The New Zealand contingent at Australian Fashion Week

Designs by World (L) and Zambesi at Australian Fashion Week. Pictures / Reuters, Getty Images

Cybele

Often, to see how good designer Cybele Wiren's relatively low-key clothes are, you need to get up nice and close. It's all in the details, the clever straps, the pretty prints and interesting panels. But the more adventurous she gets, the more obvious the good stuff becomes.

She's been working on her own prints and these included a fuzzy Pop Art black and white spotted dress, complete with line-drawn bunnies on the pockets.

Wiren's trademark double-looped shoulder straps and clever cutouts have mutated and taken over, so that while one of her jackets has cleverly twisted cutouts at the front, another has the cutout on the back trimmed sexy and low. And some of those flattering Empire line dresses she does so well took a grand turn - one little black number frosted with dangling sequins and sparkly fuzz was breathtaking.

World

You've got to hand it to World, they know how to make a bold statement. On the second day of Australian Fashion Week in what was starting to look like a sea of pallid pretty-pretty, they gave everyone a fright by sending the first of their Amazonian models out looking like over-the-top drag queens. A rabid, ruffled confectionery of lace, multi-coloured satins, florettes, bustles, netting and gold Lurex atop red velvet platform heels left the assembled crowd dazzled but probably cold when it came to actually wanting to wear the Victoriana-inspired madness.

However the rest of the show turned up some more interesting, innovative-but-wearable pieces of clothing. For World it is, apparently, always about art and creativity.

There was no story behind this collection, simply entitled Collection 33 it only referred to their 33rd collection.

It's hard to imagine local blokes wondering down Queen St in pink ankle socks, leopard print shirts, Madras-check shorts and a striped blazer.

You can, however, imagine the more dandyish fella taking one piece at a time and wearing it with jeans.

And you can definitely imagine some of the more imaginative womenswear making a glorious statement on some special occasion. Purple satin dress, plunging V-neck encrusted with in-your-face wired ruffles, anyone?

While some of the pieces were starting to look a little bit dated there were other garments, such as the grey marl shorts, dungarees and inventive vests trimmed with sexy red satin and stain bows, that provided a glimpse into World's future.

Zambesi

Watching the Zambesi show in Sydney was like watching one of those arthouse movies where it's all very beautiful but nothing ever really happens. You leave feeling elated and soothed but also a little confused. Then, later on that evening, you dream about it. And the next morning you wake up with visions of ethereal loveliness still in your head.

And that's exactly what it was like last Friday night in Sydney with a collection that related back to designer Elisabeth Findlay's Greek heritage.

The soundtrack came partially from a movie called Never On Sunday, filmed in Greece in 1960 featuring Melina Mercouri, one of Findlay's favourite actresses. It included a sort of ambient mixture of what sounded like traditional Greek music. And at the end of a pretty quiet show, a row of models turned, faced the front row and shocked everyone by smashing a bunch of white plates on the ground as though at a Greek wedding.

There was a holistic feeling of what Findlay calls zoi in Greek. Pronounced zoy-ee, this can be translated as a kind of spirit or life force.

Whatever it was, it resulted in a bunch of characters you'd expect to see on the cobbled Athens back streets.

The black widow, the village virgin in white, the American tourist in her tailored summer dress and pretty, flirty jacket, and the old man in a white shirt with a fitted black waistcoat.

And somehow the primary shades in the collection - black, white, grey and sunshine yellow - managed to suggest square, white washed rooftops against blue sky and sea. Of course, these are all poetic metaphors.

The old fella was actually a beautiful young model wearing an incredible pleated, oversized crepe shirt with a tailored, fitted waistcoat over the top. The black widow was a slim girl in a subtly detailed and draped, silken, ankle length shift. The American tourist's frock was a clever modern, intricately cut version of a 50s-style summer dress.

Even the traditional Greek men's shirt with long sleeves had become a sexy, off-the-shoulder, transparent top with over-sized sleeves.

Almost everything was incredibly wearable and definitely covetable and the beauty of the clothing was subtle - which is why it took a while for their merit to sink in and for onlookers to realise how much smarts had actually gone into their making.

Keucke

This label was the recipient of the second Mercedes Benz Start Up award earlier this year, which meant designer Veronica Keucke was sponsored by Australian Fashion Week itself to come here and take part in one of two New Generation shows.

Last in a show of seven newish designers, Keucke certainly had some interesting ideas and these arrived in one of two main ways. The first involved her choice of colours and printed fabrics - leopard, houndstooth check, and black and white graphics. Her other strong point was all about playing around with pattern-making. A bib front dress with a cowl neck and a skirt with in-built braces was a nod to the current trend for bib frontage, as well as an oversized, draped pocket on a full skirt.

Indeed by the end of the show, these pockets, each with a contrasting trim, had grown so large they threatened to take over the skirt.

Modern, girlish and quite streetwise, with glimpses of promise at times but perhaps not ready to set Paris on fire quite yet.