A Conversation with Kara - June 2009

by Annemarie Kiely

Q: Perhaps you should first explain how you work? Because there are few, if any design, business or retail models that describe what you do.

A: I am a fashion designer, with a perfectionist’s nature and a very particular vision of style, who several years ago, was prompted by the growing number of requests from friends to make for them what I was making for myself. I decided to put together a capsule collection from a mix of contemporary and collected fabrics – I bought a warehouse of vintage textiles in 1996 - and invited a very limited number of people into my salon to have the sample garment of their choice made to their size, their shape and their material selection [she gestures to shelves groaning under the weight of the most beautiful bolts of old and new fabric]. One or two weeks later they would return and collect the finished garment. It was so well received that other collections ensued [as evidenced on the website]…until I was offering credit card facilities and restricting numbers to preserve the limited edition, artisan quality of what I was doing. I wasn’t interested in growing bigger, wasn’t interested in mass production. I wanted to keep the hand-made, highly individualised craft of what I was doing intact. The impact of which has been people are now beating a path to my door (some of my clients have literally been shirt-fronted in the street) demanding to be let in to the so-called “secret salon”. Nearly everyone who has bought something tells me about being stopped and questioned for details.

Q: So there is no retail outlet from which one can purchase your clothes and no way into the inner salon sanctum, other than to wait for an existing client to die or arrange to have them knocked off?

A: (Laughing): Well I wouldn’t go that far…let’s just say that by keeping things at this scale I can control the quality and the highly personalised nature of what I am doing and that is why my clients [many of whom regularly registered on Melbourne’s ‘best-dressed’ lists] keep coming. They know they won’t see what they are wearing on every other person and they know that what they are wearing is the perfect proportion and fit for them. And because every piece I create in every single collection is conceived as part of an entire body of work, regardless of the particular nuances of style or story I reference, they will work back with garments in past and future collections. The blocks I use and the patterns I use are rooted in the work I started doing in 1984 with my own label ‘Sirens’. My work has a continuum, unlike a lot of designers whose collections you see on the runway and there are 12 looks, none of which relate to any of the others and you think there’s no cohesion, no evolution, and no vision. My work is the opposite, it is pulled together, holistic. Particular cuts literally go back to 1984.

As for retail outlets, Christine will soon have a ‘One-Off’ Heatwave edition of 12 Talitha tops, each in a unique, never-to-be-repeated combination of vintage cotton lawns and voiles for her resort-wear launch.

Q: So it’s sort of like a couture club with a restricted membership?

A: Well that sounds very elitist and this is not, it’s an exploration into alternative modes of production in an age where many brands look so similar, many mass-produced garments are shabbily constructed in poor quality fabrics and everything turns over with such rapidity that the concepts of classic and timeless have mostly disappeared. The fashion world should do its bit for sustainability by making things that endure beyond a trend. Everything I create is hand-made in-salon. I think what I am doing is both very local and by that definition very global, because in this homogenised world, where the reference pool is shrinking, people are starting to look again for the things that define them as belonging to a very specific place and culture. I feel what I am doing is very Melbourne which, ironically, gives it quite a global appeal.

Q: Yes, secrecy, sustainability and singular vision have strong global currency at the moment.

A: Well, you see it happening with food and the so-called ‘guerrilla’ dining phenomenon where members of a small foodie enclave might send a text message to other members telling them to meet at a secret destination for a feast of fresh and local produce made by a master chef – its big in New York. The mystery heightens the experience…and I think that’s what retail and fashion is missing out on at the moment - the mystery and ‘the experience’ born of an engagement with the maker and a first-hand appreciation of their craft. With what I do the client also has some input; there is a sense of collaboration in the process and therefore ownership and personal investment in the piece.

Q: This must come at a hideous cost?

A: Well no, because I am cutting out all the layers of retail between designer and purchaser, all those things that blow out costs and get the bean counters screaming at you to dilute the vision. As I mentioned I am an artisanal hand-maker, but I don’t sell my craft, or the accumulation of my knowledge short. Still, my pricing is very accessible for what is essentially bespoke making.

Q: Well let’s take this fitted tuxedo jacket in the lightweight denim – I love its 40’s retro lapel and nipped in waist - could I perhaps have it made for my figure in a glamorous evening fabric?

A: Absolutely, and you might even have a choice of buttons and you will decide on the sleeve length. In a different fabric and with a slightly altered attitude the jacket then has an entirely different mood. If you love this [a billowing, balloon-sleeved ‘70’s dress inspired by Talitha Getty - in the prettiest mix of spotted and striped Swiss voiles] then you might like it looking more formal in a mix of silk prints or perhaps a monochrome, light-weight wool for winter. Often I’ll buy a very small amount of fabric and there might only be enough for two garments – someone will get a shirt and someone else a dress.

Q: Which must generate a get-in-first mentality amongst your clients?

A: Well that wasn’t my intention, but people now prize the unique enough to want to lock into the first appointment for a fitting. Occasionally I might buy a roll of something and if two clients are acquaintances, I will tell them “now you know ‘so and so’ has ordered this”. If you have a ‘word-of-mouth’ business inevitably you end up with clients who are connected clients, some might think that is a limitation but it’s actually a plus.

Q: Because you know your client in the real sense of the word and not in some broad-demographic sense. That relationship, that knowledge must be priceless?

A: Yes, yes. People keep coming back knowing that a shape or a style works well for them, so they order it in the latest fabric. I might rest a style for a few seasons but then I’ll come across a fabric that re-invents it and I’ll get excited about showing it again. And of course the relationship is personal and therefore more satisfying for both.

Q: You paint the picture of yourself as bit of a creative fascist, but I think that level of fanaticism value adds. It is rare in this age.

A: (Laughs) Yes I suppose people trust in conviction; they respect those who don’t compromise, because I think you end up with a better quality end product. Working alone makes that easier because you don’t have to have any arguments with anybody. It keeps the vision pure. In that process the mistake sometimes becomes the ‘innovation’. The perfection is in the fault as per the Japanese concept of ‘wabi-sabi’ – an aesthetic centred on the acceptance of transience and fallibility. The hand-made is a more resonant expression of our humanity.

Q: How does all of this fit into your wider design philosophy?

A: I believe that if you design something and it is right it can be right for a decade or more [She pulls another jacket off the salon rack]. This is already seven years old as a design idea so why would I stop showing it if I still want to wear it? I as a designer deem whether it’s still relevant, that is my job, it’s what I’m good at and if I think it still has currency I keep it in the collection.

Q: Well I guess the down-turning world is moving so fast and we are seeking anchor in the familiar, the nostalgic, but not in a literal way, we are perhaps doing the post, post-modern pastiche with a puritan, financial-crisis spin?

A: Well the worst thing you can do as a designer is to make something that looks like a period costume. That is failure, because unless you bring to it the current moment…it is about the way we live now, we often reference the past but we demand

comfort regardless of the cut.

The world is also very visually saturated right now, so very dense; that simple silhouettes – you see it in architecture – serve to balance the decoration that distracts from it. I believe that in clothing design the cut is everything.

Q: So much modern fashion is superficial in every sense – it doesn’t feel good to wear, it doesn’t pass the detailed inspection. Does your inner match the outer?

A: I say bring back the inner breast pocket [she shows a glamour parka fitted with a capacious inner pocket that is capable of taking phone, keys, lipstick, coins, passport…]. Oh yes, it depends how far you want to go, I can do this [she opens to the inner of a olive cropped wool jacket to reveal bias cut, rose pink silk flat piping between the jacket wall and its muted green silk lining], but I do have to make decisions about finish that relate to the final cost of the garment. This top in vintage cotton voile is completely reversible because of the way the seams are all bound on the outside, so effectively you have two garments. I think that offers great value.

Q: Your work has a nice tension between the masculine and the feminine?

A: I’ve always been fascinated by the play of masculinity and femininity. For example this jacket is my idea of the 80’s ‘Boyfriend’ jacket [shows a navy pinstripe version with a perfectly structured retro hang and bit of an ‘80’s Gaultier vibe], except your boyfriend is a 1940’s banker, or gangster (same thing these days?!) The idea is that you put this over a soft chiffon dress [she puts it on over the floaty Megan Park dress that she designed for the label]. I don’t like girly hair, shoes and dresses put together; it’s way too passive. Femininity for me has to have some tension.

Q: Let’s talk about your Summer ‘09/10 collection ‘Heatwave’.

A: It was driven by economic desperation. I got back from my holiday – a beautiful long beach shack break – thinking I had work and there was nothing. I looked at all my delicious vintage fabrics, which I’d been ruminating over since ‘Black October’ and thought I’ve got all this money just sitting here. I had to do something about it. So out of total desperation I pulled a collection together in three weeks, worked my arse off, getting up at four in the morning, to create this small group of cotton dresses and tops. I called it ‘Heatwave’ - because it was after Christmas, mid-January, I was entombed here [salon] when it was 40 something degrees outside. I used what I had and worked with what was going on in the world. I showed it mid-February, over one week and it was a credit-card frenzy. I had a figure in my head that I thought would get me out of the financial doldrums and I did four times that in sales. I have several styles in mind (more tailoring, trousers) that I will add to this offering to show in September.

Q: Was there a particular period or person inspiring the collection?

A: I had that famous image of Talitha Getty and her husband Jean Paul Getty posing on a rooftop in Morocco in the late ‘60’s - that decadent, halcyon Yves Saint Laurent era. I’d been talking about going to Marrakesh with a friend who had been there – visited the famous gardens near YSL’s house. I hooked the mood of that into the heatwave that was happening in Melbourne at that moment; I saw fine cottons and silks floating off the body, cooling it down. Then I went off on this other tangent, making another series of garments, all one-offs, called the Talitha dress, each with its own story. So when people turned up to the launch they had a list of garments, each named after the place Talitha ‘wore’ this dress…so it was her imaginary wardrobe.

Q: So after Talitha where to?

A: I’m thinking about the young Ali McGraw, the first series of Charlie’s Angels and Paris runway fashion on the cusp of 1979 and ’80.