Emily Kame Kngwarreye<\/a>. It was also her way of turning her back on the sewing machine for an artisan craft using her hands.<\/p>\n“The bridal industry was absolutely decimated after COVID and lockdowns in Victoria and I needed to think fast,” Manuell says.<\/p>\n
“Brides were frightened to spend big dollars on dresses and that impacted my work flow.<\/p>\n
“The rise in the interest rate in May 2022 cemented it for me.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I also went through a divorce and needed time for myself. Getting into RMIT was like therapy for me and sits up there as one of the most powerful incredible things I have done in my life since giving birth to my kids. I’ll be back this year to do my honours year with plans for a PhD.”<\/p>\n
On finding her way<\/p>\n
Manuell won the first of many Fashion Awards Australia Gown of the Year gongs in 2006. She also won the first season of Project Runway in 2008.<\/p>\n
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Manuell won RMIT’s Graduate Student Award in 2025 for her collection, A Slow Mindset. (Supplied: Helen Manuell)<\/p>\n
But the quiet breath of criticism by some peers always stuck in the back of her mind.<\/p>\n
“There are a couple of colleagues in the bridal industry who constantly had a go at me about not being good enough because I didn’t have an RMIT degree,” Manuell says.<\/p>\n
“I remember when I got on to Project Runway in 2008, one of these people, who will remain nameless, asked how could I get onto that show, telling me I couldn’t even sketch. It’s been this constant,” she says.<\/p>\n
“Going back to study and being accepted at RMIT got the ball rolling. I reclaimed my place. I even showed at Melbourne Fashion Week last year and ticked off some big goals.<\/p>\n
“I slowly changed the inner critic to the inner champion. At 56, I am not listening to the critics anymore.”Realising a childhood dream<\/p>\n
Manuell grew up in Melbourne’s inner north, attending Princes Hill Secondary College where she found refuge as a teenager making her own clothes in the sewing room. But pursuing a career in fashion wasn’t encouraged at the time.<\/p>\n
“I grew up in the 80s, an era when high school teachers encouraged women to study accounting or law \u2014 heaven forbid that we do anything creative,” she says.<\/p>\n
“I dropped out mid-way through my HSC, and then went to university in the early 90s to study accounting. Going back in my 50s meant I was sitting in a class with 18- and 19-year-olds. It certainly made me feel old, but I had to get past that block and just do what I was there to do.”<\/p>\n
She learned a First Nations weaving technique to hold seams together on skirts without using a sewing machine.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Manuell says the collection is a nod to her 70s childhood, when she made doll’s clothes from leftover scraps of yarn. (Supplied: Helen Manuell)<\/p>\n
But it’s the way Manuell spins her yarns to create movement and height without crinoline that sets her work apart.<\/p>\n
The interplay of pastel-coloured yarns creates a dreamy combination of pink, red and cream that pays homage to an iconic Indigenous female painter.<\/p>\n
“My work is inspired by a work of Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s [Untitled, 1994] I saw in the early 90s at the Australian National Gallery in Canberra. It was on loan at the time from a private Melbourne collector. The pink and vertical stripes were so powerful and beautiful; an incredible work,” she says.<\/p>\n
“Seeing Emily’s work inspired me to start collecting yarns that I could use on my spinning wheel at home.”<\/p>\n
A sustainable future<\/p>\n
The garments are made using yarns that are predominantly from second-hand marketplaces and deceased estates.<\/p>\n
Manuell is now focused on making one-off knitwear pieces, all stitched by hand with no electricity required.<\/p>\n
![\"Three](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/b80cd279db4df879c6387242d37268e4.jpeg\")
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Helen Manuell (right) with daughters Sophie (left) and Chloe, studied at RMIT at the same time as Sophie. (Supplied: Helen Manuell)<\/p>\n
“I was introduced to the knitting machine by my lecturer Esther Paleologos, and now my house is full of them. This collection is dedicated to her,” she says.<\/p>\n
Going back to university hasn’t just updated Manuell’s skill-set, it’s allowed her to realise sustainable fashion is where her heart lies. Now she’s a quiet rebel with a cause.<\/p>\n
“I felt I couldn’t breathe in bridal design toward the end of my career, but working on my own namesake label now gives me complete autonomy to create knitwear with purpose,” she says.<\/p>\n
And, for the first time in her life, she feels seen.<\/p>\n
“The whole discussion around women in their 50s being invisible, I don’t care about that. I say bring it on, because I finally get to be me.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I don’t have to be anyone anymore. I don’t have to conform to what the couture industry says that I should be \u2014 this is me now.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After COVID turned her world as a bridal designer upside down in 2020, Helen Manuell swapped silk, lace…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,223396,223395,223400,134,223399,223397,223394,33076,107340,223398,65845],"class_list":["post-425255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bridal-couture","tag-brownlow-wags","tag-emily-kame-kngwarreye","tag-entertainment","tag-fashion-awards-australia","tag-fashion-designer","tag-helen-manuell","tag-project-runway","tag-rmit","tag-sustainable-fashion","tag-zero-waste"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/p>\n