The triple life of Denny Collins

At fifty nine and three quarters, Denny Collins has reached the age of reflection.
Once a young designer, then fashion agent and now manufacturer and retailer, he's not making his retirement address to the world nor is he at a career crossroad. Rather, he's paused to see what he's got in his life's butterfly net after 36 years in the fashion industry.
Of himself he says: "I have been going broke for 36 years. I am quite mad and very outspoken but luckily I have a sense of fair play and I have never failed to pay an account."
Sharing his eccentricities and triumphs and downers for the last 25 years is his partner Victoria Cooper. It is her name that is on their day dresses and sportswear label, along with four boutiques that have survived for 12 years running only her garments. The company also makes Luli swimwear and is about to launch a designer-at-a-price jean simply called 'Cooper' which will retail under $100. Collins says this end of the market is overpriced with designer jeans asking between $130 and $250.
Collins rates Victoria Cooper 'the smartest person I know, who can do everything', a claim not hard to justify when you look at her career. She opened the first Country Road shop in NSW for Steve Bennett and stayed to see the retailer dominate the yuppie market throughout Australia. She left in 1982 to take a try at making childrenswear. A year later she met Collins, a noisy, high profile fashion agent who, with a sweep of the hand, suggested she cut up her left over fabric and make young adult garments out of it. The Victoria Cooper label grew wings and after a year they abandoned the fashion agency business and became full time manufacturers and life partners.
The company operates from its own premises in Young Street, Waterloo. It is a tyAnother story that the swing tickets tell is about the retail selling prices that are printed on them. Retailers can sell below them it they want, but if they sell at the printed price they will make between 120 and 130 per cent on imports and 100 per cent on Australian made. When there is a drop in duty or a rise in the Australian dollar, Collins neither drops his prices nor increases his own profits; he simply leaves the recommended retail as it is and loads the retail profit margin. Needless to say this has made Victoria Cooper customers very happy over recent times.
"The small retailers are doing it tough," Collins says. "They need every bit of help they can get to stay in business. The big stores have educated the consumer to expect sales all the time. They promote them continually, which leaves the boutiques in a very difficult position trying to sell at normal prices. Yet those same boutiques are the lifeblood of fashion. Victoria and I have never seen a department store Caring for customers and staff (bonuses are a regular part of the outgoings) is only a tiny part of Denny Collins' care regime. Life has shown him what abandonment is like. Deserted by his father at three, his mother died when he was 12 and in the same year he lost his grandmother. He ran away from a conniving aunt to live in a boarding house at 16 to self-start his career. Through those tough years he remembers the care of the Salvation Army and now is one of its chief donors of toys. To bring focus and organisation to their giving, Collins and Cooper set up the Lucy Foundation - named after their beloved dog - which regularly donates to many charitable causes including RSPCA, Diabetics Australia, Dalwood Children's home, Waiora Special School, The Smith family, The Royal North Short Hospital, the Variety Club - the list goes on.
Being a sympathetic giver hasn't dulled Collin's wit or his sense of the absurd. He recalls a meeting with a young woman and her husband in Coffs Harbour 30 years ago. He felt sorry for their hopeless position as they tried to get retailers interested in board shorts bearing the ocker label 'Billabong'. "The second time around I wasn't so silly," Collins says. "I bought billabong shares."
He's got other heroes too. He rates the best retailer as Mary Reid at Woollahra, the best fashion agents as Andy Holt (WA), John Appleby (SA), Tony Byrne (Qld), Brian Warren (Qld), Fiona Smith (Qld), Yvonne And the biggest single order he ever took? $335,000 from Lowes. That was in 1980 - which also makes a broader comment about the plight of today's fashion agents.