A Life in Pictures

Artist and creative director Amanda Shadforth invites us into the mid-century Queensland home where her fashionable life plays out

- By Anna McCooe

Talking to Amanda Shadforth is like a game of passing the parcel. At every pause, a prize drops, and another layer is revealed. First, there's the crisp outer shell: her life as a photographer and creative director for some of the world's most luxurious fashion brands. If you are one of the almost 700,000 people following her Instagram account, you'll already be acquainted with the light-hearted cool she lends to collaborators such as Valentino, Chanel and Cartier. Deeper down, we get to her vocation as an artist. The jackpot in the middle is her family: husband Sam, their two young kids, and two pomeranians, Biscuit and Crumpet. But just before we get there, the last sublime sheet of wrapping paper, which encloses the final family prize, is "home".

Shadforth and co-live on the Sunshine Coast in a 1974 modern classic, with raked ceilings, exposed beams, large expanses of glass, and all the other Easter eggs that midcentury architecture fans would never trade for a new build.

"It was completely decrepit but it was made well and the bones were beautiful. That can be hard to find on the Sunshine Coast," she says of buying the house seven years ago.

Before moving in, the family took on a "lo-fi" renovation, moving a few walls and tearing up old carpets to reveal concrete, but many of the original quirks remain. "There's an obsession where I love for everything to be shiny and new but I [also] like a place with a bit of character. I'm finding, in all facets of life, I'm drawn to things that have been made well to withstand the test of time."