We sat opposite each other while she excitedly showed me and other guests the mock magazine she had created and produced, and laughed as she predicted an ''all-nighter'' before the looming deadline.

The magazine's pages - tucked into the bag she had with her at lunch - were full of young models from hip modelling agency The Wolves and its layout was carefully and neatly constructed, with computer graphics, hand-drawn illustrations, photo shoots, editorial content and product shots throughout.

''I'm not high fashion … I wanted it to appeal to men,'' she said of the project. It had clearly taken a lot of work, genuine interest and effort.

She was working at Metalicus, ''a daggy fashion store in Chatswood Chase'', where she had a job as a shop assistant over the course of her fashion styling degree at the Whitehouse Institute of Design. Fashion, she made very clear, was a central part of her life and her dream was to be a stylist.

At another party, this time to celebrate Randwick's new grandstand, Frances told me she had made the hairpiece she was wearing, a chic, black band with netting that neatly fell over her face.

Athletic and fresh-faced, sunny and always keen to gossip, at lunch Frances spoke about the fashion designers clamouring to dress her and her sisters.

She said a lot of clothes swapping and borrowing went on among her sisters and that hopeful designers sent items to them via the Prime Minister's Office. ''We don't see [the clothes] because they send them to my dad's office. But [staff] said they've been inundated,'' she said.

She has a good relationship with young designer By Johnny, who sends her and her sisters ''five things a time'', which they send back after wearing, and being photographed in. ''Not that everyone's going to wear what I'm wearing,'' she said, ''but if I can help in any small way … he's a tiny Sydney designer.''