High Steaks: Jordan Gogos may dismiss his skills but he’s a rising star of Australian fashion

He was the hero of Australian Fashion Week but, for Jordan Gogos, it almost wasn’t to be. In a wide-ranging interview he details how he rose to the top in unconventional means. Watch the High Steaks interview.

He was the hero of Australian Fashion Week with a show to rival the runways of New York, Milan and Paris.

For Jordan Gogos though, the thought of him personally wearing his own designs can make him feel “physically sick”.

“I actually sometimes get nauseous wearing my stuff,” Gogos said.

“It’s just I think this sense of subconsciously diving into something where, if I’m not ready, you open up your cupboard and you decide who you are for that day and sometimes I want to be myself in these clothes and sometimes I want to be myself in my clothes that I make.

“It’s like someone telling you on a day you’re not feeling good, that you’ve got to wear bright colours and you’re like, ‘I’m f--king not wearing the bright colours, you know?’.”

Fashion designer Jordan Gogos at the Roast Republic in the Sydney CBD. Picture: Jonathan Ng

Gogos, 30, is one of our most exciting fashion talents to have emerged over recent years.

His 2025 collection at Fashion Week marked his fifth showing at the premium event.

He is known for his high profile collaborations and for working with emerging Australian designers, as well as big artists and industry icons like Jenny Kee, Linda Jackson and Akira Isogawa.

Jordan Gogos thanks the audience following the Jordanes Spyridon Gogos show at Australian Fashion Week 2025 at Carriageworks on May 15. Picture: James Gourley/Getty Images

His pieces are often considered art, with many in his collections featuring in art galleries, including the National Gallery of Australia.

The Powerhouse Museum is a big collector and Mona’s David Walsh and his artist partner Kirsha Kaechele are both big supporters.

Gogos is known for his fabulous, eccentric, colourful outfits but he is also a nonconformist in the fashion world as he rose to the top by unconventional means.

He has a media marketing degree from UNSW and worked in healthcare marketing before focusing full-time on fashion.

Jordon Gogos took an unconventional way into fashion. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

“I don’t even know what advertising is still to this day,” he laughed.

“Like, I know what marketing is but where does advertising sit in? It is one of those things where you've got to have the plan B and, also, I like having an array of things and having a marketing background has helped me.”

He continued: “It is gruelling (the fashion industry) but, at the same time, it goes hand-in-hand with exciting because I think a lot of people in this industry ... if there was this pathway that was totally linear, they wouldn’t be in it. There’s jobs where you finish uni, you get a grad job, you move up the ranks. That wasn’t for me.”

Gogos sat down over lunch at Roast Republic on Clarence Street in the Sydney CBD.

The designer chose the restaurant for High Steaks because, being vegan, they offer a special vegetarian/vegan menu. He ordered blackened cauliflower steak, grilled corn cob, slaw and green tomato relish while I went for the meat option of chargrilled grain-fed Scotch Fillet, cream potato gratin, wedge salad and house sauces.

Blackened cauliflower steak, grilled corn cob, slaw and green tomato relish at the Roast Republic in the Sydney CBD. Picture: Jonathan Ng

He became vegan “out of saltiness to an ex’s mum because she was kind of prudish”.

“One day she was like, I’m vegetarian and I just wanted to one-up her, so I came in the next day and I was like, I’m vegan.”

Gogos, meanwhile, also studied at Parsons School of Design in New York. Just one subject was fashion related – a denim course – and that was “by accident”.

“That is how I kind of started sussing it out but I still left New York not knowing how to use a sewing machine,” he said.

“I taught myself to use a sewing machine in Covid in my studio apartment, but what I would do at uni when I was at Parsons was they had sewing rooms, and all the people who knew how to sew would leave their machines so they would have it all threaded and I would get on the machine as they’d leave, sew it until the thread ran out, so I would just chaotically do it, snap the needle and just bail.”

Gogos described his work as “sewing like a kid”.

Jordan Gogos while attending Parsons School of Design in New York. Picture: Supplied

“Now I’m really good but I still don’t have that kind of discipline of proper ­construction,” he added.

“I don’t know how to make a pattern still. Like all of the things that you’re meant to have or that are rewarded as people coming into the ­industry.”

Gogos, in fact, launched a furniture brand under his surname in 2017, before three years later, off the back of Covid, officially pivoted to go live with his fashion label.

He is full of energy, almost bounding off the wall, and switches from topic to topic excitedly in the midst of sentences. Sometimes he is hard to follow, not in a bad way, but in the sense that he is a deeply passionate and inspiring creative who doesn’t follow the rules.

Jordan Gogos is known for his fabulous, eccentric, colourful outfits.

Gogos grew up in the southern Sydney suburb of Engadine and graduated from St John Bosco College in 2012.

He has two younger siblings, a sister and a brother. Mum, Anne-Marie, is a single parent who runs a “very retro” hair salon in Gymea while his father works for FedEx.

The official brand name for his label is Jordanes Spyridon Gogos, the middle name taken from the designer’s late grandfather, or Papou in Greek. His family is supportive and celebrate his work but also don’t fully understand.

“I actually got a message after my (Fashion Week) show from my mum basically being like, you know we don’t want you to stop but maybe you need to slow down a little.”

Jordan Gogos and his sister Yasmin in 2005. Picture: Supplied

The Gogos family worry for him in what is a volatile industry, where earning a living can be extremely tough.

With Fashion Week over, Gogos will head to Greece for nearly two months to ­decompress.

“My Nan wants me to live the simple life. She loved it but she’s like, ‘You’re not doing it again are you?’

“I never have a job. This construct of fashion and my job is I’m constantly unemployed. Yes, there’s a company that invoices go into when I make money, but I’m looking for my next job while I’m in a job 24/7. Like right now, after Fashion Week, I don’t have a job because I don’t have anything lined up, and that’s fine. I’m used to that.”

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Originally published as High Steaks: Jordan Gogos may dismiss his skills but he’s a rising star of Australian fashion