From growing up a “sissy boy” behind the family milk bar in a rough Melbourne suburban neighbourhood, to becoming an international fashion designer, dressmaker to the stars and the name behind the accessories brand which has been a staple at Myer and David Jones for half a century, Gregory Ladner has lived large all of his 72 years.
With the long-awaited Noosa launch of Gregory’s hilarious memoir, A Boy and his Bear, plus an exhibition of his art at in Tewantin next week, PHIL JARRATT put the sometime Doonan resident in an appropriately grand Noosa Today Hotseat overlooking Sydney Harbour.
PHIL: Describe where you are now.
GREGORY: We [Gregory and partner Mark] just bought a house in Darling Point in Sydney and as we talk I’m sitting here looking at the water and it’s fabulous.
I’ll bet it is, but you also have a place in the Noosa area, don’t you?
We do, in fact I’ve been going to Noosa for 30 years. We used to have a place in Tinbeerwah and now we have one in Doonan. But when we first started coming up we’d stay with friends who had one of the First Point apartments until we started building the Tinbeerwah house. And now we’ve built another fabulous house so you’ll have to come out for a drink.
Rhonda Burchmore, in her blurb for your book, refers to you as Legs Ladner. What’s that about?
Well, when I went to art school many years ago I used to wear almost nothing because I had fabulous legs and wanted to show them off, and that earned me the Legs nickname. But you know Rhonda still has fabulous legs and mine are no good now!
What happened to your legs?
I got old!
Yeah, but I’m old too and my legs are still pretty good.
There’s a drawing in the book of me going off to art school in denim shorts that had a row of stitching across the crotch and not much else, and I wore them with my Jesus sandals that wrapped all the way up my legs. My mother would burst into tears every time I left the house looking like that. She’d say, “Please don’t!” But when you’re young and you’ve got a good body, it’s just normal.
Your long time Melbourne neighbour, the eminent historian Geoffrey Blainey, writes in his foreword to your book, “To be orthodox in any activity was never his goal.” Is that how it was from the get-go?
Well, Geoffrey is a terrific guy, but I don’t know how to answer that. I was never aware of being either orthodox or unorthodox. It never occurred, I just was! People say to me, it must have been horrible being in the closet all that time, but I never came out because I never went into any closet. But I did grow up in a pretty rough neighbourhood, and my mother and grandmother brought me up as a prince, so I think I developed a bit of a superiority complex and that protected me from the bullying that came my way. It just never bothered me. I suppose it must have hurt somehow, but I just lived in my own little bubble, still do.
Tell me about your early years living behind your family’s milk bar. You write that you were a skinny baby, but did you chub out on your mother and grandmother’s homemade pies and pasties? Thick shakes?
No, I didn’t. I didn’t get fat until my 30s, although some of that was body dysmorphia, where you think you’re fat when you’re actually quite thin. I’d go on all these ridiculous diets and so on. There’s a chapter in the book called YoYo, where I describe all of that. But when I really got fat was after meeting my husband. He ruined my figure! When you’re truly happy you eat, drink and get fat.
You write with humour and great recall about the minutiae of Australian life in the ‘50s, and because we’re about the same vintage I relate to the copper in the laundry, watching the rich neighbour’s TV and the wild billy cart races, maybe not so much to dressing Teddy. But making clothes for your teddy bear seems to be your abiding motif of childhood. Did the other kids ever ridicule you for it?
People never knew about it. Dressing Teddy was a private thing, but I was a sissy boy in a lot of ways and a target because of that, but I could run faster than most of them so I never got bashed up. But anyway, I still have Teddy and he’s still in a frock. He’s not very happy because he’s been stuck in this one frock for months, but it’s the one on the book cover so that’s what he’ll be wearing in Noosa.
Do you do a ventriloquist act with him?
No, and I certainly don’t stick my hand up his bum the way those people do.
Speaking of which, and not meaning to crawl up your nether regions here, but I do love your offhand honesty in this book. “My other favourite thing to do when left to my own devices was to go through my mother’s drawers,” for example. Or, “My father pinned my nappy to my dick once, and on another occasion my mother lifted me out of my bath in the kitchen sink and sat me down on a still-glowing hot plate on the kitchen stove.” Is there anything in it you regret publishing?
The final chapter has been a bit controversial because it’s about my sex life, and I suppose it’s shocked a few people who have asked why I had to write that stuff. My response has been that I don’t hold back on any aspect of my life so why would I do so on such an important one. You know this much, you may as well know everything. I have no regrets. I find it funny.
We haven’t talked yet about your remarkable career as a fashion designer and couturier. Your accessories brand is still with David Jones after 50 years. How did that association begin?
Well, we’re still the biggest supplier of hats and other stuff to wear to the races. It’s interesting that when times get tough, accessories do really well. Women might not want to lash out on a new dress when they can make it look different with new earrings and a scarf. We’ve never really advertised and yet in some circles I’m a household name. The full story of the Myer and David Jones’ connection is in the book, but a key point was when Fergie was engaged to Prince Andrew in the mid-‘80s. She used to wear these giant bows in her hair and they’d become quite a thing. A buyer girlfriend of Mark’s was coming to Melbourne to buy some stock of these bows, so he arranged an appointment for the next day, then he came into see me and told me, “Make 10 bows by morning.” I put away the dress I was making and sat up all night making hair bows. The buyer came in the next morning, said they were exactly what she wanted and bought $350 worth. On the strength of that Mark took my 10 samples to Myer and a week later they made a $250,000 order. We were away! I stopped making clothes to focus on accessories.
Are you still a fashion dandy?
Oh yes, in my own way, but not really. I wore Giorgio Armani before he was Giorgio Armani, I wore fabulous clothes, but I’ve been everywhere from Giorgio to Target. I think through Covid we stopped dressing up, and I’m not sure it’s coming back.
A Boy and his Bear is your first book, are you planning a sequel?
Well, I never set out to write a book, but when I worked for a fantastic chain of shops in Hong King called Shanghai Tang I would email a girlfriend of mine about all my adventures in Hong Kong and China, and she’d write back and say that my mails were so interesting and funny that all her friends wanted to read them, so I said of course, share them. It ended up with about 80 people reading my regular emails. If nothing happened one week, they’d all be expecting a new episode so I’d write about my hair or something, and they still loved it! So the emails sort of became chapters. But when it came to doing the book, there was twice as much material as we needed. Fortunately I had a great editor, and we took all the travel stories out and stuck to the story of my life and career, so when you ask about a sequel, it’s already done!
Any other creative juices still flowing in retirement?
Yes, I want to paint, and with my book launch there’s an accompanying exhibition. For whatever is left of my life, that’s what I want to do.
A Boy and His Bear Book launch and solo exhibition of paintings by Gregory Ladner.
Friday 12 May, 6-8pm, GalleryOne93, Poinciana Ave, Tewantin.
The event is free but RSVPs essential, phone Mark Hodgkinson 0409 484 159.
Proudly sponsored by Reed and Co Real Estate in support of The Children’s Hospital Foundation, Queensland.
A Boy and his Bear is available from Annie’s Books on Peregian and Berkelouw’s at Eumundi.
