Tabberer’s daughters led the tributes at celebration
Paying tribute to the model were model Deborah Hutton, arts specialist and raconteur Leo Schofield AM.
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Fashion icon Maggie Tabberer AM has been remembered as a formidable, regal and fabulous woman who didn’t much care for the colour pink or for dancing at a public memorial held in Sydney.
Tabberer’s family, daughters Brooke and Amanda and grandson Marco Bello, led the tributes at the 11am celebration at the Randwick Ritz Cinema on Monday.
The sisters recalled a single “mummy” who was “very good at bringing home the bacon” during her remarkable seven decades in the public spotlight.
Paying tribute to the model, fashionista and television personality were model/TV presenter Deborah Hutton, arts specialist and raconteur Leo Schofield AM and TV producer Peter Wynne.
Having produced the Emmy-nominated television coverage of the 1982 The Australian Women’s Weekly Australian Fashion Awards with Tabberer, Wynne was at once taken by Tabberer’s liberal use of the word “darling” – a word she used to open doors and strike up friendships across the planet, from Victoria to New York.
“Darling. So Maggie. I almost believe it was a word created just for her,” Wynne said.
“’I don’t wear pink darling.’ …’I love the angle darling’ … ‘Darling, why don’t you tear the top off one with us?” Wynne said, recalling how Tabberer dropped the term relentlessly and endearingly.
When the duo flew to the US to attend the Emmy Awards, which they lost, Tabberer pluckily approached the eventual winner of the category, a team from South America, placed her hand on the award which they had in their possession, and said “You don’t mind if we get a shot with this do you darling?”
Having shared a manager with Tabberer for many decades, the inveterate promoter Harry M Miller, Deborah Hutton described Tabberer as “a weapon.”
Model-turned-spokeswoman Hutton, whose own career would closely mirror Tabberer’s, first met the older woman in 1980.
She would eventually replace Tabberer as fashion editor of The Australian Women’s Weekly in 1996. Hutton said of the women's’ manager, Miller, who died in 2018: “Harry absolutely adored Maggie – adored the commission too.”
When Miller approached his client at a big ticket event and offered her his hand to dance, she leant in and said: “Darling, how hideous. You know I don’t dance at these things.”
“Maggie get up,” Miller had coaxed. “We’re dancing for dollars,” and up she popped.
Touching on a recurring theme at the service, Hutton didn’t miss a chance to name drop one of the electrical products Tabberer spruiked during her long and lucrative career as an ad spokeswoman.
She recalled a meal Tabberer once cooked for Hutton at her Southern Highlands home; a chicken curry cooked in a Sunbeam electric frying pan – “no doubt sponsored.”
Leo Schofield recalled a summer holiday at Palm Beach when Tabberer, or “Mags” who, he said, evoked immediate “admiration and respect” when she entered a room, arrived looking “fabulous”.
“The first thing she did was ask for an ironing board … a Black & Decker … She ironed a scarf and she twisted it like a rope … and made one of her wonderful turbans out of it. She had that quality of always being aware, not only of her own presence but of the impact and impression she made on those who admired her greatly.”
With each casual product plug, there came a ripple of knowing laughter from a cinema filled with longtime friends.
Among them Marcia and Deni Hines, Bronwyn Bishop, Lyndey Milan, Vicki Jones, Jonathan Ward, Nick Eddy, Jill Waddy, Jamie Campbell, Deeta Colvin, Victoria Morrish and Iggy Damian and Martin and Michelle Walsh.
Also in attendance were Maria and Bianca Venuti, the current editor of The Australian Women’s Weekly Sophie Tedmanson and Graham Burrells and Maurice Parker who produced the memorial service which featured some moving and amusing video packages.
Hines sang Amazing Grace unaccompanied, prompting a standing ovation. Veteran television journalist Mike Munro performed MC duties.
National treasure, AM and two-time Logie winner Tabberer died on December 6 aged 87.
Originally published as Tabberer’s daughters led the tributes at celebration
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