Collette Dinnigan offloads her first shop in Sydney’s eastern suburbs
Fashion designer Collette Dinnigan has sold the retail shop in Sydney’s Paddington that launched her career for some $1.7 million.
The property at 33 William Street was booked to go under the hammer on July 7 but sold pre-auction on July 1 as “a great price” was offered, selling agent Ivan Bresic, from BresicWhitney, said.
A local owner-occupier bought the 74-square-metre terrace and will be using it as an office.
The property sold for nearly $23,000 a square metre in terms of land rate.
The terrace sports a Parisian boutique vibe. Photo: Supplied
Opened in 1992, Dinnigan’s first retail shop helped cement Paddington’s reputation as Sydney’s premier boutique fashion destination. She also lived in the second floor of the building.
The designer moved into a larger store at 104 Queen Street, Woollahra, but vacated it in 2014 as she downsized her retail and wholesale operations, which saw the closure of her stores in Sydney, Melbourne and London.
Four years later, Dinnigan has decided she had “no use for the (William Street) property”, which she had been using as an investment, Mr Bresic said.
Dinnigan bought the original shop for $625,000 in 1998, Domain Group records show.
Collette Dinnigan once lived in the top floor of the terrace. Photo: Supplied
In the same year, she bought the business’s current headquarters at 22-24 Hutchinson Street, Surry Hills, for $1,225,000, which has been proposed for a $7-million conversion into 11 apartments by eastern suburbs developer Addenbrooke.
Dinnigan is as much a property investor as she is a fashion designer, earning more than $82,000 a year in rental income from her Milton Airbnb guest house, which she sold in February this year. That had revised price expectations of $2.95 million.
She hasn’t sold out of the area just yet, still owning the 1.21-hectare property next door, purchased for $830,000 in 2006.
The fashion designer’s headquarters could be redeveloped into apartments. Photo: Supplied
The 52-year-old has traded multiple residential properties in Sydney’s eastern suburbs in the past, including her brother Seamus Dinnigan’s former cottage in Paddington, which she bought for $1,925,000 in March 2017.
Just one month after that, she picked up another Paddington home on Brown Street for $2,225,000.
Dinnigan and her husband Bradley Cocks are working on an upmarket short-term rental accommodation portfolio.
Mr Bresic said while a property with celebrity connections doesn’t necessarily add more to the sale price, some buyers did look at the William Street property simply because it was Dinnigan’s original store.
“It certainly attracts more attention; I had several enquiries from buyers who said ‘oh, that’s Collette’s shop, that’s Collette’s shop’.”
About 100 groups enquired about the property and 14 made inspections.
