Brands

Thirty-two houses. Some of them older than most countries, some of them two women in a borrowed room in Adelaide, and all of them chosen one piece at a time.

We search a category until we find the best in it, then go deep on that one house and hold the line. One hero per category, never a wall of near identical choices. It is why there is one leather here and one cashmere, and why the menswear is a single label.

Perfumery

Santa Maria Novella

Florence, 1221. Dominican friars began distilling in the garden of a church and the house has never stopped. It is the oldest thing we sell and very likely the oldest thing sold anywhere on the Peninsula.

P Frapin & Cie

The Charente, 1270. The same family has held the same land for twenty generations, first for cognac and later for scent. Fragrances built on eau de vie rather than around it.

Trudon

Paris, 1643. Wax for the court at Versailles and for Napoleon's household, and the same green glass still poured by hand today. The widest range we carry.

Lubin

Paris, 1798. Perfumer to Josephine, and later to half the courts of Europe.

Nasomatto

Amsterdam, 2007. Alessandro Gualtieri has never published a note list for anything he has made and does not intend to. Extrait only, thirty millilitres, and the blank where the notes should be is the whole point of the house.

Ormaie Paris

A mother and son, working entirely in natural materials, with caps carved from wood rather than moulded.

Matière Première

Aurelien Guichard, who grew up in Grasse among the fields his family farmed, building each fragrance around one raw material grown for the purpose.

Eight & Bob

The story goes that a young John F Kennedy was given a bottle in France in 1937 and wrote asking for more. Eight, and one more for Bob.

Womenswear

ba&sh

Paris, 2003. Barbara Boccara and Sharon Krief met at school. Barbara went into press, Sharon studied law, and neither of them went to fashion school. They put the first letters of their names on the label and set out to make the wardrobe they wanted for themselves. Barbara dressed bohemian. Sharon dressed rock and roll. Before every season the design team still goes to their house in Ibiza, because the collection has to be imagined somewhere other than Paris.

Acler

Adelaide, 2014. The name came out of a Scrabble set. Kathryn Forth and Julia Ritorto were after a word that carried clarity, moved the letters until clear became Acler, and everything since has been built on that one idea. My own favourite, and I do not say that lightly.

Significant Other

The second label from the same two women, made in 2019 for everything Acler was never built to do. Julia calls the difference beach to bar.

Zoe Kratzmann

She learned to sew on her mother's machine. Her mother was a seamstress. She designs from the Sunshine Coast and has said that sitting outside the fashion centres is what lets them run their own race. The design team is two people.

Mes Demoiselles Paris

Found travelling, and not stocked anywhere else in Australia. Anouck Duranteau-Loeper's prints are drawn by hand before anything is cut.

POL

The label that carries the ordinary good days between the occasions.

Second Female

Copenhagen. Danish cutting, and the pieces that hold a line without asking anything of you.

Vilagallo

Madrid, 1997, named for two of its founders. The prints are drawn for the house and printed in Spain, so they turn up on nothing else. Even the linings are printed. New to Australia and we are one of very few stockists.

Vaenn

Fine knit, and the yarn is the design. Mercerised merino held under tension through the finishing so the fibre swells and takes a lustre closer to silk than to wool.

MOS The Label

Embroidery and slip dressing, cut for a summer that starts at the water.

Magali Pascal

French hands working out of Bali, on silk and lace and the kind of dress you keep. The first brand I put on the rail.

Auguste

Australian, and made for the months when the day starts outside and stays there.

World of Nomads

Cashmere ordered a year ahead and arriving as a single drop.

Second Skin

Sydney, 2011. The only leather we carry. Lambskin and suede handmade in small batches in Java and Bali by artisans the label has worked alongside for fifteen years. Dyed all the way through rather than coated on the surface, which is why it stays supple and softens into the shape of the person wearing it. Leather is the piece that carries a Peninsula winter, so it was worth searching until we found the one.

Menswear

Christian Kimber

One house, and the only menswear label on this site. Drawn in Melbourne and cut in Italy and Portugal. Christian comes down to Red Hill himself, cloth over his arm, to sit with you while the jacket is decided.

Footwear

Lana Wilkinson

Melbourne. Shoes designed by someone who spent a career dressing other women before she made her own, so the heel heights are chosen by somebody who has stood in them until the end of the night.

Billini

Sydney, 2009. Susannah Khouzame was partway through a law and accounting degree, working in fashion retail, building outfits around designer shoes she could not afford. So she made her own, with no experience in footwear and none in business, and taught herself as she went. The first label was called Billie, after her niece.

Jewellery, bags, eyewear and accessories

By Charlotte

Charlotte Blakeney was a makeup artist for twenty years. The label began above Ubud in 2012 with five thousand dollars and no experience of the trade. The lotus starts at the bottom of a pond and pushes up through the water before it opens. That necklace took two years to draw.

Arms of Eve

Made to be worn together rather than chosen between.

Viktoria & Woods

Melbourne, 2004. Margie Woods began with a single merino knit and sold only through other people's shops until 2016. Accredited by Ethical Clothing Australia, which is an audit rather than a promise. We have opened with the hardware. Two barrettes and a set of slides, in plated brass, because a hair clip is where you find out whether a label understands weight and finish.

Home

Home Fragrance

Candles, room sprays, diffusers and the things that make a house smell like somebody lives in it.

Lifestyle

Glassware, linen, ceramics and the objects that end up on the table.

If you are looking for a house we do not list here, write to us. We can often find it.

Amelie & Frank's · Red Hill