Over 20 years, designer Collette Dinnigan has built a life and business based on passion,
a steadfast design aesthetic and a mutual love affair with Paris. Melinda Oliver explores her success.
Brides adorned in clouds of tulle, intricate French lace and delicate crystals; lithe models parading Parisian runways in whimsical print dresses; celebrities shimmering in champagne shades on the red carpet attracting a flashbulb frenzy from the world’s press.
Sydney-based designer Collette Dinnigan is behind each glamorous moment, but the reality of operating a successful fashion business over 20 years is much more down to earth.
Rushing around her Surry Hills studio, wearing flat sandals, a peasant dress and drinking lukewarm coffee from a take-away cup, Dinnigan admits her main problem is having no time.
As owner of four stores across Melbourne, Sydney and London – and as director of an international wholesale operation that covers bridal, ready-to-wear, a new diffusion line and lingerie – she has propelled far from her first lace underwear offer back in 1990. She could easily be satisfied, but as reported in Ragtrader's November 19 issue, Dinnigan is now looking to remodel her business with a national retail focus.
She would like the support of a brand powerhouse or experienced investor to make this dream a reality.
"It becomes quite a lonely business on your own, and that is another reason why I would like to team up with somebody who has that [retail] expertise, so I could sit around the table and discuss what is important," she says.
In this new model, Dinnigan would step into a creative director role to manage design while the partner would focus on store operations and growth. While she has told her accountant she is ready, Dinnigan acknowledges that relinquishing total control of her business will be difficult, as she has been burnt in the past.
"My biggest mistake is that I have given some key managers an enormous amount of accountability, responsibility and ownership of their areas and probably too soon,” she says. “They have made bad financial decisions and I have lost profit and business very quickly.”
It is the recent launch of her diffusion apparel collection, Collette by Collette Dinnigan, that has fueled the new ambition. Dinnigan says the more affordable range, with all items under $400, allows for larger manufacturing orders out of China, in turn providing enough stock for more stores.
"With the [premium] mainline, it was too difficult to do that [roll out stores]. There are people that don't understand why it is important to just make five dresses. But I can keep hold of that [side of the business] – ultimately our same customers buy both day and evening. We can keep our mainline collections very bespoke and the bridal almost semi-couture – handmade out of Australia.”
Dinnigan's reputation domestically and internationally should prove attractive to potential investors. In 1995, after just five years in business, she was the first Australian brand to present a full-scale ready-to-wear collection on the catwalk of Paris Fashion Week – officially called the Chambre Syndicale du Pret-a-Porter des Couturiers et Createurs de Mode. She has returned almost 30 times and her six-year-old daughter Estella has already acquired 15 French stamps in her passport.
"It gives you a great platform for the whole industry,” she says. “We are not talking about a local industry: we are talking about the premier department stores and the stores you want to see.”
Dinnigan was appointed to the executive board of the event in 2008, alongside fashion luminaries and companies such as Karl Lagerfield, Giorgio Armani, Stella McCartney, Jean Paul Gaultier and Chanel. Initially, showing in Paris was a logistical challenge, but she has now honed the art of hauling around 150 delicate gowns and dresses across the world twice a year. A handful of other Australian designers have followed suit, but none have sustained their involvement to this degree.
"In the last 10 years I have been flying the flag as earnestly as I can and anybody who picks up the phone, I have given them as much advice as I can,” she says.
“I don't really know that Australia has many brands that have that kind of capital behind them, that could compete on that international level, because it [Paris] is really the capital. Australia has some very creative designers but they all look to London [Fashion Week] as the cost is much less.”
In other nods to her success, the South African-born, New Zealand-educated designer was celebrated as an Australian legend on an Australia Post stamp in 2005. In 2006 she was chosen by credit card company American Express to be a face of its "My Life. My Card" campaign, which was fronted internationally by Robert De Niro, Anthony La Paglia, Kate Winslet and Venus Williams. She insists such accolades were never her goal.
"I started not just wanting to be a fashion designer: I started because there was a demand for the kind of product I was making. It is very consuming this whole business and industry; you have to be passionate about it and prepared to work very hard."
Dinnigan's designs are stocked in major international department stores such as Harvey Nichols in the UK, Barney's in New York and locally in David Jones. She credits a price-conscious underwear collaboration with UK retailer Marks & Spencer for surging her business forward.
In addition to France, the Middle East, Asia and Russia have proven strong markets. Dinnigan has since created a similar lingerie line for Target in Australia called Wild Hearts. She would like to branch into further product developments such as homewares, in conjunction with an established name in the field.
These highs have been balanced by a raft of challenges. Boutiques that fail to pay for goods, problems with sourcing good retail staff and the impact of the strong Australian dollar on manufacturing costs have all been felt. Furthermore, Dinnigan is currently in a name-rights legal battle with Australian company Colette Accessories. She says the stakes are higher than 20 years ago, when her key concern was creating enough stock for her first boutique in William Street, Paddington.
"I was selling the clothes, making, them, cutting them – and when we sold out we'd have to make a bundle of clothes. Back then the challenge wasn't [finding] the craftsmen, it was just the store. Whereas now it is the opposite, there is the store and the buyers but there are no craftsmen. The industry is nearly dead: there are no makers, no cutters, everything is offshore.”
Despite the risks, opening the store in the infant years was a smart move, she believes. At the time, local department stores were reluctant to pick up the brand, so the store enabled her to display a complete representation to international buyers.
"Sometimes with wholesale, something might sell that the wholesale customer doesn't have confidence in, so it never gets to the market. So you can't really forge the direction of the business.”
Dinnigan believes Australia could learn a lot from the way France protects and nurtures the art of design and production, as well as its professional approach to a career in retail.
"We could do so much more training, as it is a vital part of the economy here – so many people are employed [in retail]. From a business point of view, customers would get better service."
Dinnigan remains the sole designer across each category.
"I wish I could write it [a formula] down as I'd love to employ another person to do that job as well. For me design is very much a feeling. I have a little movie in my head of what I'd like my characters to wear. The last collection started out as 'Love' and if you were to look at the collection you would not translate that so literally. Most of the prints I design myself. We never go and buy a print from a manufacturer."
She has avoided becoming a trend oriented label by remaining true to her feminine design sentiment, with silks, lace, prints and detailing at the core.
"Unfortunately, I think a lot of what has killed our business is that a lot can be produced at the high street level, at very, very cheap prices, which we just can't compete with because we don't do the quantity. So you need to run true to the brand, and we do things now that people just can't copy."
Dinnigan now legally protects a number of her designs and keeps detailed development records. She has also wised up to ensuring her unique prints do not fall into the hands of disreputable offshore manufacturers, who may sell them on to other companies.
"I think people need to be much more in tune with the copyright issue, where they are getting their prints from... the world is too small, it is all too quick, you have to be much more inventive."
In addition, the speed of internet publishing and the urgency of fashion bloggers means she cannot control the distribution of her images.
"It is out to the market before you know it – you just have to worry about great customer service and creating the best possible product for the best possible price."
Until Dinnigan's dream of the perfect business partner evolves, steady development is planned for 2011. The recently opened Sydney store in Queen Street, Woollahra, is now the Australian flagship for the brand, while James Street in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley is a likely location for its first Queensland store.
A collaboration with a major online e-tailer was set to be locked in at the time of press. In addition, simmering interest from US department stores to create a price-conscious underwear line may boil. This continued growth fares well for Dinnigan's possible successor, daughter Estella, a primary school student who already shows interest in the creative process.
"I initially said no way, but I have no choice now, she is absolutely right on it. She knows exactly how she likes a skirt and what colours go together and she chooses my shoes when I go out. She is a lot more daring and adventurous than I will ever be, because she has had the resources to do it. She is not learning a trade, it is instinctive to her."