Florence Broadhurst lived as she died - dramatically, with a lot of unanswered questions. A pioneering businesswoman, Broadhurst's 78 years comprised a number of incarnations, from singer to couture dressmaker, artist to celebrated designer. She changed her name and her look as often as she changed professions. And at the apex of her design career, she was brutally murdered at the hands of a suspected serial killer.
How the artistic vision of a girl born in 1899 in rural Australia is now coveted by upscale interior designers around the world, whose patterns inspire the collections of New York fashion designers and whose work is taught in London design schools, is almost too unbelievable to be true - a recurring theme in Broadhurst's life.
'She was such a liar, but she did it always with a purpose and it never crossed over into fraud,' says Helen O'Neill, author of the comprehensive biography Florence Broadhurst: Her Secret & Extraordinary Lives. 'The manner with which she did it, you can't help but think about how Madonna keeps reinventing herself; a very modern way of doing it.'
Her modern approach to life seeped into her pattern design, which made its way primarily onto wallpaper. Unschooled in the formalities of art, Broadhurst ran riot with her ideas, directing a team in the 1960s and '70s to create an incredible range of styles, all hand-made using silk screens.
Her prints span bold '60s patterns to delicate chinoiserie and dynamic colour combinations. The designs were often difficult to execute, and one false move could knock out the registration and destroy the work.
Broadhurst's early years showed few hints of her future success. Born near the mining town of Mount Perry, Queensland, she left at 19 to join a theatre troupe of drag queens, musicians and comedians touring Asia. This also sparked her lifelong obsession with reinvention, changing her name to Bobby Broadhurst as she performed across Asia.
