The Front Row for fashion week

Allow me to introduce you to Georgia McCorkill…

Georgia’s doing a PhD at RMIT and as part of it she’s creating celebrity gowns from wedding dress and formal wear remnants. She reworks the gowns over and over again so they are always evolving. You can read more about her work here.

As part of LMFF Georgia is running The Front Row, a pop-up studio in the Nicholas Building. She has a few of her dreamy dresses in the studio and has invited some lucky ladies, self included, to choose one to wear during the fashion festival.

The ladies will get to wear the dress and then bring it back to be remade for someone else. I visited Georgia last Friday to work out what I’m going to wear…

I tried on this little number and felt very 90s Belgian… something about the mix of little white slip and black long suede boots just reminded me of Ann Demeulemeester!

Anyway, as European and alternative as this particular outfit made me feel, I decided to take Georgia up on her offer to create a dress for me from scratch instead (well, actually from bits of chiffon dyed in eucalyptus leaves – you can see the fabric in that first shot of Georgia). Hopefully I’ll get to wear it to one of the more red carpet-type runway shows because it’s going to be pretty fancy! I’ll put a post up when it’s ready, of course.

There’s so much to see in the Nicholas Building and I couldn’t resist dropping into a couple of the stores on the second floor on my way back downstairs. L’uccello stocks vintage haberdashery and fancy goods and yes, it is kind of like how I imagine heaven looks. Feast your eyes!

Anno Domini Home is next door to L’uccello and is home to four different creators. There’s a lot of hand made and recycled wares in the front section of the store, including this big cushion made from ties, and other stuff!

Pretty sweet, don’t you think? And this was only two shops – there are so many more in the building that I haven’t looked at yet. If you’re in Melbourne this is definitely worth a stickybeak! Oh, and in breaking news, the studio where Georgia is working from is soon to become the Australian office of Etsy!!! You heard it here first!