DOUBLE VISION

For Bassike’s Deborah Sams, the serene feel of her Avalon home doesn’t end when she exits the front door, but continues into the brand’s nearby headquarters. She guides us through both havens.

ALTHOUGH DEBORAH SAMS insists that it “wasn’t deliberate” that both her home and office share the same aesthetic, the two could almost be confused for being the same space. While work and home represent different things for the Bassike creative director, there’s a visible symmetry between both her personal and professional arenas located on Sydney’s Northern Beaches.

After co-founding Bassike in 2006 with Mary Lou Ryan, Sams created the first bricks-and-mortar store in Avalon, the beachfront suburb where she also resides with her husband and son.

Originally serving as a retreat for Catholic priests and nuns, her home is “a hidden, gem – very private, and has a lot of history and character”. Cire Trudon candles and B&B Italia furniture fill rooms, and work by Vogue photographer Richard Bailey hang on the walls, while Butch, the family’s 13-year-old Pomeranian, also serves as an important fixture.

If Sams’s life were a jigsaw puzzle, her open-plan Bassike office, in the nearby suburb of Warriewood, is the all-important final piece. A central atrium allows harmony between inside and out. “I love this space and love coming to work every day; I feel very grateful for the business we have and the people who work for us,” she says.

Deborah Sams at home with her dog Butch, wears Bassike pants, $395, and her own Bassike shirt. Who: Deborah Sams, co-founder and creative director of Bassike since 2006. Where: Home in Avalon and Bassike headquarters in Warriewood, both on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. What: A 1930s-built Spanish mission-style house near the beach in Avalon, and a light-filled office space.

“This is a Halyard chair by Hans Wegner in my living room at home. I don’t sit in it often but my husband does when the fire is going.”