The COLLECTOR

In Sydney’s east, fashion designer Bianca Spender invites us into the private realm she fills with family mementos, memories and meaning

Trying on samples from her new collection on the morning of her marie claire photo-shoot, fashion designer Bianca Spender asks a telling question. “Can I dance in it?” She is in her kitchen and twirling – a signature move, all fluid lines. While tailored, her blush-pink trousers have just enough swathe to twirl with her and the silk shirt melds to her form. There are nods all around from our crew. In sartorial storytelling, it doesn’t get more “Bianca Spender” than this.

Standing around the designer’s kitchen table in her two-storey Victorian terrace in Sydney’s Bronte, it’s clear the ethos that defines Spender’s fashion label flows through her home. The proportions here are typical of the classic terrace style, with elongated spaces and high ceilings. If the property were an item of apparel it would be a Bianca Spender Esquire jacket, “with shell buttons that look like they were hit by hammers,” she says, referencing the stripped wood finish to her windowsills and the original oiled floorboards. “I love bringing organic detailing to something very structured.”

If the bones of the house are like tailoring, the decor is the unexpected flourish: a three-dimensional twist to the shoulder or the billow of a sleeve. “Tailoring has traditional form but it’s how you unfold it that makes it interesting,” she says. “It’s the details that draw you in. The closer you get, the more the picture is revealed.”