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Day four of Australian Fashion Week (AFW) came together in a spectacle of energy and unbridled creativity, offering a masterclass in artistic depth and sartorial storytelling.
From oceanic spirituality to archival activism, each collection transformed the runway into a space for reflection and reinvention. Hansen & Gretel’s AURA opened the day with a show awash in serenity, Albus Lumen followed with AMOR, Marina Afonina’s off-schedule intimate tribute to a decade in business, where familial muses, Casetify collaborations, and the signature monochrome palette offered a love letter to creative evolution.
In the afternoon, Iordanes Spyridon Gogos perked up the day with an explosion of colour, texture and soul-searching. His latest collection was a personal patchwork of memory and joy, blurring the line between art and wearability with gleeful abandon.
Finally, in Newtown’s moody Vanguard theatre, Nicol & Ford resurrected Weimar Berlin with PARRHESIA, a rich and emotionally charged homage to Magnus Hirschfeld and the forgotten archives of queer resistance. Their off-site show was both celebration and elegy, conjuring the decadence of ELDORADO club with exacting craft and community-led casting.
For the full show breakdowns from day four at AFW, read on.
Hansen & Gretel
For Resort 2026, Hansen & Gretel returned to AFW with AURA, a collection that shimmered with energy and ease. “This collection is all about auras—how energy, colour, and emotion can be felt through the clothes,” said Ainsley Hansen, the brand’s Founder and Creative Director. “It’s about the atmosphere a woman creates when she walks into a room.”
Inspired by the rhythm of the ocean and the unseen glow of personal auras, AURA unfolded as an immersive runway experience, complete with green-lit carpets and a custom ambient score that pulsed like the sea’s current. “AURA is a study of movement, energy, and the unseen forces that shape us,” Hansen explained. “It’s this sense of fluidity and connection that H&G wanted to capture, both visually and emotionally.”
The 41-look collection merged modern bohemian elegance with a sun-drenched surf sensibility. Wave-like prints and aura-inspired gradients swirled across sheer silks and gauzy layers, while sun-bleached textures and hand-done embroidery brought an artisanal sensitivity. “Each print reflects that convergence between natural elements and human presence,” Hansen noted. Green and blue auras guided the palette, symbolising growth, healing, calm, and intuition.
“Through print, fabrication, and form, AURA invites the wearer into a space where the ocean’s pulse meets the glow of their own presence,” the designer continued.
Iordanes Spyridon Gogos
In a show that blurred the lines between art, fashion and heritage with visionary bravado, Iordanes Spyridon Gogos returned to AFW with a deeply personal, genre-defying spectacle. Known for his maximalist aesthetic and collaborative spirit, founder Jordan Gogos continued to reframe fashion as a living, breathing expression of identity and process.
“The only way it really translates onto the runway is through hard work and persistence… I take photos of my textiles… and weeks later forget about them, and then more weeks go by and I find the magic in something,” he explained to GRAZIA ahead of the show. It’s this intuitive alchemy that gives his work its unmistakable energy—a kinetic collision of texture, colour, and contradiction. “If someone said, hmm, they don’t really go together, then it made me like it more.”
This season, the artist-designer drew from residencies at UNSW and the Australian Tapestry Workshop, where textile experiments became sacred artefacts. “The piece created at the Australian Tapestry workshop was so epic… each ‘colour’ in a tapestry comprises 12+ colours… that’s like my dream,” he said. “The work is really personal to me—so many different moments in my life accumulate to what I put out—it’s never an overarching anchor point, [but] I do think that light and movement subconsciously play a huge role in the textiles.”
A film, created with Motel and starring Gogos himself, set the tone for a show that pulsed with self-reflection, light and a rebellious spirit that bites the thumb at convention. “I wanted to be the source of light, the vessel for the moving image through self-portraiture,” he shared.
From 3D-printed shoes by longtime collaborator Olivia Bellevue to shrine-like garments embroidered with personal images, every piece was saturated with feeling and individuality. “I have to really fall in love with something for it to go out there… and love is complex and confusing… but that’s also something I love.”
Albus Lumen
Marking ten years of radical elegance, Albus Lumen’s Resort ’26 collection, AMOR, was a love letter to founder Marina Afonina’s world and what she holds dear—past, present, and future. Held off-schedule in the raw, intimate basement of Mass Practice, the show was draped in sheer plastic and emotion, with 33 looks that traced a decade of style and connection.
“In celebration of Albus Lumen’s 10-year anniversary, this collection is an ode to love,” Afonina shared. “It’s all about creating pieces that I would wear and that I would want the Albus lady/man to have.” This season, love wasn’t just a theme—it was embodied. Afonina’s own mother took to the runway alongside muses like Tessa James, Jordan Gogos and Hayley Bonham, each representing the feminine spirit that has shaped the maison.
The collection was a sensual interplay of nostalgia and modernity with a twist of opulence—monochrome, crystal accents, and sheer textures danced between Capote lyricism and La Dolce Vita glamour. “Each piece holds a decade of personal and creative evolution,” said Afonina.
Jewellery by Ryan Storer and makeup by Filomena Natoli added richness, while Albus Lumen’s collaboration with CASETiFY injected a contemporary spark—personalised accessories worn by Maxine Wylde, Rowi Singh, and Lynn Harris lent a modern counterpoint to this deeply intimate celebration of legacy and self-assurance.
Nicol & Ford
For their fourth consecutive AFW showing, Nicol & Ford delivered a cinematic triumph of queer storytelling with PARRHESIA, an evocative, immersive runway staged at Sydney’s restored Vanguard theatre. Inspired by Magnus Hirschfeld—the pioneering German sexologist whose early 20th-century advocacy for queer and trans rights changed the world—designers Lilian and Katie-Louise Nicol-Ford distilled an array of archival reverences into a curation of rich, textural fashion that challenged, seduced, and honoured.
“Every collection we create starts with a story,” the designers explained to GRAZIA. “We love diving into the lives of historical figures… this year, our collection, PARRHESIA, is inspired by Magnus Hirschfeld.” After months of research in Berlin, Hirschfeld’s legacy emerged across screen-printed motifs and references to his now-destroyed Institute for Sexual Science, founded in 1919 and later tragically obliterated under Nazi rule.
In the moody light of The Vanguard—a nod to Berlin’s ELDORADO nightclub, once a haven for queer expression—models from the duo’s own creative community took to the stage in looks that played on form and narrative. “We don’t see traditional dressmaking and conceptual design as opposites,” Nicol & Ford assert. “They should complement and speak to each other.”
Custom-dyed and screen-printed silks, reimagined 1920s “half dolls,” and silhouettes recalling Jeanne Mammen’s femmes embodied the brand’s message: celebration in defiance and performance as craft. PARRHESIA not only mourns the erasure of queer histories but affirms the strength of modern visibility and unexstinguishable pride.
Every element supported a theatrical vision in a thrilling harmony, from styling by Miguel Tan, makeup and hair by Nicole Thompson and Richard Kavanagh, Phoebe Hyles’ jewellery, Beau Esposito’s moody score and Julian Dimase’s latex work. “By staging our runway at The Vanguard, we’re celebrating the decadence of queer performance and its safe spaces,” note the designers. Unfolding as both homage and resistance, PARRHESIA stands as a love letter to the resilience of queer artistry—its beauty, its politics, and its refusal to disappear.
