Who we are
FashLab is run by a committee of practitioners, creatives, and industry professionals who give their time because they believe in what this community is for.
Julie Goodwin
President
Julie is a Melbourne couturier with over twenty-five years of experience in bespoke making – tailored suits, jackets, shirts, trousers, and statement occasion wear, each piece hand-made to order from the finest fabrics and designed to last a lifetime.
Her practice is a quiet argument against fast fashion. Working exclusively on private commission, Julie brings the same rigour to a linen shirt as to a silk evening coat – sustainable, ethical, and entirely her own.
Julie has taught fashion design and sustainable fashion at degree level and holds a Master of Fashion and Entrepreneurship from RMIT. Her commitment to Melbourne’s independent fashion scene extends well beyond her studio – through two and a half decades of mentorship, collaboration, and connections that help an industry look after its own. Julie is a founding member and the first President of FashLab Inc.
Glen Rollason
Vice President
Glen is a designer, pattern maker, and director of RBPatterns – Australia’s leading pattern making and sample development studio – with three decades of fashion industry experience behind him.
Through RBPatterns, Glen partners with more than fifty of the country’s fashion brands, from global labels to independent designers, providing pattern making, design consultancy, and manufacturing brokerage.
His approach is hands-on and holistic, shaped to the specific needs of each brand he works with. More recently, the launch of Small Batch Supply under the RBPatterns umbrella has extended that offer to small-run production – a practical resource for independent designers navigating the gap between sample and scale.
Glen sits on the Australian Fashion Week advisory committee and was named MFF Designer of the Year in 1999.
As Vice-President of FashLab Inc, he brings the kind of industry infrastructure knowledge that independent fashion practitioners rarely have direct access to and shares it without reservation.
Angelo Pantalone
Secretary
Angelo is a fashion educator, marketer, and strategist whose career spans two decades in industry and twenty-two years at RMIT University. In industry, Angelo worked across five retailers — beginning with Georges Australia — in roles covering retail buying, men’s suit product development, training management, and customer experience.
At RMIT, he has taught across VET and higher education, from merchandising and retail to retail growth strategy and luxury brand management. He is also a published author in both technical and fiction literature.
Angelo brings to FashLab a rare breadth, equally at home in the classroom, the boardroom, and the shop floor, with a genuine commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion woven through everything he does. As Secretary of FashLab Inc, he brings the same organisational skills and attention to detail that has defined a career built on turning vision into execution.
Felicity Northeast
Treasurer
Felicity is a Melbourne milliner with over fifteen years of experience creating headwear that brings together traditional technique and contemporary design — from bespoke racewear to everyday hats, always in celebration of craftsmanship and individuality.
Her work is widely recognised in the industry. She is a multi-time winner of the Millinery Association of Australia Design Award, has taken out the Melbourne Racing Club Professional Millinery Award across multiple years, and is a regular media voice for the MAA on Australian millinery and the Spring Racing Carnival.
An active professional member of the MAA since 2009 — including a term as Treasurer from 2016 to 2018 — Felicity brings to FashLab both the perspective of an independent maker and the financial rigour of someone who has served her own industry’s governance for years.
Janice Breen Burns
Founder
Janice – known universally as Jan BB – is a veteran editor, fashion journalist, and the founder of FashLab. As founder and editor of fashion webzine Voxfrock, she has built a platform that treats fashion as the complex social construct it is – with the deep knowledge and wit that have made her one of Australia’s most distinctive voices on the subject.
She is a frequent media commentator, presenter, panel facilitator, and design judge, including a forty-year run judging Fashions on the Field from 1980 to 2019.
Jan founded and co-manages the Voxfrock Rookie Crew programme, mentoring journalism and photography graduates as they cover Melbourne Fashion Week and associated festivals – working alongside legendary fashion photographer Monty Coles, adjunct professor of photography at RMIT.
She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Graduate Certificate in Creative Writing from the University of Melbourne.
Draga Jevtic
Draga is a Counselling and Organisational Psychologist with more than thirty years of experience across clinical, organisational, community, and governance settings. Her career spans senior executive leadership roles and more than two decades of board and advisory work across the not-for-profit, health, government, and community sectors.
Widely respected for her thoughtful presence and ability to navigate complex personal and professional challenges with clarity and care, Draga brings a rare combination of human depth and practical insight to every room she’s in. Her focus on ethical practice, clinical governance, systems thinking, and values-based leadership runs as a consistent thread through everything she does.
As an Advisory Board member of FashLab, Draga brings something the creative industries don’t always have access to – a seasoned governance mind and an understanding of people, organisations, and how they work best together.
Gwendolynne Burkin
Gwendolynne has been making things since she was six years old. By eighteen, she was selling hats to Melbourne’s top boutiques while completing a Bachelor of Fashion Design at RMIT. Some people take a little longer to find their calling. After graduating, she worked with renowned fashion houses before launching her signature label Gwendolynne in 1997.
Her debut collection at the 1998 Melbourne Fashion Festival announced an immediately distinctive voice – one built on meticulous craftsmanship and a commitment to clothing that outlasts the moment it was made. Her pieces are shown at prestigious events internationally and collected as heirlooms.
As an Advisory Board member of FashLab, Gwendolynne brings the perspective of an independent designer who has built a label of genuine longevity and knows exactly what that takes.
Jarrad Cuff
Jarrad is the founder, head designer, and master tailor behind Mr. Cuff, a menswear label built on a simple conviction: that a bespoke suit can transform how a person looks, moves, and feels. Jarrad combines traditional craftsmanship with a contemporary Australian aesthetic, using the finest natural, ethically sourced fabrics to create suits that fit the individual – not the mannequin.
Every commission is an exercise in listening, craft, and the quiet satisfaction of bringing someone’s vision to life.
Mr. Cuff is also a project with a larger purpose: the revival of bespoke tailoring in Australia as a living, breathing skilled trade, a practice with a future.
As an Advisory Board member of FashLab, Jarrad brings the perspective of a maker who understands and treasures what it means to build something by hand.
Johanna Preston
Johanna is a Melbourne-based master shoemaker and co-founder of Preston Zly, the acclaimed footwear atelier she established with partner Petr Zly in 1994. Trained in traditional shoemaking with a sculptor’s eye for form, Johanna creates handcrafted leather footwear that merges old-world craftsmanship with contemporary design – built to last, and supremely comfortable to wear.
Preston Zly’s work sits at the intersection of engineering, material technology, and hand craft — a combination that has carved an enduring place in the Melbourne fashion landscape over three decades. Their pieces are a fixture on Melbourne Fashion Festival runways and a quiet signature on the city’s most considered dressers.
As an Advisory Board member of FashLab, Johanna brings the perspective of an independent maker who has built a genuinely original creative business on her own terms.
Karen Webster
Karen likes to make a difference. Over more than four decades as one of Australia’s most committed advocates for the creative industries, she has done exactly that — as an academic, an advisor, a mentor, and a maker of institutions. Currently Senior Advisor in Industry Development at Creative Victoria, Karen brings a rare combination of policy understanding and on-the-ground industry knowledge to everything she does.
Her career spans senior academic roles at RMIT and LCI Melbourne, over thirty years shaping design education across the full spectrum of the field.
From 2005 to 2010, Karen served as Festival Director of the Melbourne Fashion Festival, growing it into a landmark event on the city’s cultural calendar. In 2012 she was inducted into the Melbourne Fashion Hall of Fame. She chairs the Victorian Chapter of the Design Institute of Australia and sits on their National Advisory Council — one of many government and industry boards to which she has contributed over the years.
Karen is a founding member of FashLab. Her belief in the value of independent creative practitioners, and in the communities they build together, has been part of FashLab’s DNA from the beginning.
Dr Rachel Lamarche-Beauchesne
Dr Rachel is a researcher and senior lecturer in Fashion Marketing and Enterprise at Torrens University Australia, whose work sits at a genuinely distinctive intersection: fashion, veganism, and consumer behaviour.
Her research moves beyond the academic — in 2025 she launched Les Plantes, a micro-brand built entirely free of animal and petroleum-derived materials, shown for the first time at Melbourne Fashion Week as part of FashLab’s Melbourne Made runway.
As an Advisory Board member of FashLab, Rachel brings both the analytical rigour of a researcher and the lived experience of an independent designer navigating the industry on her own terms.
Stefanie Di Trocchio
Commercial Strategist
Stef is a commercial and operations executive with more than 20 years’ experience helping organisations turn ambitious ideas into sustainable growth. Her career has spanned marketing, product, operations and commercial leadership across technology, publishing, and energy, most recently serving as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Commercial Officer at a fintech.
Known for connecting strategy with execution, Stef specialises in helping organisations clarify their value proposition, build commercial capability, strengthen partnerships and create systems that enable growth. She is passionate about innovation, emerging businesses, and the intersection of creativity and commercial thinking. (And, just quietly, she’s also experimenting with bringing her own fashion label to life, so she has first-hand knowledge of the questions and challenges faced by student and emerging creatives.)
Stef is excited to help FashLab build commercial partnerships, strengthen its strategic direction, and expand its impact across the fashion and creative innovation ecosystem.