Black in Fashion

Exclusive to Thread.co.nz, Doris de Pont of NZ Fashion Museum talks about the current exhibition, Black In Fashion, now on in Galway Street in Britomart and free to the public with iconic black New Zealand designs on display…

Exclusive to Thread.co.nz, Doris de Pont of NZ Fashion Museum talks about the current exhibition, Black In Fashion, now on (corner Gore and Galway Streets) in Britomart and free to the public with iconic black New Zealand designs on display…

First off, how many items are included in the exhibition?
We have approximately 70 garments, and right up until the last moment we were being offered new and exciting things that make a real contribution to the New Zealand Black story – so it has been difficult to select.

What did you discover about what it is about is wearing black clothing that New Zealanders love so much, and why do you think it’s so ingrained in our fashion sense?

I have discovered that there are very many reasons why we wear black. If you ask around any office you will get about as many different views as there are workers. I’m sure you have heard them all and they are often contrary.

Its stylish, elegant, sophisticated …vs It’s boring and lazy [needless to say this is not usually said by someone who wears a lot of black]
It looks understated, you don’t draw attention to yourself ….vs It’s edgy, it makes people take notice
Its slimming, flattering…. vs It is unflattering and makes your complexion look sallow and dull
It looks smart and official / formal…vs It looks aggressive
It is conformist, everyone wears it…vs It is avant garde
It is funereal…vs It is of course our colour – all our sporting heroes wear it.

Is there any sense of self fulfilling prophecy do you think, about our perceived obsession with it? (As in, people love it because they think they should and so designers and editors keep with it)

No I don’t think so. I think our relationship with Black is much bigger and more fundamental than a simple ‘fashion’ story. There are important values and associations within our national history and character that have lead us to choose to express our identity in terms of the colour black. Its not “one day your in and the next your out”. For New Zealanders I think black will always be the new black – it has become a constant feature in our psyche and will remain so regardless of what we are wearing that is currently “in fashion”.

Why do you think black is so important to us here (in the fashion industry and as fashion lovers) as opposed to overseas, where colour is embraced?

That is a very long and complex story and I think closely aligned with the evolving New Zealand character. I have just written a substantial essay about the influences that have made black such an important part of our cultural landscape for a book to be published by Penguin and due for release in early 2012. It is a collection of 10 essays by experts in their differing fields with each one canvassing an aspect of black in New Zealand from black in fashion history and in fashion today, to black in film, in music, in sport, the black singlet and of course including the wrong black crowd, that of gangs and other outsiders. So you can see that the colour black permeates all parts of our lives.

What did you discover in terms of people’s personal connection with wearing black – were there a range of reasons people love it?

Absolutely – people who wear black are very conscious of why they have chosen it. I think black is quite unique like that in that it is quite polarising, it has a definite personality and it is challenging. Even though it is worn such a lot it does seem to always require some thought and some justification. It might be as simple as some of the answers I suggested earlier but people do invariably have an answer – they have thought about it even if their answer is “I wear it because it is easy”. They have made a decision that whatever anyone else might think of when they see black, they want their wardrobe to be easy and therefore they choose to make it black.

Was there one garment, say the little black dress, that is particularly in favour?

For me using the term ‘little black dress’ is a bit off hand and dismissive of the richness of design and the originality of interpretation that I know designers are capable of, creating garments that are often far from ‘little’. Our contemporary New Zealand designers in particular do black very well and we do them a terrible disservice if we simply label them with the generic, little black dresses.

There are lovely stories about the changing value of garments. I love the example of the gym frock, a sort of pinafore dress, usually in black and worn with a blouse underneath. It was introduced early in the 20th century indeed as a “gym” frock, designed to free the body from the constraints of corsets and petticoats so that women could engage in physical exercise. It quickly became a popular choice for young girls and as a school uniform. I recall it most unfavourably as one of the banes of my school life. it was heavy, shapeless and ugly and when it got wet it smelled of the coarse wool it was made of and the pleats fell out and had to be painstakingly pressed back in again. It was blamed by the widgies in the late 1950s for their rebellion and in the late 1970s it became part of the New Zealand punk wardrobe. It surfaces from time to time in fashion and as recently as last year a version of the gym frock featured in Kate Sylvester’s collection Diamond Dogs which was inspired by that icon of blackness, Judith Baragwanath.

In terms of everyday fashion (as opposed to sporting or cultural events) do you think we need to confront it and be more adventurous in terms of colour or do you enjoy our favour for it?

I am loathed to tell people what to do but I must say that I especially admire and value people who dress very consciously, giving expression to who they are and how they want to be seen in their “dressing up”. I think the most interesting clothes are those that have an individuality, something personal in their design and I think that New Zealand designers are particularly adept at that whatever colours they employ.

What are some of the more interesting pieces you uncovered for this exhibit?

For me every garment in the exhibition is interesting, sometimes for the garment itself such a the World blue triangle dress. This is such a simple woollen jersey dress but with an eccentric blue tulle pyramid on the hip which just defies expectations. Sometimes it is because of who has owned it such as the White-tie Formal attire of Sir Keith Holyoake’s the third longest serving New Zealand Prime Minister (1957, 1960-1972) and also Governor General (1977 -1980), which communicates in its formality the rank and status of the positions he held. And sometimes it is just because it has been such a challenge locating and securing that garment for the exhibition.

What’s your favourite story attached to a garment, about why it is special to its owner?

One of the very early garments that came to me was a flapper dress from the 1920s. It had been worn in its day by Josephine McGuire and again later by her grand daughters and great grand daughters. Needless to say it was a little the worse for all that wearing but it was still seen as a very valuable garment and carrier of family history. This dress has now been restored for exhibition by one of our volunteers who is experienced in textile conservation and it looks extremely glamorous once more. In pursuing the history of this dress I found that one of Josephine’s sons, Jack, was still alive and I was able to talk to him about memories of his mother which he graciously shared along with a photograph of Josephine and her family in 1925 where she is wearing a very similar dress. Sadly Jack has since passed on and will not be able to see his mother’s dress in it newly restored glory on display and enjoyed once more, in the exhibition.

The press release mentions a gown by Konstantina Moutos from the Benson & Hedges Awards. How did you find this dress? Did you have a specific memory of it yourself?

This is the dress that I knew I wanted from the very beginning. For me it is an icon of New Zealand fashion design. It was and still is a very glamorous and beautifully cut gown. In 1986 Konstantina Moutos who was just 21 years old took out the Supreme Award in the Benson and Hedges Fashion Show [remarkably Konstantina had also won the Supreme Award at the previous awards when she had only just graduated from Wellington Polytechnic], with a sleek black velvet after five dress. It had a single sleeve and a deep sweeping slash across the back and over the hip anchored by 3 strands of diamantes. It was sophisticated, elegant and sexy – something that fashion hadn’t really dared before. I remember the dress because I was at the Awards Night at the Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington because one of my own designs had been accepted for competition in the Leisure Lifestyle Section. I can remember when it came out that it stood apart from its competitors. I have always remembered it and when I was talking to Carolyn Enting, the Fashion Editor at the Dominion Post, she told me that it was that particular dress which had made her want to get into fashion and what’s more she knew how I could get hold of Konstantina who has her own design salon in Athens, where she caters for a client list of celebrities and diplomats. She had said in a newspaper article in 1986 that she would keep the dress in her archive and true to her word she has kept it. It has come to New Zealand especially for the Black in Fashion exhibition and I couldn’t be more pleased.

What kind of influence did the NZ four’s (Zambesi, NomD, Karen Walker, World) showing in London in 2007 have where, as I understand it, that ‘dark and intellectual’ tag was first bandied by international editors?

Indeed that moniker stems from these international showings, often used to distinguish New Zealand fashion from Australian fashion. The implication was that NZ design had more depth, that there was something thoughtful going on, that there was an idea behind the designs and the collection. This was of course an idea that was embraced by the industry here, I mean who wouldn’t want to be described as intellectual even if the dark didn’t always suit or apply.

I understand you don’t wear a lot of black yourself. Did pulling together this exhibit make you more or less fond of it?

My own design practice was indeed never really black, but I would be the first to claim the intellectual in the sense outlined, as thoughtful. My design was concerned with exploring identity and looked for that identity to New Zealand culture and to ideas that were generated here. As an Auckland based designer I was very consciously aware of New Zealand’s place in the Pacific and that coloured my work so to speak. I have had a growing fondness for black in the last years but I do not know whether that is because of my increasing age and a desire to slip into the background a little more or whether I have been captured and converted by the rising fashionablility of black. [Although I think its reign in the fashion field may be taking a break for a while very soon].

In saying that, is there a black garment of your own you’ve particularly loved over the years?

Interesting question – if I think of the garments I love and have loved to extinction – they are not and have never been black, they are always coloured and often patterned too, but mostly they are very distinctive and never understated.

Was there anything that particularly surprised you when you were putting this together?

This exhibition has been much harder to populate than the last exhibition by the NZ Fashion Museum Looking Terrific; The story of El Jay, because the garments we are using are not just fashion pieces this time around. We have had to find iconic garments from NZ film, music, sport and everyday life so we have had to go to unusual places to find them. Te Kuiti, Palmerston North, Opotiki, Woolston and Porirua. But that is part of what the Fashion Museum is about, bring together garments from the wardrobes and attics of the people of New Zealand to tell the stories of our clothes and our lives. This wide search has lead to a very diverse and enlightening array of garments that all make a valuable contribution to the story of the wearing of black in New Zealand.

What’s your favourite piece from the collection and why?

My favourite piece is a Victorian dress. It belonged to a woman called Julia Torrens who was born in England in 1859 and came to New Zealand with her parents in 1863. This dress has been kept in the family until now when its guardian, a great grand daughter, loaned it to the Fashion Museum for this exhibition. I think I love it especially because I have got to know it and Julia really well in the time it has been with me preparing this exhibition. It came with photos of Julia as a young woman, as a wife and mother and in her later years with her sister. There are photos of her parents, her husband and her 11 children. The dress is unostentatious but in a beautiful quality silk with lace trims and is exquisitely made. The stitching is fine and regular, the cutting is very sophisticated and generous with the most astounding hand cut and overcast pinking. This dress speaks of a refinement of taste that I perhaps hadn’t expected to find in towns like Thames and Opotiki at this time, but this dress evidences that it did exist in the wardrobe of Julia Torrens.

13 September 2011