There’s a strange quiet that follows a collection.
The lights come down, the audience disperses, garments return to their racks, and suddenly the work no longer belongs solely to you. It begins to move through conversations, photographs, and interpretations you can’t fully control. That is often when you understand how a project has truly landed.
When I presented this collection, Vintage 2025, a runway and exhibition project developed and presented in Griffith, NSW, I was conscious of how deeply it was shaped by place, by people, histories, and ways of working that carry meaning beyond aesthetics alone. The intention was never spectacle for its own sake, but a considered body of work that could hold memory, labour, and authorship with care.
What stayed with me most in the immediate aftermath were the local responses. People didn’t lead with silhouettes or styling. They spoke about recognition, about seeing familiar work, legacy, and identity reflected back with respect. About garments that carried emotional weight rather than trend. That kind of response is quiet, but it stays with you.
One moment crystallised this for me in an unexpected way. The highest ticket item in the collection, a tote I carry with me every day, became the strongest seller. Not because it shouted, but because it felt lived with and purposeful. It was a reminder that audiences often gravitate toward objects that hold meaning as well as form.
As the weeks unfolded, the work began to travel further than I anticipated.
I was mentioned twice by the Australian Fashion Council in the space of a few days, moments of recognition that came not through promotion, but through the work being observed within an industry context. Shortly after, international conversations followed. An editorial from India is due to be released, extending the life of the collection into a new cultural frame altogether.
What continues to strike me is that this reach did not come from trying to be global. It came from being precise.
There is a persistent assumption that regional creative work must first dilute its identity to travel. My experience has been the opposite. The more grounded the work is, in real people, real histories, and specific places, the more universally it resonates.
Regional stories aren’t niche. They are exact.
And it is that exactness that allows others, far beyond the region, to recognise something of themselves in the work.
Throughout this process, the role of local cultural institutions has mattered deeply. Western Riverina Arts recently described me as a major artist of this region, a designation I hold with a strong sense of responsibility. It speaks not only to individual practice, but to the importance of building cultural confidence here, of asserting that significant contemporary work is conceived, articulated, and shared from regional Australia.
This collection was never intended as a single moment. It was an exercise in authorship, in slowing down, listening carefully, and allowing fashion to function as a cultural language rather than a purely commercial one. That approach doesn’t always move quickly, but it endures.
As the project continues to live beyond its original moment, I’m carrying forward the quiet assurance that comes from seeing work meet its audience, locally and internationally, without compromise.
After the lights come down, that is what remains.
