As part of a birthday package, my mother recently hunted around for a magazine that she thought I’d like and came up with Renegade Collective, which neither of us had seen before.

The Aussie mag proved to be a great read, so much so that I read it cover to cover and then sent it back to my mum to do the same. A few things worth noting:

• The pages mostly comprise feature articles. That is, well-written stories that give you the full picture. Many magazines these days seem to be content with endless pages of glib coverage of new products and pop-up stores, with two to three features in the entire tomb.
• The articles are about the subject and not the author. I am loathe to read most NZ coverage of pop culture because the writers almost always begin with a fascinating story about their experience of meeting the subject, or another tenuously relevant anecdote. In my opinion, a feature about another person should not begin with “I”.
• It is well-edited. Again, unlike a lot of NZ lifestyle publications, I was not tripping over poor spelling, missing words, repeated phrases, nonsensical syntax and a litany of other sins.
• There is hardly any advertising. Not sure how they manage it but there are so few ads that I found myself intentionally checking to see if there were in fact any. They are well-chosen, well placed and unobtrusive.

As the tag line says, it’s a mag for “game changers, rule breakers, thought leaders and style makers”.