In Melbourne the winds swing from bitter cold to balmy and back in a single afternoon. Sydney is tropic-warm and in Brisbane, tourists are cooling in pools in a high-fire-danger heatwave. Spring, in other words, has touched down in its inimitable Aussie way but there is one constant in this odd-ball season. Fashion BLOOMS and, especially in cities enamoured of racing, it goes positively nuts.
Brodie Harper
In Voxfrock‘s home city spring racewear is the pinnacle of fashion’s annual cycle. It’s based on classic definitions of glamour and spits in the eye of just about every tenet of restraint and cool we usually apply to the way we dress. Racewear says, ramp it up! Fake a tan! Rock that frock! And, when you’re certain you’ve employed every tool of feminine beauty enhancement, bung on a hat! Racewear is FUN, dress-ups for grownups, permission to use fashion’s full mind-boggling complement of optical illusions to slim, lengthen, smooth and flatter.
Racewear exists in a parellel fashion universe where the rules are strong, clear and surprisingly uncomplicated:
Groom fastidiously. Dress thoughtfully. Accessorise sparingly. And, always maintain a confident, straight-backed, ladylike posture.
Samantha Harris
Recently, Westfield had a pretty good crack at defining how racewear’s rules might apply to a variety of young women and the result, an exhibition called Reflections of Spring Racing, is open in its Doncaster Fashion Precinct until October 13. Blogger and Westfield Summer fashion Ambassador Nicole Warne of website Gary Pepper Girl curated the images of eight extraordinary young women (including Miss Warne), styled intuitively in spring’s standout fashion collections, by Meg Gray, to key with Miss Warne’s selection of millinery.
Videographer Lisa Frieling created this rather lovely record of the shoot, set to music by Maximum Wolf.
The exhibition itself features key photographs of the young women in GIF format that animates one tiny aspect of the composition. Model Alexandra Agoston, for example, is frozen but for her beautiful, blinking eyes. Blogger Jess Dempsey (whatwouldkarldo) is looped blowing glitter toward the camera (Main photo, top). Model Samantha Harris twirls a curl of her hair and presenter Brodie Harper, elegantly taps fingers against her cheek.
Journalists Zoe Foster-Blake and Lauren Phillips, models Miss Agoston and Miss Harris, socialite Lindy Klim, as well as Miss Warne, Miss Harper and Ms.Dempsey are described as “iconic Melbourne Style influencers” and although that may be a debateable label for some, they do offer a spectacular array of racewear inspirations for ordinary mortals.
The women also embody a fair cross-section of Australia’s ethnic reality. Miss Warne’s beauty is strikingly Asian, Miss Harris’s aboriginal, Ms. Klim’s Balinese and Miss Agoston’s sprung from an ancestral melting-pot that reportedly includes Irish, Danish, Burmese, Chinese and Indian bloodlines. And, that’s gorgeous.
Footnotes: The GIF process was popularised around the world by Melbourne-based blogger Greta Larkin of fashgif.tumblr.com who animates runway photographs to a quirky form of high art.
Entry to Reflections of Spring Racing, is free. Click here for more information.
Janice Breen Burns, jbb@voxfrock.com.au with Terry Carruthers, intern@voxfrock.com.au
