Welcome to The Look

The Look is a place for smart, curious reviews and essays on film, TV, clothes and history. It’s one critic’s way of seeing culture.

And it’s guided completely by what I like to look at. New films and TV shows — and older ones. Costume design and exhibitions. Book-to-screen adaptations. Period dramas, historical and technological fantasies, and the perennial seductions of retro and nostalgia.

And it takes a closer look at the politics of the gaze — who does the looking, who gets looked at, and what it all means.

Who am I? A clever girl. I’ve been fascinated by looks throughout my career as a journalist, researcher, teacher and critic. I wrote about fashion, history and pop culture in my 2013 nonfiction book Out of Shape: Debunking Myths about Fashion and Fit. I’ve embarked on excursions onto the street and into the past for my style blog Footpath Zeitgeist. And I’ve talked about film and TV every two weeks as co-host of The Rereaders literary and culture podcast.

As a freelance writer I’ve analysed and reviewed screen culture and cultural history for ScreenHub, Junkee, Crikey, Metro, i-D, The Guardian, The Big Issue, The Age and many more publications.

At their best, media mastheads are the banners we rally under. And The Look is buoyed by a community of people who see the world in the same way I do. Come and join us at Patreon.