The Highs and Lows of Australian Fashion Week: Resort '25
AFW's schedule lacked a lot of big Australian designers which made room for small labels to gain a bigger spotlight. Plus the online talk surrounding influencers' role in fashion media.
Welcome back to my channel! Last week was Australian Fashion Week where local labels presented their Resort 2025 collections. This newsletter will cover my thoughts and opinions on the shows I attended and the social media uproar about diversity and the influencer’s role in fashion media.
If you like what you’re reading and want to support me in seeing this newsletter arrive in your inbox each week, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription or sharing it with a friend who might enjoy reading it.
AFW 2024 felt happier than previous years. I noticed there was a lot more mixing and mingling between sectors of the industry: publishers and brand clients, writers and models, photographers and fashion fans. It felt, or at least it started out as, connected and more relaxed in ways the week hadn’t been in years before. That or, given this is my eighth AFW, I’m better at consolidating my social battery for longevity and sustenance.
I was disappointed when the Australian Fashion Week schedule was announced in March, earlier this year. Afterpay pulled out as the named sponsor, and the big Aussie household names were missing from the line-up. It was as if we were watching our national fashion week die right in front of us.
Liz Sunshine, artist and photographer, turned my opinion around when I ran into her in Melbourne. Liz said she loved seeing so many new names on the schedule. It would provide our industry with fresh creativity, new people, and new ideas, and it could be a changing of the guards. I’m paraphrasing here, but her words made me excited for the possibilities for emerging brands to have their moment.
There were still big names on the schedule. P.E. Nation returned and redefined athleisure with clothes for everyday life. I loved their layering of leggings with cargo pants and shorts, tees under singlets, and double shirts and sweaters. Romance Was Born, Carla Zampatti, Michael Lo Sordo, and Bec + Bridge returned. However, there was still room for cult label Emma (Mulholland) On Holiday and NZ label Rory William Docherty to make their AFW debut, among many others.
The Highs
Viktoria & Woods Resort ‘25 Collection
Alix Higgins’ Resort ‘25 Collection
Verner’s Resort ‘25 Collection
Speed’s Resort ‘25 Collection
Fashion Design School Graduation Show
Viktoria & Woods was the first show of Australian Fashion Week in my schedule and it is one I still think about today. It was a presentation of high-quality fabrics, held at Harry Seidler’s The Cove Apartments, that combined sartorial style with functional silhouettes. Their use of leather and knitwear in new ways was a nod to their beginnings 20 years ago, and I loved that they used models of different ages and genders. It made their clothes span generations and feel simultaneously timeless and authentic.
There’s one look in particular that will haunt me until it becomes something that I own. It was a double-breasted coat with no undershirt worn over languid silk pants and finished with a matching silk trench overcoat—the relief a cool breeze carries on a Summer’s day. It was one of the final looks to walk the runway and personified the relaxed versus structured motif throughout the Viktoria & Woods collection.
Alix Higgins returns with one of my favourite of his collections to date. Higgins’ Resort ‘25 was a fast-paced and colourful show. “I introduced a pre-collection this year, which came out in January, so this [resort] collection happened very fast,” he told Laia Garcia-Furtado of Vogue Runway after the show. “I wanted the process to reflect that speed, the energy of running towards something, not questioning, not refining too much.”
Alix’s work feels reactive. As if his collections are a commentary on how he feels about what is happening in the world and, more so, what is happening in his life, each release acting like chapters in a series of personal visual essays. In some ways, it reminds me of the ways of Jonathan Anderson, his love for art and oddity, and how he interprets them through fashion.
As a big reader and a co-owner of a bookstore, Alix’s use of words is one of my favourite motifs in his designs. This season, his ‘Good Boy’ tee, ‘Dog Whistle’ polo and ‘Tulips, roses’ sweaters are standouts. Especially when they were layered over a ruffly baroque-collared tee shirt.
The poetic language Alix uses is direct yet also has a multitude of meanings. To me, the word or phrase he uses could represent queer culture. To you, it might be a reclamation of a derogatory meaning. For others, it could simply mean a characteristic of the person who wears it. Although Alix will have you think he writes terrible poems, as he told Jared Richards of ABC Arts, I want you to know that it is lyrical and, much like art, ready for your interpretation. Make what you want of it. Make it your own.
Place your personal experiences with that of the artist or designer in a Venn Diagram, and you’ll find that the sweet middle section of commonality is where connection, therefore art, is made. Alix Higgins’ Resort ‘25 collection did that.
Thursday morning, I walked into Verner’s debut Australian Fashion Week show. It was full of effortlessly cool and extremely wearable clothes. Tees, pants and outerwear that would never stay sitting in your wardrobe for long without being used. The type of wearability that you’d even contemplate wearing your Verner piece if you saw it in your dirty clothes basket after wearing it the day before.
If it wasn’t the blue pin-striped star shirt in a commes des garcon style appliqué that sealed the deal for me, it might have been the appropriated Vanish laundry detergent logo as Verner or the Hibiscus flower coat in a warm brown. I also thoroughly enjoyed the brown pin-stripe shirt with blue stars on the chest, the hoodies with exaggerated tying cords, and the patchwork Ugg boots.
It wasn’t until after the show that I learned that this Melbourne-based brand was already well-established and creating incredible collections and collaborations. I’m a new fan and grateful to have had an AFW schedule that allowed me to be introduced to the Verner world.
The Fashion Design School (FDS) graduation presentation was incredible. I was astounded to see WHO AMU’s level of detailing and craftsmanship and Lychee Alkira’s masterful colour story. All the designers who showed were incredible, but these two specifically showed a level of technical expertise that would match a designer who has been in the industry for longer than they have. Remember those names!
Alvi Chung of Speed made for an Australian first when she held her Resort ‘25 collection at Sydney’s SeaLife Aquarium in Darling Harbour. Her artist collaboration with Taylah Hasaballah referenced the collection’s inspiration, a Phoenix rising from the ashes. Taylah and Alvi used a custom dying technique on regenerated denim, combining industrial dyes and chemical reactions with ancient methods of wax painting—a rebirth.
Although I didn’t go to Wackie Ju’s, Iordanes Spyridon Gogos’ and Nicol & Ford’s presentations, I watched them online and fell in love with their passion, representation and art direction. I often think about these as shows that transcend fashion week. They are like performance art. Visual, aural, fashionable feasts of characters and feelings deserve a space that celebrates them more authentically than what Australian Fashion Week can provide.
The Middle
Lack of menswear brands
International presence
A part of me hurts each time a menswear brand stops showing at AFW. 2024 saw no improvement, with zero menswear shows on schedule. However, I do take solace in seeing women’s labels use male models. While I know they wouldn’t use them for a campaign, I love seeing how the modern silhouette can be genderless.
I placed this in The Middle section because while I hope menswear brands return to the schedule. I’m equally interested in seeing whether the commercial viability and future of Australian fashion is genderless.
I wish there were more of an international presence for our designers. I’m unfamiliar with everyone who attends the shows throughout the week, but I hope some international publications and buyers make the long-haul flight for it. I have a feeling there aren’t as many as I imagine.
At AFW in 2022, I met Kia Desiree Goosby of Vanity Fair, who flew in to write a piece about Australian designers. I still see her post on her Instagram about wearing a few Aussie labels today. It brings me joy to see our local brands have that international reach.
The Lows
There aren’t many lows as there are highs here, but they are loud.
Lack of Australian Brands in Street Style
Diversity in Street Style
Influencer’s Role in Fashion Media
Throughout the week, a lack of Australian brands was worn and shown in street style. Of all the opportunities to showcase our style to the world, especially when fashion publications photograph what people wear throughout the week for national and international use, this is the time to showcase and support Australian talent.
I don’t mind seeing the mix-and-match of international designers with local ones, but seeing head-to-toe outfits from fast-fashion outlets or international brands felt disheartening.
If I get snapped for a publisher’s street style page, I want to ensure I wear and support local brands. This is my fourth year wearing Australian labels to AFW, allowing international brands for my accessories, and I hope that more people join in next year.
If you’ve joined this substack from Bri Lee’s News & Reviews, you might remember my interview with Kim Russell, a fashion creative whose archival knowledge made her famous. Kim and Maggie Zhou, a freelance writer and content creator, called out the lack of diversity during Australian Fashion Week—which is the low.
Maggie, in a TikTok video, and Kim, on her Instagram stories, spoke to the exclusivity of street-style documentation throughout the week and the lack of diversity on the runways. Both called to publishers about the thin, off-duty model aesthetic in their ‘Best Street Style of AFW’ articles, noting the lack of diversity representation for POCs and the array of styles people wore.
Kim continued her Instagram stories with a heartwarming message about how the industry's lack of inclusivity makes her feel alone. I relate to that. No matter how deeply or authentically we all might think about fashion and the industry, it feels like it still comes down to a mould that we might not fit. I wonder if that feeling ever goes away. I ask because mine hasn’t.
Kurt Johnson, a stylist, took to social media to dispute the role of influencers in the fashion industry. “Ur a salesperson, the 2024 Avon lady if you will,” he wrote in an Instagram story. “It’s truly so wild to me that people used to be paid because they had talent and ideas, and now people are paid for having no discernible skills other than being relatable.”
Kurt admits that his words come from a place of jealousy but continues with “Influencers signify and perpetuate the death of creativity.” He notes the budgets that used to go to “people like him” are now being reallocated to influencer marketing. His Instagram stories conclude quite dramatically: “My son can be gay, my daughter can be Lebanese. But I will NEVER raise a child who grows up to be an influencer.”
I am aware of a viral TikTok controversy about two influencers who allegedly left a brand’s resort ‘25 collection before the show began after taking pictures of each other on the runway to show they were there. Unfortunately, I’m not shocked that it happened. However, our local industry is small, and people talk. You can’t operate like that and still expect to have a seat at the table.
This behaviour does not represent influencers as a whole, and stylists who dress people in outfits copied and pasted from lookbooks do not represent their industry as a whole.
Are we really “watching the demise of creativity in real time,” says Kurt, because of influencers? Is there no room for more than one creative industry to thrive as an outsourced marketing stream in fashion? I think influencers work alongside fashion media and publishers to connect brands to people in ways that feel less like an advertorial and more like something obtainable, each influencer with their own ways of connection depending on the community they’ve built.
The real question to ask instead of coming for influencers as a whole is: what type of marketing seems to be working for the fashion industry in 2024?
Thanks for reading this special edition of ONE-PIECE! From my regular posts, you’ll be reading about a garment, accessory or trend that I analyse and style in the hope that you’ll find something new or interesting to play around with in your own wardrobe.
If you have a garment, accessory or styling technique you want me to explore, drop it in the comments! A Cowboy Hat? No worries. Double Shirting? Consider it done. Whatever you do, subscribe now so you can have ONE-PIECE come directly to your inbox every week.