Thea's RAFW Fashion Week Diary: Day Two  May 5, 2010

Here's the latest from our esteemed Fashion Week guest blogger Thea Basiliou with a wrap up of RAFW day two...

Sara Phillips kicked off my morning with a full and fast paced show full of fresh, desirable pieces that could make you almost taste spring in shades of macaroons.

Kellie Alderman, fashion writer from the Sunday Mail had just been lamenting the lack of a bouncy soundtrack at the shows when Sara pulled out "Jolene", which tied in with the models high messy quiffs and cowgirl hats which was styled by Ryan Lobo.

Watch the show here in only 46 seconds!
You can pause it if you like to view the outfits a little better...ha!

I particularly loved her suede pieces - the tee, the crop tops, shorts and jackets were all gorgeous. I loved her "city scape" print in easy pants and sheer blouses. Also fab were here western style shirts shapes in various forms including the Chambray suit.

I'm with Sara Phillips back stage after her show - isn't she adorable!

We slipped off to Surry Hills to see Carly Hunter's collection up close and found it hard not to love everything.

On the way, we spotted this brand new mural on Foveaux Street which I think is by Sydney artist Beastman...

[Ed: Yes indeed. The mural is a collaborative work by Beastman and three other Sydney artists: Numskull, Roach and Saynt for pro-street art initiative Keep Australia Colourful]

We then went down to Chinatown to preview the collection from Melbourne label, All of the Above.

Labels often share spaces to show their collections from which not only saves them some money, but makes for a fun showroom. All of the Above shared with other Melbourne label Who Am Eye and new Brisbane men's footwear label WISM, way, way, way up on the 85th floor of this building!

All of the Above the World

Here's a little preview from their summer lookbook...

Then, we were back to Surry Hills to visit Jon Hewitt at Paul Maloney Agencies who impressed us with this...

Mo of the Day!

I previewed the new Karen Walker Resort Collection and these are some of my favourites...

I LOVE the Strawberry Necklace!

I also previewed the collection of young Perth designer Garth Cook who is debuting at RAFW this Friday in the New Generation Show. I'm predicting that he will be the highlight of this group show.
Here is a sneak peak at a couple of my favourite looks from Garth's collection...

Garth graduated from the WA School of Art & Design in Fashion & Textiles in 2006 before moving to London for 3 years where he worked with amazing conceptual designer Marios Schwab and studied further at the London College of Fashion.

Next stop was to check out the very latest from Antipodium. I have already ordered from their Brides of Christ collection which will arrive for our spring.

This time, I had the pleasure of seeing their Holiday collection entitled Some Kind of Bliss which will deliver for our summer.
The title immediately springs Kylie (you know - KYLIE!) to mind but designer and darling friend Geoffrey J. Finch assures me that there are shades of Danni in this collection too.
I agree.

The collection contains lots of fab pieces that we can wear to bits including some super cute swimwear.

Here is SPECIAL preview, totally hot of the press...

It's time for a quick bite to eat and I slipped out of my LF Markey Shirt, Sara Phillips Top and Karen Walker trousers into a Richard Nicoll Dress with a Dhini Coat for our evening ahead.

Back at RAFW, the hype on the evening shows is often quite high as everyone gets in to the party mood.

The Friedrich Gray show was packed at The Cargo Hall and though the collection was very much the adopted signature FG styling of the dark urban warrior, it didn't give us anything more than that.

Kym Ellery chose to show off site at Fox Studios and the catwalk staging was quite dramatic with smoking pyramids, following the current futuristic trend of quite a few collections including Zimmerman who showed earlier in the day.

After an hour's delay (this is not unusual for a night show!) the collection started out promising with some incredible flared pantsuits and encrusted pale metallic pieces in some amazing shapes and fabrics.
The hair was a little bit Wang and the make-up, a little bit Bowie.

The show then slipped back in to a seemingly endless stream of short, sexy party shapes in black with thigh high boots. The fab flares came back at the end but I got bored through the middle. I guess lots of little sparkly sexy things for party girls.

Fashion Weeks give us the opportunity to meet our amazing peers from around the world. Then we get to catch up, in person, once or twice a year.

I finally got to meet one of my girl crushes - Susie Lau from the only blog that I actually look at on a weekly basis, stylebubble.co.uk .

I also met up with some friends from Fashion Weeks past (pictured below)...

Axel, Phil Oh from Streetpeeper.com, London-based photographer Cameron Smith, Susie Lau from Stylebubble and me.

Thea X

Visit Thea's Blonde Venus blog HERE