What you missed from this week’s National Graduate Showcase x Emporium Melbourne runway

The best and brightest.

Loved for its experimental nature, diverse aesthetics and whimsicality, the National Graduate Showcase at PayPal Melbourne Fashion Festival is always a showcase of unbridled self-expression.

Every year, the event celebrates the 10 best and brightest graduate designers from across the country, as hand-picked by a panel of prestigious industry experts. This year was no exception, with a lineup featuring AI-generated designs, sculptural construction techniques and gravity-bending accessories. The 10 chosen collections came to life on March 5 at the National Graduate Showcase x Emporium Melbourne runway.

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At Fashion Journal, we’re passionate about supporting emerging Australian design talent (but you already know that). We spoke to each of the graduates about their winning collections in a series of profiles here and had the pleasure of supporting Tuesday’s runway, which made the experience all the more special. Scroll on for some of our favourites.

Museum Objects by Lina Wu

University of Technology Sydney graduate Lina Wu’s collection, Museum Objects, was buoyant, playful and colourful. Her looks were a sensory experience and watching each model go down the runway, I just wanted to reach out and touch the bean bag-esque accessories and textural knits. Made entirely from knit fabrics, Museum Objects was a labour of love. “I would spend 12 hours a day knitting meters and meters of fabric and then cutting and sewing the pattern back together,” she told Fashion Journal. “It was a big, big task… but it meant that I was creating my own unique fabric with intentional colours and technical properties.”

Momento Mori by Samuel D Raadt

Speaking about the looks over post-show drinks, Samuel’s spikey suiting and heavily distressed formalwear seemed to be a crowd favourite. Donning morbid (in a good way) black-and-silver skull masks, the faceless models stormed the runway in artfully shredded blazers, tailored pants and pleated skirts. “This collection represents my perception of how death would look if it were to walk down a runway,” he explained. “I explore death as a force that is both hauntingly beautiful and profoundly powerful.”

1608 by Abha Gupta

Indian-Australian designer Abha Gupta’s luxurious graduate collection, 1608, “reflects the richness” of her homeland. Fusing Western tailoring and traditional Indian textile designs, her looks featured intricate draping and pleating. The androgynous runway display featured a mesmerising art performance, where the artisanal touches in her collection really shone through.

Zero-Sum Game by Alexander Enticknap

University of Technology Sydney Honours student Alexander Enticknap opened the Showcase with his distorted, carnival-esque designs. Models wore warped, sculptural silhouettes, created by fusing artificial intelligence and fashion design. “[It involved] lots of experimentation, playing with different shapes, silhouettes, patterns, prints and different methods of working with AI,” he told Fashion Journal. “[I was] treating AI as less of a tool to do a specific task and more of an open collaborator; figuring out ways to break it, developing warped figures and garments from that process.”

Copy, Hold, Fold: What Is Inside the Suitcase by Leanne Choi

RMIT graduate Leanne Choi’s collection Copy, Fold, Hold was kitschy in the best way, using luggage as an extension of each look. Her work speaks to the Asian-Australian diaspora, and more specifically the clothing and fabrics her grandma would send her mother over from Hong Kong. “These items didn’t mean much as clothing to wear but [they] had so many memories and feelings of my family and culture,” she says. “This collection unpacks these small everyday customs, experiences, and materials, exploring themes of diffusion and appropriation.”

I Wonder Who’s Knitting for Me by Cuiting Wu

Crafted from knitted textiles and colourful beads, Cuiting Wu’s collection I Wonder Who’s Knitting for Me is playful, feminine and surprisingly wearable. To create her vibrant looks, Cuiting merged her ceramic-making skills with knitwear design, encouraging viewers to reconsider the ‘grandma’ stereotype associated with knitting. “My aim is to achieve creative innovation through [the] merging of materials, using my training in print and graphics to further expand the visual potential of the designs,” she said.