Bondi Local | Lucy Hinckfuss
Bondi Local | Lucy Hinckfuss
We met Lucy through Maurice Terzini, our longtime friend who owns and runs Bondi’s iconic Icebergs Dining Room and Bar … and have gotten to know her over the years thanks to our fleeting exchanges on the streets of Bondi.
Melanie spoke to Lucy on the Icebergs Terrace.
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Hi Lucy. Can we please get a little bit of your background? Where are you from?
I’m from Geelong in Victoria, a little regional town. It’s not very exciting, but it was very nice growing up there because it was very safe and easy and open. I went to boarding school, to Geelong Grammar’s Timbertop campus near Mount Buller for year nine and then back to the Geelong campus for my final years.
Can you still build cubby houses and things like that?
Yes I think so. I’m pretty confident with my hands. With Cez [Lucy’s 2 year old son with Maurice] I’m always doing activities that are quite capable and confident to do things that maybe seem a bit masculine [laughs].
After that I moved to Melbourne for uni. I went to RMIT to study fine arts and that was 3 years. When I finished my degree I left and went overseas and travelled and spent some time abroad.
Where abouts?
Everywhere: Europe, Asia, America.
How long were you away for?
About 2 years.
Since then I have pretty much worked in fashion. I’ve done lots of menial jobs as well but always been in fashion.
What bought you to Bondi.
Maurizio
Maurice from Icebergs Dining Room and Bar we should mention …
Yes. We hooked up and we started a relationship. We had met years before in Melbourne but reconnected up in Sydney. We started hanging out and that turned into a serious relationship and then we had a baby and that pretty much cemented my residency in Bondi. I couldn’t really leave after that!
I was travelling up and down between the two cities quite a lot. I like that transient lifestyle – a bit of Melbourne, a bit of Sydney. And since then we’ve been mainly in Bondi. We still go down to Melbourne. We’ve got a place in the city down there which is a nice juxtaposition to our place here at the beach.
What are you doing these days?
Mother to a 2 year old but also Mauri and I have the 10 PIECES label which is a very intrinsically Bondi brand. The mantra for the brand is “You can wear it to the beach but you can waltz up to the Icebergs [Dining Room and Bar] and sit down in the restaurant and feel quite comfortable in it”. It’s got bit of a luxe sporty vibe. It’s unisex and we’ve done about 3 or 4 collections but only one main one, which we did for fashion week last year and launched it at the Icebergs Pool. [See archival BFD post HERE.] We’re just gearing up for our second fashion week collection which is in April.
That must be a lot of work. Is the collection all done?
Yes, that’s all done and everything has been photographed and that sort of thing. We just need to sort out our details for the show and I think I need to get a few more samples. There’s only 10 pieces which obviously doesn’t clothe an army of models so we need to have 10 times each one. Otherwise we’re pretty organised.
Will you do it here or will you get onto the main area?
We’ll probably do an offsite. But the details are a little bit top secret at this stage!
Ooh, I thought that was going to be my scoop!
Top secret and a little bit undecided.
You’ve both got a strong aesthetic sense. I’m sure it will be amazing.
It’ll be good.
Where can you buy 10 Pieces?
We’ve got an online store that sells the whole collection. And then – we have free shipping!
And then we sell to My Theresa which is a German online store and they can sell worldwide. And we’ve also been selling to General Pants.
Hopefully this season we will be a little bit more geared up to do wholesale. We weren’t really geared up previously. After the success of the last show we got a lot of interest. This time we’re ready and will be able to delve into that a bit more.
This is quite a big baby to be looking after. How do you manage it with your other baby?
It’s like what they say, women are good at multi-tasking and often it’s like the more you feel the more you have to do then the more you can do. You find a way to fit everything in and let other things fall by the wayside. Like I don’t really go to the gym anymore.
What’s your Bondi beat?
My Bondi beat … I love down at the pool obviously. Cez is a really great age for the pool now. He loves it and he’s really good! He’ll hop in the pool with the kickboard and just swim around on his own and he’ll go under. I wouldn’t take my eyes off him. He’s only 2. We love it.
Of course IDRB and the pizzeria [Da Orazio]! I love Harris Farm. It’s so easy. You get down there and do all your shopping.
We’re probably more south Bondi Beach goers. It’s a bit more quiet down here. North Bondi is great for the baby though.
I’m pretty limited. It’s sort of home, the café, the beach.
Obviously IDRB and the pizzeria but is there anywhere else that you would eat in the neighbourhood?
No. Just kidding! But I do need to think …
If you only go to two places they are two pretty amazing places …
Macelleria. Mauri really loves it down there. It’s easy and really good produce. It’s really casual, you can go in off the beach.
Nothing else is coming to mind but there is a lot of great places in the area. Oh Seans – we love Seans. It’s a nice place to go when we want to get away from Mauri’s work environment.
What are you reading and/or watching at the moment?
I’m reading a Patti Smith book, I think it’s called M Train … which I quite like. This one is quite good, it’s not too wafty. I do love reading but there’s not a lot of fantasy or fiction that I like. As I get older I prefer more non-fiction, more autobiography and that sort of thing.
Do you watch TV?
Yeah. I love absolute art house movies. I don’t really like the blockbusters. But then I can watch really cheap trashy television like the Kardashians and that sort of thing. It’s the sheer intrigue of how bad … I can watch all that sort of stuff but if it’s a film it has to be well made. I hate crap movies but I can watch crap television.
Do you have a motto for life?
If it’s anything it’s just: “Choose to be happy.” I don’t even necessarily feel like I have to do that coz I know in my head, well why be an angry person. Lots of stuff happens, people go through everything and you can either face it and deal with it being positive or you can become all angry and it just chews you up and it doesn’t help you solve anything. So, yeah, choose to be happy.
Thank you very much!
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Full interview on SoundCloud below or HERE
