Gary Bigeni

After 20 years in the industry, the Sydney designer has merged his colourful personal aesthetic with that of his clothing label’s. Emma Joyce of Broadsheet Melbourne visits Gary Bigeni's inner-west studio to hear about the shift to custom gender-neutral clothing and how surviving cancer gives him fresh perspective.

“Mum taught me that if you want something, you have to go out and get it. We didn’t come from money and if I wanted to fulfil my dream to be a fashion designer, I had to work.”

-Gary Bigeni

It’s my first ever Afterpay Australian Fashion Week, so safe to say, I’m pretty excited. Walking into Carriageworks is like inhaling some sort of beautiful chaos; there are aesthetic people in unqiuely styled clothes in every corner, some chatting to their friends, lattes in hand, while others are snapping photos of eachother in a way that screams: we do this every day.

Signalling a new direction as one of the country's most treasured designers, Gary Bigeni made an ecstatic return to the runway at Australian Afterpay Fashion Week 2022 with a colourful gender-neutral collection.

Making a triumphant return to Australian Afterpay Fashion Week (AAFW) 2022, Gary Bigeni graced the runway with his new collection REDIVIVUS, complemented by hair that embraced the models’ most beautiful selves by O&M, writes Ashleigh Matheson.

IT’S JUST PAST 8.00am on Gadigal Country and the fragrance of burning eucalyptus leaves wafts through the Carriageworks venue as Brendan Kerin, from the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council, gets Afterpay Australian Fashion Week’s Smoking Ceremony and Welcome to Country underway.

If you can’t stand the sight of another Breton stripe, you’ve come to the right place: Gary Bigeni, one of Australia’s most exuberantly eclectic fashion designers, is all for women embracing their unique sense of style.

If Australian fashion designer Gary Bigeni’s latest tie-dye clothing collection is a reflection of the man himself – it proves that colour also underpins how he decorates his one-bedroom apartment in Sydney’s inner west.

Bigeni, 39, surrounds himself with sentimental items and custom-made jewellery that doubles as his go-to daily inspiration pieces.

In this episode, I welcome wonderful human and fashion designer, Gary Bigeni to the studio. With over 15 years in the fashion industry with his namesake women's wear label, Gary has put in the work to become a house hold name here in Australia. But with the past year giving us all a chance to sit back and reflect, it gave him the opportunity to find ways to bring more of his colourful self to his work, and realise that playing by the rules was never his way in life, so why not in his work?

Afterpay Australian Fashion Week (AAFW) 2022 returned to the runway in Sydney last week with over fifty shows from many of Australia’s leading designers and plenty of emerging talent. The event was a colourful showcase of Resort 2023 collections and featured more diversity on the runway that ever previously seen at AAFW.

See the entire Gary Bigeni resort 2023 collection.

Like Judy Garland singing at Carnegie Hall, fashion brands have spent the post-lockdown months trying to convince us to Get Happy, assaulting the senses with endless bolts of hot pink fabric, feathers and sequins. On day one of Afterpay Australian Fashion Week designers confidently demonstrated that it’s not hard to hit a joyous note.

Gary Bigeni returned to the runway at Afterpay Australia Fashion Week (AAFW), with a new blueprint for his business.

The designer produced a gender-neutral and inclusive 32-piece collection, describing it as a celebration of colour and individual expression.