Footage courtesy of Hair TV Australia.

Official runway images are coming soon.

Finally after months of careful planning and design; the Drown for Subfusco limited edition jewellery collaboration was revealed on Tuesday night at Subfusco‘s Mercedes Benz Fashion Festival runway.

As a jewellery designer with interests deeply fixated in the fashion industry, the collaboration for Subfusco‘s Spring/Summer 2011 collection – Luminous, was an exciting opportunity to create pieces that worked in harmony with a clothing collection, rather than merely complementing them.

For Luminous I worked directly from the collection, designing shapes that tied back to specific pieces. Working with Subfusco was a no-holds-barred experience where I was able to design freely, enabling the creation of new shapes and styles I’d not attempted previously. Fortunately as designers,  Subfusco designer Josh Scacheri and I have very compatible design aesthetics which made the collaboration effortless; it was a very autonomous process.

Earlier in the day Patty “Frockwriter” Huntington caught up with Scacheri at his Fortitude Valley boutique along with Australia’s Next Top Model mentor Josh Flinn and model contestants Kathryn Lyons and Amanda Ware.

While I await official images from the runway with baited-breath, Huntington has kindly let me repost these shots from her visit  to the Subfusco boutique and you can enjoy these sneak-preview images of the Drown for Subfusco limited edition jewellery collaboration as kindly modelled by Lyons and Ware.

I’ve spent the last few weeks maniacally preparing for DESIGN:MADE:TRADE, the industry program portion of the Victorian government’s annual State Of Design festival. Although designed for members of the trade, DESIGN:MADE:TRADE is open for two days to the general public.

Located in the beautiful Royal Exhibition Buildings in Carlton from July 15th-19th, Drown is exhibiting at Stand 29B and a very limited number of pieces will be available for sale on the day. For more information on DESIGN:MADE:TRADE, visit the official website.

I hope to see you there!

Drown jewellery in a new photo shoot featuring Jessy from Wideawake Thoughts for Queensland-based boutique clothing label, Subfusco.

Check out the rest of the shots here.

Photography: Elvina-Mae, Hair: Ben Martin, Makeup: Shella Ruby, Stylist: Hayley Hughes, Model: Annie Callanan

Loving this beautiful hair-ditorial for Culture Magazine featuring clothing by Kirrily Johnston and jewellery by Drown. On sale now.

As previously posted, I had the exciting opportunity to meet Dion Lee right after the Woolmark Designer Awards were announced and congratulate him on his win. He was surprisingly calm and charming, and perhaps slightly still shocked from his win – but if he was, he was the only one.

Although up against some stiff competition such as Gary Bigeni, Therese Rawsthorne, Gail Sorronda and Lui Hon, Designer Award winner Dion Lee surprised no one with his win. Sponsored by Woolmark, the event  promotes excellence for those in their first five years of business. It provides valuable immediate and ongoing support for a designer who will contribute in a significant way to the Australian fashion industry.

The LMFF Designer Award has helped launch the successful careers of past winners including designer labels Romance was Born, Claude Maus, Josh Goot, Yeojin Bae and Fredrich Gray.

Lee has come a long way in a short time, graduating from the Fashion Design Studio at the end of 2007, then taking out the Westfield Chermside Australian Fashion Graduate of The Year Award in 2008.

When asked about his plans for the future of his business, Lee was clear that although international development was his ambition, he was very adamant that the brand was well established in Australia first. “I am very happy to take my time making sure everything is done properly and that the growth feels very organic,” he revealed. “In the future, developing fabrics of our own is something we definitely want to look at doing. I love mixing something classic with something unexpected or displaced and the possibilities are endless when creating new fabrics. It would allow me to take my approach to design to the next level as far as innovation.”

Lee’s futuristic designs are intricate in their geometry, highly structured and architectural in their composition. Discussing the opportunity to be represented by Woolmark, Lee said “Wool is a pleasure to work with. I love the light bouncy handle to a suiting wool and it sews and presses so perfectly. There is no better fiber to tailor with. Also, from a design perspective it allows you to build sculptural shapes, whilst moulding beautifully against the body. Garments made with wool become classic pieces that stand the test of time.”

“It would be amazing [to have access to Woolmark's global supply chain network of spinners, knitters and mills]. Fabric technology is such a huge part of design for me and I feel in Australia we are very limited in what fabrics we have access to. I think there is so much innovation in the fabric industry that I don’t know about that would be very relevant to how I design.”

Originally written for Australian INFront.

Behind the scenes at the Drown look book shoot.

As it was the hottest ticket in town, I’d been unsuccessful in securing a media pass to Runway 2 on Tuesday night. Luckily about 10 minutes before the parade started I ran into the lovely Ben Pollitt from Friedrich Gray who very kindly gifted me ticket.  Thank you, Ben! At the time I thought that was the most epic thing that was going to happen to me that night but I couldn’t have been more wrong.

After the show Lady Melbourne, Fashion Hayley and I retreated to the Festival Bar where I finally ran into the stunning and talented Selena from Dear Selena, and her two lovely friends Richard and Peter. I also briefly met Emily from Little Black Book but she was unable to stay back with us at the bar.

Myself, Richard, Lady Melbourne, Peter, Selena.

The Woolmark Young Designer Awards took place directly after Runway 2 and as everyone slowly dissipated from the event Hayley and I ran into designer Dion Lee who had just been announced as the winner of the award. We stopped to congratulate him; he was very charming.

At this point everything got pretty chaotic and Hayley and I somehow managed to abscond with a slew of Australian fashion royalty including Gary Bigeni and Gail Sorronda to the Vogue after party, where we enjoyed the company of even more designers such as Romance Was Born, Kym Ellery,  Lui Hon, Limedrop and Akira Isawaga. Australian Vogue editor-in-cheif Kirstie Clements was also there, but even if we had have managed to penetrate the circle surrounding her I think we’d have been too dumbfounded to know what to say.

It was probably the most surreal evening of my life and one I’m sure not to forget!

White Shirt – Style Stalker
White Tank – Cotton On
White Jeggings – Supre
Black Suede Heels – ASOS
Black Lipstick – M.A.C
Jewellery – Various

I’ve been super busy these last few weeks secretly plugging away with my amazing programmer Brian, getting a brand new-look Alegorie website together with great new features. It’s been a lot of hard work and stress but it launched today and I’m super excited to share that. It’s so amazing to have all of your support, every morning when I find your sweet comments waiting for me in my inbox it really makes my day.

Image credit: Hayley Hughes for Melbourne Street Fashion. Lola&Bailey Behind That Curtain pendant available at Alegorie.

Working as a fashion accessories retailer means thinking one season in advance. Today was spent with designers, choosing products for Alegorie‘s AW 2010 ranges. As usual, think neutral colour palettes – lots of black and grey for winter with touches of classic tan. Leather ranges will concentrate on relaxed and understated glamour with a hint of embellishment. Delicious!

Black Long Sleeve Top: TopShop
Black Tank: Supre
White Bralette: American Apparel
Space Print Leggings: Black Friday
Black Bead Necklace: d|lux from Alegorie
Silver Watch: Calvin Klein
Silver Bangle: Indigo
Black Pumps: RMK