How can we rebuild local fashion manufacturing? Philosophy Australia owner Alison Lennard makes a case, and a plea.
The clock is ticking on the survival of Australian-made fashion.
That is the situation as I see it.
There is a lot of conversation around supporting local, but unless consumers actively choose to buy Australian-made products and understand why those choices matter, the manufacturing capability simply will not survive long-term.
One of the key areas the Australian Fashion Council has identified in this space is education, and I completely agree with that. We need to educate both consumers and young people entering the industry. Everyone wants to be a designer, but very few people understand the importance of the other highly skilled roles within fashion manufacturing. Pattern making is an extraordinary skill. Cutting isn't just something you pick up! These are trades that take years to master, let alone the technicians needed to keep the machines in play. But design and marketing are the "sexy and lucrative" angles and titles being chased.
To be a garment machinist is an artisan skill. There is a misconception that being a machinist is simply sewing straight lines. It is not. The people making our garments hold decades of technical knowledge in fit, fabrication, construction, and most importantly, problem-solving.
My pattern maker turns 70 this year, and at 51. I am the youngest member of my team. None of our children has followed us into the industry, and although we are all still very passionate about what we do, we are not able to entice the next generation. This means there is a very real risk that these skills will disappear within a decade. We need them now, while there are still experienced people here to teach them. I'm looking into apprenticeships, but with tough trade and rising costs, taking on additional staff to pave the transition seems almost impossible.
There is also a lot of discussion around government procurement and large-scale manufacturing support, and whilst that is important, it does not necessarily help businesses like mine. I am not trying to become a volume government supplier.
I run a small independent fashion label producing locally in Sydney with a very considered business model. What businesses like mine need is consumer support, visibility and long-term cultural value placed on Australian-made products. I'd also love for memberships to AFC, Seamless and Australian Made to be covered.
When I purchased the brand after designing for it for 13 years prior, I deliberately added "Australia" to the name and made the business fully local. Before that, we still had some offshore knitwear and denim production. I chose to cement our Australian manufacturing identity because I believed in it deeply. But I would be lying if I said I was not concerned about what the next five to ten years look like.
If I am not making locally, I am not the business that I currently am. So there will inevitably need to be some form of reinvention down the line because the current model has a timeframe attached to it, and I want to have at least another twenty-year future for the brand.
At the same time, the entire retail landscape has shifted dramatically. Ten years ago, we were purely wholesale. When I took over the business six years ago, I diversified into online and direct-to-consumer sales. At the time, there was understandable concern from boutiques, but we communicated clearly that online was about reaching new customers, not competing with our stockists. Thankfully, that has proven true.
What has changed significantly is the boutique landscape itself. Our wholesale network has halved over the past six years. Rising rents are not just affecting major retailers in capital cities; they are affecting small boutiques in regional towns as well. Many boutique owners are also looking to retire, but instead of selling their businesses on, many are simply closing their doors because the next generation does not want to step into retail ownership. Labor’s Capital Gains Tax is an interesting new development here, too.
We also expanded into manufacturing for aligned Australian brands as a way to balance production peaks and troughs, but even that demand has declined because emerging brands are increasingly fearful of margins and are choosing offshore production earlier. I'd love for some established big brands to ask us to help bring even a small capsule of a collection onshore.
The irony is that I believe we are very price competitive. Our pants retail around the $150 mark, which is comparable to many vertically integrated brands found in shopping centres, except ours are made locally, ethically and in much smaller quantities.
Our newest revenue stream concept is in personal styling, and we are just launching 1:1 appointments in our Willoughby HQ, as we know consumers are craving a real-life experience.
We also do not build our business model around excessive discounting. Around seventy per cent of our range is what we call evergreen or best seller product. Those styles never go on sale. One pair of pants has remained unchanged in our collection for more than eighteen years because customers continually come back for it.
To me, that is what sustainable fashion should look like. Clever design. Longevity. Repeat wear. Emotional connection to clothing. Pieces that become wardrobe warriors rather than landfill.
I genuinely believe there is still a future for Australian manufacturing, but it will require a shift in mindset from consumers, industry, and government alike. If we want local manufacturing capability to exist in another decade, we need to value it now, not once it has already disappeared. That is the AFC’s National Manufacturing Strategy remit, but I worry it is already ten years too late.