Spanning over three weekends, the 22nd Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival (VAMFF) celebrated many firsts, including the largest number of runways in its history and the largest lineup of women speakers to date.
VAMFF: Fashion and the Future
Over 100 of Australia’s established and emerging designers took part in the country’s largest fashion event. The addition of 9 runways allowed the festival to deliver 50 runway events and welcome new designers Hansen and Gretel, Arnsdorf, Chris Ran Lin, P.E Nation, Nice Martin, Kaliver, Atori and Elliatt.
The Festival’s Ideas and Arts programs turned attention to innovation, explored through a focus on sustainability, ethical fashion, exploring technology and understanding gender roles and non-binary expression. Highlights of the Arts program include the Mirka Mora and Lisa Gorman lecture held at Heide Museum on Mirka’s 90’th birthday and the You Can’t Do That exhibition at Melbourne Museum.
Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival CEO Graeme Lewsey said:
“The future is now and the fashion industry is in an exciting state of revolution. Creative and commerce platforms are developing rapidly, embracing transformational change to keep in step with the consumer demand for innovation and instant gratification. The reality is we face a steep learning curve with technology at the forefront, but we must take note that the future will not merely be about output, we will be judged on outcomes. It is time for responsible innovation; innovation that is sympathetic to our humanity and our environment yet still tolerant of speed-to-market necessities and the economics of a global stage.”
Runway action
The Gala Runway featured the largest exclusive International and Australian designer line-up, while the Virgin Australia Grand Showcase featured acclaimed Australian label Ginger & Smart.
Runway 1: Albus Lumen, bassike, Bianca Spender, CAMILLA AND MARC, Dion Lee, Scanlan Theodore and VIKTORIA & WOODS.
Runway 2: Acler, Anna Quan, Arnsdorf, BY JOHNNY., C/MEO COLLECTIVE, Hansen & Gretel and Morrison.
Runway 3: Aje, Carla Zampatti, KACEY/DEVLIN, macgraw, Manning Cartell and Rachel Gilbert.
Runway 4: Dom Bagnato, Grace Loves Lace, JASONGRECH, M.J. Bale, Rachel Gilbert, Steven Khalil, Toni Maticevski and Bridal Party edit by David Jones.
Runway 5: alice McCALL, Kate Sylvester, Misha Collection, Nicola Finetti, sass & bide, Thurley and Yeojin Bae.
For the first time, VAMFF presented an event of uncensored real talk from some of the most prominent women in Australian media in Evening With: Women in Media. The largest line-up of women speakers in the Festival’s history including Wen Zhou, Chief Executive Officer of 3.1 Phillip Lim, and Fanny Moizant, founder of Vestiaire Collective all took part in Fashion Talks.
View all the highlights from the shows in the video above.
Film footage and photo courtesy of Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival.
