Design/Amelia Agosta
Model/Jasmine at Vivien’s
Design/Anisha Bhoyro Design/Chris Ran Lin
Model/Meg at Vivien’s
Design/Stephanie McPherson Model/Boki at Vivien’s
Model/Maria at Vivien’s
Design/Laura HuiShan Li Model/Sahara at FHM
Design/Ju Young Seo
Design/Rica Hardian
Model/Georgia at Vivien’s
FUTURAMA
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Model/Alex at Vivien’s
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Photography/James Geer
Photography assistant/Tom Blachford
Styling/Kate Gaskin
Styling assistant/Ebony Hui Hair and make-up/Julie Provis
This year’s crop of fashion graduates are brimming with talent and
imagination — but can they survive in the real world, where interns routinely
work for free and there’s always somebody new and younger knocking on
the door? By Annabel Ross Wow factor The designs of seven RMIT graduates appearing at the fashion festival this month.
With thanks to Wilson Parking and the Melbourne Convention Exhibition Centre. Over: the young designers take us behind the scenes
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Ju Young Seo One of the seven RMIT graduates
to win one of just 12 places in this year’s Graduate
Showcase at the Melbourne Fashion Festival, the
designer’s feathery creations are suitably out-there
but also display her high level of technical skill.
O
n the 10th floor of building 8 at RMIT’s city
campus, Anisha Bhoyro lays out a tiny piece of
cloth. Demonstrating how to make a jacket
using a single piece of silk, she creates a
step-by-step microcosm of her design
process, which culminates in an intricate jacket of doll-like
proportions. Called Precious Threads, her final-year collection is
based around the idea of creating haute couture garments with
a minimum of waste, “re-tensioning” yarns within the fabric to
create a puckering effect, removing the need for offcuts.
“There’s a lot of details that are done by hand, so that people
appreciate the craft of the garment rather than just, ‘This is a
trendy piece for the season’”, says the softly spoken Bhoyro,
who graduated from the bachelor of fashion with first-class
honours last year.
Bhoyro’s considered fusion of sustainability and fine
techniques has been recognised in the form of a place in the
National Graduate Showcase, a Sportsgirl-sponsored initiative
that will exhibit the works of the country’s brightest fashion
graduates at the L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival this month.
Bhoyro is one of seven RMIT graduates to land a coveted spot
in the 12-designer showcase; the 26-year-old was also named
RMIT fashion student of the year at Melbourne Spring Fashion
Week last September and, as a reward, will soon travel to Milan
to commence an internship at Armani.
Yet even those plaudits aren’t enough to guarantee that her
brilliant designs will ever find a wider audience. Like most
aspiring designers, she’s hoping her two to three-month stint at
Armani might lead to a job offer, but is realistic about her
remains optimistic. “Things are a little different to what I’d
expected but when a challenge comes up, you have to think of
a way to work around it.”
Several others in Anderson’s graduate year who have
already done internships with celebrated Australian designers
including Josh Goot and Arnsdorf are also yet to secure paying
roles in the industry, currently working in hospitality while they
look for fashion jobs. The hard slog is nothing new, says Karen
Webster, fashion director at RMIT and director of the L’Oreal
Melbourne Fashion Festival (LMFF) from 2006 to 2010.
“It’s no different now to how it has been historically, and I’ve
been involved with the program for over 20 years, and I have my
own history of when I studied years ago,” she says. On the
flipside, Webster thinks the opportunities for students now are
broader than ever, thanks to increased awards and grants and
closer ties with overseas institutions. “People could always
attempt to work overseas but now, just by the way of our
communication channels opening up, more and more of our
students are going on to work internationally,” she says.
The bigger and better the prize, the more likely the recipients’
shot at success. Laura Wade, a 2010 RMIT graduate, won the
Australians in New York Fashion Foundation (AINYFF) award in
2010, consisting of a $25,000 cash prize and an internship of
her choice in New York. Wade did her internship at Proenza
Schouler for six months and has just taken up a second
internship at Thom Browne. “Australians in New York set you up
with visas and the internship, it’s a real leg-up to help you intern
here,” says Wade. “If you had to work at the same time, it’d be
prospects. “Fashion companies are run on interns, you’d have
to stand out a lot,” she says. The 2010 RMIT student of the year,
Laura Anderson, is a case in point. After appearing in the NGS
in 2011, she headed to Italy to do an internship with Costume
National and studied briefly at the prestigious Istituto Marangoni
in Milan. When her money ran out, Anderson returned to
Sydney, where for the past three months she’s been managing
a retail store and collaborating with Danish company Muuse,
which produces and sells couture made by top graduate
students online. Anderson admits to being a bit surprised at not
having found a full-time job in fashion already.
“Everyone does tell you that there’s not many jobs going, but
when you’re fortunate enough to get recognition you do think
that that should ease the path,” she says. The 26-year-old
Anisha Bhoyro
on
hers
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han
Step
“Fashion companies are
run on interns. You’d have
to stand out a lot.”
n/
Desig
Stephanie McPherson A member of the successful
RMIT graduating group, McPherson will also show her
wares this month at the fashion festival, hoping it will
lead to a break – in previous years young designers
have been picked up immediately by major labels.
Four RMIT graduates making their mark
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Chris Ran Lin Typically menswear is the most
conservative side of the Melbourne Fashion Festival,
with suits tweaked slightly from year to year. So Chris
Ran Lin’s outrageous, octopus-like knits are a shot
in the arm – if anybody would dare to wear one.
a lot. I was really fortunate that I could not worry about that, I
guess that’s the idea of the scholarship,” she says. As a design
intern, tasks would include sourcing fabric and helping with the
more technical elements of design, without doing any actual
designing as such. At Thom Browne, Wade supports the two
designers working directly under Browne. “It’s been interesting
to be involved in the discussion of the direction of things and
helping out with accessories, it’s been very hands-on in the
respect that it’s a smaller team,” she says. Wade sees a move
into a design assistant role or similar as the next logical step.
“Getting experience at a label over here would be amazing,” she
says. “To get experience at an international level is something
that’s really important to me.”
Fellow RMIT alumnus Georgia Lazzaro has made that next
step. She won the inaugural AINYFF award in 2009, and after
six months of being an intern at Narciso Rodriguez and another
six months at Calvin Klein, she found paid employment at the
latter, where she now works as an associate designer, splitting
her time between ready-to-wear eveningwear and celebrity
couture. Recently, she’s worked on the fall 11/12 collection and
show, and on several gowns for the Hollywood awards season.
She works long hours, most of the year, and is directly involved
in the design and development for all eveningwear in Calvin
Klein’s top-end “Collection” range. “When you’re studying, it’s
what you’d fantasise about, in a way,” says Lazzaro. “There’s not
many opportunities given to people that ring true to what a
designer is.”
O
ver in Paris, another former RMIT student is
also starting to make waves. After graduating
with honours in 2008, Sarah Schofield was
one of only 18 students to be accepted into
the international postgraduate accessory
design program at the Institut Francais de la Mode in Paris. Run
by the CEOs of YSL, Dior and Chanel, the two-year course is
designed as a bridge for students between university and jobs
in luxury fashion, consisting of one year of classes, followed by
a year-long monitored internship. Schofield collaborated with
Dior on sunglasses and shoes as part of her course before
doing an eight-month internship in the label’s eyewear
department.
A 10-month internship as a design assistant in the bag
department of Louis Vuitton followed before Schofield secured
her current job, junior designer of bags, shoes and accessories
at Nina Ricci. Unlike Lazzaro and Wade, Schofield was paid a
minimum wage while completing her internship (it is illegal to
work unpaid in France). “As an intern, I was treated with respect
and as an important part of the design team. I was never sent
to make coffee or photocopy things like in the horror stories
people like to tell,” she says.
Here’s one we made earlier…
the fortunes of four RMIT
fashion graduates
Laura Anderson
A big hit at last year’s Graduate Showcase and
RMIT’s 2010 student of the year, Anderson has had
breaks – including interning at Costume National –
but is yet to make it commercially as a designer.
bit.ly/vZPxW7
Toni maticevski
Won a work placement at Donna Karen in New York
after graduating but, surprisingly, turned down an
offer of an extended position to return to Melbourne
and start his own (now successful) label.
tonimaticevski.com
elia
/Am
sign
sta
georgia lazarro
Interned at Calvin Klein, then landed a job
there as a design associate, working mostly
on eveningwear and celebrity couture
including gowns for the Oscars.
Ago
De
bit.ly/wJy72v
Amelia Agosta The young designer calls
her collection “engineered distortion”, using
architectural shapes and soft fabrics for an overall
effect that’s futuristic yet feminine and – for special
occasions, at least – quite wearable.
laura wade
Won last year’s Australians in New York Fashion
Foundation award last year: $25,000 and an
internship in New York, which she took at Proenza
Schouler. She is now an intern at Thom Browne.
laura-wade.com/
See more of Amelia Agosta’s collection at http://on.fb.me/xHTG6r See Chris Van Lin’s collection at http://on.fb.me/ArW1M9
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Anisha Bhoyro The RMIT fashion student of
the year designed her final-year collection around
the thesis of creating a minimum of waste, pulling
on yarns to tense and shape the fabric rather
than cutting it and producing offcuts.
There’s no shortage of brilliant graduates to emerge from
RMIT, from fledgling designers such as Schofield, Lazzaro and
Wade to established local luminaries such as Toni Maticevski,
Dhini Pararajasingham and Lui Hon, whose profile was boosted
by an appearance on Project Runway Australia. Graeme
Lewsey, CEO of LMFF and one of the judges on the national
graduate showcase panel, says that it’s no coincidence that
more than half the graduates in the showcase come from RMIT.
“It’s through the incredible work they’re doing,” he says, himself
an RMIT graduate. But it’s not the only Melbourne institution
producing great talent. Since opening in 2008, similar success
stories have emerged from the Melbourne branch of Australia’s
Whitehouse Institute of Design. Penelope Efthimiadis was
named graduate designer of the year at Whitehouse in 2010,
and did an internship at Karen Walker in New Zealand before
heading to London to take up an internship with Antipodium.
Now working as an intern at Mary Katrantzou, she’s working
10am to 10pm in a studio in the lead-up to London Fashion
Week. She’s not on easy street just yet: to make ends meet, she
works part-time at night in a cinema, often knocking off at
2.30am and getting up for a 9am start at the studio the next day.
But she’s not complaining: “I really enjoy nights at the cinema,
it’s kind of my relaxing time … so it works.”
Chloe Smith, 2010 student of the year at Whitehouse, fulfilled
her dream of getting an internship with Ann Demeulemeester in
Belgium but returns home feeling less optimistic about her
prospects here. “The hard reality is that this industry possibly
won’t pay the bills and (won’t) provide me with the lifestyle
I would wish for myself.” After being an intern for up to a year –
longer in some cases – entry-level positions such as an
assistant designer role might pay $30,000 to $45,000 a year
in Australia. By the time graduates move into an actual designer
role, they could expect to make an average of between $45,000
and $70,000 for the first four years.
Graduates are informed of the economic realities, says
Robyn Healy, co-director of fashion at RMIT. But that doesn’t
deter them. Elle Roseby, CEO of Sportsgirl and member of the
judging panel for the graduate showcase, says that most
graduates are aware of just how tough it is. “I think it’s very, very
difficult out there.” Of the current batch of RMIT graduates in the
national showcase, Bhoyro is the only one to have an
international internship lined up as part of her student of the year
award. The other six are in a state of flux, with two graduates
battling to get temporary residency visas in Australia.
The editor of Ragtrader magazine, Assia Benmedjdoub,
concedes that times are tough. With an unprecedented number
of fashion businesses going into administration last year, and
the strong Australian dollar damaging overseas exports, the
resulting redundancies did not bode well for job-seeking
graduates, Benmedjdoub says. “I think the biggest concern is
that a large number of graduates are not seeking entry-level
roles or pursuing long-term internship programs,” she says. “This
is not an ideal time to be entering the market without the
practical business tools needed to survive the sector.”
Knowing how to market themselves is integral to the
graduates’ success, Lewsey says. “That’d be my advice to
students – keep your creative integrity but definitely keep your
eyes open and attuned to the digital frontier.”
Back to the future: stars of the fashion festival’s 2011 graduate showcase
Roar sensuality Celene
Bridge’s collection
referenced mythical
creatures: see celenebridge.
com for more.
Old school Ana Diaz’s
’60s-inspired runway show
landed her a job designing
a collection for Sportsgirl,
due out this year.
Plastic fantastic Genevieve
Kulesza’s Swarm collection,
“a fishing net filled with a
seething mass of glowing
creatures”.
Global appeal The work
of designer Kate Sala,
who moved to Paris
and was recently featured
in Italian Vogue.
Stitched up The futuristic
lingerie collection of Laura
Anderson, an RMIT graduate
who did an internship at
Costume National in Italy.
Play suit Sangeeta Singh
showed menswear in stripes
and prints that was fun,
practical and, for braver
souls, even wearable.
Tribal An African theme from
Jason Hewitt, who described
it as “non-traditional
prints interpreted through
traditional pattern cutting”.
This year’s National Graduate Showcase is on Friday, March 9 0 lmff.com.au (m)
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