Under The Spell

In less than a decade, SPELL & THE GYPSY COLLECTIVE has blossomed from a Byron Bay market stall into a multimillion-dollar business with a superfan following. So what makes the brand so BEWITCHING?

- Grace O'Neill

THE PHRASE “CULT STATUS’ is bandied about nowadays, used to describe hot-for-a-minute brands or a dress/bag/shoe with a brief moment in the Instagram sun. The truth is, few deserve the title – but Spell & The Gypsy Collective may be a rare exception. First there’s the obvious stuff: the 933,000 Instagram followers and celebrity endorsements from the likes of Margot Robbie, Elsa Pataky and Blake Lively. Then there’s the fact customers line up around the block of the brand’s Byron Bay flagship when a new collection drops, or that there’s a Facebook group dedicated to buying, selling and swapping Spell wares, with more than 12,000 members. Even further proof: a group of Spell diehards recently launched the first-ever “Spell Sisters” retreat in California’s Palm Desert, replete with themed nights and photo shoots – an event organised totally independently of the brand.

In short: there is something special about Spell. “I think it goes back to the fact that the brand started at the markets, from the start we had the joy of talking to our customers directly,” says Elizabeth Abegg, who co-founded the label with her sister Isabella Pennefather in 2009. “Those markets were my entry into the world of fashion because I didn’t come from the fashion industry, so our strategy for the brand wasn’t based on a dialogue with our peers or with wholesalers or manufacturers, we were basing everything off comments on our blogs or social media or face-to-face with the customers. We’ve never really wanted to let go of that.”