If life is all about trying to find a balance, Jesse Kamm might just possibly have the perfect life. She’s based in L.A, but spends a good part of the year in Panama (where she has an eco-friendly place in the postcard-perfect Bocas del Toro). Her place is in a part of the city that’s actually quiet and peaceful - rural, even - and yet only 10 minutes from downtown. In fact, her studio is part of her house, meaning she can split her day pretty comfortably between work and family, consisting of her young son and husband, environmental scientist Lucas Brower.

“It is a great balance,” she says, reflecting on her lifestyle in a thoughtful, sing song-y voice. She says she tried focusing on motherhood for a while - “I took the first year of [my son’s] life off and we moved to Austin, Texas and rented this cabin and had this very rootsy period of just learning about this little person,” but ultimately, “When [my son] was 11 months old, we came back to L.A, and we decided that for me to be happy meant me having my job and being a mom.”

It’s perhaps this balance that enables her to design the way she does. “I feel like fashion can be very… what’s the word, grueling or intense, and when things start to get to be too much, it’s nice to check out and go get your priorities set straight,” she says. To wit, her pieces are bold and yet thoughtful, emphasising design and creativity over trends. The soft, organic palette and dreamy prints mean there is an almost rootsy feel to her pieces - a little bit of nostalgia for her upbringing in Illinois perhaps, mixed with the brightness and modernity of the California girl she is today.

“Growing up in the midwest was very much like… I don’t know, like so many millions of miles away from this world I live in, mentally at least,” she says. Always crafty as a child, she fell into designing after being exposed to racks of beautiful clothes as a model. “[As a model] I always felt like I wanted to be helping pick out the clothes… and so it became clear to me that I really enjoyed that process. I don’t think I ever thought, ‘Hmm, I’m gonna be a fashion designer’. When I stopped modelling I started taking sewing classes and I started drawing and creating and it became very organic.”

Fast forward eight years since she started her eponymous label, billed as ‘luxury’ and ‘artisan’ on the website, and it seems the label’s growth has stayed organic, as she focuses on maintaining the aforementioned balance in life. “I feel like if the collection were bigger and I were to have greater distribution, I wouldn’t have time to do the things I would like to do with [my son]. And maybe when he’s older and he’s in real school, maybe there will be a desire to grow in a different way. But we’re happy here having a small collection.”

Related links

See the bold designs by Jasmin Shokrian

Read my interview with fellow L.A designer Clare Vivier

See Corinne Grassini of SOciety for Rational Dress’ ultimate California girl style

Fashion is best, it seems, served with a side of music - or so goes the philosophy behind fresh menswear label Smith-Wykes. The brainchild of Michaell Smith and former Lacoste and Carven designer Rory Wykes, the label focuses on understated casual menswear while promoting music videos of up-and-coming bands, encouraging a conversation between the two, both of which are part of a “a bigger universe,” says Wykes.

So how do the fashion and the music sides work? I find it interesting that you’re trying to go through both these creative projects but under the same name, like it’s not like ‘Smith-Wykes fashion’, or ‘Smith-Wykes music’. It’s still under the same name, even though they’re still sort of separate.

Rory Wykes: Yeah. I mean it’s not a huge melding of creative projects, more of a parallel. I think fashion and music has a strange relationship and I think if you force it too much, it doesn’t really always work so well. [Music for Smith-Wykes] is a kind of add-on to style and a bigger universe and a bigger conversation… so the music is very much about bringing people into this universe and starting those types of conversations that then also inspire our collections.

Is that how you view fashion as well, as part of a greater creative lifestyle?

I do to a certain degree. In terms of how we’re trying to merge the two worlds, it’s very much how I see people interacting with fashion around me, and enjoying that, and sort of playing with that.

Just kind of going a little bit backwards, you said that obviously you guys are influenced by the music as you design. Can you expand on that? You said that it transports you somewhere, it’s a little bit nostalgic; how would you bring that into the designs?

Well for the spring/summer [2013] collection, it started off with, we were listening to just a little bit of new “new wave” that was coming through to Paris, so that got us listening to the old new wave, and then we were really liking the sound, it was really reminding us of the eighties and I started listening to a bit of early Police and a bit of Berlin-era Bowie. And it’s just like I said, it’s a conversation, and watching videos from that time, like Depeche Mode, I just sort of got a feeling of the simplicity of it all. It was very black and very stark. So it started with this kind of idea, where I would bring in [to the designs] black and white to begin with and any sort of black and white patterns. And then it got me thinking to colours from when I was a teenager, pinks and turquoises and blues, that brilliant kind of eighties colours, and I went and tried to find eighties pink and work it into a lapel or work into a shirt.

But it’s often also these conversations that Michaell and I will have, that may mean nothing to anyone else but somehow, out of it comes, you know, ideas.

And the menswear itself, it’s very elegant sportswear. Is that your niche?

It’s my area. I’ve always liked elegant, and interesting, and quirky and practical. And I do love the nuances, the technical or the interesting. Menswear, I think, is full of nuance as well as subtleties. So basically a small collar versus a big collar. Or the shade of blue in your Oxford shirt or the quality of your cotton. There’s a whole gamage of smaller details that men look to as opposed to just making sweeping statements of silhouette or colour.

Men like technical things, you know they get excited about the denim, where it’s from, how heavy is it like, you know what kind of indigo is it, what kind of weave is it. Womenswear is fascinating and exciting because it kind of goes off on little tangents but menswear is very much a smaller universe and men speak within a sort of confined area of quality and technical, nuanced detail. When a trend comes, it’s a centimetre off a pant hem or it’s not major, but it’s important.

/ Smith-Wykes spring/summer 2013

Related links

Meet Nick Wakeman of menswear-inspired womenswear label Studio Nicholson

How to get dressed for a music festival, on vogue.com.au

Interview with Kiwi singer Bic Runga for Vogue

Corinne Grassini of Society for Rational Dress reworks California style with architectural inspirations and a rich sewing heritage.

It’s a rare rainy day in L.A and the Society for Rational Dress studio provides a welcome reprieve from the wind and rain outside. A visually interesting one too: an industrial space with concrete floors, the overcast light streaming through the wide, expansive windows dances around the showroom/lobby, creating a chiaroscuro effect amongst the clothes and the sparse burnished leather furnishings. The space is at once sturdy, strong and sheltering; yet open, light and comfortable.

These are themes that could also be used to describe Society for Rational Dress itself. Started in 2007 by Corinne Grassini, the label produces California luxury James Perse-style basics with an intellectual, architecturally-inspired twist. Sculptural, industrial details such as thick leather straps and weighty antique brass chains are worked in with viscose t-shirts, knit sweaters and silk dresses, offering the same plane of comfort as track pants (or if you really want, tracky-daks) but with much more visual interest and style.

Like many of her SoCal cohorts, Grassini aims for stylish simplicity. Unlike many, however, she draws inspiration from both the ethos of architecture - “I always say that an architect builds a space to be comfortable in and feel comfortable in, and that’s kind of how I approach clothing too” - to the shapes and patterns found in the built landscape - her spring/summer 2012 collection took inspiration from the brickwork found in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House in L.A.

Despite this leaning towards architecture and an initial foray into humanities at the University of Washington, her current career is no surprise, least of all to her family. A tradition of sewing and craft comes through both sides and on the Society for Rational Dress website are photo-and-questionnaire profiles of women who inspire Grassini and her team; one features her grandmother, Marie Grassini.

“When [Marie] moved here with my grandpa from New York, my grandpa said, ‘You can’t bring everything, you can bring a quarter of it all, that’s all you can bring, we’re moving our entire lives across,’” recounts Grassini. “And so she hid everything, in like her shoes and in the couch and in the trunks and everywhere she could find to hide these notions and these fabrics and stuff and then they got here and she was like, ‘Surprise!’ She had her entire collection.” Returning to grad school to study pattern-making at the famed Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, Marie was the first person Grassini turned to. “When I started design school, I went over to her place and sort of looked through all her fabrics and she gave me a bunch of buttons and you know, stuff that she had collected. So yeah, [sewing] definitely runs in the family. [Also] my mom’s a big sewer, an incredible quilter, and she knits.”

Knitwear is another specialty of sorts of Grassini’s; on display in the showroom are a selection of hand-woven pieces from Peru. “Each little bobble is made in Peru,” says Grassini, who was initially reluctant to expand manufacturing overseas but fell in love with what she saw as the country’s connection to its textile heritage. “[In Peru] you can see where the manufacturing economy was built. There’s people sitting on the side of the road making rugs and blankets and little dolls and stuff, and then you go to the factories and they’re using the same stitch techniques. There’s a connection to the history of knitwear there, which I really like. And you can see that in the pieces I think.”

Grassini’s appreciation of production comes from that pattern-making background, knowledge of which both hinders and helps the label, she says. “There’s certain times where it’s good for me to know patternmaking and then certain times where I wish I could just forget it because I’ll design something, I’ll draw something, and then I’ll think, there’s no way, like nobody’s going to be able to figure out how to make a pattern out of this. And I try to visualise the pattern, and if I can’t figure it out I just cross it out.

“Designers who don’t know the technical side, they can come up with the craziest stuff they can imagine which isn’t always the most cost-effective way to design or, but it’s a really fun way to design. So it works for me and against me; it’s a different thing every day.”

Not that her technical expertise seems to have hindered her creativity; she has collaborated with New York’s Museum of Art and Design twice, creating one-off pieces for their Paper Ball and Metal Ball galas. The David Letellier-inspired finial (re: architectural ornament) flower base she created for the latter has since been reimagined as a small vase currently available on her website, as part of a home furnishings line introduced in 2011. These limited edition pieces allow Grassini to focus in the design process, she says, and indeed the Serra chair’s sturdy base and suspended leather seat with antique brass metal details and a sculptural semi-circle cut out appears to epitomise the elegant sculptural aesthetic and industrial finishes of Grassini’s main collection.

Given how often she returns to architecture and interiors as inspiration and now as a designer, is there a chance that perhaps Grassini really did enter the wrong industry? She considers it carefully. She would have liked to be an architect, she says.

“[But when I consider] all the pre-planning that goes into architecture, and not being able to tear it down and put it back up…  I like the design process of clothing because we can tear it down and build it back up and create a sample.

“[So] I think that if I take that into consideration, the way that I design, I would have liked to be an architect,” she says, “…. if I had the patience for it.”

Related links

See inside fellow L.A designer Clare Vivier’s Silverlake studio

Shop local Californian design in L.A

Meet Garance Doré and learn how to live colourfully

Lover’s aesthetic has long been tied in with lace, so it comes as no surprise that designers Nic Briand and Susien Chong have decided to release a capsule collection based on what has become their signature fabric. 

Exploring some of lace’s underappreciated qualities - “it can be evil and naughty and kinda cheeky and be really virginal and really pure,” said Chong of the duo’s fascination with lace - the delicate collection was launched on Tuesday night with a casual, low-key party at the label’s Strand Arcade store, the pieces hung bewitchingly on display, almost daring us not to fall under their spell. I caught up with Susien to find out more.

So tell me about the collection White Magick.

So pretty much this is pieces from our archives and they’ve basically either been refitted or just revamped in some way to bring them into a modern context and also basically be put together as a capsule for White Magick.

Can you talk me through some of the changes?
We lengthened some things and we slightly brought up to date some of the fits. Because they’re from the archives  too, a lot of the pieces are from our earlier collections, where we hadn’t quite refined our fit, so we kind of basically buffed and polished some of our older styles up.

What was it like going through the archives?
Oh it was great fun! I mean there’s actually a lot we’ve done over the last ten years and twenty seasons now that we could keep drawing from but we kept to the looks that we felt were the most influential of their time, and also that we keep getting consistent requests from customers about.

Do you regularly go through the archives?
No actually, we don’t. Sometimes we’ll remember stuff that was really good and that we think we should do again or that maybe, you know, like the first time round they didn’t get enough airplay and we feel that there’s real value in them, so occasionally we’ll be like, ‘Oh, remember this style?’. But we never actually consciously go through things and go ‘Oh we should do that again’. And I think this is what White Magick is about, consciously going through and finding styles we thought were really fun and adding more life into them.

Did you feel, especially going through some of your older pieces, that you’ve really grown as designers? Were there any pieces where you were like, ‘Oh gosh, I can’t believe we did that’?
I think we’re really proud of these pieces and that’s why we selected them. There are some pieces we decided to leave in the archives…

There’s a reason they’re not out?
Yeah. But I think [with the pieces in the White Magick collection], we’re really proud of them and we feel like they all have the essence and spirit of Lover in them and for that reason, that’s why they’ve been selected for White Magick.

View the White Magick collection by Lover on their website

Zimmermann: another Aussie label known for lace

Australian fashion love at MBFWA

In the raggedly bohemian, character-filled suburb of Silver Lake in Los Angeles, the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Micheltorena stands out for the modern, light-filled studio standing on it. Inside, designer Clare Vivier is discussing plans to introduce travel luggage to her eponymous leather goods line. 

“It can be done,” says the soft-spoken Vivier with conviction, empathetic emphasis on the can. “You can make a really pretty weekender/overnighter on wheels.”

It’s the tone of someone utterly confident in reaching their goal - all that’s left are the practicalities. But Vivier is not being cocky - her unpretentious, down-to-earth nature is the antithesis of this. Rather, her steely self-assuredness comes from experience: after all, her now cult-status luxury leather goods label was only born when the former French television journalist figured out how to turn her vision of a line of simple, practical and yet stylish laptop bags into reality. 

It’s a reality that has since blossomed: the team have since moved studios and the same location will turn into a store filled with Vivier’s made-in-L.A. buttery leather goods, each characterised by their bright colour accents and simple, chic silhouettes. She’s also planning to expand into men’s accessories soon, while adding new twists to old favourite - the best-selling Tropezienne tote in cherry pink, for example. Quelle élégance, non?

And the travel goods? They’re not reality yet, and with the number of projects in line for the company, it might be a while until they are. But will they be reality? Given Vivier’s track record, it would be almost foolish not to think so.

What do you like about L.A.?
I love the weather and I love that there’s a big creative community around, people doing creative things and anything is possible is here. Like any ideas that you have, you can make them happen here, I don’t know why.

So have there been any ideas you’ve made happen? Obviously this…
Well yeah.

How did it start?  
It started when I was making my own bags and then I looked around for factories - and that’s another thing about Los Angeles, there’s a lot of production here. I didn’t know anyone in the business so I just had to ask around.

So I found production and then I started to design and thinking I could design anything I wanted now that other people were sewing my bags. But then I discovered production in the US, it’s very expensive. So you have to work within the confines of that price structure. Like, you’re not going to… I realized that my first bag I made was very complicated and it turned out to be a very expensive bag and then I didn’t have a name yet so I couldn’t really justify charging a lot. Stores weren’t interested in a bag line that was unknown and charging 600 dollars for a bag and competing with the big brands.

What was the first bag like?
It was a work bag. It was a laptop bag but it just had canvas and leather and a lot of pockets and piping and structure to it. It was complicated to make.

Okay. But do you think it’s worked in your favour? Because part of what’s appealing about your line is that it is simple.
Yeah, it definitely has worked in my favour. I had to just make it work. I remember one day I had some leather, the Trop leather, and I thought, I want to do something with this leather, how can I make it work?

So I put it on the ground to see the way it formed and I folded it into a bag and I thought, I could do something really simple. And I made these leather strips, and even mocked up a handle and just stared at it for a while and then I placed some hardware, like where the hardware was going to be, and just stared at it, seeing if I could get a visual of what it was going to look like and I thought, that’s good.

What piece would you say represents you the most?
Oh gosh, I don’t even know. I would say the Trop but I don’t even carry the Trop much anymore.

…I can’t really name one. There’s the canvas tote I’ve been carrying lately… I think they all do in a way because they’re all simple and classic and what I like to think of as very chic.

Are there are any designers that you like, like your favourite labels or artists?
Hmmm. A lot of the Frenchies, Isabel Marant and, um, Céline I like. A.P.C. I love; I don’t wear many of their clothes but I love the aesthetic.

I love A.P.C. They don’t quite do sizes that fit me though…
No. I mean you’re quite small… And I like Steven Alan.

I know you did a collaboration with them, what’s been your favourite collaboration?
Hmm. Probably with Steven Alan, it was the easiest.

And right now we’re doing a collection with Wren, with Melissa Coker and her line, that’s always very easy and fun to do. 

Are you excited about where the store is going? When you first started, did you ever think it would be like this?
No. I hope it would. We wanted it to be. And I want it to keep growing, I don’t take anything for granted, I take it day by day because I know the fashion business is so fickle and you just have to keep going and keep making yourself relevant and keep making designs that people want to carry and keep it interesting… it’s a lot of work.

But you love it?
Yeah.

Silver Lake swagger

Interview: Melissa Coker of Wren talks colour and Minnetonka memories

Shop L.A.: local Californian design at Vivier & Bentley

I was lucky enough to be invited to check out the Wren studio when I was in L.A.; situated in a nondescript neighbourhood, its factory-like exterior showed nothing of the riot of colour and brightness that was inside. Unfortunately the woman behind the brand, Melissa Coker, was in New York while I visited (doing bigger and better things - video to come in another post, love it!) but I still managed to ask her a couple of things about those awesome Minnetonkas I spotted in her studio:

Minnetonkas! Can you tell me what your inspiration was for the Minnetonka collection?
I grew up Lake Forest, Illinois, where we spent summers in Wisconsin. The highlight of each trip was a brand new pair of Minnetonka Moccasins.  These prized shoes would be worn into the ground year in and year out, gleefully replaced at the start of the next summer.

How did the collaboration came about?
As I began working on the fall 2012 line, still in my Minnetonkas after all these years, I started thinking what a perfect pairing this could be and what a great fit it would be, not only for Wren, but also for myself.  That sense of history and authenticity would make for a great collaboration.

The Minnetonkas are indeed very cool. Your line is known for colourful prints (which came up beautifully in the photos!). What attracts you about print, and colour?
The whole line usually is born from a favorite print or two.  It’s my key for the design process.  I know I’ve found something special when I see a print that gives me a giddy & excited feeling.  

Have you ever had an all-time favorite print and why?
My favorite print was a floral that looked like it had been hand painted & had a very brushstroke-y look.  It also has a vintage feel which I love.

An unlikely source of inspiration helped make the Ellery show stand out at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia.

Kym Ellery’s guilt over discarding a soft toy from her childhood, a bear named Delicatessen, was the driving force behind the collection, according to the show notes.

Apart from Mickey Mouse-style silver ear headbands, one could hardly tell - the inspiration was subtle, but clearly inspired Ellery in all the right places. Fabrics were folded unexpectedly to give the gentle impression of a tummy while boldly rounded shoulders took their cues from the cuddliness of a bear to give tailored pieces a sense of intrigue.

The result was a collection that was directional and sophisticated, not saccharine, as nostalgia-inspired collections can sometimes be. Perhaps the guilt played into it? Whatever the case, the show was certainly a stand-out in a week of Not Another Floral Print. I asked Ellery to tell the full story after the show: 

So this resort 2012/13 collection was inspired by Delicatessen, your teddy bear. Can you tell me more? How old were you when you first got him/her?
Well he was one of a collection. I used to collect all these bears (which I haven’t really told anyone yet) and he was one of them and he was the one I saved up for the longest. I went on a trip when I was about 11 and purchased him.

What did he look like?
He was brown, and he was…. he was perfect. He had a pointy nose.

Aw. Where did the name Delicatessen come from?
There’s a famous bear named Delicatessen and I was so into him at a young age that I named him after the famous bear Delicatessen.

Oh! I’m a big bear person too but I didn’t know that. So what, when you were 18, you just thought ‘time to move on’?
Well I just went through a phase of cleaning out my life, I’d just moved to Sydney from Perth and tossed everything out. I was heartbroken.

What were you thinking when you styled the collection?
I was… thinking about who the girl was from the collection.

Okay, so who was the girl?
She was inspired by Frida Kahlo, so we kind of made a bit of a hardcore Latina bitch… can I say that? Just a strong type of woman.

A hardcore Latina… I don’t think I’ve ever met one of those.
You haven’t? Well you’ve just met 21 of them.

I met Vera Balyura outside Hemingway & Pickett, a store in LA’s Silver Lake district that is run, funnily enough, by an Australian (owner Toby Burke Hemingway is from Melbourne). The store was hosting a trunk show for her label VeraMeat, and the slender, hauntingly beautiful designer was at the door personally to greet guests with her gorgeous companion Fred (a girl, by the way). 

Fascinated by her quirky jewellery, I nabbed her for a few quick questions. She was lovely, and I cannot say enough how much I’ve fallen in love with her pieces. I mean c’mon guys - a dinosaur eating fried chicken? ‘Sif not cool. 

So you’re a jewellery designer. How did you start?
I started off making things for myself. I was modelling at the time, and I’ve always made stuff with my grandfather, like miniatures and stuff so I just wanted to just make things for myself that I kind of wanted to wear. And then a stylist saw some of my stuff and she was like, ‘Oh’, you know, ‘I’d love to feature this’. And she worked with Nylon a lot and so she said ‘You really need to make a line,’ and so I did, and I sent it to her and they ended up featuring me so it was really great.

It’s just something I enjoy doing for myself and I kind of then got into the swing and it grew and grew and grew and now I have a store in Manhattan and other stores like this (Hemingway and Pickett) carry my stuff.

Are you originally from New York?
Yeah. Well I was born in Europe but I grew up in New York. I’ve lived there for over ten years, I went to school there and everything but yeah, I come to LA a lot and my sister lives here and I need excuses to come here.

Yeah? Why do you like LA?
I like the weather the most.

Funny, that’s what most people say about Australia.
The weather!

It’s so good. I’ve actually been to Sydney and I love it, I like the ibises and the bats in the park, it’s very inspiring. Fred looks like a little bat so…

Is Fred your only pet?
She is, I used to have a little bluebird with a red belly, it was really interesting and I used to just let it fly around and I had the window open and  it would leave and everything and then about a year and a half after I had it, it was just sitting on the windowsill and it was kind of like looking at it me and I could tell it waslike, ‘Can I go?’ and I was like, ‘You can go if you want.’ So he went outside, and then he came back every few months to visit me.

Oh! Do you still see him?
Well that was when I was in Brooklyn and now I’ve moved to Manhattan so…

He’s probably gone back and seen new people in your apartment and been like, ‘Who is this?’
I know. He doesn’t see me anymore. But he was such a beautiful, beautiful little treasure.

So have you always loved animals?
Yeah I have, especially unique animals or animals that I feel like me pick me. I have a lot of weird animal stories.

Like?
Well animals, like even really mean dogs that don’t like anyone, they really like me. And for some reason they’re very calm around me.

Like me and my friend went to this insane asylum just to check it out and it was closed [but] we went to take photos, and one of the family members of the family that watched it - he used to be in the asylum, he stuttered and had a lot of issues - he was there by himself …

He came with this huge pit bull on a chain and the pit bull was just barking ‘ar, ar, ar,’ and then he let it go off the leash and it ran towards us, but it went right past me towards my friend and my friend was terrified with his hands up and I was like, ‘It’s okay, come here,’ and he just sat next to me, like super calm.

Wow.
It’s fun. I don’t know why it is, but it just is.

So animals are where you get most of your inspiration from?
Well, I just make things I want for myself, mostly.

And where does the ‘meat’ in VeraMeat come from?
Yeah, the meat comes from me laughing [while] walking near the BQE (Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in New York) after work and thinking, ‘What’s honest, that I love [and] yet think is funny?’ ‘Meat’ came to mind as it’s something hard to like these days as being vegan is the politically correct thing yet my body type doesn’t allow that nor does my blood type. Long story short, I just thought ‘VeraMeat’ and started laughing. Then I knew I would have to stick with it.

Also, my company is the ‘meatier’ side of jewelry - more interesting subject matter and better materials.

[And some] fun news - Werner Herzog the director just picked up a VeraMeat Edward Scissorhand necklace for good luck!

Just three years ago, Olivia Thornton was unknown. Today, she’s walking for some of the most prominent designers in the industry. Vogue meets the Queensland native who’s making her mark on the world stage.

Olivia Thornton was discovered on the Gold Coast at the end of 2009, and after only having appeared in two fashion weeks in Australia – “My first Australian Fashion Week I was still in school so it wasn’t even a proper one, I flew down for a couple days and then went home!” she says – has already made the jump to the international show circuit. See what she has to say about her rapid rise in the industry.

What’s the moment that’s summed up fashion season so far?
Probably doing the shows here in Paris because it was the culmination of all my efforts and tiredness and exhaustion. And it was cool being in the line up with some of the top girls.

What was your favourite show?
Either Mary Katrantzou in London or Thierry Mugler – I would probably say Mugler because it was such a good line-up of girls and a fantastic collection, as always.

How does it feel to be doing all these big shows overseas, especially Mugler?
I think when you’re going to fashion week you always have the thought in the back of your mind like, “Oh you know, there are so many girls and so many beautiful faces, why would they book me?” [So] it was definitely a massive honour, it was really, really exciting to be in that show and I’ve kind of followed his work for a long, long time so… yeah. It was really exciting.

What do you always have in your bag during fashion week?
Trail mix and my iPod – apart from the essentials like phone and wallet and stuff.

How do you kill time backstage?
If I have friends in the shows, we’ll hang out and chat but if I’m by myself I usually read, or write, or draw or listen to my iPod.

Your favourite thing about being a model?
Definitely travelling and the people I get to meet. I met my boyfriend through modelling, and I’ve met girls who are fast becoming some of my closest friends.

And the worst thing about modelling – or aspects you don’t like as much?
Castings, especially during fashion week, can get kind of gruelling. And sometimes travelling – I mean it’s a good thing, but with a lack of routine and living out of a suitcase for six months at a time, it can get a little bit frustrating. But it’s all part of it.

How do you feel having made such a meteoric rise in the modelling industry, is it a bit surreal?
Um, yeah. It seems a little bit. But to me it doesn’t feel that rapid, [it more] feels like I did it step by step. But at the same time, it has happened relatively quickly [and] when I look back maybe six months ago, I never thought I’d been doing this so soon – or doing it at all.

And looking to the future, are there any brands, photographers or stylists who you’d really love to work with, in your ultimate modelling fantasies?
One thing that I’d like to do is a lot of the big shows for a fashion week. And then I guess the ultimate thing would be to book a beauty campaign – that would be really nice. Any opportunity to work with any of the big designers, and anything further than a show, like a campaign would be awesome.

See more of my interview with Olivia on vogue.com.au

Olivia Thornton / James Nelson

Designer Gary Bigeni pays the same attention to detail to his luxe, draped-to-perfection womenswear as he does to running his burgeoning business both online and offline. Here, he talks about how he makes sure both his digital fans and his traditional bricks-and-mortar stockists receive the love they need.

Gary Bigeni / Xiaohan Shen via vogue.com.au

You have your online store and a number of online boutique stockists as well. Why did you want to start selling online in the first place? 
I really wanted the opportunity to interact in a more direct way with my customers and make the Gary Bigeni label more widely available both through Australia and also internationally. I also believe it is important to continue to evolve your business and make sure you stay on top of how customers shopping habits are changing. 

How have you handled selling both online and in retail? 
I’ve had a strong presence in both local and international boutiques for quite a few years now, well before I opened my online store. The boutiques are such an important part of my business and have been very supportive from the beginning. To ensure I continue to support these stores I deliver my collections to them a couple of weeks before I release pieces on my online store. 

I have worked hard to find a balance between my existing stockists and my online store, as it’s important not to forget those who have been with you from the start. 

What was the process like for setting up both sides of the business?
I have been very lucky in setting up the wholesale side of my business as boutiques have had a genuine love for the brand right from the start. Launching my online store was a bit more challenging, simply because it took longer for me to get my head around the technical side of e-commerce. I wanted to make sure I understood every part of the process as it’s so important to get your online store right. 

I’ve learnt so much along the way and I’m still learning. Online stores need constant maintenance, updating and love so I keep building on my knowledge as the store grows. 

I’ve heard other designers say their own online store lets them deal more directly with the customer, without having to dilute their brand. What do you think of this? 
The direct dialogue with customers is my favourite part of the online store. Customer feedback is such a vital tool to help build my brand and I really enjoy finding out what women want from the label. It helps me get to know what kind of women my customers are and the more I understand them, the more it assists me with designing my collections. A lot of my customers send emails asking questions about fit, colour and fabrications and they seem to really enjoy getting emails back from me directly assisting them with their purchases and recommending pieces.

Online shopping – it’s the future. Agree or disagree, and why?
Both. I believe in traditional retail and online shopping working hand in hand, rather than it being one or the other. I don’t see why we can’t do both. I see such value in the face-to-face customer service that boutiques can provide and love the in store shopping experience.  

On the other hand online shopping gives me access to hard-to-find and international labels that I can’t get in Australia. Similarly I want everyone, not matter where they are, to have access to the Gary Bigeni brand. I hope that as online shopping continues to grow exponentially that it doesn’t mean we lose the personal interaction of boutique shopping.

See more of my interview with Gary Bigeni and photos his new collection on vogue.com.au