FLORENCE BROADHURST- [1899-1977] Textile Designer

Colorful, fantastical designs reflect the complex character who created them

- Catherine Coyle

Ask a child what they want to be when they grow up and the replies tend to be pretty standard: footballer, scientist, vet. On the odd occasion, you might get an artisan baker or an aerial yoga instructor. If you’re anything like Florence Broadhurst was, though, you’ll live out your most elaborate childhood fantasies and stun everyone into silence with your originality.

Born on a cattle station in the inhospitable Australian outback in 1899, Broadhurst took on as many different guises as she could during her life. She was no Walter Mitty, though; she fully inhabited every one of her roles, however fanciful, executing them with aplomb.

Her parents were poor but ambitious and made sure their daughter had music lessons. She grew up to be an accomplished singer and, by the 1920s, had joined a vaudeville troop and was travelling across the Far East under her new name of Bobby Broadhurst. On reaching Shanghai, this sociable and vibrant young woman set up the Broadhurst Academy, a finishing school for the children of wealthy expats. She was 26, armed with self-belief and seemingly unstoppable PR prowess, and she quickly made a success of this venture. Alas, her timing was poor, as Helen O’Neill, author of Florence Broadhurst: Her Secret and Extraordinary Lives, explains. “Colonial Shanghai was crumbling and the Massacre of 1927 forced her to move on, heading this time to London’s Bond Street, where she reinvented herself as a French couturier named Madame Pellier, selling her designs to debutantes, aristocrats and the theatre set.