What Do The Next Generation Of Australian Designers Actually Want To Make?

As the late-summer sun faded over a dreary Melbourne day and hurried citygoers rushed to beat the post-work traffic, Melbourne’s iconic Royal Exhibition Building was transformed, playing host to the highly anticipated National Graduate Showcase as part of the 2026 Melbourne Fashion Festival. A fixture on the city’s fashion calendar each year, the event brings together Australia’s most promising graduate designers — hand-picked from the country’s leading fashion design schools — for an immersive showcase of unbridled creativity and unapologetic subversion. Sitting at the intersection of fashion and art, the showcase offers a glimpse through the looking glass at the bright future of Australian fashion.

Twelve young graduates delivered an unforgettable spectacle, brimming with the restless energy driving Australia’s next-gen designers and tastemakers. Models twisted and contorted down the runway to a reverberation of synth-heavy music, draped in looks that defied gravity, challenged construction norms, and even hinted at a virtuoso’s hand in woodwork.

From Ana Kim’s delicate sculptural mastery to Rose Guiffre’s 3D beadwork symphony (an audible delight for those sitting in the front row), what unified these wildly different collections was a persistent urge to question and comment on the world around them. These designers are reinventing dressing as a form of self-expression, thoughtfully exploring their own place in the world.

Subtle nods to Western power dressing appeared throughout, with Napoleon and funnel-neck jackets clearly top of mind. Meanwhile, traditional footwear was reimagined for entirely new roles, serving as shoulder pads, utilitarian pockets, and even headwear.

RMIT design graduate Zain Bleed’s all-white collection — featuring bubble taffeta skirts, billowing sleeves, and playful animal horns, all reminiscent of childhood plush toys — offered a playful exploration of conformity and the courage to break away from the herd, seen through the lens of the trans experience. Beyond the runway, Bleed took home the prize of Best Student Fashion Film at this year's Festival for their graduate film, Flying Sheep.

Through the use of exaggerated silhouettes, leather-adorned hardwear, and playful flashes of Australianisms (a Victorian numberplate affixed to a handbag, to be precise), LCI graduate Bryanah D’Costa questioned the notion of existing both everywhere and nowhere as the daughter of first-generation immigrants, reinterpreting the statement "you’ll grow into it" as something much more political. Here, D’Costa upcycles a woven plastic moving bag, an object laden with nostalgia and transience, into a structured skirt, reinforcing the sense of existing in a state of limbo.

The music built to a crescendo, and runway lights flickered off flashes of fluorescent tulle as LCI graduate Leah Wilkinson’s dessert-like garments floated past. Bright pops of pink, orange, and green swelled into fantastical shapes. In a sharp reinterpretation of the 1950s ‘trad wife’, Wilkinson married restrictive silhouettes of the past with the expressive freedom of now, challenging the very ideas of submission and obedience through her reclamation of dressing for expression.

For UTS graduate Bailey Quan’s collection, inspiration was drawn from the natural world, a powerful homage to the transformative unpredictability of Mother Nature. Vibrant hues came to life through the use of natural dyes on bouncy knitted hemlines; the collection felt ethereal, sculptural, and wilfully imperfect, a fitting interpretation of what it means to be human.

With each look that glided down the runway, it became clear that the next generation of Australian designers are driven by more than function or fashion. They seek to infuse their creations with a deeper essence — something that transcends aesthetics and serves as an extension of their own lived experience, sparking conversation and striking a chord beneath the surface.

From childhood musings to grappling with intergenerational complexities, the new wave of Australian designers are looking to imbue their craft with their own voices. In a world where our need for art to be political feels more crucial than ever, these next-gen designers remind us of fashion’s power to challenge convention, affirming that Australia’s creative future is in safe hands.