Voxfrock rookies Ru Elliot and Theadora Violet fused words and pictures from a radical show of creativity by fashion’s most talented fledgelings. Melbourne Fashion Week’s 2024 Student Collections Runway was a revelation of future promise; astonishing flights of imagination, newness fizzing from every exit. Grateful congratulations to Box Hill Institute‘s Nam Tran, winner of the 2024 Student Award and his fellow finalists, Alexandra Pennell from LCI, Benjamin Pink from Whitehouse Institute of Design, Indigo Stuart from RMIT and Xinglai Chen, also from RMIT. You inspired a thrilling sense of hope our industry is in visionary hands. Scroll down to meet the Voxfrockers and check back daily for their words and pictures from MFW 2024.
Words: Ru Elliot Photographs: Theadora Violet
The concept of constructing and deconstructing and constructing yourself again emanated from many of the designers’ clothes. Echoes and memories of the past twisted with rambunctious and raw creative energy; a series of small collections that explored contrasts and contradictions close to the human spirit.
The tensions of old and new came across strongly in the work of designers such as Xiaotao Shu. Utilising Chinese herbs as natural dyes, her elegantly draped yet simple and refined dresses combined modernity with deep- rooted history. The dyes themselves were earthy, muted, as if the clothes themselves had risen from a fertile earth. There was something very ancient and primordial at play, forming itself around the human body.
Mia Wilson explored bones and gargoyles in her collection, the eternal battle between life and death. It felt as if a graveyard had morphed itself into three apparitions on the runway. The cut of one of her pairs of trousers distorted the back of the calf till it looked inhuman, or perhaps more than human. Her skeletal elements were 3-D printed, combining the technological age we live in with what lies beneath us, deep in the earth, ours and the histories of billions of years.
Decay was also a central conceit in the work of Marko Plavsic whose exploration of wool fibres in textural, fraying volumes shrouded the body like burial shrouds, revealing and concealing, expressing or restricting the person underneath. The silhouettes of their work expanded across the outfits; growing, shifting things. The contrast of burnt orange in tight skirts beneath chunky wools made for an elegant, yet disquieting look.
It was not all darkness coming from the ground, however, in Manfred Wong’s pod collection, “Sea of Lust”, the world of occasionally disdained erotic identity fused with the idea of the universally beloved flower. The sleek tailoring was given a sharp edge with plaster and enamel paint in an effortlessly sexy way, and the lapels moved like petals in the wind.
The Student Runway was an ecosystem of creativity, cycling around and birthing itself anew with each next designer’s looks.
May we nurture them fully.
Meet the VoxFrockers
Ru Elliot, journalist
Ru has assisted in the curation of historical fashion exhibitions and currently works in a variety of roles with local designers while on a hiatus from tertiary study. Her journalism projects have featured in publications such as ALICE.D magazine and zines published around Melbourne, London and Paris. Ru is passionate about exploring links between the zeitgeist, the past and the contemporary fashion landscape.
Theadora Violet, photographer
