CityMag is out of the CBD once again, and this time around we’re getting to know the people and places of Magill Road. First up, we met with Christina Moulton, a former teacher and now owner-operator of Twopairs Homeware.

Eight years ago Christina Moulton walked into an antique shop.

She was a teacher who had grand plans of owning her own homewares store, and saw potential in running a business on Magill Road.

So, she approached the owner of the antique store and the conversation went surprisingly well.

“We knocked on the door and just walked in, there was an antique guy… we just walked in and said we loved the shop and if you’re ever thinking of not being here, and he just said ‘Yep, take on my lease,’” Christina says.

From there, Christina took her love of homewares and created Twopairs – a business that has since expanded into the two businesses next door, filling the spaces with the light and neutral aesthetic for which Christina is now known.

“People know they don’t come here to buy colour or anything, it’s just a really minimal palette,” Christina says.

Her decision to transition from teacher to small business owner was not one taken lightly, but she’d been toying with the idea for a while.

“I was teaching and I had nearly a year off because I was unwell, and that sort of made me realise that I had to follow my dreams,” Christina says.

“I loved teaching, loved going every single day, but I knew that this had been in the back of my mind for such a long time, and I think when you have time off you reassess things, so I did and thought ‘No, I need to do it.’

“And I have three daughters and they were very, very supportive, and very much ‘Mum, you have to do it. You’ve talked about it for so long.’”

With the support of her family, and a palette refined from years of searching through homewares stores and magazines, Christina has created a business that has resonated with locals, as well as becoming a destination in itself.

“There’s now a lot of homewares shops [on Magill Road], it’s a real hub… So I think that’s probably the biggest thing, is people know to come here for homewares, and for different homewares because we’re all owner-operated,” Christina says.

“[And] we get a lot of people travelling here as a destination, so they come here to come to us, or to come to Flourish, or go to Nourish’d Kitchen, or Inside Morocco, so they just come as a destination… and people see it as a bit of a day out, you know?”