National Portrait Gallery unveils installation of Romance Was Born designers

Australia Broadcast Center

2 days ago

Two Australian fashion designers are the focus of a new "opulent, big, and unique" photographic installation at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra.
Anna Plunkett and Luke Sales are the minds behind Romance Was Born, a fashion house founded in 2005 and loved by the likes of Cate Blanchett and Niki Minaj.
In the 20 years since it was founded, the brand's garments have been shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and are held in several national costume and textile collections.
The duo also value sustainability in their work, having held shows using offcuts of material and workshops teaching how to tailor clothes so they last longer.
"Before I even knew Anna, I used to go to op shops and buy secondhand clothing, unpick them, sew them back together and make new things out of them," Sales said.
"I guess it's just who we are as designers, and how we've always worked."
Plunkett agreed, adding that they had a genuine appreciation for vintage textiles and upcycling.
"It's a part of our work and our DNA," Plunkett said.
Long-term friend of Sales and Plunkett, artist Samual Hodge, used photographs from his own collection to encompass the minds of the pair.
The process took months of sifting through thousands of photographs he'd taken over their two decades of friendship.
Incorporating different mediums including paint, dye, and photography, Hodge said he hoped to echo the coming together of fashion and art which was central to Plunkett and Sales's work.
"Every time I see them do a show or a collection, it's never what you expect," Hodge said.
"I wanted to match that way of working, to push everything to be bigger and bolder.
"I could have just done a single portrait, but it wouldn't have really done justice to everything that they've done."
Sales said Hodge's piece embodied who he and Plunkett were as designers, along with the spirit of the brand.
Plunkett agreed and said the work taking up a whole wall was appropriate to the dramatic nature of their work.
"It's so extra, and me and Luke are both very extra — we always want to shoot for the stars with what we do," she said.
National Portrait Gallery Director Bree Pickering said the brand was unique in the Australian fashion industry, so their portrait had to be equally unconventional.
"They burst onto the scene with a really distinct and bold voice, and they've maintained that voice over 20 years," Ms Pickering said.
"Every time they do a show, there's something unexpected, but absolutely so Romance Was Born. It's very Australian, but it's globally influential.
"And, of course, it's Romance Was Born so … the portrait had to evoke them — it had to be opulent, big, and unique, and noisy."
She said Sydney in the mid-2000s, when Romance Was Born began, was a productive moment for art and fashion that Hodge's piece had captured.
"[Romance Was Born] were there at that moment, and what's super exciting is Sam Hodge, the artist, was also there at that moment," Ms Pickering said.
"So what we see in this portrait is actually almost a portrait of Sydney's creative scene at that time, as well as a portrait of Luke, a portrait of Anna, a portrait of Romance Was Born."
Ms Pickering said the piece was "overwhelmingly beautiful", which spoke to the brand itself.
"What is wonderful about the work is the layers," she said.
"What Sam [Hodge] does that is so lovely is that he kind of collapses time together.
"So when you look at the work you'll see 20 years of Romance Was Born, but it's absolutely them now. And the more you look at it the more you get."