What makes (some of us) sooooo? Janice Breen Burns asks a six pack of fashionable Melbournians why is it so. (This story first appeared in Nine’s The Age/Sydney Morning Herald)
In the run-up to Melbourne Fashion Week (on now until October 16) designer Estelle Michaelides directed two photographic shoots for her tiny independent label, MITV (Micky In The Van).
For the first, to launch a new range of sunglasses, she cast a bunch of her fashion industry mates in lush mashes of her wild-patterned headscarves, heavy silk bows, voluminous dresses and bulk-shouldered jackets, all cropped and set – imperious portrait style – in gilt period picture frames.
Michaelides is one of Melbourne’s many small-fry independent designers described as “so Melbourne” for their fearless originality, their gloriously not-slick, not-so-commercial-either, their rarely-trend-driven and not-for-everyone, anti-fashion fashions.
For her second campaign, to launch her latest MITV collection in readiness for three spots on the MFW programme, Michaelides directed the shoot to a lazy lay-about-grunge kind of vibe, appearing as herself in floral ballgown proportions and beer-can hair curlers, slumped with her mates in a Smith Street chicken shop.
I know, right? So cool. Albeit, not that global-megabucks-are-imminent kind of cool, but so Melbourne. So Michaelides. The campaigns, as expected, are going like the clappers on social media. “My tribe,” Michaelides calls her Melbourne people.
Such a Melbourne thing to say.
So, you guessed it; this is a story about Melbourne. Melbourne-ness. The “If you know you know”ness I could probably introduce better if you could see me in a swathe of moody frills by MITV or, for old times sake, some arty black layers by an obscure Antwerpian or Icelandic fashion brand as we sipped espressos, chomped biscotti and pored over maps of Hoddle’s grid (laneways, tram-tracks, Nicholas House, Block Arcade, the old Le Louvre and Georges buildings highlighted) in the honey-lit warmth of Florentinos or perched on stools at Pellegrini’s on a drizzly grey Melbourne day.
Instead I’ve asked six deliciously Melbourne-esque Melbournians, including Michaelides and a couple of bona fide local legends who are currently taking another tilt at MFW, to please explain.
What is it about Melbourne? History, food, migration, architecture, weather, what? Why is Melbourne so, um, Melbourne-esque? And, why, though most Melbournians are actually your average garden-variety norm-core puffa-wearing public, is there also this robust bandwidth of a certain cultural type who live, think, eat and dress to the beat of their own “so Melbourne” drum?
And, one more that cuts to the guts of this decades-old conundrum: why does Melbourne seem to have more in common with off-beat cities of experiment, raw talent and break-through creativity such as London or Reykjavik, than global-trend-followers such as Sydney or Los Angeles?
Let’s break it down:
OF COURSE IT’S THE WEATHER
(It makes us wear more fashion, stay indoors, talk more over tables about serious arty, intellectual stuff)
“It’s the cold, the four seasons in one day thing; we’re inside more so we just have to invest more in relationships, in collaborating,” says MFW stylist Karinda Mutabazi. She likens Melbourne’s weather to other cold cities where she’s lived and worked and creatives huddled indoors and sparks flew. “It’s the same in major fashion hubs like London, New York, Paris,” she says. “The cold. I’ve been to Iceland too and the fashion is amazing, insane…!” (Read: very good.)
Fashion retailer Christine Barro can also compare warm beachy lifestyles with cooler Melbourne. She lived in Sydney as a young woman before forging her legendary career here as buyer for Georges, founder of Christine Accessories, and arbiter of Melbourne’s everywhere.
“Our European climate dictates our behaviour and our dress,” she says regally. “The further north you go, the less garment you need, so that dictates THEIR behaviour which is more outward, more outdoors.”
More string-straps and tan-lines. Less actual clothing means fewer layers, fewer fashion decisions to make, fewer opportunities to dress expressively or appear as stylishly off-beat and well put together as Barro’s Melbournians. “Whereas a Sydneysider might be out sailing more, or at the beach, you do tend to be more indoors in Melbourne because of the weather,” Barro says, “And my observation is this melting pot of creativity goes on; arts, fashion, architecture, ballet, music, food, coffee, science…we meet and it (the conversation) just goes on…”
Menswear designer Mario-Luca Carlucci agrees there’s a warmth here, never mind the cold outside. “You feel like everyone’s open to ideas, everyone’s welcoming and open to collaboration. It’s not just fashion either, it crosses borders to all kinds of creative disciplines: cafe culture, food culture, music, art – they’re all part of that Melbourne creative community.”
With partner Peter Strateus, Carlucci co-designs the brilliantly Melbourne-esque Strateas Carlucci. The pair made history in 2015 as the first Australian menswear collection to show on Paris Menswear Fashion Week’s official schedule. They did it again in 2016 when they were invited to show at Milan Fashion Week. Carlucci says the pair travelled a lot before Covid but always gratefully return to, “our little Melbourne bubble”. “That’s what really informs our design, our collections and our life…”
MELBOURNIANS LOVE THAT THING
(That secret, crazy-new, cutting-edge thing)
“That thing you can’t get anywhere else; we’re really into that.” Denise Sprynskyj, partner with Peter Boyd of legendary local fashion house S!X, believes Melbourne is awash with iconoclasts, visionaries and groundbreaking retailers, large and small, many of them migrants, who create or hunt down That Thing just for us. “That little Italian cafe we know or that little grocery where we buy a pear and we feel like that pear was picked just for us…”
According to Sprynskyj, the joy of discovery is mother’s milk to Melbourneness. Virtually any groundbreakingly good idea out of any creative discipline’s left field – art, food, fashion, design – will find fertile ground here. “It’s all related to that word “artisan”, she says. “We love to have that experience of handmade, handpicked, and we’ve great retailers who’ve created beautiful destinations for it. Like when Le Louvre (when in Collins Street) was first to buy Martin Margiela and everyone else said; “What is this garbage..it looks like it’s inside out!” But we loved it.”
Margiela is legend now. “And we have places like Error 404 , dot COMME or Slow Waves …we’ve still got that thing.”
Mutabazi agrees that Melbourne kind of cool, of tracking down and owning something rare and original or cutting-edge, comes from knowing its narrative rather than, say, being able to show off its global logo for status. “It’s not; “I’m so cool because I got this (thing) but more, I love understanding something about what’s behind this,” she says, “It’s about knowing who the designer is, what they’re doing and thinking; “I love that, and I want to be part of that…”.”
Part of tribal thing, another, If you know, you know thing.
“We’re famous for those hidden secrets,” Barro says. Her own rigorously curated fashion trove was even located underground in its last iteration. “I’ve never wanted to be out there out on the street with all those Coca Cola McDonalds brands…” She’s not at all fond of the global logo shingles among her Collins Street neighbours. “You’re just paying for their marketing,” she says. “It’s all Hollywood and Kardashians; not my customer.”
WE DRESS TO EXPRESS MORE THAN IMPRESS
(Sartorial eccentricities, Out There outfits – yes please)
“Melbournians aren’t afraid of self expression,” says MFW stylist Stuart Walford, whose own wardrobe is a flamboyant self reflection, albeit, a refined and flawlessly fine quality one. “There’s a fearlessness and I feel there’s less judgement in Melbourne. People aren’t afraid to experiment and try things they might not feel so comfortable wearing in other places.”
Walford speculates it’s a “confidence thing” here because so many creatives congregate, “get it” and support each other with tacit approval when they dress as expressive individuals outside of norm-core mores or the fashion herd’s trend cycles.
“I never filter how I present myself in Melbourne,” he says. “I feel like it embraces me and there’s always more compliments and smiles than there are scoffs or negative comments…I feel like in other cities there’s just not the same energy and maybe, there’s a lower level of understanding of that uniqueness, that expressive side of fashion…”
WE’RE A LITTLE BIT ARTY
(And we suffer for it sometimes.)
“This was the fascinating thing with these labels,” says Sprynskyj, recalling the influx of obscure, off-beat, mostly black, asymmetric deconstructionist brands embraced like lovers by Melbournians in the 1990s but shunned – sometimes mercilessly lampooned – in other Australian cities.
“If you had just one artistic brain cell, you had to gravitate to (Issey) Miyake and Yohji (Yamamoto) and Comme (Des Garçons) and (Martin) Margiela,” Sprynskyj says. “(They) just imparted immediate cool and confidence; layers that didn’t reveal too much skin, that moved across a range of body sizes so they didn’t exclude anyone, and didn’t come with a big screaming logo.”
Sadly, and ironically, big screaming logos were trending the same year Sprynskyj and design partner Boyd mounted the first solo show of their very arty, very radical, deconstructionist S!X collection at Australian Fashion Week in the late 1990s. It was a seminal moment.
Sprynskyj and Boyd’s ideas were just starting to rumble in the Zeitgeist, taking off in off-beat fashion cities around the planet. But they were still shockingly new here. “Everything was chopped up, upside down, back to front… ” The aesthetic re-examined tailored clothing, often re-jigging and partially destroying its components.
Soon it would evolve into wardrobes across Melbourne, cementing the city’s decades-long reputation for asymmetric, black fashion by obscure, arty designer brands. But this was early days. And this was Sydney.
“The killing we got…!” Sprynskyj recalls one audience member actually stormed out of the show. “We got an absolute slamming in the paper the next day…” Front page no less; something about what a load of rubbish.
Sprynskyj has recovered enough to laugh now but it was excruciating at the time. Even S!X’s pedigree couldn’t save the duo. Never mind that they had taken out the first Australian Wool Award and a Fringe Fashion Award, had the solid patronage of visionaries such as Georgina Weir of Melbourne’s Le Louvre and museum curators from the National Gallery of Victoria, Powerhouse Museum and Australian National Gallery in Canberra. And, never mind that the same collection would go on to be re-styled, shot and widely celebrated in a Harpers Bazaar fashion spread. after defining a significant swivel moment in the history of Melbourneness, Sprynskyj and Boyd slunk home to their loving tribe and went on to become the local fashion legends they still are today.
“This is fascinating about our culture,” Sprynskyj muses now. “People say I’ve got to go to Melbourne because they. want something, they’ve heard about something, and they want to appreciate and buy it for its art and its radical, revolutionary design but they can’t get it anywhere else.”
HISTORY IS IN OUR BONES
(We can’t not be influenced by it)
Barro says Melbourneness “seeps in” like osmosis from all around us. “We were a planned, orderly city,” she says of our neat, angled streets and labyrinthine laneways. “And from the great gold rush days, our world famous Victorian architecture…that train to Flemington, the Royal Botanic gardens, the Vic market, the exhibition buildings…it’s an amazing footprint. All of those things have to become a sort of stylish atmosphere to influence someone’s eye and creative development…”
Carlucci returns from travelling around the world to a “Melbourne mindset” that he says is deeply influenced by the city: “That rich sense of our multiculturalism is what I see most…”
Michaelides says the influence is inevitable. “We’re all influenced by this amazing city; juxtapositions of its architecture, its cafes, the streets we walk in, the street art..it’s sophisticated and edgy, it’s bright but also refined…” The city is salted, she says, with like minds: “Designers, so many, who have those beautiful nuances in their work, individuality and colour and poetry…”
MELBOURNE FASHION WEEK (on until OCTOBER 16)
Shows will run through some of the city’s most evocative Melbourne-esque locations including the State Library of Victoria, Queen Victoria Market and a Dockside runway to feature the spectacularly elegant Bolte Bridge as a back drop.
Stuart Walford will style the hot ticket closing runway on Sunday, October 16, 7 pm. and 9 pm. under the elaborately lovely Dome at 333 Collins street. The show will include Christine Barro’s exclusive collection by Melbourne ex-pat Martin Grant of Paris for Christine Accessories.
Mario-Luca Carlucci and Peter Strateas presented their Strateus Carlucci collection last night among exhibits in the FashionXArt experience at the State Library of Victoria. Click here for the event.
Denise Sprynskyj and Peter Boyd’s new S!X website is under construction. Appointments via six.la chambre@gmail.com and instagram @sixlachambre
Karinda Mutabazi has curated exhibits in the intriguing Fashion Capsule series already dotted around the city. She will also style MFW ambassador, Thelma Plum for her public appearances and the Hidden Melbourne runway on Friday, October 14, 6.30pm and 7.30pm at Emporium, Level 4.
Estelle Michaelides’ MITV collection will be in the Walker Lane at Collins Square Runway, this Thursday October 13, 12.30 and 1.30 pm.
One MITV design is also among exhibits in the Fashion Capsule 7 at Collins Square and another will be embroidered by members of the Victorian Embroidery Guild at Emporium as part of activations around Fashion Capsule 5 during fashion week.
