Dutch Rubber-Boot Designer lives in a country without rain.

So, back to the rainless country thing: Well, we do have some rain, just not very much.You just may not expect a Rubber-Boot designer to live in Australia. Hi, my name is Renske. I'm not your average blond, blue eyed Dutch girl. I have dark brown hair and eyes. My father was born in Indonesia and I take after him. (My mother is a blondie with grey/green eyes.)

When I was 19 I wanted to be a Rubber-Boot designer.Actually, that's not true! I decided life in Holland wasn't exciting enough, (although there's plenty of occasions to use rubber-boots.) I took off to Australia, with my Dutch husband. The moment I arrived on the brown-baked shores with the painfully blue skies above, I knew I'd love it here. Fast forward 25 years (Oh my!)and you can now find me in Melbourne, in the lovely suburb of Williamstown, with my second husband, John, dog Pepe and cat Chubby. I was under the impression that rubber-boots would come in handy in Melbourne,but we've had drought after drought.

Life has been good and for the last 25 years I have been involved with artistic activities one way or the other.

I didn't start out as a Rubber-Boot designer.I started my current business 15 years ago, designing textiles, I called it Colours of Australia. The name came to me one night when I realized how much the brightness of light has influenced my colour choices in my work, (both commercial and non-commercial artwork.)

I started the business by hand painting fabrics, first scarves, then moving into table linen and bedlinen and ultimately into furnishing fabrics. All this was done, first from the garage, then from the shed in the back and later from a purpose built factory in Naval Base, a suburb south of Fremantle, where we lived.(Naval Base was just the name of the suburb, many of my customers thought I had a never ending parade of handsome boys in front of my door....not true!)I still wasn't a Rubber-Boot designer!

Fremantle is in Western Australia, a suburb of Perth, one of the most isolated places on earth. The next city is Adelaide, about 3 hours flying east, then another hour and a bit to get to Melbourne. So, with our eye on our business, we decided to move to Melbourne in 2002.

As an artist and designer I have always been interested in textiles, colour and texture. About seven years ago we decided we had to go off-shore for some of our manufacturing. This opened up the range of products we could do and I loved the idea of hand painted rainboots (we call them gumboots) with matching umbrellas and raincoats.I had become a Rubber-Boot designer!

Now that I was a Rubber-Boot designer I had to decide who to design for.I first saw this as a kids product but for the fun of it did about 12 pairs of adult sized boots too. Well, that was it! Sales took of like a rocket, we were the only company in the WORLD! to hand paint rubber boots.The journey of how that was developed can be read in the 'How we make our Boots' section later.

The business really took of, we started exporting our products world wide and here we are! We have customers all over the world. They love the bright colours and simple designs and the fact that our products can be used! They're not just decorative.

Ofcourse, all good things get copied, and we didn't escape that fate either. But, I know we were the first to do this product and I am very proud of our achievements. I could write a book about the adventures of manufacturing in China. It is a rollercoaster ride, exciting, exhilirating and extremely difficult, leaving you ultimately wiser but not always richer!

My job as designer is ongoing and I am always looking for new ideas, colours and designs and products to put them on. My love of textiles is still burning strong and I feel fortunate that I can do so many of the things I love.

Rainboots, Wellies, Rubber Boots or Gumboots, whatever you'd like to call them, have evolved over the last ten years in a way no-one could have foreseen. Some big names in the fashion industry have been involved in designing rubber boots and there's lots of exciting designs, styles and colours around nowadays. Some of those can be found right here.(I had to say that!)

I'm not just a Rubber-Boot designer, I now also design Kloggies, Kids rainboots of course and we're doing more Fashion Boots and we have Funky Workboots coming up soon. Most of our designs are still hand painted although we're experimenting with print as well. We have some Tall Boots that have a mobile phone pocket, again a FIRST in the world. (Sorry, I don't mean to brag but ideas get copied so fast, you have to get out there!)

Anyway, I love to get your feedback, feel free to email me. For now at: renske@coloursofaustralia.com

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