The sisters behind Cungelella Art are setting off in a new and exciting direction to create Mount Isa's first fashion label.
The four sisters, Jaunita Doyle, Dale Bruce, Glenda McCulloch and Cheryl Perez, have long been setting high standards with their Kalkadoon artworks that can now be seen across the world.
But now they have new ambitions on the fashion runways as Jaunita explains.
"We've been invited by First Nations Fashion + Design who are involved in Australian Fashion Week to put our clothing label Myrrdah on the runway," Jaunita said.
"That will happen in three weeks."
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Australian Fashion Week is on in Sydney from May 9-13 and will bring the top fashion houses and influencers to Sydney for the week, so it will be a massive opportunity for the sisters and their Myrrdah label.
Jaunita said their Myrrdah label had been on the backburner for at least two years.
"We've been busy with Cungelella but in the background we've working away on Myrrdah," she said.
"We were going to release it earlier but our Instagram got hacked.
"But when this opportunity came up we thought we'd wait and release it with Australian Fashion Week."
They had laid the groundwork with Grace Lillian Lee, founder of First Nation Fashion + Design as far back as two years ago.
"We wanted to know if she was going to take us seriously, what sort of costs we were looking at, where do we get it made, we had no idea," Jaunita said.
"Being in Mount Isa and not having access to anything, having FNFD in our corner helped, they've shown us who to approach, they've given us a confidence booster to have a go."
The designs on the clothes will be one of the Cungelella artworks which has been sent away to a studio in Melbourne and put on linen.
"It's cheaper to go overseas but starting out we wanted to keep it here," Jaunita said.
"The designs are from the one painting but none of them will be identical. We've had samples sent to us, we've taken photos of them and sent them to Sydney for the show."
All four sisters will be heading down to Sydney for Fashion Week to help market the new designs.
There is a new website called www.myrrdah.com which will go live on May 13 where people can view and order the finished ladies' dresses, tops and pants.
The name Myrrdah comes from the sisters' mother's side of the family.
"She's our great-great-grandmother," they said.
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Derek Barry
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
