As Courtney Zheng’s final looks passed between the grand green marble pillars of the MCA’s Foundation Hall at Australian Fashion Week in May, whistles pierced the air and the crowd called out her name.

The 29-year-old designer had emerged for her bow, dressed in her signature head-to-toe black, and walked just halfway down the runway. Oversized sunglasses concealed all but a broad smile as she waved and blew a kiss to the crowd.

The room had been left deliberately bare for Zheng’s show, with no elaborate set design. Instead, she let the collection speak for itself. Faded black denim bodices were punctuated with lace-up grommets. She tucked slinky chiffon shirts and sheer dusty-rose halter-necks into tailored micro shorts. A high-neck velvet jacket referenced the structured silhouette of 18th-century frock coats, while Zheng paired another, trimmed in pony hair, with a silky maxi skirt in a shade of deep eggplant that pooled at the floor. A dramatic black strapless gown closed the show, with sculptural Elizabethan-style hips.

Each look unfolded to an original score by friend Brohn Smith. Sultry vocals drifted over moody trip-hop beats. Her debut solo runway drew one of AFW’s loudest rounds of applause.

When we speak exactly two weeks after the show, called Beauty as Resistance, she’s sitting in her Alexandria studio, her long black hair falling perfectly straight. Zheng speaks succinctly and intentionally. Behind her, racks hold glimpses of the resort ’27 collection – one that came together in just four weeks.

“Our samples came on the Sunday before the show, so we were fitting in the middle of the night. The whole team was altering 30-odd samples until 5am the morning of,” she says, with little worry in her voice.

It speaks to the quiet confidence and tenacity that has propelled Zheng to where she is today. The Sydney-based designer launched her eponymous label in November 2023, deciding to work with a leading press and sales agency before the brand even formally started. Two months later, she sampled her first collection and picked up Australian stockists including The New Trend, Sainte (formerly Amara Home), Peggy Store, For Artists Only and The Lair.

“I remember being genuinely surprised that it was a first collection,” says The New Trend’s brand director, Vanessa Spencer. “The quality, fabrication and styling were incredibly resolved, and there was already such a strong point of view.

The same month, in January, Zheng presented the collection in Paris as part of a multi-brand showroom. “I didn’t even have a website or Instagram,” she says. In June, she rented an art gallery in Soho in New York and put on a standalone showroom, securing major international stockists, including luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman and retailer Revolve. “Looking back, my confidence came from a belief in the product,” Zheng says.

The foundations of Zheng’s success were laid long before she launched her label. She grew up in a family of garment manufacturers. Her grandparents owned a cotton mill and denim-washing factory in Guangzhou, China. Her parents – who immigrated to Australia in the late ’80s – ran a wholesale and manufacturing business on Kippax Street in Sydney’s historic garment district, producing denim for brands including Just Jeans, Jay Jays and General Pants.

“As early as I can remember, we spent every day after school there and school holidays, helping out around the showroom,” Zheng says. She also visited the family factory in China each year with her parents and sister.

“Back in the day, [there were] 500 seamstresses,” she recalls. She doesn’t easily summon memories of the factory floor. “All I really remember is everyone cooking and eating together. In China, it revolves around community and family. Everyone eats together at the cafeteria, everyone siestas together in the afternoon.”

Studying fashion never interested Zheng. Instead, she completed a double degree in finance and international relations. It wasn’t until after university, while helping her mum run the family business, that ideas for her own label began to percolate.

At the time, her mum’s main client was The Iconic. “She helped them start all of their in-house brands and manufacture for them. I was managing that entire operation,” Zheng says. “After doing that for five years, you naturally start to veer towards your own visual language and want to create pieces that challenge you.”

“Growing up with parents in the industry, it was all that was discussed around the dinner table, so there was no avoiding it.” Even for designers who come from families with ties to the rag trade, very few launch their first label already fluent in margins, wholesale strategy, manufacturing and supply chains.

The year 2025 involved a number of watershed moments. American musician Gracie Abrams wore two of Zheng’s gowns on tour in July 2025. “The opportunity came through my press agency, who worked with Gracie’s styling team,” Zheng says. “I didn’t realise how significant the moment was until I received messages in our group chat with footage of her performing at Madison Square Garden in front of tens of thousands of people.”

And a few weeks earlier, Zheng had taken her first AFW bow at The Frontier group show, presenting a handful of looks alongside six other independent designers. Twelve months later, she was back at AFW, this time with a solo showcase of 29 outfits. It’s a trajectory few Australian designers achieve so quickly.

“A full collection is a massive undertaking,” AFW fashion director Kellie Hush says. “And it’s one thing to be able to do it, but to do it in a way that made people sitting in that room at the MCA go, ‘Wow, she is talented’ … I think that’s the rarity of it.” It’s a quality Hush compares to the early years of Australian fashion prodigy Dion Lee. “She knows how to dress women. She’s a genuine fashion designer, not a product designer.”

Zheng’s ready-to-wear silhouettes have a distinct visual language: clean lines balanced with sensual fluidity. Nineties minimalism meets occasional bursts of bold colour and pattern rendered in luxurious fabrics such as 100 per cent silk, leather and Supima cotton. Whether it’s a bomber jacket, a simple white tee or a pair of cargo pants, Zheng’s designs blend precise, architectural tailoring with an approachable sense of cool.

The result is a wardrobe that sits between the classic and the avant-garde. Collections move seamlessly from functional everyday staples to more expressive statement pieces. It’s something that’s attracted a customer base roughly 60 per cent local and 40 per cent international. Wholesale accounts are split evenly.

Zheng’s collections are produced in her Guangzhou atelier by a team of 10 pattern makers, seamstresses and sample machinists, many having worked with the family for more than 30 years. “They’re my extended family.”

Zheng travels there from Sydney every second month, splitting her time between the two cities. “When I started sampling, I needed four weeks over there to oversee sampling for a collection, whereas now I can fly in and out after a few days.” There’s still a communal dining area, where everyone gathers for lunch.

She sees that legacy of generational tailoring less in the garments themselves and more in the way she works. “It’s the ethos of the brand but I wouldn’t say it necessarily translates to the final product.” Each season, though, denim is part of the collection – a homage to her parents.

Zheng, a trained pianist, begins every collection by curating a playlist. For her AFW show, it began with “listening to a lot of Madonna’s earlier albums from the ’90s like Erotica, as well as Massive Attack and a lot of Berlin techno,” she says.

A trip to London in October 2025 also sparked ideas. “It’s the subculture that inspires me. I was meeting so many people in the East London music scene, going clubbing for days in a row.”

That translated into a darker palette than previous collections. Revealing cuts and hints of rock’n’roll contrasted against a Victorian demureness. “It was definitely more fun and rebellious than I had ever dared to be before,” Zheng says. It was also the first time she’d designed unisex pieces.

She likens her process to method acting. “While I’m designing a collection that’s inspired by punk and rock’n’roll, I’m reading Vivienne Westwood’s autobiography at the same time, intentionally trying to absorb everything and feed that into my design.”

Next, she’s working on a unisex capsule that she hesitates to call bridal, “because that has so many stereotypes attached to it”.

At this time in a label’s ascension, questions about bricks and mortar begin to crop up. Zheng’s response to such a query is an assured no.

“Bricks and mortar feel like a commitment that prevents agility.” A fitting explanation for a designer whose rise has been defined by speed.

This story is part of Broadsheet’s annual Fashion Issue, presented by Alfa Romeo.