Melbourne fashion festival kicks off
- Filed under: Alternative Lifestyle, Fashion, Fashion Week, Fendi, Kiss Bloggs, kissfendi
- Date: Mar 3,2008
It has been billed as the “people’s festival” but only a chosen few were offered an invite to the glamorous opening party of the L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival yesterday.
Australian-born Hollywood actress Miranda Otto turned heads in a stunning pillar-box red Nicola Finetti dress, while socialites and fashionistas sipped champagne in the sun on the lawn of Government House.
The opulent surrounds provided a fitting backdrop for the 400 guests, including top Australian models Megan Gale and Kirsty Hinze, to chat about the autumn-winter season’s must-have pieces.
Launching the event’s 11th year, festival director Karen Webster said it was unique in the fashion calendar because, the “public are the A-list”.
But a quick glance at the benches lining the catwalk revealed it was politicians, not Joe Public, who had front-row seats.
Premier John Brumby, Transport Minister Lynne Kosky and Water Minister Tim Holding were given seats usually reserved for top magazine editors and supermodels.
But while the fashion credentials of Victorian cabinet members may be questionable there was no doubting the sartorial authority of festival ambassador Otto.
The Brisbane-born actress is starring in Channel Nine’s Cashmere Mafia, a show dubbed the new Sex and the City, in which clothes are every bit as important as plot lines.
Trading New York for Melbourne was an easy decision she said: “I’ve been working on a show that’s all about fashion and I just thought it would be a great opportunity to come home and see a lot of the fashion that’s happening here.”
Otto said she was heartened by the high profile of Australian style overseas.
“I was in New York in some boutique and leafing through thinking I really like this, then you realise it’s Rebecca Taylor, Collette Dinnigan, all these designers we’re used to at home, they’re really prevalent overseas and it’s wonderful.” /theage.com.au
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