Waking up in the hills to dappled light cascading off trees older than her grand-
parents and the sound of birds foraging for their breakfast, Amy does not take
the idyllic surrounds of her Warrandyte home for granted.
Growing up in this region, Amy’s return as an adult was a way to necessitate a
meaningful work–life balance. For the last eight years, the designer’s been inde-
pendently running her successful ethical clothing label Vege Threads – a unisex
label of simple, high-quality basics in earthy colours, which makes all its organic
pieces locally and donates a percentage of every sale to 1% for the Planet. “We
focus on ethical manufacturing in Australia and use environmentally conscious
fabrics and dyes,” she says of the business she started from the ground up when
she was 23.
Amy’s interest in fashion developed while she was living abroad after finishing
high school and working for a London knitwear label. Returning to Australia, she
moved to Melbourne and enrolled in a fashion course at RMIT, but six months in
was having doubts. “I disagreed with the core industry values, but enjoyed the
creative side,” she remembers.
Amy was looking for an alternate entry into fashion and eventually found it
through a friend of a friend’s stepmother who’d set up a fair trade, organic cloth-
ing label in Paris. “Nothing like this existed in Australia at the time and it really
excited me,” adds Amy, who on a follow-up trip to Europe decided to visit this
contact and learn more about her innovative label. “She offered me an internship
on the spot and I decided to leave TAFE and stay in France without speaking a
word of French – it ended up being the best year of my life.”
Back in Melbourne once again, Amy landed a fashion job with a commercial
brand, but it was a wrong fit. “It conflicted with everything I’d learnt and the new
ingrained values I couldn’t compromise on,” she says. Feeling compelled to put
her ethical fashion training to good use, Amy quit her job and enrolled in the
government-run New Enterprise Investment Scheme (NEIS). It would be the first
step she took towards launching Vege Threads.
Amy’s approach in the early days was to start slow and small. She’d cap manu-
facturing to 50 units per collection, which allowed her to regularly offer custom-
ers new styles in a low-risk way. She admits it also meant she did not turn a profit
for years, keeping a part-time job to support herself and eventually burning out
as the business grew. “I hit burnout a couple of years ago and it’s been a pro-
cess getting myself mentally and physically back on track,” she shares. “You give
everything when it’s your passion project, and before you know it self-care is a
thing of the past and you’re exhausted.”
life among the trees
FOR MOST OF US, IT’S A WRESTLE WITH THE SNOOZE
BUTTON AND A STRONG CUP OF COFFEE THAT GETS
US OUT OF BED. BUT FOR VICTORIA-BASED AMY
ROBERTS, IT’S THE VIEW OUTSIDE HER WINDOW.
words LISA MARIE CORSO photos MARNIE HAWSON
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