Fashion parades.

Word has it that Incu’s men’s store on Flinders Lane has always been heckled by the fairer sex. Having long implored the birth of a sister store, their prayers are finally answered; demand has been met, and Incu women’s has bloomed in Melbourne. If what’s missing from your wardrobe is a perfectly effortless yet immaculately constructed Rag & Bone shirt dress, or perhaps a pair…

It’s no secret that the universities of London have been churning out exceptionally talented fashion designers for years, from Alexander McQueen and Hussein Chalayan in the nineties to the more recent crop of ascending stars like Holly Fulton and Gareth Pugh. So it’s no wonder all eyes were trained on the graduate collections on show this week in search of tomorrow’s stars. I went down…

Track suits, tracky dacks, track pants… call them what you will, but they and I do not to together. I own a single pair, they accompany me to the gym and home again only to be promptly hidden, their very existence a point of frequent denial. Comfortable they may be, but visually pleasing? Seldom. Australia’s fashion industry tried its hand at improving the visual appeal…

Fashion and ‘tracky dacks’: two word you don’t often hear in the same sentence. But this Thursday, June 9, charity TLC for Kids is hosting Fashion Supports Tracky Dack day, a huge soiree on the rooftop of Melbourne’s Whitehouse Institute that not only turns all that around but does so for a fantastic cause. Guests will be treated to a runway show featuring a rather…

Traveling up a short flight of stairs from Melbourne’s Chapel Street was akin to stepping back in time. For the stairs gave way to a floor space on which people decked out in vintage fashions, some not too dissimilar from those we’re expecting to make a comeback in the new year, did more than mill and swill, they cavorted, swanned and jitterbugged. All this post-war…

It’s not an era that we currently consider to be set for a fashion trend revival, but that doesn’t mean the 1940s made any less of an impact upon fashion than any other period. Yet when one imagines the era, particularly in this post-military fashion period, it’s hard to look beyond its contributions to all things austere – after all, it was the Second World…

For spring Ana Locking took the human body and turned it inside out, a theme with a certain grotesqueness though full of abstract beauty when applied to prints on shoes and dresses. Next up, however, Locking turns to something much less… physical. She turns to the notion of identity. Titled ‘STANCE’, her fall 2011 collection is about taking a standpoint, “the correct one for yourself,…

For Camilla Franks, it all started during her actor training days when she designed costumes for her glaringly lengthy stage performances. “Firstly I did terrible plays and then I hated the costumes they made for me. It was so boring. No colour, no fun.” It was seven years ago when she was stereotyped for being a “hippie and a flamingo dancer”. Today, with her brand…

Anyone who knows Melbourne knows that it’s the laneways and backalleys that house the best of the best, the hidden gems. A new concept to draw on that fact is this Sunday’s ‘Urban Upbringing’, a laneway fashion show focused on progressive, up-and-coming designers. If you’re in Melbourne and fancy checking it out this Sunday, tickets and more information are available here.

When it comes to creativity and passion, you can’t keep a good student down; and so it is that we always await with anticipation the graduate components of Melbourne’s fashion weeks. At next week’s LMFF (L’Oreal Melbourne fashion festival) it’s Wednesday night’s National Graduate Showcase that fills the student space. With what we expect to be 12 impressive finalists and one inspiring show, this one…