The place to shop for all that Paris offers in a glossy Melbourne setting

Press, 25 January 1986, Page 14

The place to shop for all that Paris offers in a glossy Melbourne setting

Even if you do not have a fortune to spend, shopping at Melbourne’s most glamorous store can feed fantasies, as JANETTA MACKAY found when she visited the city recently.

Wandering into the marbled elegance of Melbourne’s Figgins Diorama is more than a rare chance to see the world’s leading designer clothes under one roof — it is a unique shopping experience. The Collins Street store has gathered the best of international merchandise in a strikingly renovated theatre. Its staff are specially selected, and trained to encourage and advise. They are only too happy for you to pick a $lOOO dress from the racks and

cinch it with a $lOO belt.

The pages of "Vogue” come to life as you flick past labels including Chanel, Christian Dior, Claude Montana, Emanuel Ungaro, and Giorgio Armani. Unlike exclusive European fashion houses, Figgins Diorama is open'to all. There Is no need to make an appointment to get past the portals; although valued clients can be ferried from home or hotel in the private company’s chocolate brown Rolls Royce. Figgins Diorama admits it caters for a wealthy elite — the five per cent with 40 per cent of the money — but anyone is welcome to browse among the silks, shoes, perfumes, and household luxuries.

Buyers can start with an address book or gift wrap for under $lO. For the more ambitious, a healthy credit rating helps. Limited in-store parking caters for those clients who use the valet clothescare, and view their garments in private fitting rooms.

For customers venturing off the leafy street, entry is under a National Trust classified, eightstorey tower facade, through revolving doors, into a domed atrium where two grey marble, elipitcal, cantilevered staircases wind to the third floor.

The post-modern interior opens into more than 40 individually designed boutiques. More

will follow as another level is opened for men’s wear. This, and offices, will boost total floor area from 8000 sq m to 12,000 sq m. Since it opened last May, Figgins Diorama has been much lauded in decor and design magazines. Its clothes feature regularly in fashion pages, and its reputation has spread world wide. The combination Of the best stock available

dispensed with impeccable service in a sumptuous setting has long been the dream of Don Figgins. From owning a lone shoe store in 1960 he built up a budget chain, following a family tradition begun by his great-grand-father who found that the central Victorian goldfields of the 1870 s offered more profit to a cobbler than a miner.

Shoo Biz and Mr Figgins supplied low-cost foot fashion to Australians throughout the 19705. The Emporio stores then tapped trend, stocking punkette patent, and now the Madonna lace and tapestry boots, recently imported to Christchurch.

Don Figgins moved upmarket also, obtaining the Charles Jourdan franchise for Australia: and opening Evelyn Miles, a shoe junkie’s delight, named after his quality-conscious and inspirational mother.

With 40 shoe stores behind him and looking for a new challenge rather than early retirement, Don Figgins, now aged 45, decided the clothes market could sustain a similar, high fashion adventure.

The Australian Industries Development Commission backed his business acumen by allowing him to borrow. He bought, for sAust3.s million, the former Mayfair Theatre, opposite the top department store, Georges, in the tree-lined "Paris” end of Melbourne’s most exclusive street.

One day Collins Street will rival New York’s Fifth Avenue, he believes, explaining why he drove down it, saw the theatre, and went straight to its owners, who were — luckily — ready to sell. Four years and sAust22 million later, Figgins Diorama "a 360 degree fashion experience” opened, and further enhanced Melbourne’s reputation as a burgeoning fashion capital. The theatre, built in 1912 by a distinguished architect of the time, was gutted, and redesigned with the aid of more than 100 consultants.

Thirty shades of Australian wool were specially dyed for the carpets. Twenty types of marble

were selected from throughout the world — just the right pink for the beauty counter was quarried to order. The aim was an interior finished to the standard of a private house, albeit the type that only its owner would describe as “homely.” All the while Don Figgins was secretly negotiating to convince top designers to show under one roof; not in sub-let boutiques, but in one grand boutique. Most imposed stringent conditions on the display of their goods. Don Figgins was happy to comply. He had the vision to allow individual boutiques their exclusive charms.

Some are replicas of their namesakes in Paris or Milan. Charles Jourdan, scion of the French shoe dynasty, shuttled between Paris and Melbourne matching marbles and woods. Karl Lagerfeld sent out his favourite interior designer. Caron perfumes has just seven stores world wide, one is at Figgins Diorama. Each has a scent avail-: able only there, and in the; parent parfumerie in Paris.

The perfumes are stored in crystal decanters and bottled individually, some in crystal bottles trimmed with hand-pleated lace collars. Caron’s president, Mr Henry Bertrand, says in all his international travelling he has not seen a shopping development more exciting than Figgins Diorama.

Vision to allow boutiques their exclusive charms