Outside of Europe, it's safe to say that my fashion label/climate knowledge is probably most attuned to what's going on in the United States. It's down to the trickling of information through US magazines that are widely available in London, the number of websites/blogs that are mostly based over there and the "special relationship" between the UK and the US that has generally given way to a more open information exchange. It's the import of American TV that put names like Neiman Marcus, Barney's and Saks into my awareness before I have even visited those stores.
Not that I didn't watch imports from the other large English-speaking country, Australia but sadly on Neighbours, Home & Away and Heartbreak High, nothing of the local fashion environment was ever spoken about. So whilst my knowledge of fashion labels from down under isn't awful, quite basic things about the country's fashion landscape are beyond me. The term 'opshops' is something that I have only heard about in recent months. Then I came across Sportsgirl, supposedly Australia's answer to Topshop. Going onto the site, nothing rang a bell at all. I read a fair number of Aussie blogs but could not recall any posts about this store.
I can reel off Target's collabs despite having never even so much as seen the garments in real life. Yet this Aussie chain store, Sportsgirl, who have been knocking out collaborations with local independent designers (Life With Bird, Kate Hurst, Manning Cartell and the latest Elke Kramer) is complete news to me. Feel free to tut and shake your head if this is all really basic knowledge to you people. Scanning the site, "Australia's answer to Topshop" might be stretching it a bit but it's all fairly cute stuff. Nonetheless it's the collabs that they participate in which are particularly interesting in that they seem to choose fairly young and independent designers as opposed to the Aussie biggies (Alice McCall, Sass & Bide, both of which incidentally have collaborated with Topshop).
Romance Was Born, one of the most exciting Aussie labels I've seen of late is sending out a 12 piece circus-inspired collection for Sportsgirl in March and from the looks of it doesn't seem to belong in the slapdash high-low collab category at all...
TV, a label that was recommended to me by a few readers, which I had already checked out in Paris a few years ago will also be teaming up with Sportsgirl with a collection to drop in April. No pics yet but their AW09 collection might give some guidelines as to the style of things to come... I'm personally just looking out for TV online stockists in general for their mainline collections as a lot of it is ripe for easy-e-sales (no need to try on oversized jumpers and leggings now is there...)
After a bit of searching, I even hear shoe designer Tristan Blair whose wedges I'm slowly wearing down as 2008's most worn pair of shoes, might be knocking out something for Sportsgirl. Imelda might have to correct me on that one...
Anyhow, maybe I've got the wrong end of the stick completely. Maybe Sportsgirl is terrible/amazing/both... who knows. All I know is I think I can at least add it to my knowledge in the same way that US chain store Target exists there for no apparent reason seeing as none of these stores are within my vicinity or reach
