The Shrine of Remembrance will host a Melbourne Fashion Week exhibition and iconic new venues have been added to the program in a bid to draw in a new audience.
There will be more than 100 events and for the first time runways will be staged at the Regent Theatre, LUME Melbourne, high up in CBD skyscrapers and the ground floor of 101 Collins Street.
Extra shows have been added during the day and Melbourne Lord Mayor Sally Capp said offering a more diverse range of events, including an exhibition on military influences on popular fashion at the Shrine, would attract a new demographic.
"These places that are meccas for other reasons will draw a different crowd and I think it's a lovely way of engaging the venues and that physical space together with new audiences," Ms Capp told reporters on Wednesday.
The City of Melbourne has chipped in $3 million and Ms Capp said in return it generated 1000 jobs.
She said about 85 per cent of people involved were locals, it would attract more than 100,00 people into the city and generate more than $23 million worth of value to traders.
"Melbourne Fashion Week is about runway to retail, this is important for Melbourne because so many of our retailers are still getting themselves back up and running post the pandemic," Ms Capp added.
Stylist Stuart Walford, who is in charge of three runways, said the 'quiet luxury' trend of shying away from branded clothing would feature heavily in his shows, which each take up to three months to prepare.
"From a production angle the shows take a lot of time to build out and then the fashion component to a runway is more at the tail end," Mr Walford said.
Melbourne Fashion Week Ambassador and Heartbreak High star Ayesha Madon went to university in the CBD and said she was thrilled to be associated with the event as the city had encouraged her creative pursuits.
"I'm really interested in emerging artists so I'll be really looking out for the student shows," she said.
