ABOUT

I am not the sort of designer that just wants to plaster my brand all over you and force you to fit your body into my stock size. 

What I really enjoy doing is collaborating with you to help you express your personality through your own style. 

Sure, I have a cult following of women who privately commission custom and bespoke pieces that they love and wear to death because they’re as comfortable as their pyjamas but make them look and feel 100 times better. 

In other words, they are their go to pieces they ask me for again, different colour, because they can’t live without them.

For many more women who I never meet face to face and for whom I never make a dress, I teach them the same process that my highest-level clients pay me for, so that they too can nail this level of go to effortless style themselves.

Either way, I am sure I can help you drawing on my 20 years of experience collaborating with women ranging from international musical genius Bjork through to an RBA Board member. That’s a very diverse bandwidth of women; so like I said, I’m sure I can help you. 

If you want to push the boundaries even further than Björk, then we need to talk. Yes, seriously. 

If you’re thinking, “I’m not that high-powered”, that’s cool too. Let’s talk about you.

What all the women I collaborate with have in common is, they don’t have time to be gym bunnies or give a damn about the perfect blow dry. 

In other words, they don’t let what most other people do and think get in the way of them working their unique style to help them reach positions of power and wealth, whatever that means for them.

I collaborate and teach as many women as possible, so that you can take exactly the same time, money and resources and get that sort of effortless style. 

I will not tell you to go and buy five more things with the promise it’s going to make getting dressed easier. 

Actually, I really believe in taking stock of what you’ve already got, learning how to identify and fix mistakes, or change things to suit how you are now; essential skill-building to enable you to make better, fewer, high-quality investments that have a positive ripple effect into other parts of your life.

Hi, my name is Susan Dimasi and I'm the Founder and Director of MATERIALBYPRODUCT (MBP) and HOF (the history of fashion as the history of feminism).

By training, I’m a fashion designer (BA, MA, unfinished PhD) and by trade, I’m an artisan. That means I've made thousands of custom and bespoke pieces in the MATERIALBYPRODUCT workroom. You can see more about that here.

This next part makes me sound like I am 100 years old but I just turned 50 at the time of writing this section. 

I’ve also spent a decade on luxury boutique floors in both London and Australia. Another decade teaching tailoring, history and leading honours design projects in the RMIT Fashion Design Program. 

Plus I worked as an Assistant Curator of International Fashion & Textiles, National Gallery of Victoria for half a decade before I started MBP and then they started collecting my work. 

Some of those gigs overlapped and if you have read this far, it’s because you’re a woman who can relate to being in the three-ring circus that has developed your unique skill set. 

It’s true I’m not a cool kid or a young gun of design anymore. I’m a woman who’s been through my life changing, my body changing and the world changing and it’s from some of these experiences being really shitty as well as brilliant (when I look back because it never feels like that at the time) that I can teach real skills and know how to women just like you in the HOF.

So what is the HOF?  

The acronym stands for the history of fashion as the history of feminism. And because, along with my own two decades of experience, I draw from case studies of women in history who have used their style to paint a pitch that says 1,000 words and helps them control the narrative of their personal history along with their hard work and brilliance. 

Let me make a point. I don’t spout dress for the job you want cliches at you. 

What I do believe in is helping you use all the tools in your toolkit to help yourself. 

I sincerely value creativity which is scientifically proven to enhance neurological function, specifically the part of our brain called executive function. 

Now, I know when high-delivering women hear that, they can tend to jump to the conclusion that they have to master the cello or paint a sell-out exhibition, but that’s not the point of creativity. That’s not how you nurture the part of the brain you draw on the most.

One very simple act that can be creative and that you do every day, whether you’re being seen or not, is getting dressed. 

You can benefit neurologically, even when you get dressed on automatic pilot, when you cut yourself free of the frustrating process of shopping as you know it, and its compromising results.

I have a saying: 

“It’s not the clothes, it’s what they do for you.”

And how you get your clothes is part of what they do for you. It’s exciting to work. We’re shifting the needle of the future of feminism quite simply by helping you to be yourself. 

If you want to know more about how we can HOF together click here.