International fashion labels retailed in Australia through small boutiques were also often captured by Bruno Benini, like Fiorucci from Italy and Laura Ashley from England. Bruno's unusual Australian settings for some of these shots make them uniquely memorable - like his shot of Di Sweeney inside the car wash that was opposite his studio at 62 Drummond Street in Carlton. Di Sweeney wears Bottega's newly imported blue Italian gumboots and jip-jacket wet weather suit of 1976. This is just one of over 250 photographic prints and several thousand photographic transparencies and negatives in the archive, which also includes contact sheets, posters, biographical material and many portraits of Australian and visiting actors, writers, artists, dancers, designers and pop singers who would pop into Bruno's studio, perhaps hoping to look as gorgeous as the models in Benini's elegant fashion photographs!
Anne-Marie Van de Ven, Curator 2009

Print created for 'Bruno Benini: fashion images 1956-1976' exhibition, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, Friday 12 February - Saturday 13 March 1999.

Photographic print, black and white, model Di Sweeney [Castion?], client Bottega Boutique, location car wash, by Bruno Benini, Drummond Street, Carlton, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 1976

Photographer: Benini, Bruno; Melbourne, Victoria; 1976

User: Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology; Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; 1999

2009/43/1-1/43

1976