The untold story of how June Dally-Watkins took on China... and won

An Australian icon, famous for her “charm schools” and modelling agency, ventured into China a decade ago with one mission. What happened next changed the country forever.

Jodie Bache McLean is carrying the fight to China’s e-commerce giants. Photo Steve Pohlner

China is infamous for copying high-end Australian fashion labels, but now the e-commerce giant also wants to “steal” the faces of models as artificial intelligence poses unprecedented challenges for the billion-dollar industry.

The boldness of China, if left unchecked, could hurt not only the Queensland industry but also the fortunes of global supermodels such as Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid.

It’s a dramatic assessment, but Brisbane’s Jodie Bache-McLean is doing her level best to protect the integrity of the business she’s loved for 40 years.

As managing director of Chic Management Brisbane and JDW Education & Training, Ms Bache-McLean says “if you don’t evolve you die”.

However, surrendering to AI – specifically, signing over a model’s “likeness” to China’s e-commerce behemoths – won’t happen on her watch.

The 60-year-old former model has just returned from China where she met with representatives from large and smaller emerging brands.

“Imagine this scenario,” she says, from our red leather banquette in Walter’s Steakhouse and Wine Bar in the city.

“Say AI could steal Kendall (Jenner) Kardashian’s image – she’s probably the highest paid model in the world with a net worth of $60m (AUD $92m) – or Gigi Hadid who’s worth $30m ($46m).

Jodie Bache-McLean from a modelling shoot in 1981.

“If they could steal their likenesses unencumbered and put them in a Kmart ad – and no offence to Kmart – then their supermodel status would be disintegrated.

“I don’t know whether they will ever master the ability to create the human form – AI-generated models still have that eeriness – but agencies must be diligent with their contracts.

“We’ve had one Chinese company so far wanting us to sign over the likeness, which we would never ever do because once you do that they have the opportunity to reproduce that person.

“We just said, ‘No way, it’s not going to happen’.”

Ms Bache-McLean describes herself as “Miss Dally’s understudy” after joining the pioneering business founded in the 1950s by the inimitable June Dally-Watkins. (The business was purchased by the CHIC Group of companies in 2017).

The late “Miss Dally”, famous for her deportment courses – previously known as “charm school” – as well as her entrepreneurial nous in founding Australia’s first modelling agency – ventured into China in 2013.

She was in her late 80s and had been invited by James Zhang, a 30-something “self-proclaimed Chinese expert in western etiquette” who wanted her to “teach him everything she knew”.

“He wanted to know things like how to drink wine, hold a wine glass, and one thing I learned in my experience in China with Miss Dally is that no-one wants to be in a situation where they feel embarrassed,” Ms Bache-McLean recalls.

“But Miss Dally was a brilliant businesswoman and she said to him, ‘I’m not going to train you, I’m going to be your partner’, and she became so famous in China.

“She was a woman of age and wisdom.”

Jodie Bache McLean interviewed by Kylie Lang. Photo Steve Pohlner

The Dally Institute of International Studies is still operating in Guangzhou, in Guangdong province, and as Ms Bache-McLean puts it, “Miss Dally’s relationship with the Chinese only stopped because she went to heaven”. She died in February 2020, when Covid-19 was about to change the world as we know it.

For the modelling industry, the spectacular growth of e-commerce spelled massive upheaval.

Just as supermodels were no longer walking runways in Paris, New York or Milan for luxury brands, other models who were more “relatable” were gracing online catalogues.

“Customers were getting their dopamine fixes online rather than in physical shops and brands knew they wanted models who looked more like them, and who smiled,” Ms Bache-McLean says.

“They are happier to embrace the ‘curve’ girl, I’m talking size 16 and above, as long as there is a healthy aspect to their sizing, meaning they still exercise, eat well, they just happen to be, as my grandmother used to say, ‘big-boned’.”

One such model is Georgina Burke, now living in New York and the face of the label Commonry, among others.

“Geo came to us as a teenager; she’d been bullied at school because of her weight and now she’s one of America’s top models, a girl from Brookfield – that would never have happened years ago.”

Jodie Bache-McLean in 1983.

Earlier this year, Ms Bache-McLean rekindled her company’s relationship with China, reaching out to Mr Zhang. Her visit three weeks ago was eye-opening.

“I needed to understand this beast of e-commerce – what the expectations are but we have to also set the boundaries on how it’s going to work going forward,” she explains.

“China wants more than supplied imagery taken in a studio. They’re coming here to shoot their campaigns, doing location shoots to make their platform enticing and they’re using beautiful Australian girls.

“Their target market is the USA – and Australia will fall into that – and so we met with these brands and they’re being run by these young university graduates who have studied the mechanics behind a successful e-commerce product.

“There’s been a lot of press about some Chinese e-commerce brands, about their (treatment of) workers essentially contravening the slavery act, and Shein for one has had to tidy up their act, and I’m not saying they have, but when they come to this country, our models work the Australian way, for certain hours and with breaks.”

Ms Bache-McLean says it is “not easy doing business” in China but she welcomes the boost to our economy.

“Whatever the brand, if they see it as successful or an opportunity, it will be copied.

“I would speak to James (Zhang) about this and he would say, ‘Jodie, this is the Chinese way’.”

As The Sunday Mail and The Courier-Mail have reported previously, many high-end Australian designers, such as Zimmerman, Alemais and Kristian Williams have been targeted.

Garments that look almost identical are being sold on Chinese sites for up to 80 per cent cheaper, and as Ms Bache-McLean says, “they use the print but it will be on a petrol-based fabric”.

Jodie Bache McLean has rekindled her company’s relationship with China. Photo Steve Pohlner

They’ll use the same images, but either crop out the model’s head, or superimpose it with another – hence the latest push to take that final step and own the likeness of a model.

As for copying June Dally-Watkins, that’s a different prospect.

“Michael Jordan fought for his own name in China and lost, but they can’t copy Miss Dally,” she says, referring to the former NBA superstar’s protracted legal fight over a trademark. (In 2020 a Shanghai court ruled Qiaodan Sports Company, whose name is the Chinese translation of Jordan, compensate him $70,000 for “emotional damages” but did not revoke the company’s use of his name).

While Miss Dally’s deportment courses have spawned offshoots under different names, Ms Bache-McLean says her mentor’s unique legacy lives on.

Evidence of this are the many school-based courses she conducts, channelling Miss Dally’s belief that “confidence creates success”.

“We teach courtesy, which is independent of gender and a timeless quality,” Ms Bache-McLean says.

The Modern Manners courses have been held in several private schools, including Nudgee, Churchie, Terrace, Brisbane Girls Grammar and Clayfield College, and Ms Bache-McLean is investigating funding so they can expand to state schools.

They teach personal presentation, how to give a vote of thanks, ask someone out on a date, behave at school formals and tackle job interviews.

So, I ask, is it about manners or presenting yourself?

“It’s the same thing,” Ms Bache-McLean smiles. “The definition of etiquette is understanding of the expectations of the codes of behaviour when dealing with others; if you extend a courtesy to someone that creates the element of good manners, that person feels seen, heard, valued.”

The 300g New York strip at Walters Steakhouse. Photo Steve Pohlner

Society has moved on from the 1950s and those expectations are not as fixed, I suggest.

“Yes, there’s been a shift, certainly a movement of young women who don’t want chivalrous behaviour, and I respect that, and we teach the boys about respecting that – if someone says please don’t do that, you listen, you say ‘got it, thanks for letting me know’. But we want to give young men permission to embrace manners.”

I ask about the handshake, having a personal aversion to men who offer women weak handshakes.

“We say to the boys, ‘Should you wait to extend a hand to a woman, and the answer is no, unless the woman is clearly your grandmother’s age, because it’s a generational thing, but just don’t ask them, are you over 70?’,” she laughs.

“One of our catchphrases is don’t underestimate the power of being outstanding. If you have the opportunity to be outstanding, you will be remembered.”

VERDICT

300g New York strip 9/10

Walter’s Steakhouse and Wine Bar

219 Alice St, Brisbane City

Originally published as The untold story of how June Dally-Watkins took on China... and won