By Cara Waters
Melbourne Fashion Week has become an unlikely political battleground for the city’s lord mayoral candidates as the festival opens with a runway parade inside a CBD office building foyer.
Models sashayed along the makeshift catwalk inside 376-390 Collins Street on Monday wearing local designers Alpha60, Sean Rentero and Atoir. But away from the selfies and champagne, the debate over the best way to showcase Melbourne’s fashion sector raged on.
A model walks the runway at the launch of Melbourne Fashion Week on Monday. Credit: Joe Armao
Melbourne hosts two fashion festivals – Melbourne Fashion Week in October and the Melbourne Fashion Festival in March – but lord mayoral candidate Arron Wood and his deputy, Erin Deering, are campaigning for a third – by stealing Australian Fashion Week from Sydney.
“We are known as Australia’s fashion capital, and I think we have some amazing designers; we have a really vibrant industry,” Wood said. “With the ‘Australia’s fashion capital’ moniker, the fact that Sydney has Australian Fashion Week is not something we should rest on, and ideally Melbourne should host that.”
Asked if there was room for three fashion festivals in Melbourne, Wood said it was an opportunity to think about existing programming.
“Whether we need to look at changing things up a bit or conversations about the two events [Melbourne Fashion Week and the Melbourne Fashion Festival] coming together in something bigger,” he said.
However, rival lord mayoral candidate and regular Fashion Week attendee Jamal Hakim said Melbourne did not need a third festival and the city should focus on its own creatives.
“Australian Fashion Week is so much about high-end fashion and the glamour of fashion – that is not Melbourne,” he said. “We already have the Melbourne Fashion Festival that does that in a very Melbourne style and superbly. To have that compete with the Australian Fashion Week, I don’t think that is the best use of public resources.”
The City of Melbourne’s budget for this year’s Melbourne Fashion Week is $3 million, a figure surpassed only by the budget for each Christmas, New Year’s Eve and Moomba.
Lord Mayor Nick Reece said Melbourne Fashion Week was about runway to retail, with 85 per cent of the outfits available to buy in Melbourne and 85 per cent of the talent, such as designers, models and back of house, from the city.
Front-row guests look on at the launch runway event for Melbourne Fashion Week. Credit: Joe Armao
“Melbourne Fashion Festival is also great with its focus on cutting-edge, creative and high-end fashion,” he said. “They both have a place in the Melbourne fashion calendar, and serve a market and a community. Whether there is space for a third fashion festival, and whether that is a good use of ratepayers’ money, is a question for others to try and answer.”
Reece did not attend the Fashion Week launch parade, leaving Fashion Week creative director Matthew Flinn to front the press conference and say afterwards: “I wish Sally Capp was here.”
Flinn said Melbourne Fashion Week had evolved considerably since its beginnings as Melbourne Spring Fashion Week 30 years ago. It now encompasses a week-long festival with seven premium runways at locations around the city and more than 100 events.
“We’ve lost the spring, but not the spring in our step,” Flinn said. “We are the longest-running Australian fashion consumer event in the country.”
Flinn said there was potentially room for three fashion festivals in Melbourne.
“I think that we love to celebrate fashion in all ways; we are always excited with new events on the horizon, and if it is to support our local economy, we always support that,” he said. “It would be another feather in our cap as the fashion capital, sports capital and events capital.”
Some critics have queried whether Melbourne needs two fashion festivals, let alone three, but stylist Joseph Romano said Fashion Week and the Fashion Festival both played a critical role at different times of the year.
“I think it’s important not just for the consumer but also important for the fashion brands and supporting local fashion brands in Melbourne,” he said. “Melbourne Fashion Week has taken it just to a next level, and I think it’s been that continuation of different venues that I think just garner a little bit more excitement from people.”
Caroline Ralphsmith, chief executive of the Melbourne Fashion Festival, said Australian Fashion Week operated under a very different model and was an industry event rather than being consumer focused.
Ralphsmith said there were no plans to combine the Melbourne Fashion Festival and Melbourne Fashion Week.
“City of Melbourne is a sponsor already – they sponsor our fashion forecourt,” she said. “We are always open to doing what is best for Melbourne.”
Melbourne Fashion Week runs from October 21 to 27.
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