Eugenie Kawabata Eugenie is an independent Melbourne-based designer and maker of objects, furniture and functional art. Her practice is informed by an interest in design’s transformation of materiality and how this affects the way we engage with the objects around us. Eugenie focuses on the hands-on experience, the act of designing through making. Eugenie seeks to blur the line between art and design, while embracing an ethos of sustainability.

Piero Gesualdi is renowned as a true trail-blazer in Australia’s fashion and design scene. He founded the iconic Masons stores in Melbourne and Sydney in the mid-70s, where alongside his own designs bearing his own label, he revolutionised the local fashion scene by introducing names like Jean Paul Gaultier, Comme des Garcons and Giorgio Armani. A decade later, he took over a cavernous space in the then moribund Flinders Lane, lavished it with flamboyance, flair and opened a restaurant that became the legendary, super-stylish Melbourne restaurant Rosati. He soon followed this with the equally-celebrated Pieroni’s in South Yarra. In each establishment, the architectural and conceptual footprint was pure Gesualdi: bold, beautiful, and startlingly original. In 2014, he was inducted into the Stonnington Fashion Hall of Fame and, a year later, into the Design Institute of Australia (DIA) National Hall of Fame.

With over 30 years of project management experience, Michele was exactly the can-do partner Piero Gesualdi needed to guide the practicalities of the business – and to ground his flights of fancy. No stranger to the world of design, she had worked for the management of the 2000 Venice Architecture Biennale, and then through RMIT University managed lab.3000 and Design Victoria, design initiatives for the Victorian Government, showing business people how good design could improve their bottom line – and how, in turn, designers could do better business with business people.