Capturing the coolest kids in the hottest looks at Australia Fashion Week

Nov 19, 2023

Think of Australian fashion and it's likely loads of beige linen, beach-ready board shorts, and hippy-ish mini dresses will be conjured up. A quick look at the street style on show at Australian Fashion Week's Resort 2023 edition last week obliterated those stereotypes, however, and proved there's far more going on fashion-wise in Sydney's streets than you’d probably first imagined. Right now, the city's runways are evolving, as a new gen of young, emerging talent – like Alix Higgins, whose front row challenged Chopova Lowena's when it came to how many people were wearing her designs, and Ngali, the first First Nations brand to show solo on schedule – rise up.

As is the case when you’re a world – and frustratingly slow DHL tracking time – away from Europe, brands born in both Australia and Aotearoa-New Zealand were on heavy rotation outside show venues. The bright leather creations of Kiwi bag label Yu Mei were seen slung over the shoulders of editors and models, and Caroline Reznik's leather pieces were the uniform of Friday night. With so many of the week's most highly anticipated shows ones that were both inspired by and featuring a catwalk full of the designers’ communities, each day was uniformed by whoever was scheduled to showcase: androgynous bright textiles for Erik Yvon, skin-tight font-fronted tops for Higgins, and hand-stitched styles for Youkhana.

That wasn't to say global brands weren't represented alongside homegrown talent. Attendees sauntered between shows wearing an eclectic mix of names both established and emerging. Inside Wackie Ju's debut, I spied a Masha Popova denim jacket, and outside, Telfar's famously impossible-to-get-hold-of black duffle bag, and the pieces that are trending right now – like the Miu Miu ballet flats, and Lemaire's croissant bags – were interspersed vintage and thrift store finds, and the odd heritage designer piece by Balenciaga or Burberry. A shout-out goes to Sydney's stylish guys, who, like A$AP Rocky just recently, threw preppy plaid skirts and kilts over trousers and matched them with patent Tabis care of Margiela. If the past week in looks is anything to go by, Australia's national style identity has spent the last few years wiping its IG clean and rebranding – right before it ditches IG in favour of TikTok altogether.

Click through the gallery above to see Sydney's best street style, captured on film by Phoebe Wolfe, plus some extras in the one below.