When Christian Kimber took home Australia’s National Designer Award in 2019, it was the culmination of a life spent more or less in genuflection to the fashion industry – spanning across London, Florence, Hong Kong and, perhaps most crucially, Melbourne. For more than a decade, the award-winning Briton has called Australia’s most livable city home, adding to its reputation for menswear labels that are independently owned and operated, and ‘if you know, you know’ in their aesthetic.

After winning early acclaim from fashion writers and opinion leaders in the men’s footwear blogosphere in the late 2010s, Kimber debuted his first collection of ready-to-wear clothing in 2018. His slubby linen layers and worn-in knitwear designs were at the forefront of what many style-conscious men now simply regard as the ‘Australian aesthetic’: an expression of fashion rooted in dishevelment, albeit the kind that’s good-natured and rugged, in the image of the larrikin. Set amid South Melbourne’s leafy auburn expanses, we dropped by for a look at Kimber’s latest store, where he was kind enough to share his thoughts on ‘Aussie style’, why he opened a new store mid-pandemic, and what goes into a successful fashion show.


ACM: Our readers in the UK might be pleasantly surprised to hear that you originally grew up on the south coast of England. In 2011 you made the – as it now turns out – pivotal choice to immigrate to Australia. What prompted that?

CK: I guess the short answer is that I fell in love with an Australian girl. At the time we were living in London together, and some changes in government policy meant that, even though she’d been there for years, she was required to return home.

I was working for a pretty small men’s footwear company at the time, realising that I’d kind of hit my limit there. By that stage, I’d had recurring dreams about doing my own thing, and so decided to take a punt and move with my partner (now my wife) halfway across the world.