About Nouvelle Vague | Nouvelle Vague Magazine

Who we are

Nouvelle Vague was founded in July 2015 with the intention of sharing the passion of surfing with like-minded people. Since the beginning, it has been in our values to be close to our readers, fostering a community space where people feel at home, with stories and discussions that they can connect to. Surfing is incredibly multidimensional and so are those in its lineup - we work to share content where every surfer can see themselves represented as well as topics that impact those in the water. We are also committed to amplifying the voices of those who aren't heard the way they should be in the surf industry. Through activating our community on people making positive change, Nouvelle Vague is a place for education, discussion, and a resource to build connections to groups and individuals making an impact in the surf world. Surfing brings so many people joy and solace in an ever-evolving world, and we need to work together to protect the waters we love and support those in surfing's all-encompassing community.

It's the act of riding a wave, yes, but it's also about finding the magic in those waters we ride. It's about chasing something we may never attain, but going for it anyway. It's about perseverance and persistence. It's about waking up at dawn when you’ve barely slept and it's about watching the sunrise with those corduroy lines on the horizon. It's putting on your wetsuit when it’s -20 out and hoping you’ll be brave enough to go in the water. It's the feeling of being exhausted after a long day at sea. It's the feeling of being disconnected from the world for a while, and connecting with our mother Earth. Most importantly, it's about making a positive impact on our surf communities and being active allies for those we share the waters with.

It doesn’t matter if you surf or not.

It doesn’t even matter if you’re good or not.

What matters is the passion you feel and what you do with it.

Now is the time: the time to activate that passion for surfing. To learn, educate ourselves and others, to amplify the voices of those heard less, to hold each other and yourself accountable, to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes. Now is the time to make a difference, together.

Welcome à la Nouvelle Vague.

Nouvelle Vague was founded in July 2015 with the intention of sharing the passion of surfing with like-minded people. Since the beginning, it has been in our values to be close to our readers, fostering a community space where people feel at home, with stories and discussions that they can connect to.

Surfing is incredibly multidimensional and so are those in its lineup - we work to share content where every surfer can see themselves represented as well as topics that impact those in the water.

We are also committed to amplifying the voices of those who aren't heard the way they should be in the surf industry. Through activating our community on people making positive change, Nouvelle Vague is a place for education, discussion, and a resource to build connections to groups and individuals making an impact in the surf world. Surfing brings so many people joy and solace in an ever-evolving world, and we need to work together to protect the waters we love and support those in surfing's all-encompassing community.

It's the act of riding a wave, yes, but it's also about finding the magic in those waters we ride. It's about chasing something we may never attain, but going for it anyway. It's about perseverance and persistence. It's about waking up at dawn when you’ve barely slept and it's about watching the sunrise with those corduroy lines on the horizon. It's putting on your wetsuit when it’s -20 out and hoping you’ll be brave enough to go in the water. It's the feeling of being exhausted after a long day at sea. It's the feeling of being disconnected from the world for a while, and connecting with our mother Earth. Most importantly, it's about making a positive impact on our surf communities and being active allies for those we share the waters with.

It doesn’t matter if you surf or not.

It doesn’t even matter if you’re good or not.

What matters is the passion you feel and what you do with it.

Now is the time: the time to activate that passion for surfing. To learn, educate ourselves and others, to amplify the voices of those heard less, to hold each other and yourself accountable, to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes. Now is the time to make a difference, together.

Welcome à la Nouvelle Vague.

Now is the time: the time to activate that passion for surfing. To learn, educate ourselves and others, to amplify the voices of those heard less, to hold each other, and ourselves accountable, to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes. Now is the time to be an active ally and continue to be involved in the fight to change the way we have always seen surfing. Now is the time to make a difference, together.

Meet the Nouvelle Vague team

Andrew Seale

Editor

Andrew Seale is a freelance journalist, editor and surfer based in Prince Edward County. Growing up in the cradle of the Great Lakes, his childhood was spent bodysurfing questionably large waves with his father and siblings, a quiet pact made with the near-endless freshwater seas to respect their nature. It's a feeling he's chased across the continent and overseas with a surfboard, favouring neoprene over boardshorts (La Côte des Basques being a notable exception) and trading months of his life for the beach breaks of southwest France. For a decade and a half, his journalism has focused on people who create and chase their curiosities – often entrepreneurs but also seahorse enthusiasts, renegade economists and a 14-year-old who achieved nuclear fusion. He's a proficient user of the awkward pause in interviews, a horribly inefficient typer but a talented email scheduler, capable of disguising any length of surfing session with a few well-timed messages. When he's not chasing stories or waves, Andrew is hiding out in his surfboard shaping bay, overthinking concaves and trying to convince his daughter and wife that he fully grasps the venturi effect. // Photo Credit: Neil Rimmer

Roxanne Rivard Theriault

Founder & Editor-in-Chief

Malary Cloke

Graphic Designer

Malary is a graphic designer living in Saskatoon, SK. After working as a designer for USask for ten years, she is now primarily a freelancer. She has never aspired to stay in an educational system but rather to put her design skills towards something she is passionate about. Similar to surfing and the ocean, Malary’s design style is complex but clean and her minimalist approach shows that nothing is as simple as it appears. Finding soothing relief as well as a mental clarity in the ocean, Malary keeps challenging herself and chasing the feelings that inspire her in every way.

Noelle Jones

Team Member

Noelle felt more comfortable in the water than on land her whole life. She was raised in a family that valued travel over conventionality, spending much of her childhood learning about tides in the South Pacific and developing a profound connection to the natural world. When she was nineteen, she found home in Vancouver and spent the next five years sneaking off to Tofino, sleeping in her car and on couches whenever she had the chance. In 2016, she was involved in a car accident that shifted her life’s trajectory entirely. Navigating chronic injuries, she had to reevaluate her identity and discover the things that were truly important to her. She’s found healing in learning how to draw and catharsis through writing, but ultimately feels truly connected to the core of who she is through surfing. Now, you can usually catch her logging in cold water waves, playing in the skatepark, watching 60s movies or sketching on the beach with her film camera in tow.

Abigail Leach

Team Member

Abi is a freelance writer and ocean lover. After completing her BA in English Literature at Aberystwyth University, Abi went for a wander over to Australia, traveled the Margaret River WA region before bunking down in Byron Bay. This was the stepping stone to life in Bali where Abi now lives, drinking coconuts under palm trees—or something like that. The ocean and nature play a huge role in Abi’s life, being her career, her muse and her passion. Abi encourages everyone to take a break and just look to the wild to see the beauty surrounding us. Mother Nature, thank you.

Joshua T. Woollett

Team Member

Growing up mostly on the Sunshine Coast in Australia, it was almost bound the coast would become an integral part of Josh’s life. A weekend activity that slowly bloomed into a full blown love affair leading to some of the weirdest and most wonderful places on this planet. Through these trips, Joshua has met some of the most amazing people and heard some of the most incredible stories. Trying to capture some sentiment has been Joshua’s main focus throughout his career. With a firm belief that beauty exists in the mundane moments intertwined between conversation and unspoken interaction, Joshua’s work looks to demonstrate the human element that is often overlooked.

Katrin Kugler

Team Member

Katrin Kugler was born in Munich, Germany in 1995 and has always been a very active person; be that playing football or squash, fencing, or surfing on artificial standing waves and in the ocean. After having lived in the Netherlands for a while, she is currently doing a PhD in English Literature in the UK. Katrin loves cats, reading, writing, listening to music, and watching the World Surf League events.

Stephen Jones

Team Member

Stephen Jones is a photographer, storyteller, and traveller with a deep love for surfing and anything water related. As a kid growing up in Southern California, just north of Los Angeles, Stephen spent most of his days in the water and surfing in Ventura. The more he fell in love with surfing, the more he fell in love with photography and the whole culture that he found in the ocean. Photography has become his career, his escape, and his creative outlet to be able to try and tell the stories that otherwise wouldn’t be told. Much like surfing and photography, storytelling has become a passion of his and he wants to use it to show how amazing this world and its people really are.

Davide Rostirolla

Team Member

Davide Rostirolla is a self-taught photographer and graphic designer from Latina, Italy. Passionate about outdoor photography, you can always find him traveling around the world with his wife and his camera. Since 2015, Davide started shooting in the water with film and digital cameras. He then developed two parallel projects, “Film is not dead” and “Into the water”. Both projects are extremely different, but at the same time, strongly connected together thanks to four main themes: the sea, surfing, the environment and the lifestyle surrounding it. When not shooting, Davide like to sketch and create illustrations.

Steffi Jade

Team Member

Steffi is a 26 years old that grew up in Cranbrook, BC. Despite growing up in this landlocked town, Steffi has been obsessed with the ocean and everything around it since she can remember. After doing a work holiday in Australia, Steffi knew that she needed to relocate herself once back to Canada, so she moved to the magical little cold-water surf town Tofino. There, she combined her two biggest passions of photography and the ocean to become a surf photographer. It has been a huge challenge learning to shoot surf in the water and some days she gets frustrated, but she also finds the process beyond fulfilling and exciting. Capturing her friends out on their surfboard, having the time of their life as they cross-step into the golden hues of the sun is an experience she wants to enjoy for years to come and feels so incredibly fortunate to be able to do this every day.

Kaaria Quash

Team Member

Kaaria is a journalist who grew up in the Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Tobago. A surfer in his spare time, he has always been attracted to the ocean and its unknown marvels, and he uses this passion to fuel his work. He is currently finishing up a master’s degree in Montreal, which centres around environmental journalism and documentary filmmaking. You can find his work on his website or connect with him on Instagram and Twitter.

Julia Ochs

Team Member

Julia Ochs lives and works as a photographer in Stuttgart, Germany. Her work is characterized by her deep connection to nature, especially the ocean. With her current project “Visuals from the sea”, she aspires to make the sea tangible in the urban environment. After studying at the state university in media studies, she turned her back on city life for a few years. Australia, England and Portugal became her home during this time. She initially captured surfers and the sea from land, but she quickly purchased her first water housing to fully immerse herself into the ocean. This enabled her to photograph the beauty, the euphoria, but also the calm and meditative moments in the water. She dedicated her photography to the sea in all its innumerable shapes and colours, to all ocean enthusiasts like herself and to all the amazing people out there that help protect and restore our oceans for future generations.

Ashley Bartow

Team Member

Ashley is a personal trainer and freelance photographer currently based in Nashville, TN. Her fitness-based career has taken her from Indiana, to Hawaii, to Michigan, and now to Tennessee. She grew up in Gaylord, Michigan with a passion for all things sport. Little did she know that learning how to snowboard at age six would kick-start her passion for board sports, mainly surfing! When there wasn’t too much snow on the ground, Ashley would be wakeboarding, skateboarding, or surfing the Great Lakes. Being in or near the water is where Ashley feels most inspired and at peace. The water is a powerful element and it reminds her of the abundance that life envelops if we’re willing to charge it. She continues to seek out the best waves in her area and has plans to travel the east coast in pursuit of incorporating her love for surfing, fitness, photography, and people!

Aline Arnold

Social Media Assistant

Aline Arnold is a surf and lifestyle photographer from Cornwall, UK. Growing up, Aline was surrounded by the sea, which eventually made her discover two of her favourite things: surfing and photography. Inspired by magazines since her youth, she has finally decided to take the leap and decided to create her own female surfing zine, focusing solely herself on creating a space by women for women regardless of the typical surfer stereotypes. When not at university, Aline spends her days in the sea, trying to find new styles to shoot and new locations. Her goal within the industry is to help put an end to the idea that girls can’t surf as well as the boys; she wants to create an empowering community for women. She currently works with Nouvelle Vague as their social media assistant.

Meet the Nouvelle Vague team

Andrew Seale

Editor

Andrew Seale is a freelance journalist, editor and surfer based in Prince Edward County. Growing up in the cradle of the Great Lakes, his childhood was spent bodysurfing questionably large waves with his father and siblings, a quiet pact made with the near-endless freshwater seas to respect their nature. It's a feeling he's chased across the continent and overseas with a surfboard, favouring neoprene over boardshorts (La Côte des Basques being a notable exception) and trading months of his life for the beach breaks of southwest France. For a decade and a half, his journalism has focused on people who create and chase their curiosities – often entrepreneurs but also seahorse enthusiasts, renegade economists and a 14-year-old who achieved nuclear fusion. He's a proficient user of the awkward pause in interviews, a horribly inefficient typer but a talented email scheduler, capable of disguising any length of surfing session with a few well-timed messages. When he's not chasing stories or waves, Andrew is hiding out in his surfboard shaping bay, overthinking concaves and trying to convince his daughter and wife that he fully grasps the venturi effect. // Photo Credit: Neil Rimmer

Roxanne Rivard Theriault

Founder & Editor-in-Chief

Malary Cloke

Graphic Designer

Malary is a graphic designer living in Saskatoon, SK. After working as a designer for USask for ten years, she is now primarily a freelancer. She has never aspired to stay in an educational system but rather to put her design skills towards something she is passionate about. Similar to surfing and the ocean, Malary’s design style is complex but clean and her minimalist approach shows that nothing is as simple as it appears. Finding soothing relief as well as a mental clarity in the ocean, Malary keeps challenging herself and chasing the feelings that inspire her in every way.

Noelle Jones

Team Member

Noelle felt more comfortable in the water than on land her whole life. She was raised in a family that valued travel over conventionality, spending much of her childhood learning about tides in the South Pacific and developing a profound connection to the natural world. When she was nineteen, she found home in Vancouver and spent the next five years sneaking off to Tofino, sleeping in her car and on couches whenever she had the chance. In 2016, she was involved in a car accident that shifted her life’s trajectory entirely. Navigating chronic injuries, she had to reevaluate her identity and discover the things that were truly important to her. She’s found healing in learning how to draw and catharsis through writing, but ultimately feels truly connected to the core of who she is through surfing. Now, you can usually catch her logging in cold water waves, playing in the skatepark, watching 60s movies or sketching on the beach with her film camera in tow.

Abigail Leach

Team Member

Abi is a freelance writer and ocean lover. After completing her BA in English Literature at Aberystwyth University, Abi went for a wander over to Australia, traveled the Margaret River WA region before bunking down in Byron Bay. This was the stepping stone to life in Bali where Abi now lives, drinking coconuts under palm trees—or something like that. The ocean and nature play a huge role in Abi’s life, being her career, her muse and her passion. Abi encourages everyone to take a break and just look to the wild to see the beauty surrounding us. Mother Nature, thank you.

Joshua T. Woollett

Team Member

Growing up mostly on the Sunshine Coast in Australia, it was almost bound the coast would become an integral part of Josh’s life. A weekend activity that slowly bloomed into a full blown love affair leading to some of the weirdest and most wonderful places on this planet. Through these trips, Joshua has met some of the most amazing people and heard some of the most incredible stories. Trying to capture some sentiment has been Joshua’s main focus throughout his career. With a firm belief that beauty exists in the mundane moments intertwined between conversation and unspoken interaction, Joshua’s work looks to demonstrate the human element that is often overlooked.

Katrin Kugler

Team Member

Katrin Kugler was born in Munich, Germany in 1995 and has always been a very active person; be that playing football or squash, fencing, or surfing on artificial standing waves and in the ocean. After having lived in the Netherlands for a while, she is currently doing a PhD in English Literature in the UK. Katrin loves cats, reading, writing, listening to music, and watching the World Surf League events.

Stephen Jones

Team Member

Stephen Jones is a photographer, storyteller, and traveller with a deep love for surfing and anything water related. As a kid growing up in Southern California, just north of Los Angeles, Stephen spent most of his days in the water and surfing in Ventura. The more he fell in love with surfing, the more he fell in love with photography and the whole culture that he found in the ocean. Photography has become his career, his escape, and his creative outlet to be able to try and tell the stories that otherwise wouldn’t be told. Much like surfing and photography, storytelling has become a passion of his and he wants to use it to show how amazing this world and its people really are.

Davide Rostirolla

Team Member

Davide Rostirolla is a self-taught photographer and graphic designer from Latina, Italy. Passionate about outdoor photography, you can always find him traveling around the world with his wife and his camera. Since 2015, Davide started shooting in the water with film and digital cameras. He then developed two parallel projects, “Film is not dead” and “Into the water”. Both projects are extremely different, but at the same time, strongly connected together thanks to four main themes: the sea, surfing, the environment and the lifestyle surrounding it. When not shooting, Davide like to sketch and create illustrations.

Steffi Jade

Team Member

Steffi is a 26 years old that grew up in Cranbrook, BC. Despite growing up in this landlocked town, Steffi has been obsessed with the ocean and everything around it since she can remember. After doing a work holiday in Australia, Steffi knew that she needed to relocate herself once back to Canada, so she moved to the magical little cold-water surf town Tofino. There, she combined her two biggest passions of photography and the ocean to become a surf photographer. It has been a huge challenge learning to shoot surf in the water and some days she gets frustrated, but she also finds the process beyond fulfilling and exciting. Capturing her friends out on their surfboard, having the time of their life as they cross-step into the golden hues of the sun is an experience she wants to enjoy for years to come and feels so incredibly fortunate to be able to do this every day.

Kaaria Quash

Team Member

Kaaria is a journalist who grew up in the Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Tobago. A surfer in his spare time, he has always been attracted to the ocean and its unknown marvels, and he uses this passion to fuel his work. He is currently finishing up a master’s degree in Montreal, which centres around environmental journalism and documentary filmmaking. You can find his work on his website or connect with him on Instagram and Twitter.

Julia Ochs

Team Member

Julia Ochs lives and works as a photographer in Stuttgart, Germany. Her work is characterized by her deep connection to nature, especially the ocean. With her current project “Visuals from the sea”, she aspires to make the sea tangible in the urban environment. After studying at the state university in media studies, she turned her back on city life for a few years. Australia, England and Portugal became her home during this time. She initially captured surfers and the sea from land, but she quickly purchased her first water housing to fully immerse herself into the ocean. This enabled her to photograph the beauty, the euphoria, but also the calm and meditative moments in the water. She dedicated her photography to the sea in all its innumerable shapes and colours, to all ocean enthusiasts like herself and to all the amazing people out there that help protect and restore our oceans for future generations.

Ashley Bartow

Team Member

Ashley is a personal trainer and freelance photographer currently based in Nashville, TN. Her fitness-based career has taken her from Indiana, to Hawaii, to Michigan, and now to Tennessee. She grew up in Gaylord, Michigan with a passion for all things sport. Little did she know that learning how to snowboard at age six would kick-start her passion for board sports, mainly surfing! When there wasn’t too much snow on the ground, Ashley would be wakeboarding, skateboarding, or surfing the Great Lakes. Being in or near the water is where Ashley feels most inspired and at peace. The water is a powerful element and it reminds her of the abundance that life envelops if we’re willing to charge it. She continues to seek out the best waves in her area and has plans to travel the east coast in pursuit of incorporating her love for surfing, fitness, photography, and people!

Aline Arnold

Social Media Assistant

Aline Arnold is a surf and lifestyle photographer from Cornwall, UK. Growing up, Aline was surrounded by the sea, which eventually made her discover two of her favourite things: surfing and photography. Inspired by magazines since her youth, she has finally decided to take the leap and decided to create her own female surfing zine, focusing solely herself on creating a space by women for women regardless of the typical surfer stereotypes. When not at university, Aline spends her days in the sea, trying to find new styles to shoot and new locations. Her goal within the industry is to help put an end to the idea that girls can’t surf as well as the boys; she wants to create an empowering community for women. She currently works with Nouvelle Vague as their social media assistant.