About

 

The Return

A mother and daughter. A pause. And what we built when we came back.

I started Dibo Bodi when I was fifteen. I didn't have a business plan. I had a sewing machine in our lounge room, an idea I couldn't shake, and a mum who said yes when she should've probably said let's think about this.

The first pieces were corsets — for friends' formals, for birthdays, for any night that mattered. I made them by hand, one at a time, while doing my homework on the kitchen bench.

It worked. People wore them. Then more people wore them. Then I was running a brand before I'd finished growing up.

— Indi

I'm Bic. I'm Indi's mum.

For years I held the fort. I sewed late, packed orders early, and watched my daughter become a designer in front of me. I was proud. I was also tired in ways I didn't have words for.

Indi grew up. She grew into her own taste, her own opinions, her own vision for what Dibo Bodi could be. That was always the point. But growing up next to your mother in a business you both built — that's harder than it sounds.

We disagreed. We worked through silences that lasted weeks. I kept showing up because that's what I do. Eventually I realised showing up wasn't enough. We needed to stop.

— Bic

So we stopped.

Not for a season. Not for a press release. We stopped because we couldn't keep making something we didn't both believe in, and we couldn't keep being mother and daughter while pretending the work wasn't between us.

The pause was uncomfortable. It was also necessary.

We didn't post. We didn't drop. We didn't pretend.

What came back is different.

We design elevated everyday pieces now — not just for the big nights. Cotton, linen, denim. Adjustable backs and lace-up detailing on every piece, because fit isn't a feature, it's the whole point. Made by hand, in Melbourne, in limited drops, never mass produced.

We're not the same two people who started Dibo Bodi in a lounge room. We're a mother and a daughter who finally figured each other out, building something on equal ground.

We're glad you're here.

— Bic & Indi Hawthorn, Melbourne

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Dibo Bodi operates on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. We pay our deepest respects to their Elders past, present and emerging, and acknowledge their unbroken connection to this land, water and community. Sovereignty was never ceded.