The Dalah twins, fashion designer Jordan and hospitality entrepreneur Nathan, are both at the top of their game — in totally different industries. Harper’s BAZAAR proposes they swap places for a day to see how they fare in each other’s shoes. WORDS BY PATTY HUNTINGTON. PHOTOGRAPHED BY JOSHUA BENTLEY. STYLED BY JORDAN DALAH.
IT IS ROUGHLY halfway through Harper’s BAZAAR’s Dalah twins job swap experiment that we twig that one brother is more comfortable in the other’s domain than expected. As it emerges, Australia’s hottest new designer, Jordan, might just as well have been a chef had he not been bitten by the fashion bug.
The idea is for Jordan and his twin, Nathan the founder of Japanese-inspired salad bowl chain Fishbowl, to trade places for a day. While we break for lunch at Fishbowl HQ down in Sydney’s Alexandria, Nathan’s partner, Kiwi supermodel Georgia Fowler, lets us in on the secret: “They’re both good in the kitchen, but Jordan is really good,” she coos.
“For a long time, I did want to be a chef. I was obsessed with molecular gastronomy,” says Jordan of the branch of food science that focuses on the physical and chemical processes that arise during cooking. For his 12th birthday, Jordan received a copy of Spanish chef Ferran Adrià’s book El Bulli: 1998-2002 and started cooking up a storm at home. He then moved on to a new obsession: fashion. Now, his passion lies in creating his signature inflatable Tudor-esque silhouettes and Doorstopper hems, which are stiffened with unexpected materials such as irrigation piping from Bunnings. He is stocked by some of the world’s best boutiques, from Dover Street Market New York, LA and Tokyo to Joyce Hong Kong, and was a 2022 International Woolmark Prize finalist.
“I could have opened a restaurant with [Jordan],” Nathan notes later as he stands in Fishbowl’s industrial kitchen while Fowler poses in a Jordan Dalah spring 2023 electric-blue velvet Disc Dress. Nathan founded Fishbowl in 2016 with Nic Pestalozzi and Casper Ettleson, and it is now one of Australia’s fastest-growing food chains, with 30 restaurants across Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, a $60 million turnover forecast for 2022, and plans to grow to 75 locations across the three cities within the next three-four years. They’re also testing locations internationally.
Fraternal twins who were born 20 minutes apart on August 29, 1992, the Dalah brothers went to different high schools and universities, pursued separate hobbies and careers, and launched their disparate companies a year apart. But do they ever experience twintuition? And are there any synergies between their businesses? BAZAAR decided the issue merited some investigation. The job swap day kicks off in the early morning in Point Piper, Sydney, with Jordan stepping in for Nathan’s morning ritual: a stroll along the waterfront with Fowler, their daughter, Dylan, and Chilli, the mini groodle. Nathan, meanwhile, puts on Jordan’s blue Crocs (he has three pairs and is angling for a collab) in the designer’s Paddington studio.
Next, Nathan is off to the 70-year-old fabric and haberdashery wholesaler E & M Greenfield, one of the last remnants of the once-bustling garment district of Surry Hills and not far from where the twins’ maternal grandparents operated two knitwear companies. From here, we move on to Jordan’s production room in Alexandria, where Nathan attends to sampling.
This is a family with deep connections to not only Sydney’s rag trade but also to hospitality. The twins’ father, Michael, was born in Iraq, and his family were silk and cotton merchants in Baghdad. After he emigrated to Australia in 1969, he worked for Sydney fabric merchants Smouha Fabrics and Isherwood & Dreyfus before taking over the Laissez-Faire Catering company. Three of the five Dalah siblings now work in food: Adrian is a director of Laissez-Faire Catering, while Sophie, an actor, operates a boutique firm called Food Maide in Los Angeles with Australian model Madi Fogg.
Over at Fishbowl, meanwhile, Jordan is enmeshed in operations. A central kitchen, or commissary, in each capital city preps and bags mountains of mostly locally sourced fresh produce, protein bowl toppers and dressings (the only thing cooked in the restaurants is rice), ready for a fleet of refrigerated vans to dispatch to Fishbowl locations from midnight each night.
‘No More FAST FOOD BS’ is a tongue-in-cheek way of saying that we’re really TRYING to forge our OWN PATH in the fast-food space
After an inspection of the kitchen, Jordan takes charge of a marketing meeting in the boardroom where Fishbowl’s corporate mantra, “No More Fast Food BS,” is writ large in marker pen across the whiteboard. (What would the Jordan Dalah equivalent be if there was one? “Bad taste is better than no taste at all,” he quips). “No More Fast Food BS” also appears in chunky fluoro pink lettering down the back of the black hoodies worn by all 600 Fishbowl staff. Beyond the main restaurants, Nathan and his business partners also operate the Fish Shop restaurant in Bondi, an adjacent fish’n’chipper called Fish Market, and three Side Room smoothie and salad bars.
“[The mantra is] a tongue-in-cheek way of saying that we’re really trying to forge our own path in the fast-food space,” says Nathan. “Myself and my network of friends, we were all looking for a tasty salad, something we could eat frequently, which was convenient and something that also carries a bit of a vibe — good design, good music, good personality.”
As for flashes of telepathy, which some twins claim to experience? Vis-à-vis the Dalah bros, the answer is no. “We don’t have twintuition; I don’t feel his pain, other than on an emotional level,” says Jordan. “But what I did realise [from the job swap] is that Nathan focuses on what the issues of today are today, and he’ll focus on tomorrow, tomorrow. [Also] how much respect people in his company have for him. He’s a good leader. He’s not erratic. I’m a very frantic person — he’s the dead opposite of me.”
It was like Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger, that’s how DIFFERENT they were … there was never FIGHTING but where they came TOGETHER was with their appreciation of FASHION and FOOD
Polar opposites from birth, in fact, when the near 3.6-kilo- gram Nathan arrived with a full head of hair ahead of his bald, 2.2-kilogram brother. “It was like Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger, that’s how different they were,” recalls their mother, Michelle, adding that it wasn’t just the physical differences that set them apart. “I remember one of the teachers in primary school saying, ‘You know, we’ve had about five sets of twins in the year, for some unusual reason, but your twins, they walk in the school, one goes left, one goes right. One finds his group of friends, and the other one finds his group of friends.’ There was never fighting or bickering, but where they came together, I think, was in their later teens, with their appreciation of fashion, food and that sort of thing.” Indeed, Nathan provides the catering for Jordan’s Australian Fashion Week shows, while Jordan occasionally helps with Fishbowl’s creative direction, brand identity and menu development, as well as working the door at Fish Shop.
For Nathan, the job swap was something of an eye-opener about not only Jordan’s work but the common ground between their two businesses. “I was actually really surprised at the level of intricacy and operation that is involved in doing [what he does],” says Nathan. “There’s a real, like, science in producing what Jordan does. He and I operate in completely separate industries, but we’re both trying to challenge the traditional expectations that exist within the arenas that we’re operating in, whether it’s him with his unique style or take on fashion, or us doing something that’s not typically associated with fast food. I think in that respect, there’s quite a lot of alignment.” “I look at Greenfields, and it’s such an old-school institution that doesn’t seem to have changed,” he adds. “It reminded me of going to Sydney Markets in Parramatta. They’ve also been around for decades and barely changed. You’ve still got people selling stuff, shouting it out on the market floor, and that’s really the root of Fishbowl’s product — it’s all market-oriented, and Greenfields, in its own weird way, is like the marketplace of what Jordan does.”
This article originally appeared in the September issue of Harper’s BAZAAR Australia/New Zealand. Order your copy here.
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