VoxFrocker Ru Elliot reports from Makers Lane, the most Melbournesque of Melbourne Fashion Week’s runways, dedicated to one of the city’s trailblazing heros, Simon Shineberg. Scroll down to meet the crew, and click back here and here for more daily updates by fashion’s future journalists and photographers.
Words: Ru Elliot Photographs: Theadora Violet
Makers Lane runway, a collaboration between Melbourne Made and FashLab, was testament to the enduring spirit of progress and craftsmanship this city has always offered.
Fourteen 14 designers reinterpreted the aesthetic codes of one Simon Shinberg, a boundary-pushing designer with a penchant for pizzazz who re-defined fashion conventions for women in the 1960s and 1970s.
At a time draconian rules discouraged or banned women from wearing pants in many public forums, Shineberg offered them liberating pantsuits and jumpsuits in his Mr. Simon and Sharene Creations collections, both manufactured in the Makers Lane runway venue, Howey Place.
The show opened with some of Simon’s original designs before segueing into the contemporary collections. Each designer had pulled different elements from the originals, particularly his metalic and iridescent variations. Sometimes, the nods were subtle: the copper shine of a zip in Mr Cuff’s effortless menswear, for example.
Sometimes the references were overt. Couturier Julie Goodwin’s twist on Simon’s white shirt and silver dress for example (above) was a vision of contemporary chic, a glamourous definition of modern cool. As a designer specialising in bespoke tailoring Julie could be described as a perfect candidate for “reinventing” Simon’s aesthetic codes.
Lisa Barron has crafted her own legacy since 1983 and for Makers Lane showed gowns as shimmery and slinky as any worn to infamous New York disco, Studio 54. Silhouettes hugged curves, moved effortlessly and were optically elongated by the luxury fabrics’ subtle vertical lines.
Some designers ditched Simon’s metallic motifs as inspiration in favour of reinterpreting his lace. Walker, for example, a Melbourne brand inspired by traditional Scottish knits, transposed Simon’s distinctive elements of vertical line and floral lace onto strikingly structured knitwear.
Corde Couture closed out the show, its intricate hand-crafted macrame pieces speckled with those metallic memories again, Simon’s legacy realised with such skill, such craftsmanship.
And in the end, that’s what this runway was all about. The skill, craft and hand.
From Mr Simon’s time to the designers of today and, hopefully tomorrow, there is legacy worth remembering here, craftsmanship worth saving here, a desire to escape fashion’s traps of speed and excessive production.
It would be oh so wonderful if they could exist forever.
Meet the VoxFrockers
Ru Elliot, journalist
With three years in nightlife and experience in both contemporary and vintage fashion, Ru continues to explore the links between the past and contemporary fashion and the current Zeitgeist. Studying a Bachelor of Design in Fashion and sustainability has brought renewed focus to her personal practice and a reinvigorated eye and mind. Ru’s journalism projects have also featured in publications such as Alice.D magazine and in zines based in Melbourne, London and Paris. She has recently taken up poetry and can be found reading it across Melbourne’s inner north. This is Ru’s third tour on the VoxFrock Rookie Crew.
Theadora Violet, Photographer/Crew mentor
