Alex Perry was born Alexandros Pertsinidis on 14 February 1963 and grew up in a working-class migrant family in Matraville, in Sydney's south-east. His father emigrated from Greece and his mother was Australian-born to Greek parents; he later anglicised his name.
In 1992 he launched his label from a studio in suburban Kensington, making gowns, corsets and sheaths. Recognition came quickly: Vogue Australia was the first to feature his sheaths and jewelled corsets in a main fashion story, his first editorial shoot, and the pieces photographed defined his signature from then on. His gowns have since appeared repeatedly on the covers of Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Marie Claire, InStyle and Grazia in Australia.
Before the label, Perry studied fashion at East Sydney Technical College from 1984 and worked as a model agent at Chadwick's, a job he left, he has recalled, at the same moment he signed his first shop lease. His wife, Mary, whom he married at 24 and who had worked for a designer in Athens, has been his partner in the business throughout. "If my wife wasn't the rock, my business wouldn't have got off the ground," he told the Sydney Morning Herald in 2022.
The most significant turn in the label's recent history came with ready-to-wear. "Women don't live on a red carpet," Perry told Harper's Bazaar Australia. "We love to look at it, but it's not the basis of a business that can expand and become global." He has described himself, against his public image, as "an eveningwear minimalist", drawn above all to sharply cut, clean lines. The stylist Trevor Stones consulted on the 2013 ready-to-wear launch, which was also the point at which the label began selling overseas, and joined full-time as creative director in 2018. Its international stockists now include Net-a-Porter, Mytheresa, Moda Operandi, Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus, and in Paris, L'Éclaireur. Alongside the main line he has designed eyewear for Specsavers since 2012.
In 1994 he moved his studio to Double Bay, building a private clientele among public figures and society. He showed at the first Mercedes Australian Fashion Week in May 1995 and has presented collections there in the years since, with runways that have featured Linda Evangelista, Alessandra Ambrosio, Megan Gale, Miranda Kerr and Lily Cole. In May 2002 he opened a boutique in Sydney's Strand Arcade, and in 2013 he launched a ready-to-wear line globally, conceived as a new generation of eveningwear.
Perry's métier is the statement evening dress: sculpted, closely fitted and finished with intricate detail. It has carried him onto international red carpets, and his clients have included Jennifer Lopez, Kim Kardashian, Gigi Hadid, Sandra Bullock, Gwyneth Paltrow, Rihanna, Priyanka Chopra and Lupita Nyong'o, as well as Elle Macpherson and Claudia Schiffer.
He is also one of Australian fashion's most familiar public faces. He is the only judge to have appeared in all ten seasons of Australia's Next Top Model, served as a judge and creative director on Asia's Next Top Model, mentored on Project Runway Australia and has commentated on red-carpet and racing fashion for national television. In 2015 his name extended into hospitality with the Alex Perry Hotel & Apartments in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley.
Three decades on, the label remains anchored in the discipline that launched it: the well-made, unapologetically glamorous gown.