Australian Fashion Week will be the first, maskless global fashion week since 2020 and Bassike did the unthinkable at a physical event: Take away guests’ phones. Attendees were asked to surrender their cell phones before the show and then the venue was submerged in darkness and silence. As creative director Deborah Sams tells it, the act was a way to create peace and stillness before the adrenaline rush of a runway. Her collection is aptly titled Pause.
A forced calm was the designer’s goal, yet Sams’s collection was one of her liveliest yet. An agate-inspired print opened the show, a rare pattern in the Bassike universe, and inspired a palette of sun yellows, rusts, and deep greens. Dyeing experiments produced geometric designs on pouf-sleeved dresses and concentric stripes on a marigold tunic. The most exciting development, though, is Sams’s new silhouettes: a sleek emphasis on an elongated waist, tunics over maxi skirts, and a sensual halter top with a keyhole cut-out. Sams says she designed the collection with a fashion show in mind—these are clothes made during a pause that are right for finally getting moving again.
