Tate Boswarva graduated from TAFE NSW Fashion Design Studio, launched her label ATTÈ, and showed a 12-look collection on the Australian Fashion Week runway, all within weeks of each other.
The 21-year-old Manly designer was one of four recent graduates selected for The Innovators showcase on 13 May, a runway that has launched some of the country’s most recognisable fashion names over its 27-year history. Zimmermann, Christopher Esber, Bianca Spender, Romance Was Born and Ginger & Smart all passed through the same program before building careers that reshaped Australian fashion.
Boswarva’s collection, titled Vestige, was constructed entirely from recycled materials, a fitting name for work that asks what remains when you strip fashion back to what it actually costs.
A technique you won’t find on any shelf
Boswarva’s approach to making clothes begins before a single stitch is sewn. Rather than sourcing fabric from a supplier, she builds her own textiles from the ground up using water-soluble bases, sewing densely onto the base until it dissolves and leaves behind a lacelike structure that cannot be replicated or bought wholesale.
She also beads fabric heavily by hand and experiments with sustainable techniques to upcycle materials into entirely new textile surfaces. The result is clothing that carries the marks of its making in a way that mass production simply cannot reproduce.
“My design work is defined by material experimentation and textile artistry,” Boswarva says. “I also heavily bead fabrics and explore a range of sustainable techniques that I learned during my studies at TAFE NSW FDS.”
Her thinking extends into the conceptual details too. One piece in her collection incorporates contraceptive blister packs, cut into small bead-like forms with gold foil interiors used as decorative elements. It is the kind of detail that rewards a second look and lingers well after a runway show ends.
A track record that started long before graduation
Boswarva’s interest in fashion and construction started young, beginning with sewing and an early understanding of how garments are actually built. By the time she enrolled at TAFE NSW’s Ultimo campus, she already had a foundation to build on.
Her work was selected for the HSC Design and Technology Showcase at the Powerhouse Museum in 2022. In 2024, her wearable art piece Occyan Morphosis, made from 17 upcycled denim jeans and five years’ worth of collected plastic waste including coffee cup lids and drink bottles, was named a finalist in the Northern Beaches Environmental Art & Design Prize‘s Wearable Art category.
The piece, which envisions sea creatures undergoing a metamorphosis to survive a polluted ocean, went on to win the People’s Choice award in the Design category at Curl Curl Creative Space.
It was not a side project. It was a direct line to what she is doing now.
Manly to the runway, with Zimmermann in between
Boswarva now works from her home studio in Manly, building out the ATTÈ label while taking on casual design assistant work at Zimmermann, one of the very labels The Innovators helped launch. The symmetry is not lost on her.
“It’s a huge milestone and something I have been working towards throughout my studies,” she says of the AFW debut. “Fashion has always been a part of my life. From a young age I was sewing, including working with semi-industrial machines and understanding how garments are constructed.”
The four Innovators graduates, including Boswarva alongside Luke Rutherford-Durney, Oliver Parry and Zoe Markopoulos, will now undertake a 10-month program through The Next Garde Fashion Incubator.
The program provides dedicated studio space, mentoring and access to CLO, a 3D fashion design software that allows designers to develop and refine collections digitally before cutting a single piece of physical fabric.
For Boswarva, it extends a runway debut into a genuine launchpad.
ATTÈ can be followed at Instagram. For more on The Innovators program and TAFE NSW Fashion Design Studio, click here.
Published 29-May-2026
