There's a collection of couture wedding dresses standing outside Melbourne Town Hall, but nobody's getting married.
The display is one of the Melbourne Fashion Week Fashion Capsules, a run of free, pocket-sized exhibitions planted around the city before the festival itself begins.
Once the main week arrives, fashion turns up in some less obvious places. From 19 October, Chin Chin on Flinders Lane hosts a free projection series, while Kowtow turns Younghusband in Kensington into a designer clothes swap on 24 October.
Melbourne Fashion Week
- Fashion Capsules: various city locations, until 25 October
- Main program: venues across Melbourne, 19–25 October
- Free and ticketed events
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around Melbourne here.
So what’s a fashion capsule?
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The Fashion Capsules have been part of Melbourne Fashion Week for more than a decade, placing curated displays in unexpected corners of the city for anyone who wanders past. This year’s batch opened on 28 September and sticks around for four weeks, with more than 30 local designers and creatives spread over five sites.
Raffaele Ciuca’s installation, Love Letters, is the one holding court at the corner of Swanston and Collins. It marks 70 years of the bridal house with dresses from Vivienne Westwood, Vera Wang and Nicole + Felicia, while the other capsules turn the focus to First Nations, sustainable and student fashion.
How the week works
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Melbourne Fashion Week is run by the City of Melbourne, and most of the looks that appear on its runways and in its exhibitions can be bought from local retailers afterwards. Designers are also encouraged to show trans-seasonal collections, made to be worn across more than one season, as part of the event’s sustainability push.
The program sticks close to home, with more than 90 per cent of participating designers, models, students and retailers based in Melbourne. City Square takes that a step further, with two daytime runways featuring designers and retailers based entirely within the City of Melbourne. More than 30 independent events fill out the rest of the week.
What else is on
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The capsules are just the warm-up. Melbourne Fashion Week proper runs 19–25 October under the banner Wear the Moment, with more than 300 designers and retailers taking part in upwards of 100 events. A few places to start:
- Seven premium runways – more than 600 looks, opening with the ganbu marra runway at the NGV on 19 October and closing at 1 Hotel Melbourne in Docklands on 25 October. State Library Victoria and Kensington’s Younghusband host shows in between, and the City Square runway on 24 October is free to watch.
- Out of Fashion Book Fair – new, vintage and independent fashion books and magazines at Cameo at ACMI, Fed Square, 10am–2pm on 24 October. Entry is free.
- Emerging Artists Collective: Double Take – 20 up-and-coming labels over three back-to-back shows at the Immigration Museum on 20 October, starting at 6pm, 7.30pm and 9.15pm.
- Interwoven – a multi-course dinner at Pastuso in AC/DC Lane on 22 October, with fashion, art and live music woven between the plates.
- Behind the Seams: Swap & Conversation – a free clothing swap and sustainability chat with the United Nations Association of Australia at Library at the Dock, Docklands, on 24 October.
Elsewhere on the program, Collarts presents two M/FW Conversations talks at State Library Victoria on 20 October, one on growing a fashion business and the other on how women over 50 are represented in the industry. Amnesty International brings a runway to The Motley Wherehaus on Queen Street on 21 October, and The Fashion Market sets up at Collins Square in Docklands on 21 and 22 October.
For more information, head here.
