Offbeat Onstreet Culture

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Pictures and words | Connor O'Brien

When the Gilles Street Market launched in March 08, everybody was a bit sceptical. Adelaide fashion markets have never been fashionable. My bud Jimmy predicted that, “Gilles Street is just going to be a bunch of shitty craft stalls run by sixty-year-old New-Agers called Moonshine selling dream-catchers and airbrush dolphin paintings.” (I’ve been to a few of those kind of ‘arts and crafts’ markets myself and the best thing I ever found was a ‘hand-knitted egg-protector’.)

Long story short, my bud Jimmy was totally wrong – the Gilles Street Market is home to pretty much the sexiest set of stalls this side of Portobello Road (which is the big fashion market in London, natch).

On the first and third Sundays of the month, from 10am till 4pm, soon-to-be-renowned fashion and jewellery designers (like Frances Knight and Chloe Shay) set up shop at Gilles Street Primary along with established retailers such as LAX, Whistles, and Moca Bonita. Filling in the gaps are a whole bunch of vintage resellers, a guy selling corn-on-the-cob, and another guy who makes fruit smoothies by riding an exercise bike.

It’s all a very communal affair, but Jennifer Centenera is the real brains behind it all. She’s the one responsible for holding the market together, juggling the demands of a hundred (give or take) different stallholders.

On the day I meet Jennifer at Gilles Street, things are more hectic than usual – the previous night’s forecast was for rain, so Jennifer has been up since an ungodly hour trying to plan for every contingency.

“From about 8am until 10am [on market Sundays] it’s always chaos,” Jennifer tells me. “But then the market just comes together, and it’s such a good feeling.”

After living in Sydney and Melbourne for a decade, working for Levis and Absolut Vodka, Jennifer returned to Adelaide and couldn’t find anywhere to hawk her vintage wares.

“Sydney has some amazing fashion and design markets,” Jennifer tells me. “The Bondi Markets, Kirribilli, Paddington. But when I came back to Adelaide there was nothing! When I was walking past Gilles Street Primary one day, something just clicked. It might sound stupid but I could totally ‘see it’.”

Some people see Jesus in a piece of toast, so I don’t think seeing a potential fashion market in a primary school playground sounds stupid. I’m just impressed that Jennifer managed to turn that transcendental vision into a reality.

“If you want to do anything in Adelaide, you have to make it your own and you have to drive it,” Jennifer explains. “At first the school was really hesitant, but as soon as I explained the idea to them, they were really easy to work with. And everyone from a media perspective wanted to push it, because they realised Gilles Street was something Adelaide had been missing.”

So what is it that makes Gilles Street so great?

“Creative connectivity!” Jennifer says. “That’s the corporate buzzword they all used at Absolut. One of my favourite things about the market is that the stallholders all talk to one-another, and the retail stores see the young designers and pick them up – that’s creative connectivity.”

In mid-December last year, the first ever Castle Bazaar rocked the Ed Castle beer garden, and apparently it just might become a regular thing (there’s another one happening at the end of January, for starters). A more laid-back sort of fashion market than Gilles Street, the Castle Bazaar is, according to Shadiya Nusrat (one of the organisers), something of a ‘Sunday Sessions’ market where you can nurse your hangover but still bag something unique.

“The creative kids can get their stuff out there in an environment that is supportive of their ideas, and the lovers of all things creative can come along and browse through their gear, as well as enjoy a beer or jug of Sangria while listening to good music and eating delicious food,” Shadiya tells me.

Each of the Castle Bazaar stallholders has been hand-picked, and the list of stallholders includes Pipsqueak in Saigon, Claire Incorruptible, Penny Anne, Sequoia Tree, Tape Deck Razor Blade, and Moodswinger – as well as ‘Sid’, which is a stall selling men’s vintage sourced from Berlin, which sounds awesome because Berliners have always dressed so bloody well (even under communism when jeans were made out of paper bags or something).

“Castle Bazaar is not a 'clearance' market for shops getting rid of their sale stock or a clothes-swapping market for people to get rid of their second-hand gear,” Shadiya explains. “We want to give people who genuinely love fashion and art a chance to be seen, heard, and perhaps even help set them on the path to success!”

I keep on thinking about how vibrant the Adelaide fashion and design ‘scene’ is these days. I’m not sure what happened exactly but a couple of years ago everybody in Adelaide was wearing ‘designer’ trackpants and yellow-stained wife-beaters, but now everybody is looking totally delicious and starting up fashion markets and making clothing and opening boutiques. Remember how Melbourne used to be the place to go for a ‘shopping holiday’? Well, how awesome is it that now your fashion holiday just involves you walking down to the pub?

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Offbeat Onstreet Culture

Pictures and words | Connor O'Brien

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