Key points
- Waiving registration fees this year, Australian Fashion Week is back with a spotlight on trailblazers
- Members of a newly-founded designers’ collective seek to assert their heritage community’s place on the fashion map
- The label founder views the industry’s proclaimed sustainability commitment as a call to collaborative action and innovation
A collective of 25 up-and-coming designers, under the Iordanes Spyridon Gogos label, is participating for the first time.
In the days leading to their show, the studio is buzzing with last-minute preparations. And it’s not just the clothes that are keeping them busy.
The team has been finalising more than a dozen colourful cardboard horses to be placed on the runway.
“The Trojan horse is the logo fronting the brand,” label founder Jordan Gogos explains.
“It symbolises the brand's approach to breaking into the industry and ushering new ideas.”
A reference to the , a huge wooden horse was used by ancient Greeks to besiege the city of Troy thanks to the surprise element of hidden warriors in the horse.
“So, it's really that approach of bringing new people into the industry and changing the way that we engage in fashion,” he says.
Australian Fashion Week is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, following a 2020 Covid cancellation.
The comeback is promised to be unique for a number of reasons including a notable attendance, with the event running for the first time open to the public.
Source: James Gourley/Getty Images
New faces are in the spotlight, but organisers made sure an absence will not go unnoticed.
A runway has been named after Carla Zampatti, as a permanent tribute to the late designer.
“I have absolute respect for her, she has made huge contributions to Australian fashion,” Mr Gogos says when asked to comment on the initiative.
But he notes he feels part of a generation that aspires to break out from established patterns and promote “more sustainable and inclusive” practices in fashion production.
The 26-year-old is one of Australian Fashion Week’s ‘Changemakers’.
The program aims to introduce “individuals who are reshaping Australia’s fashion industry and igniting an overall wider cultural shift via fashion.”
Participants include award-winning disability influencer Lisa Cox, New Zealand’s first transgender model Manahou McKay, and Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation ambassador Nathan McGuire, a Whadjuk Noongar activist and model.
Supported by the state government’s tourism and major events agency, Destination NSW, the event has also introduced a title sponsor that covered the costs for participating designers this year, “in recognition of the challenges faced by the industry in 2020.”
Individuals in the 2021 Changemakers program, are involved in Australian Fashion Week in a wide range of capacities from runway shows to content integrations. Source: Daphne Nguyen
In a statement announcing the decision, Afterpay co-founder, Nick Molnar, said the move was in line with the company’s “commitment to helping Australian brands and designers prosper” with the support “particularly at this time” aiming at ensuring sustainability for the industry.
“Usually, I think it's like something around $10,000 to $20,000, that an artist or a fashion brand would have to pay to even be on the schedule,” Mr Gogos says.
For him and his team, the pandemic proved a driving force beyond costly fees waived.
“The label came into existence, because of COVID.
“I had a furniture brand and when COVID hit, I had no storage facilities or access to machinery so I went and bought a domestic sewing machine.”
Kickstarting the brand in his bathroom, he says he co-fought isolation with colleagues through remote work.
Jordan Gogos was designing and making furniture before Covid hit. Source: Joseph Haddad
“I started contacting people and keep dialogue happening […] So that's where it really began.”
Before setting up his wearables label, the southern Sydneysider had already a foothold in the industry complementing furniture-making with set design work for fashion magazines.
While the collective of 25 that joined forces for the Australian Fashion Week show includes established professionals, younger brands are also in the mix.
Remaking a migrant community’s room for creativity
Stephania Liakos, 21, is one of the emerging designers having their debut on the runway.
Starting her brand at 18, she gave it the Greek name Diaspora, a homage to the migrant heritage she found herself identifying with in her first career steps.
“In a sense, I never felt really connected to it. But ironically, through making, I started to become more interested in my Greek culture and now I’ve come 360, embracing it.”
Ms Liakos cites the influence of her grandfather for her initiation into the world of recycling and remaking in which she found her own self-expression.
I think I might be one of the first openly artistic people in my family.
"My pappou was in construction but in his spare time he goes around and finds little parts to make bicycles with, he’s very creative with it.”
And she says he’s not the only one in her immediate environment with a flair for creative outlets.
Jordan Gogos and collaborator, Stephania Liakos in studio ahead of their AFW debut. Source: Supplied
Maybe it wasn't seen as a career that they could really do, because they had to do these mundane jobs to make money for the family.
Mr Gogos, also a second-generation Greek Australian, believes they can signal a shift positioning their community in the industry.
He has memories of his great-grandmother as a dressmaker and his grandmother was also a knit-maker and a seamstress, whose threads he has incorporated in one of the vests he is showcasing at the show this week.
He also named his label after his grandfather Iordanes (Jordan) Spuridon.
Source: Nick Tsindos
“I was actually going to be named Spyridon, but my mum didn’t want me to be bullied, because growing up in an Anglo-Saxon area, everyone was, you know…Adam and Jeff.”
Our grandparents despite how creative they were they never had the opportunity to pursue that. This is the first generation in our families that makes it happen for Greek design and art to exist in mainstream Australian culture and be at the forefront of Australian Fashion Week.
As part of its new features, the five-day event launches a partnership with the national industry body First Nations Fashion and Design, to highlight Indigenous Australian designers and talent with events including a dedicated runway.
The country’s pinnacle fashion event also proclaims a renewed focus on sustainability this year.
It covers both event management aspects, as well as promoting ethical manufacturing principles.
For younger designers like Ms Liakos, the concept of sustainability has emerged organically as a reaction to the old ways in the industry.
That's exactly how I started because I looked at other people, and I was like I don't want to just go and buy a new fabric off the roll, I want to go into my mum's closet, and say ‘hey, do you want to throw anything out?’, and I could cut those up and make like five different things out of one jumper.
Mr Gogos believes the sustainability territory is to be dealt with as an uncharted one.
Jordan Gogos' collaborators in a past show. Source: Supplied
I think it’s really important to recognise that in Australia there is no governing body to sustainability. There is no booklet that says how to be sustainable.
"Designers need to show to the public what sustainability is through innovation. Not just stopping at what we have suggested 10 years ago, like using deadstock materials. That's not sustainable anymore."
He says the best way to go about it is “as a collective”.
“Because you're constantly talking with each other and engaging on how to push ideas and push forward, not working in isolation.
“It is completely evolving from the way that a designer is working with people and communicating to the public and sharing ideas. I think that is a greater effect of sustainability.”
