AFW Backstage Beauty Report: KARLA ŠPETIĆ X BellyME

Australian probiotic wellness brand, bellyME, has partnered with designer Karla Špetić for her 2027 Resort presentation at AFC Australian Fashion Week, supplying probiotic wellness shots backstage throughout the show. While beauty partnerships at Fashion Week are nothing new, wellness partnerships still feel relatively fresh territory, particularly ones focused less on aesthetics and more on energy, resilience, focus and gut health.

The partnership reflects the growing presence of ingestible beauty within fashion and beauty spaces. The modern beauty conversation no longer stops at skincare, hair and makeup; it now extends to gut health, stress support, energy, sleep and the idea of beauty operating from the inside out.

Fashion Week is built around visual transformation, but backstage increasingly runs on survival tactics. Hydration sachets, magnesium sticks, ice rollers, protein bars, nervous systems held together by coffee and adrenaline. A probiotic shot entering that environment suddenly feels less surprising than it might have a few years ago. 

Backstage at a runway show is rarely calm. In all the chaos, bellyME’s presence feels intentionally quieter. Functional wellness shots, including Immune Boost, Stress Away, Clarity and Hair Nail Skin, will be supplied backstage to support teams throughout the day.

Increasingly, it includes supplements, probiotic drinks and functional products designed to support calm and resilience throughout the day. Brands are pivoting toward concepts like balance, ritual and longevity instead. Not necessarily less beauty, but a closer relationship to it.



“Today’s generations are incredibly savvy,” said bellyME Marketing Manager Pella Xie in a statement shared with TBTM. “They understand that great skin, energy, and confidence don’t just come from exteriors; they’re cultivated from the inside out.”

For Karla Špetić, the collaboration also reflects the emotional atmosphere she aims to create around her collections. “Backstage on show day can be chaotic,” she says. “When the backstage team and the models feel balanced and energised from within, it translates into a different kind of confidence on the runway.”

There is also something telling about seeing wellness brands move into Fashion Week spaces traditionally dominated by makeup, haircare and skincare sponsors. It signals how much the definition of “beauty” has expanded. Beauty, wellness and fashion are no longer operating as separate conversations, but into a single ecosystem built around the pursuit of feeling as good as looking.

At a time when the industry is increasingly talking about sustainability in every sense of the word, environmental, emotional and physical, partnerships like this feel less gimmicky and more reflective of where beauty culture is heading next. As somewhat overwhelming conversations around injectables and peptides continue to creep into the beauty industry, it’s great to see that there is an interest in approaches that feel less clinical and uncertain, and more integrated into everyday wellbeing. Quietly, backstage, ingestible beauty is finding its place within fashion spaces, too.