Scanlan & Theodore has secured a major retail accolade - just years after enduring a "diabolical" trading period.
The brand has been presented with an Australian Fashion Laureate award for retail at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia.
Other winners across design categories included Zimmermann, Christopher Esber, Dion Lee and Arthur Galan.
The win comes after a difficult period for the designer brand, among those to be hit by post-GFC trading conditions.
Last year, Scanlan & Theodore won an unfair dismissal case involving a pregnant employee in 2012.
Court documents revealed redundancies had been made across production, middle management, quality control and merchandise management.
In evidence, Scanlan & Theodore general manager Sener Besim revealed the redundancies were necessary due to an unexpected downturn in sales.
"We...didn't get off to a good start with our sales at the end of 2011 and we had to massively reduce our prices to just get to some sort of reasonable sales figure and we had a lot of stock.
"In February we had the worst - we had the worst start to the season ever. So diabolical that it didn't even make a dint to the figures.
"That to us after Gary [Theodore] being in the business for 26 years, that had never happened to us before and to experience what we experienced...we were very concerned."
Scanlan & Theodore currently operates stand-alone stores and concessions across Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia.