Attending Myer’s Spring runway show is a bit like staring into a crystal ball. Look closely at the clothes whooshing by – over 200 looks on 60 models – and you will get a vision of what people will be wearing on the first Tuesday of November.
Myer owns spring racing, and their parades are an annual chance to defend that golden crown (no fascinators this season - sorry). This focus means, while we were promised trends ranging from monochrome to sixties jet-set, the mannerly conventions of the Melbourne Cup Carnival were never far from mind.
Take the opening look, modelled by Myer muse-in-chief Jennifer Hawkins: a skater dress built over a corset, with skirt that floated around the thighs, in a shade of pink so searing in its fluorescence, you could only look at it in short bursts. Perhaps the hemline was a little high for traditional racewear, but come Oaks day, women happy to step into the centre of attention will be clamouring for Alex Perry’s little fluro frock.
The show may have opened with a mini, but the biggest recurring theme of the night was a skirt much longer, and much tighter. Pencil skirts ranging from just above the knee to mid calf have become so prevalent on this particular catwalk that, when worn with an equally tight bodice (ideally one with some kind of corsetry, cutaway, or colour block detailing), I’ve come to think of the look as the Myer silhouette. Sass & Bide’s collection twisted into this a bit of Princess Leia in her Jabba The Hutt dancing costume, while Toni Maticevski added some Henry Clarke drama.
The Kardashians and Christina Hendricks have proven this look isn’t exclusively the domain of the Victoria Beckham-thin, but if your body type doesn’t happen to include a waist and hips within the golden 0.7:1 ratio, dresses this tight are down-right merciless.
Hobblingly tight, calf length dresses, with a slit (to prevent you from eating dirt the first time you have to climb a step) were a mainstay on the red carpet as well as the catwalk. Myer’s VIPs at Thursday night’s show had many different strategies for wearing these restrictive garments, from control-underwear “I’m wearing two pairs!” one woman said. “Alex Perry makes a woman really feel good,” former television host Kerri Anne Kennerly said of her egg yolk yellow lace dress. “With any Alex Perry dress, especially when he makes a Logies dress, your posture improves immediately. Breathing isn’t always an option.”
“I mean, they do make you stand up straighter, and walk differently,” said television presenter Mel Doyle. “It’s a privilege to get to wear a dress so beautiful … you just want to do it justice.”
Designer Yeojin Bae, who wore a tight black skirt with a double slit at the front, and sent several more down the runway, thinks the style has unexpected flexibility. “They’re really after 12pm skirts,” she said. “You can put them on to go out to a lunch, or to a dinner … It’s a classic silhouette. I like having that extra bit of length because you can really play with it. I’ve put slits up the back, up the front. You can show a little bit of skin but still have that length.”
It is fitting that Myer’s coterie of international labels includes Roland Mouret. It was his Galaxy Dress, which made its runway debut in 2006, that first popularised the style. Mouret’s pieces at the Myer parade still stick to that same spirit – overtly provocative in the way they cling and cinch, without revealing too much skin.
Even Myer’s buy of Christopher Kane’s pre-autumn 2015 collection whittled an eccentric total into a far more commercial, but still playful selection. Once again, Jennifer Hawkins ruled the pack in a tight black dress with geometric yellow straps that bisected her shoulders. Kane’s odder impulses were discarded, giving the impression of a fun girl, out for her own in the night.
That fun girl, fashion-aware but never stuck up, always quick with a smile, and never backward in coming forward about what she wants from life, is an impression Myer has pretty well cemented now. And if you have to wear spanx to achieve it? So be it.
