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Australia is in the middle of a housing crisis. Anyone under the age of 35 and without some charitable (and already wealthy) parents to hook them up is resigned to a life of rent, and even that way of living can see people living paycheck-to-paycheck.

Diaries from the Housing Crisis is a series focused on the reality of housing in this country. Renting, buying, landlords, sharehouses… it’s pretty far from where it should be, but it is reality.

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Ella, Melbourne

Saturday, June 17th — Fitzroy North, 3 beds, $800 per week

It’s a Saturday morning and I’m queasy from the wine last night. I roll out of bed and dig through my closet for my most straight-edged fit. I need it to scream “I have my shit together” so loudly that it drowns out our tattoos and micro bangs.

It’s our first rental inspection since we decided to find a new house together – me and my two friends.

We all work a bizarre choreography of entry-level, part-time, casual jobs. We have a  studying-post-grad-on-Centrelink sort of vibe. Our budget is tight, but we’ll make it work. We always do.

The house is promising. It’s on the outskirts of Brunswick (points for being close to friends, bars and the supermarket – the holy trinity). For $800 per week, we would need to recruit a fourth housemate. The house has a study that could be a bedroom, but it’s a literal shoebox with a glass sliding door that opens onto the living room. That room would have to be dirt cheap for the poor soul that ends up in it, hiking up the price for the other rooms.

No-go, we agree.

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Saturday, June 24th – Northcote, 4 beds, $700 per week

Fuck yeah, what a price. It’s not just affordable but would leave room for fiscal frivolities. The house looks a bit rough around the edges, but the bar is generously low.

I ride my bike there early to stake my claim at the front gate, dishing out awkward smiles to the other share-house groups that gather behind me. Deep down we all know it’s kill or be killed, so I call upon the gods to make all their applications shit.

My friends arrive and commend me on holding down the fort at the front of the line. The real estate agent unlocks the door, and we all shuffle in.

The rooms at the front of the house are epic, they have floorboards and cute fireplaces. And then we see it: one bedroom has glad wrap over the window instead of glass. The laundry ceiling is covered in mould. The door to the backyard has come off its hinges and stands next to the doorway like an off-duty bouncer. The backyard resembles Shrek’s swamp more than it does a lawn (puzzled, I note that there hasn’t been much rain in the past week).

The prerequisite for gumboots to enter our backyard is enough for us to land on a firm no. The search continues.

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Saturday, July 15th – Brunswick, 3 beds, $750 per week

My friends are both away visiting their families. As the last remaining soldier in the state, I carry the torch for the day.

The house is on a very hectic and traffic-y road. My headphones have died so I stand at the front gate, raw dogging the sound of the post-industrial world. The real estate agent is half an hour late.

One group has had enough of waiting and dips. This is great news - they looked at least five years older than me (and five years ahead in savings). The property manager finally rocks up and I put my game face on.

The house is cute. The traffic isn’t too loud from inside, and it’s all structurally sound. It has a formal living room (score), so we could bring in a fourth housemate. There’s a weird nook with enough space for a couch in-lieu of a living room.

I have no real questions about the house, but I freestyle to sound like I know my shit. “So… there’s split-system in all the rooms?”.

We apply. We don’t get it.

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Saturday, July 29th – Thornbury, 5 beds, $850 per week

Maybe it’s time to hang up the Salomons on inner-North living. Every house in the curated bubble of upper-middle-class grunge is way beyond our budget now.

It costs to have the sweet scent of mango vape waft past your window, and to see more pierced noses than not in the local fruit shop.

Our group chat is full of inspired calculations: maybe if we had an extra person in the study… what if we insulated the garage enough for it to be a bedroom? Once upon a time, this would have been our golden ticket. But not anymore. Even with our game of bedroom Tetris, we can’t afford 90% of these properties.

What would I do if I couldn’t fare-evade my way to spend $17.50 on a glass of chilled red?

Would the world as we know it halt if my white-wall-black-Lululemon yoga studio was more than a fixed-gear bike ride away?

We hike to Thornbury (one suburb over) to find out.

The house is a bit dingey, but it’s insanely cheap. The church next door owns it. They either haven’t heard of the rental crisis or have decided to maintain their 2017 rent prices out of the kindness of their hearts (love thy neighbour I guess?).

We apply and we get it. My friends love it, but I freak at the last minute.

The house is close enough to trams, but too far out for cycling to remain my main form of transport. Myki fares have just increased, so a round-trip each workday would be an extra $200 a month.

The chats are tense, we’re all emotionally drained after almost two months of house hunting. We decide not to take it.

Battered and bruised, we regroup.

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Thursday, 24th August

At work, I get an email from a property manager. After 10 weeks, almost 20 inspections, and enlisting my older (full-time-employed) brother to hop on our application – we’ve secured a house.

It’s on the border of Northcote and Brunswick East - central enough to ride my bike to work. All the windows have glass, it’s not on a main road and there’s no visible mould. It’s a cute 3-bedroom house for $950 per week (eeek), but you guessed it, we’ll make it a 5.

The garage will be our living room, or as we call it – the glounge. ‍

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I’ll never dismiss the opportunity to celebrate the work of women and femmes in the creative industry. Why then between the driving beats and the dazzling red light, did I leave ACMI’s first instalment of Goddess Nights feeling so conflicted?

As an exhibition, ACMI’s Goddess: Power, Glamour, Rebellion celebrates the women and non-binary people who have left their mark in film – both on and off the screen. While the exhibition features usual suspects, Marilyn Monroe, Olivia Coleman and Meryl Streep, it also effectively spotlights the less-remembered work that made immense cultural waves, like that of Michelle Yeoh, Anna Mae Wong and Pam Grier. In so doing, ACMI paints a clear goal: to expand the canon of ‘Goddessery’.

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To accompany the exhibition, ACMI and Crown Ruler have planned to co-host three Goddess Nights. At the first, the line-up was top tier, featuring DJ JNETT, CD, POOKIE and Ayebatonye. Looking in from a darkened and cold Flinders St, ACMI’s Ground Floor was a hearth of vibrancy: red and pink light flooded through the glass onto the street. Bodies mulled, danced and collected. If you looked hard enough, you could make out DJ JNETT’s silhouette behind the decks, one hand mixing, the other moving to the music.

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As a concept, the Goddess overflows with complex meaning. A Goddess is powerful. They’re also beautiful and sensual. They’re feminine, caring and wise. But when we celebrate women and femme creatives for these qualities, we don’t just celebrate their work, their art or their contributions to the world. We celebrate their sensuality and their mystique too. These two elements can be beautiful parts of an individual’s artistry. But unsurprisingly, not everyone fits this deified prism of feminine creativity… and nor should they.

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I’m left with the question – who gets to be a Goddess and who doesn’t? ACMI tells us it’s the “trailblazers”, “binary-busters”, “agitators and instigators” of the film world. According to their catalogue, “Today’s goddesses unapologetically occupy spaces and roles that shatter glass ceilings”. But despite this somewhat ‘girl-bossified’ sentiment, you cannot tell me that black lesbian film-maker Cheryl Dunye gets to occupy the same corner of ‘Goddessery’ as Marilyn Monroe.

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Reclaiming the word came up a lot when I spoke to CD and POOKIE. On stage, CD embodied literal magic. Her vocals were soulful and sensual, laid smoothly over the top of Jupita’s accompanying beats. On being celebrated as a ‘Goddess’, CD reflected “I’ve already reclaimed and redefined the word to have more depth to it, because it should obviously mean so much more than beauty and magic.” CD tries to embody a revised version of ‘Goddessery’ that includes “factors like hard-work, kindness, creativity and community.”

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POOKIE – producer, songwriter, composer, DJ, and MC extraordinaire, whose song Flick has been high on my headphone rotation recently – played tracks that were hard, funky and sexy. POOKIE disagreed with my assessment of ‘Goddess’ as a limiting word. “When I think of a goddess, yes, she is fine, but she is also strong. Someone not to be questioned. Someone who moves with grace because she can. Not because that's all she is capable of”. Beyond power and strength, a goddess also offers “wisdom, affection and love”. This is what sets her apart.

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Perhaps we shouldn’t emulate the more removed and institutionalised celebration of artists that we traditionally see within the male industry (where we tend to focus more on the process and product and less on creative elements like sensuality and mystique). Instead, perhaps it’s our Goddesses who more truthfully portray the intersection between our bodies, minds and art.

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In both film and music, artists reach far beyond the binary. They can exist in spaces between, around and outside of our gendered constructs. POOKIE explains, “we live in an age where masc artists can also perform their truths, sorrows and joys and be celebrated for it.” However, there are some things that remain specific to the femme creative experience. While we’re finally seeing line-ups that aren’t just all-male or all-white, the industry is bigger than what we see on stage. When it comes to the producers, tech teams and programmers, CD reflects “it’s more white people and more men, especially in more exclusive, reserved spaces. I rarely rock up to a gig and see a woman setting up the stage or sound”. This has an impact, CD explains. “Because women are more nurturing, we allow ourselves to be vulnerable around each other as opposed to having a strong wall up when working with men. It can be a bit isolating at times.”

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It’s persistent experiences like this that ACMI’s celebration didn’t leave space for. In channelling their energy into expanding, redefining and reclaiming the Goddess, have they left us with a rose-tinted retrospection? ACMI tells us anyone can be a Goddess, but unfortunately just by saying it, doesn’t make it so.

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Leaving ACMI’s first Goddess Night, I wanted to know more about those on the messy periphery of femme creativity. I wanted to know about those who don’t get to be Goddesses, and those who never wanted to be.

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ACMI’s remaining Goddess Nights will take place on Thursday 27th July and Thursday 28th September.

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Home can take many forms: it can hold us in a moment; serve as a place of respite from the chaos of life; and provide a space to reflect and be ourselves.

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For many of us in Melbourne, Naarm’s electronic music community, Inner Varnika festival has been a home. But what does it look like when a home has to move forward? What happens to the community that once belonged there? What will fill its place?

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Over the Easter long weekend, we travelled to Inner Varnika X – the tenth and final instalment of the annual three-day event. We flocked to the grassy hills of Bookaar, winding through the dull green fields, our windscreen wipers working over-time as they coped with the slate-grey sky. We were ready to send this weekend off with one last thump.

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And thump we did.

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Just as the weather forecast promised we would need the Kmart gumboots we scrambled to buy the night before, the sonic forecast promised a good time. The line-up welcomed international artists like Higher Intelligence Agency, Donato Dozzy and DJ Sprinkles, while giving us some of our local favourites like Sleep D, Ayebetonye, DJ Earl Grey, Andy Garvey and DJ Scorpion too. Each influencing the other, these musical pioneers have created a mindset, sound, and of course, a community for us to indulge in. Even though we were wrapped in layers of clothing, we were all exposed in some way – in our dancing, in our joy, in our sameness.

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Inner Varnika X only had one stage which meant that every moment could be shared. Everyone was able to see the same artists, have the same sonic experience, and then talk about it after. One afternoon, I bumped into my friends, Daria and Sarah, who had sunk deep into the bar’s couches. We discussed the vibe on the dancefloor. “It’s so dark, therapeutic, and fun and energetic”, Daria explained. “It’s good to dance it out, good to get a bit grotty out in the mud. It’s a bit wild but it’s kind of cool.” Sarah agreed, “You’re kind of forced to let go … we’re in it together and it’s such a communal experience.”

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Kim Haworth is Inner Varnika’s Event Manager. She’s been facilitating the festival since 2013, when a few friends decided to throw an event together “at an unused football oval in Ruffy, near Seymour”, with around five hundred patrons. “We all loved going to doofs but wanted one that reflected the music taste of our peers, and put music at the forefront of its agenda, with one stage to encourage all attendees to gather for a communal journey.” 

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A decade in the festival has a confidence and maturity that most festivals don’t have. It demands open mindedness and asks everyone to place their trust in the organisers’ sonic curation.

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This trust enveloped at 10:30 p.m. on Friday, just as the main stage went quiet. Against the dark night sky, a small glasshouse, nestled into a grassy slope to the left of the dancefloor, came alive. Inside, Terre Thaemlitz, queer theorist and underground music pioneer who also performs under the stage name DJ Sprinkles, sat playing at the piano. What followed was a breath-taking 30-minute keys performance that incorporated elements of ambient and interpretive sounds.

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Community is a big deal here. “It’s smallish, but everyone’s on the same page”, Daria later reflected. There are no doof sticks and there is no bad behaviour on the dancefloor. Everyone knows everyone somehow. It’s a web of connections. This is deliberate. “We've never let things get so big that you can't find a mate on the dancefloor”, Kim explained.

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Cath (67) and Lex (75) are integrated and valued members of the Inner Varnika community. They are icons of the Perth electronic music scene and flew to Melbourne especially for the festival. You can find them at almost every event, front-right on the dance floor, partying just as hard as everyone else. Whenever someone appears impressed or shocked to see them in the crowd, they respond, “we love to dance, and we love the music”.

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When I asked Cath if she felt that there was an age-difference, she simply shook her head. “We’ve been so accepted by the electronic community, and we love their ethos”, she reveals. “We are both accepted as equals”. Leaning in, she chuckled, “We’re old, so all we want is fun. We want to dance. Inner Varnika gives us that space”. Every night, when my eyelids felt heavy and my legs trembled at the thought of more dancing, I would always cast my eyes to the front-right of the stage. Sure enough, there Cath and Lex were, always pushing on.  

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As follows in the tradition of weekend festivals, Saturday night was a big one. DJ Sprinkles followed up their piano set with three hours of genre-bending goodness. They brought us in and out of a meditative world and directed our journey through house, jazz and deep atmosphere, weaving field recording vocals in and out.

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My friend Brooke turned to me after an hour. Complete in awe, they told me it was exactly how a dream would sound, and I couldn’t agree more. DJ Sprinkles had the crowd at their mercy – entirely engrossed, awaiting every beat.

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Andy Garvey and DJ Scorpion then picked up the pace, playing back-to-back. It was a dynamic set, filled with energetic, trance and heaving techno. We were invited in. We saw the friendship unfolding behind the decks and chuckled at DJ Scorpion’s t-shirt that read “Bro, I’m filling every hole except for the one in my heart”. For the last dance set of the evening, Donato Dozzy didn’t muck around. He gave the crowd exactly what they wanted with thumping techno.

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The third day was dreamy. As DJ Earl Grey (Nik) took to the decks, the clouds parted, the sun came out and the layers came off. Earl Grey gave us the perfect daytime set – downtempo, house rhythms infused with hip hop and street-soul. Wearing a plaid three-piece suit in line with the ‘Suit Sunday’ tradition, it was clear that Nik felt connected to the festival on both a personal and artistic level.

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When I chatted with Nik after his set, he told me this was his third Inner Varnika festival. For the past two years, he has delivered banging afternoon sets to an enamoured crowd. “I’m still a punter when I’m here. I’m still here for the music and to see all the people that I adore”, Nik explained. “I feel really blessed to be able to contribute and do my thing on that stage… it is the biggest deal for me to play here.”

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For Kim and the circle of friends at the festival’s core, Inner Varnika has been a point of consistency, which makes the end feel even more bittersweet. “I’ve had many bouts of profound sadness … Inner Varnika has meant so much to me and my wide friendship circle. We have been able to share musical experiences and come together each year to this special place even though many other things in our lives have changed.”

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Despite the overwhelming sense of finality, there was also a sense of anticipation. We all wondered what will fill the hole Inner Varnika leaves in its wake. What will the next generation of artists, organisers and thumpers – those who have been musically raised at festivals like Inner Varnika – create? Kim hopes that “what we have done provides evidence to the young dreamers and creators that you can pull it off, and the results are worth it – however intangible they may be.”

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“Blokettecore feels like the sporty equivalent of women wearing Nirvana T-shirts.”

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If you’re on TikTok, you’ll be no stranger to the ever-growing list of ‘cores’. ‘Balletcore’, ‘fairycore’, ‘gorpcore’ – there seems to be a new one every week. Regardless of whether you roll your eyes at these niche aesthetic subcultures or you can’t get enough of them, we can all agree that TikTok has created a space for young people to be adventurous with fashion and to find community around it.

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The ‘blokette’ aesthetic is the online platform’s newest microtrend. It’s a bold mix between ‘blokecore’ (think oversized soccer jerseys, zip-up vintage sport jackets and Adidas Sambas) and coquette style (mini skirts, knee-high socks and hair ribbons). Coined by fashion commentary podcast Nymphet Alumni in late 2022, it’s been popularised by fashion figures like Bella Hadid and Ruby Lyn, but you can find iterations of it in almost every corner of youth culture if you look hard enough.

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Blokecore models itself off an imagined and simplified version of English ‘bloke’ culture. Essentially, it’s the aesthetic accumulated among English lads who watch sports and sink pints at the pub. The trend (without the coquette element) is popular for people of all genders on TikTok, with a focus on vintage and niche football jerseys and the nostalgia they generate.

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In total contrast sits the coquette style. Hyper-feminine, hyper-sexualised and semi-ironic, the coquette aesthetic (that sometimes dips into balletcore) centres around girliness and innocence. There’s definitely something in there about appearing virginal in a sexual way but also in a self-aware, ‘reclaiming the gaze’ way.

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The result? Visual boldness. Football jerseys tend to be in loud primary colours, with logos and stripes. Coquette details are softer in tone and the lace, silk and chiffon textures add visual interest. But fashion isn’t just visual. It’s political. So, what does the popularisation of the blokette aesthetic tell us about how young people are navigating gender through fashion today?

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A (very) brief history of genderfluid fashion:

There is nothing new about genderfluidity in fashion. The menswear/womenswear binary that we talk about in the industry is merely a fantasy. Gender and fashion have never been that neatly split, and never will be. Trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming people have been at the forefront of fashion’s development for centuries.

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Figures like Grace Jones, Hari Nef and most recently, Hunter Schafer, have played formative roles in helping loosen the fashion world’s grip on its binary ways. As fashion analyst Melanie Mollard writes, “This is not a trend, but rather a belated representation of fashion’s most influential groups”.

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The cultural shift towards genderless clothing began gaining real traction around 30 years ago when high-end designers began experimenting with sleek, ambiguous silhouettes, usually in blacks and neutral colours. This specific wave of genderless fashion was very that – lacking gender. But somehow, it still felt masculine.

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Jordan Greig, founder and designer of Naarm-based label Spitsubishi, expands on this. “The term ‘genderless fashion’ is usually used to describe men’s clothing that’s been rebranded as being genderfluid,” they explain. With the rise of ‘unisex’ clothing in mainstream retailers, we generally saw shapeless jumpers, oversized T-shirts and tracksuits that were only slightly different to their menswear equivalents.

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What does genderfluidity in fashion look like today?

Returning to our blokettes, this trend is a far cry from genderless fashion’s shapeless and monochromatic era. The blokette aesthetic is everything, all at once. Hyper-fem and hyper-masc, bright colours and neutrals, baggy and skin-tight.

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Central to Jordan’s design and patternmaking process is the constant question, “How can I make this so it fits someone with hips, someone with no hips, then with breasts but also no breasts?”. Spitsubishi’s impactful and cheeky basics are genderless, but this iteration feels very different from the one we saw 30 years ago.

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Are we seeing a cultural pivot from clothing that avoids the question of gender, and turning towards fashion that emphasises its free expression? After all, as Jordan says, “Clothes don’t have a gender identity but the person wearing them does”.

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So where does that leave our blokettes?

If I’m being honest, I’m not sure I would even consider the blokette aesthetic a part of genderfluid fashion at all. The trend is hot and cute, but there’s nothing subversive about it. And as per usual with TikTok algorithms, we’re mostly seeing cis, White, skinny women celebrated for wearing it. The trend’s gender stereotyping feels brash and reductive: soccer is for boys, and ribbons are for girls. The blokette aesthetic pairs the two together, but doesn’t really do anything more to navigate the space between them.

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However, there is something cheeky about feminising a heralded symbol of masculinity in the soccer jersey. The blokette aesthetic feels like the sporty equivalent of women wearing Nirvana T-shirts. It’s infuriating men who ask us to “name five songs” (sub in soccer players), all the while wearing pigtails and Dr Martens with pink, silky laces.

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As with many young women who grew up with a certain strain of old-world, anti-bimbo feminism, I learnt that lip gloss and personality were antonyms. Perhaps being permitted to wear ribbons in my hair and flowy skirts with my soccer uniform was exactly what I needed as a child. Genderless, genderfluid or genderful, Jordan leaves us with some parting wisdom: “All clothes are just pieces of fabric, darl!”.

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In the cold Friday evening air, night-lifers flooded Swanston St as I fought my way downstream to Yazmin Lacey’s gig at Max Watts, brought to us by RISING.

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The venue has a cavernous mosh-pit and a no-frills stage. It’s the sort of place that isn’t polished enough to be nice and isn’t grimy enough to be ironically cool. Everyone is gathered for the music and the music only.

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That was certainly the case when I walked down the stairs just before Yazmin Lacey’s set began. The place was brimming with ready bodies and expectant chatter. Heads nodded and feet tapped when Lacey’s band took the stage to play the first few bars before the singer’s entrance.

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Music as a religious experience – it’s a tired archetype. But when it comes to Yazmin Lacey’s soulful voice and healing lyrics, it’s a difficult one to avoid.

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Lacey’s sound has comforted me through life’s unfolding chapters – birthdays and breakups and everything in between. A few years ago, a friend (who shares my love for that sweet spot between jazz and soul) shared with me Lacey’s punchy, trumpet-heavy track Morning Matters. Today, as I lean towards a sound that’s moodier and layered, Lacey’s evolution is on a similar trajectory.

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As Lacey stepped onto the stage, the crowd cheered long and loud. Lacey wore a denim co-ord, her braids long, her jewellery gold. White wine in hand, she was at-home on stage. Lacey chuckled in a way that made me think she genuinely didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. The first smooth chords of Bad Company played, and the worship began.

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There’s an incredible effortlessness to Lacey’s voice – it’s both ethereal and strong. It’s relaxed (almost conversational), but there’s also a deep sense of command behind it. Sarah Tandy, Lacey’s keyboardist, sat behind a two-tier setup and gave us organ-like chords, twisting with groove melodies. Lacey’s vocals playfully interlocked with Tandy’s keys, and together, they created a full sound. This dynamic drove the music through the night.

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As she sang, Lacey’s image was broadcast onto two screens that bookended the stage. Layers of light reverberated around her pixelated face, offering a digital-Virgin-Mary-esque portrait of the singer.

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Lacey’s set-list was mostly drawn from her 2023 album Voice Notes, while also dipping into older favourites. Her 2023 sound is jazzier, more rhythmically complex, and in the very best way – looser. Lacey’s lyrics, however, have maintained their essence of intimate self-reflection and exploration.

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Lacey told us the story of one hungover morning, when she got chatting with a stranger at a bus stop. The two shared stories and wisdom, and from the encounter, Lacey crafted Voice Notes’ most buoyant track – Fool’s Gold.

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Throughout the night, Lacey’s sound wove its way through jazz, soul, RnB and dreampop, finally landing in funk with her track Sign and Signal. It was towards the end of the night that the crowd had loosened up and wine had rounded the edges of self-consciousness – real dancing ensued.

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The thing about anything other-worldly (be it religion or Yazmin Lacey’s voice) is that it requires a delicate microcosm of believers to sustain it. The fragility of my little religious experience became clear after Lacey’s set finished when I found myself sandwiched between two young guys in bathroom stalls next to me, discussing the pros and cons of their Hinge dates for a coke hook-up.

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The bubble of whimsical, soulful listening that Lacey provides may be easily burst, but it’s also easily returned to – something I look forward to continuing to do for many more years.