Stopover in Sydney: Three creative leaders share how to enjoy the city like a local | Canada Voices

Mud Australia founder Shelley Simpson is sharing the city’s love of beautifully plated food with the world

Shelley Simpson’s creative focus shifted from acting and singing to ceramics when she moved from Melbourne to Sydney and sat down at a housemate’s pottery wheel. “I couldn’t stop and I didn’t want to do anything else,” she says. “I wanted to just have that space so I could sit and make things.”

Another move, from working in a backyard shed to a studio in the Surry Hills neighbourhood where many of the city’s lifestyle publications were based, prompted her next career jump. Editors, stylists and photographers would pop in to request specific pieces for shoots in colours that would complement a dish.

Today, Simpson’s brand, Mud Australia, creates pieces in a vast rainbow of shades at its sprawling headquarters in Marrickville, one of Sydney’s inner west suburbs. The pieces are shipped around the world, including to its own boutiques in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Los Angeles, New York and London, plus shop-in-shops like an annex at Hopson Grace in Toronto.

Sydney’s maker culture offered a support system early in her career. “I think you can make a living out of it here if you have a little studio and make your own things and go to the markets. That’s certainly how I started,” she says. “Ceramic artists are generally, incredibly generous people, and I don’t think that that’s an Australia thing or a Sydney thing. They teach each other things. It is the nature of people who do something that’s very calming all day long.”

The city’s food scene influences the aesthetic of Mud’s pieces today. “It’s such a diverse, multicultural society. You’ve got a lot of Asian food, and we’ve got all these amazing shapes that lend themselves to that style of cuisine,” she says. The colours of her pieces often have a nostalgic origin. “My pistachio colour reminds me of the interior of a caravan that I stayed in once,” she says. “Colour has that kind of memory.”

Simpson’s list of visitor recommendations focuses on options near and far from her company’s headquarters. “Marrickville is a really interesting part of Sydney. Every weekend, people are walking around and going to different breweries and bakeries and interesting art galleries,” she says. “The walk from Bondi is fantastic, but the trick is you go to Clovelly or Coogee or further down and walk back to Bondi. Then you’ve worked up an appetite and there are lots of great places to eat.”

For more, visit mudaustralia.com

Photographer Bec Parsons publishes a magazine that captures the ease of Aussie fashion

The cover of the 45^th edition of Love Want, the Australian fashion magazine that photographer Bec Parsons publishes with her husband, Bart Celestino, features model Jean Campbell. In a lacy Dior dress accessorized with a pair of hydrangea stems, the Brit slouches into a leather armchair, her gaze locked to the camera’s lens.

The calm, cool and collected shot encapsulates Love Want’s aesthetic but it wasn’t captured by Parsons, herself. It’s the work of Ukraine-born photographer Anna Daki, one of a long list of international collaborators that contribute to the publication’s worldly point of view. “I think everybody that picks it up actually thinks we’re British or that we’re an English magazine,” Parsons says. “I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing.”

Parsons and Celestino started Love Want as a zine in 2010. “Over the years, it’s naturally progressed into what it is today, which is a beautiful hard copy, fashion journal,” she says. “We don’t really call ourselves an Australian magazine because we sit on the international circuit and we’re sold internationally. It’s probably 80/20, like 80 per cent happens overseas and 20 per cent happens in Australia.”

Australia is home to many local editions of international titles, many of which Parsons has shot for, including Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and InStyle. She also snapped the cover and fashion feature for the Beyond issue of The Globe and Mail Style Magazine. All of this work helps her understand how the Aussie style scene is positioned internationally.

“Australia, overall, has a very casual, laid-back approach to fashion. When I’m in Australia, I am more relaxed in my style than when I travel. We have lots of beaches and everyone wears a lot of casual clothes,” she says. Trips overseas for shoots and other projects are when she focuses on dressing up, and Sydney offers a long list of retailer and designer resources for such occasions. “There’s a great store in Sydney called Incu and they have lots of amazing brands, international and local,” she says. “Bassike is a great local brand. So are Aje, Camilla and Marc and Christopher Esber. They all have their own unique kind of placement. I think that’s probably why they all are successful.”

Parsons’s go-to inspiration points in the city are galleries like the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and a bookshop called Kinokuniya, but nothing beats getting away. “Travelling for me is what actually makes me feel the most inspired,” she says. “The older you get, you just want to have those first experiences again, and I find that’s really hard if you stay in the same place.”

For more, visit love-want.com

ON LOCATION

Capella Sydney

As handsome as your suite at Capella’s Sydney property will be, the hotel’s team wants you to get out and explore as much as possible. Called Culturists, these concierges are as adept at making a restaurant recommendation as scheduling an architecture tour that guides you through the planning evolution of the city’s CBD. The hotel itself is a local landmark. Formerly the Department of Education, the sandstone structure now houses 192 rooms and suites, restaurants Brasserie 1930 and Aperture, and an airy lobby topped with a kinetic sculpture by Studio Drift.

Stays from AUD$800/night through capellahotels.com

Architect Shelley Indyk’s latest hotel project reflects an urbane sensibility through colour

Decades before architect Shelley Indyk was hired to collaborate on the interiors for the new 25hours Hotel in Sydney, she purchased a nearby building in the Paddington neighbourhood to house her practice and raise her family. She had watched the hotel structure, the historic Olympia Theatre, evolve for decades. “I think I even once thought, ‘Maybe a whole gang of us should buy this building,’” she says.

The property’s latest identity coalesced when 25hours, the Hamburg-founded brand, signed on to manage the project as its first destination in the Southern Hemisphere. The resulting design reflects Indyk’s desire to see every project as a fresh start: Public spaces pay homage to its cinematic past via a restored ticket booth and furniture pieces reference famous films; while guest rooms alternate colour palettes, graphic artwork and bold carpets from floor to floor.

“I don’t really want to copy myself,” she says. “We do our best work when we’re thinking freshly outside the box. And there were heaps of room for that.” Colour is big part of how she differentiates a space and she looks to visual art for ideas on how to create a room’s palette or design a floor covering.

The natural environment has a big impact, too. “I think there’s much more focus on sustainability, environmental issues, ecological issues,” she says of architecture and interiors in Sydney today. “We call it ‘designing with country,’ but really, it’s about Indigenous principles and the way Indigenous communities lived on this land.” Greater consideration is also being given to how people use spaces and where they are. “I think that’s really happening all over the world,” she says. “There is a level of internationalism now.”

To experience this, one of the places she sends visitors is the Paddington Reservoir Gardens, a lush, sunken space under arcades of brick arches. “That is a fabulous bit of urban work,” she says. “It takes me to Europe.” She also suggests a visit to the new Fish Market, which reopened after being relocated this year, but notes some locals find the move controversial.

The accessibility to the city’s harbourscape, however, can’t be beat. “The Opera House, the Botanic Garden, they’re very powerful icons,” she says. “You’ve got to explore.”

For more, visit indykarchitects.com.au

ON LOCATION

25Hours Hotel the Olympia

Open since the fall of last year, the Olympia is located along Paddington’s main shopping street, which leads to laneways lined with Sydney’s charming terrace homes. Start your day with breakfast at the Palomar and end it with a sunset cocktail upstairs on the terrace at Monica. The hotel’s arthouse aesthetic pays homage to the building’s cinema origins, as does a reception desk backed with videotapes that can be signed out by guests. Some rooms offer discreet balconies, while others incorporate original details, like an oculus focusing your view downtown.

Stays from AUD$306/night through 25hours-hotels.com

Outsider interest

These are the spots that stood out to the Style Magazine team on their stopover in Sydney

Art Gallery of New South Wales

Divided between two buildings, including a light-filled 2022 addition by the Japanese firm SANAA, this gallery includes the Yiribana exhibition space. The expansive room houses a collection of work by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists. Upcoming exhibitions include When the Mountain is High, the Moon Rises Higher, a Takashi Murakami retrospective of over 150 career-spanning works, opening Dec. 5. artgallery.nsw.gov.au

Bondi to Coogee Walk

The best thing to do after a seemingly endless flight down under is to walk – and walk and walk. One of the most notable strolls in Sydney is the Bondi to Coogee path that takes you past surfer-filled bays and the city’s iconic rock pools. Try the route in reverse and end up at Sean’s on the Bondi waterfront. Its coastal decor (there are scallop lampshades and a whale-shaped ceiling medallion collaged together using clam and mussel shells) is a charming backdrop for a prix fixe menu focused on hearty staples including marinated pipis (a meaty clam) and perfectly pink lamb chops. seansbondi.com

Dinosaur Designs

At boutique locations in the Strand, a grand, Victoria shopping arcade, as well as Paddington and Redfern, this jewellery and housewares brand sells its made-in-Sydney selection of resin and metal pieces. The former material is used to create mesmerizing movement in chunky bangles and hefty vases. The latter pulls focus to the sculptural forms of rings and necklaces in sterling silver and brass. dinosaurdesigns.com

Fred’s

On Paddington’s main drag, a discreet storefront hides this lofty destination for farm-to-table fare. With its shabby chic decor and cooking stations positioned throughout the dining room, the space channels the ease of Napa or Provence. Start with fougasse, its signature bread, and end with dark chocolate sorbet, both soaked in the smoothest of olive oils. In between, there are the requisite oysters, hand-cut pastas and a bold plate of beets, nectarines, olives and labneh. merivale.com

Grandfathers

On Angel Place, an alleyway downtown, a cinematic dining room drenched in red and black is home to this destination for Chinese cuisine. All the content creators who’ve shown up for the aesthetic will tell you to order the dumpling platter and the prawn toast, and they’ll be right. Supplement with a generous platter of pipis with XO sauce and crispy vermicelli plus cocktails like a five-spice Manhattan. grandfathers.com

Museum of Contemporary Art Australia

On the top floor of the MCA gallery, its restaurant Canvas offers vistas of the Harbour Bridge and the towering cruise ships moving in and out of their berths. The view on your plate is equally as notable: artful compositions of snapper crudo or scallops with prosciutto and pickled carrots. If you visit the gallery below before February, don’t miss Robyn Kahukiwa: My Ancestors Are Always with Me, an exhibition of the vibrant work of the late, New Zealand-based Māori painter. mca.com.au

Saint Peter

Anchoring the Grand National hotel, a 14-room boutique property amid the ornate townhouses of Paddington, this is one of Sydney’s top reservations to snag. If the tasting menu seems overly ambitious after a day of dining out, book a table in the bar for a choose-your-own-adventure seafood feast of olives stuffed with ‘nduja-marinated tuna and a flight of local oysters, all chased with a glass of the restaurant’s own refreshing semillon. saintpeter.com.au

Studio Henry Wilson

Off Paddington’s main drag, this space is stocked with lighting, objects, hardware and furniture that celebrate the texture of raw metal. Incense burners and catch-alls have surprising weight, while wall scones and table lamps play with angles and folds. The studio has also partnered with that Aussie-founded icon of elevated living, Aesop, on an oil burner that warms your favourite scent via a discreet tea light. studiohenrywilson.com

Sydney Opera House

The city’s architectural marvel can be experienced with varying levels of detail, from a cruise by on the public ferries that connect the city’s harbourside neighbourhoods to guided tours that take you through its brutalist lobbies and vast theatres before showtime. One of the best options is a Tour & Dine program that includes a meal at Midden by Mark Olive, an on-site, al fresco eatery that prioritizes Indigenous ingredients. The performance calendar for the rest of 2026 includes the Bell Shakespeare theatre company’s Macbeth in the Playhouse venue, a Ring Cycle finale of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung in the Concert Hall and lots of holiday season happenings. sydneyoperahouse.com

For more on travelling to Sydney, visit australia.com

The Globe and Mail Style Magazine travelled as a guest of Tourism Australia, which did not review or approve this article. Stories are based on merit; The Globe does not guarantee coverage.