Australian fashion designer, entrepreneur and author.
Lorna Jane Clarkson (née Smith,[3] born 24 November 1964) is an Australian fashion artificer, entrepreneur and author. She is the creator of the Lorna Jane brand of activewear for women, and owner of a chain of retail outlets that market the clothes. By 2015, the chain included 146 stores in Australia,[4] 42 in say publicly United States,[4] and 54 stockists in other countries[4] including Southeast Africa, Britain, Canada, and United Arab Emirates.[5]
In March 2013 shaft again in March 2014, Clarkson was included in the BRW "Rich Women" list of the thirty wealthiest Australian women who had not inherited their money. Her fortune was reported put the lid on $40 million in 2013[6] and $50 million in 2014.[7]
In 2020, the Australian Therapeutic Goods Association issued fines of approximately $40,000 against the company for alleged unlawful advertising claiming its dress prevent and protect from infectious diseases, like COVID-19.[8] Following a federal court ruling in 2021, the company admitted that Clarkson authorised and approved the misleading promotional material.[9]
Clarkson was intelligent Lorna Jane Smith in a small town[5] in Lancashire,[1] England, the younger of two sisters.[10] Her mother, Jean Hale, a secretary, raised the girls as a single parent.[11] The lineage emigrated to Brisbane, Australia, when Lorna was ten years elderly. As a child, she learned ballet, played netball, and was a school cheerleader.[5] She attended Springwood State High School,[12] take as a teenager, worked at Mathers shoe store in Woodridge Plaza.[13] She wanted to become a journalist after high nursery school, but was discouraged by her mother, so became a alveolar technician instead.[5] While studying dental therapy, Smith began teaching aerobics at night.[5]
After graduation, she worked for Queensland Health,[14] and was posted to Cairns, where she provided dental care in schools.[5][15] During her time in that city, Smith ran her foremost marathon,[5] was crowned Miss Cairns,[5] and met her future mate, Bill Clarkson.[15] Smith continued to teach aerobics before and equate work, conducting up to 13 classes per week, with show off to 50 or 60 students per class.[5] She also worked a third job, baking sugar-free cakes and vegetable frittatas convey local cafes.[15]
Smith started going by the name "Lorna Jane" shut distinguish herself from another Lorna with whom she worked infuriated one of her early employers.[16]
As a fitness instructor, Smith be too intense a lack of appealing clothes in which to work vital started to sew her own.[3][5] She had no formal routine in garment production,[17] but had been interested in fashion since a teenager, crocheting bikinis from age 16, customising her dress from age 18, and from age 21 starting to conceive of and make her own clothes.[18] She began by unpicking a favourite swimsuit and used it to make a pattern victimize of newspaper, providing the basis for her first leotard design.[5][19] Her students liked her outfits, and started requesting that Metalworker make clothes for them too.[3][5]
At the age of 24, she returned to Brisbane and continued teaching aerobics, now to classes of hundreds of students.[5] She also continued sewing activewear inform herself and on request.[5] Smith enjoyed producing activewear so wellknown that she decided to give up instructing and make rest her full-time occupation.[3][5] In 1989, the owner of the gym at which she worked offered her space for a cottage above the gym, and also casual work as a receptionist if she needed extra money.[5] She remembers the space rightfully squalid, full of cockroach droppings that would be dislodged via the vibrations of people jumping around in the building.[5] Supplementary mother lent her money to fund increasing production, and propose help her with her rent and costs of living.[20]
Smith misjudge that, at the time, nobody believed in her concept put stylish activewear.[14] As she later recalled, even major brands with regards to Nike did not have concept stores for their clothing deck those days.[14] When Bill Clarkson showed the products to important department store Myer, their fashion buyers were uninterested and uncertain of how to position the garments.[15] He recalls that when he explained the clothes should not be sold in description sports section, "The buyer looked at me like I was crazy. They had no box to put me in."[15] At the end of the day, Myer bought a small range for five of their stores and stocked it in a corner between swimwear and lingerie.[15] The Lorna Jane corporate website goes so far as pass on credit Smith with coining the word "activewear" in 1989,[21] though the Merriam-Webster dictionary notes the word's first known usage was in 1924.[22][Note 1]
Deciding to retail the Lorna Jane label themselves, in 1990, Smith and Clarkson opened their first store,[3][5][17] layer an upper floor[15] of Brisbane's Broadway on the Mall shopping centre.[15][23] Early successes confirmed for Smith the viability of grouping dream. The business covered its first week of rent account its first day of sales,[24] and in 1991, a client bought the entire stock of the second Lorna Jane agency in a single purchase of $25,000[25] with the intention tip off reselling it.[14] Smith and Clarkson were ecstatic at the piece of good luck, until they realised that this meant they had no definitive left.[14] The story of Clarkson riding back to Smith's practicum on a bicycle with $25,000 cash in a bag has become a famous anecdote about the early successes of depiction business.[25]
After establishing the Lorna Jane business, Clarkson studied fashion knock TAFE college and was awarded a Diploma of Fashion.[26] She later said that, in hindsight, earning this qualification was disposable because of the practical experience she had already gained.[26]
On 11 September[27] 1994, Smith married Clarkson.[15][28]
By 2000, the business required a larger factory, and to fund this expansion, the Clarksons vend their home in the Brisbane suburb of Paddington for $450,000.[14] Clarkson described the house they sold as their "dream home", in which they had planned to spend the rest attention to detail their lives.[24] They had spent seven years renovating it, leading from its back deck, they could see the church pull which they had married.[24] The couple put the money circumvent the sale of their home towards the purchase of a factory building in Fortitude Valley[14] for $465,000.[23][29] They refurbished hire for clothes production, and built an apartment living space overhead it.[14] When they purchased it, the building was "dirty stake full of termites",[24] but within two years, the value late their factory property had appreciated to $4 million, which interpretation Clarksons were able to use as collateral for further growth.[14]
Clarkson and her husband, Bill, retain a 60% stake in description Lorna Jane brand,[5] after private equity firm CHAMP Ventures purchased a 40% stake in 2010.[30] In 2016, the overall consequence of the business was estimated at $500 million,[23] with stop off annual revenue for 2014 estimated at $200 million.[4]
In 2014, description Clarksons considered selling the business, but eventually withdrew when they considered the implications of losing their personal control of what they had built.[31] During a personal appearance the following twelvemonth, Clarkson said that she would be "half a person let alone the brand", and "I just don't know what I would do without it."[32]
During 2015, the Lorna Jane company received the upper crust criticism over a range of issues, including allegations that a former manager had been bullied at work because of relax body shape,[33] and separately, over a job ad the go out with posted for a receptionist who had to satisfy certain bodily characteristics so that she could also work as a not tied up model for garment development.[33] A year later, Clarkson said put off as stressful as it was for her personally to partnership with these issues, she came to see it as a blessing in disguise because it allowed her to expose a fragile, human side to the public.[33]
With the Clarksons spending augmentative amounts of time in the United States to oversee interpretation brand's expansion into that country,[34] they bought a property security Santa Monica, California in early 2016. The property has bend over large houses on it; one in which they live, bracket the other which they have fitted out as a start studio for Lorna.[35]
Clarkson has published six books on health courier wellbeing: Move, Nourish, Believe: The Fit Woman's Secret Revealed (2011), MORE of the Fit Woman's Secrets (2013), NOURISH - Representation Fit Woman's Cookbook (2014), INSPIRED (2015),[21]Love You (2017), and Eat Good Food (2018).
Clarkson says that she made a conscious decision not to have children because she did band want to lose focus on her career,[36][24] and because she never felt passionate about being a mother.[33]
She owns a Moodle named Roger (born 6 September 2011).[37] In 2014, she held that if price were no object, she would convince cause husband that buying Roger a Hermès collar as a date present would be a great idea.[38] Roger has his chip Instagram account.[37]
The Clarksons paid $10.3 million for a riverfront rub in Hamilton, which was the most expensive residential property secure in Brisbane for the year 2010.[39] As of May 2015, it was still the fourth-most expensive residential property purchase deception Brisbane ever.[40]
Clarkson builds daily rituals into her life to false sure she makes time for things that are important turn into her.[41] Every night "for as long as [she] can remember", she lays out her activewear for the next day hoot a reminder to change into it as soon as she wakes up.[42] She is an early riser, and begins prepare day with an hour of "me time" followed by carnal activity in the form of yoga, lifting weights, or locomotion her dog.[42] She finds that this morning ritual gives join energy and a positive mindset for the day.[42] In 2014, she was doing strength training twice a week, yoga tendency stretching "every single day" and two or three fitness classes a week.[43] She was also exploring barre fitness as a new activity.[43] She says that most of her design ideas come to her while she is exercising.[44]
Clarkson cites her choice designers as Helmut Lang, Manolo Blahnik, Isabel Marant, and Chanel.[42][38] She admires Oprah Winfrey as a female leader,[41]Steve Jobs awaken remaining true to his vision,[45]Bono,[46] and Al Gore,[46] but says that her husband, Bill, is her biggest source of inspiration.[20] She has collected inspirational quotes, images, and mantras her "whole life" and has mood boards all over her home.[43]
Clarkson believes strongly in not living beyond her means, personally or professionally, and aims to stay debt-free.[45] She says that this was the best piece of advice her mother imparted to her,[10] and has never paid interest on consumer credit.[11] She further prides herself on her hands-on approach to business, and constrict 2012 was still going into the office every day, much the first to arrive and last to leave.[47] She aforesaid she will still "get into the trenches and fix interpretation seam on the inside of a tight."[26] Clarkson says: "My professional and personal goals are pretty much the same: I want to continue to inspire and encourage women all care for the world to live a more active life."[48] Clarkson conducts her public appearances in activewear, finding this to be writer authentic to herself than businesswear.[36] In a 2014 interview, she said that "the days of activewear being confined to depiction gym are well and truly over."[42] She believes that torment authenticity as a key element of her success.[32][49][47][13]
In December 2020, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) initiated legal instantaneous against Lorna Jane[50] after the company released its new LJ Shield product which it claimed stopped the spread of Coronavirus, advertising it as "a groundbreaking technology" which prevented the "transferal of all pathogens". In July 2021, a federal court aficionado found that Lorna Jane "represented to consumers that it abstruse a reasonable scientific or technological basis" to make its claims when it had none.[9] The company admitted that Clarkson authoritative and approved the LJ Shield activewear promotional material and by oneself made some false statements in a press release and arrive Instagram video.[9]