The fashionable life of SA designer Sally Phillips
She is a mum of three, a designer and a successful businesswoman who has quietly made her mark on the fashion world over the past 30 years. Here’s how Sally Phillips created a life she loves, inspired by fashion, family, friends and art.
When it comes to high profile clients, they don’t come much more impressive than Zara Tindall, the daughter of Princess Anne. The glamorous royal visited Adelaide in 2022 and chose to have a private shopping experience at the Fullarton boutique of Adelaide fashion designer Sally Phillips.
Zara’s London-based stylist reached out to Sally prior to the visit, explaining that the royal socialite had seen Sally’s collection online and loved it.
“I dressed her for the VAILO races she was attending here, she picked out about eight pieces,” Sally says. “I must admit I was very nervous about meeting the Queen’s granddaughter, but she was delightful, very down to earth.”
The paparazzi captured Zara’s every move while in Australia, including a photographer who was positioned outside Sally’s boutique, snapping the royal as she left with her new purchases.
“Zara’s visit and the publicity that surrounded it prompted quite a few inquiries from overseas and orders online,” Sally says.
That global recognition was a high point for the Adelaide designer, who has spent the past 30 years forging her place on the Australian fashion landscape. The 51-year-old began her career in retail fashion, working at iconic Adelaide boutique Toffs, under the guidance of the late Carol Foord.
While she loved styling the customers and giving fashion advice, Sally says she always had a burning ambition to design her own collections. She started out in the mid-1990s as a naïve 21-year-old, working from a studio in her parents’ backyard.
“I had all the gear and no idea,” Sally laughs. “My first collection was comprised of little shorts sets in really gorgeous colours. Colour has always been a big thing for me, alongside the neutrals.
Sally standing in her favourite area of her home where large art works and sculptures are on display.
“I couldn’t sew, and I still don’t sew, and I never made patterns, but I would have the patterns and samples made from my sketches and measurements.
“The garments were made locally because back then, there was quite a big local manufacturing environment here, probably because of George (Gross) and Harry (Watt). That doesn’t really exist much anymore.
“I was so young and it was really exciting. What I didn’t know didn’t hurt me, and I didn’t know a lot.”
But gradually, through word of mouth, Sally began to build a large and loyal client base, keen to wear her “modern classics reimagined in flattering shapes”, as Sally describes her signature look.
“Classic and wearable with interesting, elevated detail,” she says. “My main focus has always been how to layer a collection and have really great pieces that integrate together. For example, I make sure I carry the same navy through so they can still mix with pieces back from last season.”
While she worked from home for many years, and held her fashion parades in the backyard, 12 years ago Sally opened her studio in Fullarton and the business now employs five full-time staff and several casuals.
From the outset, Sally’s main point of difference has been her personalised service. Her business model revolves around holding four trunk shows a year, where clients make their choices and then, once the range drops, they head in-store to pick up their purchases and enjoy Sally’s personalised shopping experience.
A photograph of Sally and Tim’s wedding with, from left, Tim’s father Trevor and Sally’s mother Rae, who are now married, and far right, Sally’s late father Robert.
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“SP offers a totally unique way to shop and delivers customers a very real and connected experience while acquiring their wardrobes,” Sally says. “I think the trunk show format creates a more mindful way to shop.
“Clients have the opportunity to wardrobe build, integrating their last season’s pieces with the new collection, with a personal stylist to assist them. At SP they have the ability to curate a perfectly well-working smart wardrobe for the coming season. It’s a lovely personal experience overall and takes the pain out of shopping.
“The collections have also evolved in harmony with my clients because I am always in contact with them and I understand their needs and what they’re doing from day to day.”
So, while it is mainly a by-appointment scenario, the studio does work as a retail outlet as well, with racks of clothes on sale, allowing customers to walk in and browse. The high-end collections include mix-and-match pieces such as blazers for around $700, shirts ($550), pants ($500) and a range of skirts and dresses.
Key to the success of the Sally Phillips brand has been Sally’s focus on quality fabrication.
“I’m very passionate about using natural fibres and really elevated fabrics, and I create my own unique prints,” she says. “I also create styles that have the right amount of being current and timeless. They are investment pieces so they last, and each collection builds on the other.”
Like all working mothers, life is a fine balancing act for Sally. She and husband Tim Pozza, an associate director of McGees Property, have three daughters, Lily, 18, Elsa, 15, and nine-year-old Ollie (Olivia), plus two French bulldogs, Moose and Clover. Tim is also chairman of the Adelaide Economic Development Agency Consultative Committee.
Sally says she enjoyed an “idyllic and all-Australian childhood living amongst wild boar, kangaroos and cane toads”.
The family’s eastern suburbs home reflects Sally’s other great love – art. Her close friend Anna Gerlach, who owns Indulgence Food Design and is also an avid art collector, introduced Sally to the idea of collecting and she has been acquiring works since her early 20s.
Huge, colourful artworks hang on the walls of the wide hallway at the family home, and eclectic sculptures, lamps and other collected works are dotted around the beautiful four-bedroom home.
“I love texture and meaningful pieces, ones that you may have picked up on your travels,” Sally says. “I love my grape light which is Italian, but my children have broken off some of the grapes over the years.
“One of my favourite artists is Anna-Wili Highfield. She is so clever and she does a lot of these horse sculptures. Another of my favourites is a work by Imants Tillers which is felt, and it comes in pieces that you fit together.
“I also love all these feminine vases, by Simone Bodmer-Turner and Anissa Kermiche, who celebrate the female form.”
Sally says she also takes advice from local art dealers Hugo Michell and Paul Greenaway when choosing her pieces.
“I think the best sort of houses don’t look perfectly curated, or too contrived, though, and I think that’s the same with fashion, as well,” Sally says.
When SALIFE visits, Sally has just finished working 30 days straight, preparing for her November collection to drop. December will also see the release of her resort wear range.
As a child Sally moved around a lot due to her father’s mining business and the family spent time in small outback towns such as Queensland’s Georgetown where she attended the local primary school.
To relax, the designer says she loves to get home, run a bubble bath and have a gin and tonic as she binges whatever she’s watching on the television.
“That’s a very exciting part of my day,” she says. “I love my bedroom. My bedroom is my peaceful sanctuary away from the day to day chaotic routines. Just getting into bed and watching Netflix while bingeing a good series. I think that’s why my husband and I never watch a series together because I’m a serial binger.”
Growing up, home for Sally was all over remote Australia for the first seven years. Her father Robert had two drilling companies, Northbridge Drilling and Southern Drilling, and his regular contracts would take the family, including Sally’s mother Rae and brother James, to tiny mining towns such as Ardlethan in NSW, and Georgetown and Kidston in Queensland.
“It was an idyllic and all-Australian childhood living amongst wild boar, kangaroos and cane toads and extraordinarily beautiful landscapes,” says Sally.
“I remember a serene environment of watering holes and dried-up old creek beds where my grandfather would visit and pan for gold. I was a student of School of the Air off and on for about two years and then went to Georgetown Primary School for a brief moment.”
Sally was around eight years old when the family settled in Adelaide, and she attended Seymour College.
When her parents separated a few years later, Sally’s father Robert married Adelaide television celebrity, Adriana Xenides.
“I was about 12 or 13 then and I remember Adriana used to come home and take off all her makeup and sit and chat to me about my day,” Sally says. “She was very sweet. I was sad to hear of her passing away.”
from left, Elsa, Sally, Tim, Lily and Olivia in the garden that runs down the other side of the home.
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As a school student, Sally says she was creative, a bit unsettled and all she wanted to do was work in fashion. As a teenager she spent hours flicking through American and English Vogue magazines monthly.
“I think I probably house the largest collection of vintage Vogues in the southern hemisphere,” she says.
When it comes to fashion inspiration, Sally says her main icon has always been the late Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy for her effortless style.
“I also admire Lauren Santo Domingo for her impeccable style and business acumen,” she says. “She is the founder and chief brand officer of a curated online shopping site called Moda Operandi and she is one of the authoritative figures on New York’s fashion circuit, and regularly features on Vanity Fair’s best-dressed list.”
When she’s not wearing her own label, Sally says some of her go-to brands include, “Loewe for their quirky bespoke finishes, Chloe for their timeless takes on feminine/masculine juxtaposition, Phoebe Philo for her modern/cool aesthetic, and The Row which is timeless”.
Her favourite jeans labels include Mother, Agolde, Slvrlake and Frame.
The key to a woman discovering her own look, the designer says, is to wear classic, modern pieces with a twist, that suit your figure.
Elsa’s beautiful bedroom looks out onto the expanse of garden that runs down one side of the home.
“The classic with a twist aesthetic is the focus of creating SP collections,” she says.
“And mix it up with bold new directional accessories to complement the look. They don’t have to be high-end designer, Zara and H&M offer more affordable fabulous high-street finds.”
Helping Sally keep on top of both her work and homelife is her mother Rae, who lends a hand with parades, as well as general organisation and child minding when needed.
“Mum is such a huge help,” she says. “We are very close.”
Sadly, Sally’s father Robert passed away several years ago and, in a quirk of fate, her mother Rae married Tim’s father Trevor, Sally’s father-in-law, 17 years ago.
“It’s lovely, we all get along very well,” she says.
Sally Phillips clothes are manufactured both in China and in Adelaide, and Sally explains there has been some criticism about manufacturing overseas.
“But I will say there are machinists who are so good at what they do, because they do it on repeat, and that’s their passion,” she says. “The fabrics are all sourced and made exclusively in China. They are experts in the fashion field, in the construction, and they have the craftsmanship and the skill. China is very good at perfecting finishes on things, and you get a very sharp garment.
Olivia, or Ollie as she is known, finds a comfortable spot in the garden’s hanging basket.
“To create a placement-print dress, for example, it requires so much more technical precision. So, it’s totally reflective of the maker, the amount of work in the garment. For this season, summer ‘25, our main accent of the collection is scalloping, on dresses, shirts, even on our blazer lapels. These items require much skill and precision, and it’s these elevated details that make the difference in a garment.”
Many of Sally’s Adelaide seamstresses and pattern-makers have been with her for years, including a tailor who creates her blazers, whom she describes as “my little secret”.
“He used to work for George and Harry,” she says. “I’ve got a few of those little hidden secrets around Adelaide who I use.”
Sally’s clients range in ages from 18 to 80, and include women with young children, those who don’t work, retired women, and professionals.
“A lot of my girls, who are lawyers and doctors, don’t dress like they did 15 years ago,” Sally says. “Gone is the power suit, now it’s about the smart separates – the blazer with the dress, the blazer that has the matching pant. I never really did power dressing as such anyway.
“Women come to me because they can get their whole capsule wardrobe, everything goes together, and it makes it really easy. It’s one less thing to think about.”
As for the future, Sally says her plan is to work smarter, not harder, with a focus on more expansion into regional and interstate fashion markets, while continuing to offer “beautiful service and fabulous forever pieces whilst maintaining quality and uniqueness”.
Sally’s curated artworks include these stylish vases.
“Everything I’ve ever done has to be authentic and real,” she says. “I am really guided by that.
“And I still get such a buzz every time someone tells me they were stopped by a stranger in the street and asked about their SP clothes and where they purchased them. I’m so grateful and think I’m so lucky to love my career.”
This article first appeared in the November 2024 issue of SALIFE magazine.
