Taylor Tomasi Hill’s Aussie Fashion Week Diary

Last week, six months into her position as Moda Operandi’s artistic director, Taylor Tomasi Hill visited Australian Fashion Week to source a new crop of designers for the site’s clientele. “We are trying to attend as many fashion weeks as we possibly can to bring not only unknown designers to our audience, but also designers that might not have a store in the United States or China,” Tomasi Hill explained to ELLE.com this morning.

That meant meeting up with designers and investigating the who’s who of Australia’s fashion industry. “They’re certainly not afraid of color, and you can find everything from frilly beach attire to a lot of unexpected work [attire],” she explained of the country’s optimistic design aesthetic. “Josh Goot showed a lot of structured pieces and exquisite tailoring—something I definitely wasn’t expecting.”

The fruits of her labor (and 40-plus hours of in-flight travel) will pay off: Moda Operandi’s launching a week’s worth of Australian designer trunk shows—including Ellery, Christopher Esber, Michael Lo Sordo and more—starting this Monday. “I think Josh [Goot] is going to blow it out of the water, and Ksubi has really gone back to their roots.  They’re not trying to go as ‘fashion’—instead they’re focusing on their denim, and it was really special,” Tomasi Hill said. “Everyone that we chose are people that we really believe in.”

Few places could be more ideal for a mid-season fashion-as-work trip than sunny Sydney, where the flame-haired industry veteran managed to sneak in a few days’ worth of fun between shows with fellow M’O-er, Naomi Watts.  ”At every other fashion week that I attend, I never get to see the city, but in Australia the designers don’t really open their showrooms on the weekends.  I had a packed two days where I got a massage on the beach, I went to zoo, I even had a proper Aussie brekky.”  Lucky for us, she’s shared her Aussie fashion week diary for all to see—click through to take a peek!