Australia Fashion Weeks

A fashion week is a fashion industry event, lasting approximately one week, which allows fashion designers and fashion houses to display their latest collections. The collections are shown in runway shows so that buyers and the international fashion community can see the latest trends — and Australia's fashion week calendar is anchored by one event: Mercedes Australian Fashion Week.

Held twice a year, the event placed Australia at the centre of fashion and business in the Asia Pacific region: Spring Summer Collections in Sydney each April/May, and Autumn Winter Collections in Melbourne each October. The event page linked above carries its record — including IMG's October 2005 acquisition of Australian Fashion Innovators and the creation of IMG FASHION Asia Pacific to own and operate the event.

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

Two Cities, Two Seasons

The Australian calendar ran against the northern hemisphere's: spring-summer collections shown in Sydney in April and May, autumn-winter collections in Melbourne in October. That rhythm served the region — buyers across Asia Pacific could work a fashion week timed to their own seasons, and Australian designers presented on a schedule their home market actually shops.

The event's ownership tells its own industry story. Australian Fashion Innovators (AFI) built Mercedes Australian Fashion Week into the region's premier fashion event; in October 2005 IMG — the sports and lifestyle management and marketing firm whose fashion arm already ran events in New York, Los Angeles, London, Miami and India — acquired AFI and with it the event, forming IMG FASHION Asia Pacific with offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Following Australian Fashion

From the event page, this guide connects onward to the Australian fashion industry, Australian retailers, fashion employment agencies and fashion schools in Australia, and to the wider fashion week directory. Designers considering the Australian event will also find the participation benefits guide linked in this section — what a fashion week appearance offers a label, from buyer access to media exposure.

Australia in the Asia Pacific Calendar

Geography made the Australian event strategically important. For designers and buyers across Asia Pacific, a Sydney or Melbourne fashion week was reachable in a way the European circuit was not, and the twice-yearly rhythm — Sydney in April/May, Melbourne in October — gave the region a calendar of its own. IMG's acquisition doubled down on that position: IMG FASHION Asia Pacific was set up to provide focused resources to grow the Asia Pacific fashion industry, adding value to existing ventures and events while connecting the region to IMG's worldwide fashion family.

The result recorded on the event page is a company positioned, in its own words, as the most professional, creative and connected fashion event and fashion media content developer in the Asia Pacific — with the Australian fashion week as its anchor event.

For Australian designers, the event's twice-yearly stage was the shop window that mattered most: the region's buyers came to it, the international fashion press covered it, and — after 2005 — the organization behind New York's fashion week stood behind it. The event page's record of the IMG era is the essential reading in this guide.