Growing up Kaylene (who grew up in Port Kembla) found it hard to find clothing she resonated with or had “any individuality.”
She says, “I started making a lot of clothes, mostly just op shopping for old vintage sheets that had great Paisley designs on them, and I cut them up and sew them into dresses.”
Making clothes was a personal practice for Kaylene back then.
She says, “When I first graduated from school I thought I was going to be a psychologist, or more specifically a radio psychiatrist like Frasier Crane, but then I realised that was a very misguided way to choose a career.”
She set her sights on Musicology, which seemed fitting for a lover of music and musician herself but there was something else in the design of Kaylene’s life that awaited her.
At Ultimo TAFE, Kaylene would eventually start a Fashion Design course which would thread together a new pattern of what was to come. After graduating from her studies, Kaylene went onto intern in New York for a year, begin a label under her own name and launch two collections, and teach at the TAFE for seven years.
Yet even after she stopped pursuing her own label, Kaylene still had “bug to keep creating.” She says, “I had the idea for a while of doing punk rock knitted garments because, at the time, I hadn’t really seen anything like that.”
She started by approaching bands to adapt their album art and posters into knitwear, Kaylene started with to name a few The Hard Ons, The Meanies and King Gizzard and Lizard Wizard.
It was a project when it first started, Kaylene says, without a global vision but it was the start of what would be WAH-WAH Australia and collaboration has been knitted into the wool ever since.
From the bedroom of her Leichhardt sharehouse in 2015 to now 11 years later,now back and living and working on Dharawal Country, WAH-WAH has moved down the coast, been worn by music enthusiasts across the country and even across seas.
Kaylene tells me, “A huge turning point [for the brand] was when Noel Fielding started wearing them on Great British Bake Off.I didn’t think much about it when his stylist got in touch. I just sent the samples over.”
Although she was a fan of Fielding when she was younger, she says, she wasn’t aware of the viewership of the show.
In 2019, Fielding was seen wearing WAH-WAH multiple times for GBBO and has continued to support the brand in later shows since.
This turning point would eventually lead to the WAH-WAH x Noel Fielding Collaboration from December 2021. The design featuring art by Fielding was a tribute to David Bowie and even has an appearance from Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh) on the back.
WAH-WAH has always been a brand of collaboration but also of community and charity. Every garment gives back to the artists who have collaborated in designs and Kaylene has also endeavoured to make designs where profits are donated to causes that are important to her. In the past four years, she has been able to donate $210,000 to various causes.
There is love woven into the story of WAH-WAH, Kaylene builds a brand designed to support through charity and create art through community. She has had the opportunity to work with artists she admires like Kaylene Whisky, a design she considers one of her favourites.
The future of WAH-WAH is just as vibrant as its history. Kaylene discusses an upcoming design with a band and the exciting process of collaborating in person together while they were on tour. She says she can’t reveal too much but the visuals might not be what we expect from the band—a new story for the image of a band told in language of superfine merino wool.
Kaylene says, “I try and design every single garment to be a hero piece and by that, I mean ‘all killer, no filler.’
“Each piece has so much work imbued into it that story and because I can be small and release things when they’re ready, it means I don’t have to pump out styles to meet deadlines.”
Despite the occasional limited run like the Amyl and the Sniffers collaboration, WAH-WAH Australia creates designs that are meant to stay. Interest is what keeps the knits in stock.
“I think that’s what really sets it apart to the rest of the industry, where it’s in season, it’s out of season.”
More than knitwear, Kaylene says, her designs are “a work of art.”
And that’s all the more reason to stock up on some warmer threads and make a statement with what you wear this autumn.
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