What it costs to put on a runway show at Australian Fashion Week

“Models are one of the main costs. Then there are sets where you can pay to put a carousel in like Romance Was Born last year or be like Jordan Gogos and use papier-mâché.”

Even with arts and crafts cost-cutting Karamian recommends potential clients start with a minimum budget of $40,000 for staging a runway show.

“If you’re showing onsite at Carriageworks you can get away with an absolute minimum of $40,000,” Karamian says. “That’s with a cast of 15 models, no set or photographers. That can go up to $500,000, which is generally for an off-site show.”

Some of Karamian’s most impressive shows have been Bella Hadid appearing for Misha Collective in 2016, Carla Zampatti’s 50th anniversary show at the Sydney Opera House in 2015 and Aje’s takeover of artist Wendy Whiteley’s garden in Lavender Bay in 2018.

“There’s all the attention that runway shows receive but the people who were there walk away having experienced something that you just don’t get from a digital presentation.”

With some fashion buyers, including Net-a-Porter, preferring to watch shows digitally rather jump on a plane for a week in Redfern at Carriageworks, and a representative from department store Myer saying that the event is not a priority on their calendar, some industry figures suggest designers save their $40,000, or more, for a different experience.

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“COVID-19 has made us all realise that there are other ways to do business with people on the other side of the world,” says fashion consultant David Bush, former general manager for fashion at David Jones.

“I don’t understand the purpose anymore, unless you’re producing content and paying influencers to attend. It’s an influencer event.”

Last year Rebecca Vallance celebrated the 10th anniversary of her business with a show at AAFW but is skipping the schedule this year, to focus her resources on other events.

“We are flat out opening stores, including our new flagship Chadstone store,” Vallance says. “Internationally we have an event that I leave for after Chadstone in New York. The US is now a big part of our business.”

Vallance was pleased with last year’s show as a celebration of a business milestone but doesn’t see showing at AAFW as an exercise for international sales.

“They’re already customers of ours and have been for a long time,” she says of buyers. “It’s great to see them in town, but it’s not a tool that we use to drive business.”

It’s a different story for Higgins, who has a growing international clientele and niche stockists but is still nurturing his label through its infancy. Watching his baby take its first steps, barefoot, down the runway, will be a long held dream come true.

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“I remember watching Channel 10 news in 2004, when I was 10, and they were talking about the extravagance of Paris Fashion Week. The images were of John Galliano’s Egyptian collection for Dior. Seeing those images from that show. Well, that was it for me.”

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