What is national dress in Australia? Do I really have to wear green and gold?
Anna Peters, Middle Park, Vic
The Matildas’ Sam Kerr, left, and Beare
Park designer Gabriella Pereira. Kerr wears the off-field uniform created for the team.
Dressing like a wattle bush is no longer a prerequisite for a patriotic Australian wardrobe. Countless Team Australia Olympic Games uniforms have demonstrated the threat to eyesight and good taste created by combining yellow and green. Successfully co-ordinating these colours without resembling a pineapple is, indeed, a prickly proposition.
As an alternative, many people turn to the colours of the Australian flag, but red, white and blue can be mistaken for the UK, US or Liberia. Meanwhile, the colonial overtones of corked hats and khaki suits rule out bush cosplay, while leaning too heavily into the colours of the Aboriginal flag has the penetrating whiff of cultural appropriation.
A more stylish approach to national pride is, perhaps, to embrace those of our local designers who have an Australian aesthetic, combining comfort, quality and a spirit of adventure (no thongs, in other words). Last year, Beare Park designer Gabriella Pereira created a striped, double-breasted trouser suit with strong shoulders and roomy pants. Stealth-Australian to the max – its merino-wool fabric whispered its origins – the suit quickly became the chic, off-field uniform of the Matildas. “We knew the fabric couldn’t be replicated; it was exclusively ours,” Pereira says. “It felt perfect for the uniforms.”
If the sophistication of a suit stifles your spirit of celebration, more exuberant designers such as Romance Was Born, Gary Bigeni and First Nations labels Kirrikin, Maara Collective and Ngali successfully walk that fine line between nostalgia and naff. Being true blue isn’t about green and gold: it’s about quality, comfort and, above all, advancing Australian fare.
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