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Gabi, Nicola, Matilda Sarah

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Global Positioning of Australian Fashion_Notes  

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Alvin Fernandez from Ae'lkemi

Photos supplied by Alvin Fernandez

Alvin Fernandez, couturier from A e'lkemi, was born in Singapore and moved to Perth in Western Australia when he was 12.

Today his fashions have graced catwalks at Milan and New York fashion weeks. His designs focus on feminine designs and are influenced by themes as diverse as the Spanish Armada of the 1500's to the 70's French Riviera.

He says the biggest challenge for him is distance. "I am far away from the epicentre of Australian fashion, which is Sydney, so finding the right manufacturer and production team has been challenging. But I have the most amazing team behind me now and after being in the industry for 10 years, it has become a lot easier.

"I have had a lot of interest from Asia recently so I would love to break into the market there, especially Singapore. Longevity for any fashion brand is always important, and I dream of having a little couture salon in Sydney and Paris."

Photos supplied by Hanny Chan

Hanny Chan was born in Vietnam to Chinese parents, and the family moved to Australia when she was 17. Her label 'Hannii' showcases feminine bridal wear and contemporary evening wear.

"Given my family's entrepreneurial background, I thought it'd be good to combine art and business and decided to study fashion design and started my own fashion label after that."

Hanny says her biggest achievement is that her label is going strong after 14 years in such a competitive industry. She's seen a lot of labels close their doors in recent years due to high manufacturing costs and the relatively small size of the market.

"You need to know everything about running a business; you need to have the ability to communicate your ideas with other people; but most of all, you need to be able to design something that is unique and stylish but not over the top, you need to be creative but also appealing to your customers.

Photos supplied by Areta Linaya

Areta Linaya is an Indonesian make-up artist and stylist now launching a career in Melbourne, Australia. She says she combines the unique styles of Indonesia and Australia in her work, and after completing her diploma is developing her career.

"There are so many people that already have years and years of experience in the makeup industry and I feel it's really hard to compete and to get into the fashion industry.

"Slowly but surely I've found my way in my makeup career, from assisting other makeup artists in bridal to doing a photo shoot for my personal portfolio and doing make-up for independent film/TV"

Photos by Joshua Fitoussi, supplied by Bowie Wong

Born in Hong Kong, Bowie Wong joined an Australian production of Les Miserables in 1996 and fell in love with the country. Fascinated with design since he was a child, he had already studied design and costume design in both Japan and Canada before making the move to Australia.

He says his beginnings in costume design influence his designs, which are drive by stories, culture and his travels.

"People can't see it exactly but a lot of my technique, a lot of my inspiration has something Chinese in it, no doubt because of my childhood."

"My biggest achievement is showing my first collection at Paris Haute Couture Week, I was the first Australian designer to show in the Australian embassy in Paris. I felt amazing, excited, and so honoured."

Bowie has already dressed celebrities like Kylie Minogue and George Michael and hopes to continue to bring his designs to the world stage. He has practical advice for up-and-coming designers.

"Passion is not enough. You have to work harder than that. What's the difference between your design and other people's?

"It's no longer easy to survive because there are so many instant fashion brands out there now. You can not be cheaper or faster than them because they are massive commercial brands. So you ask yourself, why would people pick your brand. And if you're not completely satisfied with your answer, don't do it."

Phong Chi Lai from Phong Chi Lai Handcraft

Photos supplied by Phong Chi Lai

Born in Vietnam, Phong Chi Lai arrived in Australia when he was just four years old. He says his handmade footwear explores both traditional aspects of shoe-making and a modern, androgynous aesthetic. He cites his biggest achievement so far as being invited to show his work at the National gallery of Victoria as part of the 'Melbourne Now' exhibition.

"Working in Paris at a design atelier influenced my decision to get into the industry. It was vibrant, creative and unpredictable. I loved it! Returning to Australia I decided to specialise in the craft of hand-made footwear, first studying in Adelaide and then moving to Melbourne in 2008 where I honed my craft and launched my label.

"My area of expertise is a very niche market, both in design and skill. The Australian footwear market is inundated with commercially driven and derivative product. Having said this, I hope that what I have done brings light onto a craft that is fast becoming forgotten."

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The designers redefining Australian style

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When seasons switch it's not just the weather that gets a new forecast, in the world's fashion captials new style influences emerge on catwalks from Melbourne to Mumbai to New York. Meet some of those taking the fashion world by 'storm' from Australia.

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This dress is from Collette Dinnigan's first collection to be shown in Paris. The collection was staged 'off-schedule' which meant, unlike other designers who staged their collections at the Louvre, Dinnigan chose to find her own venue. Since 1990 Collette Dinnigan has built an international reput...

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Her name is mud to some, music to others, but there are few in the bitchiest business on earth to whom the name of fashion journalist Marion Hume means "absolutely nothing, darling".

"I was just doing my job," Hume says now of the shockwaves she sent through the Australian rag trade in 1997 when she arrived in Sydney from Britain for what turned out to be a short but fiery stint at the helm of Vogue Australia magazine.

"You don't have much time - it's not a luxury that our profession affords - so I just wrote what I saw."

Hume is still writing what she sees - though her latest commentary on the fashion industry is a fictionalised account, launched last week at a swanky party in Sydney. The Fashion Pack, set against the backdrop of the morning-to-midnight grind of the Paris, Milan, New York and Sydney fashion weeks, has sold briskly in its first week. Doubtless many sales were rung up to the enemies and friends that Hume, 42 and living in Sydney and London, collected in the 18 months she spent editing Vogue Australia.

She cut an imposing figure back then - ma'amishly British and 1.9 metres tall, sporting a blunt bob haircut and a fondness for serviceable navy pant suits and brown trench coats (designer labels, of course). She arrived in the lap of Sydney's rag trade in February 1997, aged 35 and with a degree from Exeter University, a British magazine award for young journalist of the year, a lauded documentary on fashion designer John Galliano under her belt and a CV listing the British Financial Times, Independent and Sunday Times and US Vogue.

Hume had an easy, almost conversational writing style that was fairly unusual in Australian journalism at the time. And she infused her commentary on Australian fashion with sparklingly clever asides and gobsmackingly frank - some would say nasty - observations. Her first issues of the local Vogue coincided with the second Australian Fashion Week, and she stuck a pointy pen right up several of its stars, including demigod designers of the time Peter Morrissey and Leona Edmiston. "I do not see how it could be helpful to consistently pat designers on the back," she told Adelaide's Sunday Mail.

So she didn't. Some of Morrissey Edmiston's clothes, Hume wrote, were, "like Simplicity sewing patterns coded 'Easy Sew' ". She accused Wayne Cooper of being a lazy poseur, and said Lisa Ho's frocks were not dazzling enough to dominate even a catwalk. The "lingerie look" popular in Australia at the time was also witheringly ridiculed. "Call me repressed," she wrote about the underwear-as-outerwear fad, "but I still think singlets and knickers go under clothes."

She sank fangs deep into the industry's rampant practice of copying overseas designs. At the time, some designers admitted - not particularly sheepishly - that they did habitually "rip off" overseas ideas but, hey, business was business, a trend was a trend and, wasn't that what the market wanted?

Hume's new enemies fumed, but legions of equally new friends applauded her as they would a pioneer activist. It was not long, however, before her enemies were gloating. In one six-month audit period, the magazine's circulation sank 21 per cent to 48,000, and 18 months after her appointment, Hume was sacked. In the ensuing years, the aesthetic naivete that she had famously criticised in Morrissey Edmiston's collection, and the lingerie look she loathed evolved into powerful themes underpinning Australian fashion trends.

Hume remains unmoved. "No, I don't agree, I still stand by those criticisms."

Even now, she has critics who believe her missiles - which kept on coming after she was sacked from Vogue and when she became fashion director of The Australian - were exaggerated and subjective, and hurt a fledgling industry of mostly small operators so badly its knees buckled.

"I'm very disappointed to have such a negative view," Peter Morrissey said at the time. "You can't tell me you can't fill six pages (of Vogue) with positive things . . . We need constructive criticism."

Before the launch of The Fashion Pack last week, Hume described her current relationship with Morrissey as a "sparring friendship" and updated her take on the local industry. "It doesn't matter which way you cut it, (Australia) is not the centre of fashion. It's not ever going to be Paris, but does that matter to the (Australian) woman? And, it could be a kind of nursery slope for people going into the wider fashion industry. Well, in fact, it already is."

The semi-fictitious plot of Hume's book, about an English fashion writer's stint as editor of fictitious Australian magazine Joy ("No, the main character isn't me"), is set in the days when the Melbourne-born, US-based designer Richard Tyler was Australia's only internationally recognised designer. Not surprisingly, there is intense interest among those involved in the rag trade back then in how Hume's plot unfolds. The main question after the book's launch was; "Did she mention me?"

The answer, says Hume, is "probably, yes". She names fashion's "names" with abandon. A Peter Morrissey show is mentioned as remarkable for its bouncing buttocks and male models so well endowed that the book's main character, Red, describes it as her "bawdy baptism on Australia's fashion front line".

Lisa Ho - who was once so insulted by Hume's criticism that she banned the then Vogue editor from her shows - is written in as the designer of an exquisite cover-girl frock.

Alannah Hill, however, is lumped in with designers whom Red has known to run out of ideas, evidenced, apparently, by their use of animals as catwalk props. (Hill uses a goat.) Alex Perry's show also gets a mention: "Where the boobs were big and the tans-in-a-can made the models look like they'd been rotisseried."

Truly nasty characters, however, such as Hume's acidic Sydney gossip columnist, are given a pseudonym, although the sneering "Judith Snard" could be mistaken for a Sydney newspaper columnist. In her rocky reign at Vogue, Hume's fearsome reputation was met and matched by Reines' equally pointy pen.

"There's a lot of curiosity, a lot of jealousy in this profession," Hume muses. She is aware that fashion journalism is scoffed at in certain circles. "I've always been surrounded by people who are quite cynical."

Even after 20 years, however, she admits to being "still thrilled by it all - by fashion, the people, the shows, the clothes, the parties".

Hume abandoned it all for the 21/2 years it took to write the book. Her advance was rumoured to be $100,000.

"I've been out of it (the fashion industry) for a while," says Hume. "And I was glad to be out, but now I'm back, I'm thrilled to be back. When the day does come and I'm sitting there (at a Karl Lagerfeld or a Valentino fashion show), and hating it all, I hope someone will get the cattle prod and push me out."

But she is not hating it yet. The glamour goes on, although it is often less glamorous than it seems. "I once sat behind Prince (at a fashion show) and looked at the foundation running down the back of his neck," she chortles. "How glamorous is that?"

Accidentally sharing a limo with Catherine Deneuve is also among her memorably glamorous moments. "It was thrilling, but not because we had such a deep conversation - we didn't."

She has had her photo taken with Madonna too, sort of. "It actually looks like I'm sitting next to her, but I'm not."

Even so, Hume has spent large chunks of her career in "very close proximity", as she calls it, to some of the world's tallest, thinnest, prettiest, richest and most gregarious women. Her intimacy with some, and admiration for others, also underpins the plot of The Fashion Pack. "It's a book about friendship, in a world of fakes," Hume says.

The book's three main characters discover their mutual attraction only after being stripped of dignity and glamour in the darkness and panic of a faulty lift, stuck between fashion shows. After the brief emergency, the three women return to their often appallingly superficial world, but their friendship blooms, nurtured by the "secret" of their shared and terribly unfashionable humanity.

Hume admits she has had her reservations about the archetypal designer-bag-wielding divas so prevalent in the upper echelons of international fashion: "My first time reporting haute couture, I thought, 'God, those stupid women, I'm going to rip them apart,' but I did a complete turnaround; there's such a marvellous joy to it all. Such a joie de vivre . . ."

MILESTONES - MARION HUME

JULY 1962
Born Birmingham, England.

1981 - 1984
Studied at University of Exeter.

1986
Wrote for Honey and worked for fashion trade magazine Fashion Weekly.

1990
Married photographer Peter Hunt.

1998 - 2000
Sacked from Vogue. Left Australia for New York, from where she wrote for Harper's Bazaar and The Australian.

2000 - 2002
Wrote for publications including the New York Times, New York Observer, British Elle, Marie Claire, and Travel & Leisure.

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Her name is mud to some, music to others, but there are few in the bitchiest business on earth to whom the name of fashion journalist Marion Hume means "absolutely nothing, darling".

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Presentation Slides
Shining Liu, Yu Yang

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made by
YU YANG (n8429162)
SHINING LIU (n8993629)