As Rosemount Australian Fashion Week enters its teens the event is now a destination for international buyers.
On Monday more than 100 fashion designers from Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and India will begin showing their wares at Rosemount Australian Fashion Week's spring-summer 2008 collections. In the front rows, next to the media and celebrities, local and international buyers will be poised with order books open, hoping to spot hot sellers.
It's 13 years since the first Fashion Week and since then Australian designers have won favour with retailers worldwide. Austrade says fashion exports contribute about $240 million a year to Australia's economy.
Ask industry players the world over what they know about Australian fashion and you can bet they talk about our surf wear and swimwear and will name labels such as Quiksilver and Rip Curl. They are also likely to mention our model exports such as Elle Macpherson and Gemma Ward as well as models-of-the-moment Catherine McNeil and Abbey-Lee Kershaw. Some might go on to list Collette Dinnigan, Ksubi, Sass & Bide and denim label 18th Amendment.
"Australia, like Brazil, is a place we look to for inspiration for swimwear," says Anna Laub, a London-based editor at trend forecaster wgsn.com. "You guys are always going to do much better swimwear and summer clothes in general because you're all spending much more time in the sun. The street style in places like Sydney is also very fashion-forward: people are always sporting the hottest looks straightaway."
Elizabeth Charles, an expat who owns eponymous boutiques in New York and San Francisco, has been a regular at Australian Fashion Week.
"It's the unusual details and fabric combinations that make Australian-designed clothing so interesting and alluring," she says. "Although Aussies are designing for the opposite season, designers often source their fabrics from Italy and France which leads to unusual fabric combinations and atypical colour choices for the season. Plus a laid-back attitude and great weather produce some courageous designs and unique combinations."
Stocking Australian and New Zealand designers has succeeded for Charles, with USA Today recently profiling her stores by featuring looks from Zimmermann, Akira, Yeojin Bae and Anna Thomas. This year Charles won't be making the trip but will place orders based on runway shots.
"Sass & Bide are the biggest regular Australian draw on the fashion week calendar here in New York; they have loyal retailers and fans here, " says Colin Bertram, a former Sydney fashion editor who is a managing editor at the New York Daily News.
"What sets Aussie fashion apart is the ability of our designers and stylists to reinterpret trends and give them a fresh twist.
"That said, style in Australia always strikes me as being thrown together, which can be a good and bad thing. When good, it has an effortless quality. When bad, it can look very contrived and desperate to be 'of the moment'."
One of Australia's biggest commercial success stories is Lisa Ho, who, along with her own label, also owns Third Millennium and Mad Cortes. With boutiques across Australia and customers worldwide, the fashion veteran believes we should be viewed in our own right and not compared to European and American industries.
"We are relatively young and new and I think events such as Australian Fashion Week do educate the general public about the industry," Ho says. "As a result I think appreciation of fashion in this country is far greater than it used to be."