It’s been nearly two years now since IMG, the sponsor that once “long-time” applied to, and Australian Fashion Week parted ways. After Australian designers spent months in a state of cold-sweat uncertainty, the event made a 2025 comeback under NSW Government backing and a newly arranged sense of stability. A necessary shift, arguably forced, moved more and more emerging designers into Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, a setting fitting enough for the week’s 30th anniversary.
Hannah Teresa’s Haluminous, a brand seen as part of The Frontier group runway, clearly has a thing for gothic romance and Victorian references, always given a modern gloss. The brand’s Petal Nocturnal collection had just one more task to complete: make jersey sexy. Or, as they put it in an Instagram caption, “In our studio, we needed to discover ways for jersey to thrive in the most luxurious way, not as a T-shirt or casualwear, but as something sculptural, resilient and beautiful. That balance of lightness holding weight, structure and beauty became the core technical message of Petal.” And just like that, veiled eyes guided a body drenched in 3D rosettes, red structure, and romantic volume down the runway.
Katie-Louise and Lilian Nicol-Ford’s namesake brand is known for its celebration of queer communities and its ethical core. Their task, however, was to translate painter Adrian Feint’s art references and the 1958 film Auntie Mame’s glamour into a resort collection. The result was a Newtown-based retro Dolce Vita, with hand-painted florals, rich silks, coque feathers, decorated hips, voluminous hair, and silicone bodices that look like Murano glass, being quite a big part of it. Australia suddenly looks like a very tasteful diva.
