Everything We Learned Up Chic Creek At Australian Fashion Week 2015

Photographed and produced in association with the show-stealing new HTC One M9, available now at Virgin Mobile.


Nothing in life will make you as conscious of what precious little time we’re given on this earth as time spent at Fashion Week does. 
Unlike a traditional seven day week measured in precise increments [seconds, minutes, hours, days], a four day Fashion Week is measured in nontraditional integers like ‘How late is this show running?’, ‘How long do you think it will be before people stop wearing wedge sneakers?’, and ‘How long until we all literally die?’
It’s all anybody talks about when they aren’t making sagacious observations like, “She’s not eating much at all. Or maybe she’s pregnant. I mean, you never know”. 
That was the very first thing I overheard [eavesdropped] on arriving at Kym Ellery’s Sunday evening show – one that would both signify the [official] beginning of The Fashion Week and set a tone for the coming days best described as ‘complaint inducing’.
What follows is loose reconstruction of the events that together would constitute the twentieth annual Australian Fashion Week, accessorised with observations recorded using our chic AF all-metal mobile office for the week, the brand new HTC One M9 – its epic 4K video and 20MP camera documenting a week of cutting edge details and creating incredible imagery from start to finish. 
Treat yo’self to one here and the results below.

BEST NOISE COMPLAINT
The Fall ’15 collection – originally shown in Paris earlier this year – that ELLERY opened the week with would’ve ordinarily been the cause for a great deal of noise based on merit had it not been for the ensuing furore involving a disgruntled neighbour storming the runway during the finale
An on point/en pointe presentation by the Australian Ballet Company provided a fittingly theatrical precursor for a show that I suspect was devised just so I could make an on point/en pointe pun in my notes. The rest of the show was anything but quiet, and if you care for it, here’s a pithy description: the label’s signature flared silhouette found its antithesis in precise double breasted tailoring and a series of particularly memorable and deliriously engulfing outerwear rendered in strong look metallics, shearling and brocade silk. The soundtrack – including ‘Black Skinhead’, ‘Trophies’ and ‘Turn Down For What’ – kept me mouthing ‘Yasss kween’ to myself, alone in the dark.
Except that, for once, I was not alone. Everyone who is anyone with the misfortune of being branded part of ‘the Fash Pack’ was there, and the noise of the show was echoed in the running commentary of the family of four [corporate guests?] I was seated next to. Despite being first-timers, each offered up very perceptive comments on everything from the front row (“[Redacted designer] always has such a stupid look on his face”) to the industry itself (“It’s really very sad. They’re all trading on their youth and beauty, which isn’t permanent. Very sad.”) Each took a gift bag reserved for the editorial staff of a major magazines and I’m pretty sure the dad farted in excitement on seeing Luke Burgess (“He’s such a unit.”).
They were the pits, but they weren’t exactly wrong, I guess.

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BEST YOU CAN SIT WITH US
“Stupid [redacted]. That’s not a slag at you, just the fashion industry and the models. They think their [redacted] doesn’t stink. It’s about the women’s clothes, isn’t it?”
This is how my Uber driver describes Fashion Week for me, unprompted, on the morning of the first full day of shows. I tell him if he ever wants a fare, he should hang around outside Carriageworks for the remainder of the week because everyone at Fashion Week hates walking anywhere unless they’re being photographed doing so. Perhaps then he too will be Street Style Photographed and parlay his iconic look into a successful blogging career.
Arriving at the first day of Fashion Week is like arriving at the first day of the school year: you get a new locker; you see old friend[s]; you’re blanked by people you spent a considerable amount of time talking to the year before; the canteen is heinously expensive; you sit in rows or at desks, and you’re plied with variations on the theme of mineral water every two minutes. It’s just like school.

Occasionally, you also learn a thing or two. Like that New York transplants TOME – who had a homecoming of sorts to show locally for the first time – and Gary Bigeni are two of the more assured quiet achievers whose collections were a testament to the virtue of always playing to your strengths [eminently wearable separates cut from the cleanest cotton to create clothes you can and should live in]. 
Or that there’s more to the more brooding peers than you first thought, like Strateas.Carlucci, whose highly-polished show – though largely seasonally incongruous – was for the most part very impressive when you considered its use of wool (the label last year received the Woolmark Prize) and deft hand at playing toward the international buyers in attendance.
It was at the latter show that I made idle small talk with a volunteer who freely admitted she had no idea what was going on, or why she was here, just that she really liked the male models hired to hand out sparkling mineral water and that she thought Fashion Week was all about lingerie.
I suspected she was speaking for more people than she realised. The more you know.

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BEST PASSION OF CHRIST
If you don’t know, now you know that Fashion Week – now in its 20th year [old enough to drive a car unsupervised but not so old that it’s ready to give it all away at once] – isn’t only about flavoured mineral waters, but also has something to do with money. 
The spending of it, the making of it, the smell and – mostly – the taste of it [ample gratis sparkling wine]. 
Sometimes, if you think about it too much or when you’re at your lowest point, walking through Carriageworks during Fashion Week is exactly how I imagine Jesus Christ felt walking through Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem during Passover. Not unlike Christ and his disciples – the first bloggers – it’s disheartening to enter the venue full of light and love only to watch punters lining up to pose next to a car; or asking you if you’d like to jump in the Braun Steam Iron Outfit Selfie Photobooth™ to describe in detail the trends you’ve featured in your outfit, and would you like a designer paper coffee cup to match? It really is Matthew 21:12-13 all over again.
So it’s a common to hear others bemoan the legion attendees who’ll change outfits throughout the day, don animal ears and entertain the idea that any of it means anything. 
Luckily, for every half dozen hackneyed facsimiles of glamour, there’s redemption in collections like Michael Lo Sordo’s Resort 15/16 offering, which was a breath of fresh air on the morning of Day 02 – a collection of pleated, modern gowns rendered in jewel tones and capable of restoring faith and giving life. 
Amen.

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BEST
“No joke, I’m about to wet my [redacted] pants”, my neighbour deadpanned while perching on her stool as we waited for Toni Maticevski to show his Fall ’15 collection. Who knew if that unnerving prediction would come true; if my well-heeled companion would in fact soil the neoprene skirt she’d chosen to wear in an apparent homage to the designer whose clothes we were about to see. She didn’t, but she very nearly could’ve, and in the event that she did you’d be hard pressed to find a better fabric in which to wet yourself.
My point here is that hyperbole is rife at the shows, where each year hundreds will ‘literally die’ from ‘being uneven to able’. But also that Maticevski’s futurist show was one of a handful of shows from the week that were wholly deserving of praise tantamount to homicide (“That slayed me” being another popular refrain).
Last year’s Maticevski show was one of several that warranted the lashings of praise it would receive. It was genuinely exciting, and this year was no different. Everything from the scale of the set and the pristine runway, to the tablets gifted to the front row (several of which were stolen, while one of which was carried by a model as an accessory that live-streamed the show itself) and down to the styling (gilded orchids and luggage) and the soundtrack (Taylor Swift’s ‘Style’) was ~literally~ chill-inducing.

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BEST LAUGH TRACK 
If you had to ascribe one track to Alice McCall’s show of the same name, ‘One Track Love’, it would have to be either The Runaways ‘Cherry Bomb’ – the finale song – or a laugh track ripped from a 90s sitcom, the era from which McCall drew her inspiration. 
The collection itself wasn’t hilarious by any measure – it was classic McCall, reliably sweet playsuits and coquettish crochet in all the right places – but the slightly maniacal smiles the models were instructed to sport served to convey the opposite effect. Especially when you considered the length of a runway [very, very long] dotted with cartoonish, semi-phallic styrofoam sculptures commissioned of Daimon Downey

There was that bizarre spectacle, and then there was the sight of a very senior, very recognisable editor from Vogue Australia seen laughing in the face of a volunteer working the door who told her that she’d have to join the queue with the rest of the standing section, and that she could not go directly to her front row seat.

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BEST TUESDAY NIGHT LIGHTS
Clear eyes, We Are Handsome showing their first athleisurewear collection at the White City tennis stadium in Paddington on a variety of #fitspo gurus performing yogic contortions, can’t lose.

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BEST METHOD OF COMING TO KNOW A COLLECTION IN THE BIBLICAL SENSE
There are a variety of ways in which designers can exhibit their wares to a very small subsection of the general public during a Fashionable Week. 
The first is through the staging of a show lasting ~six minutes in a loud, well-lit and often cavernous space that leaves little room for intimacy and inspection; the second is through private visits to a designer’s showroom that make up for their lack of life with proximity in spades; and thirdly, through staging a presentation – it’s the best of both worlds. Por que no los dos, et cetera.
One such presentation staged this week was done so under the instruction of Christopher Esber, whose vision and accomplishments belie his years. My only note from his presentation [“great haute Turkish towels”] is a disservice to the scope and polish of what he offered for Resort 15/16 by way of crystal encrusted fish-netted black tie tailoring and effortlessly wrapped, knife pleated and fraying evening wear. 
There’s something sort of unnerving about entering the environment of a presentation – or any public space, for that matter – full as it is with everyone who knows everyone and in proximity to models who you usually only glimpse at an unnaturally fast walking pace. During a show, you can photograph anyone unnoticed – such is the speed and intensity and camera preparedness of everyone in attendance. During a presentation, however, when you photograph a model, you’re met not only with their unflinching gaze but a deafening silence, like a challenge. 
Let them stare, tbh.

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BEST ‘ME, ARRIVING AT YOUR FUNERAL’
Nicole Pollard closing Bianca Spender in a minimalist gown you’ll want to wear to your frenemy’s funeral.

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BEST INADVERTENT HOMAGE TO DARUDE’S ‘SANDSTORM’
The worst thing you could do at a fashion show, besides sitting in someone else’s seat, would be to evacuate the contents of your bowels in the middle of a runway – or at the very least, step on a runway before the show starts. 
Some runways are more precious than others: Bec & Bridge opted for wet cement that had to be topped up by two volunteers whose job it was to water the pavement with a watering can on which to show their easy Moroccan inflected collection. Strateas.Carlucci used bark dyed to match their palette (inky) and Kirrily Johnston chose gold to create a yellow brick road that a privileged few would scuff when furious PR lackeys weren’t looking.
IMHO, Manning Cartell’s was one of the more impressive runway of the week. Theirs was a set the scale of which befitted their tenth anniversary, with a stalactite lighting installation timed to the soundtrack suspended over a vast expanse of white sand – the scope of which was matched by an equally as wide-ranging collection of largely amenable separates. Here they are in action:

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BEST RUNNING OF THE JEWELS
You know when, despite your best intentions, you can’t help but judge an invitation by its front cover but then you go to the show and you’re actually greeted not only with one of the week’s best soundtracks (Run The Jewels, The Weeknd, Beyoncé, Chris Isaac, Jay Z, TLC) but also a collection that dangerously boarders on saccharine, exorbitant camp but balances that out with really impressive construction and a palpable joie de vivre, creating a situation you can wholly endorse despite it being at total odds with your own sensibilities. 
Cool, you know the feeling. That’s what Dyspnea’s ‘Dyslexi-Cola’ SS15/16 collection was like. Sweet like candy; kind of wrong, but surprisingly so right.

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BEST APPROPRIATION OF THE ICONIC
As far as this year’s offsite shows went, you’d be hard pressed to find one that topped the use of an emptied Bondi Icebergs pool as the backdrop on which to present the MBFWA debut of Ten Pieces – a utilitarian wardrobe solution revived under the creative direction of Lucy Hinckfuss and prolific restauranteur Maurice Terzini. 

Theirs was a show whose spectacle threatened to overshadow the intention of the clothing. That’s not an indictment of the capsule collection, which aims for the understated, but more of a endorsement for the show’s impressive production: the emptied pool, a drone, the wet-look H&MU, the inventive styling. 
Fans of a Rick Owens sensibility, a Virgil Abloh vibe and a predilection for a Bondi-centric lifestyle will doubtlessly find something to love here. 
I mean, how’s the serenity?

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BEST BYE FELICIA 
Shout out to Gail Sorronda, whose tenth anniversary show ‘Holy Water’ provided the perfect end to the week. Where ELLERY opted for a sucker punch arrival, Sorronda instead preferred to go gently into that good night with a collection of strong, assured black and white looks presented beautifully – the painted bare feet, pagan vibes and ma’amish touches verged on the monastic and will be perfect for the curator in your inner circle. 
If I had to choose a DJ Sammy song to sum up the experience, I’d have to choose ‘Heaven’.

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Lead photo by Stefan Gosatti/Getty Images

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