like an oven left on too long. I’s not quite oppressive but by 10am you are melting.
Sydney has an established cafe culture but also we like breakfast at home. Avocado toast is still popular but with our multicultural diversity of cuisines, anything goes really – even Coco Pops or Rice Bubbles. There’s a feeling of leaning toward health definitely but also, be easy and do as you feel.
We like coffee a lot. Italian, fancy, good quality European award winning coffee.
Maybe it’s more than the influence of the Italians and Greeks who migrated here in the 1950s and onward – it might be a hankering for the rest of the globe as we are so far away. It’s an opportunity to speak some Italian words and feel proud of ourselves. Also, it wakes you up.
We will buy costly coffees and wonder about the quality of the beans or which cafe has the best but actually we are very happy for the most part to make a Nespresso or the like at home. It’s not a very official Italian style coffee and the cappuccino foam won’t be correct but it does have the right flavour and uses those quality beans we have been pondering.
The array of available flavours is entertaining and there are other brands making compatible coffee pods, which is great for household budgets.
Too hot to stand still, too tired to move
The sky is a brilliant blue and the concrete or pavement is so lit up in the fierce sunlight that it is blinding and both the ocean and the footpaths glitter. We wear sunglasses – more as an accoutrement fashion fun thing rather than to actually protect our eyes. Much like walking on grass in bare feet, watching out for little spiky plants known as bindies, we are used to the sunglare.
A walk would be nice and yet who could be bothered? Many do, actually. Some love it in the sun and can’t get enough. Some are perpectually bronze all summer long. Those of us with pale complexions can’t quite believe the bronziness – often paired with a saltwater blondiness that is actually golden and reflects in the sun.
Heavy footwear is not desired as you lose much heat through almost bare feet, so yes to that. We like thongs (flipflops) and sandals of all descriptions. The preference once again is to not try too hard or to be seen to be trying too hard, So cheap plastic thongs are perfectly fine. I had a nice suede brown pair that I wore with jeans to the local shopping centre (a Westfield) and I still want to find something similar.
We like to find free cold air and shopping centres are ideal. Summer makes us want to bring the outdoors in and the indoors out. We want fresh colour combinations. Something to ease the heat and provide rest for our weary hearts and minds.
Entertaining is a major summer pastime and we want our homes to be the perfect backdrop to the clinking of champagne glasses.
Home improvement is also popular and we have big home development and garden centre combinations where you can pick up a new circular saw and a cute little leafy friend for your window sill.
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