Standing out in an often-throwaway society, Brisbane Arcade has a host of talented crafts people who offer repairs on cherished or meaningful even heirloom items such as hats, watches, jewellery and pens. These expert repair services are rarely – if ever – offered in other retail settings and are certainly unique to Brisbane’s city.
The Pen Shoppe: Writing new chapters for favourite pens
Koji Ogawa can remember the thrill of holding his very own S.T. Dupont Olympio model fountain pen, smooth and weighty in his hand. It was a special 21st gift from his parents and a reward for doing well in his first semester of his Bachelor of English and writing studies. As he made the purchase from specialty pen retailer The Pen Shoppe, Ogawa gave the writing implement the reverence it deserved, impressing staff enough that he was offered a job. Ogawa is now 38 and a master technician for the store, on the ground level of Brisbane Arcade, and is an expert in repairing pens alongside The Pen Shoppe co-owner and his mentor Bruce Nichol. Ogawa, who still owns his ST Dupont Olympio, can sometimes be found in The Pen Shoppe front-of-store with co-owner and handwriting expert Barbara Nichol but he is most at home in the shop’s Brisbane Arcade repair workshop overlooking the city’s Queen Street Mall. Here, he prides himself in cracking each repair puzzle, working to restore a pen that often holds a precious family history or memory. “There’s something a little bit different to figure out each time. They are individual puzzles,’’ Ogawa says. “Some repairs can be purely user error and can take just 10 to 15 minutes, while some can stretch across two to three days with curing of epoxy or allowing things to soak before we try to pull them open. Some items have been away in a drawer for 40 years and we give the pens their true care and diligence. They are very fragile things. Also knowing you have restored something that means a great deal to people’s families is a point of pride.’’
Carrion Hats: Restoring old souls
On the gallery level of Brisbane Arcade, a velvet curtain opens into another world. This is Carrion Hats, the intimate studio of artisan Tess Ebinger — one of only a handful of talents in Australia specialising in the rare art of hat repairs and restoration. For many hat owners, hats frequently hold more than shape and style — they hold the imprint of the person who lived in them so sentimental value can be enormous. At Carrion Hats, restoration is as much performance as it is craft. Tess is masterful in practices such as steaming curls from kettles or reshaping crowns and reviving felt brims. Brushes sweep through fibres, ribbons are re-stitched by hand, and sweatbands are carefully replaced. The workshop smells of wool, leather, and polish, with vintage mirrors and aged timber creating an atmosphere of old-world theatre. To watch Tess work is to witness hats — often battered, worn or neglected — slowly return to form. What sets Carrion Hats apart is not just the technical process, but the philosophy behind it. Every crease, every worn edge carries a history. Tess restores without erasing; a fedora passed down through generations, a treasured Akubra worn on the land, or a vintage market find in need of care — each leaves carrying its story intact, renewed but never rewritten. Tess’s journey began far from Brisbane Arcade. With a background in science and engineering, she first explored millinery through theatre costume work before finding herself at City Hatters in Melbourne, Australia’s oldest hat store. Over ten years, she studied millinery, trained in London and New York, and taught herself the skills others didn’t. In 2018 she was headhunted by Akubra, moving to Queensland to run Brisbane Hatters. By 2024, she chose to pursue her deeper philosophy of “make well, mend, and make do” — launching Carrion Hats inside Brisbane Arcade. For Brisbane locals and visitors alike, Carrion Hats is more than a repair studio — it is a place of preservation, where craftsmanship meets storytelling, and where hat repairs in Brisbane are elevated into an art form.
Belle Folie: Couture millinery and restoring vintage elegance
Also upstairs on gallery level, couture milliner Wendy Diggles, of Belle Folie, specialises in using vintage materials from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s and will also restore and remodel hats and headwear. With more than 40 years’ experience in fashion and accessory design, including the past 12 years as a qualified milliner, Diggles, 60, says she enjoys working with pieces that hold sentimental value. “It might be a bride who needs a piece to work with a contemporary outfit or someone has a beautiful old vintage hat they’ve picked up at markets in France and it’s a bit beat up. We’ll restore that, put a new silk veiling on or reattach feathers. “Sometimes it’s a family piece or hats someone has inherited. I understand the sentimentality. They might not even want to wear it, but they have inherited something or found something and it’s often quite close to the brink of not being recoverable. I like that sort of work.’’ Not all hats are made to be salvaged or repaired. Disposable, mass-produced fashion items, Diggles says, are very difficult to work with. However, handmade millinery, while expensive, is always worth saving. “When you’ve got a beautiful piece of millinery or a handmade vintage piece of millinery, we want to see those things last forever,’’ she says. “We don’t want to see those things wasted.’’
Watch Repair Studio: Time pieces made new
Zoltan Horvath brings more than three decades of international experience in watch repairs to the Arcade with his Watch Repair Studio located on the Gallery Level. Horvath repairs all Swiss and Japanese brand watches, digital and mechanical. Schooled in the watchmaking trade in Budapest, Hungary, where he was born, Horvath has also worked in New Zealand. He has been a tenant of Brisbane Arcade for more than three years. He laments the smartwatch trend sweeping the globe because these products cannot be repaired. “Smart watches…once it is broken, it’s in the bin,’’ he says. “I can’t fix them but I can fix a real watch. It is sad to see the way it is going but what can you do? I can fix as many watches as I can.’’ He fixes watches that have simply “just stopped’’ or are losing time or perhaps the glass face is broken. He likes to do his part to make each watch tick again and send a happy customer on their way with something that is valuable to them. “I can repair pretty much any watch, though if it is too old, you can’t get parts for them anymore. And I don’t repair clocks. That is a different trade. It’s like a car mechanic and truck mechanic. They have completely different tools and everything. I sell new clocks in my shop but I don’t repair them.’’
20/20 Optical: Frames with New Vision
Repurposing and giving new life to a product also extends to Brisbane Arcade optometrist Kevin Dick in his store, 2020 Optical. With a home in the Arcade since 2017 and more than 30 years of experience, he offers an on-site, state-of-the-art optometry workshop that is able to repurpose existing glasses frames, a service that is rare in most optometry practices. “If somebody comes in with a frame and the lenses are scratched or it is a keepsake of one of their parents or they might want to turn them into reading glasses or sunglasses, we have the expertise to change the lenses on site. Most places will outsource all of that,’’ Dick, 55, says. “The expectation with bigger stores is just to throw it away – out with the old, in with the new.’’ The onsite laboratory also means customers can receive new single vision lenses on the same day. The store also carries an extensive range of non-prescription sunglass lenses from German lens makers Zeiss. “We love being in the Arcade,’’ Dick says. “It’s like-minded businesses, it’s all about service, having special things, unique products, unique services that no one else has. And being the best of the best.’’
