Creative director Stuart Walford (pictured) curated this memorably sophisticated mix of pod collections by fashionistocrats-in-the-bud for Melbourne Fashion Week‘s Student Runway.
Voxfrock Rookie Tilly Parsons photographed it. Scroll south to meet Tilly and click back soonish for more daily coverage of MFW 2023. (Report updated from Creative Victoria’s Fashion News )
Student runways gift us a fresh batch of designers every fashion week; thrilling, unmissable hot-ticket peeks into the industry’s immediate future.
The best are peppered with stars-in-the-bud.
“It’s that one show you really don’t know what to expect,” says creative director Stuart Walford who has styled fashion week’s student runways, including this one, for six years. “An element of surprise you don’t get anywhere else.”
A selection panel headed by Stuart whittled this year’s student runway lineup down to 40 headstrong designers and their 40 wildly disparate pod collections, each comprising three outfits.
“This is their one chance,” he says. “Their one incredibly fleeting moment to make an impression. It has to count; they’ll use this as sort of advertising revenue, to really make their mark, tell you about who they are.” And so they did.
Stuart’s task was to puzzle an harmonious runway show from this mix of 40 divergent ideas and personalities. “It’s about creating an environment,” he says, “With soundtrack and hair and makeup that creates some harmony and celebrates all these strong identities.”
For most students it’s their first crack at meaningful public scrutiny. The tendency to “go big”, with a memorably gob-smacking flight of creativity to stand out from the lineup is historically understandable.
For decades, in fact, oddball “unwearables” have been the student runway norm. Some have been explosive, effective conveyors of great ideas; some, just too wacky to take seriously.
But something changed. Stuart says he noticed a curious shift in recent years, toward more restraint among student collections. It’s obvious in this line-up of pod collections, an innate sophistication spun into controlled creative visions.
“When I first started working on (student runways) the language was more about impact and size and scale,” he says. “It was; the more avant garde, the bigger the silhouette, the better. Now it’s almost like we’ve gone back to basics, emphasis on construction and make and sustainability… there are a lot more calmer silhouettes coming through with the fabrications and details being explored more than those big impact ideas.”
Meet the Voxfrock Rookie – Tilly Parsons
