Jessica Gomes responds to Dustin Martin dating rumours

Australian supermodel Jessica Gomes looks back on the demoralising early days of her career as she welcomes the fashion industry’s new emphasis on diversity, and reveals her message for those who quiz her on her connection to AFL star Dustin Martin.

It was 2006, and up-and-coming Australian model Jessica Gomes was about as far as she could get from her family home in Perth. She was living in New York, busy with appointments and castings to work with high-end fashion brands.

She knew that her “look” – the result of having a Portuguese father and Singaporean-Chinese mother – was different to the usual beachy-blonde American girls, but during one memorable meeting, it wasn’t her heritage that was the issue. It was her body.

As the casting director was fitting her with the outfit, he sighed and started prodding her breasts. “It’s too tight,” he told her. “Your boobs are too big.” The exchange left Gomes, then 21, deeply demoralised.

“When I have children, I hope they have lots of idols they look up to – people who look similar to them and they can connect with.” (Picture: Robbie Fimmano)

“I was getting knocked back by a lot of fashion brands because I was too curvy.” (Picture: Robbie Fimmano)

“I felt really bad about myself,” she tells Stellar. “I was getting knocked back by a lot of fashion brands because I was too curvy.”

Feeling dejected and homesick, Gomes called her agent. “It turned out to be a really pivotal moment,” she recalls. “My agent was like, ‘Don’t worry, Sports Illustrated has just booked you. They love your boobs. They’re great! So you’re going to do that.’”

Fourteen years, a highly successful international career and a string of profile-boosting photo shoots later, the now 35-year-old Gomes understands more than most the ephemeral nature of the marketplace she inhabits.

Models, designers, stores, consumers – each is a victor and a victim in an industry that peddles faster and pirouettes constantly to prevent being thrown from the great Ferris wheel that is fashion.

Indeed, as she steps onto the runway at the freshly conceived and newly branded Afterpay Australian Fashion Week, Gomes embodies a new post-pandemic reality, where the virtual now vies for attention with the actual.

In the same way that the wholesome supermodels who burst on the scene in the early 1990s were superseded by the aesthetics of grunge and heroin chic – which, in turn, gave way to a welcome wave of cultural and physical diversity – the old-style, runway-to-retailer supply chain has been disrupted by a digital explosion that can deliver a dress from your laptop screen to your door within hours.

But the evolution isn’t just in what we wear, or how those clothes find their way into our wardrobes, it’s also in how we interact with fashion.

“I know people care about who you’re dating but I really want to talk about the projects I’m doing.” (Picture: Robbie Fimmano)

While the trend for virtual garments – digital clothing that’s designed to drape like the real thing – is booming overseas, particularly in the gaming sector, Afterpay Australian Fashion Week (AAFW) marks the first time fashion lovers in this country will be able to “try on” the bespoke virtual garment called the “Animator Overcoat” at the event, and have a keepsake photo of themselves taken in it.

The activation is being hailed as a new and accessible chapter in style.

Gomes, who models the first virtual Toni Maticevski design exclusively for the cover of this week’s Stellar, says she’s thrilled to see the event return after last year’s pandemic-enforced hiatus. “Everybody is so excited to get back out there,” she says.

“As for the designers, it’s exciting to showcase and actually be able to have a fashion show. Afterpay loves Australian fashion, and didn’t want it to get lost. We all just really want exciting things to see that inspire us and move us and make us feel something.”

Indeed, “feeling something” seems to be a theme for everyone associated with this year’s event.

Whether it’s Gomes, who recently saw her family in Perth for the first time in 18 months; Maticevski, who tells Stellar that he’s used the past year to “re-imagine and reconsider”, or fellow designer Camilla Franks, who says it was “horrendous” trying to avoid making anyone redundant, there’s an underlying desire that fashion shouldn’t just look fabulous but also reflect the changes and challenges in our lives.

“I feel represented and accepted and it makes me feel like not too much of an outsider.” (Picture: Robbie Fimmano)

Franks – who recalibrated her design process to produce lockdown-appropriate lounge and activewear collections, bed linen, pet accessories and Zoom filters – tells Stellar she believes the event should be a celebration of a resilient, creative and brave industry.

“This is our moment to overcome and stand proud, shoulder-to-shoulder, and show the world what Australian fashion stands for.”

While Stellar style director Kelly Hume hopes the collections will be “irreverent and joyful”, she believes the pandemic will bring a new pragmatism and consciousness to an industry that’s hitherto traded on constant reinvention.

“I hope to see clothes that are timeless, made with ethical fabrics and that are flattering throughout your years.” “We need clothes that are more considered, and that last,” she adds.

As a fan of pieces you can touch, Hume was amused that her role was reconfigured for the Stellar cover, and rather than dressing Gomes, she simply styled her in a black bodysuit so the tech experts at Amsterdam-based digital design house The Fabricant could digitally “tailor” Maticevski’s design to her body after the fact.

Nick Molnar, co-founder of Afterpay, the buy now/pay later platform that’s now title sponsor of the Australian event as well as the London and New York fashion weeks, says this concept is taking the industry in a new direction, where preconceived rules are rewritten and the market reflects a broader cross-section of society.

Jessica Gomes modelling for Sports Illustrated in 2013. (Picture: Supplied)

AAFW will feature new technologies alongside live and digital environments, he tells Stellar, and will keep a focus on diversity, inclusion and sustainability.

“Taking centre stage is accessible fashion that reflects every individual, regardless of gender, age, sex or race,” he adds. “And this year we wanted to create a concept that was uniquely different to anything seen before.”

Gomes says greater inclusivity feels like the reward for being an outlier. When she first began modelling at 10, there were no mixed-race models in the shopfronts of her local mall and department store; she says it was only by garnering recognition overseas – she became a celebrity in South Korea on the back of a phone advertisement – that she became an ambassador for David Jones, a position she held from 2012 to 2019.

Years on, she hopes she’s been an agent for change. “I feel like I’ve done my job,” she says.

“What an incredible chapter that I could be the frontrunner for a lot of other girls and be their role model – be a trailblazer in that way. They can see that a girl who looks like me can be the face of a department store and they can be on the covers of magazines.”

She pauses in contemplation: “It makes me so happy. I feel represented and accepted and it makes me feel like not too much of an outsider. When you’ve grown up being bullied for the way you look, or you experience racism for the way you look, it feels refreshing and healing and, like, ‘Oh look, I’m just like everybody else.’ When I have children, I hope they have lots of idols they look up to – people who look similar to them and they can connect with.”

Jessica Gomes with her parents, Pey Yuen Wong and Jose, in Perth in 2017. (Picture: Supplied)

While she’s been linked in the past to former Wallabies player Rocky Elsom and Twilight actor Xavier Samuel, Gomes is reluctant to confirm last month’s reports that she has been quietly dating AFL star Dustin Martin, except to say that when she feels like sharing anything about her private life, she will.

“I know people care about who you’re dating but I really want to talk about the projects I’m doing. You know, I think that’s really important for a woman. I feel men don’t really get asked these types of questions, it’s more women who get asked ‘Who are you dating?’”

Martin himself is a notoriously closed book who, when he spoke to Stellar for his own cover story in March, also refused to divulge any clues about his own romantic life. And it’s clear Gomes also takes that approach.

“For me, it’s always worked best, and it keeps me safe, by keeping those things private. My life is so out in the open through social media and so to have that balance – for my own mental health – I feel the need to keep those things private. I hope women can feel there’s a currency in what they’re doing; it’s not just who they’re dating.”

That said, Gomes will admit that she’s refined her idea of what she looks for in a partner. “I want to have a family. And I want [my future children] to have the same kind of upbringing I had,” she reveals.

Jessica Gomes being fitted for her Derby Day dress in Melbourne by the late Carla Zampatti. (Picture: Supplied)

“I’m definitely looking for someone who’s a family person.”

An aunt to six nieces and nephews, Gomes says she’s missed out on a lot of special family moments through having an international career, but she plans to make up for it now that she’s back in Australia.

As she tells Stellar, she relishes sleeping in the bedroom she grew up in – “I think my school uniform is still hanging in the wardrobe” – and enjoying Portuguese and Asian food with her family.

“My parents allowed me to become the person I am and they provided a safe environment for me to be myself in. My mum put me in to modelling because she saw something in me, and my dad has always been protective and guided me. They’ve taught me good morals and to have integrity.”

Since returning home, Gomes has been steadily working: she recently appeared on the all-stars return season of Dancing With The Stars; she’s reading the script for a new film production; and she continues shooting fashion campaigns for a raft of Australian brands.

She’s a fan of Melbourne-based Viktoria & Woods and Byron Bay-based Nagnata, but also maintains huge respect for established designers such as Maticevski and the late Carla Zampatti.

“I’ve really looked up to Toni in terms of his craft – he does incredible pieces and designs – and I feel very lucky to have worked with Carla,” she says now.

“I remember in 2016, I was getting ready for the races and she’d designed this incredible ’80s dress with puff sleeves; as she was fitting the dress to me, she was describing how the ’80s was one of her favourite moments. Just to see her in her element, and see her passion and her eye and how much that meant to her…

“People work really hard in the fashion industry, they put their whole life into these pieces. It was one of my favourite fashion moments and I felt incredible in [the dress].”

Jessica Gomes stars on the cover of this Sunday’s Stellar.

While Zampatti’s absence from this year’s shows will be keenly felt, the stylists, photographers, make-up artists, set designers and editors whose livelihoods depend on such events are welcoming the return of the runway.

As for Gomes, she’s delighted to be back in Australia, and grateful that she was afforded such a long and exciting career that took her around the globe before the pandemic struck.

Since coming out of quarantine in January, she’s been enjoying a mix of work and plenty of time relaxing in nature. Plus, she says, there’s the added benefit of not constantly battling jet lag.

“I just want to have fun and not take myself too seriously,” she says, as she prepares to walk in the first multi-brand runway that will close Fashion Week.

“I feel lucky that I’ve had so many experiences and achieved a lot – I’m proud of that. It’s nice to feel confident and not have any expectations. The magic happens when you’re present, and don’t overthink everything.”