AUT Rookie Fashion Graduate Show 2014

I love graduate shows. They are the place most of us hear for the first time about new entrants to the local fashion industry. Do I think all fashion designers need to have attended and graduated a fashion college? No. And do all graduates of fashion colleges become designers, or even enter the fashion industry? No of course not. Like I said, I love graduate shows. They are the fertiliser that grows the fashion industry. And as with gardens, some of it will flourish and grow and some won’t.

Last night I attended AUT Rookie Fashion Graduate Show 2014. I try to get along every year, and the new venue at Shed 10 was a great choice; it looked slick and still industrial-and-dockside enough to be cool and was nice and central, down on the refurbished waterfront sheds. There was a room of designers’ work which didn’t make the runway show as apparently not cohesive with the others. I preferred many of these to what I saw on the runway. I know Showroom 22 go through and handpick their edit to display at their fashion showroom which is a huge honour in itself and will no doubt put a wider industry audience in the graduates’ path.

On the runway itself, there were probably three designers I thought were really original, and another five that were accomplished. Some of the collections I particularly liked included Anne Hollister-Jones, Chelsea Thomas (pictured below), Katelyn Nelson, Brit Day, Courtney Perham, Caroline Stephen, and Jarrad Godman.

Clearly, this stuff is pretty subjective. I always hear people say; “It’s like music, or art – some people like some fashion and some don’t. What’s one man’s meat is another man’s murder” and so on. Well, yes and no. There are always some designers at graduate shows each year, across all the colleges, who I feel are too referential of other labels both local and international.

I would also ask the question of all graduates, is this the BEST you can do. This is, after all, the culmination of dozens of hours’ work per week, over three or so years, to get to this point. This is your one big chance to showcase it to many of the nation’s leading designers and media sitting here tonight. Does it truly represent who you are as a creative individual and does it add something new to the fashion landscape? Or is it something I can already go to Westfield and buy? Because the work that truly stood out were the creatives who were still playing, still experimenting, still thinking, and still pushing themselves.

I look forward to seeing where their careers take them – whether under their own name, or for another brand – and how the garden of fashion college grows them.

Here are a few of the looks from the runway shot beautifully by James Yang.

Intro image: Annie Hollister-Jones
Below: Engy Mahdi