The long journey onto the international runways for Zimmermann, Romance Was Born, Christopher Esber and Dion Lee began with models strutting their sequinned, slashed and embroidered stuff at Australian Fashion Week.

Today, the direction of that runway became unclear, as owner IMG announced it was abandoning the event after nearly 20 years.

“The event has played a key role in ushering the industry forward,” Natalie Xenita, managing director, IMG Fashion Events Asia Pacific, said in a press release. “We are incredibly proud of IMG’s many accomplishments leading Australian Fashion Week for the last 20 years.

“We navigated a changing industry by introducing new initiatives including the strategic refocus on resort collections, a consumer integrated model that has been replicated globally, waiving participation fees to support designers since the pandemic, and hosting the first-ever Indigenous designer shows.”

Xenita and other IMG representatives were unavailable for further comment on whether the event has been sold to another organisation. The final association between IMG and Australian Fashion Week will be the Laureate Awards held at the Sydney Opera House next week.

With front-row whispers getting louder over past months that Australian Fashion Week was for sale, the future of the Sydney-based event remains uncertain. Since launching in 1996 with Akira Isogawa and Alex Perry on the runway, the industry event has drawn international buyers and press to Australia.

“Let’s hope it continues,” says designer Jordan Gogos, who has shown at Australian Fashion Week for the past four years.

“During Australian Fashion Week, I’m a celebrity and on the day it ends, I’m a normal person.”

Gogos is currently preparing to take part in an exhibition at the Australian Consulate in New York and says that the media attention during fashion week has been a crucial factor in raising his profile as a multidisciplinary artist.