Water Optional

Australia's first Swim Fashion Week swan dived into next summer

, writes Janice Breen Burns. IT has been top of the ragtrade's "things-to-do" list for 10 years: hold a fash-fest specifically to zentai bodysuit sell Aussie togs to the world. "Like Miami! Do it like Miami or Las Vegas swim weeks!" Visiting international buyers, utterly impressed by some of our swimwear, have wondered aloud why we didn't. In 2001, a buyer from Selfridges, London, even admitted being "shocked" by the heights of talent here and, that year, wrote orders on 15 new Australian swimwear brands to prove it. "It's because you've got such great beaches - and all that surfing you do," he knowingly concluded. "Swimwear's in your blood." (Indubitably.) Anyway, as aforementioned, we've nodded over our Moet flutes: "Yes, let's do a swim week" for too, too long. Unless you count that little forest of racks corralled up the back of Australian Fashion Week's exhibition space a few years ago, we never did. Until now. The inaugural - and, admittedly, piddling, as inaugural events tend to be - Australian Swim Fashion Week took off over three sparse days of shows and parties at the Gold Coast's Sanctuary Cove last week. Australian Fashion Week owner IMG had the gumption to crank it up from NOTHING - a dozen brands umming and ahhing, "Should we go init? Shouldn't we?" - to SOMETHING - two dozen brands firmly committed to either a catwalk show or to leasing space in a cute string of boardwalk beach boxes - in a matter of weeks. Such is biz in the fickle world of mega fashion trade events. In the end, the international contingent was light on - one buyer from US store Macy's, the other from Coco Stone, Japan. But, hey, "inaugurality" is a one-time handicap, not a life sentence, right? More will come next year. A couple of hundred local buyers, including some from Myer and David Jones, came this year. And they ordered. That was good. There was also a media contingent, heavily sponsored with airfares and accommodation, who struggled into their sunfrocks and gladiator sandals for the gruelling four shows a day and two on Saturday. ("Phew. spider man costume Hand us another flute, there's a love.") What they got was a moderately thrilling wrap of new and newish tog ideas for summer 2010: stringy crochet effects, laser-cut lacey panels, some genuinely spirit-lifting print patterns, the usual fandangling quota of ruffles and frills and, every now and then, a brand as concerned about the future of fashion and the planet as it was about string straps and bead details. Designer Bonnie Coumbe, of fledgling brand (and there were a few of those) Seventh Wonderland, for instance, was fairly typical of those talking up the value of a good quality, slightly more expensive, and environmentally responsible swimwear wardrobe instead of the tangled piles of cheap zentai currently on Australia's bedroom floor. Coumbe says the fabric in her Seventh Wonderland strapless, laser-cut maillot in Italian melon-pink jersey, is manufactured in a process so gentle it's safer for the environment than some used to refine natural fibres, and is snag-proof and tear-proof too. "I hope it will be like something your grandma still has. It'll be one of those things you keep and keep." Now, there's a thought worth churning: heirloom togs.

by: catsuit

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