Andrea Horwood

My name is Andrea Horwood. I am a Perth-based entrepreneur. I first met Aurelio Costarella when we were both around 18 or 19 years old. I remember, and we don't always remember the first time we meet someone, but I remember the first time I saw Aurelio. I should say back in those days, my nickname was Mouse and he was Ray. So for the rest of the story, I'm Mouse and he's Ray.

We were in a nightclub in Perth called the Red Parrot and it was a well-known sort of creative melting pot. Everyone made their own clothes, did their own hair. We had everyone from punks with ironed mohawks through to new romantics, rockabillies. It was an incredible creative environment when we were young in Perth. Looking across the downstairs part of the club, I remember in this sea of goths and punks and rockabillies, was this beautiful looking man wearing a white linen suit. I had to go over and ask the only man in white in the nightclub where his clothes came from. And sure enough, he'd made them, I believe, on his grandmother's sewing machine. And so that struck up a friendship that lasted most of our lives. and a creative partnership was also born because Ray went on to be one of the most important and incredible designers to ever come out of Western Australia and I went on to have a magazine that featured his clothes on my covers and in the pages and working with all the models that also became part of Ray's family. I do remember a lot of Ray's earlier designs because a lot of them we featured in the magazine.

We started as, you know, under-resourced, you know, creative project, just a group of photographers, designers, and I put it together on my lounge room floor and took it to the printer. It was not a large, you know, professional operation at all. We were all just finding our way and finding our way creatively as well. So we learnt through the process, but I remember there was always an elegance to everything that Ray made and that was unusual at that time. Beautiful clothes. Even in the early stages you could see his craftsmanship, he knew how to sew. When Aurelio was starting out there really wasn't a West Australian fashion industry at all. He was a real pioneer. Because he created a business behind his brand as well, everything he did he built up from the ground up and with his own imagination being the driving force. There was no industry to support him. There were very few benefactors to support him.

He had a creative family around him from models and photographers. I like to think of myself included in that family, but really he was on his own. There's a lot of mass-produced fashion and to be successful, that's what a lot of designers do. He was the opposite of that. every piece was beautifully made from the fabrics to the beading to the fastenings. He even managed to create beauty and elegance through periods like grunge and when everyone else was going in the other direction. For me it's very special to see his work from the friend that I met when we were in our late teens in that nightclub through to today to see such beautiful creations that are all handmade and so beautifully considered, being appreciated by the next generation, to have my girls wearing his clothes is a very special thing for me.