Dion Lee’s potential as one of Australia’s most acclaimed luxury designers was realized by the fashion industry early in his career. He has progressed from presenting his first show at Australian Fashion Week in 2009 in an underground car park in Kings Cross to regularly present at New York Fashion Week. Dion Lee epitomes youthful Australian luxury fashion.
Born in 1985 in Sydney, Australia, Dion Lee has always shown an aptitude for fashion. From a young age, he was picky about the clothes he wore, would host fashion parades on his street, and as a teenager, he started designing clothes. After a year working in a trade, Lee studied design at the Fashion Design Studio TAFE NSW, graduating in 2008. The following year, he debuted his first collection at Australian Fashion Week; he considers this to be his graduating collection. After that, his designs were in hot demand, and his self-named brand Dion Lee grew considerably.
Dion Lee has broken many boundaries for Australian fashion. He was the first designer to stage a runway presentation at the Sydney Opera House in 2010. At the age of 27, he made his debut at New York Fashion Week. His designs push fashion boundaries and are described as “technical with an intelligent sensuality”. Achieving the quasi-engineered look is done through many experimental techniques, such as laser cutting, digital printing and binding. His bold new designs mean that fashion magazines quickly picked him up; shortly before his debut at New York Fashion Week in 2013, Vogue wrote an article titled “From A Land Down Under” about Lee, which helped pave the way for his fashion take-off in the USA.
Surprisingly, Dion Lee is not more famous; he is well known in the fashion world but has not yet ascended to becoming a prominent luxury fashion house. Despite the abundance of celebrities that have worn his designs, including Jennifer Lawrence, Cate Blancett, Charlize Theron and Selena Gomez. When Meghan Markle wore Lee’s navy Folded Sail dress, it brought so much traffic to his website that it crashed. Perhaps his most famous item is his Sheer Jersey Corset, which Ariana Grande wore in her music video for “Positions”, which was modelled by Kendall Jenner in CR Fashion Book and Jacob Elordi on the cover of Man About Town. Furthermore, Michelle Pfeiffer, Bella Hadid and Kourtney Kardashian have worn the corset.
Throughout his career, Dion Lee has won numerous awards. These include the Woolmark Designer Award, Qantas Spirit of Youth Award in Fashion Design, Prix de Marie Claire Award- Best Australian Fashion Designer, GQ Man of the Year – Best Designer and the Australian Fashion Laureate.
Dion Lee’s youthful and experimental designs have brought him to the forefront of Australian fashion, and without a doubt, in the future, he will become an eminent luxury fashion designer. From beginnings, in an underground car park, Lee now has seven flagship stores and has recently presented his Fall 2021 collection at an online runway presentation from his new store in New York’s Soho.