Half a decade after his namesake’s menswear label snagged him a National Designer Award, Melbourne fashion stalwart Christian Kimber is changing tack.
With the release of its latest Winter 2025 collection, Australian modern menswear brand Christian Kimber is wading into uncharted territory: the luxury segment. The Melbourne-based label’s new collection embraces indulgent materials, sharp tailoring, unexpected layering, and statement pieces with an editorial edge, marking an intentional step toward high fashion.
It’s an evolution of sorts, but one that Christian Kimber, the designer, has always had in the back of his mind. As he explains, the Winter 2025 collection is the perfect vessel to successfully ship the emerging Aussie label from where it is now to where it needs to be.
“I felt it was time to push further—to explore what luxury could look like through an Australian lens,” Kimber tells me. “The ambition was to challenge the boundaries of local menswear, to elevate not just the product, but the narrative behind it.”
For Kimber, that narrative is ever-changing. Where the brand’s hallmark tailoring has always underpinned its creative output, the designer’s approach to contemporary aesthetics is driving a new sense of artful subversion. The Winter 25 collection introduces new silhouettes, richly complex textures, and the kind of intricate craftsmanship that speaks to the Savile Row-trained tailor’s new level of ambition.
There are some distinct call-backs to traditional menswear codes and colours, with dinner suits rendered in deep military green and featuring generously cut lapels and sculptural lines, but the blurring of occasionwear feels innately restrained. Kimber’s signature layering and relaxed precision remain, but there’s an unmistakable shift toward fashion-forward storytelling- garments designed not only to be worn but remembered.
Further, the hero knits are emblazoned with unconventional patterns and inventive weaves, and sit alongside exquisitely engineered outerwear. Patchworked suede and shearling coats, sharply tailored bombers in calf suede, and wool jackets with modernist detailing; these unorthodox takes aren’t about shock value; they’re about nuance.
“There’s a deliberate tension in this collection — between heritage and innovation, between luxury and wearability,” Kimber explains. “I wanted the pieces to feel timeless, but also to say something louder about where Australian menswear can go.”
Just where that is, Kimber stopped short of revealing, but if the initial campaign is anything to go by, it could be a new era of cross-generational design. Set inside a richly layered Graham Geddes antique store in Melbourne, the accompanying campaign, which was photographed by Gretl Watson-Blazewicz and styled by creative director Chris Kontos, offers a perfectly pleasing metaphor; just as heirlooms gain new meaning in modern spaces, so too can traditional craftsmanship be reimagined for a modern world.
The environment echoes the deep jewel tones, unexpected fabric combinations, and nuanced interplay of pattern and texture that define the clothes. Just like an antique store, the collection is curated, crafted, and layered with meaning.
Anchored by his most conceptually ambitious and aesthetically refined collection to date, it’s a firm declaration that Christian Kimber is not simply evolving, but revitalising the Australian menswear landscape. The Christian Kimber Winter 2025 collection will be available in-store and online starting this month.
