WAISTED TALENT 1981 - 1991
In mid 1978 I moved to London and within a week landed a job as Personal Assistant to The Piranha Brothers, Barry and Norman Sheffield. Until a year before I got there they managed the band Queen, and had set up a recording studio in Soho for them. That studio became Trident Studios, and boasted some of the most well known musicians in the international Rock & Roll scene of the day. I had landed in the midst of a previously unimagined world, and what a lot of fun was had!
Waisted Talent was inspired by hanging out with that mob of wild musicians at Trident for four years, and realising that I could have control of my life rather than working as a 9-5 secretary. I came back to Australia, convinced Dee Tipping (who I'd met studying fashion 1969-70) to jump on board, and we started making lots of big colourful belts.
I'd been making suede and leather garments for a friend who liked to frequent London's clubs, then began selling them at the Covent Garden Market. That was the start of me falling deeply in love with leather - specially the smell of it … oh and the feel!
Waisted Talent started with belts, and we made our first wholesale order up for the wondrous Georges of Collins Street, later securing early on a nice big order from Galleries LaFayette. Before long we were making garments, and one day Dee put some of these into a fashion parade. They were seen by fashion agents Trish and Roger from Toorak, who were importing Italian fashion accessories and asked if they could represent us. We said yes, and the roller coaster of Waisted Talent really started, and so began a decade of 16 hour days …
I was living in a two story warehouse in funky Fitzroy, Melbourne, so we established a workshop upstairs, where the light was best, and I lived downstairs. It was 1982 and we were mostly determined to continue loving what we made, and having a lot of fun. And a lot of parties! We called ourselves the Waisted Goddesses when in party mode. Most of the time.
When the orders became too big for us to make up by ourselves we started bringing friends in to help. At first Rae came, to go on leather buying expeditions, and deliver our orders. Then we employed girls who could sew, taught them the Waisted aesthetic and bought machines for them to work on. My intention was that every garment that came out of the Waisted Workroom would hang in someone’s wardrobe, making the wearer feel like a goddess every time she wore it.
Soon we were employing eleven girls, bought eight industrial machines and pumped out many many individually hand crafted garments and accessories. Every season saw a new range, launched with a fashion parade in the warehouse, accompanied by Riccoco Pops, a hot local band we knew, and modelled by friends. We’d invite the agents, buyers and other smart people, charge them for glasses of champagne and donate that money to a charity.
Every sample was photographed, for the girls to work from, and for use as marketing tools. At first we did our own modelling, then started using models and professional photographers.
Surface embellishment was our trade mark. And the type of embellishment was limited only by our rather vivid imaginations. Like the established European designers who were our inspiration, we made ensembles, so dresses had jackets, tops had skirts or trousers to match, and we became very good at jackets, so many jackets! The most popular was the very early sleeveless, throw on over anything, share with your partner vestish-jacket. We even made some with boomerangs and other Australiana for Olivia Newton-John’s shop in Los Angeles.
Somehow men - accountants mostly - were always trying to offer us advice about how we could run our business, and told us leather was too expensive as a base material, so we'd have to incorporate cheaper materials with the leather. We thought they knew best, so headed for the most exclusive wool importer in Melbourne and selected truly luscious winter wools from Europe, then jumped into the slumped Czechoslovakian linen for summer.
Before too long we had outlets in London, Paris, New York, Los Angeles and Singapore. There were 8-10 in each capital city in Australia, and several in regional centres in Victoria and NSW. And these were just the Waisted Talent leather and wool/linen range.
More advice from the accountants and a bread-and-butter line, Waisted Additions, was born. Crazy now I think of it. We were running two labels with distinctively different markets, materials and working methods out of the same workroom, with the same girls making them up. And another agent!!
And then the buyer from Melbourne encouraged us to set up a young men’s t-shirt line … so we did! It was called Doghouse. A graphic designer, Neil Curtis, designed the image for us, someone else made them up, and we called all the handsome men we knew to model for us.
Suffice to say it was wild madness. Dee left the partnership after a couple of years to set up her own shop, and I continued Waisted Talent on my own, with the girls of course.
Just before Dee went to set up on her own, she modelled for one last season. It was perhaps our most glamorous photo session, located in front of the very grand Fitzroy Town Hall, with Arthur Gilmore’s 1967 Pontiac, and Arthur, as “props”. We had a lot of fun, and it was a fitting send-off for the years Dee had been part of Waisted Talent. We also drank champagne of course!
In 1987-88 Elena Mackay published two Australian Fashion Annuals, with a foreword from then Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, no less! These two publications are chock full of late 1980’s Australian fashion design, which was very exciting, and quintessentially Australian I reckon. I’m very proud Waisted Talent is represented in them both. Actually I’ve seen them in the library of RMIT’s Fashion Department - young designers of today study them.
For most of the 1980’s I worked until 9pm, going for dinner at Mario's then dancing out the stress, often returning to the workroom in the early hours to prepare work for the next day. And of course there was the admin. Endless feckin admin. And money chasing. At the same time I was seconded onto the board of the Fringe Arts Network, and participated in the annual Fringe Parade down Brunswick Street, Fitzroy. This photo appeared on the front page of the local paper, and one of the girls gave me this print!
Amidst all the wholesale orders, we made up lots of bespoke private orders. The buyer from Myer had become friends and placed a lot of personal orders. I made quite a few accessories, including the briefcase pictured below - still in use now apparently! My brother rode a motorbike (still does!) so I made him a jacket and pants. And I travelled to Sydney quite a lot to visit our Sydney outlets.
By the end of the 1980's I was worn pretty threadbare, and made the decision to fold up the wholesale side of the business, let the agents and the girls go, and continue with private orders by myself. And developed an evening wear range incorporating printed silk.
As it happened this proved to be still a lot of work, so I enlisted the help of one of the girls, loaned her a machine, and she worked from home while she also made babies.
Then I had a baby! And the world turned. A lot.
Recently I set up a shop on Redbubble, which is a wonderful facility for artists, mostly because one doesn't have to do anything except submit artwork on their website! They take a substantial cut of course, but for me it's worth it. I know how much work there is in keeping track of orders, packaging and freighting, payments etc. I'm very grateful for their service. Check it out and see what you think. I think it's pretty gorgeous!