I came upon some wallpapers a few months ago, and fell madly in love. The designs were vibrant, wild, colorful and insanely cool. It made me track down the designer, and to my delight I discovered an Australian woman way ahead of her time, Florence Broadhurst.
It turns out her life was almost more intriguing then her designs….She was the queen of reinvention, and actually didn’t start designing the famous wallpapers until the age of 60! She was a dancer, an actress, and owned a million different businesses. Then when her husband left her for a much younger woman, she started designing wallpapers. She went under false names, wore giant fake eye lashes, tight gold lame outfits, and was a cougar 50 years before it was hip. And to top it all off, she was brutally murdered in October 1977, at the age of 78, perhaps by some one who worked for her, but the Australian police has yet to solve her murder. The Queen of reinvention – the story of Florence B.