Melbourne’s hand-painted fashion label just won a major award and it’s only getting started

MAKU Studios has gone from a finance worker and a plumber making colourful clothes in Melbourne to dressing Whitney Port and Alana Hadid , landing major US stockists and winning Emerging Brand of the Year.

The Melbourne label has been hand-painting its garments with the kind of colour and personality that tends to stop people do a double take and now the two-year-old brand has another reason to celebrate.

MAKU has been named Emerging Brand of the Year at the 2026 Australian Institute of Fashion Awards.

Even better, the story behind it is not your standard fashion industry origin story.

MAKU, the artist behind the label, was working in finance, while co-founder Kyall was a plumber.

Somewhere along the way, the pair decided the world needed more colour and less fashion beige.

While Australian wardrobes have long had an affectionate relationship with black, white, cream and every possible shade of brown, MAKU Studios went in the opposite direction.

Its clothes are bright, expressive and deliberately imperfect in the best possible way, with hand-painted artwork giving pieces an unmistakable personality.

The brand does not want its clothes to look like they could have been designed by an algorithm.

In fact, MAKU has taken a firm stance against using AI for its creative work. The artwork is made by hand, with the founders putting the human creativity behind the clothes front and centre.

Within its first three months, MAKU had been picked up by Stylerunner. Within its first year, the label had landed in David Jones and THE ICONIC. Then came the celebrity sightings.

Whitney Port wore MAKU twice during the brand’s first year, giving the young Australian label an early taste of the kind of international exposure most emerging designers spend years chasing.

Suddenly, the Melbourne label with the paintbrush was turning up on fashion week streets on the other side of the world.

And the international interest is getting bigger. MAKU has now secured three major US retail partnerships with Nuuly, FashionPass and BNTLO, giving the brand a foothold in the market it has its sights set on conquering.