Two Seasons Too Late

2010 made Australian Fashion Week the sixth I've participated in since my first in 2004. I'm not counting my unofficial first- 2002- where mid-high school year I ventured out of the comfort of my parents' Perth home and across our great land just to be told I was too fat and, confusingly, too plain and too weird.

Thanks for the self-esteem boost guys, I also nearly failed school that year. My heart goes out to the little dolls I've seen at show castings ever since. The blisters from your baby-hooker shoes will heal but the ego-wounds won't. I'll give you the name of my therapist, say Tiah sent you. Oh... and I mean foot therapist, she does a great pedi. Don't even bother with the other kind.

Just like that social-climbing bitch at school - yeah, you know the one: insecure and nerdy but desperate to hang out with 'the cool kids' - Australia's fashion industry equivalents aren't above cutting to the bone with the cheapest possible blow in order to assert themselves. As what one would wonder? A part of the international scene? Good luck. Just because you can bitch out on a chick for having tits and an arse as good as Karl Lagerfeld can doesn't mean you can make clothes like him. And even it would seem The Kaiser's coming around to a bit of woman's-woman nowadays, booking the likes of Lara Stone and Claudia Schiffer for Chanel. Miuccia too, sending out Victoria's Secret models for Prada and Marc Jacobs pulling a similar act with Elle MacPherson at Louis Vuitton.

Surprise! And not just at the international collections' casting choices, but at the fact our country is still maintaining its tradition of not 'getting it' until two seasons too late. You'd think in 15 years we would've caught up. Or at least rebelled and begun a rebel faction in the cafeteria. But no no, as a collective we're still chasing along after the popular kids, repeating what they do and what they say (but with delay) in a desperate bid to fit in most of the time. I look forward to 2012 when this year finally sets in and we see at least a C-cup on the runway, or anyone over 21.

Written by Tiah Eckhardt. 

Image courtesy of Sonny Vandevelde.