The Fashion Victim’s Guide to LMFF

At the risk of sounding like the fashion world's answer to the Grinch, let's call a spade a spade — Australians are not stylish. Where Parisians can offer the world chic little striped T-shirts best accessorised with a durry and a croissant (pronounced cwoissant, for you, oh uncivilised reader), New Yorkers are just implicitly fashionable (especially the hobos) and the women of Milan know how to work all white and gold chains, we have given the fashion world… Kylie Minogue in hot pants and woollen jumpers with things like gumnut babies on them. Whatever, we're good at other things, like turning away refugees and playing a bastardised version of football.

For one week (next week, actually) Melbourne is going to pretend it can shake it with the catwalks of Paris, New York, London and Milan for the annual L'Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival. Whilst the commercial runways may be largely overhyped, "unveiling" collections that have often been available at suburban shopping centres across the state for weeks or even months, amidst the doldrums the program offers a number of genuinely interesting, unexpected events and initiatives. If you're going to check them out, make sure you've got a good outfit; if you're lucky you might end up on the society pages right next to someone really great like, ahem, a fashion blogger.

RUNWAY

Three worth a look in are the Sportsgirl National Graduate Showcase, the Independent Runway presented by Yen and The Thousands and the Indigenous Fashion Runway, all of which showcase designers who are emerging enough to have thus far avoided being creatively crippled by the constraints that come with the need to sell, sell, sell dem frocks. In other words, these shows won't be literally and figuratively beige.

FILM

In simpler times, advertising used to appeal largely to base instinct. A photo of a hot girl drawing suggestively on a fag suggested that if you smoked Vogues you would become Audrey Hepburn and the likeness of a bunch of dapper gentleman enjoying an after work tipple deceptively led one to believe that drinking scotch wouldn't result in an instantaneous transformation into an old, decrepit alcoholic man. Then people got wise and the fashion film was born.

Some good ones will be showcased in Fashion Film Series, a collaboration between LMFF, Portable.tv and Fed Square. Transitions at No Vacancy QV is a separate film installation that explores the increasingly foggy distinction between fashion, art and spatial practices.

ART

Art is a beautiful thing. It allows people too uncool to ever convince Zippora Seven to get naked in real life to see her nipples, in both photographic and illustrated form, in a series of "sensual nude images" by Derek Henderson alongside drawings by Kelly Thompson in Darkness of Noon. Elsewhere, diaspora and the general "stickiness" of migration are explored in Foreign Returned at the flossy Sofitel hotel and gender lines get hazy in photographer Drew Pettifer's Androgyne (cos being a boy/girl is fashionable now, in case you missed the memo).

LEARN

If seeing too many suspiciously well-groomed people in town for the festival makes you want to be a better person, there are a number of workshops to help your cause. The Social Studio's Quick Unpick is a series of discussions led by people who aren't failing at life, such as designers Kit Willow and Ellie Mucke; In Conversation with Kate Fletcher will see the researcher, writer and design activist wax lyrical on matters of fashion and sustainability; and a smelly friend (maybe you’re the smelly friend) might benefit from Perfume Masterclass. If you're under 10 years old, firstly, pat your self on the back for your impressive reading comprehension skills, secondly, sign up to learn How to be a Fashionista — great to see the important life lessons being handed down earlier and earlier.

DANCE

NLNL Opus '13 is No Lights, No Lycra, but with the best dance hits from 1930 to today (like TT FM once was, only with six extra decades) as curated by six of Melbourne's finest disc jockeys. There actually is no such thing as a bad dancer when you're in pitch darkness, making this an event that cannot be missed.

The LMFF runs from March 18-24. See the full program of events on their website. Images via LMFF, No Lights No Lycra, The Social Studio, Portable.tv and The Darkness of Noon