Fashion Full Stop, the new opening night event on the L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival calendar, kicked off the festival on Monday night, delivering on everything it had promised and more – music, dance, light, sound and, of course, fashion from 50 years of Australian closets.
It was touted as the hottest ticket of the season and the energy and effort Grant Pearce’s team had put into the night did not go unnoticed – clearly months of planning and man hours had gone into staging the spectacular event which, in terms of scale, did set the bar at new heights.
Featuring Guy Sebastian, Marcia Hines and Josh Abrahams, among others, the music was as Aussie as it gets while dancers worked in perfect unison and seemingly had more costume changes than the models. The fashion retrospective was indulgent, but wasted on anyone not sitting in the lower batch of seats.
The ballet segment was hypnotising, the vintage footage (especially that of Maggie Tabberer spruiking Women’s Weekly for $1.50 in 1983) mesmerising, and the overall effect that of a good idea not executed quite as well as it could have been.
Was it ambitious to have 5000 people at a fashion show? Perhaps – but if Karl can do it at Chanel, then why not? Ultimately, as good as the music and dancing was, the show ran too long and often had too much going on.
Aspiring to the greats of couture is one thing, but pulling off a flawless show is quite another. There were awkward gaps between musical cues and while the choreography from the dancers was immaculate, the models often got lost amidst the colour and movement of the more active people on stage.
As Grant Pearce mentioned prior to the festival, he had wanted to stamp his mark on 2011 and introduce something new and inclusive for the people of Melbourne. This event did that in many ways and will surely return in 2012, however tweaks need to be made if the show is to be successful.
The detail of the fashion retrospective was perhaps the most disappointing element for me; a once in a lifetime opportunity to see vintage Australian works – a gallery of sorts – and I, I’m sure among many others, found that the sheer size of the auditorium made it virtually impossible to be able to appreciate the garments as they were surely intended.
For me, a fashion show is an intimate experience where the music, lighting and sound simply add to the allure of a collection, a support act if you will, and you can view the clothes with an appreciation for the design, technique and talent of the individual who created them.
While the event was entertaining and had all the elements of what was promised, it isn’t the way I personally would like to view fashion in the future. In what I am sure was an epic event to pull off, the staff at LMFF and crew involved – not to mention the models, dancers and volunteers – did a brilliant job of introducing something new to our fashion landscape and deserve our congratulations.
