“I’m a dark romantic,” Sorronda says. “But I’m just following the path of light.”
“It has been eight years since my last Australian Fashion Week and I just felt this phoenix energy to create and remind people that I’m still around.”
Sorronda has delved into the dark arts of design for 18 years,cultivating a following in Milan,Tokyo and in thesunglass-covered eyes of Karl Lagerfeld who described her “as one to watch.” Now with fashion’s dark side gaining greater exposure through the success of theNetflix seriesWednesday,she is casting her spell closer to home.
In Sorronda’s Resort 2024 collectionIn Dreamsshowing at Australian Fashion Week on Wednesday,darkness dominates with bleak black pinafores,strict shirting and romantic gowns for women who refuse to grow out of theirTwilight phase.
The goth approach is not a marketing ploy,although the bowerbird designer has seen the hype surroundingWednesday. At Australian Fashion Week in 2005 Sorronda’s first collection,An Angel At My Table,established her moody signature,setting Sorronda apart from Brisbane’s colourful creators Easton Pearson,Paul Hunt and Keri Craig.
“That collection was inspired by my sleep paralysis,” she says. “This is freaky but when I closed my eyes I would see shadows and lights. I alway believe that I lived between the realms.”
“It sounds a bit ‘hocus pocus’ but I was drawn to something that was important that I couldn’t quite understand and wanted to. By expressing it through fashion it helped me.”