Halcyon summer days and 1970s nostalgia converge in a fashion designer’s clifftop home.
Australian fashion designer and Shona Joy founder Shona Thatcher wishes she’d been born in the 1970s. Her romanticism for the era and Mediterranean summers is the through-line for her label, which she started 25 years ago at Sydney’s Bondi and Paddington markets.
“We’ve always needed to be close to the beach,” Thatcher says, who splits her time living between Byron Bay and Bondi alongside her husband and boys—all keen surfers. A few years ago, Thatcher and her husband stumbled on their clifftop home, just a five-minute walk from North Bondi, and were taken by the size of the steep, rock-formed site. “It had a big backyard, city and harbour views—everything we wanted.” They lived in the 1940s home for four years before engaging Andrew Burges Architects to maximise the rear garden, light and views, while making space for family, guests and downtime.
Working within the existing footprint, Andrew Burges Architects designed a home that unfolds across multiple levels behind a newly formed street façade. “It’s on a busy street, but being double-brick and rendered, it’s quiet and cocooning inside,” Thatcher notes.
