#Maggie Tabberer

[justforbooks]

Maggie Tabberer

Vogue model who became the face of Australian fashion. The glamorous model also had successful careers as editor, TV presenter and fashion designer, bringing sophistication into Australian homes

Before Instagram influencers and reality show home renovators there was Maggie Tabberer, whose poise and urbane advice on fashion and decorating made her a household name. Known fondly as Maggie T, she has died just days before her 88th birthday.

Tabberer was, quite literally, the face of Australian fashion. Photographed by Lord Snowdon in 1960, she was the first local model to appear on the cover of just-launched Australian Vogue.

But there was much more to Tabberer than beauty.

She was a media pioneer, entrepreneur, fashion designer and television presenter. Her slicked-back hair – and later, elegant headscarves – made her instantly recognisable, and together with her stylish, loose-fitting wardrobe gave her cult-like status among a generation of Australian women brought up to believe you were naked without pantyhose and a girdle.

With a face that launched a thousand products, Tabberer continued to work in the fashion industry after her active modelling days were over. In 1981 she launched a plus-size clothing label, Maggie T, the same year she became fashion editor of the Australian Women’s Weekly where she stayed for 15 years. Television did not escape her sights – Tabberer was so successful she won back-to-back Gold Logies, in 1970 and 1971.

Margaret May Trigar was born in Adelaide on 11 December 1936, the youngest of Alfred and Molly’s five children. At 17, the rebellious teenager married Charles Tabberer, a 35-year-old car dealer, and by 21, she was the restless mother of two daughters, Amanda and Brooke. Walking past a modelling school one day, she signed up for classes and was an instant success. Soon Tabberer was working in Melbourne where she met and fell in love with the renowned German photographer Helmut Newton. Tabberer’s marriage broke down and she and Newton embarked on what she described as “a perfect, lovely” affair.

With her marriage over and Newton now living in Paris, Tabberer embraced new opportunities, moving to Sydney with her daughters. Here she met her second husband and great love, the Italian restaurateur Ettore Prossimo. The couple married in 1967, but later that year their 10-day-old son Francesco died from sudden infant death syndrome.

“You know, you live and go on doing what you’re doing, but you know you’re not joyous. There’s no joy for a long time,” Tabberer said in a 2011 interview.

Since 1964, Tabberer had been a panellist on Beauty and the Beast, a talkshow pitting the views of women against those of men. It was the ideal vehicle for audiences to appreciate the grace and good humour with which Tabberer dealt with her weight – and her sorrow – and in 1967 she was offered her own daily chatshow, Maggie.

Prossimo and Tabberer separated after 17 years of marriage, but reignited their friendship before his death in 1996. Throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s Tabberer continued to appear on television in a range of lifestyle programs. She and her then-partner Richard Zachariah hosted The Home Show on the ABC from 1990 to 1995, when they split up. The couple never professed to be experts, but as they had renovated six of their own homes over six years they had plenty of experience.

Tabberer was made a member of the Order of Australia in 1998 for her services to the fashion industry. The artist Paul Newton twice entered his portraits of her into the Archibald prize, most recently in 2020. Her biography, Maggie, was published in 1999. Contemporary recognition for her contribution to Australian fashion eluded her; in 2019 she was nominated as an Australian fashion laureate, but ultimately overlooked.

In 2016, the happily single Tabberer came out of retirement to appear on the cover of the Weekly and share her thoughts on eight decades of life.

“At 80 I’ve come to my senses about men,” she said. “I’m not going to be getting into bed and taking my clothes off – don’t be ridiculous. I’ve still got a healthy ego.”

Maggie Tabberer was successful both in front of the camera and behind it, as well as in print journalism, design and marketing. Throughout her career, she successfully manoeuvred her personal brand, before anyone had put a name to that art.

Tabberer is survived by her daughters Amanda and Brooke and by her grandson Marco.

🔔 Maggie Tabberer: Born 11 December 1936, died 6 December 2024, aged 87.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[pretty-little-fools]

[newsatsix1986]

It took until Episode Six for me to make my mind up on Evelyn Walters. I have decided I adore her, in all her bitchy, calculating, menacing and conniving glory. Seeing Marg Downey in such a role is quite jarring, considering I am so familiar with her comedy characters. Evelyn is like an ice queen, and she has an intricate understanding of her husband's workplace and knows how to get her way.

I had been thinking of Australian women that may have inspired her, at least physically. I thought of Ita Buttrose, Maggie Tabberer, Quentin Bryce, Lucy Turnbull and Carla Zampatti. All very poised and regal! Anyone else got some other suggestions?

[jeremystrele]

Announcing The Finalists For The Record-Breaking 2020 Archibald Prize

Announcing The Finalists For The Record-Breaking 2020 Archibald Prize

Art

by Sally Tabart

‘Behrouz Boochani’ by Angus McDonald.

Left: ‘Soils for life’, Lucy Culliton. Photo – AGNSW, Jenni Carter.

Right: ‘Lucy’, Monica Rohan. Photo – AGNSW, Mim Stirling.

‘Ernest brothers’, Neil Tomkins and Digby Webster. Photo – AGNSW, Felicity Jenkins.

Left to right: ‘Jacinda’, John Ward Knox. Photo – AGNSW, Jenni Carter.

‘Carnation, lily, Yuri, rose’, Yuri Shimmyo. Photo – AGNSW, Mim Stirling.

  Left:  ‘Dolly visits Indulkana’, Kaylene Whiskey. Photo – AGNSW, Mim Stirling.

Right: ‘My dad, Churchill Cann’, Charlene Carrington. Photo – AGNSW, Mim Stirling.

‘Portrait of Adam Spencer’, Samuel Rush Condon. Photo – AGNSW, Jenni Carter.

Left to right: ‘JB reading’, Guy Maestri. Photo – AGNSW, Jenni Carter.

‘Disquietude’, Melanie Gray. Photo – AGNSW, Mim Stirling.

‘Poppy Chicka’, Thea Anamara Perkins. Photo – AGNSW, Felicity Jenkins.

Left: ‘Stand strong for who you are’, Vincent Namatjira. Photo – AGNSW, Mim Stirling.

Right: ‘L-FRESH The LION’, Claus Stangl. Photo – AGNSW, Felicity Jenkins.

Left to right: ‘Ngaiire’, Nick Stathopoulos. Photo – AGNSW, Jenni Carter.

‘Maggie Tabberer 2020’, Paul Newton. Photo – AGNSW, Felicity Jenkins.

‘Self-portrait after ‘Allegory of Painting’, Tsering Hannaford. Photo – AGNSW, Jenni Carter.

Left: ‘Meyne’, Meyne Wyatt. Photo – AGNSW, Mim Stirling.

Right: ‘‘Dark emu’ – portrait of Bruce Pascoe’, Craig Ruddy. Photo – AGNSW, Jenni Carter.

  Left to right: ‘Requiem (JR)’, Marcus Wills. Photo – AGNSW, Jenni Carter.

‘The art dealer: Philip Bacon’, Jun Chen. Photo – AGNSW, Felicity Jenkins.

‘Portrait of Will’, Alex Thorby. Photo – AGNSW, Felicity Jenkins.

Despite the delay to regular programming this year, the 2020 Archibald Prize has made history. A record number of 1068 entries were submitted in what has been an incredibly challenging year for artists, and yesterday the Art Gallery of New South Wales announced the 55 finalists for Australia’s highest honour in portrait painting.

The subjects of this year’s shortlisted paintings include a breathtakingly realistic portrait of Kurdish-Iranian writer, poet, filmmaker and journalist Behrouz Boochani by Angus McDonald; a wild and wonderful medley of Aboriginal cultural symbols with Western pop culture references in Kaylene Whiskey’s self portrait, imagined with one of her heroes, Dolly Parton; and footballer Adam Goodes alongside the artist Vincent Namatjira, in a poignant picture of strength and brotherhood.

Actor, playwright and Wongutha-Yamatji man Meyne Wyatt has become the first Indigenous artist to be awarded a prize in the Archibald’s 99-year history, taking home the hotly-anticipated Packing Room Prize. ‘When Meyne came into the Gallery to deliver his entry he said he hadn’t painted in some time and the work was just a COVID project’ says Brett Cuthbertson, the Gallery’s head packer, who holds 52% of the vote for the Packing Room Prize (and has been there for 39 years!). ‘I loved the story and was really impressed with the result.’

Meyne is well known for numerous film/television and stage appearances over the last decade, but you might recognise his face from when he performed a powerful four-minute monologue on racism from his play City Of Gold on ABC’s Q&A that went viral only a couple of months ago. ‘Being a finalist for the Archibald Prize was a pipe dream, let alone being awarded the Packing Room Prize. I am absolutely ecstatic and truly humbled by this wonderful honour’, Meyne said.

The winners of the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prizes will be announced at midday next Friday September 25th. The exhibition of finalists will open at Art Gallery New South Wales from September 26th until January 2021 and will then tour across regional New South Wales and Queensland for the following 12 months.

[schmidtclothingcom]

Fifty years ago, the notion of Australian fashion may have been regarded as an oxymoron. This is not a critique of Australians’ capacity to be intrinsically stylish, as there is plenty of evidence to reflect the contrary.

Rather, the Australian fashion industry, historically, was based on adopting and adapting the looks that evolved internationally, predominantly from Europe. The contemporary fashion industry in Australia has really only developed an individual identity in the past 20 years.

Maggi Tabberer modelling a classic 1950s Phillipa Gowns dress in a photograph taken in Melbourne in 1958. AAP Image/Powerhouse Museum, Bruno Benini

To put this into some context is to also understand the evolution and shifts in the Australian fashion system over the past four decades.

My early memories of the Australian fashion industry in the 1970s are clustered in two key geographical locations: Flinders Lane in Melbourne and Surry Hills in Sydney. These two locales housed industrial spaces in multi-floor buildings where the heart and soul of the fashion industry thrived.

Fast track to the 2000s and the industry had dispersed. With the rising costs of inner-city locations, fashion houses moved their bases out across suburbs and designers and brands spread across Australia. Local manufacturing has now shrunk to a level of being minute or bespoke and most production now takes place in offshore factories with no connection to the local scene.

Australian model Maggi Eckardt modelling Ninette fashion in a photograph taken in Melbourne in 1968. AAP Image/Powerhouse Museum, Bruno Benini

The geographical displacement of the fashion industry and the shift in manufacturing practices has resulted in a move from an Australian large-scale manufacturing hub to the development of fashion clusters across major cities in which creative collaborations thrive and emerging designers prosper.

Australian fashion is in a unique position, with approximately 85% of its industry representation being small to medium businesses. As a cohort of enterprises, they are spread across the nation, often working in isolated pockets.

Across Australia, many smaller practitioners are flourishing, despite the efforts of mainstream media to create alarmist commentary on the industry going into a downhill slide and no future for our creative designers.

Commercial viability has been in the headlines recently, with a number of mid-sized businesses going into voluntary or forced administration. At the moment, we are working through a period of major shifts in the fashion system globally.

Models on the runway for the Christina Exie show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in Sydney this year. AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy

New challenges

As more designer labels struggle (Lisa Ho, Bettina Liano and Kirrily Johnston to name a few), they often do not have the infrastructure and resources to deal with higher overheads such as increased shop rents, volatile global supply chains and shifts in purchasing patterns of major retailers.

It only needs one thing to go wrong for a business to be destroyed.

One of the key issues for many fashion labels is that they have continued to work within a system that worked ten years ago but is less successful today. Designers who rely on wholesaling are finding it increasingly difficult to survive in a world where long lead times requiring investment in production and materials are no longer offset by retailers with a fat cheque.

Retailers now commonly demand payment terms of 90 days or more (meaning the designer gets paid 90 days or more after the invoice is issued) and all the risk sits with the designer supplying the product. If merchandise doesn’t sell then, the retailer demands a discount – or worse, returns all the goods within the 90-day period.

In the case where goods may be faulty, the designers are finding it increasingly difficult to make a claim against suppliers in other countries with different trade rules and retailers equally refusing to accept the goods.

Cautious optimism

There is light at the end of the tunnel with two areas of specialisation having the capacity to strengthen businesses.

The first concept is: “keep it small, keep it special.” Emerging designers are opening engaged and experiential retail spaces, offering informed and positive service (by staff who know and love the product). These are often pop-up stores that encourage the consumer to buy now, before it disappears.

Lulamae Pop Up Shop in central Melbourne. Andrew Wuttke and Breathe Architecture.;

A second commercial proposition and an incredible growth area is the world of online retail. Online shopping has become the new norm and allows designers to be in control of their own supply chain.

Engaging websites enable smaller scale enterprises to test the retail market, react to consumer demand and offer merchandise globally, without the constraints of potentially expensive and volatile international expansion.

The online world is providing Australian designers with a fertile interface with global fashion advocates, without the constraints of trying to make it big overseas. But this does require shifting the processes and systems embedded with the fashion industry – something not easily done.

The online shop of Melbourne brand Alpha60. http://www.alpha60.com.au/

Northern exposure

There is also the sometimes-unrealistic benchmark placed on designers to expand into international markets; a difficult burden to endure.

I often get asked who are Australia’s most successful designers? The global guide for fashion success has historically been embedded in the concept that a designer needs to make it in one of “the big four”: New York, London, Paris or Milan. They also need to attract the attention of the global press.

To do this requires significant investment and often minimal return. My advice, using Australian vernacular, is to focus on your own backyard first. The shining light of global expansion is not so rosy when you are chasing creditors in foreign lands, dealing with multitudes of different customs requirements and hit with overwhelming freight bills.

The global fashion scene is shifting and we are on the brink of a new era. The assumption that Australia is a season behind is no longer relevant. In fact, the concept of a “fashion season” is an unrealistic construct altogether.

Global fashion has not followed weather patterns for years (which is why, for some obscure reason, sweaters are delivered into stores as we swelter through January and swimwear adorns shelves in July as the temperatures hit their lowest of the year and snow falls in surrounding mountains).

The concept of trans-seasonal fashion – clothing that is adaptable for many climates – has become quite the norm across the globe. This has been predominantly fuelled by the need for large scale fashion conglomerates to attract some of the lucrative share of the Middle East and Asian markets, where climates are often distinctly different to Europe and the USA.

Australian designers Nicky Zimmermann (left), Simone Zimmermann (far right) with Anna Plunkett and Luke Sales from Sydney label Romance Was Born. AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy

Australian designers benefit from this shift, as they create collections adaptable to varying temperatures – a criterion that works across Australia as it does for global market penetration.

The way we wear clothes has also changed, as we move from our air-conditioned houses to our air-conditioned cars and then to our air-conditioned offices. The need for weather-specific wear has fallen significantly and this opens opportunities to develop designs of varying weights and fibres that are adaptable to many environments.

All of this is, of course, only relevant if an Australian designer sees the need to pursue the dream of global expansion. To be an Antipodean designer in an industry that is run on Northern Hemisphere seasons is only a problem in a Northern Hemisphere-focused industry or if a designer perceives being aligned to the big four fashion cities as a priority. Many do not.

Goodbye New York, hello Melbourne

The world balance is shifting and markets are changing. “Same old, same old” – a phrase that equals devastation in the world of fashion – has been heard on the streets of Milan, London, New York and Paris recently. Not referring to specific collections but rather to the painfully exhausting Fashion Week system that grinds through each season, with the endless runway shows at enormous expense, promoting many of the same big name brands in an incessant cycle to sell more lipsticks, sunglasses and perfumes.

As proposed in the New York Times during that city’s recent Fashion Week in September this year: “New York Fashion Week officially starts tomorrow, but according to the Times, it’s already passé.

The newspaper of record spoke to a group of fashion folks and heard essentially the same message from everyone – "we’re tired and we don’t feel like doing this”.

Front-row at New York Fashion Week. EPA/Peter Foley

Fashion is an industry that prides itself on quick response, change, innovation and creativity, yet is perpetuating a cycle of boredom for many involved. The time is ripe for change as the world embraces innovative digital interfaces and newly emerging fashion cities such as Melbourne challenge the “big four” for fresh experiences and stimulating style.

An up-and-coming tier of creative cities are becoming hot spots for fashion innovation clusters. Around the globe, cities such as Amsterdam, Shanghai, Istanbul, Seoul, Berlin and Melbourne are being touted as incubators of inspiration.

In part, the evolution of an Australian fashion identity is constrained by the geographical dislocation of our country. Rather than discuss Australian fashion style, it is more pertinent to address the ethos of major cities.

Melbourne street style: relaxed, stylish and wearable. AAP Image/Julian Smith

Living in Melbourne and as an advocate for that city’s creative energy, I am most expert to address how, in this city, fashion flourishes under the auspices of what I have termed “fusion fashion”.

In fusion food, a mix of different culinary references combine to create a new palate. In fashion, the term relates to the synthesis of fashion references such as English bespoke tailoring mixed with the quirkiness of Asian style with a referential nod to Australian casualness – all blended together into a genre that Melbourne holds as uniquely its own. Fusion fashion provides for a one-of-a-kind wardrobe that is relaxed, stylish and wearable.

This style ethos is well suited to inspire global fashion advocates. It might just be what puts Antipodean fashion on the map.

by Beth Daley

Licensed from The Conversation

Written by Becky Heldmen for Schmidt Clothing.

[lydiajy-blog]

Athol Shmith  (1914-1990) was a Melbourne-based fashion and portrait photographer. He began taking society portraits in his parents' living room in the late 1920s. By the end of the 1930s, he had premises in Collins St and was photographing international stage and musical celebrities including Vivian Leigh, Noel Coward, and Isaac Stern. As a fashion photographer with a simple, elegant style, he launched the careers of a number of models, including Maggie Tabberer. Elegant, bold and often experimental, Melbourne photographer Athol Shmith (1914–1990) worked in fashion, theatre, advertising, and portraiture for decades. Shmith's have been called 'perhaps the finest of all Australian fashion photographs'.

He started his career shooting theatre stills, weddings and portraits of celebrities visiting the then Australian Broadcasting Commission. That is match with my wedding dress topic. He’s photo was able to capture grace and elegance that is what I want to show in my work - a solemn and sacred wedding. That is related to the first assessment I was doing the most important highlight in the whole life.

[almavio]

HENRY TALBOT (1920 – 1999) Fashion illustration, model Maggie Tabberer, 1960s

[doyoufashion-blog]

“Helmut Newton really changed my life for me,” says legendary Australian model Maggie Tabberer on being mentored by the influential German-born photographer. “For the first time I knew what it was to work hard.” Newton first discovered Tabberer when the statuesque Adelaide model was 23, and became instantly enamoured with her. “Listen,” he told former Vogue editor Sheila Scotter, “I’ve found this woman with the most fantastic face.” Tabberer’s long legs and high cheekbones came to dominate the magazine’s fashion pages in the 1960s. Pictured above in a shot taken by Newton for Vogue at Bayview in Sydney, she captures the carefree, adventurous spirit of the Australian summer. Photographed by #HelmutNewton, Vogue Australia, 1960s.

[muggle--mode-blog]

Maggie Tabberer muse of photographer Helmut Newton

[feytheist]

Guys, Maggie Tabberer is my cousin. This is her in the 60s. She was so beautiful omg

[frontcovers]

The Australian Women’s Weekly online

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[buttercakesbuttercream-blog]

Photo taken by Athol Shmith in 1959. Maggie Tabberer is pictured model the work of Hall Ludlow.

[almavio]

HENRY TALBOT (1920 – 1999) Fashion illustration, model Maggie Tabberer wearing ocelot coat, 1961-66

[frontcovers]

The Australian Women’s Weekly online

Subscribe to The Australian Women’s Weekly