CHRISTINE

Photographs (including archive): Monty Coles. For Mr. Coles’ full photo essay on Christine, visit theloupe.org
Muse: Anthea Crebbin, Chadwick Models
Words: Janice Breen Burns, editor.
Christine, 181 Flinders Lane, Melbourne (downstairs), (03)9654 2011, www.christineaccessories.com
Long post: Seven minutes read time.

Something has changed in the elegant order of Christine Barro’s universe and she’s carefully explaining it now, in her clipped, civilised drawl. “My last trip to Paris; when I came back I realised, I didn’t like it so much this time.” The revelation is disappointing, and strange after 40-odd years of love-every-minute buying trips to the city. More importantly though, it’s got her radar pinging.

“Two trips ago, too, I remember coming back and feeling choked by all these brands – do you know what I mean? It was like McDonalds, and CocaCola brands, but fashion.” It wasn’t new, this seismic hype around global logos: fashion for a price, fashion for celebrity kicks, fashion drained of meaning. It’s been swelling like a social canker for years. But, Mrs. Barro sensed it finally compromising something fundamental and precious.

Lovely old notions of taste and luxury – notions of style itself – were in danger of being trashed by this pervasive and tinny new culture. “Retail is becoming like a 21st century pokies machine,” she says, “People trawl the world – so many products! – push a button, get the cheapest version delivered. Where’s the beauty? Where’s the provenance? Where’s the experience? Where’s the love?”

Well, frankly, they are still here, in the niche perfumes, fine crafted jewels, handmade shoes and hats and bags and silky things at Christine. (“The beautiful Christine experience,” Mrs. Barro calls it.) But, before I ask this remarkable woman – renowned for her warmth and generous heart as she is for her cool –  to describe precisely how she is bracing her notions of love and beauty against the onslaught of quickquick fashion, before I ask her to define style itself, let’s back-track for a bit of context.

Christine is Mrs. Barro’s underground (literally) luxe-cult boutique of curated collections: jewellery, shoes, millinery, scarves, handbags, perfumes and an achingly small number of flawless clothing lines. (She is notoriously hard to impress.) Her criteria demands cutting edge originality, underpinned by classic principles of luxury and style. A little aesthetic shock doesn’t go astray either, if you’re an artist wanting to catch her eye. “Ah, the hunt and the catch!” she says, “That feeling; that shock of the new, when I find something special, someone passionate…!”

She likes, in other words, to be blown away. Some of the artisans, designers and artists who do just that, strum her credo and tread her razor line between quirk and classicism, include Philip Treacy, Alber Elbaz, Toni Maticevski, Christopher Graf, Adrien Lewis. Many more local and international names and brands don’t roll off the tongue or ping  “top fashion” lists and that’s fine with Mrs. Barro. Desirable, even. She selects nothing for mere popularity. How dull would that curation be.

Mrs. Barro honed her rare skills – her ability to feel The New long before it arrives – in an earlier career at Georges, the grand old store on the so-called Parisien end of Melbourne’s Collins Street. She imported collections by designers and brands unheard of, or barely known here at the time. Fendi and Prada stand out. Many years and a legendary reputation later, she poured that passion for perfectly marvellous things into Christine, re-igniting some of those early relationships with best-practice artisans and designers and setting about to nurture crackling contemporary new ones. Christine is now commonly dubbed an “Aladdin’s Cave” of fashion accessories, lures devotees from across the country and planet, and in 2011, won Marie Claire’s national award for Best Boutique.

So we’re back at today, and photographer Monty Coles arranges Mrs. Barro for her portrait, seating her like a sleek sculpture among the fantastic, tumbling shamozzle of curios and artworks in her outer sanctum, actually a cavernous converted loft apartment somewhere in Melbourne’s labyrinthine central business district. She is impossibly chic, a languid lick of black in this genuinely gorgeous, richly coloured space, stuffed with the fruits of her love for often shockingly beautiful objet d’art.

The incredible Barros – Christine and her businessman-slash-bon-vivant husband, Peter – collected this mix of contemporary and ancient paintings, sculptures, curios and furniture from around the world. Now they jostle for air, wall to wall, floorboards to rafters, like a fantastic jumble-sale in an art museum. “Can I move your giraffe?” asks Mr. Coles of one lovely obstacle in his line of sight. He tackles a 10-foot taxidermied neck and head, its soft limpid eyes the size of golf balls, out of shot as Mrs. Barro cautions him to take care; “That’s the lovely Giselle.”
(Of course it is.)

Mrs. Barro’s complexion is pale and clean, her lips (the Christine signature and logo) blood red, her black hair smoothed to a back twist. A handspan comma of Lanvin crystals glints below her throat. She sits calmly, spine soft but straight, blue eyes deep and keenly focussed. When she speaks, it is in that memorably elegant drawl, with her hands drawing balletic circles in the air, fluttering at times to assert a point. “Can we just,” she says wryly (she has a wicked wit); “Can we just cancel all these Coca-Cola brands?” Flutter, flutter.

In this extraordinary place, away from the more ordinary home they share day-to-day, away from the exotic Christine and its soirees and charitable events, away from their country retreat where a bird singing, or the soft rustle of wind reminds them of David, their beautiful young son who passed away but is still here, so loved and so vivid in their lives, the Barros host some of Melbourne’s most memorable gatherings.

“For the triple-A list,” Mr. Coles explains helpfully. And, he’s quite right. The Barros’ circle of friends and acquaintences is warm and wide but also, decidedly, for want of a better word, exclusive. It has not been surprising, for example, to find world renowned milliner Philip Treacy, or burlesque megastar Dita Von Teese, or Paris designer Martin Grant, or any one of dozens of luminous others, milling here with local artistocrats, fashionistocrats and intelligentsia at a Parisienesque soiree with nouveau musicians, suckling-pig feast and French champagne flowing like a river.

The Barros’ art museum jumble today, however, is chilly and quiet except for Mr. Coles’ clatter and, now her portrait is done, the comfortable banter between Mrs. Barro and model Anthea Crebbin. Miss  Crebbin’s dark, classic glamour and easy charm have qualified her in recent years as an unofficial Christine muse. She stands obediently as Mrs. Barro fusses with the first of five ensembles (dominated by a fresh shipment of Philip Treacy millinery) she has composed for various end uses – a weekend outing or casual evening, a smart business appointment or board meeting, and full-throttle formal swank evening out – and for Mr. Coles to photograph.

So now is a good time. I ask Mrs. Barro to define Style, that vague, endangered quality once so integral to all social accomplishment. “It’s an expression of yourself, your signature,” she says thoughtfully. “It’s about eclectic layers – of garments, of things that you love – with nothing ever so overwhelming that your presence, your DNA can’t be seen.”

Over a couple of hours, as Miss Crebbin gracefully poses and Mr. Coles shoots, Mrs. Barro explains how it takes time for a woman to acquaint herself with the “language” of style, and by default, fashion. She explains how a woman must discover – literally –  what visually expresses who she is, what she loves, the sum of all her parts and past. “You must take the time for that beautiful experience,” she says of what lesser, and less stylish, mortals might call shopping. “Find what you love; that language to express yourself.”

The arts of dressing, according to Mrs. Barro (“Simple as an upturned brim, or a brooch placed here, instead of here…”) can be learned by any woman, a belief she bolsters by hosting intimate soirees and workshops with visiting designers, craftsmen, even perfumers, for her customers of Christine.

“It can be about illusion,” she says, “Painting and repainting a picture (of yourself), but always expressing your own integrity, never allowing your presence to be overwhelmed.” In theory, this subtle brace of rules and tools can enhance any woman’s physical appearance – she does not have to be youthful or a great beauty – into a closer proximity, or approximation of confidence that opens the mind, straightens the shoulders and spine, and transcends beauty itself.
It’s called style.