Before Christopher Hrysanidis shared the details for his debut collection, he wasn’t a familiar name. His bare Instagram profile confirmed he was skilled, though. The Melbourne-based designer has a knack for tailoring and construction with an incredible awareness of fabric, structure and layering. Hrysanidis dropped out of fashion school after a year, trading institutional education for a professional intervention at a decades-old pattern maker. Here he learnt the importance of behavioural skills like multi-tasking as well as practical ones such as pattern making. He learnt, as he tells me 20 minutes before the show, shaking from nerves and a lack of sleep, “the ways in which he should work.”

These ‘ways’ are reflected in ‘Lillies’, an ode to his late mother and the grief he was riddled with after her passing. The collection proceeded with a suite of black pieces, long-line blazers pinned with a Ruby Red Butler handmade silver pin, jersey tops and pants that were also pinned at the calf to create definition. Departing from his use of woven textiles, Hrysanidis showed two knitted turtlenecks with elongated sleeves, each styled with long netted basketball-type shorts pieced together with fine wool suiting cloth, and tall leather boots by Matea Glusevic that looked expensive. The designer’s distilled sense of colour and shade was noticeable in the neutral-toned looks near the end, one including a khaki button shirt with an asymmetrical collar and ruffled cream pants folded at the waist, JW Anderson style.

After the dozen or so looks came down the wood-panelled knave, it occurred to me that a talent like his would be able to resurrect ‘heritage’ Australian bands with the initials ST, JJ and CM—a practice readily welcomed in European and American markets but one that has never occurred here. What if the young talents of Australia walked into those Sydney offices and demanded change? Maybe, just maybe, Australian fashion would be something other than ‘elevated’ beachwear. Could the middle ground find its feet in the sand?