After 27 Years, Christine On Collins Says Goodbye

Christine Barro can’t help being a saleswoman. We’re in her two-storey Collins Street store, a 27-year-old fashion institution due to close in a few weeks. But Barro, in her signature all-black look (bar her blood-red lip and layered gold necklaces), is set on guiding me around the space, pointing out the pieces she loves from labels she’s cultivated relationships with, some of which span decades.

It’s second nature for Barro; she’s been doing this all her life. Her teenage shifts at Sydney’s David Jones led to her working her way up at the famous department store, Georges, first as a shop assistant, then as an esteemed buyer. She’s the woman responsible for first bringing Chanel, Fendi and Prada to Melbourne. Barro’s fingerprints are all over Melbourne’s fashion history.

She’s dressed generations of stylish women in prized womenswear from Australian designer Martin Grant (the pair met on a dance floor in a King Street nightclub) and millinery from London-based milliner Philip Treacy. Influential local fashion designers like Toni Maticevski, Grace Lillian Lee and Christopher Graf have been stocked here, as well as international names like Anya Hindmarch, Goossens Paris and Johnstons of Elgin.

Barro announced the shop’s closure in March, writing on social media, “The chrysalis is the hard outer skin that’s left behind after the caterpillar morphs into a butterfly – a creature free to fly the skies, land where it wants and carry beauty on its wings. It is the perfect metaphor for the life-change I feel ready to make after 50-plus years of cocooning the world’s creative riches into retail quarters.”

Barro is the butterfly, and the chrysalis is her shop. At 76, she’s ready for her next adventure. 

“We’re feeling very sad,” she says, when we finally take a seat at a table displaying Treacy’s millinery. “But we’ve been thinking of it for six months.” 

During Covid, Barro watched as friends switched careers, exploring new interests. Since that time, the shop has been closed on Mondays, which have become her “health attention days”. “I have many projects to do, and I can’t get to them because the Christine store is all about personal love and care. You have to be here. I can’t not.”

One of those projects is going through boxes and boxes of possessions left behind by her late husband Peter and their only child, David. David passed away in 2008 at the age of 15 due to Hunter syndrome, a rare degenerative condition. His father passed 10 years later from amyloidosis, another rare condition that causes misfolded protein build-up in organs. “My gorgeous Peter and David, I’ve got endless boxes to go through, and it’s going to be a very special, cathartic time to be enjoyed and experienced.”

This is a business that flourished because of Barro’s curatorial eye and genuine relationships with designers and clients. The store’s renowned salon teas gave clients an intimate look at new season collections. “We just work with two models, and our clients sit, and we do a show and tell, and we break for tea and then do more,” Barro says. “A garment comes alive on the human form.” 

As we speak, we’re interrupted multiple times by customers sadly embracing Barro. I meet a stylist Barro has worked with throughout the years, I meet another old friend of hers, and that friend’s daughter. This personal touch is rare in the digital age. “The contact with humans is going to be missed, isn’t it?” Barro says. (Though details are being ironed out, Barro is planning to continue trunk shows for select brands.)

When I ask Barro if she’s taken much of a break in the past 27 years, she laughs. She was 50 when she opened the first iteration of Christine in December 1999. Located on Flinders Lane, it got the nickname “Aladdin’s cave” thanks to a vast collection of eclectic apparel, accessories, fragrances and art housed below street level. 

Back then, she didn’t want to do an opening launch: “I mean, all that hoo-ha!” This time around, she’s allowing herself to celebrate. “Would you believe we’re finishing the day after my birthday? I do want to do some events for the clients… We might need to do three nights. One won’t be enough.”

Christine On Collins closes May 2.