Again, we reached the fanfare and over-convivial creme-de-la-dreme event during which defines the culture (Sydney in particular) when delegates both local media and international media (including buyers, photographers and others) cojoin to take part in the visual spectacle that are the fashion shows. As the 15th year the IMG organised event has been run, Simon Lock the original founder of Australian fashion week left his post as its director leaving the fashion week without a proper head. Not like the enclave of loyal followers of Martin Margiela similarly leaving what he has started appears to slightly dampen the spirits in amongst the media alike. But the show and the entire event had to go on and after last year’s recessionary times, Australian Fashion week for 2010 looked absolutely jam-packed. To the hilt with back to back time slot fashion shows both on-site at Sydney’s Overseas Passenger Terminal and off-site where some designers could stage their own misc-en-scene.

We could have succinctly placed all these Australian designers with an overarching statement of fashion commercialism. After all, these are what the fashion shows are principally about in securing new buyers and a broader market place. However, this was again the unique chance to observe how some particular Australian designers have continue to develop their brand manifesto that abridges a new kind of Australian Fashion identity. In dominating fashion, womenswear was the strongest and most focal point with young established individuals including Dion Lee, Deborah Sams and Mary Lou, Karla Spetic, Therese Rawsthorne all increasingly meticulously focused on either the essence of tailoring, contrasting fabrics in endeavour to make idiosyncratic silhouettes and technical accomplishments incorporating crystals and synthetic materials. Most interestingly was in which how they have developed into fashion designers from their previous collections and the milieu of how successfully their work has resulted from their entire production and development. Dion Lee has sailed intrepidly with his own business at his tender age of 24 canvassing clothes that conflate both fluid and deconstruction. Therese Rawsthorne whose compelled to create an emotive aura woven into her clothes; Deborah Sams and Mary Lou whose own brand Bassike has been spearheaded into a direction unbridled by their Australian origin. Jade Sarita Arnott, designer of Arnsdorf whose intelligent eye creates clothes with heightened sensation interlinks the world of literature, Photography and the essence of memory interlaced.

As thought stepping into an unknown utopian domain, the event as a whole appeared to have forgotten one of its most enduring and profound performances. Susan Dimasi, Chantal Kirby and Crystal Dunn of MaterialByProduct sidestepped the conventional seating spectacle for a four-dimensional show in which Crystal (model and garmentmaking director) walked in a circular motion that danced their clothes of a high-luxe and streetwear quality. It was as if fashion designers who have forgone runway for the film medium, the trio made the film medium as a physical apparition.

Cultures In Between focuses in-depth on 6 designers who do not exclusively punctuate a new breed and identity of Australian Fashion only but have greatly challenged the demands of today’s prêt-à-porter. Unlike other countries with a historic fashion pedigree, it is the rather the intense deconstruction and reconstruction of garments that have come to defined a new kind of self-expressionism in Australian Fashion. Therefore, these designers have created clothes with very personal and intimate characteristics. In a fickled city like Sydney that demands the most extremes of pret-a-porter than conjuring conceptual or artisanal collections, we peer into these designers who most of all communicate their design than to just sell it seasonally.

BASSIKE

MATERIALBYPRODUCT

THERESE RAWSTHORNE

DION LEE

GARY BIGENI

ARNSDORF