It’s hip to be grown-up at day one of Australian Fashion Week

Australian Fashion Week has been a playground for the enfants terribles of the industry such as Jordan Gogos, Erik Yvon and Youkhana for the past two years, but the grown-ups have returned to the runway.

On the first day of Australia’s premier fashion event, showcasing the 2025 resort collections, brands with a mature approach to business and design made it hip to dress with well-made flair. We are talking about the runway here, not the influencers posing for street style photographs.

The opening show from Albus Lumen set the considered tone, with former stylist Marina Afonina refining and reinvigorating her most memorable designs from the past nine years.

Pearl-embellished knit bralettes, olive dresses with plunging necklines and low-slung, dip-dyed denim with double-waistbands offered click appeal for photographers and future online shoppers.

“I wanted to give myself a challenge,” Afonina says. “I’m quite a minimalist and usually keep things elegant and simple. This is a different time. The world is falling apart, so you have to do what you want. Strangely, I wasn’t thinking commercially. I pushed limits, but you still have to be able to wear it.”

Distressed finishes added youthful vigour to knit tops and loose trousers, without losing their broad appeal. It was easy to imagine the clothing on people of all sizes, which was the audience’s only options as sample-sized models dominated the show.

“I was after people with a forceful attitude that had a grungy, almost ’90s New York look,” Afonina says.

Margie Woods has been refining her aesthetic with elevated basics for 20 years, but expanded her outlook beyond oversized black blazers with a collection of fringed dresses, butter yellow knit briefs and chocolate leather bra tops.

There was always something accessible in the most extreme designs which had buyers from David Jones nodding their heads in appreciation. Corset tops that you could buy for your mum cannily merged the aesthetics of Dion Lee and Seed.

The cast ticked the diversity boxes of age, race, size and gender, without losing Woods’ cohesive theme of contemporary cool.

Even designer Rory William Docherty’s debut at Australian Fashion Week, months after his first runway outing at New Zealand Fashion Week, balanced consumerism with creativity.

“It’s not like I look at the accounting books, otherwise some pieces might not have made it, but there is no point showing something if you are unable to manufacture it when the orders come in,” Docherty says.

Docherty’s oversized suits, drop-shoulder trench coats, dhoti pants and prim silk organza dresses played with an aesthetic celebrated by Country Road in the mid-’80s, worn beneath cadet hats.

“It’s an opportunity for people to curate their identity,” Docherty says.

The young were present in the Next Gen show, where designers borrowed heavily from established overseas labels such as Balenciaga and Molly Goddard. Models dressed as thieves or armoured security guards were shocking in a way that designers probably didn’t expect.

There’s still plenty of time to grow up.

Carla Zampatti was a woman who understood that maturity was also contemporary, cool and sexy. At the label’s return to fashion week after a five year-hiatus, following Zampatti’s death, creative director Karlie Ungar is celebrating her predecessor’s exuberant Italian spirit.

Metallic fringed jackets reminiscent of Zampatti’s marabou staples, trim jumpsuits with necklines that plunged to Sicily and coin details on earrings, belts and bracelets evoked the much-missed designer’s singular sensuality.

The movement of silk capes, layered scallop shoulder details and those metallic fringes contrasted with the discipline of tailored essentials, including pants with a cut straight from the ’80s playbook.

The models looked as though they had emerged from a photograph by the late Helmut Newton: Amazonian women who understood control and clothing. Sometime being a grown-up helps you channel the right references.

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