When Jennifer Hawkins invites you to dinner in a dark car park in Melbourne, you put aside any thoughts of an Underbelly type demise that could await and RSVP, "yes".
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The face of Myer jump started the department store's bi-annual fashion launch, set in the car park of the University of Melbourne, dressed like a blonde Morticia Addams in a gown by Alex Perry on Thursday.
Sleeves too long to eat with, pom poms for grown ups, deep burgundy hues, dark florals and heavy leather pieces by Yeojin Bae, By Johnny and Mishca, were all on the fashion menu while Ian Curley of the renowned eatery French Saloon, dished up some of his famed dishes to the 116 VIP guests including Neighbours star Jodi Gordon, comedian Andy Lee and The Project's Carrie Bickmore.
Myer's love affair with car parks continued for its autumn-winter showcase, with the smaller event following in the footsteps of last year's innovative parade inside Barangaroo's sparse parking lot. Except this time there were actual cars - Tesla electric ones - which was lucky as fuel emissions and Billecart-Salmon champagne are an uglier combination than pink and neon.
Like everything on the catwalk - Aje's distressed denim and olive suits by MJ Bale - the cars will be available to buy at Myer from Friday.
The Elon Musk of Australian fashion retail, Myer's deputy chief executive Daniel Bracken is pleased with the new motoring partnership and direction of the intimate seasonal launch which showed 100 looks by only 16 labels - mainly Australian.
"We have a really dedicated position on Australian designers. We are an Australian department store, in my view, the only Australian department store," he told Fairfax Media, subtly sledging South African-owned rival David Jones. "We've got a commitment to Australian fashion and brands like Alex [Perry] and Toni [Maticevski] that continue to be stalwarts of our fashion offer but the brands we nurture like By Johnny or White Suede are as much in our DNA and in the fabric of what we do we are constantly looking to build on that."
