By Jennifer Thorp
With Rosemount Fashion Week 2010 just around the corner, Rescu. brings you the most exciting new names in Australian fashion and accessory design. Watch these spaces.
Gary Bigeni
Belinda Seper loves this man, and one glance will tell you why. His take on fashion is the ultimate in stripped-back chic. Rather than fluff, excess trim or even the frivolity of prints, Bigeni focuses on the art of the drape and cut in flattering fabrics – and the result is clean, flowing minimalism verging on Yohji Yahomoto territory.
Once a worker for Josh Goot, Bigeni has now stepped out on his own, and is definitely one to watch. There’s something very, well, Australian about his laid-back, throw-on-and-go and yet utterly impeccable understanding of glamour. Check out his work here.
Dion Lee (one of his designs is featured above)
Including Dion Lee on this list feels vaguely like cheating. The 2008 TAFE graduate has been causing such a stir with his debut lines that it feels like he needs virtually no introduction.
Still out of the loop? Lee’s compositions – which won 2010’s L’Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival Designer Award– are fantastically structural and as complex as origami, leading some to champion him as the new face of tailoring’s return. This isn’t so much Romance Is Born’s wild chaos as fashion played like a chess game: studied, refined to a knife-point, immune to trends, and exciting in a way clothes haven’t been for ages. Look at a video of his latest collection.
Friedrich Gray
Friedrich Gray, the label run by the came-out-of-nowhere Ben Pollitt, is never going to give you what you expect. Past seasons have been inspired by the use of colour in the work of avant-garde filmmaker David Lynch and the eroticism of industrial materials – all in immaculate fabric. If this is intellectual fashion, count us in.
Androgynous, cut to lasting silhouettes and designed to be worn over a lifetime rather than just a season, Friedrich Gray’s aesthetic is dark grunge for the discerning. Think the most fabulous factory part you’ll ever go to, and you’re close. We like.
Alpha60
With four (or five, or possibly six – they’re opening so fast it’s hard to keep count) stores and counting, Alpha60 is no longer a fledgling brand. It’s emerging as a veritable fashion force. Run by the Cleary team, a brother-and-sister duo who seem unstoppable, it’s casual with an edge; think Chloe Sevigny’s days off, and House Of Holland’s neon T-shirts, except (always) in monochrome.
Currently their style is still emerging from the throngs of eccentric street-wear designers, even though Patti Smith has given them her divine seal of approval. Their collaboration with Sportsgirl certainly had some teeth. With time – and more stores under their belts – Alpha60 will definitely be worth the attention.
Lisa Cooper
Cooper may have come onto your radar due to her exquisite golden foil crowns for Cate Blanchett in the Sydney Theatre Company’s product of War Of The Roses. However, this florist/painter/video installation artist/COFA graduate/jack of all (creative) trades also runs a glorious cult jewellery line, The Butcher’s Daughter.
It’s been featured in Vogue Australia, and deservedly so. Her intimate and classically beautiful compositions, in gold, silver and enamel, are garden scenes in miniature: lush foliage and insects strung on ribbons, to be worn as necklaces or headpieces. It’s Victoriana crossed with luscious anatomy textbooks. Check out a few examples.
Find them at selected boutiques in Sydney, and invest now, because this woman is so talented she’s likely to explode.
