How modernist queen Frances Burke kept wartime Australia looking fabulous smh.com.au - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from smh.com.au Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
How modernist queen Frances Burke kept wartime Australia looking fabulous
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By Janice Breen Burns
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Credit:Argus Collection, The Age Archives
Nanette Carter and Robyn Oswald-Jacobs would dearly love the subject of their book
Frances Burke – Designer of Modern Textiles NOT to be remembered primarily as a fashion icon.
“You’re not … it’s not going to be all about …” Oswald-Jacobs’ pleas are delicate, not to offend this fashion writer assigned to their story; “Not all about … fashion …?”
Well no. But oh. It’s hard to flick quickly past what a crackingly fashionable character Burke was. What a thoroughly modern, elegantly gay, hats-and-pearls working woman of the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. Her work was not only sought by the seminal young architects of the mid-century modern era but her lady clients were known to commission Burke’s tres chic fabrics for
Tone on Tuesday: On Marr Grounds | Architecture & Design architectureanddesign.com.au - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from architectureanddesign.com.au Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Architecture news & editorial desk
The Boroondara Council’s request to apply an interim heritage overlay to an architecturally significant modernist house designed by pre-eminent Australian architect Robin Boyd has been turned down by the Victorian government’s planning department.
The councillors were prompted to take action in August following a public outcry after the house on 12-14 Tannock Street, Balwyn North in Melbourne’s north-eastern suburbs was listed for sale. A petition started by Jacqui Alexander, a senior lecturer in architecture at Monash University, calling for the protection of the house against possible demolition, received almost 6,000 signatures.
“It is a tragedy that this important example of post-war Australian modernism looks likely to succumb to the same fate as many other significant homes in Boroondara. Architecturally significant homes from this era are being razed in eastern suburbs like Balwyn at an alarming rate, only to be replaced with mas