‘Not just runways and champagne’: Adelaide Fashion Week hits the catwalk
As Adelaide Fashion Week kicks off, key designers and industry players take you inside SA’s burgeoning fashion world.
Dr Nathan Crane says people tell him “all the time” about wanting to be a fashion designer but they don’t know how to break in.
“We see it in media all the time, this sort of Devil Wears Prada-esque perception of it all being steely cold and kind of snobbish,” he says.
Nathan is the current SA Fashion Industry Association (SAFIA) board chair and when we meet tells how his team has been working hard to iron out final details for this year’s ADL Fashion Week starting on October 7.
The founder of Élever Australia says it is also the association’s role to celebrate local designers and to break down the “mystique around fashion design”.
He says the perception is far from the truth when it comes to the state’s burgeoning industry, with Nathan claiming “it’s hard work but it’s nothing to be intimidated by”.
“Everyone is really quite grounded and passionate about what they’re doing, and it’s a really warm industry,” the designer known for his unique fashion flair says.
It’s a sentiment shared by Nini Wang, the designer behind the “infatuated” silk maxi dress that CityMag’s cover model Lara Williams wears, her look elevated by Élever Florence Earrings.
“It’s a smaller industry, but we have so many lovely people around us, so it’s amazing to have a brand in Adelaide,” Nini says when we meet at the cover shoot.
Nini’s label 23rd August debuted at last year’s ADL Fashion Week, an important milestone for the designer who has worked in fashion for more than a decade.
Her latest designs are returning to the runway this year to show off the label’s “growth, and clearer sense of who we are”.
As Nini and Lara toast their cover shoot partnership with one of the city’s best martinis at the effortlessly chic Honeydripper on Frome Street, Nathan tells why 23rd August stands out among designers being featured in this year’s lineup.
“I think there’s this really great energy that Nini and the brand have … I think it is really fresh, and I just love her eye,” he says.
“Even the way she presents the clothes and styles has this fabulous, global appeal that I would really put up there with any of the other amazing brands I’m seeing kind of through Europe.”
He says SA punches above its weight in terms of fashion exports. Paolo Sebastian is a global favourite, with singer Taylor Swift wearing one of his trademark dresses in her The Fate of Ophelia video late last year.
While local label Wolf Gang has dressed celebrities like Kylie Jenner and Hilary Duff.
“Because of the scale of the state, we have to work just a little bit harder to get our head above the parapet, and that gives a real resilience and a very interesting point of view,” Nathan says.
He says fashion, specifically design, production and manufacturing, is the “largest live creative industry that South Australia has” with about 2500 full-time workers in fashion; excluding retail.
A 2021 Deloitte report — the most recent economic analysis completed on the industry — found the local fashion scene generates $218 million for the state’s economy.
It’s a figure that Adelaide Economic Development Agency (AEDA) Tourism Executive Manager Michael Rossi says “gets straight to the heart” of why the city’s economic agency runs the annual ADL Fashion Week.
Two thousand and twenty-six is the fifth year of this iteration of the city’s fashion festival, which began after the Vogue Festival, a three-day shopping weekend, was axed.
“Once upon a time, fashion weeks over the years have been so heavily focused on retail and sales and shopping, or in other instances, it’s all about tourism; bed nights, either from interstate travellers or you know bringing regional travellers into the city,” Michael says.
“But at its core, this festival and the opportunity for us as it evolves really cuts across our core remit, which is selling Adelaide as a destination to invest, live, work or study in as well as visit.”
This year’s Fashion Week is offering about 3000 tickets for sale across its five-day roster, compared to its first year when only 800 tickets were available across three days.
Michael says the flow-on benefit to businesses is clear too, with 68 per cent of Fashion Week participants eating at a city venue before or after the event they attended, and 45 per cent shopping in the city on the same visit.
He says the city is centre stage for the festival, and its ambassadors including designers, media personalities and chefs, show how intertwined Adelaide’s fashion, food, culture and nightlife are now.
This strategy is aimed at Adelaide’s own, like students studying the city’s fashion course, Michael says.
“They can see for themselves that something like the festival, from a trade, a career, a business possibility, or the dream of opening their own retail store, having Fashion Week in their home city, is one more reason for them to stay in Adelaide,” he says.
Nathan agrees, saying creating “opportunities for designers to have a really legitimate platform to showcase their work publicly” is a key part of cutting through the fashion mystique.
“I think the more opportunities that consumers can see too, that it’s a real industry and that there’s craft and makers deeply involved in fashion, that it’s not just runways and champagne, I think that’s one of the key functions for a city running a fashion programme.”
ADL Fashion Week made not-so-fashionable headlines last year when it faced the chopping block in Adelaide City Council budget negotiations, but Michael says the program has been prioritised moving forward.
“The AEDA board have been critical in supporting, advocating, and prioritising Fashion Week as an initiative that AEDA will continue to deliver, whatever the envelope is of our budget from council,”
Michael says.
Meet Nini Wang, 23rd August
CityMag meets Nini Wang at Honeydripper bar for our cover shoot on the day after her birthday.
“August is my birthday month, and 23rd is the day I came up with the idea to start my own brand,” the 31-year-old explains.
Nini’s worked in fashion for around 10 years, she was previously a designer at Australian Fashion Label C/MEO.
When we meet, she’s wearing an unreleased blue set from her upcoming collection which is all about versatility. She shows off the custom embroideries and the fact that you can wear it inside out.
Her collections feature premium fabrics, like silk and hand-crocheted items and she draws inspiration from “architecture, sculpture and painting”.
“I feel like you know, inspiration could come from different things, a texture, a shape, a colour, even just a feeling, we’re kind of always observing and translating small things into my design,” she says.
One of her proudest business features is her silk swap program, a guarantee that if you buy one of the silk gowns from 23rd August, after two years you can swap it for a fresh one.
And the old silks are then upcycled into fabric bags, a cushion for her studio, or even a teddy bear.
“We want to make things eco-friendly,” she says.
This article first appeared in The Golden Edition of CityMag, released in September 2026.
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