When news broke this week that Nadia Bartel has listed her Windsor home for sale, the story went nuts. Everyone raced to check out Bartel’s bed linen, critique her living room art and generally have a good old sticky beak at how an influencer lives in 2026.
For those yet to see the listing, Nadia’s four-bedroom Edwardian home, bought in 2020, is open-plan with a parquet-floor living area. It could be yours for between $3 and $3.2 million.
One male friend asked me about the fuss over a suburban house with basic kitchen cabinetry. Or rather, over its owner.
“I just don’t get the Nadia thing. Sure, she used to be married to the bloke every woman thought was their dream husband, but what has she ever done that’s interesting?” he said. “I know women love her, but men don’t get it. What am I missing?”
Well, gents, this is your lucky day. After a week awash with friends’ texts variously hating on the state and US governments and debating whether this year’s MAFS brides are the worst yet, I’m in the mood for something lighter.
Happy to help out the fellas in translating the Nadia appeal, although I couldn’t care less if you don’t get her. And as it turns out, I have some inside running.
Years ago, Nards and I were colleagues at a magazine. She sold ads. We’d say hi opening tins of tuna in the work kitchen. Still in her 20s, a baby, not long out of uni.
We held hands at one Myer event when she was nervous. She drove me home that night and came in for a hot chocolate. My middle son greeted her in a dressing gown: “Not being rude but why are you hanging out with Mum?”
The first time she showed me her engagement ring from Geelong star Jimmy Bartel she was unsure if the rock was big enough, but she had no such hesitation when Jimmy – the aforementioned dream husband – turned out to be an alleged love rat.
Nards absorbed the humiliation without ever making it ugly. Soldiered on as a single mum, co-launched fashion business Henne, found love again. Found controversy during lockdown when a video showing her snorting white powder off a Kmart plate was mistakenly posted online.
If we bumped into each other in the street, I have no doubt we’d hug and probably shriek briefly, but realistically I hardly know Nadia. We’re not friends as such and we’ve never had a deep conversation, other than the time I told her I dreamed she’d had a third baby.
But I know enough to admire her for her resilience and her entrepreneurship. Her dedication to her boys and family. The fact that she’s a self-made woman, albeit one like the Duchess of Sussex – someone I both abhor and admire – who’s used a famous man’s name to build a brand.
Is Nadia particularly interesting? Probably not in the way I usually admire. I gravitate towards women who plant a flag and say what’s on their minds. Nadia doesn’t do that. She rarely weighs in on anything beyond business. That could be old insecurities or simply not wanting to explain herself every five minutes.
And that, I suspect, is the bit men miss.
The mystery doesn’t endear her to some women either. They don’t like that she doesn’t need weight loss jabs or that she “looks mean”, as one friend said this week during our regular discussion of our lists of people we don’t like (Nards isn’t on mine.)
“The weird frozen pose face. Looks like she’s holding in a fart.”
Fair. But given the amount of people peering through her windows, it also looks like that frozen mystique is about to sell a house.
Kate Halfpenny is the founder of Bad Mother Media.
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