Mags: The Secret Life of Frankie

For regular readers, Frankie has all the familiarity and comfort of a well-worn cardigan… perhaps one handed down by your mum or your gran or bought from a flea market for five bucks only to discover some cute trinket in the pocket (don’t have a cosy cardie? Turn to pages 78 and 79).

There is nothing insidious about the content – it won’t make you feel inadequate, try to push product on you or encourage you to consider a diet (see scone recipe on page 112). It will embrace your quirks, let a swear word slip, make you feel okay about staying in, inform you about issues of importance without urging you to sign up its online campaign, introduce you to similarly minded individuals without pushing friendship, and tug on your nostalgia strings for an added injection of warm and fuzzy. Oh, and it’ll make you laugh a little, too.

Frankie is reprieve for creative types for whom the world can often seem too money and goal focused (KPIs and BAS statements make them cringe), university students surviving on minimum wage and those in a perpetual state of existential crisis looking for common ground (Frankie won’t solve your problems but understands your plight).

Which is not to say the mag isn’t inspiring – it manages to turn up all kinds of interesting people leading worthy and fulfilling lives largely outside the corporate world – it’s just that it espouses an ethos that says ‘Life doesn’t get much better than this – let’s grin and bear it and do some knitting, shall we?’ In this sense, the editorial vibe is more along the lines of Reality Bites GenX slackerism than go-get-‘em GenY career/social/material ambition(ism).

This issue should be read on a comfy couch, while bound up in a doona, dunking a biscuit into warm tea, milk or Milo (read Edmund Burke’s hilarious biscuit road test on pages 62 and 63 – he rates Paradise Cottage Cookies and Woolworths Honey and Apple Squares) and watching re-runs of The Goodies (win a copy of the DVDs on page 15 – what, you don’t read your mag, watch telly, type on your computer and snack happy at the same time?).

Frank Bits is delectable, offering up a smattering of newness on white space - new albums, quirky products, Wellington boots, books, shoes, jewellery, worthy campaigns, perfume, retro DVDs, pretty wine labels, bags and boutiques feature alongside small Q&As with musicians. Frankie really likes its musos – we get Death Cab For Cutie’s Nick Harmer, Ladytron’s Mira Aroyo, Lovefoxxx and Joan as Policewoman this issue.
All the first-person features and writing makes for a kind of GenY soap opera along the lines of The Secret Life of Us, only the cast is a bunch of wise-cracking, university-educated GenYs who make money off their trials, errors, oddities and memories. This month Justin Heazlewood talks up his 70s tie collection and Tasmanian pride; four writers “look back on their first set of wheels” (sorry, boring – skipped it); Mia Timpano recovers from a ‘phantom pregnancy’ (no doubt many of us can relate); Benjamin Law ‘wonders why trashy news articles are so addictive’; Romy Ash writes about her nemesis; and Daniel Evans talks tupperware.

Unlike mainstream women’s magazines, how-to style articles aimed at self-improvement or life enhancement are in short supply (the blind leading the blind?). Instead, Jason Treuen gives us some tips on ways to stay snug and entertained throughout winter (USB key party; board game bonanza; vodka infusion night; plus-one party; DIY degustation night; fondue night); we get a set of DIY instructions for knitting a hat; and Daniel Evans explains how to take a digital photograph in six steps.

In the ‘cool chicks’ department (a Frankie specialty), we get a two-page story on actress Rosario Dawson; Patience Hodgson of The Grates, who is photographed at home for ‘Around the house’ (her big, cheeky smile makes you want to smile!).

The stand-out stories are the 10-page ‘Smart Cookies’ feature, where we meet some outstanding young Aussies making the most of their relative creative giftings – playwright/actor Kate Mulvany, filmmakers Paul and Benjamin China, writer Michaela McGuire, painter Estella Castle (she is mesmerising – I have a new girl crush), conservationist Ben Grace, band The Frowning Clouds, creative director of record label Hole in the Sky Sarah Grieve, designer Juliette Hogan and community worker Matt Noffs.

I also enjoyed Benjamin Law’s interview with David Sedaris, in which he gives readers tips for giving up smoking, ‘Exposing your s(h)elf’ by Caro Cooper, in which the book shelf is held up for judgement (my sister and I both laughed out loud reading this one), Edmund Burke’s ‘Like a biccie?’ road test and Mia Timpano’s witty/naughty toothpaste reviews (Macleans Extra Clean is the “Barry White of toothpaste”) The ‘I love my shop’ DPS is also very inviting and cosy and cute, while the ‘…watch listen/ …eat read’ restaurant/café, album, movie and book reviews provide for quite pleasurable snippets of prose.

In the serious department, photojournalist Megan Cullen shares her experience of working in Cambodia’s biggest dump and expat Aussie journo Katie Wallis writes of her experience of editing English-language magazines in China.

Fashion serves up Pippi Longstocking in threads by the likes of American Apparel, Cacharel, Vintage Lee denim and a bunch of annoyingly “stylist’s own” stuff, as well as ‘The Lake District’ for the guys (cue man-cardigans), and ‘Charmed, I’m sure’, with lots of lovely soft, girlie dresses and blouses by the likes of Kate Sylvester, Jimmy D, Zambesi and Cybele.

Overall excitement factor: 7/8
Feel-good factor: 5/6… hmm.
Eye-candy rating: 4 – Patience is adorable, as are the shop people.

The Stats
Issue: July/August 2008
Book size: 122 pages
Inside front cover: Karen Walker Jewellery
Back cover: Mossimo
FOB ads: Rip Curl, Evoke body sprays, Stussy, adidas, orbit footwear, Eclipse mints, Nikita clothing…
Editor: Jo Walker
Publisher: Morrison Media
Website: www.frankie.com.au

Yours truly,
Girl With a Satchel