Australian Dictionary of Biography

Sylvia Parsons on her wedding day, 1941 [detail]

National Museum of Australia, AR00225.001

Sylvia May Parsons (1911–2000), fashion business owner, was born on 17 September 1911 at Gunning, New South Wales, fifth of eight children of New South Wales-born parents Thomas Johnson, grazier, and his wife Rachel, née Murray. As a child, Sylvia took private music lessons and sat the annual Methodist scholars’ examination. An accomplished seamstress, she later taught music and was active in the Gunning community where she organised social events and entered needlework and flower arranging competitions in the local show. On 21 June 1941 she married English-born John William (Jack) Parsons, an aircraftman based in Canberra with No. 8 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force, at Gunning’s Methodist church.

By the time Jack was discharged from the RAAF in December 1945, he, Sylvia, and their son Peter were living in the Canberra suburb of Turner. She taught home economics, including dressmaking and design, at the Canberra Technical College, and in 1947 bought Beth Gorman’s women’s wear business in Kennedy Street, Kingston. Trading as ‘“Canberra Fashions” and Sewing Service,’ Sylvia advertised to ‘women folk’ (Canberra Times 1947, 2) her range of washable sports hats, smart coats, and woollen frocks. She made forty dresses a week on her Singer sewing machine. Business boomed as the city’s population increased almost fourfold between 1947 and 1961. She opened additional stores at Manuka (1950–55), Civic (1955–63), and Woden (1972–90). Jack managed the business accounts and travelled overseas for ideas to support the salons’ development.

Parsons demanded that her staff adhere to strict standards of service, governing deportment, appearance, knowledge of stock, and attentiveness to customers’ wishes. Spurning the self-service push that increasingly characterised retail shopping from the 1960s, she gave staff printed instructions detailing sales etiquette and their daily and weekly cleaning responsibilities. Her directions often took an admonitory tone: ‘remember this is your home … we all live here more than in our own homes therefore it should be house-kept’ (Parsons 1948). Una Macdonald, who worked in the Kingston store for fifteen years, remembered Parsons as ‘a very, very hard lady’ (Macdonald 2002). Any breach of the shop rules was dealt with by being told to ‘stand on the edge of the carpet,’ and smoking was a sackable offence. Parsons also drew a firm distinction between ‘fashion’ and ‘gear,’ arguing that fashion gave a woman ‘elegance, respectability, and individuality’ (Canberra Times 1988, 15) whereas gear blemished a woman’s personality and style. Her business acumen extended its reach in tandem with her charitable causes through the Soroptimists club of Canberra for which she organised ninety-eight fashion parades from 1959. The most significant was the annual Gown of the Year event, which attracted an affluent audience in support of local charities, including the Marymead Children’s Centre and Dr Barnardo’s, and generated valuable media coverage for Parsons’s salons.

Though Parsons was in many ways a traditionalist, she recognised the growing appeal of synthetic fabrics. By 1965 her new home in Red Hill boasted a fibreglass bedspread. Through her advertising and contributions to local charities, she maintained her high business profile despite the challenges of new fashion designers, makers, and entrepreneurs. When she eventually closed her last remaining store, at Kingston in 1996, she nominated as one of her career highlights having made a wedding dress from a silk parachute. She also claimed to have dressed the ‘great train robber’ Ronald Biggs, while he was living incognito in Australia (1966–69). Years later she mused that she thought nothing of men trying on women’s clothing: ‘There’s no shame about it. It’s business. But I think that in those early days I’d have had a stroke’ (Speedy 1996, 1). Away from work, she took great pride in the family home and enjoyed painting, which she described as ‘the only hobby I have time for after business and family’ (Stocker 1965, 17).

Acknowledged at the end of her life as a Canberra ‘fashion-retailing icon’ (Hamilton 2000, 13) and a highly successful local businesswoman, Parsons maintained a regular clientele for forty-eight years through a period of substantial change in women’s work, customer service, community service, and technology. Jack predeceased her in 1998. Survived by her son, she died of cancer on 5 July 2000 at the National Capital Private Hospital, Garran, and was cremated. Her wedding dress, which she made herself, was acquired by the National Museum of Australia. The Sylvia Parsons collection at the Canberra Museum and Gallery includes her Singer sewing machine.