From garage to red carpet: Adelaide fashion house dressing the stars
From making dresses out of her parents’ garage to creating red carpet gowns for Dannii Minogue, well-known Adelaide fashion designer Cristina Tridente has come a long way.
Eight years ago, love+couture+madness director Cristina Tridente was making dresses out of her parents’ garage in West Lakes. It’s a far cry from where she is now, having created pieces for the likes of Amy Shark, Dannii Minogue, Sophie Monk, Julia Morris, the Veronicas and Ricki-Lee Coulter.
InDaily recently caught up with Tridente at her Norwood studio, where the fashion designer and her team have been busy preparing about 20 dresses as part of their 15th anniversary celebration for Adelaide Fashion Week.
To mark the milestone, love+couture+madness will be hosting an intimate dinner at Adelaide Festival Centre’s Angry Penguin on October 7, with the fashion house’s most iconic gowns over the past 15 years.
“I’m going to have some right back to my first collection ever at TAFE, some red carpet looks – we made a dress out of pasta for the Italian festival, we’ll try and put that back on a mannequin; it’s very fragile, as you can imagine,” Tridente said, adding that there would also be another collection show as part of AEDA’s Couture Ball on October 9.
| Sponsored |
Tridente said she has always wanted to be a fashion designer since she was a little girl; she studied an Advanced Diploma of Applied Fashion Design and Technology at TAFE SA and later went to summer school at Central Saint Martins in London, where famous designers like Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney learnt the tricks of the trade.
“I just love it (fashion) – it’s the only thing I’ve wanted to do since I was five. I always made clothes for my Barbie dolls; I would hot-glue them together, staple them together,” Tridente, who has made more than 1000 dresses, said.
“Our techniques have grown since then, but I would never do anything else in my life – I live and breathe it; I love it.”
You might like
love+couture+madness, which has been located on The Parade for seven years, specialises in bespoke bridal and red-carpet gowns, with everything made from scratch. The studio services clients both around Australia and internationally.
The fashion house typically creates 10 to 12 dresses a month, with the busiest months being November and March, and the quietest June to August.
Tridente compares creating a wedding dress for a client to making a teddy bear at Build-A-Bear, saying the only limit is your imagination. Wedding gowns typically start around $4500, with love+couture+madness sitting in the mid-range.
“Sometimes girls have been dreaming about their wedding dress for their whole life – so, they’ll come in with some design, some inspiration, more often than not; otherwise, they might come in and tell me what they don’t like, which is also very helpful,” she said, adding that she is still involved in the entire process, from the initial design to the finishing touches.
“So, then we sit down and sketch up some options together based on the ideas that they’re telling me. A lot of the time, they might want to highlight parts of their body, like if they want to really fit it in the waist or sometimes, they want something across their arms.
“From there, once decided on the design, we make a calico, which is a draft of the dress to make sure that they’re happy with the fit … We tweak the draft until that’s perfect before we cut the real thing, so we don’t waste fabric.”
Typically, a bride would have about six fittings, with the dress ready a week before so that it fits her perfectly. The time taken to make a dress varies depending on the style and fabric used – with Tridente sometimes spending hours on intricate beading work.
“Especially with weddings, brides change their mind, they change their shoes – sometimes they change weight and stuff like that, and you want it to fit them exactly as close to the day,” Tridente, who created six “non-traditional” gowns for her own two weddings in Australia and Italy to husband Petar Filipovic, said.
“It’s a very considered art form – we’re not making 20 pairs of shorts in one day; it’s very much about the individual client and what they feel great and uncomfortable in.”
Asked about her inspirations, Tridente said it is “always wonderful” to see the latest trends from larger fashion houses like Dior, while she is also drawn to Australian designers like Toni Matičevski and J’Aton Couture.
Stay informed, daily
“Those kinds of fashion houses are timeless – they’ll be with us forever, and I hope that a lot of what we do is in that kind of vein, that those pieces are also kind of timeless,” Tridente, who brings her Golden Retriever Hercules to work every single day, said.
“Labels that really push the boundaries of design and look at things in more of an architectural light, I find quite interesting.”
Tridente sources materials for her dresses from all around the world and regularly travels to and from China, where she has relations with suppliers who “make really beautiful products”, while custom beads and laces come from India.
“It’s all about the quality – I need to touch and feel things to make sure that the quality is great because that’s what we’re passing along to our clients,” she said, adding that she typically buys five to 20 metres – enough for two dresses.
Tridente said every day at work is different, describing it as at times “hard” but a “feel-good job”, saying it has been “wild” since she and her husband welcomed their boy Luca earlier this year.
“I was still answering emails and texts from the hospital the morning of,” she said.
“It’s wild, but I think the best thing is I’ve got such a supportive husband who has taken the time off, so that has allowed me to come back in and out when I’ve needed it.
“It is definitely a crazy ride, what we do. You never know what you’re walking into day to day in terms of, sometimes we get last-minute red-carpet requests that have to be turned around in 48 hours.”
Asked her favourite dresses she’s ever made, Tridente struggles to choose between the Olivia Gown, which was made in collaboration with embroiderers in India, and the “big fluffy” Rose Gown.
“It’s got these really beautiful feather and crystal flowers on it that were all hand-dyed and all in pastel shades,” she said of the Olivia Gown.
Tridente said the Rose Gown – love+couture+madness’s most well-known design – is often compared to 1980s toilet roll holders, describing it as “super fun”.
“It’s a very bold dress … it’s not for the fainthearted,” she said.
Tridente said she would love to expand into more international markets, including the Middle East, over the next five years, as well as becoming more well-known around Australia for bridal gowns.
“It’s so cool to be able to do that kind of work and still be in Adelaide, because I love Adelaide and I would never want to leave here, and I’m really proud that we’ve got a great community here that follows us, and a great fashion industry here as well,” she said.
Want to see more stories from InDaily SA in your Google search results?
- Click here to set InDaily SA as a preferred source.
- Tick the box next to "InDaily SA". That's it.
