General News
14 April, 2026
Fashion sense & sustainability
JUST like the tiny crystals she sews into a creation to add that subtle sparkle, designer and embroidery artist Leah Kelly is tucked away in the rainforest of Kuranda yet wowing the international EcoFashion world as Andree Stephens reports.
“I blew them away with banana and pineapple, they were like, ‘What?’” she says with a grin.
“A lot of people were using recycled fabrics, which was cool, it is good to recycle, but no one was sourcing what I was using, in the way I was using it.”
Over the past four years, Leah has been invited to show her designs in Paris (which switched to London because of political unrest), then Italy and next year, Vancouver.
But she has yet to actually get to these global reveals.
Stuck at home because of Covid, she watched the London show from her garden at midnight with friends who set up a big screen and live feed.
Despite the distance, Leah felt every moment of the night’s magic. She had given more than her designs for this debut; she had given the “whole me”.
“I even composed the music for it, on the piano,” she says.
“One of my dear friends played the cello, and another dear friend played his didgeridoo, and I had recorded all these bird sounds, and the thunder from here, and I did the showcase as ‘Rainforest to Runway’.”
As she watched, she saw the audience, heads down, looking at their phones.
“All of a sudden, that sound of the didgeridoo and my piano just came in, and we saw them put their phones down, and they were like this,” she mimics their heads shooting up.
“And then my first piece came out, and I was done for,” she laughs. “I bawled my eyes out.”
The event was the culmination of a long and fascinating journey for the girl from Gulgong in central western NSW.
As a young woman, Leah had been studying environmental health and was more than midway through the five-year degree when she fell seriously ill with a bone tumor.
She returned to her family, spent months healing, then deferred her degree. She got in her car and with her dog, drove north.
“I bought a block of land and that was that. I’m still there,” Leah says with a contented smile.
“There was no electricity, so I couldn’t even get building material up there, so I set up a mobile mill from New Guinea and milled my own timber,” she says, adding that three years of her degree was in building and construction.
Her self-sufficiency and creativity soon found purchase in her surroundings. And she saw a way ahead.
“I used to sew as a child, my grandmother taught me to embroider, taught me how to sew on these old machines, and I was forever collecting stones and shells and things, so I sort of combined every part of my life into my brand,” Leah says.
She was also raising her daughters. “They didn’t love the isolation, we didn’t have lights, TV or the mod cons, but they love it now when they visit.”
Her “off-grid” way of life, while more familiar these days, was her way of survival back then.
This pragmatism also extended to exploring alternatives in her fledgling sewing work.
“I was always trying to do things. Like, once I got a couple of banana skins, sliced them into strips, dried them and actually twisted them into two-ply rope. And it was strong and sturdy, and I tied up my tomatoes in the backyard. It got me thinking.”
She knew about Indigenous use of hibiscus and other vegetation to make ropes and such, but a light-bulb moment sent her deeper into research on alternative fabrics.
And there they were.
“I was amazed. It was not new; it has been around since the 13th century,” she says.
Most of her hemp material comes from Romania because of its durability and quality, which can handle a bit of robust embroidery.
“Then I discovered the hemp silk, and hemp with bamboo, there are all sorts of different wild nettle.”
These textile industries are now part of a global effort to ensure they remain both culturally and economically viable, something she actively supports through the Eco Fashion movement.
Could it happen here? Sadly, despite the FNQ region growing these products, including hemp, there is no industry to support sustainable production.
“A prime example is wool. We’ve got the finest wool in the world; it gets sent overseas to be manufactured and then people like me pay phenomenal tax to bring it back into the country. It does my head in,” she laments.
“There used to be operational textile factories here, but they’re all gone.
“We are growing the pineapple, the banana, the hemp, the cotton, the wool, flax, we have it all available here, but no industry.
“To me that’s jobs, that’s revenue. Some of these farmers out here that are losing their crops of banana, we could be using the peel to make fertiliser, to make fabric.”
She sighs and shakes the moment off to show me around the beautiful Didi La Baysse Art Studio & Gallery, where she displays her famous organic haute couture.
Leah joined the gallery two years ago. She had always worked from home and sold her pieces through the markets, but with increasing international showcases, she had needed a more suitable outlet.
Didi, a painter, had wanted another artist to share the space and job-share the gallery’s seven-day-a-week opening hours. A third local glass blower also displays his creations in the gallery.
“It actually really works for us, because we all complement each other’s art.”
The gallery is perfectly curated, from the impressive chandeliers above to the luxurious antique furnishings, vibrant paintings, cabinets full of precious glass, and Leah’s hand-made lace lingerie and those gowns, elegantly draped on mannequins throughout the shop.
“I said to Didi when I came, ‘I’ll swing from the chandeliers, but I’ll not clean them’,” Leah hoots.
Leah’s workstation is a timber table that holds a vintage hand-operated sewing machine. It is one of several she uses, but her pride of place is a crank from 1878, in pristine condition and only ever seen by invitation. It is stunning.
Next to her worktable, Leah has a gown on a stand, with intricate stitching in soft blue, pink and gold, creating small design touches on cream-coloured silk.
Leah points to a box of old cotton reels on her worktable, the colours identical to those used for the delicate embroidery on the gown.
“They are really old,” she says with delight. “And they came from a nun.”
The reels had been in a paper bag with the factory name and date on it, and Leah had “done a full read” on the factory history and also discovered the cotton was made in England.
“Apparently, the nun had come out to Australia over a hundred years ago, from Ireland on a boat, and brought them with her in a suitcase,” Leah says.
“My father, who is a musician, went to the convent where the nun had lived. He was looking at an organ there, and knowing me and my obsession with sewing, found this suitcase with all these old very old threads and bits of lace. It was like a pandora’s box, for me. I’ve got the whole collection!”
We do a final walk around the gallery, and I meet more of the gowns and hear their stories. A striking red dress stands out, with black gemstones scattered through the embroidery. It was shown in Florence, Italy.
“It brought the whole house down, they all stood and applauded,” Leah says fondly.
A stylish sleeveless jacket over silk pants is another success story. Made from hemp and wild nettle, with smoky quartz in the buttons, it was hailed as one of the top 10 fashion items for Europe in a well-known fashion magazine.
Leah reveals another story as she passes a corset that would look right at home in the Renaissance era.
“I was toying with the concept of steering away from plastic boning in corsetry. I have tried metal, but it rusts. So, with this one, I boned and edged it with banana bark,” she says.
“I got the banana and got it woven and I stitched and stitched and stitched the pieces.
“London’s Ox fashion studio lost their mind over it! They asked me how you cleaned it. Back in the day, you know what they used to use? Vodka.
“I hope it gets dirty, I might need a bottle,” she chuckles. Then, on a roll, she adds:
“This one here, the pineapple one, if I just add a couple of bits of coconut on it, feed you some rum, you’d actually have a pina colada outfit!” More laughter.
She quietens, a conspiratorial look on her face. She has saved possibly her best story till last – her “pet project”.
“I was gifted a dress made from a 1941 parachute,” she says looking at a white billowing gown in the back studio.
“In that time there was no silk, and women would rush out to the fields and get the parachutes, or if a man couldn’t buy an engagement or a wedding ring, he’d gift her the chute that saved his life,” Leah says.
“So this dress was made in 1942, from a parachute that came out if the sky in 1941, and what I’m actually doing is hand embroidering all the way around the base of the dress.
“I’m making a field. And I’ve made ‘a million’ poppies that are going to float up from the field, then across the shoulder I’ll add a piece representing clouds, to tell the story.
“I’m calling it ‘Lest we forget’.”
To view Leah Kelly by Design works go to Didi La Baÿsse Art Studio & Gallery 20 Coondoo St, Kuranda.
All gowns are for sale, as are her lingerie sets. Leah also makes wedding gowns on request and individual customer designs.
For more information visit:
www.facebook.com/leahkellybydesign
www.leahkellybydesign.com.au
