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Steph Gilmore has never been afraid to add a dash of glamour to her dynamic, all-round act. On Monday, Steph headed to Sydney’s Maroubra for a fashion shoot with a distinctly salt-infused flavour. While it wasn’t clear exactly whose haute couture Steph was rockin’, the Roxy sticker was still clearly visible on the twin fin she was riding at The Bra’.
Although Maroubra is still a concrete-fringed, urban beach where stacked apartments tumble towards the water, it’s a more gentrified kind of setting these days. A unit in the blocks where the Bra boys were raised will cost you a cool million. While many of the locals have held on through the Sydney property boom, you’ll find the busy lineup littered with lawyers, doctors, business mavericks, social media moguls and uni students. It was into this eclectic, mosh-pit of city-beach humanity that Steph Gilmore descended to ride a few waves and try on a few funky outfits.
Photographer Bill Morris had been shooting lineups and was just about to suit up for a surf when former pro, Blake Thornton, tipped him off that Steph was paddling out at the north end. Bill dutifully trekked down to the zone known affectionately as ‘The Stormy’ because it is marked by a large stormwater drain that flows into the ocean. It was perhaps a curious location for a fashion shoot, but Steph and her entourage of photographers and stylists had set-up on the beach near The Stormy.
Once in the water, it took a shivering Steph a little while to find a wave. “It was freezing cold and she was waiting for a wave for a round twenty minutes,” explains Bill. Eventually Steph found her rhythm in an array of get-ups. She snuffed out a barrel, flashed the winning smile and by the end of the shoot at least one surfer could boast he’d ridden a wave with world champion, Steph Gilmore.
