BRIGHT SPARK

I respect traditional craft so much,” designer Lesleigh Jermanus explains over a cup of tea during a recent week-long deluge that hit the eastern seaboard. After the year she’s had, it’s understandable how this passion crystallised. She’s speaking from an undercover balcony in central Sydney and radiates ease despite the downpour. Likewise, she contradicts the gloomy weather in golden drop earrings and a micro-floral, tiered cotton dress by Alémais, the label she launched in September 2020 while much of the world was shuttered indefinitely. “Without that space in time, I probably wouldn’t have had the stillness to sit and really