Monday 5 December 2011

INTERVIEW

STYLE PONY ON STYLESTALKER. Behind the scenes of Australian brand stylestalker...an interview with designer Sue-Ann. 

Have you ever wondered how you actually run a creative business? I know I have, so I decided to ask the gorgeous Sue-Ann, one half of stylestalker, a few questions about what happens behind closed doors at stylestalker HQ. 


1. What are your backgrounds? What path led you to establishing the stylestalker brand? Rachel and I come from a marketing background. We were working together at an Ad agency and found we were spending all our time on blogs. We've always loved clothes so when we couldn't find what we wanted to buy, we decided to make it. 

2. What does creating and designing for a fashion brand involve? I'm interested in mundane and amazing! 
1. Inspiration
2. Research. 
3. Fabric and trim sourcing (china)
4. Designing (the hardest part is culling cause we always have a billion ideas). 
5. Getting the samples done and getting stuff made. 

3. You have an active online presence with your blog, twitter, Facebook and lookbook accounts. Is this the main way you market your brand?
We are incredibly passionate about online and stylestalker started as a small online store. We find that this medium of communication is relevant and engaging to us and our customers. We also do PR for offline presence as well. 

4. You create campaigns with some fantastic Australian models. At what stage of crewing a collection do you decide on the model? Does this influence or inspire the designs in any way?
Of course! Every collection has a muse, a girl who embodies the kind of girl we're designing for. Our models strongly reflect that. 

5. Stylestalker seems to have come so far since its inception. What has been the most exciting moment so far? What goals do you have for the brand in the next five years?
Being able to afford staff members has been a massive highlight! Also, seeing our stuff in Selfridges, David Jones and on celebs like Sienna Miller. Over the next five years we want to keep doing what we're doing, making cool stuff that people want to buy and keep having fun. 





Thanks so much Sue-Ann, very insightful. Keep doing what you are doing! x

Thursday 1 December 2011

EVENTS

CHRISTMAS 2011. Present wrapping and photoshop woes. 

My photoshop has stopped working and my internet is being temperamental. The past few days can only be described as a total nightmare. It has caused me to want to go back to the basics of scissors, glue, sticky-tape and pens. 

Anyway....Christmas. 
I adore wrapping (and planning how I will wrap) my Christmas presents. Almost as much as I used to enjoy planning and contact papering my school books each year. Did anyone else spend their whole summer holidays thinking about that? For Christmas 2011, my first Christmas in my own house, I found this spotty hot pink tulle from Lincraft (pink is an official Christmas colour in my book by the way). Thought it would look amazing as Christmas present ribbon. 

Exhibit A shows the tulle paired with brown paper that I seem to have hanging around in excess and a silver tree decoration I poached from my mum. 

Exhibit B features silver cellophane. So effective. So cheap. Find at your closest $2 shop. I would even go as far as saying this silver cellophane looks better on odd, uneven shapes (rather then the crisp, even square shapes wrapping paper usually loves). Brilliant stuff. 

So I am actually devastated about photoshop. Because even though I'm not a pro at it, I could make the above photos look a little better, and be the right size. So sad.
I suppose I will have to get over it though.

x