Prue Acton

Early life

Acton was born in Benalla, Victoria and educated at Firbank Anglican Girls' Grammar School in Melbourne. Between 1958 and 1962 she completed a Diploma of Art majoring in Printed Textiles at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. She married Michael Charles Treloar in 1967. Later on, in the year on 19 September (1967) they had their first child together, Tiffany Treloar and then, a few years later, they had their second child Atlanta Treloar.

Career

In 1963 Acton established her own fashion design business in Flinders Lane, Melbourne, and by age 21 she was turning over 350 designs a year and selling an average of 1,000 dresses a week through 80 outlets in Australia and New Zealand. As her fashion business took off, Acton also began to develop her own range of cosmetics to complement the range. In 1967 she became the first Australia female designer to mount a show of her own range of garments in New York City. By 1982 the estimated world-wide sales of her designs were $11 million with garments sold in Australia, Japan, USA, Canada and New Zealand and her designs made under licence in America, Japan, and Germany.

Acton also designed the Australian Olympic uniforms (1978, Lake Placid, USA); (1984, Los Angeles); (1988, Seoul).

Prue Acton initially wanted to become a traditional artist - a painter - before focusing on fashion. "At 15 I went to RMIT; I was one of the youngest ever to go to RMIT" Acton says about her art studies that lead up to her fashion career "And during that time I was making my own clothes and making clothes for friend and that's how I was making pocket money". Right after graduating, Acton worked on clothing samples, and began her business. At the start of her career, she wrote a fashion column for the journal Go-Set. Acton was the first Australian female designer to show her own fashion range in New York.

Acton returned to painting in the '80s. She shifted her focus from fashion to painting because "it's all about making money and I’m becoming far more interested in painting". Acton found the art forms to be similar: "I don't think it makes any difference whether I'm painting or I'm a designer, it's about the art of what we do, of how the parts come together". She attended life drawing classes at Swinburne College, and studied painting with Clifton Pugh and Mervyn Moriarity. Since 1989, Acton continues to hold exhibitions with Clifton Pugh and the Dunmoochin Artists.

Awards

In 2005, she was honoured on a commemorative Australian postage stamp, along with other Australian fashion designers, Collette Dinnigan, Akira Isogawa, Joe Saba, Carla Zampatti and fellow RMIT alum Jenny Bannister.