RMIT Design Archives: Fashion and Textiles collections

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A selection of resources in the RMIT Design Archives.

W J Ackland

Collection donated by William Ackland

This collection comprises over two thousand colour pages from over 800 Australian magazines which offer a visual history of clothing styles including daywear, evening wear, lingerie and accessories, dating from 1919 - 1979.

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Annan Fabrics

Collection compiled by the Frances Burke Centre

Established in Sydney in 1941 by Alexandra Mackenzie and Anne Outlaw, Annan Fabrics was a pioneer in silkscreen textile design in Australia. Designs were influenced by Australian flora and fauna and Aboriginal imagery. Annan produced fabric for furnishings, table linen and garments and their corporate clients included Qantas and the Department of Public Works. After the Second World War inexpensive American fabrics flooded the market and Annan Fabrics addressed consequent economic difficulties by working in consultation with architects. In 1954 the business won the sub-contract to print the Aboriginal and heraldic emblems on the official street banners for the Royal Tour. All other work was suspended to undertake this project. When the sub-contractor declared bankruptcy, Annan Fabrics was forced to close.

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Ailsa Graham Art Fabrics

Collection donated by Ailsa Matheson (nee Graham) and Beverley Graham (nee Knox)

Established in 1948 by Ailsa Graham at 49 Little Napier Street, Fitzroy, Melbourne, Ailsa Graham Art Fabrics employed textile students including June Alexander and John Rodriguez, and later designer Beverley Knox and others. On the suggestion of Edith MacMillan of the Primrose Pottery Shop, Melbourne, Graham incorporated more Australian motifs into her range of screen printed tablemats, handtowels, tablecloths, handkerchiefs, scarves, and later, upholstery materials. The business supplied to the Victorian Hospital Commission, the Arts and Crafts Society shop, Georges department store and suburban gift shops. In 1952 Ailsa Graham fabrics and paintings by Nancy McIntosh were exhibited at David Jones’ Sydney store and in c1954 at Princes Gallery, Melbourne. In May 1958 fire destroyed the building and equipment forcing the business to close.

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Alfredo Bouret

Collection donated by LexAitken

Fashion illustrator Alfredo Bouret was born Alfredo Gonzalez Acevez in 1926 in Mexico. His early drawings appeared in La Familia magazine. A prize-winning entry in a design competition took Bouret to Paris in 1948 where he worked for Pierre Balmain and French Vogue. Subsequently he established a base in London. Bouret’s illustrations appeared in English Vogue, The Tatler, Queen and Glamour magazines and he covered the designs for post-war couture houses including Chanel, Christian Dior, Jacques Fath, Pierre Cardin and Givenchy. He was the only artist of any discipline granted access to record the collections of master couturier, Balenciaga. From 1969 to 1972 he established an outlet in Sydney under the name of ‘Mexicana Bazaar’ together with ‘The John Cavanagh ready-to-wear’ shop. In 1985 he moved to Sydney and became an Australian citizen in 1990. In 2007 Bouret’s collection was donated to the Frances Burke Centre under the Federal Government’s ‘Tax Incentives for the Arts (Cultural Gifts) Program’.

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Bee Taplin

Collection donated by Bee Taplin

In 1929 Taplin studied art at the Slade School, London, and in 1931 won a scholarship to the Royal Academy. After the Second World War, Taplin returned to Australia where she established a textile design, fabric and wallpaper printing business. In 1955 Taplin and Maurice Holloway established Faulkiner Fabrics which manufactured exclusive furnishing fabrics and imported wallpapers. Taplin sold her fabrics through Colour Cottage, a retail outlet in South Yarra, Melbourne.

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Cash's

Cash's (UK) is an international operation with its sister company in Australia. Cash's manufacture woven and printed labels, badges, nametapes and other products. Established 1846 in the UK, the company was England's leading silk ribbon manufacturer. Quaker brothers, John and Joseph Cash, began production of silk ribbons in the early 1840s in Coventry using the jacquard process. Workers owned their own looms and the Cash brothers, like other merchants, distributed the silk for them to weave in their homes at a fixed price per piece. Cottage industry gave way to greater production and in 1857 work began on a site at Kingfield which Cash's (UK) was to occupy for the next 138 years. The business moved production from silk ribbons to narrow frillings and Victorian silk commemoratives in response to the effect of the Free Trade Bill of 1860. It was in the 1870s that the first Cash's woven nametape rattled off the looms. From the 1960s, Cash's technological innovations have represented a breakthrough in what had been a craft industry for generations. After 130 years of family ownership and management, the company became part of the expanding Nottinghamshire textiles holding company Jones Stroud plc in 1976. From its initial expansion to Australia in 1913, to establishment of sales & marketing operations in the USA and manufacturing partnerships in Hong Kong and China, Cash's combines its traditional weaving heritage and skills with the latest developments in computerized technology which it applies to weaving, embroidering, printing, metal stamping and casting, laser cutting, computer graphics and design.

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eclarté

Production of eclarté hand woven fabrics began in a basement studio in Queen Street, Melbourne, in 1939, established by Edith ‘Mollie’ Grove and Catherine Hardress. In 1958 the business moved to the country town of Heathcote. The burgeoning business was awarded a two-year contract to produce furnishings for the Reserve Bank, Sydney, and in 1960 won a gold medal at the first Australian Wool Bureau Fashion Awards. The enterprise developed personal and working relationship with prominent Australian architects and designers including Roy Grounds, Robin Boyd, Stephenson & Turner, Bates, Smart and McCutcheon, and Fred Ward. When the business accepted another contract to supply to a Melbourne bank Grove and Hardress cancelled all private orders. The Board of Works who were handling the order failed to advise the businesswomen that they had handed the order to a Melbourne warehouse. The venture could not stand the setback and eclarté closed.

Publications

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FDC (Fashion Design Council of Australia)

Collection donated by Robert Buckingham on behalf of the Fashion Design Council of Australia

The FDC was the leading exponent for emerging and innovative fashion designers from 1983 to 1993. It was a co-operative organisation essentially instigated by designers Robert Buckingham, Kate Durham and Robert Pearce. Members were predominantly young fashion designers but the FDC included artists and crafts people from related fields including film, music and theatre. The FDC extended the idea of fashion into the arena of high art as well as popular culture.

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Frances Burke Fabrics

Collection donated by: Dr Frances Mary Burke (MBE); Miss FabieChamberlin; Diane Masters

Frances Burke studied art at Melbourne Technical College (now RMIT University) and the National Gallery School. In 1937 Burke and Morris Holloway established Burway Prints, Australia’s first registered screen printery and in 1942 the business became Frances Burke Fabrics. Burke’s strongly-patterned fabric designs which often featured Australian flora, fauna and Aboriginal motifs were commissioned by many hospitals; Melbourne and Monash Universities, Melbourne; embassies in Canberra, Washington and Paris; the State Library of Victoria, Melbourne; and the Civic Theatre, Canberra. In 1947 Burke was a founding member of the Society of Designers for Industry (now the Design Institute of Australia) together with Grant Featherston, Frederick Ward, R Haughton James and Selwyn Coffey. 1948 saw Burke open a retail outlet Good Design (later New Design) in Hardware Lane, Melbourne. She was a founding member in 1958 of the Industrial Design Institute of Australia (now the Design Institute of Australia) and was a member of the Council of the Museum of Modern Art and Design from 1958 - 1966. In 1970 Burke was awarded an MBE for services to design and in 1987 became the recipient of RMIT University’s first award of an honorary degree of Doctor of Arts. Burke died in 1994.

Publications

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Gerhard Herbst

Collection donated by Gerhard Herbst

Herbst received a Diploma of Industrial Design / Textile Design and attended teacher training in Cottbus, Germany. He arrived in Melbourne in 1939 and served with the Australian Military Forces from 1939 - 1945 after which he joined the textile business Prestige Ltd in Brunswick, Melbourne, as Art Director and Designer. Herbst taught part time during periods from 1951 to 1960 at the Melbourne Technical College School of Art, (now RMIT University) and from 1960 - 1976 was Principal Lecturer in the Department of Industrial Design at RMIT. Herbst was awared the L’Ordre Du “MeriteCulturel”, Warsaw, in 1986, and the RMIT Centenary Medallion in 1987.

Publications

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Gloweave

Collection donated by Saul Same

On 29 September 1944, Saul Same, dressed in Australian Air Force uniform, stepped in for his ill father-in-law at Comfort Shirt and Underclothing Manufacturing Company. The Company employed twelve, making underwear and polo shirts for the army, and by the end of the War, boys and men's shirts. In 1950, Same inherited Comfort and started work on introducing the concept of fashion to the conservative Australian men's shirt industry. The company continually released new product lines with shirt names evocative of the times including Airline, Freeway and the popular Four Seasons. The shirt name, Glo Weave (later Gloweave), took its inspiration from the lustre of the nylon yarn, the 'Glo', and 'Weave' because although the fabric was warp knitted, it looked woven. The shirt became so popular that in 1954 the company became Gloweave Proprietary Limited. Gloweave's glamorous modern lifestyle media campaigns, with memorable slogans including 'Love me in my Gloweave', saw sales grow exponentially. In 1956, Gloweave became a major advertiser using a new form of media, television. In 1963, unable to source supplies of fabric, Gloweave built its own mill to maintain production. This provided the infrastructure which enabled Saul Same to translate experimental textile concepts into reality, using sophisticated machinery and synthetic yarns. In 1998 Gloweave moved from its home of 37 years at 234 Brunswick Street to 425 Smith Street, Fitzroy. Gloweave had provided employment, fostered a family-type environment and provided English lessons for successive waves of immigrants from Italy, Greece and turkey. However in 1991 the Company was forced to 'let go' several hundred employees, having lost the battle started in the 1980s to retain staff and keep its manufacturing entirely in Australia. In 1992, Saul Same's son David became managing director. Gloweave continues to design, source, manufacture and merchandise men's and women's clothing.

Publications

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Library and media clippings collection

Collection compiled by Frances Burke Centre

Includes publications and media clippings relating to Australian fashion, textiles and designers - individuals, businesses and events. Also, australian trade, craft and fashion magazines including Australian Vogue (1959 - current), Vogue Living (1967 - 1999), Mode/Harper's Bazaar Australia, Follow Me.

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Linda Jackson

Collection donated by Linda Jackson

Jackson studied fashion design at Emily McPherson College, Melbourne. In the late 1960s Jackson, Fran Moore and Peter Tully travelled to New Guinea, Asia and Europe. In Paris Jackson sought out her favourite couturiers. In 1973 Jackson and Jenny Kee launched the Flamingo Park label and boutique in The Strand Arcade, Sydney. Their flower series of 1977 was shown in Europe and applauded by influential fashion critics Anna Piaggi and Diana Vreeland. The Jackson-Kee partnership continued until 1981. Jackson subsequently opened her studio, Bush Couture. Jackson has since shared knowledge and art practices with indigenous artists and communities in Africa and Australia.

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Louis Kahan

Collection donated by Lily Kahan

Kahan moved from his birthplace Vienna to Paris in 1925 where he met couturier and cultural entrepreneur, Paul Poiret. Poiret appointed Kahan, who possessed a Diploma of Tailoring qualification, head designer. Later, Kahan joined the French Foreign Legion and was sent to North Africa. After demobilisation Kahan worked as an artist spending several years in Algiers in the company of French expatriate artists, and exhibiting in Oranie, Casablanca and Nigeria. The artist-tailor joined his parents who had fled Vienna in 1947, in Perth, Australia, where he married. Kahan became a well known artist, fashion and theatre designer and illustrator who won the Australian Archibald Prize in 1962 for his portrait of writer Patrick White. His works are represented in national, state and regional galleries in Australia; and also in the Unites States and Europe.

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Hall Ludlow

Collection donated by Diane Masters

As Australia's first true 'couturier' Ludow opened his dress salon in Melbourne in 1949, and subsequently in Hong Kong and Sydney. Ludlow developed a distinct aesthetic and style of dressing that competed with the best of international design trends, and was awarded the prestigious Gown of the Year award in 1953 and in 1959. Ludlow collaborated with celebrated local photographers Helmut Newton, Athol Shmith and Bruno Benini and elite models such as Diane Masters and Maggie Tabberer. His Collins Street salon was a magnet for Melbourne’s jet set, popular with theatricals and admired by the fashion elite. His work which continued into the 1990s was described as sculptural and sumptuous yet subtle. Hall Ludlow’s work has left an indelible mark on the Australian fashion history.

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Michael O'Connell

O'Connell was born in England and lived in Australia from 1920 to 1936. O'Connell and his wife Ella produced block-printed fabrics for fashion and furnishings. In 1937 they became known as Mael Fabrics. O'Connell's designs featured birds, vases, flowers, aboriginal motifs and figures revelling and dancing.

Techniques used included batik and resist methods of dyeing. O'Connell was also involved in an interior design and decorating business in partnership with Cynthia Reed and Frederick Ward. In 1937 O'Connell returned to London where he continued his career a textile designer.

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Moylan Woollens, & Returned Soldiers and Sailors Mill

Collection donated by Fred Moylan

Moylan Woollens Company was a major wholesaler of woolen fabrics from 1950 to 1980 in the historical centre of Melbourne’s rag trade, Flinders Lane. In 1997 Fred Moylan donated over eighty swatchbooks which contain examples of natural and synthetic fabrics produced by Australian and overseas weaving mills including the Returned Soldiers and Sailors Mill, Geelong.

Publications

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Prue Acton

Collection donated by Prue Acton

At 19 years of age, in 1963, Acton launched her self-named business in the male dominated centre of Australia’s ragtrade, Flinders Lane. In the 1960s Acton was Australia’s equivalent to the United Kingdom’s youth fashion and design entrepreneur, Mary Quant. In the 1970s, she was the working woman who juggled business, children and glamour and who was named Man of the Year for achieving a six million dollar national and international turnover. In the 1980s, Acton was a celebrity designer and cultural spokeswoman and in the 1990s, an icon and industry consultant. Throughout three decades Acton adapted to significant change in Australia’s fashion and textile manufacturing and retail sectors, however, the stockmarket crash of 1987 caused a move from a manufacturing concern to a design studio. Acton closed the business in 1991. Although Acton is now an exhibiting painter she continues to be an articulate commentator on the importance of design to Australian economic development.

Case Study (DOC 6P 47KB)(Opens in new window)

Publications

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RMIT Design Education (Fashion & Textiles)

Collection donated by various donors

Donations from former RMIT students, for example, 'First Year Notes, Dressmaking 1935' from a student of Emily McPherson College of Domestic Economy (later renamed RMIT), and copies of the Emily McPherson College magazine from the 1960s, create links to RMITs fashion, textile and design history and curriculum. RMIT University opened its doors on 7 June 1887 as the Working Men’s College. Those it has trained have been in large part the men and women - the tradespeople, technicians, technologists and designers - who have created the industrial and commercial infrastructure of the nation. From an encouraging intake of 600 students, RMIT University has grown to a global university of more than 63,000 students, including 21,000 international students drawn from more than 100 countries.

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Robert Maltus

Collection donated by AdrianusJanssens

Dutch born master tailor Adrianus Janssens was a partner in the 1960s studio-weaving firm, Robert Maltus. Together with founder, Marian Swinton, Janssens designed and produced collections of hand-woven garments which successfully combined the ancient craft of hand-weaving with haute couture fashions from 1959 to 1968. Robert Maltus enjoyed consistent wins in the prestigious Melbourne Gown of the Year competition. After Robert Maltus closed Swinton accepted a teaching position at Emily McPherson College (now RMIT University) and later taught Textile Science in the Fashion Department. Janssens focused on work for private clientele. From 1974 to 1999 Janssens worked as a lecturer in fashion in the Fashion Department at RMIT University. During his twenty-five years at RMIT University Janssens was an inspiration and mentor, especially sharing his knowledge of the craft of tailoring.

Publications

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Yarra Falls Ltd

Yarra Falls Spinning Co, which later became Yarra Falls Ltd, built its first mill for spinning wool yarn on Johnston Street, Abbotsford, near the Yarra River in 1918 and its administrative complex facing Johnston Street in 1919. Yarra Falls became a major worsted and woollen yarn spinner to meet the growing demand of the nation for high quality knitwear and weaving yarns. Heavy investment was made in modern automated equipment to ensure Yarra Falls remained competitive in the market. The 1990s saw significant rationalisation of the total textile industry in Australia and other developed countries, and the acquisition of Yarra Falls by Australian Country Spinners in 1998. Yarra Falls Mills was the one of the sites of battle between textile employers and workers throughout the 1930s Depression. The Yarra Falls history published on the City of Yarra website (http://www.yarracity.vic.gov.au) gives the following account by employee, Janey Stone: ‘It started in August 1932, when Victorian employers cut wages by 15%. This was in addition to the 10% across-the-board cut for all workers two years previously. Immediately 700 employees at Yarra Falls Spinning Mills, 500 of them female, went on strike. Following an offer to reduce the cut to 7.5% the union officials convinced the strikers to return to work pending further negotiations. Not long afterwards, at a mass meeting which consisted ‘largely of young women and girls and boys dressed in knickerbockers’, 1000 textile workers voted to strike again, electing a committee which sent speakers out to other mills to spread the strike … With 3,500 out in Melbourne there were too many to meet in Trades Hall, so "the strikers went to the Temperance Hall, the girls marching along Russell Street singing." Although forced to settle, they had achieved a partial victory in reducing the cut to 7.5%. In the last two decades of the 20th century, these large industrial and mill buildings have gradually been decommissioned and recycled for light industrial, commercial or residential uses. Yarra Falls Limited located to Heidelberg West around 2000.

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