Epic Melbourne fashion week takes some recovering from

There are big events and there are big events. The Melbourne Fashion Festival was in the epic realm.

Clare Waight Keller was known for her feminine, breezy style, and her last collection for Chloe was seen in Paris earlier this month.

There are big events and there are big events. The Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival this year was in the epic realm. Buzz is still in recovery mode from just the past week in the Victorian capital, during which catwalk shows and business seminars (some hosted by your columnist) took pride of place in the 2½-week schedule that also included cultural and film programs.

Festival chief executive Graeme Lewsey must be ready to put his feet up for a nanosecond, but in the meantime he is thrilled with the outcome: shows and events sold out across the board in the second year in its new home at the Royal Exhibition Building and adjacent Melbourne Museum precinct. “I stood up at the festival launch in December and thought about my words carefully, and said this will be the festival 21 years in the making,” Lewsey told Buzz of the not-for-profit consumer event. “And it’s a big call to make that was made on the basis that (with our new venues) we now go into an era of stability, but also we are confident to really innovate and serve the consumer and stakeholders as best we could. And having just finished debriefing we can see that their satisfaction levels exceeded expectations. Not only are we a financially fit enterprise, as a result we’ve created huge momentum for our industry. And I’d like to say we’ve set a pretty high benchmark for ourselves, if not the rest of the industry.”

The music has stopped on the next round of musical chairs. Following on from last week’s update that Natacha Ramsay-Levi is taking over the helm at Chloe comes news that ex-Chloe creative director Clare Waight Keller is moving to Givenchy.

Fair to say Waight Keller has a very different aesthetic to recent creative director Riccardo Tisci, who became known during his 12-year tenure for his provocative gothic approach.

At Chloe, Waight Keller was known for her feminine, breezy style, and her last collection for the house was seen in Paris this month (pictured).

The house, founded in 1952 by Hubert de Givenchy (who is now aged 90), became known for its sculptural approach to mid-century couture as well as its longstanding relationship with Audrey Hepburn in their mutual heyday.

In a statement, Waight Keller says: “Hubert de Givenchy’s confident style has always been an inspiration and I am very grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this legendary house’s history.”

This year marks the 65th anniversary for the brand; Waight Keller is the sixth designer, and its first female designer. This follows on from Maria Grazia Chiuri’s appointment as the first female designer at Christian Dior.

Waight Keller starts on May 2 and will oversee all collections for the house, including haute couture, men’s wear and accessories; her first collection will be unveiled during the spring-summer season in Paris in October.

Still no confirmation whether Tisci is headed to Versace, as per the rumour mill.

Speaking of Versace, in other news sure to get fashion and television devotees in a lather, the next instalment of US series American Crime Story will centre on the 1997 murder of the house’s founder, Gianni Versace. This is the same series franchise that gave us Sarah Paulson in The People vs OJ Simpson, so it has form. This third series has another treat in store, however: Penelope Cruz is slated to play Donatella Versace. (Apparently Lady Gaga was rumoured to have the role.)

The Girl on the Train’s Edgar Ramirez will play Gianni (and, frankly, the likeness is uncanny), while singer-actor Darren Criss of Glee will take on a darker role as Andrew Cunanan, who shot the Italian designer on the steps of his house in Miami before taking his own life a week later.

The bad news? We have to wait until next year to see the results.