The 71-year-old fashion commentator – international fashion editor for all 19 of Vogue's editions – who is famous for her independent analysis and pompadour hairstyle, is in Australia to present the Australian Fashion Laureate on Friday.

The fearless and peerless critic also kicked off the new 'in conversation' series at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences Centre for Fashion with Collette Dinnigan this week.

Menkes, who prior to her time at Vogue was the fashion editor of the International Herald Tribune for 25 years, has been a long-time fan of Dinnigan.

"She's done a fantastic job for women, for fashion and for Australia and she really deserves all the support we can give her," Menkes said.

While Dinnigan has retired from ready-to-wear, Menkes is now keen to see other Australian designers turn their attention to bikinis and budgie smugglers.

"Someone needs to own swimwear and Australia is in the best position to do that. About 20 years ago Israel were going to produce a fashion week for swimwear but that didn't happen for a number of reasons, we have Miami but Australians could be a driving force. Who is doing men's swimwear? It may not even exist, it should and it could here," she said.

A trained historian, Menkes regularly takes the major players like Marc Jacobs and Karl Lagerfeld to task, refuses gifts from designers and is nonplussed by the "peacocks and crows" of the fashion world like celebrities in the front row and street style bloggers.

"Clearly the celebrity thing is huge. It's really overblown, now it's become such an industry of its own. The big names use their big money to bring somebody in on a contract to wear their clothes, which is fine I'm not criticising it, but it's not very spontaneous," she said.

"Collette Dinnigan is an example of how celebrities choosing to wear her clothes is both an honour and an acceptance and I don't believe that she bribed them to wear these clothes. They wanted to wear them and that is good."

She also praised the recent Australian Designers Abroad showroom set up by the Australian Fashion Chamber during Paris Fashion Week which allowed foreign press and buyers to become familiar with home grown labels like Fashion Laureate award nominees Strateas.Carlucci and Camilla and Marc.

"It's a great initiative that means we get to see everything under the one roof. It could be developed digitally to have all the shows staged here run behind the looks over there to let us interact with the live garments a little more."