Defamer Does L’oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival: Day One

Even though we write this stuff in our underwear and ugg boots you may not realise it, we are basically fashion oracles here at Defamer Australia. So we felt it only fair that we bring you all the news and gossip from the L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival, which is currently underway, to share with you our fashion nous.

We’ll be bringing you daily fashion diaries throughout the Festival; it will be like The Devil Wears Prada meets He Died With A Felafel In His Hand and will be totally compelling.

Read on for the runway reports and all the front-row celebrity spotto you can handle!
ON THE RUNWAY: WE LOVED

* Marnie Skillings’ patchwork velvet smocks, which made us feel like it was Year 9 all over again and we’d just discovered hippie glamour at the op shop/Ishka.

* Jayson Brundson’s gorgeous blossom-print silk satins.

* Kirrily Johnston’s use of a thundering remix of MGMT’s Electric Feel.

* Ginger & Smart’s printed silks, which were somewhere between Hellenic pottery and Tron-style circuitry-chic.

ON THE RUNWAY: WE LOL’D

* Jayson Brundson’s red taffeta shorts suit, which was somewhere between a Star Trek cosplay outfit and Demi Moore’s infamous homemade Oscars getup.

* Camilla Freeman-Topper and Marc Freeman giving a brief but noticeable evil eye to the ankles of a particularly stompy model who was evidently having trouble conquering the towering shoes picked out for their label camilla and marc’s Runway 1 portion.

* The cross-promotional finale,”celebrating” show sponsor Harpers Bazaar (i.e. “Harpers Bazaar celebrates 10 years with [designer] and [HB cover girl]“), featuring outfits by each designer made out of a hateful photo-print stretch fabric printed with – you guessed it! – Harpers Bazaar covers!

IN THE FRONT ROW

* ‘Face’ of the Festival Miranda Otto was resplendent, albeit very pale and fragile looking, in an oyster silk sack dress and a veritable glove of rhinestone cuffs (actually, they were probably diamonds).

* Steven Jacobs LOL!

* L’Oreal guest of honour Doutzen Kroes, in what looked to be a Leger bandage dress, may actually be a Barbie doll a la Weird Science. Her body defies gravity, she is about eight million feet tall, and her face is stupendously gorgeous. We just wanted to touch her to see if she was real.

* Nine newsreader Jo Hall, wearing a very pretty broderie anglaise sun frock, fanning herself madly with the free promotional fan. She is STUNNING in real life. Evidently Nine’s alleged hatred of women extends to their make-up department, because they’re certainly hiding Hall’s light under a Max Factor bushel.

* On the flip-side, Sophie Falkiner wearing last year’s silver sequinned shift dress and black opaque tights. Zzz…

* We’ve discussed Zandra Rhodes’ genius before, but the legendary designer – who was in town to launch a retrospective exhibition of her designs as part of the Fest – is almost too brilliant. She attended Runway 1 in a gold-lame pant-suit (and her trademark fluorescent pink bob) and watched the whole thing with a benevolent if slightly pleasantly bored expression, occasionally putting on her (suitably offbeat) specs to assess an outfit she liked. Can she stay here forevs, please?