Deborah Sams and Mary Lou Ryan from Bassike

The easy style of Bassike may have been successfully exported internationally, with its first overseas store opening in Venice, Los Angeles last year, but the designers themselves have become further entrenched in their Northern Beaches home – the benefit of their designs and their scores of fans. “Everything about this peninsula is so special,” says Deborah Sams, who grew up in Avalon. “We appreciate its little eccentricities: unsealed roads, the last remaining horse paddocks in Warriewood, the uncrowded beaches and their bright orange sand, the handwritten signs nailed to every lamppost along the Bilgola bends, and the 1940s sandstone bungalows of Palm Beach.” Mary Lou Ryan, who moved from Melbourne to Sydney 20 years ago, has noticed that the area has attracted like-minded creatives who have relocated to escape the fast-pace city life of the Sydney centre. “It’s enriched the local culture even more,” she says. Even though surfing and skating is the part of the lifestyle, Sams believes it’s more than just a beachside town. And for Ryan, it’s a source of design stimulus: “The northern beaches allow us to create and to be creative away from the noise and distraction of the city. Because of this, our relationship with the area is strong: it has shaped us as individuals, and as designers.”