200 Years of Australian Fashion
A woman sitting directly behind me on my last architectural tour asked me if I had written about 200 Years of Australian Fashion shortly to be unveiled at the National Gallery of Victoria. My response was ‘No’ and ‘Are you sure about this exhibition? Surely there couldn’t possibly be 200 years of fashion in Australia? That would date the exhibition from 1816’.
As it turns out, my bus companion was correct. But rather than 1816, the first garment on display in this exhibition originated in 1805. Worn by Anna Josepha King, the wife of the governor of New South Wales, the empire line dress made from white muslin, features metallic thread. “We have endeavoured to select key moments from Australia’s fashion history, changes that made an impact at the time,” says Paola Di Trocchio, Curator Fashion and Textiles at the National Gallery of Victoria.
The 101 outfits, as well as shoes and accessories, from 90 designers, is a blockbuster fashion exhibition. From early dress makers working in colonial Sydney, to mid-20th century fashion available through salons in Melbourne’s Collins Street, the diversity and richness found in this exhibition will delight fashion aficionados, as well as those who have a passion for design history. And the question, ‘What defines Australian dress?’, can be contemplated at every turn.
The ‘New Look’, conceived by Christian Dior in 1947 after the lean war years, obviously left its imprint on the local scene. La Petite’s garment, a full skirt, with a cinched waist and bejewelled bodice, is one interpretation of Dior’s innovative new look. So is Hall Ludlow’s, a knitted gold lame halter-neck dress. Decades later, in the 1960s and 1970s, designer Prue Acton literally caused a mini fashion revolution Down Under with her 1960s mini-dresses and her wildly-patterned jumpsuits. “Prue wasn’t just a talented designer. She has a strong business acumen that made her a household name,” says Di Trocchio. And while Mary Quant was liberating the way women dressed in London, Acton was creating a new freedom for young women who didn’t want to dress like their mothers!
By the 1980s, a new crop of Australian talent was reverberating through the industry. With the support and initiatives of the Fashion Design Council (FDC), established in Melbourne by Robert Buckingham, Kate Durham and the late Robert Pierce in 1983, their first fashion parade a year later picked up the excitement of fashion in the early 1980s. Bruce Slorach and Sara Thorn, represented in this exhibition, designed a ‘Princess Dress’ with a Grecian pattern, as well as a dress with a vibrant and graphic calf print. “The duo was dynamic. There was also that element of humour, something that can be seen in a number of designs exhibited,” says Di Trocchio.
While some designers such as Hall Ludlow and Prue Acton, are well recognised in circles outside the fashion industry, some names, including knitwear designer Maureen Fitzgerald showed a similar bravado. Fitzgerald’s dress, ‘colour in motion’, circa 1983 and featuring knitted panels lined with black leather, exhibits pure artistry and extraordinary skill in taking simple yarn to a new level. Brighid Lehmann and her twin sister Sigrid also designed remarkable clothes under their label Empire. Sold through a tiny store in Myrtle Street, South Yarra (now boarded up), the Lehmann’s are represented in this exhibition with a long narrow linen skirt, a singlet and a matching cropped jacket. Their store also sold Kara Baker’s designs and, the now-applauded Martin Grant.
Grant designed the Qantas uniforms and is currently a leading European designer based in Paris. His beautiful linen dress from the 1980s, with its finely executed slashes across the shoulder, has a sculptural quality (Grant studied sculpture at Melbourne’s Victorian College of the Arts).
Di Trocchio and the many people working on this exhibition were also keen to capture the fashion weeks held in Australia from the mid-1990s until the early 2000s. Key moments, such as when Collette Dinnigan first showed her short black lace dress on the Paris runway in the mid-1990s, are acknowledged, as are more recent achievements, such as Strateas Carlucci’s debut in Paris for the menswear shows, almost unheard of for Australian menswear designers (not counting Sruli Recht who is now based in Iceland).
Accessories, such as hats and shoes, are also on display in 200 Years of Australian Fashion. Christopher Graf’s dress from the 1990s is complemented with a hat designed by leading milliner Philip Rhodes. “We couldn’t possibly include everyone in this exhibition. We were looking for pieces that would be animated on a mannequin, clothes and accessories that have a sculptural quality and ‘hold’ their own in a space,” says Di Trocchio. “We hope people reflect on the past 200 years (plus a couple more) and see how far fashion has come in a relatively short time,” she adds.
The exhibition, 200 Years of Australian Fashion will officially open on Saturday 5 March 2016 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia at Federation Square, Melbourne, Australia.
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