On November 13, 2024, IMG exited Australian Fashion Week and the local industry held its breath. Little did we know that the Australian Fashion Council (AFC) would swoop in to save the day.
Of course, on the outside, it seemed like the AFC was making “an insane decision” – as AFC CEO Jaana Quaintance-James calls it – but the truth is that the timing was perfect.
Speaking with Ragtrader, Quaintance-James says one of the key factors was getting approval and backing from the New South Wales government. Coincidentally, the AFC was working on a fashion sector strategy with the NSW Minister John Graham around that time; the very same strategy that was revealed late last month.
The moment IMG dropped the show, the AFC was able to set up a chat with Graham just 24 hours later. Once the AFC got his verbal support, Quaintance-James and her team – which then made up a total of just five people – had to pull together a 60-page proposal that conceptualised every single aspect of the event. This included a full schedule breakdown, from the talks to the runways to the offsite shows, as well as budgeting, staffing and the entire governance of it all.
But the AFC wasn’t alone as the industry rallied behind them to help. Five days after IMG’s exit, the AFC and many designer brands – including the likes of Camilla & Marc, Christopher Esber, Aje, Cue and Bianca Spender – stood on the steps of Sydney Opera House to announce their takeover of the event.
“The fact that we harnessed that many really important people from across the industry, and had that moment collectively standing together in front of the Harbour Bridge, really set the tone from that point onwards,” Quaintance-James says.
“The AFC, at different times in the past, may not have been in the position to do this. But there was an acknowledgement there that the AFC was able to do this now, and that we can have the right structures in place for us to take this on.”
From there, the AFC set up an industry working group, with AFW founder Simon Lock taking the lead position. He was quickly signed on in those breathless five days.
Quaintance-James says there were two versions of the working group. There was one prior to Christmas 2024, which helped the AFC team set the early design phase. This predominantly consisted of AFC members, all with different perspectives and different-sized brands. Then there was an official committee set up in the new year.
“We did a lot of one-to-one conversations with different people, who were deeply experienced in terms of running a Fashion Week,” the AFC CEO says. “We were so lucky. They were very gracious for the time.”
The organisation also signed on many of the agencies that helped manage AFW in prior years, across production, marketing and communications.
But the groundwork was yet to come. Truth be told, the AFC and its industry working group technically had four months to pull together the show. For one, the AFC needed a lot more funding. Destination NSW came forward pretty quickly with some cash, but the corporate partnerships were harder to nail. And they were necessary.
According to Quaintance-James, when IMG dropped Fashion Week, a lot of the budgets from those corporate partners naturally moved onto other things, with others likely waiting to see if AFW 2025 was going to be a success under the new management.
The AFC and its working group were also in the middle of building their case for a successful event and weren’t able to go out to corporate partners until January 2025. This meant the real hard work started in the new year.
On top of that, with a shorter launch runway (pun intended), securing designers was tough, too.
“We know that it requires a lot of planning to put on a runway show, and often the collections have been designed specifically for that,” Quaintance-James says. “Some incredible brands I would love to have attracted this year didn't feel they had the right range to put on the runway. That was tricky, let alone the funding and partnerships that designers needed to secure or have the money to do it."
And when you have a small organisation and you double the effort of the team, Quaintance-James says there are various complexities around that as well.
“The board had to lean in a lot,” she says. “There were weekly board meetings, which you wouldn't normally expect from a not-for-profit board. But obviously, the significance of what we were doing, and both the financial risk and also the reputational risk, really required a much more active approach from everybody.”
But, following a tumultuous few months of planning, AFW 2025 launched successfully, with Shark Beauty as a presenting sponsor, Kellie Hush as the Fashion Week’s CEO and a considerable schedule of talks and runways spread across the week.
More than 10,000 people walked through the doors, with 1,600 of these being international or interstate, and 422 interstate and international buyers.
On the runway front, the working group pulled in 40 fashion designers, with 16 on-site designer runways held, and six offsite. There were also six activations involved – including parties and exhibitions – as well as three panel discussions hosted by the AFC, and an on-site atelier trade show powered by Splash.
The event's success was also driven by 300 volunteers, all selected from an applicant pool of 1,200.
Quaintance-James says the most interesting feedback she heard was how calm the week-long event was inside Carriageworks for AFW 2025, with all the shows running on time.
The event was also notably very trade-heavy with little consumer runways or events compared to previous iterations under IMG. Quaintance-James says this was done mostly for the sanity of her team, which had a lot to contend with already.
However, she recognises the importance of consumers at Australian Fashion Week – noted from her chats with those across the industry – and says the team is figuring out what this consumer integration will look like in 2026. If consumers do come back, she confirms it won’t be in the same way it was done in the past.
“The one thing I’m excited about is how we can engage other creative industries,” Quaintance-James says, pointing to areas like music.
And with 2026 being the 30th anniversary of AFW, the AFC and its newly formed AFW team have a huge responsibility to produce something bigger.
“I can assure you that AFC will absolutely do that justice,” Quaintance-James concludes. “We intend to deliver even more value, better numbers, more engagement and a more positive experience for trade and beyond.”