Nicol & Ford

Nicol & Ford is an independent Sydney fashion label and atelier founded by Katie-Louise Nicol-Ford and Lilian Nicol-Ford. The designers met in 2013 and developed their joint practice across 2013–2014 under the name The Gold Hatted Lovers, with the first documented collection dated 2014. Katie-Louise brought training in sewing, fashion and costume construction; Lilian brought art-historical and archaeological study. Their partnership joined those disciplines from the outset, building clothing through historical inquiry, small-scale making and direct relationships with wearers.

The first years were deliberately compact. The 2014 Gold Hatted Lovers collection was followed by Peach Narcissus in 2017, Mignons de Coeur in 2018, The Goblin’s Cry and Pieno Sole in 2019, and Pink Carnation in 2021. The practice was renamed Nicol & Ford in 2017, replacing The Gold Hatted Lovers without changing the founding partnership. Early garments were made to order in Sydney, often in very small editions, with custom sizing and construction undertaken by the founders themselves.

Historical inquiry became the label’s organising method. The founders return to figures, interiors, literature, art and subcultural histories that can be read through clothing: Christina Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite world in The Goblin’s Cry; Hollywood costume and performance in Pink Carnation; Carlos de Beistegui’s extravagant interiors in La Pouffe; Regency dress and the Great Comet of 1811 in Comet; Rosaleen Norton in THORN; Magnus Hirschfeld and Weimar queer and trans histories in Parrhesia; and Adrian Feint’s floral painting and coded camp imagery in Feint. These subjects are translated through construction and atmosphere instead of being reproduced as period costume.

Nicol & Ford entered Australian Fashion Week in 2022 with La Pouffe at Carriageworks and subsequently presented five consecutive annual runways through 2026. Comet followed in 2023, THORN in 2024, Parrhesia at The Vanguard in Newtown in 2025 and Feint at Elizabeth Bay House in 2026. The shift into fashion week did not turn the atelier into a conventional sample-and-wholesale operation. The founders continued to cast from their communities, make garments for specific bodies and commission specialist footwear, jewellery, leather, metal, silicone, sound, movement and beauty work from independent collaborators.

The practice has also expanded through institutions without forming separate divisions. Powerhouse acquired La Pouffe and exhibited it in Absolutely Queer in 2023. Darlinghurst Theatre Company commissioned Nicol & Ford to design costumes for Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 that same year. In March 2026 the founders curated Inner West: Ideas for the Biennale of Sydney, bringing panels, spoken word and performance into their public practice. After the Feint runway, Museums of History NSW presented Treading Feintly at Elizabeth Bay House, placing garments alongside works by Adrian Feint.

Nicol & Ford remains active as a founder-led Newtown atelier. Its current model centres made-to-order clothing, direct domestic and international sales, custom sizing and bespoke evening and bridal commissions. Specialist components are made with recurring collaborators, while the principal clothing construction remains closely tied to the atelier. The scale is intentionally intimate: annual public presentations and institutional projects sit alongside direct client work, limited materials and a production system shaped by the time required to study, fit and make each garment.

Nicol & Ford treats historical study as a design tool. Lilian builds dense visual and social histories around a subject, while Katie-Louise translates those references through pattern cutting, fitting and construction; both founders share design decisions and making. A period reference therefore enters the clothes through proportion, cut, volume and movement on an actual body. The work may evoke Regency dress, 1930s bias cutting or 1950s fetish imagery, but it is reshaped for contemporary bodies and for the particular people who will wear it.

The body is central to the atelier’s method. By the Australian Fashion Week period the founders explicitly described a cast-first, construct-second process: people were selected from their communities before garments were completed, and looks were patterned around individual bodies instead of forcing a predetermined sample size onto the cast. Custom sizing extends the same principle to clients. Fit becomes part of authorship, allowing gender expression, scale, exposure and movement to determine how a historical silhouette is rebuilt.

Material availability also disciplines the work. Remnant, deadstock, inherited and salvaged textiles recur across the collections, alongside new specialist materials when a concept requires them. Antique beads, old lace, feathers, upholstery textiles, leather, metal, shells, silicone and hand-painted silk have all entered the atelier’s vocabulary. Limited fabric quantities often produce small editions or singular pieces, giving the collections a demi-couture rhythm in which material scarcity and hand labour shape the final form.

Collaboration is embedded in the construction system. Phoebe Hyles has developed jewellery and millinery across multiple seasons; Matea Gluščević has built custom footwear; J. R. Harvey has produced handbags, corsetry and leather body pieces; Tobias Sangkuhl has fabricated hardware and metal; Julian Dimase has developed silicone and skin-like interventions. Styling by Miguel Urbina Tan, movement by Fetu Taku and later collaborators, sound by Jonny Seymour and beauty direction by Nicole Thompson have helped turn the annual runway into a shared environment without displacing the founders’ authorship of the clothing.

The label’s relationship to queer history is similarly concrete. Historical figures are approached through the conditions around their lives: patronage, censorship, archives, nightlife, intimacy, persecution and survival. THORN used Rosaleen Norton to examine kink, hybrid bodies and the policing of outsiders; Parrhesia moved through the flourishing and destruction surrounding Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft; Feint shifted towards coded pleasure and ornament through Adrian Feint’s Sydney world. The historical material becomes a framework for contemporary community, not a claim to recreate the past.

Presentation follows the same logic of specificity. Carriageworks provided a large fashion-week platform, but later shows moved into places whose histories could alter the reading of the garments: The Vanguard for Parrhesia and Elizabeth Bay House for Feint. Performance, music, scent, florals and movement are used when they sharpen the collection’s subject. The result is an atelier practice in which history, body, craft and place remain interdependent from first reference to final fitting.