Ed Note
Can you believe we’re already saying farewell to another year? 2025 was a year of fearlessness for Forte Magazine as we fronted the task of going independent, bringing the magazine fully home to regional Victoria. The championing our community has given us has been invigorating and we cannot thank you all enough for flipping through our pages every month and tuning into our digital domain daily. We have big plans for 2026, and we cannot wait to fill you in!
It makes me feel akin to our cover artists this month – the trailblazing, rule-breaking, radical-thinking, and ferociously determined designer extraordinaires Vivienne Westwood and Rei Kawakubo. These magnetic females challenged and changed the cultural conventions and conversations of the fashion world. In an ambitious pairing, NGV explore the convergences and divergences between the two designers’ work across over 140 works for exhibition, Westwood | Kawakubo. May we all be so bold and daring as these two forces of fashion!
Remaining in art with strong women, Geelong Arts Centre reveal their world-class SEASON 2026, with powerful women leading the performance programs, and we head in the studio with ceramist Chela Edmunds of Takeawei Ceramics, whose designs are lighting up the nation. We also look into the art of metalsmithing with sentiment with Breanna Lee Timmins of BLT Jewellery.
Our food focus this month has been all about the rituals of consumption; slow coffee mornings with Ziggy + Kit, lengthy cocktail catch-ups at Astray Bar, tasting routines with Kilderkin Distillery, and the Italian art of Cicchetti with Mona Cicchetti. In music, we rev up the engines with guitar virtuoso, Diesel, and feed into time capsules with TEED. All of this and so much more lurk beyond the pages.
As Westwood once said, “The best fashion accessory is a book”.
Forte Magazine is close enough – go forth you fashionable bunch!
