HE WORDS fashion, social conscience and environmental sustainability are not often seen in the same sentence but for Australian designer Gabriel Scarvelli, it is the way forward for fashion and the future.
   Wherever possible, Scarvelli uses natural fibres, 98 per cent of the dyes he uses to colour his fabrics are organic, he rescues rose quartz chips destined for the scrap heap to bead onto his garments, employs 12 Indian beadworkers in a small factory two hours out of Calcutta whom he pays 48 times the average wage, and plans to help them set up an independent organic cotton plantation. All this aside, Scarvelli, 25, has talent—lots of it.
   At Mercedes Australian Fashion Week in May 2003, he launched his first signature collection of intricately beaded dresses now stocked at luxury boutiques Tracey Ross on Sunset Boulevard, Coco Ribbon in Notting Hill, Karen Walker in New Zealand and a number of high-profile fashion boutiques throughout Australia.
   His most recent show at MAFW ’04 at the Cove, Sydney was a triumph and hailed one of two fashion moments of the week—the other belonging to couture jewellery designer Sarina Suriano (see separate report).
   Inspired by Sydney’s gangster women of the 1930s, Scarvelli named his collection Razor, after the Razor Gang who used to rule the streets of Surry Hills where his workroom is based.
   This time it was Scarvelli’s turn to rule. Trebling the number of pieces of his hand-finished demi couture from eight to thirty-eight beaded styles, models sashayed down the runway wearing fabulous flapper frocks fashioned from silk georgette, hand-embroidered tulles and French lace.
   However, unlike many young fashion designers Scarvelli has not let his success go to his head.
   ‘My goal is not to be rich and famous. My aim in life is to help people out because someone once helped me,’ Scarvelli said.
   His passion and drive for protecting the planet and helping the underdog can be explained in part by his story, which reads like a Charles Dickens novel featuring a guest appearance by Cinderella’s fairy godmother.
   Growing up in a dysfunctional home, Scarvelli had a less than happy childhood and found solace in his aunt’s vintage clothing shop in Paddington where he helped mend garments for $2 an hour.
   One day, a 90-year-old Russian woman walked into the store. Upon seeing some of the beaded garments, she revealed that she used to work for haute couture beading and embroidery institution House of Lesage in Paris.
   She announced she would teach Scarvelli, then aged 12, the secrets of tambour, the French beading and embroidery method, even though she had signed a confidentiality agreement in 1925 never to pass on the skills. She died a year later leaving him all her equipment.
   Two years later, home life, coloured by alcohol and abuse, became too much. He ran away aged 15 with ‘nothing but the clothes he was wearing, a bag and a book’.
   He lived on the streets of Sydney for several months, one day passing out from lack of food and woke up in hospital.
   Doctors quickly diagnosed he had the beginnings of liver cancer. He was operated on ‘as a ward of the state’, had part of his liver removed and told he had a 10 per cent survival rate.
   ‘I made a decision that if I woke up from the operation I was going to get out of the situation I had been in,’ he said.
   ‘I was being given a second opportunity at life and that was my inspiration.’
   In the beginning, no one wanted to employ him because he didn’t have a second change of clothing, but he persevered working any job he could get in a cutting room.
   It wasn’t long before he was snapped up by designer Collette Dinnigan after he began beading for the bridal industry and worked for her for three years as head beader.
   While working for Dinnigan he was exposed to beaded fabrics from India, many of which were badly made.
   ‘They knew how to bead but didn’t know how to knot it off properly,’ he said.
   However, the work inspired him to make his first trip overseas, at age 19, to Calcutta, India with the view of working with and paying bead workers to create beautiful fabrics for a growing list of clients that included Jodhi Packer and Peter Morrissey.
   ‘The travel agent asked me where in India I wanted to go. I looked at the map and the first city I saw was Calcutta. I said, "Calcutta," and the agent looked at me as if I was an alien and said, "Are you sure?" I said, "Yes, I will stick with my first gut feeling and go to Calcutta",’ he recalled.
   With a budget of A$1,000, Scarvelli gave himself two weeks to find a factory to bead for him. He found it on the second day, two hours out of the city. It is the same one of which he is now a part-owner and still uses today.
   It turned out that at one time the factory had beaded for Christian Lacroix and had only reopened months earlier, after being closed for 10 years.
   The factory had lost many of its skilled workers, so Scarvelli sat on the floor with them for a week and began teaching them what he knew. A special bond and friendship were born.
   Over the past six years he worked with the people of the village, the name of which he will not disclose, and helped set up a co-op system and successful beading operation.

CONTINUED

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‘The travel agent asked me where in India I wanted to go. I looked at the map and the first city I saw was Calcutta. I said, “Calcutta,” and the agent looked at me as if I was an alien and said, “Are you sure?”’