Piece by piece: Icebergs owner’s growing empire
The man behind the Bondi icon is not your average restaurateur. A fashion label is among several creative projects he and his partner have on the boil.
Maurice Terzini is not what you expect. The man behind one of Australia’s most iconic restaurants — Icebergs — and who has been selling the Bondi Beach lifestyle to the world for 17 years is actually from Melbourne. The fact that he is also a fashion designer, produces gin, publishes graphic essays and is an epic party thrower just adds to his enigmatic reputation.
But the more you chat to Terzini about his 30-year career — and it’s not easy to do (“I don’t often talk about it because it seems a little bit irrelevant these days”) — the clearer the picture that emerges. For the 54-year-old is not your average restaurateur, and never has been.
It is not just about the “F&B [food and beverage]” for him, it’s about all the good things in life: music, art, culture, fashion, design. They are not mutually exclusive businesses and Terzini does not have to choose. “I find it has all blended into one,” he tells WISH. “I find now what I really like is the crossovers — fashion designers are doing restaurants now and restaurateurs are designing fashion. I like the idea of blurring the ground between pubs, bars, restaurants, art, fashion. It is about selling a lifestyle.”
Terzini is talking to WISH at Icebergs on a crisp spring morning. The venue is living up to its reputation, as the sun streams through the windows and the sea and the sky are that glorious shade of blue that makes Bondi the envy of the world. He is with his partner, Lucy Hinkfuss, and one of their two sons, Leo, 20 months, who is toddling on, over and around his parents. The pair both work on their fashion label, Ten Pieces, which is now in its eighth year and has achieved quite a cult following.
“It definitely has an Australian feel to it,” says Terzini of the urban streetwear brand, which produces clothes for men and women. “We are a bit laid back here and I find that distance [from other countries] is our greatest asset. We are so far away and that makes us who we are, it makes us cool.” Hinkfuss believes people in Australia don’t overdress. “It’s still detailed, stylish and there’s a design element to it, but it is not overdesigned and you are not trying too hard,” she says. “We are by the beach, we are by the bush, so it is unrealistic to be walking around in big high heels or a stiff collar when you are five minutes from the beach. So [Ten Pieces] is geographically appropriate.”
Ten Pieces began as an idea over a few bottles of wine one night between Terzini and his friend and fashion retailer/designer Ian Nessick to make 10 men’s suits and simply call it Ten Pieces. The “punk/rude boy” inspired suits sold out in a month at Nessick’s store Restricted Premises (which has since closed). A few years later Terzini met Hinkfuss (also a Melburnian) and her background in fashion led the pair to do small one-off streetwear collections under the Ten Pieces label. They also started designing and making the uniforms for Icebergs and Terzini’s other hospitality venues.
“People would ask us a lot about the uniforms — where can we get the shorts staff are wearing or the T-shirts — so we went to the next step and did a pop-up where we produced 10 Pieces — literally 10 pieces of each piece,” says Hinkfuss. “We sold out in three weeks,” adds Terzini. “So we thought, this is a really good model, and we were really enjoying it and it was good for my brands and for my restaurants.”
The label catapulted onto the national/international stage when Terzini and Hinkfuss did their first show at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Australia in 2015 with creative director Mark Vassallo. They held it at Icebergs — of course — but in the pool itself.
The pictures of the models walking across the whitewashed floor of the empty pool with surf crashing around them would have to be among the more spectacular runway images in the world. It could not have been more Icebergs, more Bondi, more Sydney. The Ten Pieces show is now one of the most sought-after invitations at MBFWA and the jam-packed fashion event, complete with drinks and a DJ, is more like one of Terzini’s legendary New Year’s Day parties than a runway presentation for a local fashion label. It is the place to be.
“We didn’t really set out to say ‘we are going to achieve this; yes, let’s go global — this is our direction, these are our budgets, this is our targeted audience’,” says Hinkfuss. “It was nothing like that. It was pretty much from one step to the next. We didn’t really start it as a business venture; it was more like an extension of what Maurice was doing with his work.” Both Terzini and Hinkfuss have a keen interest in fashion (the former is famous for his drop-crotch pants and is true to form for his meeting with WISH). They joke that the need to fill their wardrobe is often an inspiration.
“I want some dresses and Moz wants some T-shirts,” laughs Hinkfuss in reference to an upcoming Ten Dresses collection, and even the Resort 2020 MBFWA presentation they showed in May. It was called Cosmic Runner and as the show notes put it, was a mix of “hippy beach vibes and a DIY punk” aesthetic. “It was inspired by the attitude and styling of the disco freak eras gone by,” said Terzini on the day of the show. “I’ve drawn on my own experience as a teen in Italy during the late 70s.”
Terzini was born in the Abruzzo region of Italy (just below Rome) before his family migrated to Melbourne. He bounced between the two countries in his teens, and was very much influenced by the punk music and socialist politics that were on the rise in 1970s Italy. He started working in the hospitality scene in Melbourne, as a waiter and on the door at Black Cat bar in Fitzroy and the Italian café Mario’s, and was “part of that disco punk movement”. At the ripe old age of 22 he opened Café e Cucina on Chapel Street in South Yarra, one of the first cool Italian eateries in Melbourne. It was a game-changer for the street, the suburb and the city.
It was the first of 18 venues Terzini was to run along with various business partners in Melbourne and Sydney over the next 30 years. He opened Icebergs in 2012 and faced an uphill battle to do it, with a multimillion-dollar renovation bill, investors dropping out like flies and numerous delays. “With all the power of the ocean outside the window, I knew I had the opportunity to create my first truly international restaurant,” he wrote in the recently released Icebergs Graphic Essay. “I wanted a restaurant that expressed my Italian heritage but also my Australian roots — I wanted people to know they were on Bondi Beach. Music and art would [also] need to take a role, not just in the physical restaurant but in the personality as they have shaped who I am today, both politically and personally.”
Almost two decades on Terzini’s empire has expanded and contracted a few times, but it now includes The Dolphin Hotel in Surry Hills, Scout bar [on the top floor of The Dolphin], Bondi Beach Public Bar and Ciccia Bella. He has also gone into partnership with Europe-based Australian fashion designer Justin O’Shea to produce Goldy Gin and regularly ventures into the world of music (he helped bring out LA-based pansexual dance party act A Club Called Rhonda to Sydney recently).
Ten Pieces is still very much a small operation with a cult following, and that’s the way the couple like it … for now. “We still haven’t figured out where we want to go,” says Terzini, “but we know what we don’t want to be. It has taken us a few years and lot of arguments, but we have figured out we don’t want to be a cookie-cutter brand and one that pumps out clothes every month. Ten Pieces has grown organically and slowly and we don’t need to rush it.”
“We are not making landfill,” adds Hinkfuss (the couple often finish each other’s sentences or talk over each other) — something that is very important to them as “we don’t want to make hundreds of units that people get sick of after one wear”.
They also have the bigger picture in mind. Terzini truly believes he is not just selling the best food and drinks at his venues, or even just a T-shirt or dress via Ten Pieces. It is so much more — it’s an ideal.
“I have been in the process over the last decade of developing more a lifestyle brand rather than just a restaurant brand,” Terzini explains. “My ultimate aim in the next five to 10 years is to do hotels. We always say that Icebergs is sort of like a religion. We are not just food and beverage, we provide a lifestyle experience.”
The next stop on the journey of exporting that lifestyle/religion to the world is Los Angeles. Terzini wants to do a hotel there. “Financially you get a better bang for your buck in terms of property and real estate,” he says. “I also like the idea of Ten Pieces in LA. I think it would drop like a rocket.”
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