Lou Pennisi, Business owner

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Resident of South Kingsville, Self-taught illustrator

Business owner of Totally Innocent and Yarraville Markets

I spent my teenage years in Essendon, after moving across from East Keilor. As an aspiring actor, I studied acting at uni but found it tough to get acting work. In my free time, I would sit and draw and create things. This was nothing new, as I was always drawing and colouring as a child. People would say to me ‘You should sell these’ but for me I was just passing time while I awaited my ‘big break.’

I had always been creative. My mother was a beautiful artist and both my Grandmothers were creatives too, so I grew up always making and creating alongside them. Creativity and design was always encouraged but it was never discussed that perhaps this was a pathway to a career.

I met my husband Charlie in my last year of uni at the age of 20. After uni, I found work in theatre restaurants, travelled overseas and was living in Elwood. We had our first baby, Jordan there. When I fell pregnant with Toby, I wanted to be near family again and decided to move back to the West.

I never knew much of Yarraville before moving here. Charlie was working in the music industry then, and a mutual friend of ours said ‘Come look at Yarraville.’ We found this great little house along Somerville Road for rent, and moved into it. Not long after, Toby was born in 1998.

This was where I began connecting with the local mothers. I was 26 then. When Jordan was born, I found it really isolating but Toby’s birth was the opposite as I really found ‘my people’ in Yarraville.

Before the kids were born, I had been painting on silk fabric and selling greeting cards to a few shops. However, with the birth of the kids, I realized I had to stop silk painting as it is such a messy artform. Up until that point, I had always thought it was the silk aspect that people loved. However as I began drawing on paper I realized that it was my illustration style that people connected with.

I kept being creative throughout that time and sold to some retail shops, but my main focus was on my kids and raising them.

In 2001, we bought a house in Yarraville. By this time we had fallen in love with the area. We had made good friends and decided this is where we wanted to stay. I remember renovating the house during a very hot summer while I was heavily pregnant with Joelle. All this time, I kept up with my creativity.

When Joelle was about six, I decided to sell some of my work at a market. I did my first market in Kensington and did really well. I thought ‘If I could make that much money every week, I would be set!’

I was so inspired by the market concept that I began thinking about putting on a market in Yarraville. With my sister, we planned one within three weeks and had our first market in the Masonic Hall in the Village. It was just before Christmas and it went off! It was a really great day and a lot of people said to me ‘You should do a monthly market.’

I thought about it and decided to try another one and see how it would go. It coincided with the Yarraville Festival and my stall was set up in the arts precinct along Canterbury Street. The following year, I offered to help grow the arts precinct of the festival.

When I started the market, the aim was to have a friendly, supportive space for local artists to showcase their work and it just grew from there.

The first market had a bit of everything, including bric-a-brac and antiques. My sister and I really didn’t curate it, but when I decided to do it monthly, I made the decision to focus only on handmade and Australia handmade products. There would be no second-hand products or vintage, unless they had been re-purposed.

My business name totally innocent. was Charlie’s idea all my designs were innocent and whimsical, so it seemed to fit. To be honest, when I first started, I never knew what my purpose was except that I enjoyed it and it kept me sane whilst raising children. However as my children grew, things became a lot clearer for me. I saw how quickly my children were growing up due to society pressures, and I wanted to capture that time in childhood where everything is magical and dreamy and innocent.

I’m a bit of a hippy at heart. I’m a big believer in kids being barefoot, getting out in the dirt. Kids should be allowed to grow and develop at their own pace. And they should be encouraged and loved every day. I sometimes felt judged for not forcing my kids to grow up, but I focused on developing the basis of the business of ‘kids being innocent’ for as long as long as possible.

I started developing my products with more intent and focusing on positive affirmations on the artwork, and it became about building resilience through beautiful artwork for kids’ bedroom. My aim is to build self-esteem and resilience in children through positive messaging and help them believe in themselves. My theory is ‘Teach them young’ and maybe they won’t need to invest in as many self-help books as I did in my early twenties!

I worked at Wembley Primary School as a teachers aide for two years. During this time I saw a lot of children struggling with their self-esteem and I always provided positive reinforcements by telling them that they ‘can achieve anything – they just have to try’. Kids were telling me ‘I can’t do that!’ and it broke my heart.

That’s how Totally Innocent evolved.

Over time, I developed more educational products and affirmation cards for kids. I reached a totally new client base for me, as teachers started buying the cards for their classrooms. I love that children in schools are being exposed to my positive artwork and are reading these messages daily. I have so many ideas for more affirmation cards and I’m working on a new set about friendship as we speak!

When Yarraville Markets first started, I had to pay for all the advertising. I didn’t have big dollars to spend, and could only fit 25 different stalls in the hall every month. It was a struggle.

When social media came along, I saw a massive difference in Yarraville Markets’s reach. It was not only within the community, but it took the brand Victoria wide. Around this time, I saw a massive resurgence in hand-made ethical products. People were becoming more aware of the impact they have on the planet and wanted unique items. In the last ten years, I’ve seen numerous markets pop up and disappear due to aan oversaturationof markets in Melbourne. But somehow, our little market has managed to stay alive.

When I first started on Instagram, I made sure I followed everyone who followed Yarraville Markets. I now focus on following makers and designers. This opened up our database of makers as well. My main aim on social media is to promote the market and all of our talented stall holders.

Yarraville Markets turns ten this year, and totally innocent. has been around for almost 20 years.

It was never my goal to create the biggest and best market, but more a platform for creative, local people to showcase their work. The market attracts a lot of people who are trying markets for the first time, and I love that. I love encouraging people who are starting out and watching them develop their brand and products.

Occasionally we have cute entrepreneurs – young kids and teenagers – who sign up to do their first markets. We offer children and students a cheaper stall fee as well, as I am all about encouraging others to live their dreams and see where it goes.

Running a market can be trying at times. Stallholders often have unrealistic expectations about how much money they will make. People need to understand that markets have ups and downs. You need to be resilient to survive in this industry. Some days you make no money but you hand out a whole lot of business cards and people get to see your work. That kind of exposure is just as important as your social media presence.

Sometimes I may have a bad day but I pick up a wholesaler at the end of the day, or I get an email asking me to create custom illustrations.

I have a passion for rainbows and have a big henna rainbow tattoo on my hip. It was an epic eight hour tattoo session and it was really painful! I also have a fascination with true crime podcasts and spend many hours in the car travelling to markets listening to them. Quite a parallel to my totally innocent. world.

I am really enjoying where my children are at now. They are young adults – 20, 19 and 16. It’s great to see them taking on the world, starting to live their lives and chase their dreams.

When our kids became teenagers, we were finding that they wanted to be out all the time because our house had become too small to cater to them and their peers.

Our family of five had outgrown our beautiful house in Yarraville. So we rented a larger home in South Kingsville and live there with our 13-year-old staffy named Busta. Charlie and I have an open house policy. It was a conscious decision to have that open space for our teenagers and their friends, and something that my parents did for me and my siblings when we were teenagers. It helps keep us connected to them and to know who they are spending their time with at a time when they are finding their own place in the World.

We welcome their friends; their friends are our friends. Although I often whinge about always having a house full of teenagers, I really do love that they all feel comfortable in our home and spend time socialising before they head out for the night! Our house is rented out, and the kids have lots of space here so it’s a good arrangement. And hopefully, one day, if they ever move out of home we will head back to our home that we love so much.

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