Within a year of launching his men’s garb line, Christian Kimber has been crowned Australian’s high-quality new designer.
The Melbourne-based fashion designer behind the eponymous label beat five different finalists to say the National Designer Award on Friday.
British-born and raised, Kimber moved to Melbourne and his Australian wife in 2011 and started designing guys’ shoes and accessories.
In 2018 he brought apparel to his label with the goal of “redefining” Australian menswear.
“Australian men, in my revel in, don’t just put on board shorts and singlets. However, it is no longer genuinely formal fits and ties both,” Kimber told AAP.
“I remember our label to fill the grey location in between – now not too formal, not too casual.”
Kimber’s prizes include $10,000 cash, enterprise mentoring, and a gap in a Melbourne Fashion Festival runway show provided by the opposition’s foremost sponsor David Jones.
He hopes the award will help power the logo’s expansion in Australia and remote places.
“For the Australian fashion industry to say ‘it’s remarkable Christian we like what you are doing,’ it’s made me experience greater assured about myself and our enterprise to develop,” Kimber stated.
“I’d like to begin wholesale once more, and I would like to meet a few American and European customers as well. Maybe David Jones might be interested in us now too,” he stated.
David Jones, head of menswear Chris Wilson said this 12 months’ opposition included the maximum number of menswear designers in the award’s history, reflecting the boom of the menswear class.
“Men have become greater style-conscious and experimenting with expressing their non-public fashion, so there may be a steady demand for new and precise brands,” he stated.
“Christian Kimber has mounted a foundation of super, easy-to-wear, enduring pieces complemented with the aid of bolder announcement pieces – the proper mix for the contemporary gentleman’s cloth wardrobe.”
The different finalists for the award had been BLAIRARCHIBALD, Chris Ran Lin, Double Rainbow, and MANDATORY.
The most straightforward women’s label in the opposition – Arnsdorf – won the inaugural sustainability prize.
* The National Designer Award kicked off the Melbourne Fashion Festival, which runs until March 10.
