DAY TWO

 

So far, so…iffy-to-prettygoodnotgreat-to-bloody-marvellous. Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Australia is halfway through Day Two, a reasonable checkpoint for howzit going and so far, the trinity of red carpet thrillers (reported on Voxfrock here), a brace of very-fetching-though-admittedly-not-earth-shattering frocklets and separates from

By Johnny (scroll quickly from here)

Bec&Bridge

and Ginger & Smart

plus some excellent swimwear from Talulah,

have established beyond doubt this is a forum for commercial, wearable, Aussie fashion. Voxfrock’s faves however – Maticevski, Esber and Romance Was Born – are still in the wings. So we wait. Breath bated.

And as we do, let’s re-check shows by two brands, ostensibly our Next Big Things of Australian fashion. Mario-Luca Carlucci and Peter Strateas of Strateas.Carlucci won the Tiffany & Co. sponsored National Designer Award at last month’s Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival. They were also finalists in the new Australian Chamber of Fashion’s BT Emerging Designer Award which was eventually won by the marvellous Michael Lo Sordo. All three young men have been around fashion long enough to hone their garment construction skills to a masterly level and all, in their own intuitive ways, balance current trends – the look of NOW – with features to also ensure wearers feel comfortable and easy in their vastly different versions of chic.

Strateas.Carlucci

 

Strateas.Carlucci showed a confusing collection. Good confusing, not bad confusing. For spring/summer 2014-15 it looked remarkably wintry and, splitting tricks between men’s and women’s wear in the same show must surely halve your audience’s ultimate vested interest.

But, Messrs. Strateas and Carlucci know what they’re doing. Voxfrock has been enamoured of this brand since its inception as Trimapee, a dark and minimalist collection of layer components that fit like jigsaw into that slumped, predominantly black Antwerpian definition of so-called The Melbourne Look. The aesthetic is still present in this collection: simple, silky, woolly, leathery boxy tops, pencil skirts, dresses often layered with tailored jackets invariably longer and easier than commonly cut. A shaggy, funnel-neck boucle knit dropped to mid-thigh, and its sleeves, to first knuckle.

A calf-skimmer coat was split open by a zip from waist to hem at the back.

Leather jackets for women were intensely sculpted to fit flatteringly around the rib cage but below them, the arty, comfortable layers replaced sexiness with an easy cool. A group of woven leather tops and jackets proved this duo’s cunning and respect for textures and subtle surface details. There were colours among the blacks too: a creamy ivory, an airforce blue, an oxblood one shade short of black. Only one exit I was not particularly enamoured of; the dropped-crotch return of men’s shorts so bagged and loose they made the model appear bandy-legged and unattractive. But, small price for otherwise excellent -albeit niche market – fashion.

Michael Lo Sordo

 

If Michael Lo Sordo is a definitive Emerging Designer, then I am Diana Vreeland. He is young, but far from callow, mature and intuitive enough to incorporate fashion’s most flattering trends in his collections that have reasonable appeal across all ages of sophisticated young and not-so women.

Most memorably, he showed slumped silk trench coats and tailored jackets over modestly constructed brassiere tops, mono-shoulder split-skirt fitted frocks and loose patio trousers  in icecream blue, pink and lemon, sometimes with glints of metal at the waist. Styling with slipper-like shoes suggested a casual end-use but I found it difficult to picture precisely where these glorious ensembles might be worn: to lunch? cocktails? parent-teacher interviews? Their low-key high-colour glamour is distinctly European.
Now, there’s an omen.

Janice Breen Burns, jbb@voxfrock.com.au, with Terry Carruthers, info@voxfrock.com.au