Meet restaurant owner Maya
WEARING SLEEPERS S/S 2023
tell us about yourself Maya
I’m originally from Melbourne in Australia, with Polish family.
The majority of my previous work (life) was in the fashion industry as a personal shopper
and stylist - I think after many years in that space I found myself a bit stuck creatively and decided to
completely shift what I was doing. I took culinary training in the US without many expectations
of the outcome, it was more of a learning holiday idea at the time !
However after returning to Australia I fell straight into working as a chef and really felt such a
huge amount of fulfillment.
What led you to food?
Food and cooking has always been a huge part of my life, growing up. My parents always prepared food at home and rarely ate out as my father was diagnosed with cancer at a young age and took an intensely holistic approach to food.
Additionally spending half of each year living in my mother’s village in Poland as a child everything was gathered and home cooked.
I dipped into working with food whilst working as a fitness trainer a bit but more so for the goals of my clients, later also doing a little food styling here and there in between fashion styling jobs.
I had just liked to make recipes and shoot them as more of a hobby / escape for a long time whilst working in fashion kind of entertaining the idea of making a book or food blog but never really committing to that.
I started to find a lot of inspiration in chefs and some culinary schools overseas and it sort of was a realization that I wasn’t feeling fulfilled in my current profession and an overnight decision to just take a culinary course for fun and see
where it goes.
how is your approach to concious living?
We do our best but I’m sure we can always do better with this.
I feel lucky to live in a place which innately gives a slower pace to life than a lot of others.
Meet nail artist Lottie
WEARING SLEEPERS S/S 2023
How did you get into nail art?
I wanted to try to find out what I like to do.
I was not doing any study because I was just not interested in anything, so my parents were like “ok Lottie, we understand you don’t like it but please just try and do some courses to see if there’s anything else you like”
I became a nail artist because I was doing my nails at the at the salon when I was like 17 and at that moment 30 euros for color gel Polish was so much money for me...
I was like doing my mom’s nails and practicing on all of my friends and then it was actually quite nice to do. All of a sudden my mom’s friends and my friends friends they all wanted me
to do their nails. I was like “wow how amazing I can just do this get better at this - and then I got really good at it.
What led you to starting your own nail salon?
I ended up starting House of Orange because I did nails back in Amsterdam and I wanted to take a break because I had been working so hard for so many years.
So I went to Asia and then COVID came, so I got stuck in Bali and there was no choice for me to go back home. I couldn’t even do nails at home so I was like “you know what; I’m going to stay here”.
One day I was on the beach my friends surfing and on the beach I wrote a business plan. The feeling that I got in my body while I did that was so insane.
I was like “ok you know what; I’m going to do this! I will sell everything in Holland and put all my money together and just try and open it.”
And two years later we have a fully booked new salon and three months waiting list. It’s amazing. Oh my God!
What is your approach in your business?
I want people to come in and have a lovely warm welcome, feel pampered and that we’re taking the time for them and let them go out with a smile and feeling like their best self.
For those two hours you’re sitting there, you have your mind somewhere else just taking the time for yourself to not be on your phone or whatever. It does so much to your mental health taking a moment where you’re taking care of yourself!
