Nov 15, 2023 – 5.00am
Word on the street is that an international production company is sniffing around Australian fashion, hoping to entice personalities into being part of a documentary series. Details are thin, but so far I’ve heard that Vogue editorial director Edwina McCann has been approached, along with P.E Nation designer Pip Edwards, publicist Robyn Catinella (her clients include Christopher Esber and Sarah & Sebastian) and Chic Management, a model agency.
I love the idea of this. Clearly there is a groundswell of interest in the local fashion industry, no doubt propelled by the partial sale of Zimmermann earlier in the year. And internationally, Australian brands are punching far above their weight. Matteau, St Agni, the aforementioned Esber, Rebecca Vallance: these are all labels that perform magnificently overseas. It makes sense that a global audience would want to know more about the soil in which these brands took root. And what’s not to like about a TV show that takes fashion as its subject? We all want a peek behind the glossy exterior.
A TV series centred on how something like fashion week comes together would be compelling. Simon Letch
If the project ever gets off the ground, it will follow some regretful predecessors: Fashion Bloggers, where Nadia Fairfax, Margaret Zhang and Kate Waterhouse (and others) took an all-expenses-paid trip to Dubai with the show’s main sponsor, Emirates, for reasons that were never clear.
The Sweat Box was to be a show following the life of publicist Roxy Jacenko until it was cancelled before production even began. And who could forget Park St, about the magazine industry? Hopefully everyone. I was working at Cosmopolitan at the time, and I had one line in this six-part series: “We have a problem.” The problem, manufactured to inspire intrigue (which was otherwise non-existent), was that a cover star would be late to her shoot.
But the real problem was that all of this so-called drama was a confection. The domestic fashion industry is interesting, but the stuff that makes it compelling – the way the sausage is made, the internal politics – all happen where no camera would ever be allowed.
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If there was to be a documentary series about what’s really happening in Australian fashion, it should look into Australian Fashion Week. Afterpay, the naming rights sponsor since 2021, quietly dropped out earlier this year. Another major sponsor, Vittoria Coffee, ended its partnership this year, too (Toby’s Estate stepped in at the last minute to provide caffeine). The question is whether the event can continue without two of its biggest supporters.
Destination NSW has come to the party and is sponsoring the event, but it’s not a naming rights sponsor. The tourism body won’t put a dollar figure on the transaction, and IMG won’t say how much the week costs to stage. My guess, based on what it costs individual designers, is around the $6 million mark. It’s a lot of money for a week that’s increasingly under scrutiny, and which many designers are opting out of in favour of international trunk shows, digital presentations or other ways of showing their new collections.
Michael Lo Sordo’s Australian Fashion Week show on May 15. Getty
Many designers and brand leaders I speak to are wary that their investment – upwards of $200,000 and usually more like $500,000 – never gets paid off. Most use a combination of savvy accounting and sponsorship of their own to get their shows to the stage – witness Michael Lo Sordo’s show this year, in the coveted Monday night spot, where waiters carried trays of Hendrick’s gin.
A TV series centred on how something like fashion week comes together would be compelling. It would be fascinating to see how these events are funded and staged, the hundreds of people working thousands of hours to put on a show that lasts for 20 minutes, max. The craft of the designers, the graft of the makers, the experts who take a show from good to great: watching these people create something beautiful or unusual (or both), for the love of it, would be engrossing.
And underpinning it all, the real drama: that it all could be for nought without a corporate sponsorship. If all of that was turned into a TV show, Australia’s fashion industry would have a runaway hit.
The December issue of AFR Magazine is out on Friday, November 24 inside The Australian Financial Review.
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