ANY WHICH WAY
Heidi Middleton makes a triumphant return to the creative scene with her boundary-pushing fashion concept, Artclub. By Clare Press.
Heidi Middleton makes a triumphant return to the creative scene with her boundary-pushing fashion concept, Artclub.
Fashion brands design, make and sell clothes. Are we all in agreement on that? Certainly, there’s a plethora of different products out there, at different price points. And brands approach these core components in different ways: some make locally, others offshore. The pace varies, as do the channels for access: wholesale, flagship stores, only online. A few pioneers are looking at rental. But, essentially, this is what the business of fashion looks like: design collections, manufacture them, sell them.
“But what if,” says Heidi Middleton, with a twinkle in her eye, “we reinvented the whole model? And kept on reinventing it? I don’t see why it can’t be a moveable feast.” With her new venture, Artclub, the Sass & Bide co-founder is redefining what a small, sustainable, creative fashion business can look like today. Officially, what she’s come up with is: “ateliermade art, environmentally-conscious garments and vintage designer pieces”.
Operating out of a light-filled warehouse in Sydney’s south that has become a hub for eco businesses, Artclub combines fashion with art and community happenings. Ethical furniture and homewares business Koskela is downstairs. ‘Conscious’ eatery Three Blue Ducks fronts the street. Stylist Megan Morton’s The School is in the same precinct. “When I found the space, it just felt right,” says Middleton.
From it, she will be creating and curating her own paintings as well as clothes, both new pieces, made on site in limited editions using deadstock (remnant) fabric, and vintage from her own archive. There’s no shopfront, though; it’s all online. She plans to collaborate with other artists, and to turn her HQ into a creative salon of sorts.
“Sharing knowledge, sharing the space, exploring ideas,” she says. “I want Artclub to be a place where we can come together on philanthropic and passion projects. We’re also going to hold a quarterly clothes-swap night, where we’ll stage a beautiful dinner party bringing together 10 or 12 like-minded souls.” This might be a way of reconciling our desire for new, new, new with the need to combat the current fashion system’s inherent wastefulness. It also sounds like bloody good fun.
Middleton returned to Sydney from France 12 months ago. In Paris, she’d rented an artist’s studio in Clignancourt, and rekindled her love for painting. (She’s a graduate of the Queensland College of Art and once worked as a freelance illustrator.) She then spent a year renovating an 1830s chateau called Les Tourelles in Saint Christoly de Médoc, a small village near the Atlantic coast. It was a time of healing and growth (she separated from her husband around the same time), filled with cooking, friends and nurturing her two young daughters. Starting another fashion business was hardly front of mind, but the idea for Artclub was simmering.
“It’s not a collection, as such. Yes, there will be a vibe, a shared energy, so you can marry pieces back with each other, but they won’t date. It’s very free”
“I loved Sass & Bide,” she says of the brand she built with her friend Sarah-Jane Clarke in the 2000s. A controlling share was sold to Myer in 2011 for a cool $42 million. The pair stepped down in 2014, and Myer acquired the rest. “But it feels like a long time ago, and also that model was so demanding, so hungry. The pace was exhausting.”
Asked if she might venture into conventional retail down the track, Middleton thinks for a moment and says: “I like the idea of popping up somewhere in the world, maybe in Eastern Europe! Or back in France. We could be there for a summer. What do you think? Then move on, like a bohemian caravan. We can invent it as we go along. The only rules are honouring people and the planet.”
Hang on a minute. We haven’t talked about the clothes. “Oh, the clothes!” she says with a laugh, leading me over to a rack of toiles, where Frida Kahlo-ish circle skirts abound, a jumpsuit features flattering palazzo pants, and ruffles take an asymmetric turn. A velvet ribbon droops charmingly from the shoulder of a blouse. “No wholesale, no range plans. The clothes will be born from ideas as they come, very spontaneous,” she says. “It’s not a collection, as such. Yes, there will be a vibe, a shared energy, so you can marry pieces back with each other, but they won’t date. It’s a total rejection of conventional spring/summer, autumn/winter or pre-collection drops. I see it as ongoing, rolling. It’s very free.”