at Dumbo feather HQ! It will be in subscribers’ letterboxes any day now and in newsagents by Friday. It’s already in some of our special stockists like Ariel Books in Sydney and Mag Nation in Melbourne.

Cover & contents photography by James Deavin

[*Spoiler warning* If you want the five people in Issue 14 to remain a surprise until you receive your copy - read no further]
Issue 14 features these delicious and remarkable individuals…

Photography by Another Bloody Water

Didi Lo: is one of the three founders of Another Bloody Water, an award-winning bottled water from the Victorian Alps. Sure, it’s another bloody water, but if we insist on drinking the stuff (and we do recommend you buy less of the bottled version) then it’s great to at least have a local option that doesn’t pretend to be anything it’s not, and in fact celebrates the very things other bottled water brands strive to disguise. Didi is also the founder of Soulfresh a food and beverage distribution company based in Melbourne, Victoria that is committed to supplying organic and sustainable goods to corner stores and cafes near you. Didi seems to have left his former commitment-phobic self far behind…
Photography by Chicks on Speed

Alex Murray-Leslie: Eleven years ago Alex Muray-Leslie from Bowral, New South Wales met Melissa Logan from New York at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. It was the beginning of the Chicks on Speed (CoS) phenomenon. What started with one single, a remix no less, spawned a vast creative network of collaborators; artists, musicians, designers and film makers… “all leading towards the advancement of culture and the betterment of the world.” It’s difficult to be more specific than that. CoS blur the borders between performance and visual art, music, theatre and fashion. Their music defies categorisation; a mish-mash of of techno, electro and pop… Their fashion is sold in exclusive boutiques yet they make the patterns available for all. Alex and Melissa have remained at the core of CoS. Now geographically dispersed – Alex is based in Barcelona, Melissa in Munich, and other members in New York, Florida and Tel Aviv – they come together to make their work in bursts of intense creativity. Whether performing at music festivals or in galleries all over the world (like Colette and the Centre George Pompidou in Paris, the Tate Modern in London, and the MoMA in New York), you get the impression that the same energy and excitement is there today as it was in the beginning. Alex and CoS are unrelentingly original and unabashedly individual and we love that.

Photography by Andrew Cowen

Nigel Marsh: is the author of two books, ‘Fat, Forty and Fired’ and ‘Observations of a Very Short Man’. He wrote the first after finding himself overweight, over 39 and made redundant when the company he’d been brought to Australia from the UK to run, was merged with another. It’s a brilliant, candid account of one man’s struggle to find himself in the rubble, become a better dad to his four kids, a nicer husband to his wife Kate, give up drinking and lose a few pounds. The book quickly went almost to the top of the best-seller lists, just pipped by the ubiquitous Dan Brown. After taking a year ‘out’ Nigel was offered the position of CEO of advertising agency Leo Burnett. Over the next three years he turned the company around, even winning ‘Agency of the Year’ twice and introduced the concept of Earth Hour to the world. At the peak of his career he then did the unthinkable, he left work again, this time to write his second book (which has recently been published) and to attempt to make a living from work with ‘a point.’
Photography by Claire Thomas

Nahji Chu: Nga (known as Nahji to most) Chu is quite a woman; a talented film maker and highly successful entrepreneur. Nahji was one of the first Vietnamese/Lao refugees to find a new home in Australia over 30 years ago. Their new life here was tough, but nothing compared to what it had been like living in refugee camps for the previous four years. Her business, MissChu, supplies venues and events with sublime Vietnamese-inspired canapes. Her ingredients are wherever possible Fair Trade and organic. Her famous rice paper rolls have been devoured by – excuse us while we name-drop for a sec – His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Missy Higgins, and Ben Lee. But MissChu was never meant to be so successful, it was just meant to allow her to make more of her wonderful charcoal animations and thereby tell her story and that of so many others like her.
Photography by Heidi Romano.

Laurent Labourmene: Laurent Labourmene’s CV, (if he had one… we suspect he doesn’t), would be scattered with words like United and Nations, Leadership, Development, Forum, Global, Future and Architect. It would be staged in Vienna, Paris, Sydney, New York and San Francisco. After reading it you’d expect to meet some incredibly impressive, possibly uptight, individual. Impressive he is, but uptight? Not in the slightest. In fact Laurent is one of the most humble individuals and, as you’ll quickly realise when you read the following interview, extraordinarily brave, candid and full of insight. If we could build the world of tomorrow, then we’d want this guy to be one of the architects.

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