MELANIE GREENSMITH
WHEELS & DOLLBABY
Faultless Phenomena: Melanie Greensmith Navigates Decades of Wheels & Dollbaby Pandemonium with Grace
A society jaded by factory fashion and hands-off fabrication scarcely expects ingenuity of its creators. Exploitative, scrimping, and sterile design drowns a market searching for its identity, a market in which Melanie Greensmith delivers salvation. The Australia-based Wheels & Dollbaby founder turns the industry on its head without lifting a rebellious finger. Instead, she remains bona fide in her ambition, to outfit the icons and sexpots of whichever generation in which she, and her finery, may find themselves.
Greensmith’s very essence alludes to refined edge: an aura that’s entirely unfeigned, and wholly irreplicable. To a skeptical eye, Greensmith’s biography reads as a supernova subsection of the cross streets between grit and glamour, rock and fashion, sex and rage. A wisped smoke cloud envelops Greensmith’s lore, insisting one buy into the magic, as resounding substance pillars her splendid illusion.
One is just as engrossed swapping life’s minutiae with Greensmith as they are digesting the flamboyant details of personal history she humbly intersperses. Asides like, “When I opened the shop, my first ever customer was Michael Jackson. He flew in on his biggest tour, the BAD tour. I had this amazing studded biker jacket that we’d done in the window. We hadn’t really opened the store yet, and he tapped on the door with his guards. This was before all the bad shit. He was the biggest star in the world!”
And, “Bob Dylan was my favorite. He came in the shop and just spent a fortune. He was in there for, like, 2 hours. He loved it. But, when he first came in (laughs), I thought he was a bum! (Whispers) He has this big, old trench coat on and a hat, and I thought, ‘Oh, my god! Who’s this?’ And then he looked up and I went, ‘Oh, holy shit!’ He wanted to buy the furniture in the store. He wanted everything! He didn’t even ask for sizes. I’d ask, and he’d just say, ‘That looks alright.’ God, that was amazing. I had a guitar on the wall, an old Gretsch White Falcon, and he signed it for me. People have told me he doesn’t sign anything.”
Wheels & Dollbaby is characterized by a distinct sensibility, surely: “I’ve always loved Hollywood and that whole golden era. I think that that look makes women look their best. I’m not so much rockabilly. I’m just the glamour end of it, and the shapes. Because I’m a rock chick, I guess I mix the two together.” But, that aestheticism is no marketing ploy, seeking revenue and reposts. Wheels & Dollbaby was born solely of the beat of Greensmith’s own drum, her early influences, and her crowd of characters.
“My mother was a model and worked at the Ludo in Paris. She was a showgirl. I used to watch her do her wing eyeliner and tease up her hair when I was a kid. When I hit 19, I went back to London [from Australia]. John Galliano had a store at the markets, Vivienne Westwood. It was ‘82, ‘83, maybe. The Cult were out. It was very exciting. I was only a kid. My friends were all in bands. We were young and broke, the usual. I didn’t go to college. I didn’t study or anything to be a designer; I just fell into it because that was my lifestyle. It was all about what I wanted to wear, really, and what I thought bands should wear.”
The chord struck by Greensmith’s design— and disposition— is less groupie, more muse. An individual in Wheels & Dollbaby is who the song is about, not who is trailing behind the bus. How can I make this conclusion? Consider steadfast customer, and perhaps the most notorious muse of recent history: “Kate Moss was the biggest she’d ever been. She wore a singlet that I made up that read ‘Fuck off, I’m with the band’ at Glastonbury. It was like an explosion.”
An aptitude for the zeitgeist naturally possessed by Greensmith is the exclusive result of her groundwork in ‘cool’, a workshop in trial and error that seldom culminated in error.
“I was getting Harley Davidson bandanas and making them into mini skirts with a zip up the front, selling them to all my friends. Wheels & Dollbaby comes from an episode of Get Smart. Max was Wheels and 99 was Dollbaby. It was this whole 60’s, beatnik thing.
MTV had just started [in Australia], so they got wind of the shop. They came over and did an edit about us. Then, all the rock & rollers and fashion kids decided it was the place to go. It was a cool boutique. Through those years, I dressed everybody: The Stones, Katy Perry, Kate Moss. An agent came in and said, ‘Listen, I want to take you to London. I think you could be everywhere.’ We ended up in Harrod’s, Harvey Nichols, Selfridges.”
Across the pond, Greensmith’s domination far from slowed. A fateful sojourn led Greensmith to her now-longtime collaborator and dear friend, a woman who would define Wheels & Dollbaby in her own visage.
“I was staying in London and Dita was staying with Marilyn Manson upstairs in the same hotel. We were at the Mandarin Oriental. The PR girl suggested I send Dita up some pieces. This was when she was just about to take off. Everyone was starting to wonder, ‘Who is this girl?’ She emailed me, and I suggested a collaboration, so we did! We’ve been doing it for 15 years. It comes in a little box we made look like a closet. It’s like collecting Barbies. Everyone wants each color. We’ve done 28 colors now. It’s been really great fun. She’s a bit more pinup than I am. I’m more of a rock chick.”
Informed in tandem by her musical adolescence, Greensmith ensures an international, cosmopolitan influence on each garment, resonating through generations and geographies.
“My inspiration is always glamour. I find interiors very inspiring: interiors and hanging out in LA. I’m pushing the brand there now, in America. I think it’s time. I’ve been spending a lot of time there. I shoot with Ellen [Von Unwerth] out there. I just love it. We seem really welcome whenever we go there, which is super nice.
My partner is Mark McEntee from a band called The Divinyls. We’ve got lots of friends in LA, so we’re sort of looking for somewhere to live there.” As we exchanged niceties prior to the interview, Greensmith mentioned she was batting around purchasing the famed Charlie Chaplin bungalows…. As one does. “I love the Chateau, but it’s so expensive.”
Greensmith’s design ethos is nothing if not elastic. When the overnight sensation of understated, angsty grunge shook the excessive, bombastic sartorialists of the ‘80s, Wheels & Dollbaby— an established social hub beyond retail— reacted accordingly.
“The store was a bit notorious. Back then, you used to smoke in there. We had a few colorful characters working there, so the store became a place to hang. In the 90’s, Sydney was very rock & roll…. Guns & Roses, who I’ve dressed, but anyway. It was that kind of scene. Then, Nirvana came out and it was all about grunge. What we did, going from selling all of these fabulous, expensive cowboy boots and leather pants from that era— literally, Kurt Cobain came out and, overnight, no one would wear that anymore. Music changed, and so followed fashion. I started buying all of these vintage flannies and printing on them. Those did really well. We survived grunge.
I haven’t seen that stark of a shift again. And I’ve seen a lot. I’ve spoken with Mark about it, as well, and he said overnight, no one wanted rock bands in the traditional sense anymore. All anyone wanted was grunge. Then came heroin chic. Oh God, I had to be so skinny. But, I dressed Courtney Love at that time. I love her. She’s just got the best fashion sense. That was really good for us.”
Through the decades, Greensmith has yet to fumble her fingers on the public’s pulse, despite how disjointed that current culture may be.
“It’s funny online now. Social media is almost frightening. It’s overwhelming, especially in LA. When I go to LA, I notice a lot of the young girls I hang out with already have their phone in their hand before I meet up with them, taking pictures of the hotel. Sure, the Chateau is beautiful, but it’s like, ‘Can we say hello first?’ Content,” she laments, punctuating content with what I imagine is a resigned eye roll through the phone.
Above all else, the lasting impression garnered from Greensmith is that what she has built— and who she has been able to remain as the champion of this empire— is a strata of integrity in talent rendered obsolete in today’s climate.
“It’s weird now, though, isn’t it? It’s just a mishmash of everything. So I think to myself, ‘I’m just going to do what I want to do.’ I don’t know what they’re doing. You’ve got to stay with what you love.”
Miraculously, Greensmith’s business acumen has had to shift little between the drastically different markets embodied by today and the retail of yesteryear. Rather, Wheels & Dollbaby’s customer base remains, evolves, and bends to Greensmith’s sophistication, much like revered artists.
“It’s a whole different ball game now. When I was a kid, it was all about getting that one great piece that you would save up to purchase, because you knew that you could wear it for years and you could put it with this and that— more classic, you know? But edgy, and cool, and original. Back then, people didn’t produce in China. Also, we didn’t have the internet. To me, a brand is built on ethos. I forged one, not that I really meant to. If someone told me I had to, I wouldn’t have known what to do. But, in a sense, I’ve always stayed true to that. I haven’t strayed very far away from where I began, because I love a certain silhouette.
It’s like AC/DC, if you listen to their songs. Their art form is very narrow, but it’s fantastic. I’ve just done it the way I wanted to do it, I suppose because I didn’t learn anything else. A lot of kids that go to fashion school are taught how to make a range and tailor price. I never learned any of that! I just went, “Ah, I love that fabric!” I worried about the cost later. Did it look good, was it going to be cool, and would I wear it? Now, it’s just endless streams of the same thing, as cheap as you can get it.”
Greensmith has composed a raucous career of revolution, a symphony of autonomous successes stretching sea to sea. Studded in spirit, Greensmith strode a street all her own, paved in willpower, tenacity…. And a red-carpet-full of loyal clientele. With plans only to expand, charting her course through to the top of the American market, don’t expect to forget Greensmith or her sultry seductresses anytime soon.
By Delaney Willet
