Clothing & Fashion

A multi-brand clothing shop in Hawthorn. The brand list is set out alphabetically and runs long, from Carhartt WIP and C.P. Company through to Patagonia, Fred Perry and Yardsale, with Stones Throw Records and Kompakt Record Bar listed in the same menu as the clothing names. Stock is sold in the store and online.

A curated independent lifestyle boutique showcasing top designer labels and quality Australian and international brands. Known for personalised styling service and a thoughtfully curated collection of modern womenswear designed for everyday elegance.

A coastal-lifestyle store on Terralong Street in Kiama, running fashion and homewares side by side. The buying leans on considered labels, American Vintage, Assembly Label, Rolla's, La Bottega di Brunella linen, Saarde textiles, Pony Rider and Wonki Ware ceramics among them, alongside an own-name Deer Willow range. Clothing, footwear and eyewear share the floor with furniture, lighting and candles.

A clothing store on Beach Street in Coogee, drawing on resort styles and beach living. The range spans womenswear and menswear alongside accessories, eyewear, jewellery and homewares, with Australian and international labels sitting together. Denim and cargo styles anchor the year-round collections, chosen around principles of simplicity, comfort, beauty, functionality and versatility.

An independent outfitter and homewares store trading since 1985 from the heritage Hammond and Wheatley building on Hyde Street, Bellingen. The buying leans to natural fibre and classic goods: La Bottega di Brunella linen from Italy, Libeco Belgian towels, Birkenstock, Akubra hats and Pesci Che Volano jewellery, alongside a house signature range. Menswear, womenswear, children's, shoes and homewares under one roof.

A rural Queensland town is an unlikely birthplace for a fashion label with national reach, yet this family-owned business has stayed put in Goondiwindi since 1992. The flagship store stands on Bowen Street near the Macintyre River, carrying the full women's and men's collections of relaxed, natural-fibre clothing alongside accessories and homewares. Design and development run out of Goondiwindi and a Melbourne studio, and the name nods to the surrounding cotton district that shaped the region's economy. For travellers crossing the Newell and Cunningham highways, the shop is a genuine reason to pause rather than push on, one of the few true destination retailers in this stretch of the Darling Downs and a rare instance of a country town producing a label recognised in city boutiques.

Jacinta opened Green Horse as a Westgarth pop-up in 2012, after a bowel cancer diagnosis at 21 and a background in fashion sent her digging into the chemicals and processes behind everyday clothing and cosmetics. The High Street shop that followed stocks Kowtow's certified organic cotton, Brunswick label Lois Hazel, Melbourne-made Fressko flasks and hand-knitted toys from Kenana Knitters. Staff can tell you where each label's supply chain runs.

Darwin-based label working out of a purpose-built flagship on Knuckey Street, drawing Territory iconography — Stuart Highway, goannas, mangoes, the Bureau of Meteorology — onto t-shirts, caps and shirts. Long-running collaborations with First Nations artists including Tyrown Waigana, Molly Hunt and the late Kunmanara (Tiger) Yaltangki. The House of Darwin Foundation funds Hoop Dreams, refurbishing community basketball courts with locally led murals.

A curated independent retailer showcasing an carefully edited selection of contemporary apparel and homewares from established and emerging designers. The store features everything from everyday essentials to statement pieces, complemented by thoughtfully chosen home goods, wellness products, and children's items.

A gift shop on Maple Street in Maleny, stocking pieces across four broad categories: for her, for him, for children and for the home. The range runs from jewellery, scarves, bags and Secrid wallets to soft toys, tulle dresses, candles, drinkware, Huski coolers and Lexon speakers and clocks. New stock arrives regularly, and there is a bath and body selection alongside gift cards.

A Vincent Street store built around natural-fibre womenswear and a dark, romantic aesthetic, headlined by Magnolia Pearl and running through Ichi Antiquités, Italian handmade shoes from Victoria Varrasso, Cire Trudon candles, niche fragrance and Aesop. On Dja Dja Wurrung Country in Daylesford, with a sister store, Around the Corner, a few doors away stocking antiques, art and home goods.

Named for owner Anna Vincent's two grandmothers and run from a small cottage of roughly their vintage, this Glenlyon Street boutique trades in women's fashion, shoes and accessories alongside a tightly edited range of homewares, art and gifts. The proposition is a curated one, clothing chosen against the owner's line that life is too short to wear boring clothes, and it reads as a personal shop rather than a stockist of the obvious labels. In a city where retail runs heavily to the big centres and the chains, it is one of the few genuinely independent boutiques, the sort of place regulars visit as much for the owner's eye as for any single rack. Open weekdays and Saturday mornings.

Sixty kilometres south of Tamworth, in the old gold village of Nundle, one of Australia's last working spinning mills turns raw merino into knitting yarn on textile machinery salvaged and restored from mills that closed decades ago, some of it approaching a century old. Reopened in 2001, it spins its own eight-, twenty- and heavier-ply yarns, sold in the mill store alongside knitwear, accessories and the locally celebrated Nundle socks. Weekday tours walk visitors through the carding and spinning floor while the machines are running, a rare chance to watch a heritage manufacturing process still in commercial use. Drawing tens of thousands of visitors a year, it has become a reason many make the drive up the Peel Valley, part working factory, part living record of the Australian wool trade.

An Airlie Beach store built around resort and warm-weather womenswear, with a designer stable leaning tropical and considered: Morrison, Hannah Artwear, Kinga Csilla, Foemina, OnceWas and Kivari among them. Alongside the clothing sit homewares, tableware and gifts pitched at coastal entertaining. A women's fashion stop on the Whitsunday Coast where the resort-wear focus matches the setting.

A Bank Street shop stocking considered Australian labels including Marle, Jac + Jack, Iris & Wool and Binny, alongside ceramics, books, lighting and work by local artist Liam Murphy. The stock runs new and old, wardrobe pieces beside homewares, shaped by a Port Fairy sensibility of slow winters and salty coastal days. A clear buying eye on the Shipwreck Coast.

A women's wear boutique on Hamilton's main retail strip, stocking designer clothing, imported shoes, bags, jewellery and a tightly edited run of homewares, candles and fragrance. The buy is more considered than a regional town might suggest, favouring established labels and quieter, longer-wearing pieces over fast fashion. It functions as a genuine destination shop for the surrounding Western District grazing country, where the nearest comparable range otherwise means a drive to Ballarat or Melbourne. Independently owned and run from a double shopfront on Gray Street, it trades six days with a short Saturday.

Nicola and Carl Mason moved from WA to Hobart, got cold, looked at the sheep, and decided to start making clothes. That was 2007. Today, Smitten Merino on Sandy Bay Road sells lightweight merino wool garments — dresses, thermals, pyjamas, jumpers — designed by Nicola and manufactured in Tasmania. Daughter Holly works the floor; son Daniel is being coaxed away from photographing beetles to shoot campaigns. The pre-loved rack and zero-waste line say the rest.

The Eyre Peninsula's west coast is a serious surf frontier, and its outfitter occupies a heritage shopfront on Bay Road that traded as the Harry Brown Store more than a century ago. Run by 'Goose', a local surfer and farmer, alongside Sara, it bills itself as the coast's original surf store and stocks accordingly: boards, wetsuits and skate hardware next to surf-label clothing, footwear and the workwear a farming-and-fishing town actually needs. That mix of beach lifestyle and practical rural staples under one old timber roof is characteristic of a shop that serves residents first and travellers second. It keeps proper trading hours six and a half days a week and functions as the town's default emporium for anyone kitting out for the water. For a remote coastal town of this size, a genuine, long-standing independent store of this range is itself the point of note.

On Bay Terrace in Wynnum, on Brisbane's bayside, Leanne's indoor market stocks clothing, accessories and handmade goods from over 100 Australian small businesses. Makers from as far as Coffs Harbour sell here in person without working the floor themselves. It's colourful, deliberately so — the kind of shop that reads as a community project because it is one.

# The Social Outfit At the corner of King Street in Newtown, this sustainable fashion brand sells garments made in its local Marrickville workroom by women from refugee and migrant backgrounds. Each piece—from anorak jackets to silk tops—is designed and produced in-house, embedding economic opportunity into every seam. The store offers bold fashion with deliberate purpose, positioning style as a vehicle for community support and skills training.

A curated independent retailer showcasing an eclectic mix of international mens and womenswear brands sourced from Paris, New York, and London. Drawing inspiration from global travel and urban culture, this store brings together immaculate Japanese denim, New York minimalism, and Parisian timelessness to Australia's off-beat high streets.