If you check the weather once and decide what to wear in Melbourne for the entire day, there is a reasonable chance you'll regret it before lunch.
Sun in the morning. A cold wind in the afternoon. Rain somewhere in between. And by evening, somehow, it feels right to sit outside with a drink.
In Melbourne, layering feels less like a styling technique and more like a life skill.
Maybe that's part of why we've always liked the city. It rarely asks you to define yourself all at once.
THE WEATHER CHANGES. SO DO YOU.
Melbourne style is difficult to reduce to a single look.
A shirt gets another layer. A jacket begins the morning buttoned and ends the afternoon open. A blazer that looked almost formal at 10am feels completely different once the trousers loosen, the shoes change, or a T-shirt appears underneath.
Good clothes need to allow those transitions.
You shouldn't have to decide who you're going to be at breakfast and then maintain the costume until midnight.
The clothes should be able to move with the day.
For us, that's part of what Modern Classic means. The familiar pieces remain. The rules around them become less fixed.
MELBOURNE REWARDS PEOPLE WHO LOOK TWICE.
Some of Melbourne's best things aren't immediately obvious.
A bar behind an unremarkable door. A tiny café halfway down a laneway. Artwork you only notice when you look up. Another turn and suddenly the city feels completely different.
Its clothing culture can feel the same way.
The first impression doesn't always need to be loud. Look again and you begin noticing proportion, texture, the placement of a shoulder, the length of a trouser, or the centimetre of another layer appearing beneath a jacket.
Quiet doesn't mean boring.
Sometimes the most confident clothes are the ones that don't need to announce themselves first.
THE CLICHÉ IS BLACK. THE REALITY IS PERSONAL.
Melbourne has a reputation for wearing black. And yes, there is plenty of it.
But black is only the easiest part of the story.
What makes the city interesting is how comfortable it is with people dressing like themselves.
Vintage beside tailoring. Sportswear beside something experimental. Second-hand finds beside carefully designed pieces. Minimalism beside something strange enough that it shouldn't work—but does.
That freedom matters to us.
Because the best clothes leave something unfinished.
They don't complete the person. The person completes the clothes.
Quiet doesn’t mean boring.
THE MELBOURNE RULE OF THREE.
If we had to steal one dressing idea from the city, it would be this:
ONE THING THAT HOLDS.
ONE THING THAT MOVES.
ONE THING YOU CAN TAKE OFF.
Something structured: a jacket, a blazer, or trousers with a clear silhouette.
Something softer: a shirt, knit, loose layer or fabric that moves with the body.
Then one piece that can disappear as the weather, place or mood changes.
It isn't a Melbourne dress code. It's simply a way of leaving room for the day to change.
And increasingly, we think good clothing should always leave that room.
One thing that holds. One thing that moves. One thing you can take off.
BACK IN MELBOURNE.
For this shoot, we didn't want to turn Melbourne into a postcard. There was no need to constantly prove where we were.
Instead, Haftom moved through the city in ARVOpm: through laneways, past painted walls, waiting for the light to change, letting the clothing slowly become part of the architecture, colour, shadow and movement around it.
The original project began with one sentence:
In Melbourne, the light moves slower.
Maybe the light isn't actually slower. Maybe Melbourne simply makes you more willing to look.
And when you look twice, ordinary things begin to become interesting.
A wall. A corner. A jacket. Even something you threw on without thinking that morning.
Style gets interesting when it stops performing and starts living.
That might be the most Melbourne thing about it.
Modern Classic, in motion.
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA
Creative Director — Jenny Hsieh
Photography — Karen Song
Styling — Kelly Ko
Model — Haftom
Wardrobe — ARVOpm
ARVO WORLD — People, places and the way we live in clothes.
