Australian Fashion, challenge local young designers at The Mercedes-Benz Fashion Festival

The Mercedes-Benz Fashion Festival Brisbane which is held at the Auditorium, Brisbane City Hall every year in late August, showcased Queensland’s own talented fashion designers and retailers, both established and emerging, alongside some of the biggest names in Australian fashion.
For the 9th year, Mercedes-Benz Fashion Festival Brisbane runway provided an all-important platform for the local businesses to increase their profile and create a direct connection with consumers. This year, the festival introduced the Own It campaign, which allowed the fashion-loving public to shop their favourite looks straight from the runway. Tap on “Own This Look” and link directly through to the designer’s online store to shop instantly. You can also share your favourite looks and new-season purchases with your friends via Facebook and Twitter
Also this year, four recent graduates competed for the accolade of Australian Fashion “Graduate of the Year” at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Festival The graduate show featured the best designers from the country’s top six fashion colleges who launched the future of fashion in Australia. Participants in the event shared the stage with leading national and international designers.
Sydney student Emily Walters is named winner of this year’s Fashion Graduate of the Year Award. The 22-year-old former Sydney TAFE student was selected from a group of 12 graduates from around Australia.
“It feels so strange because I finished it so long ago and I thought I had no hope in this competition,” says Walters. “I came up to Brisbane for the experience without really having hopes of winning, so I was really overwhelmed and surprised.”
The collection, ‘Gossamer’, was inspired by the delicate beauty of spider webs.
“Spider webs are quite haunting and a bit scary but still quite beautiful, delicate and alien-like,” says Walters. “I wanted the collection to have a similar feel.”
The Fashion Graduate of the Year Award is given to recent graduates who are judged to have the most potential in the Australian fashion industry.
Students were nominated by their teachers.
“Don’t play it safe with what you know how to do, Push yourself to create something new that you haven’t done before.” This was Walters’ best advice to other young designers, to push themselves when creating collections.
Not to forget that Sydney Town Hall also witnessed the lifetime opportunity to earn serious style cred and experience fashion previewing Spring Summer 2014/2015 collections on the runway at the Merceds-Benz Fashion Festival Sydney during fashion week from 24 to 27 September 2014. It was the place to experience every hot highlight from fashion week and the next season’s coolest Australian collections like Camilla, Sass & Bide and others.