Fashion Festival kicks off

With the longest runway – and possibly the longest show – NZ Fashion Festival kicked off on Tuesday night showcasing in-season ranges from cutting edge and commercial designers AW10 collections…

With the longest runway – and possibly the longest show – NZ Fashion Festival kicked off on Tuesday night showcasing in-season ranges from cutting edge and commercial designers AW10 collections.

Over 1,000 white plastic seats three rows deep with standing behind was made up of roughly 2/3 ticket sales and 1/3 industry (media and sponsors.) Above all though this show was aimed at Jo Public, who wants to go to NZ Fashion Week in September but can’t go to the industry event unles lucky enough to know someone or shop hard enough to be a VIP customer of a specific designer.

So what does one get for the $45 ticket price? An hour long show with selected highlights from the popular and the best of the nation’s high streets and malls, from Annah Stretton to Zambesi, in an experience that is very close to mimicking an off-site show from real fashion week. In fact Shed 12 was the venue for Zambesi two years ago, and all with the country’s longest front row appeasing as many as possible!

What was done well? The vibe was really good; non-pretentious and an atmosphere of expectancy, mostly from a packed room of the public rather than jaded exhausted media feeling over it. Nicely done: Everyone got a flute of Pelorus bubbles on arrival and a goody bag no matter where they sat.

The goody bag contents: Tebe olive leaf hand cream, a month free Herald subscription, 2-for1 Bright Star film voucher, Scarborough chocolate eggs, water bottle, TRESemme hair product, Karen Walker Resene test pot containing a mini nail varnish in KW paint tints, and numerous vouchers and brochures.

What could be done better? The crowd milled around for over an hour before the show started so some point of focus would have been nice; big screen TVs of fashion week, or an MC doing fashion tips and prizes, or a live NZ band playing, perhaps.

A downside of the show was that all the models’ hair and makeup was the same whether they wore denim or sequin cocktail dresses with the exception of The Carpenter’s Daughter who used their own plus size models. But this is always the case with group shows, and in fact having a uniformity in styling meant one focused on the clothes more.

Below: the longest walk. With between 1.5 and 2 minute runway walks, it meant it was so long between seeing them go down and come back, we’d forgotten and it was like seeing a new garment!