Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia: Runway Edit (Part 2/2).

Project NextGen: The showcase of emerging Australian designers was bound to be one of my favourites, with rising artists who have no fear of pushing the boundaries.

Stanzee

Stanzee featured everything I love about the recent shift in fashion towards pushing boundaries: boundaries of modesty – with sheer – and of glitz – with sparkles. Textures previously deemed as raunchy or tacky can be made luxurious; exhibit A: Stanzee.

Photography by me.

Stephanie Henly

Sheer, fluff, fringes, what’s not to like. I’ve always wondered what I would wear to my wedding, as I am so NOT a traditional white dress kinda gal – I now know what I’ll be wearing – I’m going as a red and white princess swan.

Sarah Hope Schofield 

All the fun and games of flouncy dresses and power suits, with a twist – no backs. And there’s nothing I love more than something so unexpected.

Meredith Bullen

Making sheep look fashionable – genius.

Victoria Bliss

A much-needed update of the furry key chain/accessory that’s been overdone more than fishnets on Instagram (I still wear both, nevertheless). This collection features a range of luxe furry attachments that you want to love, but have to hate, because it’s fur – oh wait it’s faux fur, you can just love it.

Isabelle Quinn

What space would look like, if you shrunk it down, drew a picture of it for a child’s picture book, then turned it into clothing using only metallic, silky or sheer material. Okay that made absolutely no sense at all. Forget that, these pieces are totally what I imagine all the cool kids will wear when humans live in space.

Pageant – Tunnel Vision

The Pageant collection began with an array of colourful, yet minimal, modern swimsuits and what I’m going to call ‘adjunct beach attire’ – that is, if you can call bather-material arm warmers ‘beach attire’. For those times when you’re at the beach and you’re just sitting there thinking ‘if only my arms weren’t so cold’. I don’t go to the beach though, so I guess I can’t really judge. If you prefer you arms to remain attached to your top, you’ll be happy to know Pageant produces these too. For the next part of the show, it was as if these poor warm-bodied-cold-armed people realised that if their arms were cold, it was most likely not beach weather and suddenly decided to put on long sleeve and long pant suits. Good move, if you ask me. Aside from some confusing weather arrangements on the runway, I thoroughly enjoyed the first half of the show. Unfortunately however, the collection finished with what can only be described as camping outfits – and no, not glamping, camping.

Photography by me.

Photo credit: Lucas Dawson.

Zambesi – Kaleidoscope

Zambesi featured a bizarre combination of tailoring, street wear and iridescence. The combination was disjointed, but joined in a different way with the blurring of gender lines. My favourite parts of the collection were jackets made of a material which could only be described as thinly-sliced mermaid tail combined with unicorn dust. The sequinned shoes would have also been my favourite part, but unfortunately I am a midget and couldn’t see the shoes over the heads of frow – luckily for me, there’s this thing called the internet.

Photo credit: Lucas Dawson.

Thank you to Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia, OMGFIVE and IMG for having me.