On the Australian retail scene

There is a distinct curse that comes from living in Australia, and that is that our stores and labels are stupendously slow when it comes to picking up on trends for the current season. While for the Northern hemisphere the fashion shows forecast trends for the next season, Australia is less lucky. For us, it's a year - or more - before the good stuff gets translated to us. So here is a little review of the retail scene down under.

What further exacerbates our problem is that our high-street chain stores like Sportsgirl, Bardot and Witchery have distinct flaws. Sportsgirl like to rehash boho gypsy crap way too often (like... right now), Bardot are just.. Bardot i.e. suffering from ombre overload (seriously guys... that trend is OVER) and Witchery are somewhat overpriced, especially for students like us. Then we also have stores like Supré, yes with the wanky accent on the e, which suffers from lycra disease, pantsless sales assistants syndrome and suffering from the ridiculously black interiors and blaring music that afflicts all teen el cheapo shops. Your intrepid bloggers, brave in most things, are somewhat intimidated by the sheer bad quality of it all. This applies also to: Dotti (though admittedly a step above), Temt, Barkins and Valleygirl. Yeah, we've never set foot in most of these places but we don't need to; their displays are terrifying enough.

Of course we do have some good ones. Forever New is a fairly recent addition to the Australian retail scene but have proven themselves to be quite impressive. There are the usual suspects of FCUK and Country Road which along with Witchery are more upmarket so can be counted on to deliver, but once again some of the pieces are a little out of our price range. Cotton On is good but only for basic tees.

But for affordable, on-trend clothes with a little bit of an edge, a personal favourite of ours to shop is General Pants Co. I recently picked up a pair of Something black track pants (pictures to come) there that are absolutely one of my favourite pieces. Our department stores Myer and David Jones are always good sources of clothes as well. And like any other in the blogosphere, American Apparel basics are big obsessions. Finally, eBay is god. There are so many fantastic items on there, most at relatively bargainous prices, including my pair of Levis' faded cutoff shorts I recently bought off there which will undoubtedbly be my favourites come the warmer weather.

Despite the somewhat negative tone of this post on the Australian retail scene, it's not that bad. I've merely outlined some of our pet hates, but the Melbourne retail scene is undoubtedbly fantastic with so many great high-end boutiques, some quality chain stores and edgy contemporary labels popping up everywhere. More posts to come on that!

-S