So it turns out I've been a fashion nerd my entire life.
Last year, the biggest, highest grossing, most violent video game of all time came out. Grand Theft Auto V made six billion dollars in it's first week out of the gate, and contains more mayhem, torture and explosions than The Sopranos, Breaking Bad and the Boxing Day sales combined. And yet, amidst the two hundred hours I spent reviewing the game, I spent an ungodly portion of it driving around the digitized rendition of Los Angeles, scouring every clothing store, from rundown vintage hipster flea markets to uptown, bling-festooned haute couture dispensaries, building up my fictional wardrobe. Before each mission, I'd spend a literal half hour painstakingly coordinating suits, shirts, waistcoats, ties, loafers and cufflinks, and each heist I pulled in the game meant one thing and one thing only: more clothes.
The new Doctor Who actor, Peter Capaldi, was announced, and all I could think about was this: what look will he go for? Will he go for the Toulouse-Lautrec era flowing Boho chic of Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor, or will he sport more a David Tennant era Ben Sherman mod look? In the end, he went for a tailored Bowie-come-nineteen twenties street magician, and throughout his first episodes, my eyes were glued to his threads, judging, assessing, evaluating.
Even when late last year I finally deigned to give in to the sticky allure of reality TV, I instantly veered towards shows that were fashion oriented - namely, The Face and Australia's Next Top Model. Hell, RuPaul's Drag Race made me its bitch, providing a sort of warped kaleidoscope of 20th century fashion highlights, which one could argue is part of what drag does so well with fashion. Hell, maybe I've been a closet fashion nerd all along. In an age where people are growing more comfortable stepping out of the closet, I seem driven to climb on in.
Where better a place to start, then, than the Australia's biggest, best and brightest fashion week: Melbourne Spring Fashion Week? So, I made some calls, and the kindly souls pulling the strings smuggled me into the front row at the opening night runway event.
I arrived at the cordoned off stretch of Little Bourke street in the heart of the Melbourne CBD, nestled between the glittering shoulder-blades of Emporium. If you've not been inside, it's a sprawling layer-cake of artfully cobbled together fashion icons, all vying for your attention. The sheer scale of the structure, split into two parts, ensures that most people will never be able to leave. Partially because of what they sell, but mostly because, structurally, it's like trying to escape a maze. I've been in there five times now, and I still can't ever find the exit. If Jareth, The Goblin King, had used Emporium to trap Jennifer Connelly, she might never have gotten out.
And so, Melbourne Spring Fashion week kicked off cradled in the bosom of this incandescent retail juggernaut, with both sides of the street cordoned off, allowing the public to watch longingly as models traipsed through a series of florally festooned arches. I was shown to the riser - a fuzzy raised plinth situated before the runways zenith. Surrounded by professional fashion photographers, I put on a brave face, pulled out my tiny camera, and began snapping.
At which point the head of the PR agency running the whole shebang warmly greeted me, and with perhaps five words, led me through one of the archways on the runway, along the now seated three rows of tiered celebrities, fashion icons and other assorted lovers of fashion, and plopped me down exactly halfway down the runway. I was about to be thrown in the deep end without so much as a life jacket, or whatever the high-fashion equivalent of a life jacket is.
After the MSFW ambassador, model Ashley Hart, came out and rang a large ceremonial bell to kick off the week, my very first runway began. Models emerged one after another, walking down, then up again, exactly like I expected. After the initial shock wore off, I realised I was seeing new clothes from Sass & Bide. Which is when it struck me: i'd just recognised a designer without being prompted. Much in the same way you'd recognise a Bjork song anywhere, I somehow twigged and thought, oh. Obviously, new Sass & Bide. Their colour palette this season has been a stunning blend of white, gold and royal blues, and the outfit in front of me looked less like wearable clothing, and more like an exploded interpretation of an art deco-infused naval uniform.
Sass & Bide, incidentally, is a label championed by Sarah Jessica Parker, aka Carrie Bradshaw. Sex and the City is something of a love of mine (for the record, I'm an Aiden guy), but the one episode I hold above all others is 'The Real Me', in which Carrie is cajoled into living her dream/nightmare: strutting her stuff alongside models on a catwalk, wearing jewelled Dolce and Gabbana panties, hectored lovingly by Alan Cumming. At one point, she trips, looks over at her friends sitting in the crowd, their faces bathed in the light emanating from the catwalk itself, and she considers not getting up. And there I was, sitting where Samantha, Miranda, Charlotte and Stanford sat, looking up at actual, real-life models for the first time. Any pretense I had about my stance on models, fashion and being seen attending Melbourne Spring Fashion Week fell away, like chiffon under fabric scissors. I was born again. If it weren't guaranteed to have distracted the model before me wearing a superb Dion Lee ensemble, I'd have punched the air triumphantly.
The whole runway look was spring, through and through. Well, spring in Sydney; spring in Melbourne right now is, evidently, a city-wide Ice Bucket challenge. The whole thing felt feminine without being overbearing; brimming with hues of pink and purple, a smattering of pastels, soft, dewy makeup and archways garlanded with flowers. All the models had a French Baroque feel to their hair styling (Kevin Murphy did a superb job styling here.) I found it hard to move past the pieces by Sass & Bide, though a Bianca Spender number also seized my attention. Sadly, the it was all over in a flash. I'd taken barely any notes, instead sitting there with my jaw on the floor.
Later, at the opening night party, I asked Ashley Hart about the distinction between 'high' fashion and 'wearable' fashion. 'Oh, there's definitely a clear difference,' she told me. 'I love both, but there are certain designers who make pieces that are less things you'd be seen wearing around the place, and more for display. Actually, they're closer to art. And that's part of the industry... having both types is important.'
'Are there any designers out there, or any who we saw tonight at the launch, who are straddling that line between... well, if we're being crude, practical and impractical?'
She thought for the briefest of moments before replying. 'Sass & Bide. I love those two, their stuff is incredible. It's somewhere between the two ends of fashion, and I love wearing it. Did you see their pieces tonight?' At this point we both very vocally geeked out over the current Sass & Bide range, before moving onto discussing the merits of Bikram yoga (Hart is a trained Yoga instructor; she assured me the 40 degree heat required in Bikram classes does, in fact, have benefits.) Then we were approached by the famous milliner and designer of the iconic MSFW headpiece, Richard Nylon, who given his name is forbidden to work in any industry other than fashion. We all chortled and sprayed pleasantries about the place. So as it turns out, people in fashion aren't just immaculately attired, they're also utterly lovely.
Melbourne Spring Fashion Week had more to throw at me: the MSFW Hub, documentary screenings, free runways, and on Tuesday night, the first in a series of epic designer runways. The Melbourne Town Hall was overhauled for the event, with the runway surrounding a group of classical musicians playing to accompany the models. The conductor emerged, the entire room hushed, and I proceeded to scream internally at the onslaught of superb, ephemeral fashion on show. Early on, Jason Grech dominated the runway with a series of dresses that were high-concept, yet elegant. I was won over by Michael Lo Sordo's pieces, too; one in particular involved an artfully skewed soft pink trench with exposed metallic pink bodice. It was like asymmetrical fairy floss cyberpunk. Which is a phrase I never thought I'd utter, but there you go.
Gwendolynne's pieces were unbelievable. I found myself leaning forward eagerly when Dom Bagnato's line of men's suits were trotted out; one model was wearing matching blue trousers and waistcoat with a tan blazer, a stucco shirt, and matching flame-orange pocket square and bow-tie. The entire outfit popped, and as the model wearing it pivoted on brown leather soles which, I realised in an instant, locked in perfectly with his belt, my third eye blew open like the airlock on a poorly built spacecraft.
The show closed with a series of pieces by Anaessia, which started somewhat tamely and then escalated in a sort of fairytale Wagnerian crescendo; initially gentle pinks and frills, the models began emerging wearing increasingly ornate headpieces. The ascent peaked with a literal princess, wearing a crown that looked like it hadn't been lovingly made, but rather grown. The whole line was at once organic, adorable and ever-so-slightly unsettling. Much like the notebook I was clutching, which, now filled with tiny manic handwriting committed in a madman's scrawl, made me look like a white-knuckled nutbar. As everyone rightfully applauded, I discreetly pocketed the notepad, resolving to burn it as soon as humanly possible.
How had this happened? How, in the span of four days, had I gone from casual indifference to ardent obsession? How had I somehow decided to violently explode out of the fashion closet? Being subjected to a night of Aurelio Costarella, Carla Zampatti, Dom Bagnato, Jason Grech, Nicolangela, Anaessia and Michael Lo Sordo certainly played a part. Meeting and talking with models, milliners, designers, curators and exceptionally generous PR folk also played a part. But it turns out that Melbourne Spring Fashion Week acted as a sort of lens through which the diffuse light of my casual interest in clothes was focussed down to a searing, relentless beam. It's hard to deny such a week of concentrated, deliberate, dense, considered fashion offerings, especially for nerds obsessed with minutia. Melbourne Spring Fashion Week made a believer out of me. I plan on spending the remaining couple of days enjoying all it has to offer, and I highly recommend you head to their website, pour over the program, and dip your toe in.
If you need me, I'll be in the fetal position, gripping the September issue of Vogue to my chest and whimpering quietly to myself.
/Paul
(All photographs courtesy of Tegan Higginbotham)
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