Wearing It Well
From grassroots beginnings in 2016, Country to Couture has become one of Australia’s most exciting fashion events. Here’s how its enduring legacy has been woven into the fabric of Australian style.
WORDS BY Nick Harvey-Doyle | PUBLISHED 8 October 2024
↑ ‘Daluk’, by Bábbarra Women’s Centre, Raw Cloth, Jemimah Jemimah, Young Daluk, and The Social Studio, Country to Couture 2023, Photo by Marley Morgan.
Showcasing the innovative work of First Nations artists, designers, and Art Centres from across the country, runway show Country to Couture returned for the ninth time at this year’s Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair (DAAF). With dynamic runways, boundless creativity, and collaborations with top Australian labels, this is a stage where ancestral stories transform into spectacular, contemporary designs. I had a yarn with some key players in the First Nations fashion industry, discussing how the show’s enduring legacy has been woven into the fabric of Australian style.
It is a fact that some of Australia’s most recognisable Indigenous fashion brands have emerged from showing at Country to Couture. “Labels such as MAARA, Ngali, Liandra Swim, and Miimmi & Jiinda, have now gone on to show at Australian Fashion Week and have had their collections stocked in major department stores nationally,” says Yuwaalaraay designer Julie Shaw. And if Shaw’s name sounds familiar, it’s likely because the rise of her luxury resort wear brand MAARA Collective has been nothing short of meteoric.
↑ 2019 From Country to Couture, Julie Shaw, MAARA Collection featuring Bula’bula Arts. Photo by Kate Noble Photography.
Launching at Country to Couture in 2019, MAARA’s inaugural collection was created in collaboration with artists of Bula’bula Arts from Ramingining, northeast Arnhem Land. “MAARA is built on the foundations of collaboration, so I thought what better place to launch than at Country to Country, when I had collaborated with a group of Yolngu master weavers from Bula’bula,” she says. Shaw travelled to Ramingining to work with artists Mary Dhapalany, Margaret Malibirr, and Evonne Munuyngu on a range of woven accessories, which were then styled with Shaw’s resort wear pieces for the runway.
Shaw has built her own legacy since her 2019 showcase, receiving widespread recognition for her chic and collaborative designs. The designer has won both the ‘Fashion Design’ and ‘Community Collaboration’ awards at the inaugural National Indigenous Fashion Awards, was awarded the Australian Fashion Laureate for Indigenous Designer of the Year in 2021. She was also named as ‘Designer of the Year’ at Marie Claire’s 2022 Women of the Year Awards. Shaw again collaborated with the Bula’bula weavers on a special design project for the National Gallery of Victoria’s Indigenous Fashion Commission in 2022. Titled Maayama-li Dress, the collaboration subsequently won the IDA International Design Award for Fashion Design of the Year in 2023, and was featured on the cover of Vogue Australia.
↑ 2019 From Country to Couture, Julie Shaw, MAARA Collective x Bula’bula Aboriginal Arts Corporation, MAARA Collection. Photo by Dylan Buckee.
But success seldom happens in a vacuum, and Shaw credits Country to Couture for her ongoing collaborative partnership with Bula’bula, as well as the show’s legacy in uplifting Indigenous creative excellence. “Country to Couture will always have a very special place in my heart,” she says. “And I think that moving forward, the legacy of the runway will be that these shows act as a starting point, as a place of discovery for the magic that is Australian Indigenous design.”
↑ ‘Daluk’, by Bábbarra Women’s Centre, Raw Cloth, Jemimah Jemimah, Young Daluk, and The Social Studio, Country to Couture 2023, Photo by Dylan Buckee.
For Indigenous designers, the merging of old and new, the transfer of intergenerational knowledge, and the preservation of storytelling is intimately interwoven with expressions of contemporary Aboriginality. Bábbarra Women’s Centre, a place where the passing of intergenerational knowledge is sewn into its DNA, made its Country to Couture debut in 2023 with their collection titled Daluk. Celebrating the relationship between older and younger generations of Bábbarra women, the collection represents the ongoing tradition of intergenerational mentoring from mothers to daughters and grandmothers to granddaughters.
Established on the north coast of Arnhem Land in 1983, Bábbarra was created as a safe space for women in the Maningrida community to share and pass down knowledge and ideas. But an uneasiness clouded this intergenerational practice when, after COVID, the young women of Maningrida became less engaged with the Art Centre.
↑ ‘Daluk’, by Bábbarra Women’s Centre, Raw Cloth, Jemimah Jemimah, Young Daluk, and The Social Studio, Country to Couture 2023, Photo by Dylan Buckee.
“Our artists were worried about the future of Bábbarra as many of our artists are approaching retirement age and they were concerned because they didn’t know who they were leaving their legacy to,” says Bábbarra’s manager Ziian Carey. In response, the Art Centre launched the Young Daluk (young women) program, an initiative geared towards bringing Maningrida youth into the studio to learn different skills around textile design. What began as a series of sewing and design workshops grew into the Daluk collection, which was made possible with the support of Raw Cloth Darwin and The Social Studio.
In addition to designing the garments, two of the Young Daluk women were given the opportunity to walk the runway wearing their own designs. “For these two young, shy, reserved women from Maningrida to walk the runway wearing their own designs will always be a massive moment of confidence that they can carry with them forever,” says Carey. “We were so proud because this collection represented this new generation of Bábbarra and the passing down of these stories.”
↵ Sarina Cowcher Collection featuring Gary Lang’s fabric design, modelled by Maminydjama Magnolia Maymuru, Country to Couture 2026. Photo by Shane Eecen.
↑ Sarina Cowcher Collection featuring Gary Lang’s fabric design, modelled by Maminydjama Magnolia Maymuru, Country to Couture 2026. Photo by Shane Eecen.
Since walking in Country to Couture’s inaugural runway in 2016, Yolngu model Maminydjama (Magnolia) Maymuru has curated a world class career that spans major runways, magazine features, an AACTA award for Best Supporting Actress in the 2018 film The Nightingale, and two Vogue Australia covers. “Little did I know that with the support of Country to Couture and everyone else around me that I was going to be on the cover of Vogue twice in the span of nine months – one with my daughter, and then one with my beautiful sisters,” she says.
Reflecting on her career since, Magnolia acknowledges the importance of Country to Couture in upskilling future Indigenous talent. “Being included in shows and photoshoots and building up my skills in a safe space with professionals has been so important for my career,” she says. “The team is strict with time, hair, and makeup, but it was always a safe space with gentle feedback, and this really did prepare me for the bigger runways and the bigger world.” Between being a Miss Australia Finalist in 2017, walking in Brazil Fashion Week in 2018, and becoming a mainstay on Australia’s biggest runways, Magnolia is excited for the future of First Nations fashion. “I’m seeing Indigenous design and representation in more and more shows, runways, and magazines, and it’s so inspiring,” she says.
↑ Gapuwiyak Culture & Arts, Country to Couture, 2022, photo by Leicolhn McKellar Photography @leicolhnmckellar_photography courtesy of Country Road.
Whether we see it or not, creative excellence continues to thrive outside of Australia’s city centres. Country to Couture’s showcase of regional Indigenous expression dials us into the talent at the perceived fringes of Australian society, and mainstream Australia is taking notice. “The show gets bigger each time I go,” says Yatu Widders Hunt, a judge of this year’s National Indigenous Fashion Awards. “Vogue Street Style are there, CEOs of retail are there, along with the big magazines and prominent fashion writers and it’s taken a lot more seriously because of the potential and creativity of First Nations fashion.”
This article originally appeared in the Art Collector 2024 Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair Special Edition, click here to read more.
Cover Art by Betty Mula, 33-24 PunuTjuta, Synthetic polymer on linen, 152 x 122 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and Mimili Maku Arts.
Contributor Nick Harvey-Doyle is a descendant of the Anewan people from the Northern Tablelands of NSW. He has qualifications in arts, law, and journalism, and is currently studying a Masters of Media, Culture, and Communications at New York University with the support of a Fulbright Scholarship.