EXPLORE  sites that tell stories of historic and contemporary expressions of fashion in the City of Melbourne
WHAT is fashion? What makes us ‘fashionable’?  What is design?
HOW do small business fashion designers survive?
HOW is fashion expressed in different forms e.g city icons, accessories, vintage, design architecture, street art, shop exhibition, typography, historic personalities, even chocolate?
SUITABLE for school tours (two hours).
OUR TOURS usually start and finish at Federation Square. School tours are normally two hours in length.

FOR over a century ‘The Lane’ (Flinders Lane) was the centre of Australia’s textile manufacturing and tailoring industry (the ‘schmatte’ trade) crowded with milliners, seamstresses, factories, tailors, commercial travellers and sample rooms.
(MY father was a tailor and I can easily recall the gleaming black Singer machines, the smell of their oiled parts, their chattering sound driven by foot pedals and the myriad small steel parts kept in machine drawers. But the industry was vastly diminished when the Government ended tariffs in the 1990s – Meyer, Director Melbourne Walks).
DESPITE the challenges, a boutique industry of places specialising in designer clothes, Australian-made products, jewellery, accessories, vintage and secondhand clothes has sprung up in places like Flinders Lane, Hosier, Nicholson building, 271 Collins, Block Arcade, Campbell Arcade, Cathedral Arcade, Royal Arcade, Centre Arcade, Howie Place, Degraves subway, Flinders Lane and others. We can also visit the former site of the stunning 1892 Singer/Melbourne Sample Rooms.

‘Thank you very much for your program of different walks (including fashion) that the girls attended. The girls loved them and I received great feedback from teachers as well! It was a pleasure to work with you and look forward to working with you again next year.’ Siena College 2021

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