Picture, if you will, the Australian man. His mullet. A handsome but weathered face, somewhere between a Chris Hemsworth and a Jacob Elordi. Think of his fit: board shorts? A linen shirt? A vest? Flip-flops permanently fixed to his feet, which are in turn permanently fixed to a surfboard? Without my instruction, you have pictured a moustache.

The thing is, you're not wrong. But, at the same time, you really, really are. Australia has always been thought of as a stereotypical desert island, inhabited by dangerous animals and bad haircuts. I can say this because I'm Australian (although my haircuts are usually, like, fine).

But outside of the world of stereotypes and linen, menswear is doing its own thing down under. On Sunday, the final show of Australian Fashion Week came and went. Granted, there's not a lot of menswear that goes on during AFW (the ladies get the lion's share of the spotlight), but it is a nice snapshot of just how varied and unexpected it can be.

At Albus Lumen, blouses and buttoned-up coats had a "punk-ish" attitude in shades of inky navy and aqua blue, says Charlie Calver. Charlie's a good friend of mine and the head of digital content at GQ Australia, where I used to be posted up. Then there was Commas, which held its show in front of a roiling sea on Sydney's Tamarama Beach, Bondi's less famous - but equally good-looking - cousin, and put out "feathery deep V-necks with sculptural raffia hats" and "sick rugbies with these embellishments on the chests", according to Charlie. Alix Higgins and Jordan Gogos, Australia's enfants terribles , did buzzy takes on colour and texture, everything about bodies, bodies, bodies. Farage (no relation to Nigel) took on tailoring.

Out on the streets, photographer Liz Sunshine (real name, by the way!) says the things she sees real guys wear are just as different from guy to guy. "I'm not sure that there is a single trend, but across the board, I'm seeing a bigger emphasis on fabric and fabrication," she tells me over text. "More focus on how clothes move and feel."

That makes sense. Putting on a fashion show in Australia isn't easy - or cheap (an AFW berth hits around the $20,000 AUD (£10,600) mark). In 2026, lots of brands are focusing on tight, considered collections. "That's just one of the cool outcomes of Australia's natural distance from everything, that you kind of have a set of rules if you're going to be a designer," says Charlie. "You do need to be quite small, but also nimble, and I think that means that people are really thoughtful with what they're going to make." Issues with tariffs, smaller consumer populations and more complicated production set-ups, he says, have "led to people investing heaps in the quality of it and paying more for it. I think that's a good thing overall."

He points to brands like Man-tle, based in Perth (big up, WA!): "All their stuff is so heavily researched. They're actually pushing that boat really hard." Song for the Mute, he notes, is the only outsider brand allowed to touch Birkenstock's design language. Mutimer is "this guy out of Melbourne who was just making cool, much more streetwear, stuff, but he's now making these sick leather jackets and cow-hide belts and really stepping it up."

It goes on. There's skater catnip Butter Goods. Umi Nori's twist on tailoring, with cropped blazers and pleated kilts, is growing fast. Belancē does the flashy, made-to-measure vintage stuff, with dagger collars and shawl lapels. The classics are holding strong too: P Johnson's tailoring empire just put up a stronghold on Old Burlington Street, next to the big dogs on London's Savile Row. RM Williams is for the cowboys. Venroy for the beach kids.

OK, now let's go back to our thought experiment. Picture an Australian man. What's he wearing? Linens, still? Or wavy tailoring, feathery tops, Japanese-dyed cotton? I don't know the answer. Neither do you. Good, now we're getting somewhere.

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