The Order of the Phoenix

thom kerr

Well Rosemount Australian Fashion Week is four days away but as has now become tradition in the leadup to the event, a vibrant off-schedule week of Sydney shows is underway. Yesterday, Life With Bird and Thurley unveiled their Spring/Summer 2011/2012 collections. This morning, it was Carla Zampatti’s turn, followed by tonight’s Ginger & Smart and Phoenix Keating shows. Phoenix who? The 20 year-old eveningwear designer from Sydney’s Bellevue Hill, who is now in his second season, will be making his runway debut tonight at Sydney’s Luxe Studios. Keating did a part-time TAFE patternmaking course while still at school, before receiving private tuition from retired Australian costume designer Jenny Clarke. He also spent one and a half years as an assistant to Australian makeup artist Jody Oliver, who is doing tonight’s show. Others giving a helping hand tonight include his first cousin, Sydney fashion PR queen Marie-Claude Mallat; Deni Hines, his sole client, who will be performing; and upwardly mobile Sydney-based fashion photographer Thom Kerr, who shot this portfolio of images to accompany the collection - starring new face Krystal Glynn. Keating looks to be sufficiently talented to make it on his own without name-dropping, but it is nevertheless worth noting one fascinating bit of bio trivia: five years ago, he discovered that his biological grandfather was the late Nigerian Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti.  

all images: supplied exclusively to frockwriter by thom kerr

styling and art direction: cassandra scott-finn
beauty: sinden dean
production: jovita lee 

Adelaide's emerging designers enjoy BMWs and free rent

The Adelaide Fashion Festival appears to revolve around young designers. Its timing is designed to coincide with the graduation of final year students at TAFE SA, whose fashion campus in the CBD, incidentally, recently received a $4million upgrade. The graduates get to show their work in a big runway showcase at the Festival. Frockwriter shot the 2010 TAFE show from backstage, when we attended the first few days of the event as a guest of the organisers. Then there is the festival's gala finale, the Chambord SA Emerging Designer Award. The 2010 winner was Jaimie Sortino (below), who we just happened to meet and photograph on November 9, following the Festival's opening party. Sortino was awarded the use of a BMW for one year, which is ironic given that he doesn’t have a driver’s license. Sadly, we had to get back to Sydney and missed the closing night's festivities, but head to Sonny Vandevelde’s blog for some great backstage shots of that show. Earlier in the week we did, however, meet up with two other Chambord finalists, Julie White and Alice Rawlinson, who designs under the brand name Divine Madness (above - and below, with White), at their Hindley Street studio/boutique called Workshop. Providing yet further evidence of Adelaide’s fashion incubator focus, White and Rawlinson share the space with two other young creatives... rent free.  

jaimie sortino/chambord SA emerging designer award/sonny vandevelde

Workshop is part of an initiative called Renew Adelaide, which is based on the Renew Newcastle urban renewal program that was pioneered by writer and broadcaster Marcus Westbury in that city in 2008. Its mission statement: to revitalise the Adelaide city centre by pairing up creatives with empty spaces and abandoned buildings. Legal squatting in other words.
 
It reminds frockwriter of the Stalbridge Chambers studios in Melbourne’s Little Collins Street in the 1980s which birthed, among others, Scanlan & Theodore co-founder Fiona Scanlan, milliner Tamasine Dale and wünderkind Martin Grant, who launched his label at age 15. Also the existing China Heights collective in Sydney’s Surry Hills. Just without the overheads.  
 

julie white

divine madness

julie white

julie white

Elliot Ward-Fear's bottom line

Elliot Ward-Fear’s profile is completely disproportionate to the size of his business. In fact the 22 year-old Sydneysider has yet to snag a single stockist. Given that he only graduated from TAFE NSW last year, that’s not so hard to grasp. But that hasn’t stopped pieces from his spectacular 'Beauty In Exile' debut collection, which was unveiled at Rosemount Australian Fashion Week in May, finding their way into two episodes of Australia’s Next Top Model, this month's ARIA awards and even an audience with Miuccia Prada. When your stocks-in-trade are 18cm microsuede booties and gargantuan, stalactite-like Lucite jewellery, people tend to notice you. Having a publicist doesn’t hurt of course - and he's had one of those since June. Next week Ward-Fear is going to be flat chat. First up, he will unveil his Autumn/Winter 2011 ‘Spirit of Clothing’ collection at press showings in Sydney. Here is an exclusive preview of that collection, which includes some quite beautiful dresses, such as this pretty, deconstructed tennis dress in fondant pink and white and the intricately-seamed caramel wool bodycon dress, above and below, which boasts a curious cutaway panel at the derrière. The latter is designed to be worn, we are told, with a full, flesh-coloured brief - as white hot new Australian model Codie Young will discover later next week when the Vogue Australia September covergirl shoots Ward-Fear's first lookbook in Brisbane with Thom Kerr. 

Young will also be negotiating the, by all accounts, equally extreme accessories of Ward-Fear's AW11 collection. They include a handbag with a detachable glove, a pair of sunglasses cut from one piece of Perspex and a pair of 45cm platforms.  

Just what is the Prada connection?

Manila-based blogstar Bryanboy was sent some Elliot Ward-Fear pieces in the leadup to the Spring/Summer 2011 shows in Europe. 

On October 7th, the final day of the season, he wore both the 18cm booties and a spiked Lucite necklace to the show of Prada's diffusion line Miu Miu in Paris (and continues to be photographed in the booties). 

Of his attempt to greet Miuccia Prada after the show in the necklace, Bryanboy later noted on Twitter:

"Took a miracle to exchange kisses with mrs prada with my extreme elliott ward-fear necklace".

As for comments that have since been attributed to Prada regarding Bryanboy's outfit, we have it on good authority that the sum total of her commentary was “you look beautiful” – which is not quite the way Grazia Australia spun it in this piece.

Nevertheless most definitely one to watch from Australia, Ward-Fear hails from highly creative lineage.

He is the latest big buzz graduate of the TAFE NSW Fashion Design Studio, whose alumni include a roll call of this country's best known fashion names, from rising star Dion Lee to Akira Isogawa, Michelle Jank, Nicky Zimmermann, Gary Bigeni and Alex Perry. His father is set designer David Ward-Fear, who worked on films such as The Shining, Mad Max, Aliens and and The Matrix triology. 

Check the Elliot Ward-Fear website for more examples of earlier work.

 

all images: supplied exclusively to frockwriter by elliot ward-fear/mother & father PR

Dion Lee's fashion analysis

To those who may have been wondering whether Dion Lee was going to be able to pull off a second blockbuster collection fresh out of design school – in his case, the seminal NSW TAFE, this country’s equivalent to London's Central Saint Martins – the answer was delivered yesterday morning at approximately 9.30am. Yes, he did. Set against arguably the most iconic of Australian backdrops, Sydney Harbour, by way of the northern foyer of one of the world’s most beautiful buildings, the Sydney Opera House, the twenty-four year-old Sydneysider mesmerised his audience with a small, but perfectly formed collection entitled Façade.

It began with a dose of the complex, razor-cut, yet deconstructed, tailoring with which Lee has quickly established his name. The collection quickly moved into a series of bodycon microdresses with a honeycomb effect, created by the layering of synthetic mesh. These segued into yet more microdresses, this time in a sheer stretch georgette, splattered with a striking, ultraviolet Rorscharch inkblot effect print.

If asked by a fashion shrink what you saw in the patterns, you might well say Josh Goot and Michael Angel, coincidentally, two other Australians. Unlike Lee, Goot and Angel are both self-taught. They have nevertheless been at the vanguard of the recent digital print power trend. In Goot’s case, as far back as his Spring/Summer 2008 collection presented at New York Fashion Week.

Lee closed with a breathtakingly beautiful series of draped crepe microdresses in soft duck egg blue and taupe. Their skirts consisted of layered micropleated panels, with the bodices crafted from soft ropes of the same fabric, meticulously draped, knotted and interlaced.

The "drapé" was effectively trademarked by Madame Grès in Paris last century. Dion Lee just deconstructed it. If anyone is planning to revive that haute couture house, you know who to call.

Click here to see frockwriter's Posterous pic gallery of the show.