Pack Your Best Outfit: Australian Fashion Festival Is Going Regional
Consider this your sign to plan a spring road trip. Pack something considerably better than activewear for the journey. Choose fashion pieces for comfort and style.
After three decades of runways and parties, the PayPal Australian Fashion Festival leaves the city. This spring, it heads to Bendigo and Shepparton for two regional programmes, with art, culture and reasons to dress up.
It follows the success of this year’s Geelong Fashion Fortnight, which attracted more than 150,000 people.
Moreover, it proved that it can thrive well beyond its usual metropolitan bubble.
Bendigo will be first, hosting 31 events from September 12 to 20, before Shepparton takes over from October 3 to 11 with more than 20 events of its own.
The expansion is the festival’s first major move since dropping “Melbourne” from its name and stepping into a more nationally minded era. It is also making one thing very clear: creativity has no city limits.
For Creative Director Damien Woolnough, the regional series is a chance to bring the Australian fashion conversation directly to the people already creating, collecting, designing, and dressing differently in their own communities. Rather than asking regional audiences to travel to fashion, the festival is bringing fashion to them.
And no, this is not simply a runway dropped into the country for the weekend.
The Bendigo programme moves from modern couture to First Nations weaving, fashion photography, historic shopping precincts and even cocktails. Documentary photographer Liz Sunshine will present How Fashion Makes Me Feel, an exploration of the complicated, emotional and occasionally irrational relationships we build with our clothes.
Pageant designers Amanda Cumming and Kate Reynolds will revisit 15 years of creative partnership, while Sonia Cappellazzo will bring her modern couture off the hanger and into a live presentation. Guests can also pick up a paintbrush during Estelle Michaelides’ fashion illustration workshop or try mixed-media collage using upcycled fabric with the Pageant designers.
For anyone who has ever insisted that shopping counts as cultural research, Bendigo is ready to validate you. A dedicated walking tour will trace the city’s fashion and retail history, including its iconic Beehive precinct and the beginnings of the Myer emporium.
Then there is Caroline Zilinsky’s Two Zimmermanns. Created by the Archibald artist, the work is as dramatic and arresting as the Australian label’s famously feminine dresses—worn by Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Queen Mary of Denmark. Few artworks come with a celebrity wardrobe resume quite like that.
But the most exciting part of the programme may be what is already waiting in Bendigo.
Local designers, artists, makers and cultural groups have helped shape a line-up that feels distinctly connected to the region. Plastic bags will be transformed into wearable accessories. Indonesian fashion will meet music, dance and food. The work of Bendigo tailor and photographer Allan Doney will return through an outdoor exhibition capturing local post-war life.
There will be bushfoods and conversation with Djaara artist Cassie Leatham, paper-jewellery workshops, historic garments, First Nations artworks and plenty of opportunities to make something yourself. Even babies are invited, courtesy of fashion-focused gallery sessions for children and their grown-ups. Front-row etiquette may need to be temporarily relaxed.
Shepparton follows in October, with creatives including Richard Nylon, Josh Deane, Jordan Drysdale and Stieg Persson joining a programme that will once again place visiting talent beside the people shaping the local creative scene.
That connection is the point. Fashion can become strangely preoccupied with who is sitting in the front row, but these new regional programmes are more interested in who has traditionally been left out of the room.
By bringing industry names, regional talent and curious audiences together, Australian Fashion Festival is creating something far more interesting than a travelling event. It is opening a two-way conversation—one that gives local creatives a major platform while allowing the wider industry to learn from the stories, skills and perspectives already flourishing outside Melbourne.
The Bendigo Fashion Series runs from September 12 to 20, followed by the Shepparton Fashion Series from October 3 to 11.
Fashion’s next important conversation may not be happening in a capital city—and really, why should it?
Written by Bella Blake
For more information please visit https://www.australianfashionfestival.com.au
