In the middle of Verner’s resort show, it hit me that the clothes were exactly what people think of when they think of Australian Fashion Week—resort! beaches! surfers!—except done to the nth cool degree. It was by design. “Above all [resort] was about extending certain techniques like the roping and the tying and using Australia’s history with surf as a sort of aesthetic framework,” designer Ingrid Verner said backstage after the show. “But my work is always about elevating everyday pieces—the t-shirt, the board short, and this season I also wanted to mix this idea of ’80s and ’90s eveningwear garments with more purposeful garments.” This was executed beautifully in a lipstick red tailored jacket with slightly voluminous sleeves and a subtle nipped-in waist paired with red and fuchsia baggy board shorts—both in the nylon fabric characteristic of beachwear.
She was able to fuse those two specific ideas with her half-t-shirt/half-nylon dresses; a black dropped-waist number with an almost hidden sexy shirred cutout at the hip was a standout. Elsewhere her experiments with ropes and gathers on striped t-shirts made for fresh new takes on the classic marinière, including a zesty yellow and neon lime striped pieced-together dress that carved out the curves of the bust and the hips, the bias-cut panels of the cotton not unlike those in a glamorous vintage slip dress. Her mesh pieces—the print of which came from a vintage swatch of seersucker that was digitally manipulated, rose above precisely because of her gathering and layering techniques. A simple t-shirt with a contrasting square panel on the front and two seams on either side was paired with a skirt draped, gathered, and layered with four different colors of the same fabric, and yet the look still retained a sense of ease and unfussiness.
Other highlights included a twill hibiscus print jacket in shades of mustard and caramel paired with caramel track pants, and experiments with upcycled denim. “These are the start of my ideas in terms of overprinting,” she explained. “I’m working with one leg from one jean and the top of another pair and piecing them together like a jigsaw and then overprinting on top of that.” A cream pair had gradient navy stripes that went from thin to thick with a very ’80s Miami graphic design vibe to them, while a black pair with the same treatment in red was tailor-made for beach goths (they exist!).
“That line between the cherished and the discarded is really important to me,” Verner said. “Thinking about what is special and what I have an emotional response to when I go into a shop, the things that jump out at me randomly; it’s that random combination of things where the interest comes into my brand.” She’s right.