The fashion show that lasts until 4am

The first fashion milestone in many people’s lives is accompanied by the faint soundtrack of a Calvin Harris remix or Donna Summer’s I Feel Love while standing in front of an unsmiling bouncer, who is wearing beyond basic black and white.

It’s that decisive moment, where the cut of your vintage Bettina Liano denim skirt, floral Kenzo shirt or mesh diamanté singlet could gain you entry into the club. Not just any nightclub, where the measure of success is scoring an illicit kiss or something stronger in a bathroom stall but the place of the moment with a queue to match. These are the clubs where the outfit is more important than the birthdate on your license.

“The club scene is where people are daring and open to the way they express themselves through their clothes,” says DJ Jonny Seymour, who straddles the worlds of music and fashion in drop-crotch pants.

“It has given everyone, the queer community and people of colour, a safe place to go out and dress themselves.”

“A queer dance floor at 4am is a fashion parade in itself.”

A fresh influx of designers at Australian Fashion Week, beginning in Sydney on Monday, will bring the sequined spirit of early morning reveries to the international buyers, media and Instagram identities in attendance. Erik Yvon’s rainbow palette, Alix Higgin’s slogan nylon and Jordan Gogos’ onslaught of textures and references all shine brightest in the reflection of a mirror ball.

It’s the attitude of Lil Nas X’s barely there body paint and pearl outfit for the Met Gala mixed with the seduction of Dion Lee’s costume for singer Kali Uchis at Radio City Music Hall. In other words, nearly anything Rihanna and Beyonce are photographed wearing on stage.

“When we go out we can be free and fully express ourselves,” says Melbourne designer Yvon. “For many people the club is a safe place to share your creativity without people judging you.”

The domestic design groove echoes the beat of international luxury label Valentino, where creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli created a Le Club Couture collection for Paris Fashion Week in January, shown at the underground club Bridge below the Pont Alexandre III. Dune 2 actor Florence Pugh borrowed a look with short shorts and a taffeta coat straight from the runway for this year’s Oscars.

“It’s the idea of the club as a place where fantasies can become real; where people are not only allowed to be who they want to be, but where their fantasies can transform them into whomever they wish to be,” Piccioli said. “I think this is quite contemporary.”

“The world of Leigh Bowery, the world of Mr Valentino in the ’80s. The glamour of the stripes, the polka dots, the ruffles, the most classical signs of haute couture, but re-signified in a different way with a different kind of balance. Leigh Bowery meets Mr Valentino.”

Melbourne-born Bowery, an RMIT fashion design dropout and founder of the ’80s London club Taboo, inspired a generation of designers with his outlandish costumes and remains a club fashion muse. Following his death in 1994, Bowery’s creativity influenced John Galliano’s spring 2003 collection for Dior, Alexander McQueen’s Horn of Plenty autumn 2009 show and the work of Vivienne Westwood and Richard Quinn.

“That period is where we get the idea of a kind of fashion born out of a scene of individual creativity,” says Danielle Whitfield, curator of fashion and textiles at the National Gallery of Victoria. “It was not about known designers. Instead, people focused on attitude, dress and street style coalescing.”

Whitfield points to the influence of music on fashion since the 1920s Jazz Age shaped the liberated silhouettes of flapper dresses. Photographs of starlets at Hollywood nightclubs such as Mocambo and the Trocadero in the 1940s started a craze for dresses with maximum embellishment above the waist. Why spend money on a sequined shirt if it wasn’t going to be seen in the photograph?

Then there was disco in the ’70s with its nipple-baring halter-tops and revealing tight trousers designed to signal sex and help the Bee Gees hit those high notes. The London club scene, based around Blitz, a Tuesday club night in London’s Covent Garden from 1979-1980, was less primal but more influential.

“With the New Romantics in London and the Blitz kids it was different because everyone became very involved, from media such as magazines ID and The Face, to the people and the designers.,” Whitfield say. “It wasn’t just the club kids, it was the designers, like Jean Paul Gaultier, going to the clubs and being inspired directly.”

The founder of Blitz, Stephen Strange, had a direct impact on fashion by helping launch the career of milliner Stephen Jones, who now works with Dior, Thom Browne and has created hats for Catherine, Princess of Wales. At Blitz, you could find gender-bending model Marilyn arguing with Boy George, Bananarama’s Siobhan Fahey and Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp beneath layers of crinoline and eyeliner, all aesthetically rebelling against the austere punk movement.

“I think it was a particular moment in time, even though we weren’t aware of it then.” Jones says. “Nightlife is a continuous source of inspiration.”

Strange, who died in 2015, got Jones started by commissioning a £75 gold braid hat from the future designer and finding the location for his first store.

“At the time I was a club kid first and a designer second.”

The impact of the London club scene drifted to Australia with the Fashion Design Council formed by artist Kate Durham, graphic designer Robert Pearce, and arts law graduate Robert Buckingham in 1983, staging runway shows in clubs in Melbourne.

The beat, with a club mix goes on today, with Seymour seeing the queer Sydney event he founded in 1995, Club Kooky, as a melting pot of inspiration. It was from his DJ deck that Seymour was lured into creating soundscapes for fashion shows.

“Anyone who has spent time with Akira Isogawa knows that he loves the dancefloor,” Seymour says. “He just asked me to help out with a show he was doing.”

That was Isogawa’s Australian Fashion Week debut in 1996, and since then, Seymour has worked with Lisa Ho, Romance Was Born and Carla Zampatti. At Australian Fashion Week this year, Seymour is creating music for Gary Bigeni. Nicol & Ford and Youkhana.

“To create a set for a designer is a huge collaboration,” Seymour says. “I see somebody’s fashion parade as an exhibition, like an artist but instead of it running for two or three weeks it’s one show only.”

“The big difference between a show and the club is that I have a captive audience. I don’t have to draw people onto a dance floor and hold them there.”

As part of Australian Fashion Week, Seymour will be talking at a seminar about the influence of club culture alongside model and casting director Basjia Almaan and designers Katie and Timothy Nicol-Ford.

For Seymour, a key factor is the queer corners of the club scene which have spilled onto the runway.

“A queer space is more than just a place for clothes more daring than what you would see in the CBD,“Seymour says. “It’s a safe space for queers and people of colour to express themselves.”

“From there we have seen the impact of this community on what it means to be a model visually. Superstars of the dancefloor have crossed over to the catwalk in a way that is exciting and gorgeous.”

“Diversity no longer seems tokenistic or just a trend. That hateful voice against inclusion just doesn’t exist in this utopian land.”

Queerness is at the heart of Yvon’s relationship to club culture. His Australian Fashion Week debut last year transformed Carriageworks into a rave at 2pm on a Tuesday afternoon. Models and performers vogued down the runway, shocking veterans with their off-trend smiles.

“We wanted to break away from the traditional walks and celebrate the diversity that you see in club culture,” Yvon says. “We have been suppressed for so long that there is room for joy.”

“Fashion can also be a place where people come together.”

The 80s club fashion scene was eventually overwhelmed by the retreat to conservative styles with the impact of the HIV/AIDS crisis. Whitfield can’t predict when this burst of creativity will end.

“Fashion is a cycle and tends to look back to different periods through nostalgia. What’s interesting here is that the nostalgia is about searching for an authentic moment. It’s like music junkies trying to trace a sample. People are trying to go back to an authentic moment of fashion creativity.”

“It’s about more than playing dress ups.”

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