Revive

Rich culture sewn into clothing design

In 1993, a frustrated Dui Cameron, fed up with discrimination and injustice and protests that did not make a difference, packed her bags and left Australia to go travelling.  She hit Thailand first, then India, a country which had been beckoning for years and which has gone on to change her life.

“India has always been where I wanted to go. I didn’t know why when I started travelling but I knew when I got there. As much as it’s poor, there’s such richness, richness in culture, compared to Australia,” Dui said.

Dui spent several years living in India, where she began making and selling clothing at markets to earn an income, her inspiration coming from the beautiful Indian fabrics.

Upon her return to Australia, she started her own label, Boom Shankar, blending traditional Indian fabrics with Western fabrics and clothing styles.  The colourful, feminine clothes, which she started selling from markets at Eumundi, Byron and Bangalow, have found favour with Aussie girls and women.

From a base at home amid 1.2 hectares of wallum heathland at Doonan which she shares with her artist partner Michael and their 19 month old son, Charlie, Dui now wholesales to many stores throughout Australia.  “I’ve probably always been one for creating my own wardrobe but it really started in India with the idea of working with such unique textiles,” she said.

The label has grown to the point where Dui has four women sewing for the label, employs another in the office, and two more to look after the market stalls.  “It’s a lot more work than I was planning. It’s quite full on. I don’t want to think about how many hours,” she said.  “The other morning I was up at 4.30am on the computer trying to work out how much I owed people in India.”

Dui said her employees were one of the keys to the success of the business. “I’ve got a fantastic group of people around me. I’m really blessed to be working with the people than I’m working with. It’s like a sisterhood, I suppose. We’ve got a really good relationship,” she said.

Boom Shankar’s success as a business is pleasing to her but would present a puzzle to business ‘experts’. There are no sales goals figures, no targets, no business plans – just garments that people seem to like, and a vision. “My sister, Sally, she’s the one that’s always on to me about those sorts of things. I’m not businessy at all,” Dui said. “There’s no five year plan. I just visualize. I like to dream and visualize that every beautiful, colourful women in Australia will be able to wear our clothes,” she said.

Boom Shankar’s customers range from teenagers to grandmothers, who wear the clothes for everything from grocery shopping to weddings.  “That’s what’s awesome about it,” Dui said. “I sell to ages between 13 and 70. It’s all so timeless. You can dress the clothes up or wear them really casually.”

The Boom Shankar range is full of silk, sequins and embroidery. Many of the fabrics used are old Indian saris. Dui has also introduced a range of gypsy skirts made from dance skirts from the Gujarat region in Western India. “A lot of our clothing holds to me such strong femininity. It’s just so beautiful. The Indian fabrics, they’d have to be one of the most beautiful in the world,” Dui said.

Dui wears her own clothes frequently but is not against wearing clothing by other designers and manufacturers. “I like anyone who makes creative stuff … anyone that’s a bit different, a bit free, I really like colour.”

A visit to a clothing boutique in India while wearing one of her own skirts has won Dui an opportunity with one of India’s leading designers, who has asked her to come up with a line of one-offs to sell in her boutiques in Delhi, Bombay and Dubai.

Dui says Indians tended to dress traditionally or in western-style, with very few venturing into the in-between world of using traditional fabrics or western-style clothes.  “That’s why she was so interested in what I do,” she said. The range is one of two big jobs he has on her plate this year, the other being the interior décor of an old Rajastani hotel in Delhi.

Dui travels to India about twice a year, on average. It is a trip that she never tires of. “It’s my second home. I’m just a traveller through and through,” she said. Dui loves the people.  “They’re so helpful. They’ll give you directions, they might be wrong, but they’ll always try,” she said. While many find the overwhelming poverty difficult to come to terms with, Dui has dealt with it in her own way. She has a group of street children that she helps, usually by providing food, as she has learned that to money may be squandered. … While living in India, Dui also helped establish two soup kitchens, which now run though sponsorship, and with which she maintains an involvement.

The discrimination, injustices towards Aboriginal people that drove Dui from Australia in the 1990s have not changed, but her anger has subsided. At the moment she enjoys the best of both worlds, Australia and India, but she has not ruled out one day listening to that beckoning call from India again.  “One day I might just get jack of it and want to go back to India to live,” she said. “But I’ll probably always work with clothing.”