Isogawa's joyous colours a moving finale
AKIRA Isogawa closed Australian Fashion Week last night with a stupendously beautiful show that reduced a good portion of the front row to tears.
Hardened boutique owners and fashion media were left wiping mascara from their eyes after Isogawa's masterful display of colour, fabrication and texture.
The show was a welcome antidote to the gloom, doom and endless black ranges that have dominated this week.
"The inspiration was colour - what colour can do for your emotion," Isogawa said backstage last night. "When I see little babies, I see the love and optimism; they are our future and that is what I was trying to capture."
AFW founder Simon Lock described Isogawa's show as "the most perfect finale".
"To see the emotion in that room because of his creativity was just the crowning glory of the week," Mr Lock said.
It was a triumphant return to form for Isogawa, whose last AFW show was unanimously panned when he opened the event two years ago with a bland and directionless range of jersey separates mixed with his signature east-west fusion.
Handworked raw silk cropped jackets, cocktail dresses and shifts in hues of emerald, buttercup, fuschia and Isogawa's signature red were among the designs he presented in Sydney last night to a standing ovation. Painstakingly appliqued detailing and fabrics woven abroad to Isogawa's exact specifications were incorporated in the collection.
Earlier, Gary Bigeni unveiled a collection uncomfortably similar to last year's spring-summer one that he designed for Josh Goot, one of Australian fashion's biggest names.
For the past three years, Bigeni, 27, has toiled behind the scenes, designing and overseeing pattern making and cutting for Goot, who has regular shows in New York.
Bigeni's debut solo show on the final day of Australian Fashion Week incorporated the hallmark stretch jersey tank dresses, colour-blocked panels, capes and bat-wing details from Goot's 2007 spring-summer range into Bigeni's new range.
The designer even gave his models Goot's signature slicked-back ponytails for the show, which drew on the bold colour palette of Goot's 2007 collection.
Bigeni admitted that his range shared some similarities with the collection he designed for Goot. "Probably a bit of the capework and maybe a bit of the necklines and underarm cuts, which I wanted to keep simple," Bigeni said.
"But I was more inspired by twisting and the draping. It was more about ease and not as figure-hugging (as Goot's body-conscious designs)."
some beautiful pieces {some of those cream dresses with the flower print and the short black dress in this post 
}...
... even if it doesnt always match up with my personal taste.
