Despite cost of living pressures hitting retail hard, luxury Australian womenswear label Rebecca Vallance has arrived in Perth just as the brand’s founder reveals it’s going from strength-to-strength in a “growth phase”.
Founder and creative director Rebecca Vallance-Gasan travelled to Perth to mark the special occasion of the brand’s first WA store, located in Claremont Quarter.
“We’re on a strategic retail rollout. (Regarding) Perth, we could see from our direct-to-consumer online, we were sending a lot (of sales) here,” Vallance-Gasan told The West Australian.
“We’ve always wanted to represent (the brand) in our key cities in Australia and overseas, but we knew our customers were here.”
It marks her seventh store in Australia, with imminent plans to scale internationally.
“We have seen that our online sales has shown 40 per cent growth year on year, including our key wholesalers with MyTheresa seeing growth at 60 per cent year on year. We have also noticed that other market channels such as Farfetch have had strong growth, hitting 70 per cent year on year,” the brand revealed.
Vallance-Gasan said the West Australian market provides the fashion brand with a unique opportunity to showcase year-round collections.
“We’re not opening stores willy-nilly. We’re looking, we’re taking our time, we’re doing strong due diligence on making sure it’s the right store, in the right area (and) that our customer is there,” she said.
“This is definitely part of our strategic retail growth push but every store has to have a community focus.. you need to localise them.
“What I love about (the new WA) store, because of your weather, here you can have the northern hemisphere collection and the southern hemisphere collection. If you put that in Melbourne stores, it wouldn’t do well because the weather is so cold.”
Rebecca Vallance, first launched 14 years ago, has seen an overwhelmingly positive response since its opening on Saturday with customers filling the high-end shop.
The Claremont boutique boasts rose-coloured quartz and cool marble surfaces juxtaposed with warm-toned timber, textured walls and silken carpets.
The brand, known for its elevated occasionwear, has grown to become not only a national household name but an international favourite among stylish A-Listers including Dakota Johnson, Naomi Campbell and Geri Halliwell.
Recently the fashion label’s designs were donned by Zara Tindell (granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth II) at Royal Ascot in England, as well as American socialite Nicky Hilton Rothschild at Cannes Film Festival.
The designer grew up the Central Highlands of Victoria, in Ballarat, and worked in fashion retail from the ripe age of 13.
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