Bec & Bridge and serious race wear

Cute collection by bec & bridge. In a week groaning with playsuits, they sent out some of the best. Shorts with a pinafore front and fat ribbon lacing down the back.

By far the most interesting outfit in the auditorium however is being worn by a woman in the opposite front row, the fourth seat closest to the end of the runway. Huge pink cartwheel hat decorated with feathers and silk flowers. And matching suit.

I tell my colleague at The Melbourne Age, Jan Breen Burns, who is sitting next to me, that the woman looks like she is going to the races.

"About ten years ago," counters Burns. They take their racewear very seriously down in Melbourne.

Doing a group show means having to share the same models, hair and makeup, as everybody else. So the challenge is to find a styling point of difference that can be popped on and off in between sections as the models are changing.

In the case of Preacher, that happens to be a wrist cast on the right hands of all models. Perhaps It's a nod to David Jones' fashion buying head Colette Garnsey, who has been sporting a similar cast on one wrist for some time.

The Pani label from Sydney stands out from this pack. Great colours and really cute mini boardshort-look shorts. It would have been colourful enough without the emergence of two clowns on stilts and three contortionists. Take it from me, what this event doesn't need is more clowns.

The contortionists proceeded to roll down the catwalk doing one-handed somersaults, before regrouping at the end of the runway to create a human pyramid. At least they didn't look like they were about to pop out a ping-pong ball - which is what many of us were thinking about the hula hoop artiste at Allannah Hill on Wednesday night.

The clowns then started dancing down the runway towards the contortionists. It must a challenge negotiating a catwalk, while dancing, on stilts.

If they'd gone any harder I reckon they might have had needed something a little bigger than a wrist cast.


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