After ascending a scarlet staircase with twists reminiscent of the M80 ring road, we arrived at Mane, a newly opened retail space in Collingwood. Within a dedicated section of the space—termed an ‘outpost,’ or a store within a store—hushed proceedings were underway. We were about to witness a performance titled All Dolled Up, which explored the long-standing relationship between two established Melbourne brands: P.A.M. (shorthand for Perks and Mini), founded in 2000 by Shauna Toohey and Mischa Hollenbach. P.A.M. offers a 360-degree drowned visual and material world sustained by collaborations between friends and peers—something they term as their ‘psychographic’—including the brand S!X, established in 1994 by Denise Sprynskyj and Peter Boyd. S!X emerged as a reactionary retort to the fashion industry’s overproduction and overconsumption, with collections such as The Sea Between declaring their commitment to ‘High Risk Fashion.’ Today, in addition to running their brand, Sprynskyj and Boyd serve as senior lecturers in the Bachelor of Design course at RMIT.  

It was while Toohey was attending RMIT herself, under the supervision of Sprynskyj, that the pedagogical relationship between teacher and student began. Toohey graduated with a Bachelor of Design (fashion) from RMIT “sometime in the 1990s” and has since sat in as a guest on undergraduate presentations. It was during one of these sessions that the collaboration between the two brands came to be.

S!X and P.A.M.'s collaboration debut involved models slowly moving within the store space around a central performer who was arranging fabric off-cuts and swatches, some shiny, all colourful. Models, moving in a deliberate, almost ritual-like way, handed the assembled audience small pieces of paper that resembled swing tags, requesting they write down any anxieties.

These slips of paper were carefully handed to those in attendance, including architect Pascale Gomes-McNabb, visual artist Sai-Wai Foo, Karen Webster of Creative Victoria, Christine Barro and her sister Jane-Ann Davoren of the inner-city subterranean retail space Christine, Camillo and Monica Ippoliti, downstairs neighbours to P.A.M.corp HQ at the eatery and beer hall Cookie on level one of Curtain House, and Amelia Borg of ‘Sibling’ architecture, who also has a space on level four of the same building.

The collection, as the show title infers, was taken from the doll, in particular the Guatemalan worry doll. An extension of the Brasilis Collective project, which began in São Paulo, Brazil, in 2017, S!X used single-use plastics to construct each doll, aiming to raise awareness about the harmful effects of these pollutants on waterways and marine environments while simultaneously creating a desirable and luxurious object. Much of the clothing draws on similar notions of femininity, featuring doll-like styling with hair arranged in ringlets tied into pigtails, schoolgirl plaits adorned with ribbons, or set curls resembling an exaggerated automaton or bisque doll. The make-up furthered this with bright red overdrawn lips and rosy cheeks.  

For the clothing, all of which was one-off and not currently for sale, there were housecoats and skirts, many adorned with frills (some made from knit tees), sprays of tulle, and fine antique lace. Hand-dyed doilies and crochet work were appliquéd here and there, often trimming a collar or sleeve. Elsewhere were found or repurposed materials—such as tablecloths—draped into skirts that hung asymmetrically. The graphic prints on T-shirts and button-down shirts, along with the idiomatic expressions that define P.A.M.’s distinctive visual language, were spliced and reworked. Their baseball caps, embroidered with branding, featured large, colourful stitches as intentional repairs, with each cap trailing knotted scarves made from twisted fabric remnants. S!X enhanced reworked garments by applying additional screen-printed processes, featuring broadsheet newspaper prints with headlines and a doll as the lead image.

Toohey explained that after her initial meetings with S!X, she provided feedback and shared her thoughts but later retracted them, instructing the team to disregard all her comments and suggestions. After what felt like months of planning, Toohey finally began to see glimpses of what they had been creating. The real excitement and opportunity lay in seeing how they would transform the P.A.M. clothing. While the collection featured S!X's signature deconstruction and reconfiguration, Toohey noted that it still carried “a strong weight of P.A.M. in it.” This process involved releasing any anxiety or worry and fully embracing the process.