A new wave of thoughtful design
From bold innovations to inspiring storytelling, discover the talented designers showcasing their collections at the Melbourne Fashion Hub Event in March 2025.
Access to MFH and designer’s media kits
Details were correct at the time of publishing.
Abha Gupta
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT)
Brand: Antiek East Instagram @antiek.east
Evening wear, Gender-neutral
- Featured in Instyle, Broadsheet, Fashion Journal, GQ and Herald Sun
- PayPal Melbourne Fashion Festival 2024
Abha’s ‘16o8’ collection pays tribute to the historic moment when the British first set foot in India, a pivotal event that reshaped the country’s fashion landscape for over two centuries. She connected the history of Australia and India, tried to portray the cultural interaction, and questioned the economic exploitation in both countries due to British rule. This collection was designed under the mentorship of RMIT professor Blake Barns; the collection draws inspiration from the era of British colonisation, reflecting its profound influence on Indian fashion history. Each garment in the collection is meticulously handwoven and handmade by local artisans using natural fibres, embodying a commitment to traditional craftsmanship. Through collaborations with craftsmen from rural villages, Abha empowers marginalised communities and fosters cultural exchange, bridging societal divides with each intricately crafted piece.
Design Practice
“Antiek East” was established under the creative direction of designer Abha Gupta on March 5th, 2024, with its debut fashion show at the PayPal Melbourne Fashion Festival. The brand quickly gained recognition within the industry, dressing notable figures for prestigious events like Sydney Fashion Week and the House of the Dragon premiere. After the success of several fashion events and after getting recognition in prominent magazines like GQ and Instyle, the brand formally commenced operations and, in October 2024, was officially registered under the name “Antiek East”.
Alexandra Pennell
LCI Melbourne
Brand: Atopic Designs Instagram @atopic_designs
Conceptually accessible luxury wear
Fashion innovators, gender and size-inclusive, queer-fluid fashion
- Melbourne Fashion Week Finalist 2024
- Graduate Capsule Collection: Oh, You Just Need to Moisturise
- PAX Convention Panellist
- Fashion on the Field – Emerging Designer Runway 2024
- Melbourne Fashion Festival 2025- Emporium Melbourne Showcase
- Internships – Blair Archibald and A.BCH
In an industry often marred by opacity and exploitation, I aspire to become a catalyst of educated consumerism, leading by example. My journey began with sewing at a young age, igniting a passion for intricate detail and craftsmanship. Furthering my education at LCI Melbourne as a mature-aged student, I honed my skills and nurtured my vision for a more sustainable and inclusive fashion landscape. Interning with renowned designers Blair Archibald of BLAIRARCHIBALD Designs and Courtney Holmes of A.BCH provided invaluable insights into the importance of a slower-paced, conscientious approach to fashion. As a designer, I am dedicated to embodying ethical sourcing, fostering innovation, championing gender inclusivity, and dismantling harmful gatekeeping through knowledge sharing. I believe in the power of transparency and collaboration to drive positive change in an industry ripe for transformation.
Drawing from my own personal life struggles, I aim to bridge the gap between individual experiences and the broader human narrative. I understand firsthand the power of connection and the importance of recognising that everyone’s story is valuable and often misunderstood. Through my designs, I seek to create spaces where people can see themselves reflected, understood, and celebrated. Aesthetically, I like to embrace texturally interesting silhouettes inspired by organic forms with highly refined construction techniques and finishes.
Design Practice
Atopic Designs, founded by Alexandra Pennell, is a Melbourne-based fashion and costume design practice that uses creativity to challenge societal norms and reshape the fashion industry. With a background in design arts and a passion for conscientious innovation, Alexandra merges her expertise in textural fabric manipulations, sustainable materials, and zero-waste principles to create thought-provoking capsule collections. Conceptually, their work reflects deeply personal narratives, exploring topics such as body autonomy and living with chronic illnesses while advocating for a more sustainable and ethical fashion future.
Atopic Designs crafts capsule collections that illuminate distressing issues within the fashion industry, offering fresh, innovative approaches to tackle them. Each collection is a stepping stone in an ever-evolving research project, reflecting a commitment to sharing knowledge and sparking meaningful change. The latest collection, debuting at the 2025 Melbourne Fashion Hub Pop-Up, takes a bold stance on zero-waste design. It extends beyond construction methods to challenge and reshape consumer mindsets. The mantra is simple yet transformative: Fit First, Make Less.
Annalise Joyce
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT)
Brand: Annie Joyce Instagram @anniie_berrry
Size-inclusive womenswear, stretch fabrications, and applications of sustainable patternmaking with second-hand materials
Size-inclusive and unconventional bodies in fashion
- Featured in FAT Runway 2023
I am currently a full-time student in my third and final year of Fashion Design at RMIT. Originally from the northern suburbs of Sydney, I now reside in Brunswick, Melbourne, where I work and study. My fashion journey began with a Certificate II in Applied Fashion and Technology at TAFE, North Sydney. This early education ignited my passion for fashion and motivated me to move to Melbourne to further my studies.
Alongside my academic pursuits, I have a keen interest in fine art, particularly ceramics and painting, which I incorporate into my fashion design practice. These artistic influences allow me to bring a unique perspective to my work, blending traditional art forms with contemporary fashion. My diverse art practice background and dedication to my craft drive my ambition to succeed in the fashion industry, where I aspire to merge creativity and innovation.
Design Practice
Model: Chloe Smith
I’m a fashion designer dedicated to inclusivity, sustainability, and innovation. My work challenges traditional sizing norms, offering size-adjustable garments that celebrate body autonomy and adapt to natural body fluctuations. Drawing inspiration from my personal experiences and a commitment to reducing environmental impact, I use second-hand and circular sourcing for materials and incorporate hardware closures like snaps, buttons, and custom hardware to create versatile, lasting designs. I believe fashion should empower everyone, regardless of size or shape, while addressing the industry’s responsibility to the planet. Through thoughtful design and mindful sourcing, I strive to create clothing that fits more than just bodies—it fits lives and values.
Danielle Carbone
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT)
Brands: DGianna Studio and DGianna Vintage
Instagram: @dgiannastudio / @dgiannavintage / @dgiannac
Editorial, Couture, Art
Sustainable fashion, size/unisex inclusive, wearable sculpture art
- Featured in Vogue Living and Fashion Journal
I am a multidisciplinary artist and designer. Focusing on repurposing textiles and carefully crafting expressive sculptural works. A realisation of the impurities within the fashion industry while studying was the catalyst for my journey into art, upcycling textiles and repurposing. Witnessing the rise of overconsumption firsthand, I became deeply impassioned about advocating for slow fashion and combating the adverse effects of fast fashion on our planet and society.
After a year or so of creating textile art and furniture, I finally found my place in the fashion industry. Upcycling discarded textiles into corsets using my art abilities, upcycling vintage crocheted fabric and creating one-of-a-kind pieces adorned with vintage jewellery. I aim to unify my diverse skills with each experiment, forging a path towards a more conscious and artistic fashion future.
Design Practice
My artistic practice is deeply rooted in exploring the boundless paradoxes and intricate complexities of human emotions and my own journey through spirituality, particularly through the lens of womanhood. Endlessly inspired by my European roots, I merge the fluidity of fabric and the solidity of sculpture, aiming to capture moments in time. This led me to create my signature draped aesthetic.
Utilising recycled textiles, I am dedicated to ensuring that my art evokes emotions and contributes positively to the environment. The endless possibilities of textile manipulation captivate me, fuelling my exploration and experimentation. There’s still so much left to discover and create.
Jessie Cunningham-Reid
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT)
Brand: Dinner Party Instagram @jessie_cunninghamreid
Womenswear, evening wear
Fashion-forward women
I (she/her) am a White, Scottish-born settler, a descendant of British parents who emigrated to Far North Queensland, the ancestral land of the Kuku Yalanji people, in 1988. As an artist and designer, I am conscious of how, when living and creating on these unceded lands, it is important to understand the detrimental impacts of colonialism. I understand that the disciplines in which I trained (Fashion Design, Fine Art and Art Therapy) have significant histories (continuing to the present) as tools of colonisation. I appreciate craftsmanship and align with slow fashion practices that value the materials and experience of making. In addition to my design practice, I have a background as a multidisciplinary artist working across textiles, oil painting, photography and styling.
Design Practice
As a fashion designer, I intend to create works that incorporate intuitive approaches to making clothes through a honed methodology and culminative process of painting, draping and responding to concepts in an explorative way. This iterative process of further uncovering deeper layers of meaning can reveal themes of femininity, performative aspects of gender and dress, and an appreciation for garments as objects to be adored that carry emotional significance. In bringing experiences of canonical understandings of fine art and fashion design, and being in a climate of systemic change, I locate my work within a zeitgeist of upheaval and seek to develop resilient approaches to making that are flexible to change that are open to new ways of being. The creative expression of dress is an evocative tool for advocacy, and through my methodologies, I intend to reflect personal values through aesthetic and material choices in my garments.
Marko Plavšić
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT)
Brand: Marko Plavšić Instagram @_markoplavsic
Eveningwear, Avant-garde design, outerwear
Gender, size-inclusivity
- Melbourne Fashion Week Finalist 2024
- Media coverage VOXFROCK
Marko Plavšić is a fashion designer in practice, studying in the RMIT Bachelor of Fashion Design (Honours) Program and is based in Melbourne, Australia. Captivated by the interplay between fashion and philosophy, his work aims to capture and interrogate the self by subverting traditional dress notions and confronting society’s foundational values. Marko’s non-conformist upbringing has heavily influenced his creative practice, influenced by his conflicting relationship with his hometown of Adelaide, South Australia. By juxtaposing scale, materiality and technique, Marko’s signature aesthetic presents a window into his rigorous self-analysis while simultaneously reflecting the influence of society’s structure on his internal dichotomies.
Design Practice
Marko’s creative practice is best interpreted as a self-reflective memoir, a moment in time frozen within the bounds of a fashion collection. The collections highlight the significance of the present moment, often featuring themes relative to the moment in which the collection is ideated and developed. As he steadily matures, Marko views his collections as sentimental journal entries, where he can reflect on the themes associated with his collection and relive moments in time that have shaped his present existence. Collections continue to be motivated by a fear of losing memory, and by designing each collection, the themes, memories and emotions are frozen into existence and can be forever revisited until the end of life.
Misato Yukimoto
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT)
Brand: Misato Yukimoto Instagram @misatoyukimoto_official
Sustainable Casual wear
Size inclusive – made to order, gender inclusive, slow fashion, innovative fashion
I am Misato Yukimoto from Osaka, Japan. I moved to Melbourne, Australia, in 2019 to study fashion design. I have loved fashion and English since I was young but never thought about my career in Fashion industry since I am from a conservative family. I lost track of what I wanted to do in my early 20s, but in 2013, I had the chance to do a fashion runway backstage internship in Tokyo, which changed my whole life. It was the moment I found what I was looking for, and it was the moment I felt the power of fashion—not only garments but also models, makeup artists, lights, music, performances, and all the people who got involved in the passion of fashion week. I strongly believe fashion can change people and their lives, as it did for me.
Since then, I have been in the fashion industry. Fashion has always been a connection between me and the world. It can take me anywhere I want to go. My journey has just started.
Design Practice
The journey of Misato Yukimoto started with embracing Japanese culture, which is my origin and bringing it into the Western lifestyles to blend.
As a designer, my mission is to make my customers feel comfortable wearing my pieces and blending them into their own styles.
Each collection has a story about how the garments are designed and produced. My customers will take over the story, add it to their own stories, and keep moving forward on their own journeys.
Japanese culture and history inspire me mainly. I really enjoy researching philosophy, concepts of art, and architecture that I didn’t know, and sometimes I find them interesting. Some different cultures inspire Japanese ones, and vice versa.
I learn something new every time I make my collections, which I believe I grow with my designs and customers together.
Moira Rodriguez
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT)
Brand: M O I Instagram @_moiraisabel
Sportswear, Lingerie
Gender Inclusive
- Work EAC x MFW Independent Runway 2024
- Emily McPherson Masters Award for Fashion Practice Research 2024
- Revive and Thrive Independent Runway x Paypal Melbourne Fashion Festival 2024
- MFW Student Runway 2023
- Product and Design Internship at Kit Willow 2023
- Fashion Journal Feature 2022
I am a designer based in Melbourne and a recent graduate with a Bachelor of Fashion Design (Honours) from RMIT. My main inspirations revolve around social and psychological discourses within human connection, touch and emotion. In saying that, garments and silhouettes are designed considering the body’s organic movement to provide comfort, using tactile experiences and drape to emphasise this. Garments are produced with consideration of their finish – finding different ways to support the movement of the wearer whilst withstanding everyday wear and tear, thus discouraging easy disposal.
Design Practice
My design ideation is deeply rooted in my personal emotions and their connection to the world around me. A recurring theme in my work is the significance of physical touch for our humanity, offering reassurance and solace, particularly in recent times of stress. This is reflected in my design practice through adjustable details, the reimagining of restrictive garments, and the emulation of temporal movement through textile manipulation, creating garments that provide comfort to the wearer. I draw substantial inspiration from music, movement, and the emotions I encounter daily, which significantly influence the silhouettes I design. My practice heavily emphasises developing techniques and finishes that ensure durability while maintaining a soft touch against the body.
Tasmin Martin
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT)
Brand: Tasmin Martin Instagram @tasminmartin
Bridal wear, evening wear and lingerie
Non-conformists, including those with piercings tattoos, participants of alternative cultures, and members of the LGBTQ+ community. Size inclusive with a particular focus on female empowerment
- EAC X MELBOURNE FASHION WEEK ‘OUR UNKNOWN’ RUNWAY
- Graduate of the Year and the included prize money from HomeStart
My name is Tasmin Martin; I am a 23-year-old female from the rural town of Broken Hill, NSW. At the age of 18 I pursued my dreams of studying Fashion, moving to Adelaide, SA, where I completed my Bachelor in Fashion Design. This journey was surreal, as growing up in remote Australia, the possibility of a career in a creative field had always felt so limited. At the end of my degree, I was honoured as the Fashion Graduate of the Year at Flinders University, an award I am very proud to have received. After completing my degree, I spent a year as a bridal dressmaker for a small local company. This experience led me to realise that my passion lay in challenging the Bridal industry and the norms surrounding what bridal attire is.
This led me to Melbourne, where I’m currently pursuing my honors at RMIT—an opportunity I am so grateful for, considering where I started my journey. My ultimate goal as a designer is to redefine fashion’s boundaries, creating a brand that embraces individuality and empowers those who crave self-expression without fear of societal judgment.
Design Practice
(Ella Maximillion)
Pulling directly from my experience as a bridal dressmaker, my current collection, ‘Undressing Bridal’, explores Western bridal norms and expectations of dress. At the heart of my practice lies the idea that bridal traditions often suppress individuality and promote a singular idealised vision. My pieces will aim to break down this barrier, challenging the notion that brides must conform to the narrow definition of femininity created within the bridal industry.
While developing this collection, one of my key areas of interest has been exploring why non-conformist individuals choose to conform on their wedding day despite their inclination towards non-traditional expressions of identity. Non-conformists, including those with piercings tattoos, participants of alternative cultures, and members of the LGBTQ+ community, often find themselves navigating a landscape where traditional expectations clash with personal identity. Despite this truth, the majority of these individuals who choose to engage in a marriage ceremony will still follow traditional expectations of dress in one way or another.
Using these ideas and findings to inform my design process, I aim to explore how far bridal can be pushed before it becomes unrecognisable and how certain aesthetic choices are read in comparison to traditional dress.
Xiaotao Shu
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT)
Brand: Shiran Instagram @shiran_fashion
Contemporary therapeutic and sustainable women’s wear, casual wear, evening wear
Size-inclusive
- Finalist MFW Student Runway 2024
Xiaotao Shu is a dedicated and innovative fashion design student at RMIT, boasting a commendable GPA of 3.7. With a passion for continuous learning and a collaborative spirit, Xiaotao excels in blending creativity with a keen eye for aesthetics. She specialises in sustainably natural and herb dyeing techniques and zero-waste one-piece pattern making, and she brings a unique perspective to her designs. Her “Good Medicine Tastes Bitter” project exemplifies her ability to integrate cultural heritage with modern sustainability practices. Her cultural background and eight years of experience living in Australia enrich her design practice with a diverse and international perspective, demonstrating a profound commitment to cultural understanding and global fashion trends.
Design Practice
My design practice is deeply inspired by the transformative power of childhood memories and cultural heritage, particularly the traditional Chinese medicine I grew up with. The “Good Medicine Tastes Bitter” project symbolises this connection, using Chinese herbs in the natural dyeing process to merge tradition with sustainability. By incorporating organic materials like cotton and silk and employing simplified tailoring techniques, I aim to minimise fabric waste while enhancing the natural aesthetics of the textiles. The screen-printed prescriptions of Chinese herbs on the garments educate wearers about their significance, creating environmentally friendly, meaningful, and culturally rich pieces. This holistic approach ensures that each garment is a testament to the enduring wisdom of Chinese herbal medicine, appealing to those who seek a wellness-oriented and sustainable lifestyle. Additionally, my designs are size-inclusive, with one-piece garments that fit a wide range of body types, promoting inclusivity.
Melbourne Fashion Hub 