L'Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival

Editorial

Have you ever wondered if there was more to life other than being really, really, ridiculously good-looking? Well, stop that pointless musing right now and fix your brain to the setting marked Zoolander. For one glorious week in March, you have permission to worry about nothing that is not skin deep.

Plump your out and praise your pumps to the height required for the dedication that Australian fashion demands. As a promising local industry shifts gears into late adolescence, your participation is required for a week of competitive air-kissing and gasps of, “Oh. My. God.”

The L'Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival is not, to use the cant of clothes horses, the most directional show in town. Here, you won't find crazy couture and art thinly disguised as garments. What you will find, however, is a week of frothy fun whose primary purpose is to encourage the commercial viability of Australian design.

Events like the Marketing Breakfast and Business Seminar are squarely aimed at emerging professionals; here, old business tricks are taught to fashion's new puppies. And, for those of us who prefer to consume rather than to create, big ticket shows, such as Red Carpet Runway this year featuring the insouciant Alex Perry, should appease.

Well-dressed cineastes will adore the cultural program presented by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. The season Fashion Models on Film should convince us that there is little more to life other than being really, really, ridiculously good-looking. At least until the end of March.

Helen Razer, Citysearch