1. Describe yourself in a sentence.Bright & bubbly, organised but messy - a fairytale princess who never grew up!
2. What is the first thing you ever designed?
From the age of 6 I used to design & sew dresses for my Barbie dolls & then take photo’s of them like they were in a fashion shoot but the first thing I designed & made for a real person was in Textiles & Design class in year 7, we were asked to make shorts & all my classmates made checked cotton baggy shorts with an elastic waist & I made electric blue velvet hot pants with silver hearts on the bum!
3. Describe your labels aesthetic.
LADY is unashamedly girly & ethereal with an edge, dress up clothes for urban princesses.
4. Tell us about your current collection Glass Flowers.
Glass Flowers draws inspiration from the The Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants, a famous collection of highly realistic glass botanical models at the Harvard Museum & the concepts that surround the fragility of glass. The collection incorporates a colour palette of lilac, apricot & sage with highlights of white, silver & blue & silhouettes reminiscent of the sinuous shapes of flowers.
5. Where do you draw your inspiration from?
From everywhere, a girl walking down the street that looks fabulous, my friends, music, art…. a twisted tree, anywhere really.
6. What designers inspire you?
Vionnet, Lanvin & my father who was also a fashion designer.
7. Tell us about your lovely shop.
I first opened my shop LADY with my business partner Skye in High St Armadale in 2006, after a year of being in Armadale we decided to move to the city & found a fabulous little shop in Flinders Lane. The shop that we found was painted all over with blackboard paint, every wall even over mirrors & the concrete floor was cracked. We spent two weeks renovating the entire store ourselves, painting, mortaring holes in the floor, sanding & drilling racks into the walls! We wanted the shop to feel like a surreal dolls house, so got a 3 metre staircase to nowhere constructed in the middle of the shop, spray painted lace stencils on the floor & had our artist friend Eveline Tarunadjaja illustrate he walls.
I love having a shop because it means I can display my LADY collections how I like & I have the opportunity to talk to customers & find out what they want. It also gives me the chance to stock other like-minded labels & play dress ups whenever I like!
The labels that LADY stocks at the moment are: Tristan Blair, Karla Spetic, Bim Kinesis, Sara Philips, Estrella, Emma Veal, Tryst, My Pet Square, Fine Cloth, Jane & Eleni, I Heard They Eat Cigarettes, Limedrop, Mr Julius, Marie Says Eat Cake, Alex & Alex Shoes, a selection of re-worked vintage pieces and of course our pretty LADY Collection + more.
For Autumn/Winter 09 that arrives in Feb/march we will be stocking Karen Walker, Sretsis & Lucette also.
8. What is the best thing about what you do?
I get to be creative everyday, & when I see that one of my designs has made a girl feel special & confident that makes me the happiest!
9. What are you working on right now?
I have just finished designing & making the samples for my Autumn/Winter 09 collection called
She Walks in Beauty. I am selling it into boutiques for next season and looking to stock in boutiques nationally & internationally.
I am also working on my online store
www.ladylovesme.com
Emerging local Sydney label Secret Squirrel is the brainchild of designer Bri Cheeseman and her musician partner Andrew Prince.
