“It’s been the hardest few months,” Lee Mathews said on a Zoom call from her Sydney studio. The usually optimistic designer has a right to be bummed: New South Wales only recently emerged from a five-month lockdown. No one has entered or exited Australia—except, somehow, celebrities and the very wealthy—for almost two years. “It feels a little like Groundhog Day,” she said. Mathews used the repetitive Aussie days to ask big questions about her brand and fashion in general: “What are you making and why? What makes it worthwhile?”
She started her label after her time as a Vogue Australia editor, where she reworked thrift store pieces into new garments. In the 20-plus years Mathews has been at it, she’s developed signatures like roomy cargo pants, voluminous prairie dresses, and mannish overcoats and jackets. She spent 2020 and 2021 honing these designs, producing uncomplicated, lovely, easily wearable pieces. “My instincts, which you rely on heavily in times when you are isolated, are to surround myself with good people, take good advice, and trust in that advice,” she said.
During the darkest days of Victoria lockdowns, the team members at her Melbourne store were looking for a way to stay busy, so they started posting archival and one-off pieces to a new Instagram account and selling them directly through the account to customers. Without any promotion her followers grew and within three months they had built a sizable business. Mathews’s Australian stores will finally reopen this Saturday, but she’s steadfast about keeping this archival project going. The potential for someone with such a vibrant fanbase and well-honed point of view seems high. Let’s see what else she has up her sleeve.
