As seen in Vogue Australia, January 2023
Words by Alice Birrell.

After years of a public creative and personal partnership, designer LUCY HINCKFUSS is striking out solo with a summer-ready label.

When Lucy Hinckfuss began tie-dyeing pieces by hand in her Sydney studio for new label Luuda, a stylist friend asked if she writes down exactly what she puts into each coloured concoction. “I said, ‘No, I just remember it.’ And she said, ‘What?’” she recounts with a laugh. “It’s a little bit like the way I cook; I don’t really follow recipes.”

Hinckfuss’s life incidentally has had a strong food link; until late 2021, she was married to restaurateur Maurice Terzini, helmsman of Bondi’s Icebergs among other venues, with whom she shares two children, and is co-founder of clothing label Ten Pieces. While Hinckfuss was collaborating on its monochromatic unisex streetwear, she began exploring tie-dyed dresses with a modern slant. “There was, however, perhaps a feeling they confused the Ten Pieces brand,” she reflects. Demand grew among friends and, “it was clear that it was its own little collection,” she says. Luuda launched mid-2021.

Hinckfuss doesn’t often stop to parse her own creative output but says she’s enjoying newfound freedom. “And being able to really do things in my own way. It’s good because I do like making things quite instinctively and I can just really get into all that in my own mind and not have to deliberate with others.”

So, what does Lucy Hinckfuss’s solo output look like now? “I’ve been a little bit more imaginative, and more playful,” she says confidently. In a real sense, that means summer-inflected pieces in clean shapes from relaxed shorts with drawstring waists and bowling shirts, to sundresses with the occasional flourish: a sweeping ruffle or balloon sleeve.

“I look feminine, but I’m not. I don’t want to be too pretty or girly,” she explains of her penchant for blending opposites — hard and soft, dressed-up and grounded, tie-dyed and block colour. “I like things to have a certain amount of classic, but then it also needs to be a bit fresh and a bit realistic. I think I always dress very appropriately for where we live and our lifestyle. I think it has that high-low feel about it, which is part of living in Bondi.”

So is colour, like the aquatic blues that mirror crystalline rockpools and juicy ice-block shades from pastels to bold sun-kissed brights. “Everyone loves a bit of colour,” she says. Every tie-dye piece is hand-done by Hinckfuss herself. That’s a lot of work. “It is,” she laughs. “I do sometimes go into Terminator mode and get quite a bit done, but I will be needing to start to get help because it’s getting bigger and bigger.”

Orders from Harvey Nichols have seen to that, plus she’s pondering a runway show and bricks-and-mortar store, while working on one-off reworks with vintage fabrics. Through this, she’s working at her own pace. “I probably am doing it more from a personal perspective — something that suits me. I’m producing things which are very, sort of, about me, rather than things that are about selling and what other people like,” she considers. “But then, it’s seeming to work well in that way too.”