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AKON CHANGKOU While visiting Australia for Christmas, homegrown model Akon Changkou stepped back in front of the camera for a beauty feature directed by senior beauty and health editor, Remy Rippon. “I love make-up but I’m such a minimalist,” says the New York-based talent, whose look for this shoot, captured in collaboration with Chanel, straddles the line between soft and strong. Scouted via Instagram, Changkou was studying psychology before making her runway debut in 2019. “I’ve had many career highlights but a few that stick out include my Chanel N1 serum campaign and my Vogue France and British Vogue covers,” she says. DAN THAWLEY Australian-born, Paris-based journalist and creative director Dan Thawley was at the Christian Dior spring/ summer ’25 show when artist Sofia Ginevra Giannì, aka SAGG Napoli, took…

The Vogue team travelled to the shimmering shores of the Gold Coast for this month’s cover shoot with Anna Sawai. The Tokyo-based actor was in town to film the second series of her television show Monarch: The Legacy of Monsters, before jetting to Los Angeles to see out the remainder of awards season, where she is nominated for her Shōgun peformance. Sawai was styled by editor-in-chief Christine Centenera for the March fashion issue, with the shoot’s concept combining two distinct angles. “Maximalism, with strong silhouettes, bold colours and exaggerated shapes,” explains Centenera. “Then pared-back minimalist looks, with a focus on the body.” Filmmaker Taika Waititi brought his signature energy to the day, lensing his second feature and first cover for Vogue Australia with his “fast and loose” photography style. “He…

When we feel pushed around, sometimes the only option is to push back. Or so designers seemed to recognise as chaotic sociopolitical and economic forces make themselves keenly felt in the middle of a decade. Spring/summer ’25 capitalised on the idea that the dominion of our wardrobes is a stronghold of personal choice and so dressing to assert something became the most engaging idea of the season. Rather than one overt code, however, designers looked to sharpen other implements in a woman’s toolbox for getting dressed, teasing out the options to feel good, and feel ourselves. That didn’t always look like the expected tropes of self-possession: assertive dressing duelled it out with softer power and a desire to have fun. Some were evolutions of ideas simmering along from previous seasons.…

Layered approach Sheer-on-sheer, delicate camisoles layered under one another: doubling up has emerged as key to a new brand of unstudied style. Whichever piece is piled on, keep the mood effortless. Scan the QR code to shop Vogue’s edit of the best of the trend. Suits you, madam Traditional pillars of a man’s wardrobe have been reclaimed to express the new brand of powerful femininity. A tie, a pocket square or a classic pinstripe, it’s all fair game. Night follows day Glamour became grounded this season in the pair-up of utilitarian outerwear and floor-sweeping gowns. Dripping in embellishment or worn with a dramatic trailing skirt, the thrown-on parka lends evening casual cool. Scan the QR code to shop Vogue’s edit of the best of the trend. New romantics Powdered pastel…

MARION HUME JOURNALIST, SCREENWRITER AND ETHICAL CONSULTANT “Change can’t wait until the future. The time is now. We all know throwaway fashion must cease and become something we look back on with horror and disbelief. Yet there’s an easy solution to this one. Let’s each commit to falling in love: with the clothes we already own (resell or gift if the love has faded) and only invest – whatever our budget – in what’s deserving of true love. “What would I like to see change today? That gendered drumbeat that somehow fashion doesn’t matter. Of course it matters. In tough times, self-expression, individuality, the confidence clothes give us matters more than ever. There’s something even more pernicious going on when fashion is rendered less than serious: the huge global business…

During Maria Grazia Chiuri’s nine-year tenure at the house of Dior, the Italian designer has engaged with the work of esteemed female artists to help tell the stories imbued in her fashion collections and bring to life the spaces in which they are unveiled. Often, she’s commissioned embroidery from the Chanakya School in Mumbai, India – projects that have allowed the narratives of illustrators and painters like Isabella Ducrot, Mickalene Thomas and Judy Chicago to be writ large in giant handicraft panels, framing the Dior ready-towear or haute couture shows in colour and texture. Despite these interventions, rarely has a living artist taken centre stage in her productions in the way that London-based Neapolitan artist Sofia Ginevra Giannì (known as SAGG Napoli) did last September. Transforming a pavilion in the…

Duran Lantink is inspired by the everyday – just not in an everyday way. “We all have jeans, we all have a T-shirt; we have certain things that feel very standard to us,” he says. “I find it very interesting if you interpret that in a different way. It gives me freedom to think that something we take for granted isn’t necessarily how it’s supposed to be.” See his spring/summer ’25 collection at Paris fashion week, where Lantink revolutionised regular garments by experimenting with their proportions, in what’s become his visual signature since he founded his label in 2019. The enlarged waistline of a red-and-white striped dress appeared buoyant on Australian model Angelina Kendall (above right), while hoodies and bras were dialled up to the power of two, draped in…

Ethan Bergersen “Ecdysis, the scientific name for reptiles shedding their skin, is the name I chose for my [honours] collection and represents the core of its inspiration,” Ethan Bergersen says. The recent University of Technology Sydney (UTS) graduate is discussing his new range: on one dress, thousands of volcanic glass beads are embroidered on the skirt and clink with the wearer’s movements, while on another, fine-woven string under sheer plastic film appears as scales on the body. Bergersen’s conceptual pieces earned him the 2024 Australian Fashion Foundation Scholarship, one of the country’s top honours for fashion students, and has made him one of the most talked-about new names in the Australian industry. “The use of fashion to evolve the body and become beyond human has always fascinated me,” he says.…

It’s September 2024, and inside the cavernous Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Alaïa is hosting its show on the first day of spring/summer ’25 fashion month. Look 23 – one of the collection’s most ravishing, a cerulean skirt and cape with the label’s signature hood – was modelled by 20-year-old Stella Hanan. Born in Sydney, this was her first appearance on an international runway, but unless you’re versed in the mercurial world of modelling, Hanan’s newness on the scene was hard to pick. Not least, given that walk. Saint Laurent, Versace, Isabel Marant, Sacai, Gucci and Prada were among the slew of shows she booked during her debut season, placing her among Australia’s expanding cohort of internationally regarded – and booked-up – models. There’s Angelina Kendall, the seismically…