Tailoring, tantrums and TikTok trends: 30 years of Melbourne Fashion Week
Words by Bianca O’Neill
Reflections on the ever-changing event, on and off the runway.
Despite our decades-long rivalry with our northern neighbours about everything from which city has the best food, sport, culture or coffee, few would challenge Melbourne’s reputation as Australia’s fashion capital. Melburnians are known for their unique sense of style, reflected in both our vibrant creative communities and our unwavering support of our beloved local designers.
It comes as no surprise then, that Melbourne hosted Australia’s first ever Fashion Week event back in 1994 – followed closely by the consumer-facing Melbourne Fashion Festival and Sydney’s Australian Fashion Week, both in 1996 – in an attempt to capture the heart of the city’s creative community.
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1994 was a watershed moment in Australian pop culture: Muriel’s Wedding and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert relaunched us onto the international stage; our Kylie surprised us all with the darker smash hit, ‘Confide in Me’, and a little-known band of teenagers from Newcastle called Silverchair released their first ever single ‘Tomorrow’ – later included on their debut Frogstomp, a US chart-topping album. Within the context of these cultural turning points was a burgeoning local fashion industry, with nowhere to spruik their wares.
Then came Melbourne Fashion Week (M/FW). It’s gone by a few different names, but over the past 30 years its runways have launched the careers of many local faces, provided a stage for the city’s best creatives, and seen its ‘frow’ [front row] morph from insiders, buyers and stylists to reality TV stars and local influencers. Backstage, it has hosted a veritable who’s-who of Melbourne’s best talent, and out front, provided some of the country’s most thrilling and poignant fashion moments.
Australia’s first Fashion Week
As the first Fashion Week to launch onto the Australian calendar, M/FW (or Melbourne Spring Fashion Week as it was known) tried to find its legs as a more nationally-focused fashion event, before settling on its current ‘Melbourne-first’ focus. Fashion journalist – and I wouldn’t be exaggerating to call her a local fashion legend – Janice Breen Burns (who now runs an online edit @voxfrock) was there from day dot, thirty years ago.
“In the beginning, we did actually think that we had an Australian identity – but we didn’t. We had a lot of really fantastic brands who were polling well in international markets because they had an ‘international’ look… the focus was a bit wider in those early years.”
“The first memories I’ve got of some incredible events were in the Town Hall,” says Janice. “There was a lot of excitement around it because it was the first time we’d kind of coagulated around a focused fashion event here.”
In our walk down memory lane, Janice details some of the first designers she remembers from the early days, including Gwendolynne (who will return to the runway this Sunday night for the Closing Showcase) and iconic Melbourne milliner Richard Nylon. She speaks fondly of long-time fashion retailer Christine Barrow (Christine on Collins) organising pop-up fashion events ahead of spring racing season to promote home-grown designers like Martin Grant.
One of these memorable events she speaks of culminated in full-sized trees being hauled into Town Hall for a runway, snaking around dining tables where attendees watched large ice sculptures containing fresh roses melt in time with the changing seasons. It was the era of fashion as spectacle; ahead of the looming big department ‘store wars’ and fashion budgets that certainly seem like a rarity these days.
“As the dinner progressed [the trees] started out with blossoms, then went to full vivid leaf for summer, then autumn leaves… it was just absolutely magical, it felt like you were on another planet.”
Current Creative Director of Melbourne Fashion Week, Matthew Flinn, enters M/FW lore around the same time I did, a little over a decade ago when big retail was starting to come up against the rise of online shopping, and department store ‘faces’ like Jennifer Hawkins and Megan Gale saw its days numbered. But that didn’t mean the end of household names gracing the M/FW runway, with Kate Peck and Ashley Hart delivering some star power for those seeking an injection of celebrity.”
“In 2010 we had Ruby Rose walk the runway, which caused a lot of excitement,” says Matthew, “and obviously Adut (Akech, 2019) who has gone on to so many great things after being an ambassador for us as well.”
“I always remember Melbourne Spring Fashion Week usually kicked off with the Little Bourke Street runway – and it was where we closed down Little Bourke Street and we did this big, amazing retail runway to kick off the event.”
With its return to the program again this year, as part of the 30th year celebrations, Matthew speaks of how it stoked some wistful reflection on the history of M/FW. “It was just so nice to see so many people saying it reminded them so much of Melbourne Spring Fashion Week back in the day – and doing that great, free runway for the city, and for retail. A big celebration in the heart of the retail Mecca… it was a nice full circle moment.”
Controversy, trends and tantrums: A changing frow
As the internet delivered the first iterations of social media, a new era began to take shape at Fashion Weeks around the world Bloggers and online fanzines emerged, a new media wave was set to threaten the traditional hierarchy of the coveted front row – something Janice had already seen years earlier, with the influx of newspaper gossip columnists seeking sizzle for their weekly rag.
Kate Keane, Managing Director at Kate&Co (who have been the PR company behind the runway for almost a decade) was at the forefront of the changing media climate in the 2010s, eventually taking on the mammoth task of delivering PR for M/FW from 2016.
“My first memory of M/FW is seating media at runway shows at Melbourne Town Hall. For years, M/FW hosted all their runways at the Town Hall before expanding the schedule to include some impressive locations around the City of Melbourne… I remember when we first managed the PR in 2016 and we had so many media we almost couldn’t fit them on the media riser!”
Nowadays, traditional media attendance is more curated, as the frow has increasingly heated up with influencers, content creators, local personalities and TikTok stars – some of whom have larger online audiences than even the largest media outlets.
The rise of the ‘democratic’ internet, where everyone has access to an instant audience, brought with it the onslaught of social media content. Those who were able to wrestle the social behemeths’ algorithms most lucratively were able to collectively drive a movement which revolutionised Fashion Week’s front row. But the result wasn’t always pretty.
Behind the scenes and in media columns around the country – and even, occasionally, on the runway itself – there were rumblings of discontent from traditional fashion media, who now found themselves ousted to the second row, thanks to a growing cohort of young guns wrangling millions of online admirers.
As everyone found their respective seats over the past decade (both literally and figuratively) the chatter has died down to barely an occasional comment here and there about the newest face in the frow. But how has the radical democratisation of the frow been reflected both on and off the runway?
The democratisation of the runway
The changing face of M/FW, and indeed, many Fashion Weeks around the world, has resulted in a more democratised fashion industry. From an insiders-only, more exclusive event, we’ve seen its growing appeal to the general public result in the on-sale events we see today; events that truly anyone can attend.
But beyond that, the increased calls for representation across broader demographics have ensured that attendees can more accurately see themselves reflected in an industry that was, for a very long time, almost exclusively white, thin, and able-bodied. Perhaps the biggest credit to the rise of bloggers, and then influencers, and now content creators, is their ability to show the richly diverse public they are welcome to participate in fashion.
On the runway, we’ve seen showrunners heed calls for better representation, delivering a series of ‘firsts’ that have now become a regular occurrence on the catwalk. As Kate points out, M/FW is one of the most inclusive events on the fashion calendar. “What really stands out,” she notes, “year upon year, is the similarities to international shows and the celebration of individuality. M/FW does this extremely well and is a driving force of the Australian fashion industry.”
The future of Melbourne Fashion Week
The whole world changed when the Covid pandemic tore through populations at alarming speed, pushing everyone indoors and driving significant moments online. Melbourne Fashion Week was no exception; they, too, had to find a new way of operating within an unprecedented landscape.
“Coming out of Covid, we were one of the first live events back in the city,” says Matthew. “And while we did digital runways during that time, we reimagined the program to be able to reshape it, and make it so much more accessible by doing the dispersed runway model and going to different venues for different showcases… it just changed the types of shows we were able to do, and appeal to different audiences.”
From increasing cultural, colour and size diversity represented on the runway, through to increased representation of ability and the gender spectrum, it’s clear Melbourne Fashion Week has worked hard to ensure the now much more public runways are adequately diverse. This mission has culminated in their first non-binary ambassador this year, musician G Flip. “They’ve just been so amazing to work with, and we’re so excited for their performance on Sunday night,” says Matthew. “It’s going to be an amazing, spectacular celebration of 30 years.”
But look, in the end it all comes down to the fashion. How is fashion evolving with the rise of AI and dupe culture, and in an environment where it can sometimes seem saturated with endless feeds of outfit inspiration and fleeting micro trends?
As Kate notes, we’re starting to see attendees take more risks with their outfits – something we’re all craving more of as we look to international Fashion Week fare. “About two years ago I first noticed Charlene Davies (@charlene_ye_davies),” she says. “She would spend months planning what to wear and show up to M/FW events wearing the most incredible outfits I have ever seen… it is so fashion forward, it gives me New York vibes and I love seeing this in Melbourne.”
“Since spotting Charlene, I’ve noticed that more consumers are dressing in their individual style. They are creating looks that speak to fashion, but also to culture and technology. Thankfully, we are not seeing a fashion uniform in a sea along the frow. It makes for fabulous people watching, and adds to the incredible fabric that is M/FW.”
Kate has also seen this shift toward fashion as entertainment. “Consumers [are] wanting entertainment in their fashion, which is evident in ticket sales to runways such as the Student Showcase, where our emerging designers and creatives showcase designs outside of the box… we are oversubscribed to runways that provide entertainment via colour and movement, and a uniqueness that it seems we are all craving.”
Colour? That seems very anti-Melbourne of us. So maybe, after three decades, we will finally answer the question we’ve been asking all these years: Why do Melburnians wear so much black? I suppose the answer lies in a deeper metaphor about what it is to be a fashionable Melburnian – because it’s timeless, because it doesn’t scream ‘look at me’, and because no matter the changing weather, you’ll always be right on trend. Or maybe looking beyond it.
For more on Melbourne Fashion Week’s history, head here.