She looks and smells like money and so it’s unsurprising when Janine Jellars walks into swish Nice on Seventh on the plummy Parkhurst suburb’s famous restaurant strip looking like an AmiAmalia model.
“I subscribe to the Khanyi Mbau school of thought,” she quipped a couple of days prior to our brekkies date. “Money loves me. When money is lonely, it looks for me.”
She’s certainly not materialistic but the former magazine editor is indubitably the girl she thinks she is and so, when Drum reaches out to her to interview her about her author era and contemporaneously obtaining her MBA at Gibs, she suggests this chic, understated brunch spot for the chat.
It’s one of her favourite bistros.
When we meet, it’s a rainy morning in the little true north nook that’s known for being “one of the first suburban high streets to offer street side-café dining”, according to the Avenue’s official website. The area has developed into a lot more, though, over the years, with some seriously stylish open-air shopping experiences and boutiques – and also home to Janine, both quite literally and figuratively Literally because she lives here. Figuratively because she looks it. Although growing up a bookish child in Cape Town, she’s always been coolly elegant.
Read more | Shonisani Masutha is a beauty biz mogul in the making
She walks in donning an exquisitely crafted jumper and jeans and the trendy Bottega drop earrings that every baddie is currently wearing at the end of every GRWM TikTok vid.
She’s quick to correct me it’s the dupes we’re all rocking, not Bottega Veneta, hanging from her ears. She’ll buy a Hermès handbag but never expensive design dress jewellery because the material and craftmanship doesn’t match the price tag. “You’re just paying for the brand.”
It’s the first bar (advice) she drops before requesting a macchiato from the waitron. She doesn’t even glance at the menu to decide on her breakfast order. She knows it inside-out.
Read more | From Accra to Notting Hill and now Joburg – Badu, Chimamanda hairdresser never forgets her roots
She’s been busy, studying, running her own business, mentoring others and writing her first novel to boot. We have more to talk about than time, so we agree to discuss the book after its launch in Sandton City.
A few weeks later, she’s sitting at her home study desk in Parkhurst when she starts responding to Drum’s questions. It’s where the writer, editor and marketer feels most productive. “It’s best for me to work in a formalised space,” she explains.
There’s an aloe outside the window of her study that she sometimes admires while working, listening to ‘Deep Focus’ playlists and podcasts and, of course, “my stack of dictionaries piled on my desk” as references for her writing. “My mind focuses better when there’s a buzz of controlled sound in my space. I’m celebrating the start of a brand-new year – I don’t care how cheesy some people might find it, I love that optimistic feeling in the air every January.”
She’s not all the way cheesy with it, though. “I set goals every year, rather than make ‘resolutions’. To me, a goal has to be concrete, defined, trackable and quantifiable, so I know whether I’m achieving it or not. I have six goals for 2024. My word of the year is BIG – I am celebrating a milestone birthday this year and I’m definitely planning on having a big, beautiful year.”
She deserves it, she’s been working since social media was even a thing, which is what the novel she’s written, When the Filter Fades (published by Incwadi Yothando) explores.
“And I’m obsessed with how the first wave of gossip blogging influenced celebrity culture – whether that was Perez Hilton, or Just Curious or Mika Stefano. There was an early 2000s gossip blog called Socialite Rank that would rank New York socialites, and I initially wanted to incorporate some of that idea of the hierarchies that exist in the fame game.
“Most of all, though, I wanted to discuss how women mediate our lives – what we choose to highlight or hide on social media – and what motivates us when we’re clamouring for fame, fortune or status. Women have our own ‘power struggles’ and they might not be as overt as men fighting in the streets or going off to invade other countries.”
My jaw drops when she reveals this highly regarded fictional release was actually birthed even before she wrote her other critically acclaimed work.
“I wrote this novel before I wrote ‘The Big South African Hair Book’. ‘When The Filter Fades’ began as a creative exercise. I started my career as a journalist, and being a writer was always a part of my identity. When you work in corporate, and you’ve climbed the ladder a little, you’re not in contact with writing on a daily basis, and I really missed that side of my identity. I started writing ‘When The Filter Fades’ as part of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November 2017. The aim with NaNoWriMo is to write a 50 000-word book in a month by meeting a daily word count target. I had this story idea about celebrity and influencer culture and I wanted to investigate what women do in the name of fame, fortune and status.”
So which “job title” fits most comfortably in this season of Janine’s life?
“I’m in my author era right now.”
Seems apropos.
But she is also a creative and self-described ultimate millennial slashie so how does she keep track of it all? Does she ever take the time to really stop and celebrate each milestone before moving on to achieving the next one? “Girl, are you in my therapy sessions?” she jokes.
But, seriously, the mind of a Janine Jellars is busy, which is why her career has been defined by one word: brave. She bets on herself, challenges herself, ups her game, agrees to do things she’s scared to do but does them anyway.“There’s really no getting away from the fact that I came up in a time where we were told not only that we could be anything, but that we could do anything – and do it all at once,” she says, explaining the general ambivalence around the slashie term nowadays. “It feels like we were encouraged to be really greedy about life and do it all. It’s not always the healthiest way to live life, but I’ve learned to embrace all parts of my personality, including the part that’s always chasing the next challenge.”
Drum loves a hun who’s always chasing a dream, so her response is met with an Amen.
Her proudest achievements are numerous though she’s reluctant to dwell too long on celebrating them – she’d rather systematically, calmly in her home study with the little aloe flourishing outside, work on her next challenge. But she’s learning how to get good at celebrating. You can never totally shake off an A-type personality, though, she admits.
“An idea can hit me at any time! I do find, though, that my creative mind gets activated around water: doing the dishes, at the beach, taking a shower; that’s when ideas flow most easily,” adds the wordsmith.
“You should see my phone’s Notes app – it’s full of sentences, observations, ideas, streams of consciousness, anecdotes, one-liners, book recommendations etc etc. I’ll either jot it down in my Notes all or send myself an email. So much of what I write is still pretty much based in reality, so there’ll be observations, or pieces of stories I’ve eavesdropped that I always squirrel away until I might need them. Other people’s gossip makes for great storylines!”
Sounds like an inveterate journalist.
She was the idol of almost every ’90s kid who admired her editorship of Hearst’s Seventeen. (The local licence was acquired by Media24 from 8 Ink Media in 2010.) She’s still about the life of inspiring, style, grace and mentorship. She recently just addressed the new Gibs MBA intake, she shares, then afterwards a student told her, “You made it seem so scary. But I feel you didn’t scare us enough.”
“The course is difficult because it’s designed to be that way,” says the challenge thrill-seeker. And, of course, she passed. That’s one of her crowning glories of 2023. “Besides launching my novel, I’d say walking the University of Pretoria graduation stage with a Master’s in Business Administration (was one of my proudest moments last year). That was the toughest degree I’ve ever done and it definitely had me fighting for my life.”
Her take on life is: try to win.
“I love chasing my dreams, and achieving things that ‘younger me’ always wanted to do – whether that’s being a magazine editor, or writing books.”
Read an edited extract from the novel When the Filter Fades by Janine Jellars (published by Incwadi Yothando) here. Available in all good bookstores. Recommended retail price: R325.
