Oroton creative director Sophie Holt is making bold moves to reinvent the iconic label
The creative director opens her Melbourne home and discusses her shake up of the Australian heritage brand, styles cues from her grandmother and her search for authenticity at home and abroad.
Sophie Holt is speaking to WISH from a room of her own. Technically, it’s the pool room, but in the past few months she has reclaimed it.
“It used to be just this den of daddy long-legs and PlayStation. And now I’ve thought, ‘Well, that’s enough of PlayStation and daddy long-legs’. So I’ve actually turned it into an office because my husband uses the study and I used to be, in covid, in my bedroom 24/7. So now I’ve done this,” says the creative director of Oroton, as she gestures to the paintings on a wall behind her and the glimpses of the garden outside her window.
The art speaks to Holt’s magpie tendencies when it comes to collecting – other obsessions include shells, baskets and vintage Danish brutalist furniture – and also how fashion has threaded its way throughout her family history.
“These are actually from the ’60s and were in my house when I was a baby growing up with my mum and dad … interestingly, I did a shoot for Vogue years ago, and [my son] Joe, who’s now 22, was a baby and he was pictured underneath those paintings. And a woman rang up and said, ‘My aunt has done those paintings. I’ve never seen them before, but they’re by my aunt’.”
Holt’s earliest memories of fashion come from her grandmother, Dame Zara Holt, wife of former prime minister Harold Holt, who opened her boutique Magg in Double Bay in 1949. Holt’s sister Pippa also works in fashion, moving from Vogue stylist to founding the upscale Pippa Holt Kaftans.
“I grew up in this incredible world of my grandmother and her style, and my mother also was very, very stylish and used to subscribe me to these Italian Vogue Bambini magazines that would come in the mail, and we would go through WWD together. When she went out, we’d be talking about outfits. And really, I was very involved in fashion and my grandmother had the [Magg] business, but later she bought Yves Saint Laurent out to Australia for the first time, and she had a Saint Laurent boutique in Toorak Village. So I sort of grew up in that world, which really was my fashion education,” she says.
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Her grandmother Zara, says Holt, had a particular impact in terms of honing her eye and taking risks. “I think she [made] very brave choices. I remember her sitting room had these chocolate-brown taffeta curtains, chocolate-brown velvet sofas, chocolate-brown glossy walls … she was quite strong. She always wore kaftans, so she’d wear long in the evening and short during the day,” she says.
Her grandmother’s tastes have influenced her in another way in her role as creative director at Oroton, too – a job she took on in 2017 with the rather Herculean remit of turning the business around. She’s been trying to recreate her grandmother’s signature cane basket.
“She always carried this very stiff and uncomfortable-looking cane basket. It was like a glossy cane basket. And it actually kills me that I can’t find it now. And she’d wear that out at night. She’d wear it during the day. I never saw her with a handbag. I only saw her with this one cane basket … she knew her own style and she was just really confident with it,” the designer says.
A perfect wicker bag fits with how Holt, who previously held positions at Country Road and Witchery, as creative director and head of design respectively, has reimagined the heritage Australian brand since joining.
Holt was appointed by billionaire businessman Will Vicars, who swept in to save Oroton when it collapsed into voluntary administration in 2017. The heritage brand was founded in 1938 as a textile importing business and was later also known for bringing the Polo Ralph Lauren franchise to Australia.
Alongside the brand’s dynamic chief executive Jenny Child, a former McKinsey consultant Vicars poached in 2021, Holt’s bid to make Oroton relevant again has worked. The business posted double-digit sales growth in 2023 and doubled operating profit to $7.4 million.
Holt is quick to say she had her work cut out for her. “It really wasn’t relevant anymore at all. And it wasn’t relevant to me. It was very, very leathery. Everything was leather. The mannequins were leather, the bags were leather. It was quite leathery. I mean, I guess that’s not surprising from a handbag brand, but I felt like, ‘Oh, it’s an Australian brand. Let’s lighten up and get some sort of honest materials in there’,” she says.
“And so I briefed this canvas tote and it was just this really great heavy canvas and it came back with all these tan binds through the bag. And I just thought, ‘Oh my god, this craftsmanship is > absolutely outstanding. Imagine if we could make all the products this special’. And then I just had this really clear vision of how I wanted it to be. But it was really driven from this craftsmanship and this quality. That was sort of why I took [the job], because I thought, ‘Wow, we’ve really got something here’.”
Other changes included launching a proper ready-to-wear range in 2019, chic and fun and pared-back pieces with an ease to them. In 2021, she staged her very first runway show at Australian Fashion Week. The accessories are more interesting now, with sculptural mini-bags and elevated hardware alongside the useful – and leathery – bags for work you’d expect from the brand.
Holt likes consistency, but contrarily and perhaps essentially, she also likes to surprise. “I really feel like the success is creating this cohesive handwriting so it’s very clear for the customer … and then I think within that consistency, you really need to have these moments of surprise and bravery: to make people feel joy and excitement about the product and about the brand, and that it’s got energy and it’s got a bit of spirit to it,” she says.
Colour is something Holt – who for this interview is wearing a striking cobalt blue shirt with a caramel jacket, both of her own design – spends a lot of time thinking about. Actually it’s how she begins most collections.
“We get inspiration from everywhere. So we look at everything, from the collections to furniture, colour palettes in art. Normally we start with colour, print and fabric. I like to work on the floor,” the designer says with a light laugh.
“It probably drives my team mad, but they’ve been working with me, a lot of them, for quite a few years. So they’re used to it. But, basically, we make these sort of piles on the floor of the fabrics and the colours, and they’re just really swatches. We have the odd inspiration picture, and we outfit collections from that stage, before we’ve sketched anything,” she says.
Thinking about how people will wear the clothes is always at the forefront of her collections. “We say, ‘How are we wearing this? What are we wearing? Will they actually wear a peach shirt with a green pant? Will they do that? Oh, I don’t think they’ll do that’,” Holt says.
“So we are sort of imagining how the customer’s going to wear the collection and what is the occasion for that bag? How does it go back with the apparel? How does it go back with the jewellery? So we’re co-ordinating and integrating our ranges at a very early stage.”
Reconciling what the brand was, and what she thought it could be, is something Holt holds in fine balance. So, too, finding new – and younger – customers and keeping the ones who were already there.
“I’ve always erred on the ‘be brave’ side because you’ve actually got to do quite a lot for people to notice. You think everyone’s looking at your brand, but they’re actually not,” she says.
“And we’ve sort of done that and we’ve really managed to get this new customer. And whether they’re people that knew of the brand and thought that it wasn’t for them anymore, or this new younger customer that didn’t even really know or relate to the old Oroton,” she says.
“But I also think it is really important, and I think we’ve done this as well, to keep your existing customer.”
Fabric is another thing Holt takes seriously. She loves attending fabric fairs with her teams and digging through archives for vintage prints that she can purchase.
“You really need to have these moments of surprise and bravery; to make people feel joy and excitement about the product and about the brand, and that it’s got energy and a bit of spirit to it.” - Sophie Holt
“I’m a total fabric buff. And I love straw, and I love learning about leather since I’ve been at Oroton. And skins – faux skins, not real skins – but just the colour and texture is really important to me,” she says. “Because I’ve been in the industry for so long, I guess I’ve worked with fabrics a lot, so a lot of European, Japanese mills … It’s a bit of a dying art, fabric, and it’s a very important part of our collection.”
Holt sweats the details, too. She’s always been like this. “My mother always used to say I always noticed everything,” she smiles.
“I do often think about a tiny detail in the middle of the night about, like a belt, and I’ll be thinking, ‘It really does need edge stitching on the side’.”
Choosing the right fabrics fits with how Holt thinks about capturing the feeling of Australia in her collection. For the designer, summer means time together as a family. Two of her adult children have recently moved back home; her youngest, Joe, to save some money and her daughter Indi while she finishes her medical degree and begins her first hospital residency. Holt is actually thrilled about it.
“I’ve always been one of those people that want the children to stay at home as long as possible. Someone once said something to me, which I had not realised when I had teenage children, they said, ‘When your children grow up, they become your friends’. And it’s so true. When you’ve got young kids, you don’t really realise that, but when they’re grown-ups, they become your friends,” she says.
Spending quality time together as a family is something Holt treasures. And gathering everyone together at the family holiday home on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula is one such tradition.
“We are rebuilding a house in Portsea at the moment; we’ve had an old shack on a big block of land,” she says. “Our summer tradition is to go down there … we have lunches with our cousins and we go out on the boat, and we’re by the water and the kids are all there before they go off to festivals or travelling,” she says.
The family likes to go a little further afield together, too. Ponza, an island south of Rome, is a recent favourite. “[It] is sort of straight out of the 1950s. It’s very three star, it’s like a three-star Capri. But the water is stunning. The boating is just beautiful. And I found a little navy wooden boat with navy terry towelling cushions on it that we hire. Pulling into a little restaurant for lunch and things like that, that’s enough for me,” she says.
“My husband’s a very down-to-earth person, and so he would hate it if I booked something slick and modern. We like it a little bit rustic because we’re on holidays, we want to be relaxed. So if any wicker comes into it, that’s a bonus,” she laughs.
Still, she cares about the details on holiday, too.
“I’ll never book a hotel with bad curtains … [but] I like it if it feels like the place that it’s in and it’s not too polished.”
As for what’s ahead for Oroton, Holt says overseas expansion is on the road map, eventually. The Australian lifestyle – especially on a perfect summer’s day, wicker bag in hand – is one she thinks resonates globally.
But it’s one she wants to perfect the art of here first.
“We’ve done a bit of international wholesale and that’s been quite successful. But I think we’re at a time in the brand where there is still so much opportunity in Australia that we are unlocking and working with the business to develop … Now it’s about looking at what the international strategy actually is and deciding very carefully what route to go down,” she says.
Still, purposeful strides. It’s how Holt believes you move forward.
“I think with any brand with a fabulous history – with an iconic heritage brand – there is also a little bit of baggage that comes with that. That’s why you have to make bold moves,” she says.
Sittings editor: Abby Bennett
Hair and make-up: Stella Tu
Production: Casey Pippet
Photographer: Derek Swalwell
This story is from the February issue of WISH.
