The 3% Club: Why Australian Made Fashion Is Worth Fighting For
Right now, approximately 97% of all clothing sold in Australia is made overseas. Which leaves just 3% made here.
It’s a tiny number.
And yet, behind that 3% are designers, pattern makers, cutters, machinists, skilled artisans, fabric wholesalers and countless small businesses quietly keeping Australian clothing manufacturing alive.
We’re part of that 3%, and proudly so, and I think it’s time we made a little more noise about it.
Why I’m creating The 3% Club
Philosophy Australia has been designing clothing in Australia for more than 20 years, and since I took ownership of the brand in late 2019, we have been proudly 100% locally made.
Not Australian designed. Australian made.
Our garments are designed in our Willoughby studio, patterned in house, cut locally and made by an incredible network of Sydney makers. They are trimmed, pressed, checked and despatched from here too.
There are usually fewer than ten pairs of hands between my original sketch and a finished Philosophy garment arriving in someone’s wardrobe.
I know those hands. I know where our garments are being made. That matters to me.
But The 3% Club isn’t intended to be just about Philosophy Australia.
I want to bring together the designers, brands, makers, suppliers and supporters who are still manufacturing clothing in Australia, shine a spotlight on what we do, and start a bigger conversation about how we keep doing it.
Because local manufacturing still makes sense.
There is sometimes an assumption that manufacturing in Australia is simply something businesses like ours do because we’re passionate about Australian Made.
We are passionate about it, but there are also some very practical business reasons for doing it.
Speed. Agility. Flexibility. Transparency.
Local manufacturing allows us to respond quickly.
We can produce smaller quantities. We can replenish something when it sells. We can make much of our collection to order rather than gambling on huge quantities months in advance.
If I need to see a garment, I don’t have to wait weeks for a sample to cross an ocean.
And because we’re not trying to produce thousands of identical garments at once, local manufacturing can make genuine commercial sense.
I know I can make a small run of pants here in Sydney faster, and sometimes more economically, than I could by sending our production offshore.
The difference is volume.
Our business isn’t built around selling thousands of one style in one moment. It’s about creating beautiful clothes in considered quantities, replenishing our proven Wardrobe Warriors, and responding to what our customers actually want. That agility is incredibly valuable.
Of course, there are challenges. I’m not going to pretend manufacturing locally is easy. Price is always part of the conversation.
Australian businesses operate in a market where decades of offshore manufacturing and fast fashion have completely changed our perception of what clothing should cost.
When a garment can be bought for less than the price of a takeaway lunch, it becomes very difficult to explain the true cost of skilled labour, quality fabric, small production runs and responsible manufacturing.
There are practical limitations too.
Some machinery and specialist skills simply aren’t readily available here anymore. Certain product categories are incredibly difficult to manufacture locally at a commercially viable price.
That’s why I often talk about staying in your lane. Know what you make well. Know what your local manufacturing network can do. Understand your quantities, your margins and your customer.
This isn’t about survival, it’s about opportunity and that distinction is important.
I don’t want The 3% Club to become another doom-and-gloom conversation about an industry hanging on by its fingernails. Because when I look at our manufacturing network, I don’t see an industry without value.
I see skills.
I see knowledge.
I see craftsmanship.
I see employment.
I see flexibility.
I see innovation.
And I see opportunity.
The question isn’t simply, how do we save Australian clothing manufacturing?
Perhaps the better question is:
What could Australian clothing manufacturing become if we genuinely supported it?
Support needs to mean more than saying “buy Australian”
Consumers absolutely have a role to play. Every time someone deliberately chooses an Australian-made garment, they are supporting far more than the label sewn into it.
But consumers can’t carry this alone. We need recognition, greater visibility for the value and capability that already exists within local manufacturing.
We need practical support
Practical support that helps make manufacturing here commercially viable and encourages investment in skills, training, technology and machinery. There are no subsidies or advantages to keeping it local.
And we need collaboration between brands, manufacturers, industry bodies, government and consumers.
Together, we are stronger
Because once skills disappear, rebuilding them isn’t easy. That’s the part I worry about most. We have incredibly talented people working in this industry today. Knowledge accumulated over decades. Skills passed from one person to another. We need to value that knowledge while we still have it.
Imagine if 3% became 4%, if we moved the needle just a little? What would an additional 1% of clothing being manufactured locally mean?
More work flowing through Australian factories and workrooms. More demand for skilled machinists, cutters and pattern makers. More reason for younger people to see fashion manufacturing as a viable career. More investment in machinery and technology. More businesses able to produce smaller quantities and respond to demand rather than overproducing.
And more money circulating through local communities and the Australian economy.
Small changes can create very big ripples.
Welcome to The 3% Club. This is only the beginning.
I want to discover the other businesses who are doing this. I want to meet the makers. I want to share their stories. I want us to learn from one another, collaborate where we can and collectively shine a much brighter spotlight on Australian-made fashion.
I don’t want to look back in ten years and wish I’d done more to protect our industry.
So this is me doing more.
If you’re an Australian designer, clothing brand, manufacturer, maker, supplier or industry supporter who believes there is a future for clothing made here, I’d love to hear from you.
Welcome to The 3% Club.
Supporting people. Supporting skills. Supporting industry.
Shop small. Support local. Buy Australian Made.
Love Ali x
