Meet Uma, the Melbourne-based online store offering a curated selection of local and international designers

“Joyful, unique, creative, chic.”

Before meeting for dinner, drinks or another dress-up occasion, it’s not uncommon for women to send (or receive) the ‘What are we wearing?’ text. This is usually followed by a detailed description (“Thinking maybe those crazy pants I got from that little Instagram store and the top I wore to Lilly’s birthday lunch”) and photos to help capture the vision. Occasion-specific dressing is tricky, and a quick pre-event outfit pow-wow is sometimes necessary.

After working in the fashion industry overseas for the last 10 years, Hannah Borg and Amy Ayrton met in Melbourne over hot chips and wine. “We had just started working together and were bonding over how getting dressed up for a night out could be completely transformative to our sense of self and confidence,” Hannah says. They had the vision to create a unique multi-brand store, one that offered thoughtful pieces that fell somewhere between wear-once formal dresses and “extreme casualwear”.

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Named after a famous Kath & Kim quote, Uma was launched in January of this year. The store stocks a curated selection of pieces from independent designers, with a strong focus on Australian talent. Bellow, Hannah and Amy speak on their inspirations, individuality and what’s next for Uma.

Tell us about you. What’s your fashion background?

We both have over 10 years of experience across the fashion industry (god, are we that old!), both living and working in London and New York before meeting in Naarm/Melbourne. Hannah has spent the last decade working across different facets of the fashion business, from retail, sales and brand management to fashion tech, and has worked for brands including Zimmermann, Acne Studios and trend forecasting agency Wgsn.

Amy comes from the operation and logistics side, including New York-based Maryam Nassir Zadeh for five years as the Director of Operations as well as consulting for brands such as Telfar Global and SC103. We met serendipitously as new colleagues both having recently moved back to Melbourne after our stints overseas and the rest is history.

How did Uma Store get started?

At the pub over hot chips and wine, where else! We had just started working together and were bonding over how getting dressed up for a night out could be completely transformative to our sense of self and confidence – and a really joyful process. We’d both moved back to Melbourne from stints overseas from cities that really celebrated personal style and we missed the freedom of really dressing up for no occasion at all. We also both felt that there was a tendency for local retailers to be aesthetically split between extreme casualwear or styles so dressy you’d only really wear them once.

Casual conversations then evolved into meetings, meetings evolved into our first brand partner and 18 months later, Uma is live! It has been, and is, a labour of love. Funnily enough, the name of our store Uma was born from a (pretty terrible) Kath & Kim impersonation – when brainstorming what the Uma aesthetic is, we joked that it needed to have a “sense of uuuuuuma”. Thus, Uma was born.

How did you curate the selection of designers?

We want our designer curation to feel inspiring and interesting, yet imminently wearable. We’ve worked hard on cultivating strong designer partnerships, working with independent brands that align with our vision – which is an original and playful aesthetic and design values of substance. While we know that all fashion has an impact, we only work with designers who have a considered and ethical approach to production.

The first brand we knew we wanted to work with was London-based Luna Del Pinal, an incredible label that works with local artisanal weavers in Guatemala who create the most unique and beautiful fabric. We also wanted to ensure a very strong Australian-based brand offering and celebrate the immense talent that is on our shores. We are so excited to be able to collaborate with Naarm/Melbourne-based label Par Moi with styles made for Uma in exclusive colourways.

How would you describe Uma Store aesthetically?

Joyful, unique, creative, chic. We want to curate a beautiful selection of pieces that celebrate creativity and craftsmanship but that are able to be styled as your own. We often think of Uma’s aesthetic as ‘meeting your girlfriends for drinks and admiring how each person at the table has put together a look with finesse and individuality’. The outfits may be aesthetically varied but each person has put together a look that is beautiful, unique and fills them with confidence.

Who or what inspires you?

Our friends, dancing, old Vogue, being in crowded streets at night, op shops, karaoke, reading.

You describe Uma Store as a place to “reimagine the (often static) category of occasionwear”. Can you tell us more about how you’re doing this?

We are now more consciously choosing what to invest in – financially and ethically – and a traditional idea of occasionwear feels so out of step with a modern approach to dressing. Uma’s curation completely redefines occasionwear from two perspectives… [we’re] expanding the narrow aesthetic view of what constitutes occasionwear while also redefining what occasions are worth getting dressed for!

We want to help you to see more occasions in your life – a friend’s birthday drinks, a solo date night, or a picnic in the park – as worthy of getting dressed up and celebrating while ensuring you create a relationship with the piece that has versatility and longevity at its core.

Who do you think is most exciting in Australian and New Zealand fashion right now?

Our stellar Uma designers, of course! We are so excited to see what Meg at Aprés Studio creates next – she has a way of creating the perfect dress for so many people. We also can’t wait to see what the lovely mother-daughter team behind Muse creates, they just perfectly encapsulate casual occasionwear.

We also really love the joyful pieces Kourh is creating – keep your eyes peeled on this for an Uma drop! We must also mention Lucinda Babi’s latest collection preview. We’ve been drooling over so many pieces, she is such a talent.

What’s next for Uma Store?

We’ve got some special things cookin’! We are so excited to be launching drop two with three new designers very soon online. We also have our first pop-up event in Naarm/Melbourne set for April 27. Stay tuned!