Designing women

Three fashion designers who have so many "hats" that their job descriptions - and careers - are open-ended

Giving new meaning to multi-tasking, these three fashion designers have so many "hats" that their job descriptions - and careers - are open-ended

GAIL REID
A fortnight before Australian Fashion Week in 2005, Gail Reid was on a Queensland island modelling in a commercial for a German beer brand. There was sun, there was swimming and there were even dolphins, but in Reid’s mind there was only anxiety. With her AFW show just two weeks away, the designer had yet to cast it, finalise the looks and find a suitable location.
Instead, Reid found herself helping to style the shoot she was on as some of the clothes were not to her liking. “I hadn’t prepared for my AFW show at all and everyone was like, ‘Are you crazy?’ What are you doing on this dolphin island?’’ she laughs. “But I thrive on anxiety and just like being busy.’’

Now a model and stylist as well as a designer, the 27-year-old is a multi-tasker extraordinaire:
“I probably enjoy stress … it’s just the way I’m wired. It’s nervous energy that propels me.’’
After graduating from Queensland’s University of Technology in 2004, Reid launched her label, Gail Sorronda. Within 18 months she had stockists in London, New York and Hong Kong, and
was invited to represent Australian fashion at the G’Day LA showcase in 2006. Her next stop was Europe, where later that year she styled a shoot for Phil Collins’ daughter Lily Collins in London, modelled for Kenzo during couture week in Paris, and had her garments photographed for style bible ID magazine.

Last year she opened her first store in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley, before showing at 2007 London Fashion Week. Three months ago she relocated to Paris to try her luck in the European market and hired a press agency in Berlin. “It’s a bit like an obstacle course,’’ Reid admits. “I throw myself into all sorts of things because I’m curious, but you don’t do those things unless you think you can succeed as well and I think I can.’’

The designer first found success with her graduate collection, Angel At My Table, which won AFW’s Queensland round of the now-defunct Start-Up competition for emerging designers.
Her standout piece was the “bow dress’’, which Dita Von Teese was subsequently photographed wearing. Reid also garnered mentions in UK Elle and UK Harper’s Bazaar.

From those early plaudits she built her business on a “palette” limited to black and white, which was unusual in a country known for its love of colour. “It was born out of the economics of when I was a student,’’ she says. “The only fabrics offered at uni were in black and white and the cost of getting them patterned and dyed was too much for me. But I was also interested in the relationship between shadow and light (black and white) so it also worked creatively.’’

Focused on structure and silhouette, her designs exude a certain rigour. “I love colour
but I like the fact that I have created this parameter for myself. It’s a discipline that forces me to look more at silhouette.’’ Reid’s styling work allows her to cut free from self-imposed limits and revel in colour and prints. “When I finish a collection I’ll do a styling job to shake the demons out,’’ she says. “It’s often a rebellion from my monochromatic stuff, so I’ll use a lot of colour. I really like the immediacy of it and it’s not as insular as designing because you get to work with a lot of other people.’’

In the past, occasional modelling jobs have helped Reid fund her label but she doesn’t do much any more. “It can be a bit mindless,” she says, “whereas the business is more stimulating.’’
Opening the Brisbane store has been her biggest challenge so far: “As much as I was proud of the shop, I honestly hated it for a while. It was like a child I didn’t want; it’s something I have to feed and look after on a daily basis. I was scared of the responsibility because it felt so permanent but it’s forced me to grow up a bit and given me routine, which I’ve always shied away from.’’

Not that Reid has lost her wanderlust. “Paris really excites me,’’ she says. “Obviously the pivot is building my label but I also want to just experience things and soak everything up. I haven’t reached my true potential. It’s all about developing and learning, building up a base of experience that I can channel into my work – whatever that may become.’’

REBECCA DAWSON
While she enjoyed the buzz of being a solo designer, Rebecca Dawson found the overall experience more stressful than satisfying. “It was liberating because you don’t answer to anyone,” she says, “but confining in the sense that you are running the whole show and have to take care of every element, which squishes the amount of creative time you have.’’

The gamine beauty wound up her eponymous label four years ago. She’d spent the previous four working hard to establish it, following her graduation from the Sydney Institute of Technology’s fashion school in 2000. “It was all-consuming. This is not a job you can leave in the office and, as a small label, chasing money was the most crippling part.’’

Dawson now has other people chasing the money for her, teams of accountants and business brains to take care of the administrative side of things while she focuses on designing. The result is three new labels: highly successful denim brand 18th Amendment, the cashmere basics of Bezoar, and soon-to-be-released label The Beautiful and Damned. “Ending my label was a financial decision but also a creative one,” she says. “I now have a great team around me with everyone doing what they’re best at, whereas before I was working on my own.’’

Her latest wave of success began in 2005 when she was approached by Rachel Rose, then an importer of international denim brands such as James Jeans and Rock & Republic. “Rachel saw a gap in the market for a premium Australian denim label that could compete with the likes of American imports but would also have a point of difference,’’ Dawson explains. “She asked for my opinion and it evolved into us working together. It got hectic in 2005 and I didn’t want to do both 18th and my label and not do them well, so I decided to concentrate on what was really working.’’

For a woman who confesses to a less-than-perfect understanding of the business side of fashion, it was a remarkably prescient move. Her 18th Amendment, which references vintage cuts with modern fits and finishes, is now the most successful Australian denim label after Ksubi and Sass & Bide. Stockists of the label include Harvey Nichols in London, Colette in Paris and Barneys in New York, and a celebrity fan base of Jessica Stam, Gwyneth Paltrow, Charlize Theron and Eva Mendes. In the over-crowded domestic denim market, 18th Amendment is an undisputed success story.

“At the time we started, most of the Australian denim brands coming into the market were trying to work off the formula of either Ksubi or Sass & Bide. In that way we found it a little hard from the manufacturing side to be taken seriously, so we really had to earn respect,’’ says Dawson. “Our point of difference was that we were more fashion denim-oriented and it wasn’t so much about the brand culture, like Ksubi. We were more about the silhouettes and the vintage elements.’’

Her next project was Bezoar, which she began in 2006 following an approach by its co-owner,
Antonia Leigh. Dawson says Bezoar is a good example of her perfectionistic design tendencies. “The essence of Bezoar is the perfect cashmere basic and, when you are doing a V-neck jumper or T-shirt, there are so few elements that everything needs to be impeccable,’’ she says. “I want to strive for excellence and now the details are more important than ever.’’

The Beautiful and Damned, a diffusion line to 18th Amendment, is her newest venture. In September it was launched through Sportsgirl in Australia and will soon be followed by other outlets around the world. “It will give us the freedom to make 18th more special and luxe because we won’t have to worry about being too commercial,” she says. “The Beautiful and Damned will cover that side of things.’’

While financially rewarding and creatively satisfying, the designer readily admits that juggling her three projects is challenging. “Time-wise, it can be hard,’’ Dawson says. “I can plan ranges in advance but there are things I can’t control and that can be full-on.’’

She also admits to the occasional pang of nostalgia about folding her Rebecca Dawson label: “I sometimes miss the social aspect of being the face of the label, especially when it comes to things like Australian Fashion Week. But I’m more of a private person in general, so it works for me. It’s becoming more about the product and the work, not about the superficial fluff that sometimes needs to go with it.’’

TINA KALIVAS
When Tina Kalivas, who studied fashion at Adelaide’s Marleston College straight after school, moved to London in 1995, she was fortunate enough to secure a job at a well-known costume house, then known as Angels and Bermans. Having just completed a short course at London College of Fashion, she was hired as an assistant to renowned costume designers Sandy Powell (Orlando, The Other Boleyn Girl) and Lindy Hemmings (The Dark Knight). Kalivas cut her sartorial teeth on period films such as Pride & Prejudice and the musical Evita. “It was incredible,” Kalivas says. “I loved the creativity and scale of it. I learnt so much.’’

After her stint at Angels and Bermans, she landed a dream position with talented British designer Alexander McQueen. During her three-year stint as a seamstress and pattern cutter for McQueen’s showpieces and private orders, Kalivas acquired the precise cutting skills and surgically sharp tailoring that define her work today. While working for McQueen, she continued to design ostumes for feature films, including Gangs of New York and Die Another Day, as well as for theatre productions and music videos. “I love the flexibility of working across both costume and fashion design because creatively they are so different,’’ she says.

“Costume is intellectually different because you are taking into consideration a particular theme and personality of a character, and having to put all of the focus on what they are wearing as a way of signifying who they are. Fashion is more about the broader zeitgeist, portraying the time we are living in and picking up on what’s happening in the world at a particular time.’’

Kalivas returned to Australia in 2002 to launch her own label, which is renowned for its strict, almost architectural silhouettes, colour blocking and sense of fantasy, even kookiness. She has held off selling to the big local retailers in favour of courting a niche international market. “I see my business as a boutique label,’’ she says, naming stockists such as Browns Focus in London and Harvey Nichols in Dubai and Hong Kong. “I always want it to stay really special; I don’t want the collections to go into mass production.’’

In cutting her own patterns and employing only a handful of people full-time at her studio in the inner-west Sydney suburb of Marrickville, Kalivas admits she has created a rod for her own back. “It’s tough because I’m not going to the department stores and down that road, but year by year the boutiques accumulate and other projects continue.’’

The latter includes creating a range for Kookai in 2004, designing the uniforms for the Hilton Hotel relaunch in Sydney the following year, and creating a capsule collection for Target soon afterwards. “All these other collaborations have helped me stick to my plan (of having a niche business) because of the financial injection they give me,’’ she says. “I get that financial injection and they get an exclusive designer working for them.’’

The Hilton project, which involved dressing 500 staff as part of a $200 million makeover of the hotel, also gave Kalivas an extraordinary reality check. “I can safely say it was the toughest job I’ve ever had to do because the limitations were so tight. We had to use very particular fabrics for durability and then I had to think of a design and a cut that would suit different body shapes across the board. When I mean different, I mean every body. I had to think about what every person did in every department, from the amount of movement a bellboy needed in his arm and sleeve to pick up cases to the lady at reception and staff in the restaurant.’’

Kalivas took on another challenge last year when she worked on Baz Luhrmann’s mega-production Australia. “I met (set/costume designer) Catherine Martin and worked with her to create 10 gowns for the movie,’’ she says. “It was incredible to work on something of that size in Australia. The epic proportions were very exciting ... rails and rails of incredible clothes.’’

Her film work continued with a six-month stint in Tokyo designing costumes for upcoming fantasy blockbuster Goemon (due for release in 2009). “There were kings, princesses, ninjas, samurai, tea masters, geishas – it was endless.The fabrics and the level of creativity were incredible.’’ Some influences from the film have filtered through to her latest collection, Pendulum. It incorporates various period references and traditional Japanese obi fabric sourced from a supplier in Tokyo.

“Those other projects help keep my own product exclusive and original but they also breathe fresh air into the company because I’ve stepped out of my comfort zone and broadened my mind by working outside parameters,” she explains. “Inevitably, I bring some of what I’ve learnt back into my company.’’

The most recent influence on her label is a fascination with the landscape and culture of Afghanistan, on which she’s based her autumn/winter collection, Zarafshan. It was produced in conjunction with a group of Afghani women based in Sydney’s Auburn and was named after one of them. Kalivas’ designs in earth and desert colours have been embellished by the women’s embroidery skills – cross-stitching, beading and sequin work – resulting in a collection that invites close scrutiny.

Suffice to say, Kalivas will continue to work in both fashion and film. “I’m the type of designer who likes creating a theme around a collection and I particularly enjoy going into fantasy land,’’ she says. “I create stories and little worlds in the same way I do for costumes, so it all goes hand in hand for me – one informs the other.’’