This year’s Project Runway was a nail-biting thrill ride of fashion, fashion, fashion. Contestants had to make clothes from fresh market produce, hardware store materials, haberdashery and furnishings, plus design clothes based on zoo animals. Sound crazy? It was.

But shining throughout the show, teetering in impossibly high heels with a dash of eyeliner at the ready was 25 year old Melbourne boy Anthony Capon. With a distinct androgynous avant-garde aesthetic, Capon consistently blew the competition out of the water with his edgy, experimental – yet incredibly constructed – clothes.

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Capon and fellow finalists Lauren Vieyra and William Lazootin were each given $10,000 to create a 10 piece runway collection. Capon’s winning designs were exuberant and outrageous, yet incredibly wearable. The inspiration? Black roses.

‘I just love [black roses],’ Capon told OUTinPerth while on his lunch break at Etal, the Melbourne boutique for whom he works. ‘They’re just sort of how I dress myself – it’s a lot of texture, a lot of detail, lots of different layers – and for me I just really went with it because that’s my personal style.

‘I just called the collection a little black garden for me; it’s me watering my little flowers and seeing them blossom. So, yeah, it was nice – it was good just doing what I love.’

Capon’s gardening motifs went from the beautiful – blue and black rosettes used as underlays on giant shoulders – to the subtle – black garden shears and trowels used as styling – to the outright absurd: Capon himself opening the show while wearing a black watering can on his head.

The overall effect created a runway collection that was equal parts mirth, intrigue and drama. Beguiling would, in fact, be the best word to describe it.

‘I used a lot of silk, natural fibres like silk organza,’ Capon said of the instruction involved in the runway show. ‘In that final dress I used 51 metres of silk organza, which equals about 120 metres of hemming, which was kind of painful, but you know – you do it cause you love it..

‘So silk, a lot of lamé as well, and velour. I made a neck-ruffle out of black perspex. So it was just interesting – I like playing with different textures and different fabrications. I used a lot of rope in my collection too, and it sort of was a linking element, and I sort of plaited it and used Celtic knot-work as a reference to my Irish-dancing background.’

Capon was also the only finalist to include male models on his catwalk. ‘For me, I still think clothes don’t have to be gender-specific, so a lot of my guys clothes you could wear on a female, and some of the women’s clothing as well, the jackets and singlets and stuff like that. So for me it was just something I would wear myself. Not all of it, but a lot of it I would wear myself, so it was just a collection that was pretty much just what I wanted.

Indulgent? Possibly. But Capon simply reeks of such confidence, and with just cause too. His ambition is clear (he has his sights set on Milan and Paris… naturally) and some even go so far as to say he smacks of potentially being a visionary. After all, not many people push the envelopes of good fashion, good style whilst maintaining hope and encouragement for everyday people adopting the outrageous.

But Capon does… and he might just make it happen. But before then he wants to open a concept store. A small quavering doubt that the only way he’ll succeed is to keep his work centralised and manageable. It’s a goal he hopes to achieve by February next year. After that? His $100 000 Rosemount Fashion Week opportunity of course.

‘They kind of provide you with typical parts of running the show; hairdressers, models, and all that kind of thing, but they give you low amounts of funds to actually do the collection. So it’ll be interesting; yes I can make it, but it’ll be interesting to see whether I can actually produce anything with any money left over.’

No doubt whatever Capon produces it’ll garner him the attention – and consequent fame – to propel him further into what is already proving to be a fantastic career.

Scott-Patrick Mitchell