Alex Perry 2010

Alex Perry has always known that bigger is better, and the reaction of Sydney’s fashion set to his latest show proved a strong public endorsement of such an ideal.

Sound Stage 7 at Fox Studios was the unlikely off-site venue chosen to accommodate Perry’s grand vision of staging Australia’s largest ever fashion show, as part of Rosemount Australian Fashion Week 2010. As house photographers for this event, Smartset arrived at the venue at the allotted call time of 3.30pm, many hours before the scheduled show time of 8.30pm. As such, we were witness to the radical transformation of an enormous, dark and cavernous space that looked like it could have been used as an aircraft hangar for the German Luftwaffe pre WWII, to an elegantly laid out space that seemed entirely appropriate to house his 1400 guests and show off his Arabian princess inspired creations.

Behind the scenes, Perry also enlisted a couple of other ‘Greeks done good’ mates to help backstage, with Napoleon Perdis working his magic with the make-up brush, and Renya Xydis in charge of hair. All three are acknowledged masters of their craft, but are equally adept in front of the TV camera and wielding the microphone- which was just as well, as they seemed to be everywhere at this show. Mr Perdis in particular showed amazing dexterity in his ability to conduct multiple interviews and  pose for pictures yet never wavering in his  attention to the girl before him being impeccably made-up. It really was an orderly chaos as the models were  prepared  amongst the slew of photographers, tv crew, PR people, make-up artists, hair dressers and that recently invented term-stylists (what they do I still don’t know).

At a fashion show, if you are running an hour late, this is considered on time, so the mood in the minutes leading up to the eventual start time of approximately 9.45pm was fairly calm and considered.  When the show started, Perry’s vision was brought to life and was a study in his signature brand of elegance- tall slender models sashayed up and down the 150 metre U-shaped runway- the strategically placed down lights and enormous space combining to create a beautiful moody lighting and an unmistakably exciting, tense and  almost surreal atmosphere.

Ffiteen minutes later and it was all over, and Perry himself sashayed down the runway, signature sunnies perched atop his head, to the expected rapturous applause from all present. A very generous delivery time of 8am the next morning was suggested by the PR for delivery of pictures, so the real fun for Smartset begun now as we began sorting  through/editing  2000 plus files to deliver key shots by the allotted time.