200 years of Australian Fashion

We recently returned from a trip to Australia. It was a long overdue holiday and our expectations of it were quite low as both of us had been sick leading up to it. However, it excelled above and beyond and now I can't wait to return.

Our main intent in Melbourne was to attend the Andy Warhol exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. But we arrived in its final few days and the queues were so long we decided reluctantly to give it a miss. Instead we focussed on other travelling and permanent exhibits in Melbourne and Adelaide. We weren't disappointed. I had no idea the breadth of talent in the Australian art community, and have fallen heavily for Fredrick McCubbin, Alfred Stretton, etc. We even managed to visit The Cedars, the home of artist Hans Heysens.

So I will begin with the National Gallery of Victoria's "200 years of Australian Fashion" exhibition. I was allowed to take photos, but without flash, and the room was dark, so there may be obvious camera shake on some photos. I don't like to admit it, but I enjoyed this better than the Yves St Laurent retrospective I saw last year at the Bowes Museum. Different in every way in terms of curation, but somehow there was a spirit with the Australian exhibition which was not there in the YSL one. I suppose it was the sheer breadth of the history projected out from a pioneer nation. Sometimes it positively sang out from the ribbons and bows

I'll let you judge for yourselves.