MBFWA is the highlight of our nation’s fashion calendar, where the perfectly groomed, impeccably styled and Instagram glued fash-pack flock to Surry Hills to see what’s on offer for the following summer in style. There are the debated trends, the ‘it’ models, the ever present weight debate (this year spear-headed by Marie Claire editor Jackie Frank) and the sought after street style snaps that dominate our social media feed for weeks following the five day event, JOSIE CLOUGH writes.
The key trends emerged include sheer fabrics, metallic accents, feathers and lace, structured and tailored styles, bold colourful injects and a move towards more wearable and feminine looks than we’ve seen in previous seasons. There have been lots of leg-revealing and plunging necklines strutting the runway with the safe and ever-so-elegant black and white staying as popular as ever.
However it’s hard to tell these days where the main focus of trend spotting should be when it comes to Australia’s annual fashion extravaganza… Whilst designers spend months preparing for their 10-minute shows the rise of fashion bloggers, insta-famous fashionistas and stylish celebrities have broken the traditional focus being solely on those strutting the runway to those pounding the streets.
Even in the seriously competitive street style stakes, WA didn’t disappoint with Claremont boutique owner Poppy Lissiman being snapped by Style.com, Tommy Ton, Vogue, Asos and NY Times.
Back on the runway, Aurelio Costarella launched us into the crazy schedule first thing on the Monday morning with his beautiful red-carpet-ready eveningwear. Costarella incorporated his perfectly structured feminine lines with sheer fabrics, trademark feathers and thigh-high slits in muted tones and varying shades or fuchsia, orange and red hues.
Perth-born Kym Ellery kept the fashion stakes high with international supermodel, Julia Nobis who is the current face of Celine, Dior, Lanvin and Paul Smith (in an exclusive appearance) opening the show in an all white outfit at Sydney hotspot Bondi Icebergs. The stunning collection included her signature bell sleeves, tunics, heavily detailed pieces, clean lines and plunging v-necks with black, white and cream dominating the colour palette. With a crowd including the likes of Gerard Butler, Jessica Mauboy, Cheyenne Tozzi, Tommy Ton, Emma Booth and Bambi and Dan Single it also made for great people watching.
Zhivago kept their perfectly sexy style with low necklines and short hemlines on their metallic, black looks that had colour injections of yellows and blues, perfectly accentuated with ‘70s style big hair.
Ae’lkemi maintained his contemporary elegant aesthetic incorporating sheer fabrics, lace and feathers in feminine yet structured designs.
Betty Tran maintained her couture glamour appeal with more metallic and sheer looks walking down the runway with strong colours of red and blue incorporated in the collection.
We then move onto the more edgy WA brands including Dyspnea who showed it’s seriously cool summer 2014/15 collection Paralysis in the New Gen show which incorporated sheer fabrics, midriff baring tops, red flare pants and pom-pom adorned outfits.
Desert Designs showcased their fashion-forward yet wearable collection that features prints heavily inspired by aboriginal art with hints of neon and bold colour patterns.
All in all MBFWA 2014 was an event that lived up to it’s reputation as being the fashion highlight for the Australian calendar showing us what’s to come, on the runway, and what’s cool now, off the runway.
