FINE FORM with Rebecca Jarvie-Gibbs

⚠️ Content note: This conversation includes discussion of pregnancy loss. If this is a tender topic for you, please take care while listening.Katherine Sabbath is the effervescent baker, author and creative force behind some of the most extraordinary cakes you’ll ever see.Before the cookbooks, the television appearances and the hundreds of thousands of people following her work, Katherine was a high school teacher in Campbelltown, baking cakes for her students as a way of making them feel seen. That simple act of generosity became the foundation for an entirely new career.But this conversation goes far beyond cake. We talk about finding the courage to face your fears, exploring the financial realities of backing creative ideas, her relationship with risk, and her experience of carrying grief while continuing to show up publicly with joy. Katherine truly is as good as they come.Follow Katherine: @katherine_sabbath

Adriana Picker is one of Australia's most beloved illustrators and the best-selling author of several books - including Petal, a stunning coffee table book of botanical illustration that thousands of copies around the world.With an upbringing in NSW’s Blue Mountains and the Hunter Valley, Adriana has been surrounded by nature and botanicals since her early childhood and she talks beautifully about her formative years shaped in her grandmother’s garden.After moving to Sydney to study at the Collegue of Fine Arts, she became an intern for acclaimed costumer designer Catherine Martin - her illustrations for the film Australia were shown at the Oscars. She followed that with The Great Gatsby, then stepped out entirely on her own. Her folio today spans commercial and editorial illustration, murals, exhibition work, and several books — including Petal, which hasn’t left my coffee table since it came out.She came to our conversation 31 weeks pregnant and I was incredibly grateful to speak to her at this transformative time. In this conversation, we explore what Covid completely changed about her relationship to ambition, how she lives with hyperfocus and what she's learned to do with it, what it means to structure a whole life around appreciating beauty, and what happens to your creative identity when you're about to become a mother.Find Adriana's work at adrianapicker.com | Follow: @adrianapicker | Petal at all good bookstores

Chloe Matters is the founder and creative director of Matters and Made, one of Sydney's most distinctive interior design studios.Chloe came into the world with an innate confidence - a willingness to back herself and simply go for it. Which is exactly what makes her honesty in this conversation so compelling. She's remarkably candid about what it felt like to lose that confidence.She launched Matters and Made when her second child was just six months old and her first had only recently turned one. What followed wasn't the version of success she'd imagined. There was burnout, the end of her marriage, and a period where her confidence was completely shaken.So she rebuilt. Learning to trust herself again, to work differently, and to define success on her own terms.In this conversation, we explore the role our homes play in regulating the nervous system, how her relationship with work has evolved, and the non-negotiables that now shape the way she lives, leads and designs.Follow Chloe: @mattersandmade_ | Find her at mattersandmade.com

Heleena Trahanas is PR and Marketing Manager at Dinosaur Designs and co-founder of Alex and Trahanas - the Sydney-born Mediterranean lifestyle brand she built with her friend Alexandra Heard.Heleena's family came from Greece - her grandparents migrated separately, each building something from nothing. That tenacity is in everything she does. She has spent over thirteen years at Dinosaur Designs while building Alex and Trahanas on the side - a world of hand-painted Italian ceramics, beautiful linen, and a deep love of the Mediterranean way of life, now celebrating ten years.In this conversation, we talk about what it actually takes to sustain passion and creative energy over a long professional tenure, how Alex and Trahanas was born on a friendship built on shared loves, and why joy - not grind - sits at the centre of everything Heleena creates.Find Alex and Trahanas at alexandtrahanas.com | Dinosaur Designs at dinosaurdesigns.com.au | Follow: @alexandtrahanas @heleenatrahanas

Ali Handley is the founder of Bodylove Pilates with four studios across Sydney, Bali on the horizon and a community of women who are deeply, genuinely devoted to what she has built.Ali didn't find her calling immediately. She started in PR and media before discovering Pilates in New York, where she specialised in prenatal and postnatal work. She came home to Sydney in 2018 and opened her first studio a month after having her third child.In this conversation we talk about what it really takes to scale something without losing the soul of it, how she holds the line between gut instinct and hard data and the role of genuine community in building a business that lasts.Bodylove has been a consistent anchor in my life for the past six years - through grief, burnout, pregnancy and recovery - and has fundamentally changed my relationship with my body and with movement. I'm share excited to share Ali's with you.Find Bodylove Pilates at bodylove-pilates.com | Bodylove Mamas at bodylove-mamas.com | Follow Ali: @bodylove_pilates

Stephanie Feher is the founder of Lucky Dragon Supper Club, author, content creator, and someone who has built something genuinely original in a space that didn't exist before she created it.Stephanie grew up in an Australian-Chinese-Hungarian household, and that mix of cultures runs through everything she makes. She studied music, taught briefly, wound up in digital and tech - and after Covid started filming her dinner parties just for the love of it. Lucky Dragon grew from there, slowly and on the side, into a community of people who wanted to cook and gather the way she did.She built it while life kept interrupting. The redundancies weren't the plan but they became the permission she needed. And then everything happened at once and she went all in.In this conversation we talk about building something without a blueprint, the shift from perfectionism to a pursuit of excellence and why the dinner table has always been where she feels most herself.Follow Stephanie: @luckydragonsupperclub | Find her book wherever great books are sold

Samantha Wills is a bestselling author, creative strategist and one of Australia's most compelling entrepreneurs.At 21, Samantha launched her self-titled jewellery brand from a kitchen table in Port Macquarie. Within a few years she had offices across the globe, the New York Times declared her a Breakout Star, Forbes took notice, she made history as the first Australian jewellery designer to appear on QVC.And then, after 15 years and at the height of her success, she closed it all down.What Samantha did next - and why - is the real story. Letting go of something you've built your entire identity around is one of the hardest and most honest things a person can do, and yet it has given Samantha a clarity and a purpose that feels even bigger than what came before. She is now a bestselling author and everything she does is in service of the same thing - helping women build creative careers from true alignment.In this conversation, we talk about what happens when the thing you built becomes the thing you need to leave behind and what it takes to trust yourself enough to do it.Find Samantha at samanthawills.com | @samanthawillsinstitute | @samanthawills Of Gold and Dust available at all good bookstores

Lia Townsend is the founder of Stories to Gather - one of Australia's most distinctive creative studios, building bespoke food installations that are, at their core, works of art.What Lia does is hard to put in a box - and that's exactly the point. She doesn't style food. She builds worlds out of it. Edible, immersive, sensory experiences that transform produce into storytelling - from intimate celebrations to large-scale brand activations for some of the biggest names in luxury.Lia grew up in an Australian-Italian household where food was never just sustenance - it was the reason people gathered. In this conversation we talk about what it means to build a creative practice around beauty and joy, what it took to finally back herself in this career, the label that was placed on her early in her professional life that quietly shaped how she saw herself for years, and how motherhood has influenced her approach to work and business. Find Stories to Gather at storiestogather.com.au | Follow: @stories_to_gather@rebeccajarviegibbs@thisisfineform