Forget the front row. Let’s meet in the back alley instead.
While much of Sydney’s fashion attention was fixed on official schedules and established runways throughout May, Kissing’s Alley Cat runway show served as a timely reminder that fashion has never belonged exclusively to the institutions that attempt to define it.
For one night, a typically empty back alley in Chippendale became a runway and a party all at once. Emerging designers, performers, models, photographers and fashion lovers gathered in a flurry of creativity free from the traditional structures of industry… And that was kinda the point.
If Alley Cat proved anything, it’s that fashion doesn’t need a prestigious address, a major sponsor or an official invitation to matter. It’s in everything, everywhere and everyone.
Held on the weekend preceding the official Australian Fashion Week, the collaborative event occurred at an interesting moment for Sydney fashion. The city is once again finding its confidence. New designers are emerging, independent publications are thriving and creative communities are building spaces for themselves rather than waiting to be welcomed into existing ones.
Despite this momentum, access remains one of the industry’s greatest challenges and visibility is often concentrated within a handful of institutions, while countless talented designers continue creating remarkable work beyond their reach.
With over fifty designers championed in their inventory, Kissing challenges that dynamic simply by existing. The independently run gallery and creative space has rapidly become a hub for Sydney’s underground fashion and arts community. In a single afternoon the Alley Cat runway brought together more than twenty designers under a shared banner. Each look existed as a conversation in itself, featuring multiple brands and rejecting the notion of top-to-toe to showcase the art of dressing IRL.
That approach to styling (from Kissing owner Lucy Zaroyko no less) felt particularly refreshing. Fashion is often presented as a singular vision delivered from designer to consumer. Alley Cat instead reflected the way style actually functions. People borrow, layer, remix and reinterpret garments from different designers, different eras and different subcultures to create something entirely their own.
Alley Cat embraced that reality rather than attempting to control it and, in doing so, highlighted something that can occasionally be lost within broader conversations about fashion: that clothing is only one piece of the puzzle. Fashion itself is a social practice that lives in the way people gather, experiment, communicate and build identity.
In the alley, the line between audience and participant felt pleasantly blurred, a powerful statement in an industry that so often operates through exclusivity. Alley Cat embraced accessibility and diversity not only through style, but through people and place.
This event was unmistakably Sydney-coded. Slightly chaotic, creative, resourceful and alive.
In many ways, that’s where the city’s most exciting fashion stories are currently unfolding: not exclusively inside showrooms or on official calendars, but in artist-run spaces, temporary venues and independent creative communities that are willing to build opportunities for themselves. In these spaces experimentation is valued over perfection and emerging designers can be seen before the wider industry catches up.
At Alley Cat, a normally unused space became one of the most exciting runways in the country, because it reminded us that great style has never waited for an invitation.
Designers of Alley Cat: Annie Berry, ASAU, Atelier Chevalier, Bizarre, Dimora Press, Feaath, Jasmine Jafari, Jess Grindel, Katalyst, Mareta James, Matilda Roberts, Nofunovic, Ossinger, Saigey, Sweet Dreams Bitter Reality, Troubled Water, You Took Your Time, Zaroyko.
