LISTEN: What Does a Tokyo Runway Have in Common With a Sheep Station in Walcha NSW? with Vanessa Bell

She walked Valentino runways at $10,000 a day, built a media career that spanned some of Australia's biggest brands, and was awarded Gold in Fashion & Textiles and Silver in Agriculture & Farming at the Women Changing the World Global Awards in London, 2025. And then she moved to a sheep station in Walcha, New South Wales.

But here's what makes Vanessa Bell's story genuinely worth your time: this isn't a fish-out-of-water tale about a city woman finding herself on the land. It's a masterclass in what happens when someone with serious commercial firepower looks out across a paddock and asks, what is actually possible here?

Vanessa is the Founder and CEO of her eponymous Australian luxury knitwear brand — crafted from Merino wool grown on her own property and produced with leading Italian mills. A Woolmark Licensee and RWS-certified wool grower, she works at the intersection of fashion, agriculture and sustainability, and champions natural fibres as the future of luxury. She also hosts the Fashion to Farmer podcast and speaks internationally on traceability, regenerative agriculture, and the global value of Australian Merino wool.

In this conversation with Ben Law, she gets into the real thinking behind building a business that operates at both ends of the value chain — from what happens in the shearing shed all the way to the global consumer.

What made her walk away from a career that had taken her from the runways of Tokyo and Vienna to the boardrooms of Sydney? What does it actually look like to grow wool fit for purpose — and then partner with one of Italy's most exclusive production houses to turn it into a globally recognised luxury knitwear label? How do you build a brand that refuses to discount, holds its value over time, and is designed to last a decade? And what does Vanessa believe is the real difference between farming families who talk about diversifying and those who actually do it?

There's also a pointed conversation about what farming families might be leaving on the table — not because they lack opportunity, but because of the way they think about what they produce and where their role in it ends. Vanessa challenges that thinking directly. And if you're part of the next generation on the land, or a farming family wondering whether an off-farm idea is worth the leap, what she has to say about solving real problems with real intention might be the reframe you didn't know you needed.