It’s Time for Timeless, not Trends

In a quiet area tucked away in the industrial estate of Leesville Jindabyne, the new site at 7-9 Baggs Street exists against a dry and rustic landscape of rolling hills and open skies. The site has recently been converted from a large shed into a renovated timber stone building with a car park. On a warm day in Spring, Birchwood kiosk is open, and a few people pop in and out of the yoga studio next door. The sound of a construction truck reversing is heard in the background. To the right of Alpine Yoga and Sankalpa Living is Meadow Store. Open since June 2024, the store front features glass doors encircled by some pot plants and a sign reading, “Ethical and Sustainable Design. Womens. Mens. Kids”.

Born and bred in Jindabyne, founder and owner of Meadow Store, Samantha (Sam) Denford, is a long supporter of the town and community. She went to boarding school in Sydney before moving to Gerringong to work in retail for her uncle’s surf shop where she found her niche in swimwear. Sam comes from a family of teachers and creatives, her grandparents were a costume designer and actor. She obtained a Advanced Diploma in Design majoring in Fashion from the Canberra Institute of Technology. While she learned the ropes of retail from her uncle on the South Coast and flourished under his guidance, Sam was always drawn back to the Snowy Mountains.

In 2014, Sam opened the business, Ebony & Chrome, in the heart of Jindabyne. At this time, there was a gap in the market for ‘fast fashion’ and little awareness around sustainability in fashion. She describes the clothing she sold at Ebony & Chrome as “rock and rustic” and tells me that denim ended up being the bread of butter of this shop. “I reckon we survived purely off the back of black skinny jeans”, she said.  She owned and managed Ebony & Chrome for 6 years, but around 3 years in she started to struggle with the ethics of fast fashion. The bushfires of 19/20 then brought a challenging summer, and having fallen pregnant and re-located back to the coast, she decided not to renew the shop lease for Winter 2020.  While she was relieved, she grieved it. “I didn’t know what to do with myself because I’d put my heart and soul into that shop for 6 years”, she said. Suddenly it clicked that this was her opportunity to do what better aligns with her views on fashion. The ‘pandemic’ also brought about a new market. “With Covid suddenly there was a huge interest with keeping things local and people had time on their hands to do some composting at home and were suddenly like ‘oh sustainability is important to me’. I could see the interest in the market rise. They want this now. Finally!”, she explains.

As I walk inside the shop at Leesville, it is clean, fresh and orderly. Beautiful garments hang from high racks and a centre wooden table displays a collection of belts, mugs, and jewellery and a pot of native flowers. To the left is the change room linking through to Sam’s studio where she has her sewing machine set up along with some fabrics and loose garments. A laptop is positioned on a desk to one side and in the corner is an unfinished plate of strawberries and cake.

Sam launched Meadow Store online initially. While Ebony & Chrome was ‘made for Jindabyne’, she wanted Meadow Store to be something bigger. This vision includes finding and selling more ‘trans-seasonal’ clothing and keeping other regions and climates in mind. Part of her mission is to steer people away from the unhealthy habit of looking to magazines and advertising for trends. “My belief is that trends are external pressures on you, it’s not coming from somewhere that’s aligned inside of you”, she says.

On the day I meet Sam she wears a blue jumpsuit and a curated selection of jewellery. She has a sweet smile and moves calmly about her shop with style. Her humble nature is proven by the fact she doesn’t like to put her face on her website. She buys me a coffee and we start chatting – me sitting on the couch while she sits on the arm of the couch.

The story of how Meadow Store found its location is fitting. When Sam and her husband, Harry, returned once again to Jindabyne, Harry started his own business in metal design and fabrication in Leesville. With Sam’s best interests at heart, he reserved an area in his shed for Sam to set up a studio. “He wanted me to physically design and make because he knew that makes me happy”, she reflects. While Sam was hesitant to opening another business, having this creative outlet triggered her love of retail again, and after a year of working out of Harry’s shed she started to look for her own space. With rents high in town, it proved difficult. Almost at the point of giving up, the landlord from up the road came down and approached Sam. “About five people have told me I need to talk to you, Sam”, he said. “Ok, what have you got planned?”, she replied. Sam was aware of the new development up the road. The landlord continued, “It really matters to me how it feels”. And that was a turning point for her because she had never had a landlord say that. “It was powerful because it wasn’t just about money”, she tells me. With an interest in creating community, Sam jumped at it. “Ok cool, who’s going in? what’s it going be? what’s it going to feel like?”. The landlord replied, “It’s yoga, massage, food and coffee - café Birchwood are moving in and potentially Shut The Gate.

Originally a dusty garage with roller doors, Sam worked with the landlord to convert the space into a beautiful light filled room with glass doors. “The part I really enjoy about being in Leesville is everyone is so creative and industrious, everyone is actually moving and shaking”.

With Ebony & Chrome in Jindabyne, Sam had to stock what she knew would sell to ensure she met the rent. “Jindabyne town is designed for tourists”, she explains. “Whereas with Meadow Store, if someone comes in and they don’t find something, who cares. I don’t want to put pressure on people. I want them to know it is a good purchase”. Operating out of Leesville has reduced the pressure to sell and allowed her to be more creative. “If I want to spend a day just making kids recycled jackets, I can because I haven’t lost anything”, she says. 

Photos courtesy © of Samantha Denford. 

As I take her story in, I sip my coffee and look down at my notes. “So, I’ve been wanting to get your views on sustainable and slow fashion”, I say. Sam tells me how sustainable fashion can be broken down into three parts. 1) How much the consumer is buying and how much they are going through. She believes people need to be educated on how to edit their existing wardrobes, this includes realising what might not have worked in the past to make better decisions in the future. 2) Choosing the right fabrics - natural fabrics over synthetics are an absolute must here, and that includes the right dyes, trims and threads. This is so at the end of a garment’s life the fabric can go back into the earth or be recycled. 3) The human aspect of making clothes. This includes how much a brand is paying their workers, where those workers are located and what their environment is like. Sam admits no brand can be perfect (the best solution would be to recycle garments), but says it is always best to buy locally.

Sam pops out to the back room where her son is resting. As she wanders back she starts to tell me about a powerful concept. “It’s called the 7th Generation Principle”, she says. “Originating from the native Americans, it suggests how anything you do has to consider the 7th generation from now. So, if it’s going to harm ahead to the 7th Generation from now, you don’t do it. It’s simple. It can change everything”, she adds.

Our conversation shifts to slow fashion and I listen intently. “For the consumer, slow fashion is about how one wears their clothes and whether they buy into trends or not”, outlines Sam. “For producers, slow fashion refers to the schedule that brands engage in to produce and sell”, she adds. Sam strictly does not stock brands that insist on the purchase of seasonal collections. “A brand might say, ‘You have to do our pre-spring injection on these jeans’, and I say, ‘No thank you, I won’t be dealing with you’”. Sam supports brands that have core ranges, meaning they have five best fits/best sellers that they stock all the time. She goes on to tell me how the 7th Generation principle can apply to fashion, and how fashion, the environment and sustainability are all linked.

Meadow Store is timeless, heartfelt and collaborative. The brands she stocks such as Orbit The Label, Hall Store and Hemp Clothing Australia, are refined, sustainable and sophisticated. It is important to Sam that the clothing she sells appeals to a wide range of body shapes and ages. Sam wants to help people look inside for how they want to express themselves visually. “I really think what I fell in love with about retail is seeing someone for who they are with all their vulnerabilities”.

Sam’s new ventures include offering customers a service in ‘colour analysis’, and a course advertised on her website as ‘Soul Expression’. “Colour analysis is essentially a colour science”. she says. “People can come into the store and be inspected for their colour palette and find out which colours best bring out their essence”. Her course leads one through a meditation to bring up their true selves. Having seen how flawed the fashion system is, from reading Dolly as a teenager and noticing how it can affect your self esteem, Sam wants to encourage us all to look inwards for our expression.

Photos courtesy © of Samantha Denford. 

When I ask Sam what inspires her, she says, Love. “I have learnt now from a few mistakes that if you don’t follow your passions, things will blow up. If you’re following that path of passion, you get into the ease and flow of attracting similar things. I really do believe in the law of attraction”. When Sam sits down in her studio to design a dress, she bases her design on wanting to accentuate rather than hide. “It’s about what do you love about your body? Let’s celebrate that and who you really are, and not try to be something that you are not”.

Sam hopes the locals who loved Ebony & Chrome will be open to the idea of Meadow Store and sustainable, timeless fashion, even if it takes some time. As well as the physical shop and hosting some collaborative events, Sam plans to build an online space where people can be part of a community of likeminded buyers. “It’s not just retail anymore, it’s a movement. A movement where people can find their own style from within, and not from external sources”, she says.

There are many beautiful Australian designers and brands doing it the right way. Sam has taught me that we need to find and support them and bring people back to buying classic pieces that last. Embracing the practices of sustainable, ethical and slow fashion, Sam’s initiative with Meadow Store is a step in the right direction to overcoming the challenging world of comparisons, trends and fast fashion.

Meadow Store is located at 7-9 Baggs Street, Leesville Jindabyne and open 10am-3pm Tues- Sat. Shop in store or online at www.meadowstore.com.au/