Some Australian Fashion Week looks were built for The Devil Wears Prada sass. All glitzz, flashbulb-lit glam, and theatrical gimmick. And then there was this year’s Karla Spetic show, Compose.
Presented offsite at Saint Barnabas Chapel, Spetic’s Resort 2027 collection swapped the runway (literally. models walked through the crowd) for restraint. And, in a season where maximalism once again tightened its grip on the fashion cycle, the designer instead chose softness. Ease. Space.
And as a front-row guest of the Croatian-born Aussie-bred designer, in the softened light filtering through the chapel’s stained glass windows, it worked beautifully.
The setting itself felt deeply intentional. The church location – all soaring structure and diffused light – became an extension of the collection’s language. Models moved through the space in layered transparencies, tactile fabrics and elongated silhouettes that shifted subtly with movement. Nothing felt static. Or overly resolved. Instead, garments appeared to evolve as they walked; lace revealing skin before disappearing beneath tailoring, sheer overlays softening sharper construction, familiar archival shapes returning in gentler, quieter forms.
By now, lingerie-inspired lace has become something of a Karla Spetic signature, but here it felt newly distilled. Catsuits emerged like ghostly echoes from collections past, rendered in muted tones of ivory, nude, grey and black. Filmy underpinnings peeked through structured separates, while delicate openwork textures added fragility without ever tipping into overt romanticism. As the show notes described, these were “familiar forms revisited and refined through a quieter lens.” And that sense of refinement permeated every look.
That same understated philosophy extended backstage too, where beauty mirrored the collection’s softer emotional register.
As the official skin care partner for the show, Weleda collaborated with lead makeup artist Susan Lilianto to create skin that looked luminous rather than laboured. Faces appeared fresh, lightly nourished and intentionally untouched – less “glass skin” and more actual human skin, just exceptionally well rested. In a beauty landscape still obsessed with contour, correction and overcomplication, the decision to let skin breathe felt perfectly aligned with Spetic’s vision of femininity that reveals itself gradually rather than instantly.
Hair followed a similarly restrained path thanks to Revlon Professional, who returned as the runway’s exclusive hair partner for a third consecutive year. Led by Benjamin Martin, Creative Director of XVI Collective, the backstage team embraced soft movement and natural texture over hyper-polished styling. Hair looked touchable. Slightly imperfect in the most deliberate way. The kind of lived-in softness fashion perpetually tries – and often fails – to replicate.
Importantly, none of the beauty partnerships felt bolted on or commercially intrusive. Instead, they organically reinforced the collection’s central themes: fluidity, tactility, and quiet luxury. Even backstage wellness partner bellyME – supplying probiotic wellness shots to models and crew – tapped into the show’s wider conversation around care, balance and internal wellbeing. Fashion Week may traditionally run on caffeine, adrenaline and approximately four collective hours of sleep, but Spetic’s backstage environment appeared more intentional than chaotic.
And perhaps that’s what made Compose resonate so strongly.
In an industry currently addicted to virality, Karla Spetic continues designing for women rather than for content. Her clothes aren’t costumes engineered for a TikTok moment. They’re intelligent, emotionally intuitive garments that ask to be worn, inhabited and interpreted over time. There was no obvious “headline dress” here. No singular gimmick destined to flood Instagram by midnight. Instead, there was atmosphere. Texture. A feeling.
Which, ironically, is often what lingers longest after Fashion Week ends.
