PayPal Melbourne Fashion Festival is turning the runway into a spectator sport

PayPal Melbourne Fashion Festival (PMFF) has unveiled its 2025 programme and alongside it a catchphrase that sums up its unique value proposition: “Fashion as a spectator sport”.

The 15-day festival has held the title of Australia’s largest consumer-facing fashion week for some time, but it’s still kicking new goals, announcing that in 2024 it delivered over 10 per cent growth in attendance.

“As Australia’s only true consumer major fashion event, PayPal Melbourne Fashion Festival does exactly that, delivering tangible value, development opportunities and exposure to designers at all levels by connecting them directly to consumers and facilitating purchases in real-time,” the CEO of PMFF, Caroline (Ralph) Ralphsmith, said in a statement.

“We create a true fashion destination where anyone and everyone can experience ‘fashion as a spectator sport’, and as a result, we contribute to the creation of a strong, viable and commercially sustainable future for the Australian fashion industry,” she continued.

Championing talent 

As Ralphsmith described it to Inside Retail, PMFF created a tapestry in the Australian fashion industry – bringing designers and consumers together for an equal parts fashionable and accessible event.

This differs from other major fashion events where consumers are relegated to reading about key moments after the fact in glossy magazines, print newspapers and Instagram posts.

“The concept of spectating here is really about truly getting involved as a spectator… You turn up and you’re part of it. You’re there,” Ralph told Inside Retail.

“And the team uniform, if you like, is anything that looks fabulous and anything that you feel good in,” she added. 

Now for the first time in the event’s history, consumers will be able to attend the National Designer Awards in partnership with David Jones as part of the programme’s premium consumer-facing runways. 

Keeping in line with PMFF’s broader concept of sport, 10 emerging Australian designers will be acknowledged on the runway in front of 1500 people.

“It’s always been industry there with media in attendance and smaller – very much about making sure that we’re getting publicity for the winner and providing them with the material prizes, if you like,” shared Ralph.

“But it occurred to us that the depth of talent that we’re seeing and the breadth of talent that we’re seeing is good enough to actually put on a runway,” she followed.

The team behind PMFF made the decision to make the National Graduate Showcase a premium and consumer-facing runway long before the fashion industry started talking about the role of closed industry events.

Reaching customers

PMFF is doubling down on its consumer focus at a time when other fashion weeks are still grappling with the question of who they are really for. 

Recently, the future of Australian Fashion Week was in limbo after IMG unexpectedly announced that it would no longer be holding the event and that it had not found an interested party to take the event over. 

Over the weekend, the Australian Fashion Week confirmed that it had secured funding from Destination NSW for AFW to go ahead in 2025.

From Ralphsmith’s perspective, the starting point for conversations surrounding fashion events and Australian Fashion Week should be what the fashion industry needs and where the gaps are.

She is urging the fashion industry to look beyond the recurring calendar event and think about which elements of a closed industry fashion week have served designers.

“I think the industry getting together and thinking about how to support each other is a good thing. I think lobbying the government to get industry focus and value is a good thing. I think leadership and showing how success has happened, and allowing others to access that is a good thing,” Ralphsmith outlined.

“I’m not sure if that means you need an industry fashion week. Firstly, I’m thinking it probably doesn’t and I think the concept of the consumer model in a fashion week, which is growing, seems to be able to pick up a lot of that more visible content-related space,” she further explained.

“But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a broader, industry-wide opportunity to continue to support the industry in a different way.” 

PMFF has conceptualised a not-for-profit and in-person fashion event that quite literally brings fashion direct-to-consumer down a runway and at no cost to designers – positioning itself as a consumer platform with world-class production and entertainment.

“The industry itself contributes a great billion dollars to the economy and 150,000 workers – a lot of them are women and we all know that – so we are supporting that industry and making sure it’s not trivialised,” concluded Ralph.

“[PMFF] is fit-for-purpose at the moment, and I think it’s actually been fit-for-purpose for a long time, and will continue to grow and make sure that it moves with the market, to ensure that industry is only growing and becoming more and more healthy.”

The post PayPal Melbourne Fashion Festival is turning the runway into a spectator sport appeared first on Inside Retail Australia.