An original invitation I hand painted, stitched and sent out to a handful of luxury, designer boutique owners around Australia to show my first collection.

From January to August of 2002, I worked at my home studio and produced samples of my first collection, sewing some of them myself.

The DNA of the brand was evident with the fabrics sourced from Italian mills, all of whom we work with today. It was a challenging 6 months, outlaying $ on fabric, patterns and samples without any knowledge of likely sales.

A highlight was showing the first range to key retailers in the suites of boutique hotels in both Melbourne and Sydney, after what seemed endless phone calls of both success and rejection. Fortunately, enough of these retailers placed orders for my Autumn Winter 2003 collection so I was able to make a sufficient quantity with our local manufacturers (which is still about half of our manufacturing :) ).

On reflection, I was lucky, but I also had a lot of belief that my "European sensibility" would be refreshing for the Australian market. Perhaps I was a bit naïve after heading up a big design team at Italian company Max Mara, thinking my own label would “happen”! Owing to a lot of perseverance things eventually did just fall into place, with very much gratitude to you our loyal customers.