Rodd & Gunn staged its first-ever runway show this week at the brand’s Australian headquarters on Little Collins Street in Melbourne, unveiling a limited-edition collaboration with the Australian Football League. The event, headlined by model Montana Cox, marked the debut of the ‘Footy’s Back in Fashion’ platform and showcased two exclusive jerseys for each of the league’s eighteen teams.
The collaboration runs for a limited window, with the jerseys available at Rodd & Gunn stores and select AFL retail partners. The ‘Footy’s Back in Fashion’ platform is expected to continue as a seasonal tentpole, potentially expanding into other codes and team-adjacent lifestyle categories.
For Rodd & Gunn, the move into sportswear feels less like a pivot and more like a natural expansion of the brand’s foundational ethos: quality garments that earn their place in a wardrobe through versatility. If the AFL partnership proves successful, it could open a new revenue stream in licensed sportswear that doesn’t sacrifice the tailoring DNA the brand has spent two decades building.
The collection represents a considered intersection of sport and tailoring, translating the AFL jersey from pure athletic gear into a garment with enough structural integrity to sit alongside a merino blazer. The cut follows Rodd & Gunn’s signature shoulder line — clean, generous without being oversized — while the jerseys themselves use a dense cotton-jersey that holds its shape better than traditional performance mesh.
Montana Cox closed the show in an ivory double-breasted coat layered over the Essendon Bombers edition, a styling choice that made the argument more convincingly than any campaign copy. The juxtaposition of the coat’s fluid tweed against the jersey’s graphic block worked because both pieces respected the same proportion principles: clear shoulders, clean hems, no competing volumes.
