Ahead of Australian Fashion Week, Charlotte Hicks invited some of the country’s leading editors to preview her brand Esse’s new retail space. Despite the chaos in the lead-up to the runway shows, which concluded last Friday , the editors didn’t want to leave. “There’s a real opportunity for a different type of retail,” says Hicks, who won the 2020 National Designer Award.
“I love eventually that it could be a place to escape to ...
you could come for a coffee and just stay.” Charlotte Hicks, of Esse, in her brand’s new retail space off Oxford Street in Paddington. Credit: James Brickwood Indeed, Hicks is one of several local designers who are opting out of traditional mega-malls or even high street locales and instead opting for retail spaces that feel more like a visit to someone’s home for a cup of tea than a trip to the shops.
Esse’s space, which opened to the public last week, is on Oxford Street, in Sydney’s Paddington, where the heart of the city’s fashion epicentre thrums on Glenmore Road. But it is hidden down a laneway, up on the first floor, giving the space an air of mystery and intimacy that Hicks says can be hard to find in a regular shop. And while there’s no coffee bar yet, Hicks says she is keen to evolve the space in line with feedback from her customers.
Loading “So much of the brand’s DNA is a homage to old-school ways, whether that’s the craft in the product or from a retail view – a return to slower, more intimate retai.
