Australian Made: 100 Years of Fashion
Editorial
When: 28 May 2010 - 23 January 2011
Where: The Ian Potter Centre: National Gallery of Victoria
Details: (03) 8620 2222
It is said that the best way to strike it rich in a gold rush is to sell picks and shovels. However excitement over new-found wealth in 1850s Australia sparked a fashion renaissance in the colony, as people scrambled to mark their place in the shifting social order. Enterprising designers began to create clothing and accessories, and an industry of Australian made fashion was born.
The National Gallery of Victoria holds collections of early Australian clothing, textiles and accessories, the most important of which have been brought together for this free exhibition which runs for the entire latter half of 2010.
The exhibition covers the century between the 1850s and 1950s (and the shifting styles may be of interest to those of us who can only imagine that entire period of fashion blurred into vague costumes from a BBC period drama). In the pre-globalised economy of that century, all of the items were made in Australia and sold in fashion houses and department stores which sprang up around the country.
The most fashionable people shopped at department stores like Farmer and Co in Sydney and Buckley & Nunn in Melbourne, however individual dressmakers also made their mark and Australian Made features the work of 19th century designers such as Miss Scott, Mrs Eeles and others whose designs have miraculously survived for more than a century.
Then, as now, people defined themselves by what they wore, so this little-known niche in Australia's history provides much more than a fashion parade.
Robert Stevenson, Citysearch
Image - full caption
Hall Ludlow, Melbourne (fashion house)
1948-60
Hall Ludlow (designer)
born New Zealand 1919,
arrived Australia 1947, died 2003
Evening gown 1954
silk, Vilene, acetate, nylon, polyester, metal, cotton
(a) 130.0 cm (centre back) 33.0 cm (waist, flat) (evening gown);
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Gift of Mrs Adrian Lowe, 2005
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