The very definition of creativity involves making something different — and the risk of creating something different comes with vulnerability. “There is no creativity without vulnerability,” Brown says. “There just isn’t.”

I began creating at a very young age. Both my parents working full time. I was the oldest of four siblings. We grew up on the coast of Sydney’s eastern suburbs, a lot of my time was spent climbing rocks by the ocean and daydreaming looking up at the clouds and creating pictures up in the sky. I would dream of what was out there and wanted to make a difference in the big wide world.

I would create out of nothing an outside production with my siblings and cousins.  We had an open field in our backyard with a huge clothes line, I would peg up two old sheets so they could pull apart as curtains. Then I would get one of the cassettes I had created a playlist on, I loved making mixed tapes in my spare time. I would begin choreographing and making up a script for the kids. We would spend hours rehearsing and somehow they all would let me direct them. Often my brother would step in and lend a hand on direction.  By the time our parents finished work they would come home to a performance that they patiently sat through and clapped and cheered. We felt like we had created some magic moments.

And so my creative juices began to flow. At the ripe age of 16 I choreographed a fashion parade at a local community club my parents were members at and had reputable designers including Alexander Perry  agree to come on board and I organised the music and production.  From there while still at school, I worked in a hair salon in Darlinghurst on weekends and Thursday nights to make extra money. I met a customer through the salon who wanted to organise a charity event for AIDS awareness and she asked if I would like to help her. So at the age of 18 I produced a show at the Metro Sydney to raise awareness for AIDs and we called it DADA (Designing Artists Design for Aids) It was a huge success.

From there while doing my HSC at a private girls school in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, I was studying at night at East Sydney Technical College Fashion Illustration so I had a portfolio to apply for Fashion Design when I finished school. I finished up school with high marks in Art and Textiles and was accepted in Fashion Design with Nicholas Huxley head of the department. I studied for a year and a half but was struggling with the pattern making and sewing. A lot of the students had worked in the industry and were older than me. Nicholas pulled me aside and I never forget he made sure he assured me my creativity was alive, he suggested I took some time to work in the industry and then come back to study. He felt I would be better suited to production, styling and explained how many areas of fashion there were, and so I set off to the big wide world and landed a job at Spin Communications working for Mercedes Australian Fashion Week.

And my work, career began as I created out of nothing…