For one week out of each year, Melbourne slips into something sexy, stylish and entirely its own. Melbourne Fashion Week is an event stitched into the very fabric of what makes the city the fashion cornerstone of the nation. It’s a spectacle showing no signs of slowing down. This year, for two nights, I bore witness to the surrealness taking place in between the polished grandeur on Melbourne’s famous Collins Street as well as in the city’s outskirts at Younghusband Kensington. Let me take you back to when MFW pulled back the veil of both the established and the emerging, to serve as a living showcase of an industry that thrives on contrasts and collaboration in a city whose identity is entrenched in style.
SHOW 1: A PROMISING FUTURE SHAPED BY A COMPLEX PAST (22 & 24 October)
When you think of a fashion runway, it’s easy for visions of pristinely polished minimalism and a collective hush amongst attendees to come to mind. This script was done away with at this year’s Student Collections Runway. In its place? A wholehearted, rowdy celebration of Melbourne’s true cultural trailblazers…students.
Held in the furthest corner of Kensington ‘’Younghusband”, the student runway presented an intimate spectacle where fancy, elaborate set designs were instead traded for the true heart of the collections presented, the audience, the spectators, the loved ones who helped bring the tangible manifestations of hopes and dreams into fruition. Featuring collections by student designers from Box Hill Institute, Holmesglen Institute, LCI Melbourne, RMIT School of Fashion and Textiles, and Whitehouse Institute of Design Australia, each designer brought something solely distinct whilst simultaneously tied together by strings of shared experience and ideology.
Designer Jessica Pangestu stands out as a testament of what it takes to truly optimise the whole runway. Garments constructed through dedicated, time-stealingly intricate levels of research and cultural conceptualisation ultimately results in nuanced approaches to layering, with meticulously crafted embroidery set on top of outerwear cut and proportioned in contrastingly contemporary ways given the otherwise vintage feel of the collection.
The runway acted equally as the debut for a winning artist from Melbourne’s yearly student competition, with this year’s recipient Helen Manuell delivering a mindful approach to research and development of her collection. It was a well needed breath of fresh air flowing into a landscape rife with increasingly concerning trends towards vapid consumerism and environmentally damaging behaviours.
By the end of the show, the applause was not just warm, but almost theatrical. Instead of commercially polished head nods and handshakes, audience members stood from their seats in a standing ovation that echoed throughout the space for minutes. The message was clear; the Student Collective runway was a wholehearted embrace of Naarm’s future generation of talent.
SHOW 2: THE ESTABLISHED DECADENCE ON COLLINS ( 26 October)
Setting a much different tone on the night of the 26th, in the heart of Collins St. Fashion’s established upper echelon gathered once more to mark MFW’s Closing Runway. Going from a night of student commemoration surrounded by warehouse grit and radical creativity, to polished marble floors, lavish stone masonry and a soundscape carved by a live orchestra set the established from the emerging.
Whilst the show had opened at golden hour, the runway was bathed in dusky lighting, a metaphor for the week’s eclipse and the beginning of the festivals’ end. Throughout the show’s duration, one couldn’t help but wonder if this week’s effort to highlight creative emergence, struggling artistry, and then conclude with a display of curated opulence is perhaps Melbourne’s way of challenging the institutions that be.
Labels such as Saloon archive echoed this sentiment, as vintage, archival Vivienne Westwood was lavishly presented down the runway accompanied by models adorned with French classical makeup. Tabi’s were also an ever-present staple of the runway, further driving home the message that all cultural mainstays could have (at times) been fleeting trends, but also worked to cement the innate relevancy evoked by the entire show.
FINAL WORD: THE WILD AND THE REFINED
Melbourne Fashion Week began with hope, curiosity and candid insight into untapped potential. In its finale, it ended with a reminder of the sheer weight of legacy and a reflection of the current commercial landscape. The inherent symbiotic nature of one of Naarm’s most noteworthy avenues of the creative industries. A refraction of classic glamour and subcultural tenacity, existing simultaneously, celebrating the multifaceted true identity of the city.
