Designer Collette Dinnigan has announced via a hand-written letter on owly.com that she is stepping into the background with her business activities to concentrate on raising her young child.
Dinnigan has a young toddler with new hubby Bradley Cocks and a daughter who is now 9 years old by former flame Richard Wilkins. Collete says after losing her own mother at a young age she has decided she wants to concentrate on raising her children.
Meanwhile her business empire thrives. You can read her very personal letter here.
Collette Dinnigan continues to conquer Paris with her latest collection receiving plaudits in the French media after a parade at the Paris Fashion Week two days ago. Lots of fine Aussie wool, French lace with oblong sequins and a discreet sexuality (and that's not even from a press release !).
Dinnigan is a favourite and Francophiles seems to love her designs which sell well in Paris and the smart boutiques in the South of France.
Fashion impresario Simon Lock has announced on Facebook that he has become engaged to fashion editor Kirsten Doak.
Lock is the genius behind the various Australian Fashion Weeks in Melbourne and Sydney and worked tirelessly with good friends who mortgaged their houses to finance and get Australia's fashion industry up on the world stage. His efforts paid of with sponsors like Mercedes Benz coming on board and a number of local designers like Collette Dinnigan, Josh Goot and Alex Perry having fantastic success throughout Europe and the USA,
Amiable Lock now lives in Dubai where he is overseeing successful fashion forums. Kirsten lives there as well and is the fashion and beauty editor on Dubai's Viva Magazine.
As a man of many talents - Lock also runs a very successful public relations firm in Sydney- Simon takes the winter months off and heads for the snow fields where he is a ski instructor. Right : Simon & Kirsten at the opening night of the Dubai Fashion week.
Sass & Bide showed off their Spring/Summer 2012 at the Royal Opera House in London on Friday.
front row-actress Bonnie Wright
Paloma Faith's a fan
Designers Sarah-Jane Clarke and Heidi Middleton mixed patterns with textures and coloured prints including batik, polka dots, neon, sequins and metallic leather work in crisp clean, modern shapes and cut. The mix of long body-skimming silhouettes, dresses,tube tops and skirts, draped dresses and jackets drew hearty applause.
Paddington hairdresser Renya Xydis flew into London to do the hair. Lucky girl-with 2 top clients in Sass & Bide and Collette Dinnigan she spends much of the year jetting to Paris, London and New York but as they say, someone has to do it.
Here's Sydney fashion identity Paula Joye's video of the parade and backstage:
David Jones was first cab off the rank with their Autumn Winter Fashion Launch at the Elizabeth Street store.
Dannii
Just to show there were no hard feelings now that the fashion duo from Sass & Bide, Heidi Middleton and Sarah Jane Clarke have decamped to the Myer chain of stores, a DJ's spokesman happily told any interviewer who would listen that sales of Sass & Bide fashion had been just a tiny, teeny fraction of DJ's income.
Myers must think otherwise having forked over $42M for around 65% of the brand.
Melissa George
Trundling through the grand marble floored store and past a photo station and then in circles around the ground floor and up 7 sets of escalators to DJ's former floor of boutique shopettes were Jane Ferguson , Harry M.Miller, Jan Logan, Grant Pearce, Mark Patrick, Lyndey Milan and Skye Leckie amongst the usual suspects who front Sydney and Melbourne's fashion parades.
Dannii Minouge was there and so was actor Melissa George , both looking trim and glam. ( If you have a spare few hours catch up on Melissa in the excellent HBO series In Treatment in which she stars opposite Gabriel Byrne).
Leggy beauties Sarah Murdoch and Megan Gale waltzed by. Alex Perry and Collette Dinnigan sat with Camilla Franks-all had their wares featured in the parade as did George Gross and Harry Who (both with deep suntans). Akira Isogawa.Carla Zampatti and her equally talented daughter Bianca Spender showed their latest and it wouldn't be a fashion show without Alex Perry, Alannah Hill and Josh Goot.
Needless to say, the gallons of Veuve Clicquot were eagerly quaffed.
In 1979 the Shuttle's resident psychic adviser Mandy Miami was looking for a new British designer to showcase at the New York nite spot she was managing-the Mudd Club. She chose an up and coming young couple David and Elizabeth Emanuel for her British Invasion Fashion Show that scored the Emanuels a front page story in the prestige Woman's Wear Daily.
The Emanuel wedding dress
And she predicted an amazing success for the 2 designers and that one shining moment was in store for them very soon- one of their designs "will be seen throughout the entire world like no other has ever before".
In 1981 Princess Diana wed HRH Prince Charles in a now famous Emanuel wedding dress, watched on live TV by billions of people around the world.
Miranda Kerr in Collette Dinnigan
On Tuesday evening the Shuttle attended the opening of Collette Dinnigan's new Woollahra boutique. The news had just broken of the engagement of Kate Middleton and Prince William. Collette is one of Kate's favourite designers and Kate is a regular at her London store. Today Ms Dinnigan fielded phone calls from media outlets around the world asking for her advice on Kate's wedding dress.
In Vogue UK she is running at odds 16/1 along with Alice Temperley another favourite, that the future Queen will wear one of her designs on her wedding day.
However the chances of Kate choosing a non-British wedding dress designer are pretty slim. The British media would rip her to shreds if she wore a foreign design-even a colonial one. But Collette does a nice line in beautiful Christening gowns for that inevitable Royal baby that will be with us in a year or so !
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Society maven Marie Sutton , the woman who managed to gazump the entire world by getting Princess Diana to attend the Victor Chang dinner in Sydney in 1995 as her last official charity function tells the Shuttle her phone began ringing at 5am this morning and hasn't stopped.
"They're calling from all over the world" she says "radio stations and newspapers in London and America. I even had a TV station in South Africa wanting to send a film crew to interview me".
"There's not much I can tell them" she says. " I've never met Kate and last spoke to William on the telephone 3 years ago".
In the meantime she is busy filling a table for the Black & White Committee charity lunch at the Four Seasons Hotel on the 30th November.
The special guest is John Rendall of 'Christian The Lion' fame. He's just returned from hosting a safari in Kenya and will be giving a talk at the lunch on life in an antique shop on the Kings Road, Chelsea with the lion cub he purchased at Harrods in the 1970s.
And there's a slide show. The pictures were recently exhibited at the prestige Saatchi Gallery in London.
Queen Street, Woollahra has now taken on the mantle as Sydney's uber shopping area with designer Collette Dinnigan, still the toast of Paris, opening a new boutique in one of the few remaining and much coveted stores available.
For the past 3 years the tree lined boulevard has been going through a transformation from the city's premier antique centre to the smartest fashion precinct in town.
Sipping on Moet and nibbling Chinese style canapes at last night's opening bash- Kerrie Anne Kennerley, Peter Weiss, actress Pia Miranda, TV host Kylie Speer and cricketer Shane Watson. They're all confirmed Collette fans.
Collette & models
Missing in action were Dinnigan's close friends Sarah and Lachlan Murdoch. Murdoch is busy with his takeover of the TEN TV network along with James Packer.
Designer Collette Dinnigan has announced via a hand-written letter on owly.com that she is stepping into the background with her business activities to concentrate on raising her young child.
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