Amber Symonds kicks off the road to Australian Fashion Week with her first Common Hours show in Sydney
Ahead of the first show for her label Common Hours, founder Amber Symonds unpacks the storytelling within her talisman threads.
‘AlleyCat is the name of a wine bar that my parents owned in the ’70s,” recalls Amber Symonds, unfurling the backstory behind her latest, and especially personal Common Hours collection, which she will present on Thursday evening in Sydney, ahead of Australian Fashion Week.
“It was kind of underground in the backstreets of North Sydney,” she continues, sipping matcha tea in her expansive creative studio, located within the Point Piper home she shares with her husband, business magnate John Symonds, and her two teenage children from her first marriage to Patrick Keating.
Back in the late ’70s, early ’80s AlleyCat was a place where her parents hosted all matter of live music acts, including a band called the Farriss Brothers, who would go on to become INXS. “It was a very unorthodox childhood because my parents would work until the early hours on the weekend and my sister and I would sleep in the Kombi van outside because we lived in the northern beaches. We had this fantastic bed in the back and in our pyjamas we would watch the comings and goings of these beautiful women, the guys in the bands, and the fashion. I could hear the music and the people having fun until I would fall asleep,” she adds, reminiscing on the era’s glossy Pat Benatar styling, clumpy eye mascara and over-plucked eyebrows.
“So yeah, AlleyCat is a vibe. It’s a time in my life. It’s of these creatures, these cool cats, drunk cats, loser cats, uber cats, all just come as you are.”
It’s a similar sentiment of self-expression that initially led Symonds to fashion as a canvas for her creativity. “My husband and I were travelling a lot and being maybe an over thinker and (trying to) find meaning in all the things that we were experiencing … it was like this personal endeavour,” she says of the one-of-a-kind robes initially created as an “introverted musing” of her wanderlust.
At the time Symonds, her husband and children were based in London during a three-year sojourn from the Sydney social swirl, which she still speaks of fondly. “It was never meant to be a commercial endeavour, just personal pieces for myself that also suited travel,” she adds of the versatile, figure-flattering designs. “You could wear it from lunch to dinner to a black-tie event if you suddenly had to go to one.”
She would embellish the reversible, box-sleeved designs with words that moved her or textures from an exhibition she visited like a wearable journal. “I thought the deceptively simple silhouette would be a great place to layer all of this documentation in my mind. I would stumble across things that would just hit me in the guts exactly as I was feeling and I’d go, ‘Correct, that’s exactly right’,” which is how the legal licensing of art, literature and lyrics became as integral to each garment’s conception as her quest to incorporate the world’s finest fabrications, embellishments and construction techniques. “Because musicians, poets, philosophers were able to say things more succinctly than I could,” she smiles.
By 2021, this personal pursuit morphed into a collection of eight limited-edition robes launched exclusively with MatchesFashion.com in February 2021. “I wanted to stock overseas first. I wanted to see if it found its own feet,” she explains of the timeless robes that retail between $2000 and $10,000. “I am appealing to the collector, the consumer who seeks the rare and beautiful, valuing composition and construction as the hallmark, with the sense of fun or armour that these pieces can provide.”
“Amber is inherently chic, exuding style and elegance,” says good friend and stockist Eva Galambos of Sydney’s Parlour X. “These characteristics are tastefully reflected in Common Hours, where each piece has its own narrative.”
Lane Crawford buying consultant Ramya Giangola agrees: “These pieces are extremely unique and make a statement all on their own.”.
As such, each Common Hours garment, which now includes cloaks, opera coats, smoking jackets, slips dresses and underwear, comes with an edition number. “I always wanted limited-edition because it’s a reference to artwork, but I also think it honours all the people who work on it,” Symonds says, noting she is just as transparent when it comes to her supply chain. “We’re really proud of everyone we work with, so we’re happy to show it.”
To date, Symonds has enlisted the Cure’s Robert Smith, British singer/songwriter Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits, Scottish rock band the Jesus and Mary Chain, and the estates of polish painter Tamara de Lempicka and French artist Paul Colin to name just a few licensees. “We properly pay and have contracts with each person,” she explains of the often lengthy legal process.
Fifty is the maximum number of editions created to date. “I would never want to overproduce,” she qualifies. “I don’t want to buy anything that’s overproduced. I like to have things that not everybody else has. I buy things with the purpose of keeping them forever. I don’t buy a lot, but when I do, I collect things.”
As for the brand moniker? It was inspired by a quote from 19th-century philosopher Henry David Thoreau: “The words resonate the idea of shared human experiences – within the common hours. I like the democracy of it, and the humanity.”
It also, of course, denotes collaboration. “I don’t like titles,” she adds, when pressed to define her own. “That’s why I never named it after myself. I don’t want it to be about me. I just want to make beautiful things that resonate with me, and if they resonate with other people, that’s a surprising joy …”
This creative director also refuses to be confined by fashion’s frenetic seasons. Aside from delivering two collections a year for wholesalers, she is instead driven by how far she and her tight team can go down the rabbit hole with a theme. “I couldn’t do what I do without all the technical support,” she says. “I absolutely honour the wonderful Lee Matthews, who is the engineer and maker,” she says of the Sydney-based designer – no relation to the established local brand. “I lean on Bruno Volpi as well,” she adds, recalling the tale of The Lyric Dress, which took Volpi eight days to hand-write the Cure song, Pictures of You, over eight metres of fabric. “Poor thing, she’ll never listen to that song again. I’ve destroyed it for her!”
That said, Symonds is certainly no novice to the fashion industry, despite having originally studied geology and law. In the mid-2000s she had her own cashmere label called Amber Jules, and later worked for Louis Vuitton in private client relations, which, she says, “took me around the world a few times” and reinforced “that commitment to excellence”.
Husband John has been “super supportive” of her path back to fashion – an industry his daughter Deborah also inhabits, having founded Mode Sportif in 2014.
“John has an incredible eye for detail,” she smiles, “and he very much appreciates all of the intricacies”, which he has witnessed first-hand on many a European sourcing trip. “When he saw how I graffitied the entire wall,” she says of the backdrop she created for Collection III’s look book starring Charlee Fraser, “He was like, ‘Where did that come from?’. He’s certainly seeing different facets of his wife,” she laughs. “But I am reticent to talk too much about John because we always go down that sort of … it has been in the past, the John Symonds’s wife story …”
Not surprisingly, given her meticulous attention to the minutia, Symonds only works with the best in the business, including French heritage mill Maison Bucol, which is part of the Hermès group, Maison Hurel Paris, Italian mill Bonotto, as well as India’s master embroiderer, Chanakya. The latter was recently honoured with a Dior show on the Gateway to India, which the French house dedicated to Chanakya’s master artisans.
The search for perfection is also why up until very recently all Common Hours garments were made in Australia: “Traditionally it’s because of our placement printing process,” she explains. “As it turns out, I freak out if it’s not exactly perfect, so I haven’t had the confidence to hand that off. But because of the cost of freight and duty, and stocking overseas, it has become a necessity to start making in Europe.” Now 20 per cent is produced in Italy, with the remaining majority proudly made in Australia.
Nurturing local skills is another Symonds passion: “From what I can see, we have some incredible technical know-how, but it seems like we don’t have enough to satisfy a growing industry,” she says, agreeing that the pandemic has fortuitously led many local labels to rethink their reliance on foreign production, from a sustainability, cost and time perspective, which is in turn resulting in a domestic skills shortage.
“Time is the most overwhelming ingredient within our brand,” she continues, which also explains why Symonds chose to show just before AFW, rather than on the official schedule. “Everything we do takes so much time. I didn’t want models to be rushing between shows, I wanted the time to film the fitting process, so it was just to be part of the industry at that time of the year, to honour fashion week in Sydney, but I just didn’t feel the need to stick to a specific time schedule.”
And as for the show itself, don’t expect a haughty high society soiree. Guests are invited to an experiential evening within a “beautifully dilapidated” boarding house in Potts Point’s Challis Avenue, which has been the brand’s creative “safe house” for some time now.
Over the past few years, the venue has also hosted the artistic pursuits of many of Symonds’s collaborators, including photographer Jake Terrey and stylist Sarah Starkey. It will eventually become a renovated home. “In the meantime, it’s been this wonderful blank canvas for me to explore, riff and to collaborate,” Symonds says. “It’s part of the Common Hours DNA, we’ve shot all our campaigns and look books there so it’s fitting that as we prepare for construction it morphs into something else again – the perfect setting for the show.”
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