Australia Fashion Week

Mercedes Australian Fashion Week (MAFW) was billed as the Asia Pacific fashion week: a twice-yearly event that made Australia the centre of fashion and business in the region, with Spring Summer Collections in Sydney each April/May and Autumn Winter Collections in Melbourne each October.

Its modern era began with a change of ownership. In October 2005, IMG acquired Australian Fashion Innovators (AFI) — and with it the region's premier fashion event — and formed IMG FASHION Asia Pacific to own and operate it, alongside the management and production of several events throughout Asia. The event's own account of the acquisition and of IMG's fashion portfolio is kept below as the record.

Illustrative image created for this guide — an artistic impression, not photographs from these shows.

Inside the IMG Fashion Portfolio

The acquisition placed the Australian event inside the world's largest fashion week portfolio. IMG FASHION owned and operated Olympus Fashion Week in New York, Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Smashbox Studios in Los Angeles, Fashion Fringe in London, the Sunglass Hut Swim Shows Miami presented by LYCRA, and Lakme Fashion Week in India — and published The Daily. Its sister company IMG Models managed many of the industry's top names from New York, London, Paris and Sao Paulo.

IMG FASHION Asia Pacific operated from four offices — Sydney, Melbourne, Singapore and Hong Kong — set up to grow the Asia Pacific fashion industry and to connect it globally through the wider IMG family. For Australian designers, the practical meaning of the deal was a home fashion week run by the same organization that ran New York's — with the buyer, media and sponsor relationships that came with it.