GROWTH, CHANGE AND TRAVEL
are continuing passions for creator of the funky Noosa-based clothing label Boom Shankar Dui Cameron.
In addition to Boom Shankar, Dui launched a second clothing label under her birth name Katie Cameron to offer a more conservative range of clothing, but it has since blended with Boom Shankar, which has matured from its Indian-inspired infancy towards a more sophisticated adulthood.
“I’m now 36 so I make clothes for around my age and up,” says Dui. “We still do sell clothes for women from about 16 up to 70 though – I’m blown away with the wide age group that we sell our range to.”
The Katie Cameron range has been described as conservative but quirky, with interesting add-ons.
“Instead of a plain cotton white shirt it will have piping or colourful pompons or something,” says Dui. “I have a denim skirt with a nice straight line, but I’ve done beautiful hand stitching around the pockets.”
Dui originally drew inspiration from the rich colour and culture of India to design Boom Shankar, but now prints her own fabrics and says inspiration floods in from many unexpected places.
“I can find inspiration in absolutely funny little nooks and crannies, like sitting in a traffic jam and looking at the shapes and colours of all the cars.
“Next year’s range is my Back to Bollywood range, so I have again been inspired by bright Indian colours and images, and I’m going into T-shirts as well.
“I draw a lot and I have a seven year-old son who draws a lot, so he inspires me hugely. He’ll ask me to draw a T-shirt and he’ll actually fill it in. I love that naive art that kids can do, and their interesting colour combinations.”
Dui says she has a very special bond with India and its people and finds being involved in various humanitarian and animal rights projects there deeply fulfilling. She spends six months a year there.
She supports Tree of Life for Animals, a small charity founded in 2005 in northern India that offers welfare for mistreated and street animals and educates children to love and respect animals. Boom Shankar’s Noosaville store sells bags for $4 and donates all proceeds to the charity.
Dui is also involved with various community aid projects, such as raising money for bores in drought-stricken areas, school building projects, and a cottage industry on the border of Pakistan and India.
“We send all our fabrics to them to make bed covers,” she says. “They put the patchwork together and do the hand stitching – they’re beautiful. This village has no power, no industry at all, so with our bed covers they use a foot pedal machine to stitch all the work together. The people there have touched my heart quite incredibly.”
Dui doesn’t think of her charity work as a way to boost the image of her business, rather the business is the tool that allows her to do the work that is so important to her.
“If I wasn’t in Boom Shankar I would be doing something anyway to give back or help as much as I possibly can,” she says. “In Australia we have choices – we can travel, we are a lot better off as a country, so it’s not a hard thing to do.
“When you are sitting in a village where the people have not a cent in their pocket and they give you everything they’ve got, the feeling is overwhelming and it’s just pure love. It brings me back to thinking that community coming together, helping and supporting one another, is really important.
“We get lost in our own things a lot of the time. It’s good to focus on yourself, but it’s also good to focus on how you can use yourself to do things for other people. To me we are just one big family, that’s my belief and I feel that it’s important to be able to share what we can do with each other.”
words leigh robshaw