The young face of fashion

New designers are stealing the show, reports Rebecca Martin in part one of our series on the Australian fashion industry.

If you listen to the popular media, Sydney and Melbourne have joined cities like Paris, Milan, Tokyo, London and New York on the list of fashion capitals of the world.

Such statements may employ a bit of poetic licence, but it's hard not to notice that the Australian fashion industry has been 'zhuzhed'.

Australian designers like Collette Dinnigan, sass & bide and Michelle Jank are in demand from the rich and famous around the world. Almost double the number of fashion buyers choose to jump on a plane and make the long flight to Sydney for the recent Fashion Week. And, with fashion continually on the hunt for something new and unique, it's the young and upcoming designers that are stealing the show.

"There are many more young designers out there feeling like they've got room to have a say so we're getting more young entrepreneurial designers. They're quite confident," says Val Horridge, senior lecturer in fashion at Sydney's UTS.

Graeme Lewsley, marketing and communications manager for Australian Fashion Innovators agrees and says the demand for new designers has filtered through to the retail level.

"The classic example is the Myer and David Jones store wars," he says. "They're fighting over who's got more Australian designers in stock. That's a milestone."
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The new advantage
Gail Sorronda label on the catwalk.

Gail Reid, the 23-year-old designer behind the label Gail Sorronda, is one of those taking advantage of the industry's hunger for the new.

She hasn't looked back after winning an industry competition and sending her designs down the runway at the popular Next Generation shows at recent Mercedes Fashion Week in Sydney.

With requests from retailers flooding in, Reid says the popularity of her designs and others of her ilk are part of a generational shift away from the known brand names.

"If you talk about this at a macro-level, I believe my generation is a product of the techno-consumer society," she says.

"They've got information overload and have everything at their fingertips. At the same time, they want to be special and not generic.

"Designers are responding to this and there's a new confidence in being an independent thinker," she says.

According to Nicholas Huxley, head of Sydney's Fashion Design Studio the media is backing the shift. Huxley says the press are hungry for new names. And it's come at the expense of better-known labels.

"The more established brands are finding it hard to get good press as journalists are not so interested," Huxley says. "They're looking for something new and all the positive stuff is going to the new designers."
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Cut-throat industry
Fashion shows give young designers like Valerija Vocanec a chance to strut their stuff. Image:David Gray/Reuters

The industry itself seems to have filed down its talons. Although still sketchy, some support is beginning to arrive in the way of industry grants, with new designers exploiting the exposure afforded by competitions like the Mercedes-Benz Start-up program.

Lewsley says the greater space afforded to young designers can also be seen as a sign of a maturing industry.

Australia's annual fashion week (two really, if you count both the Sydney and Melbourne events) has gone past the teething stage and is recognised internationally. Several other 'ready-to-wear' fashion shows have also started up around the country giving new designers even more chance to strut their stuff in front of consumers and buyers.

And designers are not the only ones benefiting.

"Fashion Week has launched the careers of designers, created more space for agents to come and board and build business," says Lewsley. "It's allowed lots of different facets of the creative businesses to grow."

While the anecdotal evidence points to a revitalised industry, the fashion business remains the queen of camouflage.

Facts and figures are simply not available so it's hard to know whether the young designers are winning a new share of the market or simply stealing some of the market share from more established designers.

"I think the market is bigger in terms of labels," says Huxley. "But for every 10 new labels, two old ones go bust. But when it comes to the amount of money being made, no one has any idea."
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The business of survival
Fiona Buckingham started selling her label at the markets 10 years ago.

Fiona Buckingham, designer of the label Kyotap, says it was hard to get a leg up in the industry when she started out ten years ago.

Buckingham started out selling her "very not mainstream" stuff at the markets, and doesn't recall either grants or mentors being readily available. Now firmly ensconced in her own shop in Sydney's Surry Hills, she's one of the few of her designer friends left in the industry.

"A lot of my designer friends that started their own label struggled and have not been able to sustain it," she says. "I'd guess the success rate would be about 20%."

"It is changing, I've noticed that, but it remains very hard. There's absolutely no support, especially for young and upcoming designers," she says. "There isn't a good network. To get started is very difficult, but I don't know whether that's different to any other kind of creative industry."

Reconciling the urge to create with the need for good business sense in a tough market is an ongoing battle for wannabe fashionistas.

While Reid says her business skills seem "non-existent" and she has to "take it a lot more seriously" for her fledgling label to survive, Buckingham is in the enviable position of having a few years' experience under her belt.

"Eighty per cent of my business runs on business skills, ten per cent is creativity. You've got to forgo a lot of creativity to get a label going and growing," she says.

"Education-wise, we were taught to be designers, not to run a business. But I've fumbled through, made a lot of mistakes and learnt along the way."

And business sense holds the key to a designer's survival if like all things fashionable, the crave towards new designers ends and the market reaches saturation point.

"It's become obvious that for the Australian fashion industry to continue to succeed it needs to look into Asia-Pacific," Lewsley says.

"We're getting a lot of buyers from Asia-Pac now interested and a lot of designers starting to look at Asia for new markets. That's the future."

Bagging the market

It's not just clothes designers enjoying new opportunities. Accessories are also coming into vogue, and entrepreneurs like Melinda Lawrence are finding there's always room for another bag.

Lawrence, the 34-year-old designer behind the label Uchi, discovered a market niche for cosmetic and toiletry bags when travelling extensively in her previous incarnation as a textile designer.

"I always knew I wanted my own business but I knew first I had to find a niche in the market. It dawned on me that you couldn't find a decent toilet bag. I looked into the competition, did my market research and then went into production. I nearly had a nervous breakdown," she says. "I'd put my entire life savings into toiletry bags."

It paid off, with retailer David Jones quickly picking up the brand. "My stuff was appreciated by DJs," Lawrence says. "I had identified a gap so the buyer was happy to see me."

In business for just four years, she recently launched the Uchi brand in the UK, an experience Lawrence says confirmed that fashion accessories are in vogue.

"In London, many people were talking about how accessories are the flavour of the month. I've also noticed magazines like Shop Til You Drop are becoming very accessory orientated as well."

Lawrence is now working on expanding the Uchi product range and is confident her travel and handbags will cut it in an already crowded market.

"Handbags are more glamorous, so it's harder to have a point of difference. But because I've got the brand already established, I've got a