RTTS farewelled its friends with a Sydney dress-up party

The last ever RTTS.land party.

Sydney-based designer Niamh Galea is marking the end of an important chapter. The creative mind behind Ramp Tramp Tramp Stamp (RTTS) has decided to farewell RTTS.land, the beloved retail space that housed her label and served as a test kitchen for emerging designers.

Her idea back in 2021 – to stock pieces from friends she’d met across the fashion industry – quickly ballooned. “It started as a way to use up a little excess studio space I had, to help pay the rent on my first-ever studio for my brand. It was very much an experiment,” she told FJ in March last year. “It turned out I had a lot more [friends] than I initially thought and the store became a true multi-brand experience very quickly.”

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While it’s been a joy to highlight other small brands over the past four years, Niamh says the time has come to focus all her energy on her own label. This meant saying goodbye to the many talented friends who’d been involved in RTTS.land and reimagining her shopfront as a solo brand. Naturally, though, everyone was “unbelievably supportive” in celebrating this next step, joining her for a farewell party late last week. I caught up with Niamh to chat about her future plans for RTTS and most importantly, to hear the goss from the party.

Hi Niamh! Congratulations on this next chapter for RTTS. What lead you to this decision?

Niamh Galea: It’s been something that I’ve been thinking about a little bit for a few months, candidly, I was starting to feel a bit burnt out… I had two chance encounters this year at Australian Fashion Week that cemented the decision, firstly I met Thea Basiliou, founder of iconic Australian fashion boutique Blonde Venus and probably our industries’ number one champion of independent designers, and I shared my thoughts with her. She actually told me she had to make a similar choice with Blonde Venus, between focusing on her brand or going full throttle on being a stockist, and had chosen the latter.

A few days later, I met one of my Australian fashion heroes, Akira Isogawa – he was my nominee for my year five ‘studies of eminence’ project. The first thing he said to me was, “I know and love your brand and I think you are very nice stocking other designers in your space!” He told me he’d done the same in the early days of his Queen Street boutique, because he didn’t have enough clothes to fill the shop, similarly to why I started stocking other brands, but quickly realised he needed to back himself and focus on his brand. So yeah, if that wasn’t a sign to take the leap I don’t know what is!

You’ve been in your Darlinghurst shopfront for one year now. How has the change been in terms of retail, since moving from Haymarket?

It honestly was such a scary but game-changing decision for the brand to make the move to Darlinghurst. I guess at the time I didn’t even realise how hard I was hustling just to get people through the door of our secret space in Haymarket. And while it was cool and romantic having a hidden store, and an IYKYK experience for the customers, our sales have basically doubled since being in the new space. You just can’t compare the two.

I miss Chinatown but I also love being in this area and the vulnerability of the brand being exposed to so many new people. Before, anyone who walked into the Chinatown store had already drunk the Kool-Aid, so to speak. They knew the brand and the products, and were super educated on the brand. It’s so nice watching people who’ve never heard of it fall in love with the clothes, even if we get a few more ‘WTF is this?!’ reactions in between!

Clearly you have a close relationship with the other local labels you stocked at RTTS.land. What was the response like from the community, following your announcement?

It’s been quite funny and amazing because of course, the thing I was dreading the most was telling all the beautiful brands I stock that RTTS.land was no longer. But if you could read the responses, basically all the designers were of course sad but also unbelievably supportive, and the main sentiment was how proud they were of me and how they were honestly shocked that I’d been able to do both for so long.

I can’t help myself (I love them all so much) and have already begun planning a few pop-ups with some of the brands over the next few months, starting with a Maroske Peech collection launch pop-up shop this weekend. I’m hoping this format will allow me to continue to have those moments of community with a lot less admin and work for myself!

You just had a farewell party in Sydney. How did you celebrate? Tell me the goss.

We wanted to do something silly and camp, that evoked the sleepover dress-up party vibes of the shop. The absolute superstar divas of Fredas, our ex-neighbours, gave us an opportunity to take over their new venue Bar Fredas to celebrate the farewell. RTTS.land has always been about all the artists, designers and other friends I get to collaborate with in running the space and the brand, so a massive dance party was the only way to celebrate.

We didn’t do speeches but I did get ex RTTS shopgirl (and forever muse) Honor Munro and her bestie (and forever RTTS muse) Matthew AKA Sarah Jessica Carpark to run a slightly chaotic but very glamorous ‘Style Up Portal’ and ‘Awards’. Basically, they assessed and tweaked everyone’s looks, accessorised them with pieces from Honor’s collection of RTTS.land designers and took polaroids of some of the best party looks to go in the running for the ‘You Are Glamour’ award, which we will be announcing this week!

What are you most excited about, now that you’ll be fully focused on your label?

I’m most excited about having the time and space to design new pieces, challenge myself to push my practice further conceptually and to work in a space where I will be fully surrounded by my own work. I’m also excited to push myself to expand the product line to hopefully bags, more perfume and accessories, basically for the shop to be a total and complete RTTS universe.

Your runway show last year was incredible. Any plans to hold another event like that in future?

Thank you 🙂 Actually yes I do! The last year was very much dedicated to getting the new shop up and running, and figuring out the logistics of the space (as well as my wedding on a personal note!) but I’ve been really craving releasing another collection and doing another runway show. I’m going to be holding a showroom in Paris during Fashion Week in October, so I’m in the process of getting a collection together for that and would love to show it in Sydney with a runway before I go.

Where do you hope to see your label, five years from now?

If I think that five years ago, I was sewing every piece in my sister’s childhood bedroom trying to finish my MFA in Fashion at Parsons online, it’s pretty insane to imagine what could be achieved in the same amount of time. I do really believe in growing slowly and building a brand that has solid foundations, not a hot flash in the pan.

I’d love to still have the current shop, I think this space is wonderful and it would be a dream to have a shop in Melbourne, too, I think that kind of connection with our customers is so important in this ever increasingly digital age. I’d love to have said that I’ve shown at Fashion Week both in Australia and maybe overseas by then, and have expanded both my international stockists and my manufacturing partners – the less talked about, true challenge of running a fashion business.

What can your customers expect from the new RTTS shop?

One thing I’m super excited about is we’re expanding RTTS Resale World from an online marketplace for customers to buy and sell their preloved RTTS, to a full buy back program. We’ve only just launched the buy back but we expect to have a rack full of secondhand RTTS available in the store, for people to shop archival and sold-out pieces all year ’round. Having the extra space also allows us to dedicate some space to this!

Is there anything else you’ve been reflecting on, over the past four years?

Just that being a stockist and fashion buyer was a joy and a wonderful excuse to make a lot of new friends, and find a really special community of fellow independent designers.

Also, it taught me a lot about the other side of the fashion business – the retail and wholesale side – and gave me a lot more respect for what stores do. It’s not easy and it’s essential to this industry. Sydney needs more special retail spaces where people can shop the best and newest independent designers and artists, and I ‘m putting it out there: someone needs to come fill the shoes of RTTS.land and start a multi-brand space in Sydney! If you need a hand getting started, let me know I’d be happy to help.

Keep up with RTTS here.