Who Is Romance Was Born? The Australian House Held in Four National Collections

Romance Was Born is the Australian fashion house that behaves like an art practice. Anna Plunkett and Luke Sales founded it in Sydney in 2005, and two decades on their work sits in four national collections and has shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. If you have seen a dress that looked like a painting someone had learned to cut, it was probably theirs.

Two students who turned down Dior

Plunkett and Sales met studying fashion at East Sydney Technical College. An internship with John Galliano at Dior was on the table. They started their own label instead and called it Romance Was Born, which tells you most of what you need to know about the temperament of the house.

The method has not really changed since. A collection starts as a story. The artwork gets drawn by hand. Only then is the garment cut, around the print rather than the other way round. That order of operations is why a Romance Was Born piece reads as a work in its own right, and why a print rarely comes back once its run has sold.

Held in four national collections

The label is held in the costume and textile collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the Powerhouse Museum, the National Gallery of Victoria, and the South Australian Museum. In 2019 it showed internationally in Camp: Notes on Fashion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Its design studio sits inside the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, which is a fair summary of where the house places itself.

In 2022 Plunkett and Sales took a Sydney Theatre Award for costume design, shared with Anne Cordingley, for Amadeus.

Collaboration is the method, not the marketing

The house designs with other artists as a matter of routine. Past collaborators include May Gibbs, Linda Jackson, Jenny Kee, and Archibald Prize winner Del Kathryn Barton, alongside Disney, Marvel, Lego, and the Sydney Theatre Company. Musicians have been in the mix too, among them The Presets and Architecture in Helsinki.

Cate Blanchett, Miley Cyrus, Grimes, Lily Allen, and Karen O have all worn the label.

What that means if you are buying one

Runs are small and prints are engineered per garment, so the piece you are looking at is closer to a limited edition than to a seasonal repeat. The house also runs a made to order service from its Sydney studio, and an upcycled line, RWB Forever, built from vintage Australian blankets, kantha quilts and regenerated denim, where each garment exists once. Luxury Handbags carries the seasonal ready to wear, which ships worldwide from stock.

Where to start

If you want the house at its most characteristic, begin with a print that carries a whole story. The Poppy Polka Petal Dress is the full circle shape the label is known for, and the Persimmon Garden Dress is the midi version of the same idea. For something you will reach for more often, the Acid Gum Chiffon Frill Top and the Acid Gum Wrap Midi Skirt share one artwork and work apart as easily as together.

At the other end sit the occasion pieces, the Retro Modernism Wrap Dress and the Persimmon Ruffle Dress. The Pistachio Pea Coat is the outlier: a plain, strong colour from a house that almost never does plain.

Sizing is Australian and runs level with UK sizing, so order your usual UK number. Browse the full Romance Was Born collection at Luxury Shoes . For styling, read our guide to how to wear the prints, and for alternatives, our comparison of brands like Romance Was Born.