Fashion’s freshest crop of 30 top tertiary graduates were sifted from 120 applicants for MFW 2026 Student Collections Runway, shown this week in the air-craft-hangar-sized show space at YoungHusband in Kensington. The joyful, clatteringly noisy night took on a grand-final vibe as families and mates of the graduates from LCI Melbourne, RMIT, Whitehouse Design and Box Hill Institute hooted and stamped for their crews. Out of the 30 Remarkables however, only one Exceptional One could be picked for 2026. It was Maddie Clark. The RMIT graduate showed a deceptively simple pod collection, ‘ki-net-ic’ tethered to her complex backtheory of physics, fabrics and passion for professional volleyball. Congratulations Maddie! VoxFrockers Alice Naish and Ru Elliot were there to report the teasing glimpse of fashion’s future at the MFW Student Collections Runway.
Photographs: Alice Naish Words: Ru Elliot
I think it’s passé to say the student runway is the most anticipated of any season, but it really does remain true.
As a journalist it’s an incredible opportunity to see what new voices and visions you’ll hopefully get to cover in years to come.
but it’s also a daunting task, to watch 30 emerging creatives and whittle it down to an article that can speak to all or any of their talents.
I was lucky out the front of the show this year to overhear Aaron Freeman mention their work. I chased them down for a quote about their collection, ‘The Things We Grew Into’.
“Originally inspired by my gender dysphoria,” they explained. “Fantastical story book creatures, rot and then bursting out of the garments, a version of yourself that inevitably has to become…”
Aaron’s musing resonated with my own journey as a queer person and a designer. So I looked to the runway, which they described as ‘looking at in-between moments of making’. I thought, in the act of making clothes are these designers not also fashioning an identity?
Aaron’s work certainly left an impact on me, the fur textures exploded out from the shoulders, like an uncontrollable beast that could not be contained, a presence that could not be ignored.
This contrasted so heavily with the work of Katrina Kan, whose origami-like treatment of sheer silk organza created a feeling of a beginning of an identity, the folds visibly constructing what was a blank slate into a manipulated beginning of identity.
The show was so filled with moments of revelation like this, seeing into the gestation of an idea, a persona being born.
Amelia Hull’s work ‘Figment’ used cutouts and lights inspired by puppetry and theatre to evoke places that characters are born into.
Swirling ruffle sets circled a central light, a place where fantasy and reality can meet.
It’s impossible to talk about all the works shown in the 2026 Student Collections Runway, but it truly was like seeing each and every one of the designers building the foundations of a language, of an identity, for themselves and hopefully a future customer.
I saw myself in a lot of looks. I’m still forming my own identity, as we all are, and fashion makes that exploration possible. This group of our “next brightest” will find their feet, and help us find ours along the way.
Meet the VoxFrockers
Alice Naish, photographer
Alice is the newest member of the VoxFrock crew of emerging fashion photographers and journalists. She is a gifted image maker, often works with dancers in her fashion work, one evocative way she expresses her interest in autonomy and the limits in which we observe ourselves. Alice’s work has been published across publications in Australia such as Harper’s Bazaar Australia, To Be Magazine, and Wangazine.
RU ELLIOT, JOURNALIST
