Teenage dream come true: Alemais to open 2023 Afterpay Australian Fashion Week
Designer Lesleigh Jermanus’s beloved brand Alemais will open Afterpay Australian Fashion Week in 2023.
Lesleigh Jermanus attended her first Australian Fashion Week 22 years ago, as an intern with big dreams of one day launching her own fashion brand.
Now, not only has the designer achieved her dreams—Jermanus is the founder and creative director of contemporary Australian womenswear label Alemais—she has exceeded them.
The Weekend Australian can reveal that Alemais will open the official 2023 Afterpay Australian Fashion Week schedule in May next year, with a presentation of its Resort 2024 collection. The occasion will also mark Alemais’ first time showing at Australian Fashion Week.
“It feels like a full-circle moment,” says Brisbane-born Jermanus. “We are incredibly honoured that Alemais has been invited to open this iconic week and we are excited to bring the magic and energy of Alemais to life for a global audience on the runway.”
Alemais is one of the biggest success stories to come out of Australian fashion in recent years. Launched in October 2020, the brand’s eclectic designs and artisanal approach to detail struck a chord with women desperate to trade their lockdown layers for more inspiring outfits.
Though her brand is only two years old, Jermanus is no fashion industry newcomer. The designer has worked for notable Australian fashion brands like Zimmermann and Marcs for 20 years; it wasn’t until she was made redundant at the beginning of Covid that she seriously considered doing her own thing.
Friends warned Jermanus that launching a dress brand during the pandemic was risky but the designer could sense that people were looking for designs that reminded them of brighter times.
“It felt like the energy and the mood of the world was very flat. And I think from an artistic point of view, I was questioning: how do we transport our imaginations? I think it was to try and inspire everyone to dress up again,” explains the designer.
Her senses were accurate. Alemais’s collections regularly sell out at the pre-sale stage, thanks to the brand’s loyal following of local and international customers who sign up for early access to each range.
For fans, the appeal stems from Alemais’ intelligent combination of vibrant prints—many are designed in collaboration with local artists—and flattering yet wearable silhouettes. The designs are certainly conversation starters; decorated with painterly sun, moon and bird motifs by Australian artist Claire Pony, a brilliant blue one-shoulder gown from the recent resort collection would turn heads anywhere.
“Sometimes I look at a dress and go, ‘is this really crazy!?’” Jermanus laughs. “We dance on that line between being artistic but commercial enough.”
Alemais’s popularity is being recognised by the industry too: it won the National Designer Award in July, and the brand is also a finalist in the Emerging Designer category at next week’s prestigious Australian Fashion Laureate.
The celebrity love has been forthcoming, particularly among creative women with influence. Actress and wellness entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow, author and Go-To skincare founder Zoe Foster Blake and Masterchef judge Melissa Leong are among Alemais’s high-profile fans.
“Zoe broke our internet one day,” jokes Jermanus. “She wore one of our dresses to a Go-To event and immediately after, all of these messages started coming through like, ‘I need that dress!’”
But Alemais isn’t a fashion brand that’s made exclusively for fashion people, which adds to its aura of approachability. While it’s stocked by high-end international retailers like Net-A-Porter and Saks Fifth Avenue, you’ll also find Alemais designs hanging in the windows of rural Australian boutiques.
Jermanus says the regional stores have been some of the brand’s biggest supporters.
“I think sometimes, people think that no one in regional towns is really interested in buying fashion. But they are, more than anyone. They really dress up and they really celebrate.”
“I don’t know whether it’s in the way we communicate or the spirit of the brand, but people from different backgrounds feel like they can connect to it. It’s not elitist.”
Sustainability, meanwhile, informs everything Alemais does. The brand works with environmental organisation Ecologi to plant a tree for every garment made. “We’ve got a really cool forest planted now,” says the designer with a grin.
For the last 28 months, Alemais has also operated a climate positive workforce, which involves the carbon footprint of every Alemais staff member being offset by the brand. Alemais collaborates with a sustainability consultant to help implement these initiatives, and work towards what Jermanus describes as a “good, better, best” system.
“I don’t really believe in a sustainable brand. As soon as we’re making new things, it’s not sustainable,” she says.
“I really did have a moment where I was like, ‘do I want to be part of this, or don’t I? But I felt a responsibility to help create a new business model for how we design and make a commercial yet creative product for consumers.”
“It’s not by stepping away that change is made. It’s by stepping in.”
At Afterpay Australian Fashion Week in 2023, a new chapter of the Alémais story will begin as the brand makes its runway debut on the international stage.
Natalie Xenita, Vice President-Managing Director of IMG Fashion Events Asia Pacific, the organisation that operates Afterpay Australian Fashion Week, says “there’s no better platform than Australian Fashion Week for Alemais to scale its business.”
“Through Alemais, Lesleigh is engaging the industry in conversations about fashion’s impact on the environment and reinforcing the cultural influence of Australian fashion both locally and on a global scale. We’re thrilled to be supporting the Alemais team as they work towards this significant business milestone.”
In the meantime, Jermanus and her team are focusing on the immediate task at hand—like getting the next Alemais collection ready for production.
“Sometimes it feels a bit premature to talk about the brand at this point, because it’s so early,” she reflects. “I think true success happens along the way, over many years of being in business.”
But Jermanus’ journey to the top of Australian fashion began years ago. “I found this diary the other day, I probably wrote it when I started at technical college. I’d written: one day, I dream about having my own brand.”
“I guess everyone starts with this really big idea, and then you find out the reality and the dream are very far apart. But I do think that… it was always in my heart and I always knew it was there.”
“I think everyone ends up where they’re meant to. Everyone finds their own yellow brick road. And I feel like, I’ve found it, and it feels right. I‘ve never looked back.”
Alémais will open Afterpay Australian Fashion Week 2023 at 10am on May 15.
A version of this story appears in the November 19 - 20 edition of the Weekend Australian.