Designer goes for secondhand

You are a fool if you do fashion and don’t buy clothes in secondhand clothes shops.

This was what renowned Australian fashion designer Nicholas Huxley said about pretentious fashionistas who look down on buying secondhand clothes.

Mr Huxley, who ran Australia’s top fashion design school – the Fashion Design Studio – was one of a dozen designers who showed their collections at the Fiji Fashion Week 2023 Resort Cruise show on Friday.

His collection was entirely made of clothes bought at secondhand shops around Suva, reimagined and reworked into stylish pieces befitting the most prestigious runways. “I think the most expensive outfit there would have been $25 altogether,” he said.

“That’s part of the fun, it’s like art. You take a blank canvas and you start to put things together, layer it and add textures to it, add colour, and it just suddenly works.”

Mr Huxley has been coming to Fiji Fashion Week for almost a decade and said he has become addicted to the secondhand clothing stores in Fiji which are a model of sustainability.

“Here it’s everywhere. I take so much back with me to Sydney when I leave here every time. “It’s very addictive.”

He produced a similar collection at last year’s fashion week, which garnered the attention of some wealthy people until they found out it was secondhand.

“They loved it and then they heard it was secondhand.”

He said Fiji had the best secondhand clothing stores he had seen in the world and if you were into fashion, they were where you need to be.