The Best Of Australian Fashion Week
5/19/2026
The Week The Fashion World Wore Bared
This year, Australian Fashion Week 2026 was set against the impossible glamour of the Museum of Contemporary Art with Sydney Harbour gleaming in the background. The industry descended on the city and did what it does best: dressed up, showed out and made it look entirely natural. And threaded through front row seats, post-show pavement moments, lunches and late-night drinks, were Bared shoes. Loudly, proudly and with a kind of effortless authority that only comes when a shoe is truly right for the room.
This was AFW's 30th anniversary, a milestone year that brought with it a new home, a new energy and a renewed sense of what Australian fashion can be. The Australian Fashion Council moved the week to the MCA, swapping the industrial grit of Carriageworks for the harbourside drama of Circular Quay, and the city responded. Guests arrived in full force, editors flew in from international mastheads, buyers descended from London to Tokyo and the street style at the MCA became one of the most photographed backdrops of the week. Through it all, Bared was there. On the runway. At the lunch. On the feet of some of the most-watched people in Australian fashion. From Vogue Australia to Broadsheet, from GQ to nine.com.au and Elle, the coverage was everywhere.
Fashion's Elite, Head To Toe In Bared
To attend Australian Fashion Week in Bared is to understand something the most stylish people know instinctively: that a shoe can carry an entire outfit, that comfort and desire are not opposites, and that the right boot in the right shade at the right moment is as close to magic as dressing gets. The talent who wore Bared across the week proved this with an effortlessness that looked completely uncontrived, because it was.
Elle Ferguson arrived in the Pandion Chocolate Brown Croc Emboss and the streets simply stopped. She cycled through the Curruca Black and the Alethe Choc Croc Emboss across the week, and each time the effect was the same: completely, devastatingly chic.
Jessica Gomes wore the Mino Black and Hardware and looked exactly like someone who should be on every cover of every magazine simultaneously.
Jessica Leahy moved through shows in the Hillstar Black and then pivoted to the Calandra Heel in Silver.
Charlene Ye Davies in the Pintail Boot in Chestnut Brown was a whole conversation.
The Runway, Reimagined: Bared At NGALI, Gary Bigeni & The AFW Edit
When a shoe brand walks a runway, it becomes part of a collection's argument. At AFW 2026, Bared made that argument three times, and each time the result felt entirely earned.
Gary Bigeni's show was the morning of the final day of AFW 2026 and it arrived with the clarity that comes from a designer who knows precisely what he wants to say. Titled The Enduring Collection, it marked 23 years of the label and represented Bigeni's return to draped jersey, the silhouette that defined his early work, executed with all the refinement of someone who has spent two decades studying what clothes can do to a body. Styled by Jana Bartolo, draped silhouettes, signature hand-painted colour, a cast that brought effortless individuality to the runway: this was fashion as philosophy, not spectacle.
The MCA was the right setting for it. A show that felt like it mattered. And how proud were we to see our Towhee in Poppy Red, Towhee in White, Cygnini in Snake and Calandra in Silver styled with over half of these incredible pieces.
NGALI’s show on the final day of the week was one of the most meaningful moments of the entire calendar. Founded by Wiradjuri woman Denni Francisco, the label has spent eight years building something rare: a fashion brand built around genuine cultural partnership, where First Nations artwork is translated into clothing through a model of permission, royalties and long-term collaboration rather than extraction. The Wondrous collection, presented at the MCA and styled by Nadene Duncan, continued that tradition with optimism and precision. The show closed the week on the most resonant possible note, and as the official AFW summary put it, it was a reminder that fashion can hold so much more than clothes alone: storytelling, art, connection, memory, craft. Bared was proud to be part of it, and the feeling of walking alongside Denni and NGALI, as we have done since Melbourne Fashion Festival, remains something we consider extremely special at fashion week. Featuring the show featured our Mountaingem in Terracotta, Whydah in Black Velvet, Towhee in Black and Towhee in Sand.
The AFW Edit, presented by NIVEA and styled by Jess Pecoraro, transformed Foundation Hall at the MCA into a consumer-facing runway that celebrated Australian fashion at its most wearable and most now. Alongside Aje Studio, Anna Quan, Bec + Bridge, Henne, Friends with Frank and Romy, Silk Laundry brought its signature liquid ease to the runway, the kind of dressing that looks simple until you try to replicate it without exactly the right proportions and exactly the right fabric. The Edit was one of the most discussed shows of the week among the broader public, and Bared's presence within it put the brand exactly where it belongs: at the centre of Australian fashion's contemporary moment.
Come As You Are: The Bared Lunch At Le Foote
On Thursday 14 May, in the glittering middle of AFW, Bared hosted a lunch at Le Foote, Sydney. Over 45 of fashion's most compelling people gathered around a table to celebrate Australian Fashion, and what unfolded was exactly what happens when the right people share a room with excellent martinis and excellent footwear: the kind of conversation that keeps going long after lunch ends.
The room was stunning. The footwear was, by unanimous agreement, extraordinary. And Elle Ferguson, who hosted the afternoon with the warmth and wit that has made her one of Australia's most beloved figures across a decade of partnership moments with Bared, gave a speech that made everyone smile. She spoke about what ten years of collaboration with a brand actually feels like: the pride in watching something grow, the pleasure of genuinely adoring the product, the particular joy of seeing shoes that are actually good for your feet become genuinely cool. It was a passionate encapsulation of our work together, in front of the people who had been watching the brand become what it is.
The guest list read like the most desirable table at the most desirable event of the week. Chris Kontos was there, as were Suzan Mutesi, Jessica Leahy, Em Gurr, Dirk Fourie, Christina Macpherson, Tom Derickx, Max May and so many more, each one wearing Bared in their own way, each styling the brand through the lens of their own irreducible taste. The conversation moved between collections and collaborations, between runway opinions and personal style philosophies, between the first martini and the last one. Nobody was in a hurry to leave. That is the mark of a lunch that has done what it was meant to do.
Bared has built its name over many years on the belief that you should not have to choose between looking extraordinary and feeling good. At Le Foote on a Thursday in May, with the week's best minds gathered around one table, that belief was the truth, worn on 45 pairs of feet and reflected in every photograph taken that afternoon.
The Press That Followed: From Vogue to The Guardian
Fashion week coverage has changed. Where once the story was told through print pages and appointment-only showroom visits, it now lives everywhere simultaneously: in real-time social posts from the front row, in reel formats that collapse the distance between runway and consumer, in editorial features that arrive before the week has even ended. In 2026, Bared was part of all of it.
Vogue Australia covered the week with the authority it has always brought to Australian fashion, and Bared featured prominently in its street style coverage. The Guardian weighed in with its characteristic combination of cultural intelligence and fashion acuity. Broadsheet captured the energy of the week at street level, the kind of coverage that reaches an audience who consume fashion through their phones and whose attention is the hardest and most valuable to earn. Nine.com.au brought the brand into the mainstream conversation. Across all of it, Bared appeared as a genuine presence in the story of how Australian fashion week looked and felt in 2026.
Every Moment In Between
What made AFW ’26 unforgettable was not just the runways themselves, but the movement happening around them. The spontaneous street style moments. The late arrivals. The beauty looks half-finished in ride shares. The energy of Sydney becoming a temporary playground for fashion’s most interesting people.
On the runway. At the lunch table. In backstage corridors. Outside venues. At afterparties. On editors, models, musicians and creatives moving through the city with purpose and personality.
Australian Fashion Week may only last a few days, but the style is forever.
Shop the Fashion Week Edit — every style worn at AFW 2026, in one place.
Want To Know More? Here’s What Everyone Wore At AFW.
Elle Ferguson not only wore the Pandion Chocolate Brown Croc Emboss. She also wore the Curruca Black and the Alethe Choc Croc Emboss across the week. A decade into partnering with Bared, Elle wears the brand with the comfortable authority of someone who helped shape it. At the lunch she hosted on Thursday, she gave a speech that captured just this, talking about ten years of collaboration, about how the shoes have grown into something truly cool and about how much she adores what this brand has become.
Jessica Gomes styled our Mino Black and Hardware making a statement everywhere she walked.
Jessica Leahy styled our Hillstar Black and shone in our Calandra Heel in Silver. Proving that the Bared wardrobe operates across the full spectrum of fashion week dressing.
Charlene Ye Davies in the Pintail Boot in Chestnut Brown as well as the Tern Boot in Tan Suede. The rich tone, the architectural silhouette, the way these boots worked with everything she wore: it was the kind of street style image that gets saved, referenced and recreated.
Inka Williams wore the Pintail Black and brought it fully into the Sydney register, that particular mode of fashion week dressing where the clothes get better as the night deepens.
Suzan Mutesi in the Vulture Chocolate Brown Neoprene and the Cockatiel Red was a masterclass in knowing exactly which shoe speaks your language. The neoprene boot has a sculptural quality that rewards the eye, and Suzan wore it with the confidence of someone who understands that a great boot is a full-body commitment.
Saskia Wotton in the Softtail Black gave western dressing its most refined expression of the week: minimal, precise, exactly right.
Dirk Fourie wore the Samarium Black paired with a 1940s triple breasted suit which captured the attention of Vogue and The Guardian. Tom Derickx stepped out in the Actinium Olive Green, offering proof that Bared's men's range belongs on the front row with the same authority as anything in the women's collection.
Em Gurr in the Nightingale Rustic Brown was the definition of goes-with-everything, which is to say it goes with everything because it has been thought through completely. She also skated into shows (literally) in our Hillstar Boot, pairing them with an effortlessly detailed white dress.
Isabella Manfredi, Max May and so many more from fashion's inner circle completed the picture: a fashion week in which Bared moved seamlessly from category to status symbol to cultural shorthand for the kind of style that actually lasts.
