Yuwaalaraay designer and creative director of brand MAARA Collective, Julie Shaw, has debuted her latest feminine yet contemporary designs at Melbourne Fashion Week.
No stranger to the Melbourne Fashion Week runway, Shaw returned to the high fashion event to showcase her ever popular First Nations brand.
"It's always an honour to be invited back to the MFW Runways to showcase MAARA among so many incredible Australian designers, and we love connecting with our Melbourne audience," Shaw told Style Up.
This year Shaw showcased MAARA Collective's new Desert Bloom collection by participating in the Refined Edit runway, sharing the catwalk alongside other Australian brands including fellow First Nations favourite, Ngali.
"The new collection Desert Bloom is a special one; it's super feminine, we've expanded on our fabric selections and the colour palette is divine and as always, inspired by the colours of Country like our beautiful coppery gold tones, bush honey, and textured sandstone whites for summer," Shaw said.
"This collection also features the stunning Bush Medicine Leaves printed artwork by Anmatyerre artist Caroline Numina, and we're excited to showcase a few key looks from this collaboration on the runway as these pieces have just landed in store for everyone to discover and enjoy."
Reflecting on the collection's name and her broader inspiration, Shaw said the new Desert Bloom collection has a key floral focus.
With the accessories accompanying the new range also touching on the reference to florals, Desert Bloom eludes to a whimsical yet sophisticated collection.
"The name as suggests, Desert Bloom has a key floral focus through both print and textured fabrications, and the entire collection has really been inspired by the explosion of wildflowers that we see occur in the Australian outback and deserts each year," Shaw said.
"Also as a special touch, we're showing a selection of woven bags that we've collaborated with Bundjalung artist Kylie Caldwell on with, and these pieces will be styled into some of our key looks on the runway.
"Kylie used sun-bleached lomandra, sourced locally from her Country to create these really gorgeous pieces, with a floral touch interwoven in reference to the overall collection's theme."
Recognised in the fashion industry as one of Australia's leading First Nations brands, Shaw said after a series of ongoing projects and a brand re-fresh, MARRA Collective aims to increase its presence both on and off the runway.
"The last three months have been a busy production period for us, we've been working alongside our local manufacturers in Western Sydney to coordinate and deliver the new range of product into store for David Jones and the Iconic, as well as to our D2C online store," she said.
"We've been working through a lot of strategic planning this year, which is not always the fun part of running a fashion brand, but very important in building strong business foundations.
"We've also just completed a beautiful brand refresh which reflects a confident new look in moving forward and into the next phase of the brand."
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