It was boom time for the nightclub industry, but I was without a life; a sensible one, I mean. Apart from partying and managing my busy workload at Stonewall, I also resurrected and chaired the fundraising committee of Mr Gay Sydney with a team of influential community members. We organised the yearly pageant at the Paddington Town Hall, raising thousands of dollars for AIDS. Dannii Minogue was a guest judge and entertained at one of the male beauty pageant finals. Jimmy Barnes, the legendary Australian rock star, and his wife Jane also became two of our regulars. We spent many weekends at their Point Piper home, at recovery parties that would start about 3am Saturday and finish some time Monday morning. It was at one of these parties where Dannii and I once jumped into the pool, partly clothed, laughing loudly after downing way too much booze. I didn’t know where I was, so drunk I didn’t care. She was fun, that Dannii, I loved those days. I can’t help it but I adore the Minogue sisters. Kylie, oh, what a legend! I mean, tell me which Queen doesn’t love the Princess! You couldn’t crown a bigger gay icon in our time than Kylie.
I drank ridiculous amounts, not to mention the sleepless nights for the nightclub licencee role. Red Bull was the only thing that kept me awake and sensible in the day. It was impossible to maintain any form of discipline with my work and social life, the two merging into one during my time at Stonewall.
We also spent a lot of wonderful times with Peter Morrissey, who was Jayson’s boss. We were like a family of three. On the nights I wasn’t working, we went to his place to hang out, ordered takeaway (big bags of lollies) and watched a video. Sometimes I would cook a Singapore-style chicken curry, with Charlotte and Scott joining us occasionally. Their marriage was starting to unravel and it was truly the worst time of her life. Charlotte wasn’t herself and it pained us all to see our friend, who we thought had married the man of her dreams, in such deep turmoil. Scott is a very good person, a true gentleman in my eyes. He was just very young and probably they were not a good match. He had barely turned twenty-three. He didn’t need a wife, especially someone with the social calibre of Charlotte, a well-known identity in our crazy world. The media scrutinised them, relentless in their pursuit of a story, the power of the media being something I myself experienced later. After ten months, their marriage was over, their lives ripped to shreds. The stories about the short-lived marriage were plastered in tabloids for all to gawk at. Charlotte was devastated and felt helpless. On the one hand, she loved Scott but she couldn’t help feeling responsible for some of his setbacks, one being his failure to qualify in the Sydney Olympics. On the other hand, she could not put up with the blame any longer, especially from the press, who painted her as a psycho bitch. The truth was she wasn’t anything like what they said about her. She was troubled, yes, but they were demons of her own she was fighting. It appeared that Scott got caught up with Charlotte’s celebrity status and carried away by the frivolous lifestyle that comes with marrying a celebrity.
Their wedding was one of the most beautiful I have ever witnessed. Jayson illustrated the wedding invitation and her dress was stunning; it was Jayson and Morrissey’s design. The ivory strapless trousseau she wore, hand-beaded in the finest stones, when she walked down the aisle at the Overseas Passenger Terminal in Sydney, with the Opera House as backdrop, lives in my memory. I cried seeing Charlotte’s beauty accentuated in the dress, and her fairytale wedding touched many of our hearts. Only ten months later, my heart ached, ached for knowing something so perfect was falling apart.
When the life of a celebrity club promoter wasn’t about going to parties or organising them, Jayson and I spent quiet times away together. We love travelling, so every opportunity we got, we would travel somewhere, often to Thailand. They were contented times – our time to relax completely, shut ourselves off from the world, lie on sunbeds in a five star resort on the beautiful islands of Koh Phi Phi, Koh Samui and Koh Pangyang (“Koh” means “Island”).
It was around this time that we introduced our respective families to each other. From the outset, both families instantly supported our relationship. Jayson’s parents seemed impressed that at age twenty-five I already owned my own home, and my family fell in love with the blue-eyed Jayson. They welcomed him as their other son. “An honest, kind-looking face,” they said about him, and the relationship, they felt, was made in heaven. What parents don’t want happiness for their children? In this instance, it was obvious to both sides that the strong and stable partnership was bringing us both great joy.
In 2001, after the Olympics, Jayson moved in with me. The Morrissey label was at its peak and was subsequently acquired by the Oroton Group, a Sydney-based publicly-listed retail company founded in 1938 that had over eighty stores across the country. The iconic Oroton luxury brand was first made famous by its metallic mesh handbags and later acquired the exclusive Ralph Lauren licence for Australia. Jayson and Peter joined Oroton as designer and creative director for Morrissey, and overnight stores opened in Westfield buildings across the country. Morrissey triumphed and success stories of Peter Morrissey the homegrown talent appeared in various print media. Peter and Jayson worked well together. Peter is a marketing genius, and marketing is instrumental to any label’s success. Jayson did a lot of the design work. Industry and peers knew he did the hard yards and was integral to the ongoing accomplishments. They tendered for the new Qantas uniforms. Jayson spent weeks working with Peter and drawing designs for the submission. After weeks of anticipation, the newspapers announced that Morrissey was the new uniform designer for Qantas.
In 2003, work at the Stonewall became little more than routine, and I struggled to motivate myself. I had been there for six years and dreaded going to work. I wasn’t giving the job the attention it deserved, and with time my role began to feel stagnant, with no room for me to grow. I felt like I needed to challenge myself and develop my other passions, such as staging other parties out of Stonewall or helping Jayson merchandise the Morrissey stores. The nights felt long and I began struggling with whether to stay or go.
Things I have always loved most in my club career – the female impersonators, seeing them dolled up in women’s clothing and listening to the hilarious jokes they would crack from my tiny office next to the stage – would be difficult to part with. But I had accomplished everything I wanted to at Stonewall, and I was getting bored; I needed a change. I was also sick from the excessive drinking, and not coping well in general. The stress resulted in me getting shingles. But the catalyst for my decision to leave was not wanting to spend the rest of my life running a gay club, however exciting.
Times had also changed, and I had changed personally too. Some of the new clienteles’ behaviour was rough, and one or two incidents that took place convinced me it was time to leave. I was ready to go, maybe back to university or perhaps to start a career in fashion with Peter and Jayson’s assistance.
In late 2003, I left Stonewall Hotel. It was one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make, and I was left with a feeling of sad detachment, especially after putting in so much of myself and taking ownership and being personally responsible for the club’s success.
Stonewall will always hold a special place in my heart, and it will remain dear to me forever. I gave it my best and it brought so much happiness and love to me. They are times I will always cherish, remember and be thankful for. There will never be a moment of regret nor can I ever forget what it gave me – my Jayson and my future. Stonewall brought love to all – the laughter and joy it brought to the patrons, but most of all, it brought our community together.
Shortly after my departure from Stonewall, I took a part-time job with the Oroton Group as a visual merchandiser. I went into the stores to merchandise Morrissey’s latest collections and was responsible for the window displays at all their stores. I had to theme and create innovative windows. I also made the stock on the floor look appealing and presentable, ready for sales. I would dress the mannequins and teach store staff to coordinate the total look. Using simple techniques that reflecte
d professionalism, I would consistently fold garments the same way so they would look presentable on the racks. My creativity was expressing itself and I was happy once again. Because I didn’t have to work nights anymore, I did a scriptwriting course and went to NIDA, the National Institute of Dramatic Arts, on weekends to do more courses in film editing and direction. Shortly after leaving NIDA, I wrote a nine-minute short feature called Stranded, about the club in the eighties where Jayson, Peter Morrissey and Leona Edmiston had met and used to frequent in their heydays.
Stranded was about prejudices, culminating in a rape scene meant to shock viewers. The story’s main character, Mona, picks up a young man at the Stranded Club and together they brave the night to visit a park, where he attempts to rape her. But instead he finds out that she is genetically a man. With my personal experience of abuse and the many tales I have heard from my transsexual friends at Stonewall, I was equipped with enough facts to create an authentic story. Jayson was my script consultant since he knew Stranded. We raised enough funds from friends and family, about $40,000 and, with some free technical support from Foxtel, we did the nine-minute feature for Tropfest Film Festival, which was Australia’s most established festival for budding filmmakers. Friends including Ricca, Charlotte and Ian Roberts (famous footballer who came out) were cast for roles in the film. Charlotte played a policewoman, and diva transsexual Kristy McNicol was cast in the main role as Mona. Kristy is beautiful and shoots very well on screen. You wouldn’t in your wildest dreams think she was genetically born a man, and indeed the penis was still intact. Jayson designed all the costumes and for weeks we shopped at markets, op shops and raided friends’ closets for the nightclub scene, which featured a smorgasbord of new romantics, punks and Debbie Harry lookalike patrons. The film got nowhere, its content too serious for the festival and perhaps too advanced for its time. The organisers didn’t think it was appropriate. Later, I was happy to learn it had been screened in an obscure film festival in Germany. It was a worthwhile exercise, the insights into filmmaking and the experience and confidence I got from it remain to this day.
Between only working part-time, my expensive hobbies and course fees, I hardly had any money. I had gone through my savings. Jayson started to support me with his wages. He was working harder and had to deal with the many internal changes that had taken place after the buyout, including the relocation of the office to Balgowlah, a northern suburb of Sydney. He dreaded the hour-long journey to work and got caught daily in the bridge’s traffic jam. Oroton also wanted to change direction and become more commercial with the Morrissey brand to make it appeal to a broader demographic, like changing the brand’s aesthetics and garment prices to entry level. Because Jayson’s designs weren’t about commercialism, he didn’t stand a chance with the executives’ decision. He has never been that sort of an artist. He wouldn’t know where to start if he had to design cheap clothes. His flare was “dressing the woman in sensuality and femininity”, the exquisite form, shapes and luxurious fabrics. That’s his thing. The relationship between Jayson and Oroton was drawing to an end. He didn’t want to participate in Oroton’s change of direction. Peter also became less involved, spending more time in social work engagements for the brand. Because Jayson held fort for some time, he dealt with powerful Oroton executives, mostly money men in suits with whom he battled daily on the brand’s creative direction. For money men, it’s the bottom line that matters most and profits come before art.
It was during the last business trip he took with Peter that Jayson made the decision to leave Oroton and dissolve his twenty-year relationship with Peter, both on a professional and personal basis. Before they left for Paris, I handed him the book Greek Fire, the story of opera singer Maria Callas and the life she shared with the only man she ever loved, billionaire Aristotle Onassis. Callas was a heroine in her day. She died young after losing his child and having her heart broken after learning of his marriage to Jackie Kennedy, America’s sweetheart and former first lady. Jayson sat at the famous Café de Flore and later at the rue de Rivoli gardens on the last day before returning home to Sydney and read the book from beginning to end. When he put the book down, he knew exactly what he had to do. He needed to live his dreams and find his own voice before it was too late. When he returned home, he handed his resignation to Peter and Oroton. No one needed to know his plan to start his own business. He was going to design an eponymous label and branch out on his own without being under Morrissey’s wings. He would do what he loved most – design beautiful dresses on his own merit and in his own name.
5
The Brand
In early 2004, we sold Jayson’s Oroton shares and, with some savings and borrowed funds from a friend Paul, we started the Jayson Brunsdon label with no other staff except the two of us and another friend and ex-Oroton staff member, Melanie Batten, who came sporadically to help. I was the brand’s sales and marketing director. We had no separate premises so we set up the new office in the spare room of our Elizabeth Bay apartment. It was small and cramped. We used the living room floors to toile and cut garments and we had no income but we were driven and happy. Then Simon Lock, an angel and close friend, founder of Australian Fashion Week and now turned author, helped us write a business plan. It comprised short- and long-term plans for the new label and helped us to think critically about our business. He gave us a lot of support and later a breakthrough came when he urged us to show our premiere collection on the runway at his next organised event, the popular annual Fashion Week. Simon wanted a new star for Australia fashion and since he was familiar with Jayson’s work at Morrissey Edmiston and at Morrissey, he suggested we launch the label on the platform, which had been created specifically for emerging designers like us. Simon would use his networks to tell Australia about this new up-and-coming designer who could take Australia by storm. If anyone could have created such a storm, it was Simon. He is a fashion genius and a great businessman with astute knowledge of the industry.
We worked tirelessly for months, sometimes until late in the night and early mornings. Jayson designed the clothes for the runway presentation and I ran to contractors, sample machinists and patternmakers to have them sewn and made. We did as much as we could ourselves, bringing costs down and saving the little capital we had. With the help of several friends and past fashion contacts, including Simon and Jarrad, three months later we managed to pull together a cohesive collection to show at the 2004 Mercedes Benz Australia Fashion Week.
We launched our careers and the highly anticipated brand on the runway to an audience of 400 people, including fashion media, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. The auditorium was packed, the front row filled with super-powerful fashion industry representatives, editors and buyers, while the standing room was overflowing with people who had come to see what Jayson Brunsdon had in store for them. Supermodels Helena Christensen and Gayle Elliott, whom Jayson had worked with in the US when he was styling, sat front row at the show. Later, Vogue ran a full-page story in the magazine. The media dubbed it the show of the week. It was a major success. Models walked down the catwalk in Maria Callas inspired clothing, accompanied by her soprano voice. It felt surreal; it blew away the audience. Some cried on hearing the aria fill the high-ceilinged, pillared museum. A big hit, Jayson was instantly one of fashion’s big heroes. David Jones’ head buyer Collette Garnsey came backstage immediately after the show to set a meeting time. She wanted to purchase the new line for their stores. Department stores from Taiwan, UK’s Selfridges and many other national and international stores followed suit, knocking on our door to buy the collection. Suddenly we had a million dollars’ worth of distribution.
From rags to riches? Actually, no: we were now wondering how to meet these orders. Our funds were inadequate to produce the range and we had no means of raising the necessary sum of money. We were stuck, having had no expectation a million dollars’ worth of orders would fall on our doorstep. After much consideration, we decided to sell twenty-five per cent
of the company’s shares to a private investor. This move would allow us to raise the money for production and move into sensible premises with enough left over from the injection to hire several new staff members.
Over the next few years, our business kept expanding, to considerable sales results. Overnight we had become an international brand. David Jones almost instantly sold out of the entire first collection that hit their stores that summer. Re-orders midway through the season streamed into our little company. We worked nonstop seven days a week. Celebrities and their stylists asked to wear our clothes, and we dressed Linda Evangelista, Naomi Watts, Toni Collette and, the highlight of our career, Her Royal Highness the Crown Princess Mary of Denmark.
In 2006, we received a phone call from Amber Petty, Princess Mary’s best friend and a most loyal friend to her to this very day. We came to know Amber when she was preparing to travel to Denmark to be bridesmaid at the princess’s wedding. Recommended by Vogue, we were asked to design a wardrobe for Amber. It was important that she wore Australian fashion throughout the week-long functions and social engagements leading to the big day.
When Amber walked into our office the first time, we both fell in love with her, seriously impressed by her wicked sense of humour. As we soon discovered, she is known for putting people in stitches with her smart one-liners that she unexpectedly drops without any notice. She can leave you with your pants down, so to speak, laughing in hysterics. Amber is a totally cool person to be around and over the years our friendship has become very close and solid. Once we travelled to Los Angeles together for the Golden Globes and I was held up at customs for over two hours because my passport was found to have been tampered with and wouldn’t scan. Amber waited outside the holding area for hours, worried sick. Finally, unable to bear it any longer, she crept into the customs holding area, tiptoeing slowly inside to where I sat so no one would notice, stared seriously into my eyes and said, “Mate, is it time for a runner?” The expression on her face had me in hysterics. Only she could do it the way she did. The customs officers were not at all pleased.
Designer Baby Page 4
