Melbourne Style is the place to pick up a great gift with a Melbourne (or Australian) flavour. It's in Clarendon Street, South Melbourne, just around the corner from one of my favourite haunts, The South Melbourne Market. As any good Melburnian would know, the market is the home of the beloved 'South Melbourne Market Dim Sim' (my husband regularly gets his fix there). Anyway, back to Melbourne Style...they've recently released a series of 12 Melbourne silk scarves - my favourites are:
Melbourne buildings, featuring "colourful sketches of Melbourne's Town Hall, Magistrates Court, GPO, Flinders Street Station, St Pauls Cathedral, Manchester Unity, Le Louvre, Baptist Church, Shrine of Remembrance, Immigration Museum and State Library" - all iconic Melbourne buildings:
Melbourne Tree, featuring "a tree design containing a variety of local Australian birds, and embellished with a mad mix of local floral blossoms from banksia to wisteria.The names and addresses of a dozen of Melbourne's legendary parks and gardens are rendered in fine script between the branches":
Roo Map, featuring a "kangaroo motif rendered in a collage of 19th & 20th century Melbourne street and botanical maps and underlaid with script text recounting data on the life cycle, habitat, export, and use and abuse of kangaroos":
And the scarves come packaged in these bright boxes (tho' must admit that lime green is not a colour that I particularly like):
All in all, a much nicer souvenir than a cheesy snow dome or tea towel.
My other (non-Melbourne related) favourites at Melbourne Style include...this fabulous bamboo rocker:
and these steel rabbit sculptures by Melbourne artist Peter McKlisky (which come in various sizes):
[Images from Melbourne Style]
