National Graduate Showcase presented by Sportsgirl
Fashion collections designed by national graduates including six from RMIT showcased last Saturday in the Docklands for the L’oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival.
The annual Sportsgirl National Graduate Showcase features a runway with styled models wearing the garments graduates take months to make.
RMIT graduate Kara Liu whose designs showcased says her and fellow students worked intensely for 3 months last year before Melbourne Spring Fashion Week.
“We worked very long hours. I’m talking twelve to fourteen hours a day- that’s normal,” she says.
The collections from the picked Rmit candidates during Spring Fashion Week were used for Saturday’s show.
Graduate Bernadette Francis from Rmit says the inspiration for her collection is the sensory experience of the person wearing the garment.
During the runway disco balls reflected off her designs of silver bells and bright prints on the models.
Francis is aware of wearability in her collection and “[doesn’t] want it to be so unwearable that it alienates people.”
“There is a real strength where people can envision themselves wearing it,” she says.
Liu and Francis say they construct all the garments themselves but admit some processes and materials are time consuming and cost ineffective when sourced locally.
In the collection Kara Liu’s designs include pure felted wool from Holland in different tones and Francis went to Indonesia for the bells sewn onto her garments.
Rmit graduate Jack Hancock is the only designer with male only fashion to appear in this year’s showcase.
“I think that menswear has this construct of being limited but it really shouldn’t be,” Hancock says.
Two suits in the collection contain up to ten metres of whole fabric where they would normally take up 3.
The effect is voluminous garments with layers of woollen and silk fabrics.
Kara Liu and Bernadette Francis reflected on a strong communal dynamic between fellow students without being competitive.
“You can work together so closely for four years and at the end of it, everyone produces different disparate things but you can see the link through it,” Francis says.
The runway uses twelve collections from twelve graduates across Australia.
Last year’s graduates Amelia Agosta and Stephanie McPherson have been chosen to collaborate with Sportsgirl on two collections selling online and in store.
Amelia Agosta’s advice to students in fashion and design is to always write things down even “waking up at 3am with an idea could be a great design.”
Agosta says her collaboration with Sportsgirl has given her “great exposure and a chance to shine” in the fashion industry and plans to start her own label in the future.
Backstage at the Sportsgirl National Graduate Showcase, photography by Lucas Dawson
