I first met Zoë Foster, pre-Blake, 14 years ago. I was
a seasoned and mildly cynical magazine journalist and
she had just made the move from writing about boy
bands for Smash Hits magazine to being beauty editor
of Cosmopolitan. Zoë wafted into the industry like
a breath of fresh (Michael Kors-scented) air, catching
my attention with both her supremely peppy, quick-
witted personality, which I found charming despite my
jaded self, and her take on beauty, a topic she wrote
about in a way that was completely her own, replacing
the beauty lingo and gobbledegook with real talk and
pithy puns. I’d soon learn that this shake-up is Very
Zoë: it’s not part of her make-up to do things the way
they’ve always been done, she doesn’t know how to
phone things in. And she’s a do-er of the highest order,
which is why – not content to show up to the product
launches and drink the cocktails and be on the masthead
of one of the most famous magazine brands in the world- she took this innate skill in being able to make eyeliner
sound like the most fun and fascinating thing ever, and
started fruitybeauty, one of the first beauty blogs in the
country and one that spawned an entire generation of
beauty writers all trying to sound Very Zoë.
One day a few years later, when she was 27, she
turned up to my house with a bottle of champagne.
She’d sold a novel. I, along with lots of her other friends,
didn’t even know she was writing a novel. This is
a Very Zoë type move. She’s smooth like George
Clooney, and she has the intimidating skill of making
very hard things look very easy. She has, of course,
gone on to write three more, one of which – The Wrong
Girl – was recently turned into a television series
starring another ELLE cover girl, Jessica Marais. In the
promos on Channel 10, Zoë’s name – as in “based on
a book by” – was featured just as big as three-time
Logie winner Jessica’s, testament to Zoë’s power as
a drawcard. I can’t think of many other Australian
novelists who could command the same treatment.
Her non-fiction books are just as successful. The
updated version of her bestselling Amazing Face beauty
tome (Very Zoë-ily called Amazinger Face) has proven to
be just as popular as the original, with fans clamouring
to get her latest beauty advice. Its popularity, combined
with the success of her previous offerings, has seen Zoë
sell more than 150,000 books in total.
She famously proved just how effective her non-
fiction advice could be when she co-wrote a book on
how to get the guy, Textbook Romance, with comedian
Hamish Blake – and promptly got the guy. It’s Very
Zoë that she ended up marrying Australia’s second
most-beloved man (sorry, Hame, but Waleed), because
while she is as lovely as you want her to be and despite
the fact that she spills food on her clothes literally all the
time, don’t be under any delusions that she’s not also
absolutely alpha in every possible way. They are the kind
of couple that cause other couples to fight in the cab
after dinner parties (“Why don’t you ever look at me
like that?”) and it goes without saying that together
they would go on to have the cherubic baby of
everyone’s dreams, the perfectly straight-faced George
Costanza to their Elaine and Jerry, making the sum of
their parts somehow even greater. (No, she isn’t
pregnant at the time of going to press; yes, they are
hoping to have a second baby sometime soon; yes, she
does find it annoying to be constantly asked.)
But just before she gave birth to Sonny, Zoë started
a business. A skincare line without any of the waffle or
marketing confusion usual in the industry – no
department store stockists, no ad campaigns. Just some
sweet talking on the back of boxes, some typically
hilarious Instagram posts to her 400K+ followers and
Zoë in shopping centres charming her Very Zoë way
into people’s bathrooms. But its ahh-shucks facade is
just that: Go-To has sold more than 300,000 products to
date, with orders increasing more than twofold every
year. It’s a force to be reckoned with.
It’s easy to dismiss Zoë as someone who is #lucky,
the girl with the Midas hand where everything she
touches turns to gold. This might be a bit true, she was
definitely born under a good sign (or number, she’s
way more into numerology), but she’s also steely-
willed, whip-smart and keenly strategic. She has little
tolerance for incompetence or dullness of wit, and to be
her friend is to always try a little bit harder with her in
any text or conversation than you might with someone
else you like equally as much. It would be lovely and
simplistic to pigeonhole her as just the proof that nice
girls do win, and it’s true that she is extremely pleasant
to be around, but to say that’s all she is would be to
diminish some of what makes her so worthy of a cover
of ELLE. She is, in my eyes, the ultimate ELLE woman.
She’s sexy, smart and spirited like our magazine’s
tagline, yes, but she’s also a game-changer, someone
who plays by her own rules, who knows all the things
to know about what to read and watch and listen to, the
person who can make you cry with laughter five
minutes after the deepest conversation you can have,
who cares about people and being a good person and
a better person, and who works hard but who really
knows how to live well, too. (Fun fact: no-one holidays
as well as Zoë, with wardrobes that are always themed
to the destination – Dolce & Gabbana lady-dresses in
Italy with the husband, slutty mini-skirts on a girls’ trip
to LA.) She has all the qualities that I aim for this
magazine to have every issue, but in person-form. I had
no choice but to put her on the cover.
I couldn’t interview Zoë for this cover story. It
would have descended too quickly into tequila
and in-jokes. Instead, I chose my favourite writer to
interview her. So dear readers, I give you our in-depth,
hard-hitting celebrity cover story of Zoë Foster Blake,
by Zoë Foster Blake. ]First, a note from the editor-in-chief: