WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO REACH THE FINALS OF FASHION’S RICHEST AWARD? VOXFROCK EDITOR JANICE BREEN BURNS AND PHOTOGRAPHER MONTY COLES, VISITED THE COOL, WHITEWASHED HEADQUARTERS OF VIRGINIA MARTIN’S NEO-CLASSICS BRAND, BUL TO FIND OUT. THE 2015 TIFFANY & CO. NATIONAL DESIGNER AWARD WILL BE ANNOUNCED TODAY AT A PINNACLE EVENT ON THE VIRGIN AUSTRALIA MELBOURNE FASHION FESTIVAL SCHEDULE. (THIS STORY FIRST APPEARED IN The Age.)
Virginia Martin could be the new Coco Chanel. Or future Collette Dinnigan. The fresh-faced finalist in the Tiffany & Co. National Designer Award certainly looks the part: excruciatingly chic in layers of smoke-coloured linen, shiny hair long enough to sit on, not a skerrick of makeup on that fashionably lovely face. Martin’s talent for precisely cutting and weighting fabric to drop elegantly and kink flatteringly for her fashion brand Bul (rhymes with “Cull”), is also wonderfully Chanel-esque. “It’s the textural depth and that smooth fall,” she says, referring to one particular frock. “But, I had to use a polyester to get it.”
Janice Breen Burns (right) with Virginia Martin, left, and Louise Bolger, Scene model. Photo: Monty Coles
It’s the first time in Bul’s four years she’s mixed a synthetic in with the usual cottons, linens, pure blends and leathers. “But it had to be perfect.” And, so it is: a sharply cut, fleshy to the touch, clean calf-grazing drop of dark blue plaid inspired by Scotland’s culture and coastline.
In fact, you’d be forgiven for thinking, after a flick through the Bul pod collection entered in Australia’s richest fashion award, that Martin’s a shoo-in to win. But the judges’ decision, to be announced Monday as part of the Melbourne Fashion Festival, is considerably harder than that.
Grey on grey; dropped-crotch pant and jacket set. Model: Louise Bolger, Scene.
Photo: Monty Coles
Martin is a sophisticated designer with international experience (Cynthia Rowley, Heatherette, Proenza Schouler), five eponymous stores and a long list of wholesale stockists including Myer, but these aren’t unusual achievements among finalists for the award.
Quilted zip top and matched, layered skirt in colour palette print inspired by Scotland’s northern lights. Photo: Monty Coles
This year, her second as an award finalist, Martin is up against the equally sophisticated “neo-luxe” daywear of Melbourne brands Verner and Pageant and Sydney-based brand MacGraw, and the clever, whimsical niche brand by another Sydneysider, Emma Mulholland.
Though it was established with the first festival 19 years ago to discover Australia’s Next Big Things barely out of college, the award has evolved into a jumping-off point into fashion stardom for established “unknowns”. Last year’s winners, Mario-Luca Carlucci and Peter Strateas of Strateas-Carlucci, for example, were already hot in Australia and selling well out of Paris when they accepted the cash prize, a trip to New York and business mentorship packages worth more than $100,000. They went on to win both women’s and men’s categories of Australia’s leg of the international Woolmark Prize.
Other recent award winners, Dion Lee, Yeojin Bae, Toni Maticevski and Romance Was Born, are also heavily inked into fashion editors’ and buyers’ contact books in Europe, the US and Asia.
Janice Breen Burns, jbb@voxfrock.com.au
