Customs and Ways of life in Australia

2.3 Fashion

Climate and perhaps natural inclination dictate that most dressing in Australia is extremely informal. Possibly, too, Australia's early history plays a part in ensuring that formal dress is an exception, rather than the norm. In the early days of settlement, fashion was a nonissue. Needs were so basic and clothes so few that the imperative was to find any kind of clothing at all. One woman is quoted as writing in 1790: «It is now so long since we have heard from home that our clothes are worn threadbare. We begin to think the mother country has entirely forsaken us. As for shoes my stock has been exhausted these six months and I have been obliged since that time to beg and borrow among the gentlemen, for no such article was to be bought.» 3 Australia's distance from the important European centers also meant that there tended to be a time gap of a year or more before styles from the northern hemisphere became available.

Within 20 years, however, styles of dress had emerged, which emphasized the differences between the established classes and the convicts and settlers, who often had to be content with government issues or secondhand clothing. Though some clothing was locally made, much was imported, and even the locally made was heavily derivative of models from London and Paris, establishing a trend that lasted for many years. An exaggerated concern for overseas models was not uncommon. One writer on fashion reports: «One newspaper… with an outburst of colonial pride, in describing Christmas holiday makers wearing `their brightest and best' went so far as to write that owing to the perspicacity of drapers and mercers novelties reached Melbourne six or eight months before hitting the Paris market!» 4 More realistically, another commentator notes that «The Australian fashion industry was practically built on plagiarism,» 5 with the six-month gap serving local designers well. The huge distance from Europe and tiny size of the market made it unappealing for name designers to take legal action. The same writer notes that ironically now Australian designers themselves suffer from imitation by cheaper competitors, the so-called copyrats.

The overseas dictators of fashion were influential and impervious to local differences. Again, the same commentator writes, «The climate and good food endowed the women of Australia with particularly beautiful hair and it was probable, therefore, that there was no need to resort to the addition of artificial hair, though so irrational can fashion become that Bright and Hitchcocks' buyer in London in the sixties was complaining about the lack of sales of this commodity in the colony.» 6 By the end of the century, however, the majority of clothing was made locally and there was an abundance of both drapers and well-stocked clothing shops. As with cuisine, distinctively Australian styles did not begin to emerge until the arrival of migrants on a large scale after World War II.

When this occurred, fashions tended to feature ironic humor, self-deprecating prints, and unusually vivid colors; Australian fashion is now almost as distinctive as Australian films, though some critics have pointed to the limitations of the characteristic qualities of both. Fashion commentator Colin McDowell doubts whether Australia will ever produce a world-class designer. «I like Australian fashion because it's not decadent, bored or oversophisticated,» he observes. «But, dare I say it? - Australians are too healthy (to produce a world class designer). Our culture is too bright-eyed, bushytailed, youthful.» 7 With the possible exceptions of Collette Dinnigan and Akira Isogawa, there are virtually no fashion designers who are widely known overseas. Australia, the argument goes, is six months behind the rest of the world's ambience and zeitgeist, and it is still imperative, as it was for writers and artists 50 years ago, that budding designers move overseas. Nevertheless, where buyers and importers once returned to Europe for inspirations, Australian designers and models now pursue their own agendas.

One of the first successful Australian designers was Prue Acton. While still only a teenager, she borrowed money from her parents to set up her own label in 1963 and quickly gained popularity for her counterculture clothes. Four years later she set sail for New York. Her example led to others following. In the 1970s, when the rest of the world was wearing beige corduroy, tan leather coats, paisley caftans, and nylon flares, designers like Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson set about providing an alternative fashion landscape, populated with iconic Australian themes. They employed adventurous prints, bold knits, decorative designs, often accompanied by a range of local wild life and fauna-parrots, fish, snakes, and various native flowers. Akubra hats and Drizabone raincoats have become widely popular in some areas outside Australia.

By 1977, Kee's signature «koala, kooka, and kanga» knits and Jackson's opulent handprinted silks were gaining such international interest that Italian

Vogue editor Anna Piaggi described their outfits as Australian graffiti-which she later confirmed was a compliment. Interest peaked in the 1980s when a pregnant Diana, Princess of Wales, was widely photographed wearing a Kee koala handknit. Kee said that customers from London, Paris, and New York found the images «very exotic.» Most of her customers had never even heard of the plant, banksia, before, let alone seen one abstracted and knitted into a dress using many different colors. Kee's success was reflected in Italian Vogue' s decision to devote an enthusiastic double-page spread to the designer, and again when in 1983 Karl Lagerfeld unveiled Jenny Kee's Opal Oz prints to great acclaim in his debut prкt-а-porter collection for Chanel.

Perhaps Australia's most famous designer, and one of the most controversial, is Ken Done, whose iconic images of koalas and the Sydney Opera House are snapped up by tourists while often being derided by locals. The tote bags, tea towels, coffee mugs, coasters, and leisurewear have sold prolifically under the label Done Art and Design for over two decades. Done says that life changed for him in 1967 when he saw a Matisse exhibition in London and immediately began painting at every opportunity he had. By 1969 he was successful enough to be painting full time but his real strength has been in the sale of Australian kitsch.

The 1970s was also the decade when surfing labels, Australia's most popular export niche, began their rise. The dream of endless summer was in effect transformed into clothes on backs. Bobbing along on the increasing casualization of clothes, Billabong, Rip Curl, and Quiksilver set themselves up for mass-market success. In most countries people don't even know the names are Australian; they just think they are like a global surfing label. Surfwear is so popular overseas that Billabong, which is now registered as a public company, records 70 percent of its sales outside Australia.

Beachwear is, not surprisingly, the area in which Australian designers have made a particular impact. When Peter and Stephen Hills' Globe International listed on the stock exchange, the company suddenly found it had a market capitalization of $550 million, making it one of the stock exchange's 150 biggest companies. The float revealed the widening appeal of the action sports industry. The brothers acquired licenses for foreign skating equipment and clothing brands as well as starting their own clothing and footwear labels, including the popular youth labels, Mooks, Gallaz, and Globe. The Globe stable relies heavily on first-rate equipment, designed to withstand the rigors of sports like skateboarding, but also a wide variety of different brands, including female-specific brands like Girlstar (surfwear) and Undergirl (underwear).

Similarly, Quiksilver Europe, the continental arm of the antipodean company, pulls in five times the annual profit of the founding company in Australia. Quiksilver, Rip Curl, and Billabong make up the Big Three in the international action sports industry. Australian companies operating in the surfwear, skatewear, and streetwear market have over the last 25 years or so taken somewhere between 60 and 70 percent market share of an industry worth $20 billion a year worldwide. Latecomer Mambo, founded in 1984, records $55 million in sales worldwide.

Unlike these companies, Australian-born couturier Richard Tyler went for the up-market consumer. During the 1970s the flamboyant designer outfitted such pop luminaries as Rod Stewart and the Electric Light Orchestra. Settling permanently in the United States in 1987, he directed his talents into suits and gowns made from luxurious fabrics such as velvet, taffeta, and silk duchesse, in styles that appealed to the most style-conscious of the Hollywood elite. Tyler has 44 buyers for his collection, all high-end fashion stores. Swimwear can act as a measure of the changes taking place in society, from the cumbersome, androgynous wool tunic and knickerbockers of the late nineteenth century to the contemporary bikini, or even Rudi Gernreich-style topless bathing suits. Australian swimsuits have passed through a number of transformations-Speedo's high-tech Olympic bodysuits, Max Dupain's iconic sunbaker photographs, Gold Coast meter maids in bikinis, zinc-nosed lifeguards, and Mambo boardshorts.

It was Australian champion swimmer Annette Kellerman's scandalous onepiece costume, worn to compete against men in the Thames and English Channel races in the early years of the twentieth century, that challenged codes of modesty and led to swimsuits women could actually swim in becoming acceptable. In the first half of the twentieth century, Australians and Americans led the way in designing innovative swimwear and sportswear designed for local conditions.

Hailed by a wildly enthusiastic U.S. press as «the world's most perfect woman,» Sydney-born Annette Kellerman was a star and Australia's first golden girl. She swam the Seine, performed with Houdini, dived into a tank full of crocodiles, appeared in silent movies, and was even arrested for indecency after wearing a skirtless bathing costume in Boston in 1905. Ironically, she took up swimming as a way of strengthening her legs after suffering childhood polio. A movie of her life, starring Esther Williams, was made in 1952.

Local designers began to use Australian iconography and created casual clothing suitable for local conditions. By the late 1920s and early 1930s the big American swimwear manufacturers such as Jantzen, Catalina, and Cole of California all had bases in Australia, recognizing it as a key market. Australian-born John Orry Kelly worked in set design in Sydney before heading to New York in the 1920s. Orry Kelly became one of the main designers for Warner Brothers.

Like Tyler, many current designers have founded their success on garments made for body-conscious people, but unlike Tyler, there has been no need for them to remove themselves physically from their place of birth. Since the 1996 inception of Australian Fashion Week, it is the buyers who determine the latest fashion debutantes. The concept of Fashion Week has steadily grown over the last few years until it now generates $42 million in wholesale orders and $75 million in media coverage throughout the world. According to Simon Lock of The Lock Group and the man behind the concept, the event now costs $5 million annually for international marketing, infrastructure and production, against $1.4 million in 1996. Lock's eventual plan is to add Australia to the big four-Milan, New York, Paris, and London-though most people are skeptical of his chances.

But the most high-profile fashion exporters of the past decade remain Collette Dinnigan and Akira Isogawa. Dinnigan exports 80 percent of her business to more than 100 of the world's best shops. She designed her first ready-to-wear range in 1994, as an extension of the lingerie and delicate slip dresses that she began making for friends when she was laid low with an injury. By October 1995 she had started to show in Paris. Dinnigan remains the only Australian designer to be admitted to the prestigious Chambre Syndicale de la Couture - the official organization that assesses the cream of the legions of fashion designers wishing to show in Paris.

Isogawa, who also shows in Paris, is stocked as well in some of the most prestigious fashion stores worldwide, most recently by top Hong Kong department store Lane Crawford, which is rapidly expanding in Asia. The example of Dinnigan and Isogawa in tackling Paris with just a suitcase or two inspired two young women from Queensland, Pam Easton and Lydia Pearson, to do likewise, with considerable success. They formed Easton Pearson in 1999 and now export much of what they make.

The supreme day for fashion in Australia is Melbourne Cup Day, and, in fact, throughout the so-called Spring Racing Carnival, new outfits are displayed and the most outrageous clothes worn. The appearance of famous English model Jean Shrimpton at the 1965 Melbourne Cup in a tiny sleeve less miniskirt that ended well above her knees and wearing no hat, gloves, or stockings signaled a revolution in fashion design. Women took eagerly to the miniskirt and in general toward casual, comfortable clothes more appropriate to an Australian climate, and have never really changed since then. Most recently, stylist for the hit TV series Sex and the City, Rebecca Weinberg, has expressed her admiration for the quality of Australian fashion. The clothes the characters wear are crucial to the show, which averages 70 outfits an episode. On her first visit to Australia, Weinberg bought clothes from Melbourne designers Scanlan & Theodore and Princess Highway and Sydney's Morrissey and Pigs in Space. The show's star, Sarah Jessica Parker, was so taken by the clothes of Sydney-based denim label Sass & Bide that she bought 90 percent of their collection.

Generally, however, trends in fashion affect only a small percentage of the population. A combination of the temperate climate, historical trends, and personal inclination ensure that most fashion in Australia is highly informal.

Conclusion

Destination Australia, the «unknown southern land». Some say, with Australia you get it all: the only continent that lies entirely in the southern hemisphere, a country with a population density others can only dream of, and a very big island with a 30,270 km long beach.

The customs and traditions of Australia is essentially a Western culture influenced by the unique geography of the Australian continent, the diverse input of Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and other Oceanian people, the British colonisation of Australia that began in 1788, and the various waves of multi-ethnic migration that followed. Evidence of a significant Anglo-Celtic heritage includes the predominance of the English language, the existence of a democratic system of government drawing upon the British traditions of Westminster Government, Parliamentarianism and constitutional monarchy, American constitutionalist and federalist traditions, Christianity as the dominant religion, and the popularity of sports originating in (or influenced by) the British Isles. Australian culture has diverged significantly since British settlement.

Aboriginal people are believed to have arrived as early as 60,000 years ago, and evidence of Aboriginal art in Australia dates back at least 30,000 years. Several states and territories had their origins as penal colonies, with the first British convicts arriving at Sydney Cove in 1788. Stories of outlaws like the bushranger Ned Kelly have endured in Australian music, cinema and literature. TheAustralian gold rushes from the 1850s brought wealth as well as new social tensions to Australia, including the miners' Eureka Stockade rebellion. The colonies established elected parliaments and rights for workers and women before most other Western nations.

Federation in 1901 evidenced a growing sense of national identity that had developed over the latter half of the 19th century, as seen in the works of the Heidelberg School painters and writers like Banjo Paterson, Henry Lawson and Dorothea Mackellar. The World Wars profoundly altered Australia's sense of identity, with World War I introducing the ANZAC legend, and World War II seeing a reorientation from Britain to the United States as the nation's foremost major ally. After the second war, 6.5 million migrants from 200 nations brought immense new diversity, and Australians grew increasingly aware of their proximity to Asia. Over time, the diverse food, lifestyle and cultural practices of immigrants have been absorbed into mainstream Australian culture.

Australia is a developed country and one of the wealthiest in the world, with the world's 12th-largest economy. In 2014 Australia had the world's fifth-highest per capita income. Australia's military expenditure is the world's 13th-largest. With the second-highest human development index globally, Australia ranks highly in many international comparisons of national performance, such as quality of life, health, education, economic freedom, and the protection of civil liberties and political rights. Australia is a member of the United Nations, G20, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), World Trade Organization, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, and the Pacific Islands Forum.

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