Hawkins hits the runway for Myer Fashion Show at Bourke Street Mall

CONSUMERS will get the chance to see Jennifer Hawkins and Kris Smith up close and personal at the Myer Fashion Runway in the Bourke Street Mall store today.

The glamour pair will sport the latest looks for the new season along a 280m long runway which snakes its way around the second floor of the city store.

“I’m really looking forward to meeting all the customers and soaking up the crazy energy,” Hawkins says.

“Everyone is so close to the fashion. It is a chance for customers to be involved in an intimate runway rather than just seeing it live online.”

More than 100 of the new season looks will be on show from designers including Asilo, by johnny, Cue, Sass & Bide, Seed, Acler and Skin and Threads.

One of Hawkins’ favourite trends for the season is Victoriana which includes soft florals, lace and ruffles.

“If you’re after a bolder look, then vibrant brights and colourful patterns are really popular. And statement earrings are a must. I always say to find the colours and trends that suit your own personal style and embrace them,” she says.

Fashion designer learns to sew in secret

BURIED in international trading taxation and federal budgets, Ann Xiao ploughed through the first year of her economics degree; her mind elsewhere.

                                           
Having attended a specialist high school where all subjects were tailored towards commerce, science and business, her path was already being paved for a career behind a desk and excel spreadsheet.

But the Sydney-based creative with a passion for fashion had other plans.

Before her second year of university, Ann told her parents she needed to take a year off to work before getting back into study. A white lie she had to tell.

Behind the guise of a busy working girl, Ann spent 12 months teaching herself to sew in secret through YouTube videos and pulling apart her own clothes; building her portfolio and harnessing her talent.

She applied for every fashion course in the state until she was accepted into one of the best fashion design courses in Sydney at Ultimo TAFE.

It was then she had to break the news to her parents.

Now graduated, the 23-year-old is already making ripples she hopes to turn into waves.

Last year she was selected from a pool of 35 to exhibit her collection, A.N.X, at her school's graduation runway show to an audience of industry heads and scouts.

Her latest feat is being selected to present at Dunedin's iD Fashion Week - one of New Zealand's premier events with major designers and industry professionals as well as an emerging designers competition.

Optimism chic – the look of 2017

Most Januarys are broadly similar. The lunchtime wait in line at M&S to exchange that dodgy Christmas gift cardigan, the treadmills jammed with runners trying to remember how to work the controls, the Dry January martyrs making a massive song and dance about every Diet Coke in the pub.

But this particular January feels tangibly different. Seldom has a new year begun with a zeitgeist united in such bloody-minded optimism. The social media mood on New Year’s Day was a curious mix of blitz spirit (“We can do this!”) and VE Day demob-fever (“We did it!”). The afterburn of 2016 is being felt in our collective determination to bring a better year into being through sheer force of will. Last year had more than its fair share of obscure buzzwords – from Kondo to post-truth to hygge – but the first of this year is one that everyone can rally around. Optimism is so hot right now.

This is big picture stuff, but style is part of it, because on an individual level even big picture stuff gets expressed in small ways. Profound statements are posted on Instagram, and liked by your immediate family. And what you wear to face 2017 is a statement, too. In Susie Boyt’s book My Judy Garland Life, she writes that one of the lessons she learned from her heroine is that “Glamour is a moral stance.” Dressing to cheer and brighten the world in 2017 – whether by red lipstick or a Choose Life T-shirt – is a generous act. And so it is that the look of 2017 has a different slant to what went before. More cheerful, more colourful, more outward looking. With the benefit of hindsight, the athleisure trend that dominated the first half of 2016 seems to signify not simply the wholesome, healthsome vibe it represented at the time, but something about self-obsession and a brazenness about celebrating the shallows of humanity, which played out on a meta scale later in the year.

Full tracksuits are back in fashion

AS if chokers, high-waisted ‘mum’ jeans, floral dresses and goth make-up weren’t enough.

                 
Another staple trend from the ’90s has made its way back into fashion — the tracksuit.
Once the uniform of Sporty Spice and Jenny From The Block-era J. Lo, matching jumpers, hoodies and sweat pants have been given a high-fashion spin by trendsetters including supermodel sisters Bella and Gigi Hadid, Margot Robbie and Cara Delevingne.

And while matching tracksuit pants, jumpers and hoodies may be a “look” that only models can pull off, Instagram types are teaming new season sweaters with skinny jeans, leather and even over dresses, as seen on P.E Nation, adidas x Stella McCartney and GOOD CMPNY.
James Hill, co-founder of GOOD CMPNY, said sweaters were “like denim for your upper body”.
“From going to the gym, wearing it with a pair of jeans, we’ve had some people wear it out to fashion catwalks with a dress on and a jumper on top with the sleeves rolled up,” Hill said, of the Melbourne-based unisex label.

“I always think fashion trends are a rejection of whatever becomes the norm,” he said.
“Somebody will start a trend then the masses will jump on it then the same people who started it will reject the trend they started, and start another trend. And that’s the cycle it goes through.”
Part of that cycle is a blurring of the lines between men’s and women’s styles.

Fashion stakes high in the birdcage, the best and worst dressed from the big stars

A LIGHT breeze and reggae strains welcomed punters and VRC guests to the Birdcage at Flemington Racecourse for Melbourne Cup.

               
The biggest star in the Birdcage for the morning was Melbourne Cup darling Michelle Payne, dressed in pale pink — with wings — every inch the likeness of the Melbourne Cup guardian angel.
             
With no mount for the race that made her name a year ago, Payne was in high demand in the sponsored marquees of the Birdcage with only betting behemoth Tabcorp successfully enticing her in during the morning.

Nearby Race sponsor Emirates were awaiting the arrival of actor Elsa Pataky, wife of Chris Hemsworth, who on Friday wrapped production on Thor on the Gold Coast. Hemsworth was no accompanying his wife, a horse lover.

Canadian supermodel Coco Rocha guest of honour at Adelaide Fashion Festival

THE state’s top designers are pinning their hopes on international celebrity Coco Rocha modelling their creations at the Adelaide Fashion Festival.
                   

                 
The Canadian supermodel, who has appeared in Italian Vogue alongside Gemma Ward and modelled for Christian Lacroix, Stella McCartney and Louis Vuitton, has been secured for an undisclosed sum to be guest of honour at the five-day, 20-event festival.

Showcasing South Australian brands such as Keepsake The Label, Liza Emanuele and Paolo Sebastian, the festival, now in its ninth year, starts today with an invitation-only opening at Tandanya.

Arriving in town late tomorrow with her manager-husband James Conran and the couple’s 18-month-old daughter Ioni, Rocha will have front row seating reserved for her at parades on Friday night.