Living courageously

ONE OF AUSTRALIA’S MOST SUCCESSFUL FASHION ENTREPRENEURS, ACTIVEWEAR DESIGNER AND AUTHOR LORNA JANE CLARKSON TALKS ABOUT EMPOWERMENT AND FOLLOWING YOUR DREAMS

- Lorna Jane Clarkson

Something that comes up multiple times while talking with Lorna Jane Clarkson is the importance of embracing diversity and loving our unique quirks. What a boring, vanilla world it would be if everyone was exactly the same, she muses.

Buzzing with energy and dressed in a lilac pantsuit, her blazer open to reveal the words Fearlessly Female scrawled across a tank top, there is definitely nothing vanilla about this woman.

The day we meet, she has been bouncing between airports, hotel rooms and media appearances, yet she is still trying to find time in her schedule to squeeze in some exercise. A high intensity class? Hot yoga? Perhaps Pilates? Nope, what she really wants is just a simple walk.

“I love walking, it’s so underrated,” she says. “People think that exercise has to be all or nothing and I used to think like that too, but it doesn’t. Just do something, anything!”

For someone who is such a beacon of health and fitness (and doing it all in style), she wasn’t a particularly athletic child and was far more likely to be found with a book in her hands than a ball. It wasn’t until later, when she realised how good exercise made her feel, that she made it a central part of her life.

Made the leap

If you’re unfamiliar with the Lorna Jane story, once upon a time she was a dental therapist, teaching aerobics classes on the side. Unhappy with the available choices for workout gear, she decided to get busy on the sewing machine creating pieces of her own.

When she quickly became inundated with orders from her class members, she said goodbye to the dental surgery and hello to working full-time as a designer.

Three decades on, and hundreds of retail stores later, the 54-year-old is a businesswoman, creative, author and wife, and is the person who is credited with coining the term “activewear”.