Most Indian occasionwear is designed for a climate that Australia only has in February. Velvet is the exception. It is the one heavy fabric that has a genuine season here, and between roughly May and August it is the most comfortable formal thing you can wear in Melbourne.
What velvet does, physically, is hold its own shape. A georgette kurta falls along your body; a velvet one stands slightly away from it. That is why velvet reads as formal even when the cut is simple and the embroidery is minimal — the fabric is doing the structural work that embroidery does on a lighter cloth.
The weight is also the catch. Velvet does not breathe, and an Australian wedding venue is almost always heated to the point where guests take their coats off within ten minutes. A full velvet salwar suit in a warm hall is a long evening. The honest test is not the outdoor temperature but the indoor one, and nobody can tell you that in advance.
The compromise most people land on is velvet in one piece rather than three. A velvet kurta with lighter trousers, or a velvet palazzo with a crepe top, gives you the depth of the fabric without wearing it head to toe. A crushed velvet behaves better again — the texture breaks up the surface, so it holds less heat against you and creases far more forgivingly in a car.
