MSFW: Student Runway 2

Last night I had the opportunity to attend my first (ever) runway show and it was nothing short of truly amazing.

Melbourne Spring Fashion Week showcased the work of some of the most talented individuals from Melbourne's leading fashion institutes including the Whitehouse Institute of Design, Box Hill Institute, Melbourne School of Fashion and the Kangan Institute.

A diverse range of concepts and aesthetics were portrayed as designers showed off not only their creativity but also their skills and techniques.

The hairstyle, by Kevin Murphy, was somewhat reminiscent of the hair at the late Alexander McQueen's Spring/Summer 2010 collection entitled, Platos Atlantis with two knotted buns on top of the head and a deep side part with a single strand of hair. The makeup by Mecca Cosmetica was a dark dramatic winged smokey eye with fresh skin and subtle contouring.

The opening look by Brendan Smith explored the baroque period and surrealism with it's exaggerated structured shape, while the folded pleats at the bottom added a femininity to the garment.

While avant-garde designer, Tennille Sanders, presented her clothes without any external embellishments - choosing to embellish her pieces using eclectic tailoring and clashing prints.

Eleni Nott had printed the word "SPLIT" onto the side of a dress and when I saw this, I could not help but think of Anna-Sophie Bergers' collection "Fashion is fast" which featured a number of slogans and measurements printed onto garments.

The printing of such materialistic and artificial words on garments was also most recently used by designer Raf Simons in his Spring/Summer 2014 collection and Anna-Sophie Bergers' collection "Fashion is fast".

Fashion is Fast by Anna-Sophie Berger
Source: TouristMagazine.co.uk

Bergers' collection featured a number of slogans, measurements and icons printed onto the garments, to re-iterate the most basic concepts and governing rules of production and commercialisation in the fashion industry. "Through serial presentation of garments in groups of four, I allow a sort of formal comparison between aspects that I isolated as essential for the conception of the trends and garments of a time. The mathematical fact of a skirt having a width of 90, as opposed to a skirt width of 360, executed as real garments present the dimension of change achieved through a seemingly banal equation." Berger told Bullet Magazine.

Raf Simons Spring/Summer 2014
Source: Style.com

Simons' S/S 14 collection also featured garments with words such as "Clusters-Artifically Flavoured - Super Nylon" branded across them. In an article by Dazed & Confused, Simons stated that it was a comment on the increasingly superficial and artificial nature of our society and heavily consumerist population. He declared the collection a "freedom of expression versus the mechanical repetition of products."

This piece by Eleni Nott, in the same way, declared the physicality and artificial nature of garments nowadays.


The attention to detail paid by all designers in their respective collections was truly astounding as many designers played with not only concepts such as minimalism and surrealism but also prints, iconography, texture as well as the tailoring of garments.

Congratulations to all the designers who presented their collections on the night - you have truly set a high standard for emerging fashion designers in Melbourne.

If you live in Melbourne, don't forget to check out the MSFW Program!

Thank you for having me MSFW!




All photos courtesy of Thomas Walk and Wesley Nel at Hobo photography with the exclusion of those which have sources at the bottom of the images.