Comedian Celeste Barber is no stranger to the absurdities of the fashion industry, but even she was taken aback to learn the extent to which some clothes – and the women who wore them – were policed in our nation’s past.
As the presenter of ABC TV's upcoming documentary, The Way We Wore, Barber steers the audience through Australia’s fashion story, exploring its social and cultural significance over the decades.
It includes moments of celebration, and, as Barber discovered, moments that are truly confronting.
One scene that left her jaw to the floor was vision of "beach inspectors" — volunteers whose job was to enforce modesty rules — physically removing women from beaches for wearing swimmers that were too revealing.
"That for sure made me really uncomfortable," Barber says.
Another related event that stood out was a gathering of the inspectors — all men — to critique and give feedback on the modesty of women's bikinis as they were modelled in front of them.
"Some people [on set] were like laughing, uncomfortable laughing, but oh my God," Barber says.
"I understand this is something that happened in history but I still feel very uncomfortable watching it.
"It was so messed up, it really blew my mind, I just couldn't believe it — those poor women."
The vision was also hard to stomach for writer, producer and director Nel Minchin, who shared her own surprising, and troubling, discovery from Australia’s fashion past: an ad demonising women’s "thigh bulge" from wearing shorts, and the latest clothing to fix it.
"You know what that's made me do, it's literally made me wear bike pants and look at my 'ugly thigh bulge' and just be like 'F**k that ad'," Minchin says.
Challenging fashion as 'shallow'
While exploring Australia’s past, Barber and Minchin are challenging viewers to ask themselves why, despite its social, cultural and economic influence, fashion is often considered shallow.
Minchin admits that even she, when approached to work on the documentary, was initially caught up in that narrative of fashion being something superficial.
"Initially, I was like, 'Ah, do I want to do that fluffy thing?'," she says.
"Partly that comes from my own stuff where I [think] in my 20s people thought I was fluffy, and now I feel like I've got to a point where people go 'Oh actually she can tackle quite big subjects'."
Minchin's directing credits include documentaries on the history of Bangarra Dance Threatre, sporting icon Steve Waugh, and rugby player Israel Folau.
Minchin says she grappled with an “internal monologue” as she considered the project.
"It's like a totally sexist response on my behalf, 'fashion's not fluffy, why are you even questioning this?'" she says.
"Obviously, you don't want to make it too earnest because it is amazing and Celeste is inspiring. You want all that, you want to have a rollicking time.
"But just because it's fun doesn't mean there's not actually really big insights into our politics and systemic racism and systemic sexism."
The inside stories of fashion's elite
Minchin says after her initial hesitation, she set out to make the series with two things in mind.
The first was to explore the personal stories and memories of the show's guests, which include industry heavy-hitters, academics, designers and models.
"Fashion can be quite an exclusive and elite world, and it's really nice to break that down," she says.
Audiences can expect Minchin to pull back the curtain on the industry, including filming snippets not usually shared with audiences.
"That was a very deliberate choice, to make sure it wasn't just the facade or the on-screen persona of fashion, that we were actually showing people as they were getting made up, as they were sitting down."
Minchin’s second priority was to seek out the stories of people and communities that have, for the most part, had their contribution to our fashion history glossed over.
"I think the absence of stories or uncovering the absence of stories is as important as the ones that we see," Minchin says.
"Why was there such a multicultural environment in the 1800s, with Afghan cameleers, a large Chinese population, African people on our first ships, [but] … the English fashion, you know, prevail?
"Obviously, that's like a clue as to who was in power and why.
"If you actually do spend the time to look for [those stories], then they're there, and we've just got to start telling them more."
The importance of diversity when we talk about fashion isn't lost on Barber either.
Anyone familiar with her Instagram account will know that at the heart of her videos is a challenge to the fashion industry to do better when it comes to inclusivity.
"Having done the documentary, it's like 'Oh, we really have come a long way', but my God we've been through a lot to get here'," she says.
Now keenly aware of the struggles of the past, Barber says her personal wish is that the industry's progress doesn't stall.
"I think about body inclusivity for me and representation for minority groups, and not just going back to one type of person on a runway, or one type of person that fits into clothing," she says.
"It would be nice for that not to make headline news when there's someone [on the runway] who's over a size zero."
The Way We Wore premieres Tuesday November 21 at 8pm on ABC TV or on ABC iview.