Bold opening: A Mother-Daughter fashion story redefines lineage, resilience, and bold design in Australian fashion.
Grace Kelly, founder of Joaen, a Brisbane-based label, navigated a challenging pivot before capturing the National Designer award at Melbourne Fashion Festival in 2024—the pinnacle accolade for emerging Australian talent. She recently revived Joaen in 2025 with a clarified vision rooted in her family’s fashion legacy and a commitment to enduring craft.
The Joaen name honors Grace’s maternal lineage, merging the names Joan and Jean. She describes feeling her grandmother guiding the collection as it comes to life, and she aims to ensure every production phase would make her grandmother proud. The brand itself operates as a multi-generational project, co-led with Grace’s mother, Mandy Kelly. Mandy notes that Grace’s late mother—Grace’s grandmother—wasn’t known personally by Grace, but Grace inherited her influence through the family’s fashion sensibility and spirit.
The collection draws heavily on Grace’s ancestral wardrobe sources, translating tailored silhouettes and sturdy fabrics from rural Queensland into contemporary city wear. Grace’s other roots sit on a Merino farm owned by her father’s side of the family, a background she intends to celebrate through fiber choices and fabric quality—she emphasizes championing Australian fibers in her designs.
Despite Grace’s long-standing aspiration to run her own label since childhood, the path included a detour into architecture after leaving school. She briefly pursued architecture before switching to a fashion degree at Queensland University of Technology, ultimately choosing a path that aligned with her creative calling.
The National Designer award—now in its 30th year and a marquee event at Melbourne Fashion Festival—offers a $20,000 cash prize plus a $150,000 partnership package to help scale a young label’s business, with eligibility limited to brands under eight years old. Grace intends to deploy the funding to expand Joaen’s reach, including exploring international markets.
Judges praised Joaen for its cohesive design language, noting the consistency from silhouettes to color palette and praising the craftsmanship and attention to detail. They also highlighted Grace’s courage to pause, reassess, and relaunch the brand when previous efforts weren’t delivering the desired outcomes, viewing this fortitude as a model of strategic resilience.
Other award differentiators included an honorable mention for sustainability awarded to Rachel Van Brussel of Van Brussel, recognized for using dead-stock fabrics to craft elevated streetwear, alongside a $10,000 prize. The People’s Choice Award went to Justin Tong, whose Vietnamese-tailored occasionwear captivated voters.
Would you celebrate a designer who blends family heritage with modern fashion, or do you prefer fresh, non-traditional inspirations in rising labels? Share your thoughts on the balance between legacy and innovation in fashion design.
