April 13, 2013 |
1. THE GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER
Well, no, not quite, especially here in Australia, where the land is subjected to long periods of drought, resulting in it getting very baked out and brown. And so if you were to ask me, “Did you leave England because the grass is always greener?” I would have to say no. But if you are referring to the other usage of this phrase, then possibly, yes. I was hankering for a big adventure and escape, and this seemed like a particularly big leap into a hot place. Conversely, because this faraway land is so faraway it serves to propel many Australians out of here and across the Pacific, the primary goal being New York and LA, where they work incredibly hard and have much success and establish Aussie outposts. They are happily everywhere.
2. KNOW YOUR TIME ZONES
A journey minimum of 22 hours could be misread as quite the killer (unless you made the Ten Pound Pom journey by boat in the 1950s and 1960s, which took weeks; Kylie Minogue’s and Hugh Jackman’s parents were Ten Pound Poms), but really it’s a much-loved minibreak – a glass of wine or three and back-to-back movies. I once watched nine and, with no other form of communication, I entered into a catatonic state of emotional bliss. Fellow long-haulers are frequently heard laughing out loud and bawling their eyes out. Bliss is being geographically ahead of the rest of the world, which is amazing, and fireworks fizz here first on the stroke of midnight – and of course we all knew before anyone else that the world wouldn’t end on 12th December, 2012. Confusingly, though, being ahead of time can sometimes put us behind, as most Big Decisions and Announcements made by international HQs come out of Europe or the US just as our day is ending and theirs is beginning. It can make you a bit giddy trying to fathom it all out, and feel jet-lagged, even though you haven’t even hopped on a plane. Awake is the new sleep.
3. YOU ARE POTENTIALLY BIPOLAR AND SHOULD SEEK MEDICAL ADVICE
There is something nicely liberating about being a fashion immigrant, because you do get the best of both worlds. In 1997 I came from a Luella Bartley culture of “Daddy I want a pony”, a bit geezer London that was all about self-expression, and did I self-express. I wore combinations of clothes that might now be called, somewhat euphemistically, “individual”, and were, I would like to say, most definitely ironic. Thank God for Oxfam, who benefited greatly from my departure. However, I still arrived with stacks of vintage clothes and masses of coats – Lord knows why, as there is never ever a winter in Sydney. Being a fashion immigrant means you get the chance to reinvent yourself, to start a whole new fashion journey and ditch the old annoying bits of you. In my UK passport picture I am wearing a big, blankety, grey Armani overcoat, while in my Aussie passport picture I’m wearing a Bassike T-shirt. Gateway to a new life.
4. BE PREPARED FOR AN EPIPHANY
I didn’t really think too hard about what Australian fashion would be like as I exited a flushed and somewhat-swaggering country that was high on Britpop. In my mind’s eye perhaps I thought it was going to be somewhere between Picnic at Hanging Rock, My Brilliant Career and Oscar and Lucinda. I had led a sheltered childhood in darkened cinemas. I thought it would all be deeply romantic. Somehow I forgot to see Mad Max. Instead, it was better than any of those: it was much more modern, it was a country full of printed boardies, slick Gucci swimsuits, Zimmermann bikinis, Prada T-shirts, crazily painted Kombi vans and barefoot sun gods. Here the lighter side of fashion is in a crystal-clear context, and it makes sense. In the late 1990s Australia still had a fledgling fashion industry, although Collette Dinnigan was already showing in Paris and influencing everyone globally with her underwear-as-outerwear phenomenon. Some designers were copying bits of collections from overseas, but thankfully that has long gone, and designers such as Dion Lee, Josh Goot, Sass & Bide, Romance Was Born and Ellery have had the sense to develop unique vocabularies, and so many others are doing good things. However, it must said that the hardest part about being here to begin with was the lack of international-designer stores. There were a few, including Chanel, Hermès and Gucci, but not many more. There were some pioneer standalone retailers in Sydney – Robby Ingham and Belinda Seper; Georgina Weir at Le Louvre in Melbourne and Wendy Marshall at Elle in Perth – but you could count them on one hand. Now there are flagships in most major cities, and we have become the number-one region for many online shopping sites, hooked in to all that nonstop 24-hour goodness – Net-A-Porter and Mr Porter and Matches can barely ship fast enough. This isn’t cabin fever, it’s fashion fever.
5. YOU CAN WEAR CELINE SANDALS ALL YEAR LONG
Yes, you can. Even as I’m writing this, the fan is whirring overhead and the thermometer on my iPhone is reading 31 degrees Celsius (translated for European readers as 87.8 degrees Fahrenheit). This means that you have to strip off, and so, in 1997, it was “Hello, Sydney” and goodbye, pasty white Brit body. Now I like to think I have lightly sun-kissed skin (delusional, of course) not just for two weeks of the year, but 52 weeks of the year. It’s intoxicatingly good, although sunning is a big no-go. Most women and a fair few men spray tan, which I do, too, sometimes, and doubtless, in years to come, that will also be declared as dangerously toxic as UV. All this near-nakedness demands exercise, of course, so you need to be fit and have your wits about you and quickly absorb the all-powerful sporting codes, which are multiple and include cricket, rugby, soccer and AFL, all of which I can now just about converse in. I like to think I am something of a fashion Olympian, I play pool, I have a bike that hangs in the garage, I have a swimsuit and I run, sometimes.
6. KNOW YOUR MANKIND
Joke: how do you impress an Aussie man? Come naked and bring pizza and a beer. Is this true? Not really. You see, it can be Coffin Bay oysters every day, lobster every Sunday, Wagyu beef on Monday and freshly grown vegetables and fresh food always. There is plentiful crisp white sauvignon blanc, although chardy is making a major comeback, and of course it’s iced beer not warm beer. There’s salty skin and salt and pepper squid. Lots of salt. Not much malt vinegar, unless it’s deconstructed with postmodern mushy peas.
7. GET A PAIR OF STRONG SUNGLASSES
Colour is off-the-register intense. We are saturated with turquoise ocean all around, red ochre desert and wildly blue sky. It’s an assault on the eyeballs, as brightness seeps through every part of Australian life and deeply influences fashion. It’s not about Northern Hemisphere layering and heavy coats and jackets, it’s about light whispery wool, and renewable, natural, fine cotton at its most uncomplicated simplicity. Designers capture this lightness of being and somehow manage to breathe a newness and mystery into what they do. Of course there are sundresses in the Sunday markets and beach-inspired fashion, and there is a place and a time where surfboards and bikinis meet red carpets and minidresses, and it’s a lovable mash-up.
8. PREPARE FOR MAJOR SENSORY OVERLOAD
Crashing waves drenching white sand; the snap of a bikini strap; the booming ships; the cicadas from another planet. The pavements smell good after a summer storm. Petrol lawnmowers hum as they trim away, beating back the bush. And there is always the overpoweringly sweet yet acrid smell of mozzie repellent. It doesn’t get better than this. The sun rises early, so the days are long, hot and humid in spring and autumn. Days can be spent willing the southerly winds, and heavy rain is like taking a power shower. Yes, it’s extreme, but frogs do not rain from the skies. Once we woke up in an eerily red atmosphere – it was like we were on Mars as red dust swept in from the desert and engulfed Sydney. Huge bogong moths and indecently large fruit bats fill the night skies in summer. A nation clings to the coastal fringes, but it is always ruled by the dead heart of a hot desert.
9. OPEN YOUR EYES
Being a fashion immigrant means you have a whole new culture to inspire you and makes for squeaking amazement. Australian art is thrilling. There are so many great painters and brilliant installation artists, and the land itself is inspiring. It’s about discovering places like Little Bay, the coastline that Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped up way back in 1969, all 1m square feet of it, as part of the Kaldor Public Art Projects. There are great galleries stocked with Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kellys and our favourite, TV Moore, and then there’s the internationally renowned Archibald Prize. The gallery directors are passionate power players. And everywhere there are massive gum trees, toweringly architectural, and fabulous botanic gardens, enormously lush and otherworldly natural. There is a total feeling of freedom that comes from living in this vast, eyes-wide-open, big blue skyness. No twitching net curtains and coal fires. You aren’t hammered into your home – there are, after all, only 22.6m people.
10. REMEMBER, IT’S 12,000 MILES FROM ENGLAND
There are no M4 jams, no Northern Line and the traffic ebbs and flows like the morning tide at Bondi. There’s not much need for a vest, a jumper, a scarf or gloves. It’s not such a long way from King’s Cross, there’s one in Sydney, and Paddington doesn’t have a great big station. No bobble hats, just sun hats, no flip-flops, only thongs. It’s a damn fine double life really.
NB One in four of the Ten Pound Poms returned to the UK, but of those who “went home”, half returned to Australia. They were dubbed the Boomerang Poms. That’s me: I first arrived in 1997, left nine months later, and soon after returned to Sydney.
by Alison Veness
