4 year old Karen could often be found on the lounge room floor making clothes for her first Barbie out of newspapers, tissues or whatever she could get her hands on. She may not have known it at the time, but this was the start of her never ending dream of being a "world famous fashion designer".

Just before she turned 18, Karen had graduated college with a trade qualification in the technology of clothing. She graduted on the Friday, then by Monday she was beginning her first official job in the industry with SABA.

Employed in the role of Head Designer for Michael Francis Clothing, 1985 was when Karen really bloomed. She was established in her career, confident in her skills and getting ready for a life full of jet setting across the globe on research and inspiration trips. She saw her designs sold in big stores such as Just Jeans, Myer, Sussan, Target, Sportsgirl and Witchery.

Karen's first born Liam was born in 1990, with Elana coming along in 1992. After 6 years of an epic effort to juggle both motherhood and a successful career, in 1996 Karen made the difficult decision to put her career on hold to put 100% of her focus into her children.

After years of watching her mum do ad-hoc wedding dresses and some freelance design services, at the age of 14 Elana started taking an active interest in fashion. In the years to come, it quickly became hard to find things that fit Elana's body shape properly...and that was when Karen & Elana started working together to create pieces that fit, which then snowballed into other mums asking if Karen could make things for their daughters too.

Eventually, once both Liam & Elana were old enough, Karen was ready to get back into the fashion industry and do what she loved again. Despite her lengthy experience and qualifications, she struggled to find a position in the industry that suited an older woman.
So, Elana booked an inspection at a shop that Karen had always admired, and that's where Blush Clothing Playhouse officially began.

In the very beginning, we stocked other Australian brands both in our physical store in Northern NSW and online. But the plan the whole time was to design and release our own brand, and at the end of 2017 we did just that. We were one of the only size inclusive fashion brands in Australia at the time, and we had a lot of push back from manufacturers about our size range, but we still managed to launch with sizes 6 - 22.

In 2021, after Covid had calmed down and the borders were open, we finally pulled the trigger on closing down our physical store in Murwillumbah, NSW and made the trek back down to Karen's hometown of Melbourne where the rest of our family are. We moved into a beautiful new warehouse and resumed business as usual, but online only.

January 2024 was a big turning point for us. After 8 years of off shore manufacturing with ethical factories, we still didn't feel like we had the control or transparency we needed to feel good about our manufacturing process, nor the power to viably increase our size range.
So we made a big change and switched our whole model to be sustainably Australian made and officially increased our size range to cover sizes 4 - 30 🎉

Now, we're still designing in house, but we're working with a range of local makers, artisans and suppliers, and we're constantly expanding our network to make our label as sustainable as possible. We're proudly made to order instead of having a bunch of stock just sitting in a warehouse. We're focusing on quality over quantity, and we're pushing to keep the Australian made dream alive alongside our forever passion of size inclusive fashion 🇦🇺❤️