It’s a hot day in Sydney’s Centennial Park, and Julie Bishop is pulling on a sea-foam trench before stepping into long, dry grass. One of The Weekly crew members thumps the earth with a large stick as nervous laughter follows jokes about snakes. Julie gamely forges into the scrub, but something else is lurking in the undergrowth: A paparazzo. Julie shrugs it off. During 20 years in federal parliament, she grew accustomed to her quotes becoming the page one splash the following day. Now, six years after leaving politics, she remains a subject of fascination for the media. In her third act, the lawyer-turned-parliamentarian performs a range of roles that includes serving as the Chair of the King’s Trust in Australia, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Myanmar, and a friend of the fashion department store David Jones. This combination of influence and glamour is catnip to paps.
“That’s one of the challenges of public life, generally,” she says later. “You’re seen as public property, and the personal side has to be subsumed as much as you can. That can be difficult.”
Julie became an official friend of David Jones after she and CEO Scott Fyfe spoke about how she could continue to support Australian fashion, which was something she became known for during her years as foreign minister. The industry was grateful for her advocacy, but some of her Canberra colleagues sneeringly referred to her as the “Minister for Fashion”.
“It was meant to be a derogatory term,” Julie says. “It was meant to be trivialising the work I was doing for the Australian fashion industry. As if you couldn’t hold down a serious job as foreign minister and still be supporting a creative industry. I embraced it and wore it as a badge of pride.”
Furthermore, it was common for foreign and trade ministers to promote local commodities and industries. Julie felt the fashion industry had long been overlooked.
“It was a significant contributor to Australian GDP. It was a significant export item. And it employed thousands of people across Australia. The creativity and innovation from our designers, our stylists, our models, photographers, were world class.”
Plus, Julie was always passionate about it.
During her time in the high-profile cabinet role, many column inches were dedicated to Julie’s outfits. A lilac feathery gown she chose for the 2017 Midwinter Ball triggered headlines. Ditto when she sparkled on the backbench in a royal blue sequined gown by Rachel Gilbert for the first federal budget after she left cabinet. (Julie told the press that she was celebrating the return to surplus.)
Significantly less attention was given to the grunt work she led to open doors for designers and manufacturers. She promoted Australian wool to activewear manufacturers. She created grants to support designers to travel and train overseas. In 2016, she flew to Jakarta for security talks, then changed into a black gown (Rachel Gilbert again) and attended a fashion week event. Her work helped to open the lucrative Indonesian market to Australian designers.
Julie believes her fashion diplomacy “gave a sophisticated edge to Australia’s image overseas that perhaps had been lacking previously,” she says, smiling. “If you were a French politician or an Italian politician, it would be expected of you to promote French fashion houses or Italian fashion houses.”
When she was contemplating life after politics, fashion was always going to figure in her future. “I did a self-appraisal,” she says. “What am I good at? And what am I not good at? What are my strengths? And what are my weaknesses? An honest appraisal of where I felt I could succeed, where I could dedicate my skills and talents and abilities. What was I passionate about? What would continue to get me up in the morning and get me going?”
She became the first female Chancellor of the Australian National University — a position she still holds. She created an eponymous strategic advisory firm. Julie reveals that, had it not been for the leadership skirmishes that plagued both government and opposition in the 2010s, she would have remained in parliament.
“I’d planned to stay on; I was planning to contest the 2019 election,” she says. “But I’d been in parliament for 20 years, and in the past six or seven years, I’d been [through] around five leadership challenges as deputy. For the most recent one, I felt I had no other choice but to stand as leader. That didn’t work out.”
Once she made up her mind to leave, she embraced the next phase. “I never look back; I don’t do regrets,” Julie says. “I look forward and learn lessons along the way.
“Once I announced I was leaving, a number of amazing opportunities came my way.”
In May 2023, she attended the coronation of King Charles III, where she took selfies in Westminster Abbey with Lionel Ritchie, who sat next to her. She knew the eyes of the world would be on her, and she made sure they saw Australian fashion.
“I was told to dress as if I was going to a royal wedding — they hadn’t had a coronation in a long time. So, I thought, what do you wear to a royal wedding?”
She decided on Zimmermann. Cream linen, adorned with flowers, and a hat by Nerida Winter, with custom embellishments.
Three months later, a private equity firm acquired Zimmermann in a deal that reportedly valued the business, which started at Sydney’s Paddington Markets, at more than $1 billion. It showed what Australian creators can do. But conditions are tough, and they need a champion.
“That is what the Australian fashion industry deserves, and it requires government support in the same way that other sectors of the economy receive support,” Julie says.
When Julie was a child, growing up in the Adelaide Hills on a cherry farm, her mother, Isabel, made most of her clothes. Or rather, she made clothes for Julie’s two older sisters, and Julie would inherit them, “whether they fitted me or not,” she says. Julie says that “without a doubt”, it was her mother’s skill and care in making clothes that ignited her love of fashion.
One of her earliest memories is of watching her mother make a ballgown.
“I think it was about 1960. She and my godmother spent hours making this pink tulle and lace ballgown. I watched every moment of her stitching. The night she came out wearing this ballgown, I was so emotional. I cried. She looked so beautiful.
“The transformation from my hardworking mum to a fairy princess — I remember that moment very clearly. I think my interest in fashion grounds from that moment.”
Her parents had a copy of National Geographic that featured a spread on Jackie Kennedy. “I pored over it. Not only the pictures of the White House, but what she was wearing,” Julie says. “I was transfixed by her image. I must have been six.”
As she approached her teens, she began to express her own individuality, saving up to buy her very first outfit: A pair of canary yellow bathers with a frilled skirt and a white and brown striped skivvy.
“I didn’t team them,” she clarifies. “Clearly, I didn’t have a stylist then. But I was very independent in my choices of what I wanted to wear.”
Her sense of style became a symbol of her pride in what she had achieved. For her final press conference as Australia’s first female Foreign Minister, she stepped out in a pair of blazing red shoes with a high, jewel-encrusted heel. They turned the news event into a viral moment. The heels are now part of a permanent display in the Museum of Australian Democracy.
“I’m proud that the pair of shoes I wore that day, that sent so many messages — different messages to different women — should be enshrined in a museum of democracy,” Julie says.
“But it was also a message about gender inequality,” she adds. The photo “had these sparkling red shoes, in a sea of scuffed black and brown shoes of the Canberra press gallery and in a sense that said it all. It certainly did send subliminal messages to women around the world.”
And those messages will keep on coming.
“I do reflect from time to time also on the firsts that I’ve been able to achieve,” Julie says. “Not that I set out to, but when you are the first [female] foreign minister in 113 years, or the first female chancellor of a national university in 70 years, you often ponder why it’s taken so long. But then I reflect that hopefully I will make it easier for the next woman to follow me.
In partnership with David Jones.
This article originally appeared in the March 2025 issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly. Pick up the latest issue at your local newsagent or subscribe so you never miss one!
