Lisa Gorman’s Guide to Gertrude Street – and the Colourful New Store Bringing Her Back

Lisa Gorman is finishing a slice of cheesecake from Morning Market when Broadsheet arrives at Kikki K’s new flagship store on Gertrude Street.

It’s one of a selection of pastries a friendly customer dropped off for the team on opening day. There’s a palpable sense of excitement as locals who have been walking past for weeks, wondering what was behind the papered-over windows, are finally able to drop in. During our chat, Chris Gill from Northside Records – a store Gorman has shopped at for years – pops by to see how it’s going.

“It smells new,” he says.

It’s an apt observation. Sure, the store is literally new, but so is almost everything about Kikki K.

Gorman joined the beloved Melbourne stationery brand as creative director at the tail end of 2023. In just over two years, she has expanded the business well beyond its stationery roots, introducing categories she says align with its core proposition. “Kikki K is a very useful brand.”

With that in mind, stationery is no longer the sole focus. It’s still a core part of the range, but apparel, bags bottles and luggage now also occupy a significant amount of floor space.

But Gorman’s influence is perhaps most visible in the use of colour across every category. She’s pushed Kikki well beyond the neutral palettes and whimsical woodland motifs that helped make it popular in the early 2000s.

“Many people know Kikki K as a cute little beige and pink stationary brand from their childhood,” she says. “We’ve stepped a fair way from hazelnut and rose.” Those were, she notes, the brand’s two best-selling colourways before her tenure.

Today, you’ll find poppy red denim jackets, butter yellow jumpsuits, plum-hued suitcases and black bucket bags accented with neon orange details. When we speak, Gorman is wearing one of next season’s pieces: a cinnamon-hued jumpsuit with a silver zip in the front.

Everything is meant to be customisable – not simply through monogramming (though the shop has a machine for that), but through the way customers combine colours, products and styles. “What I want to be able to offer the people that walk into the store is an experience that almost challenges their ideas around colour,” she says.

That philosophy extends to the store’s design. The Gertrude Street space is the first Kikki K location to open during Gorman’s tenure, and the brand’s first new high-street store in more than a decade.

Instead of a plain white box retail fit-out, customers are greeted by cork tiles, a masonite pegboard wall and Kelly green finishes that echo Gorman’s colour-washed home kitchen and the iconic green of Melbourne trams.

Gorman is passionate about local shopping and wants Kikki K stores to respond to their surroundings. “I think in a place like Gertrude Street, you’re incredibly influenced by the street. You don’t [open] here if you’re not inspired by your neighbours and the community [of] shops here.”

Having lived in Fitzroy for the past 20 years – and in Melbourne’s inner-north since moving there from Warrnambool at 18 – she knows the area well. “It’s been my stomping ground [for] forever.”

The businesses around the area have also helped shape her creative sensibility. She points to a handful of long-time favourites that continue to inspire her, from record stores and bakeries to fashion boutiques and design-led retailers.

Gill’s record store across the street has been her go-to, picking up funk albums and a number of gifts for friends. “Obviously, if you want a bit of funk, Chris is your man.” And while she thinks Morning Market is “gorgeous, not just for their coffee, but also the products they sell there,” her “favourite bakery in the world” is Fatto a Mano. She knows the owner-operators by name and especially loves the gluten-free brownies. “[They] are off the charts.”

Perhaps the least Melbourne thing about her is that she’s “a bit sporadic” with her coffee consumption. “When I’m in my coffee drinking moments, I tend to go to Archie’s.”

Havn is another local favourite, with Gorman praising the retailer for introducing international brands to Gertrude Street. She also admires nearby designer Megan Parks’s eponymous store. “I often jump on the tram to work, and I spend a lot of time sitting outside Megan Parks’s beautiful store at the tram stop. She has amazing product; her design sense is gorgeous.”

Unsurprisingly, given her affinity for colour, Gorman loves Mud ceramics. “Mud have such a beautiful eye for colour and there’s something quite special about a store that sells one thing like Mud does. It’s a bit like looking at this wall,” she says, referring to a shelf lined with solidly coloured notebooks at the new flagship. “There was a joke at the office that they probably won’t see me again. It feels quite homely being here.”

This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Kikki K.