Why Realisation Par co-founder Teale Talbot bought her classic Toorak home 'sight unseen'

• Who: Co-founder of much-feted fashion label Realisation Par, designer Teale Talbot.
• What: An elegant, double-storey, European-inspired beauty in the classic Toorak surrounds of Heyington Place.

With time and distance affording some perspective now, those surreal COVID-19 years seem almost like a bizarre dream.

The story behind the listing of 41 Heyington Place is emblematic of those incredible days when best-laid plans were laid to waste all across the globe.

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For the co-founder of the uber on-trend fashion label, Realisation Par, Teale Talbot, it meant giving up on her Toorak dream home, but silver linings abound in this tale too.

Leaving Australia in 2008, Talbot travelled across the globe, finally landing in London in 2018, where things really started to take off for her already burgeoning business.

With her brand booming – a strong social media presence and the favour of names like Margot Robbie, Kate Moss and Bella Hadid, helping to create a buzz that remains – the designer still had one eye back across the water to Melbourne.

“I felt like I was searching forever for our future family home,” says Talbot from her Notting Hill, London base.

“When I saw this house, I fell in love with the gardens, the proportions.  I loved the setback – it’s sort of secluded from the street.”

There is an easy coherence to the floor plan here that makes it accessible and welcoming while looking every inch the august Toorak abode.

You pretty much know a quality home as soon as you clock it, but even with something this good, it’s a surprise to hear Talbot say she bought the property “sight unseen”.

Well, not exactly unseen, but unvisited. It was 2021, and Talbot was stuck in London. COVID restrictions prevented her from coming home to view the Heyington Place house for herself.

“My stepfather and my sister inspected it for me. There were so many pictures, so many video calls,” she laughs.

The original plan was to return when travelling restrictions eased and set up house with her husband, whose family had property in Fingal on the Victorian south coast.

“It seemed like the perfect place to come back to.  The proximity to the city, the ease of getting to my husband’s family.  It’s a lock up and leave place – a simple layout, but a traditional house. Large and light.  I always need light,” she says of the excellent north-westerly orientation here that makes the classical interiors glow.

Parquetry floors, stone hearths and marble accents are made radiant via banks of French doors opening out onto the lovely surrounding terrace. Two stunning formal rooms at the front of the house have a similar surfeit of splendid light and air from their lofty seat over the street.  Upstairs the main bedroom is a divine sanctuary of superb dimension.

Who, though, could have ever envisaged those two fateful pandemic years? Although she did get to see her home in person, Talbot never got to live in her Toorak treasure, the enforced time away giving rise to a different future.

“London just became home,” says Talbot.  “When our son was born over here, life changed.”

The family are about to welcome a second child, another born in Blighty and bound to become a native. “I’m sad to sell. It’s a beautiful house, but plans change, and we’re very happy here,” she says.

With a flagship Realisation Par store just opened in Mayfair, Teale Talbot’s roots run deep in London, while her sublime manor in Toorak also awaits a new chapter.

SOLD - $6,060,000

41 Heyington Place, Toorak VIC 3142

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Price guide: $5.7 million- $6.1 million

Expressions of interest: Close 5pm, June 18

Agent: Jellis Craig Stonnington, Michael Armstrong 0407 063 263