The Women Who Built Matilda Life
Most fashion brands are built around a product. Matilda Life was built around a decision.
During Melbourne's first COVID lockdown in 2020, Jo Mercer sat with a question she had been carrying for years. After more than three decades in fashion, including 12 years as General Manager of Footwear, Handbags and Accessories at Myer, she had watched Australian manufacturing quietly disappear. Workshop by workshop. Skill by skill. She knew what had been lost, and she thought she knew how to bring some of it back.
She called Lauren Mastromanno, her former colleague at Myer and an experienced buyer with her own 25 years in fashion retail. Between them, they had seen enough of the industry to know what it was missing. A lifestyle brand made entirely in Australia. Not partially. Not with exceptions. Everything.
That conversation became Matilda Life.
What They Built
Matilda Life launched online in 2021, self-funded by Jo and her business partners. Finding Australian manufacturers who could work with a new brand, at a considered scale, meant building relationships from scratch. Jo used three decades of industry contacts. She visited workshops, understood what each maker did well, and structured partnerships that worked for both sides.
Caterina Angerosa has been handcrafting shoes in Thornbury since she founded Anna Fiori in 1969. Her family still works alongside her. Every pair of leather shoes in the Matilda Life range comes from that same workshop, made the same way. Melbourne Textile Knitters, one of only two knitting mills still operating in Victoria, produces the merino fabrics used across the knitwear range. Uimi, also in Thornbury, has been making 100% merino knits in-house since 2009.
These are not suppliers in the traditional sense. They are small Australian businesses that Matilda Life chose to build with, rather than around.
Jo's View on What Australian Made Actually Means
Jo has been straightforward about why she built the business the way she did. Manufacturing locally means she can visit production regularly, catch problems early, and maintain a standard that is harder to hold when your supply chain is on the other side of the world. It also means the people making Matilda Life products are paid properly for their work. That is built into the pricing model from the start.
"I passionately believe we have great skills in this country," she has said. "Our labour rates may be a little higher, but we do have the skills."
The first Matilda Life store opened in April 2023 inside Kings Arcade on High Street, Armadale, a heritage arcade with its own sense of history and character. The fit-out followed the same logic as the products. Recycled Australian timber, natural Australian sandstone, and leather throughout. Every finish is sourced locally. A second store followed on Church Street, Brighton, one of Melbourne's most sought-after retail strips, a few minutes walk from Brighton Beach. The same warmth, the same approach, a different part of the city.
What It Looks Like Today
The range has grown to include women's clothing in wool, cotton and linen, leather shoes, sleepwear, and personal fragrance. Everything is still made in Australia. The four principles Jo and Lauren set at the start have not shifted: Australian manufacturing, premium quality, sustainability, and a fair price that reflects the craft without pricing people out.
It is a business built by women, supplied in large part by women, and made for women who want to buy well and buy local. Not because it is the easier path. Because it is the right one.
