Shears

Shears references the many local businesses and factories that have been and still are part of Collingwood’s textile and fashion industries.

They represent the working class history and industrial landscapes that defined the early architectural and cultural development of suburbs like Collingwood and Fitzroy.

Much of Collingwood’s unique streetscape is defined by factories, mills, warehouses and stores built to support Foy and Gibson, one of Melbourne’s earliest Department Stores that was, by the turn of the century, described as the largest in the Southern Hemisphere.

Shears echo the creative ingenuity and invention of business entrepreneurs that led to a building boon and the industrial “Heyday” of the late 1800s and also the untold stories of the thousands of factory workers whose toils and hardship drove that boon and shaped Melbourne’s first quintessential working class suburb.