For their spring ’25 collection Romance Was Born took over Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art pop-up bar and took it to the prom. Or a wedding reception, the kind their parents would have had in the 1980s, replete with a profusion of pink taffeta, baby’s breath, and balloons. Weddings are top of mind: Luke Sales and Anna Plunkett launched bridal in 2021, and since then have done a steady trade in custom pieces for brides-to-be that are made by hand, often using upcycled, heirloom fabrics like Venetian crochet.
The duo found themselves returning to one 1994 film while making them. “We just kept making Muriel’s Wedding jokes and quoting lines from the film, and, like with a lot of the things we do, it started as a bit of a joke.” For the uninitiated, P.
J. Hogan’s Muriel’s Wedding is a kitsch, camp, wickedly funny cult hit beloved in Australia. It follows misfit, flawed Muriel escaping from her small town, and small-town mindset, to pursue her dream of being married.
Heckled by the Queen Bees when she catches the bouquet—who tell her to throw it again as no one would marry her—Muriel goes on a clumsy, sometimes misguided journey to free herself from her roots. “The whole idea of coming of age, there was just so much about it that relates to me and also the business, and then it also talks to us working in fashion and aspirations,” said Sales, who will mark 20 years of the label next year. With the assistance of the National Sound and Film Archive of Aust.
