Louise Owen, a regular on best-dressed lists and a social scene favourite, has built a dedicated following for her beautiful mixed-media artwork based on the female form with a heavy influence from the world of high fashion.
Born in outback Queensland, Dr Louise Owen, began painting and playing with drawing the female form when she was a four-year-old. Her Mum, Margaret, also an artist, not only taught her to paint but helped Louise developed her life-long love of fashion from the back room of the family’s drapery business in Brisbane.
Louise spent many hours here, relishing in the fine fabrics and tailoring that were produced from the store and honing her painting skills for a career in art and fashion but her practical, Finnish-born father, Charles, suggested she study medicine. Never one to do anything by halves, Louise got to studying and set to work gaining five degrees, culminating in a PHD, but her painting and love of fashion never faded.
Louise had a highly successful career in the corporate medical industry for many years but her love of painting was always simmering underneath. She developed her first collection of works titled Mon Amour under the name elaurante (pron: elle-er-ron-tay) – her father’s surname in 2018. In recent years, a three-year stint living in Texas, USA brought her love of painting back into focus and she successfully launched her second collection, Botanical, in 2020 at Tootsies Luxury Designer Boutique in Houston.
The collection was a hit and was shown in Galleria Neiman Marcus, The WM Interior Design Firm and Alice + Olivia boutiques. The works, available in a multitude of formats, are sold from Louise’s website elaurante.com, and delivered to fans around the world.
Her latest venture, a debut premium made-to-order fashion collection based on her artworks, will be released at a gala event in Brisbane November 11. The collection consists of garments featuring direct prints of her original artwork on luxurious silk fashioned into beautifully tailored separates. Other pieces in the collection are taken straight off the canvas and translated from 2D paintings into stunning original limited-edition handcrafted pieces.
Louise’s network in Houston, Texas, is so excited to get their hands on the new collection the prestige retailers she has worked with for her art collections have already asked her to present trunk shows for the new fashion range in the USA. She intends to visit them in early 2024.
Louise lives in Brisbane with her husband and has two children.
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