The backdrop of fashion education globally is that of industry turbulence: radical digital innovation, hyper-competition enabled by fast global supply chains, and a world simultaneously more fragmented and more connected. In this chapter we examine the idea of the local within the global, and explore how our experience of local—subtropical Brisbane, Australia—shapes the fashion culture and approach to materiality of our undergraduate design students and of ourselves as educators. In our Fashion Design course at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), our teaching approach is to foster curiosity and material exploration within the students as they tackle the quixotic task of making garments in a country in which manufacturing skills are in scarce supply, and where there is no shortage of clothing, but a dearth of high quality materials. For us, the future of fashion and textile design lies in entrepreneurial and artisanal approaches to making, and we have found that living in Brisbane promotes the make-do capacity in our students—as through necessity they innovate. We begin by discussing the desire for local fashion cultures through the notion of “fashion cities”—whether first-tier, second-tier, or otherwise—before discussing the Australian and then Brisbane fashion culture. Through a series of undergraduate student projects, we illustrate how our geographical location can at once limit and expand the students’ capabilities in fashion and textile design. Last, we close by discussing our expanding connections with other countries in the region.