This one’s for mum: Designer’s bittersweet Fashion Week debut

A top Australian designer has turned his Fashion Week show into a tribute to his late mum.

Joe Farage pictured at Australian Fashion Week. . Picture: Rohan Kelly

Joe Farage waited 27 years to show at Australian Fashion Week.

The top suiting designers biggest regret is his mum didn’t make it to share the moment with him.

Two days out from sending his latest collection down the runway, Farage’s beloved mother, Charlotte, died at the age of 88.

“I really thought she would (make it),” Farage told Confidential.

Joe Farage pictured at Australian Fashion Week. Picture: Rohan Kelly

“It feels like a bit of a bad dream at the moment but I woke up this morning and I just went, ‘I am celebrating her life’.

“She was the most incredibly positive human on the planet and I am channelling her spirit. “She is the reason why I am who I am and her spirit is in me.”

Farage and wife Katy have run the FARAGE label together for nearly three decades and last night debuted their first Fashion Week collection for both men and women.

Their daughters – Charlotte, Alexia and Sienna – were to sit front row.

Joe Farage's mother, Charlotte, has died this week, a few days before his show at Australian Fashion Week.

“I had a moment thinking I was going to struggle to show up today but I sat with it for a second and that is exactly how I felt, mum would give me a clip around the ears and say, ‘you show up and do this for your family and do it for you’ so here I am and we will power on,” he said.

“It is a tribute to her, it is a celebration, she was my style icon, she was my queen and I am celebrating all of the beautiful girls in my life.”

Model Montana Cox headlined the catwalk while front row guests included Sydney Swan players Dane Rampe, Will Hayward, Brodie Grundy and Justin McInerney and Swans AFLW co-captain Chloe Molloy and teammates Montana Ham, Cynthia Hamilton and Ally Morphett.

Five years since his first Australian Fashion Week show, Jordon Gogos believes he is “finally coming into myself”.

“I am weird and wacky,” Gogos told Confidential ahead of his Jordanes Spyridon Gogos show at Carriageworks tomorrow (Thursday).

“I think this year I am a bit more bold on a personal level.”

Daily Telegraph. 12, May, 2025. With Anja Brown, with designer, Jordon Gogos, preparing for Australian Fashion Week, at his studio in Ultimo, today. Picture: Justin Lloyd.

Gogos, 30, founded his clothing label in 2019 after pivoting from his furniture brand.

He is widely regarded as one of the exciting rising stars of the industry, respected and renowned for his bold, colourful, non-gendered and experimental looks.

“I’ve realised that a big proportion of my clients are male,” he said.

“Making beautiful dresses is just not my thing so I’ve done a lot more men’s looks this year with tailoring as I’ve started doing weddings because there is a big gap there for beautiful, creative menswear.”

He continued: “I’ve been reining myself in in terms of patterning my stuff in a different way with lots of jackets, blazers, coats, ties. The thing is I kind of flip flop and knowing myself, if I do something super tailored this year, I will want to do something trash can garbage the next because I don’t want to feel too scripted and I also get bored.”