Linneys' Broome Cup masterpiece
Justin Linney is pulling out all stops to make sure his girlfriend Cat Golledge is the stand-out in the fashion stakes at tomorrow's Broome Cup.
Linney, who is assistant creative director of his family's jewellery business Linneys, has created a spectacular bespoke headpiece for Golledge to wear at the annual racing event, which is one of the hottest on WA's social calendar.
Made entirely of pearls and coming with a price tag of $5000, Linney told AAA he was spurred to create the one-off piece for Golledge after she spotted a similar design in a glossy fashion magazine.
"I said 'OK that's a bit of a challenge, let's see what we can do'," he said.
"I just wanted it to look different to the fascinators you commonly see and it's nice to even have a fascinator that's unique, because there's nothing worse than getting to an event and seeing someone with the same dress and the same hat."
Linney said the headpiece was a month in the making, with pearl graders taking three weeks to individually select the 112 pearls that feature in the one-off design.
"They're called Australian south sea seedless pearls," he said. "They're found in one in every 250 oysters, so they're a little bit different and they've got that nice baroque shape to them. They all have the same lustre and colour and they graduate in size along each strand so that it goes from smaller to bigger. That makes it sit correctly.
"For the fitting, we used 18-carat yellow gold and I did that in a brushed finish."
The couple will spend the day mingling with VIP guests in the coveted invite-only Linneys marquee at the cup, which will see the cream of Perth's social scene fly up north to attend, including WA power couples Nigel and Denise Satterley and WA governor Malcolm McCusker with wife Tonya.
Singer-songwriter Kate Miller Heidke will attend as one of Linneys' VIP guests.
"The tent should be good this year. The tickets have sold out and so it's sort of clients and friends of Linneys, and it's pretty highly anticipated as the tent to be in," Linney said.
"It's always a really great day and good to catch up with our clients up there."
