It’s World of Wear­ableArt sea­son again, where scores of ladies (and some gents) con­verge upon the cap­it­al it wit­ness the extra­vag­anza that is the World of Wear­ableArt show. This year’s awards show was held on Fri­day night, and again The Wel­ling­tonista was invited along for the WOWstra­vag­anza.

The fun of the WOW show is that it’s nev­er just mod­els walk­ing down a cat­walk. For a start, WOW uses dan­cers (and some of the cos­tumes require phys­ic­al strength and stam­ina to wear) and that cat­walk is an three-headed ser­pent with rotat­ing circles for max­im­um dis­play poten­tial.

After the jump, win­ners and pics galore!

The night star­ted with the South Pacific col­lec­tion, which this year saw entries draw­ing heav­ily on tra­di­tion­al Maori styles, as well as the pieces inspired by nat­ur­al. Thank­fully the Hal­loween cos­tume-style anim­als of past years were absent.

The win­ner of this cat­egory was Mana Uha by Oliva Hall of Nel­son, a Maori cloak made of plastic strap­ping.

The chil­dren’s cat­egory was work­ing with the theme of “the magic of books”, and seemed to have a smal­ler num­ber of entrants this year – only 12. But they were superbly show­cased with a giant pop-up book accessor­ised with dan­cers dressed as paper-cut-out story­book char­ac­ters.

The chil­dren’s cat­egory win­ner was Victus Libri (Who Needs Com­puter Games?) by Jane Ewers, anoth­er Nel­so­ni­an.

Then it was time for the black lights to come on, as the old favour­ite Illu­min­a­tion Illu­sion sec­tion returned.

The neces­sity of using fluoro col­ours lim­its the palette, but this entrants man­aged to avoid look­ing like a giant late ’80s cas­u­al­wear fest.

The win­ner was The Cycle of a Fungus by Dimitri Jagten­berg of the Neth­er­lands. Incid­ent­ally, fungus popped up in a few oth­er WOW pieces, so I think we can declare that fungus is the new bacon/zombies/steampunk for ’10.

The open sec­tion is, by its nature, the most var­ied cat­egory. But it also pro­duced both the supreme win­ner and run­ner-up.

The win­ner was Loops by Yogesh Chaud­hary and Man­as Barve of India. It’s laser-cut Merino wool felt, that care­fully loops togeth­er without the need for seams. The philo­sophy behind it reminds me of the stuff that Japan­ese fash­ion design­er Issy Miyake does, with his thought­ful, tech­no­logy-driv­en designs. It’s inter­est­ing that the two young win­ners have a design back­ground, rather than fash­ion or art.

And the open sec­tion run­ner-up was Hor­ridus by Lynn Chris­ti­ansen of the USA. This cop­per suit made a clack­ing noise as the mod­el walked around the stage. More clothes should clack.

My favour­ite piece in the show was also in the open cat­egory. It was You Don’t Bring Me Flowers, by Cath­er­ine Ander­son of Wel­ling­ton. If the flor­al design was­n’t awe­some enough, it’s described as “a trib­ute to Bar­bara Streis­and and Neil Dia­mond”.

The avant garde sec­tion had the theme “inspired by the cir­cus”, and it seems that many design­ers were inspired by the big top and/or ring­mas­ter cos­tume.

This included the win­ning entry, The Ring Mis­tress by Richelle Dynae Rudeen of the UK. This lady has a cir­cus in her pants.

But this cat­egory pro­duced oth­er gems, includ­ing com­men­ded entry Lady Curi­os­ity by Fifi Col­ston of Wel­ling­ton, a tat­tooed lady inspired by Rachael King’s nov­el “Mag­pie Hall”.

But you know what was the best thing about the cir­cus cat­egory? Little dog­gies in ele­phant cos­tumes. They stole the show!

This year’s Cre­at­ive Excel­lence sec­tion had the theme “The Art of Light”, which is awe­some because LEDs are so hot right now.

The present­a­tion for this cat­egory also included the amaz­ing Vosper­tron dance group, whose clev­er cos­tumes evoke the clas­sic sci-fi film Tron, cross over into the uncanny val­ley and back a few times, and gen­er­ally man­aged to amaze me.

The win­ning cre­ation was Lady La La, which cel­eb­rates “the glam­our, pre­ci­sion and music behind New Zeal­and’s march­ing girls”.

Speak­ing of ladies, the spectre of Lady Gaga was every­where. Where­as before the WOW entries were art, not inten­ded for every­day wear, Lady Gaga has changed everything. The cos­tumes she wears are inter­sec­tion with wear­able art.

There were already a few pieces this year that seemed more than inspired by the world of Gaga. It will be inter­est­ing to see how far the influ­ence extends for future WOWs.

And finally it was the ol’ crazy tits Bizarre Bra cat­egory. I always worry that this has been debased by all those Bendon ‘n’ hot glue gun fun­draiser bra-dec­or­at­ing com­pet­i­tions, but the cre­at­ive WOW spark remains strong.

The win­ner was Every Rose Has Its Thorns, by Viol­et Oliv­er of Auck­land. Sadly it was not inspired by the excel­lent Pois­on rock bal­lad, but by the artist’s daugh­ter breast­feed­ing her baby.

I was impressed with the over­all stand­ard of entries this year. There are far few­er entries that feel like they belong at Sev­ens week­end, and more entries that are mak­ing splen­did artist­ic state­ments.

The stage­craft was excel­lent and big praise must go to artist­ic dir­ect­or Malia John­ston who just brought everything togeth­er to superbly, from the ele­phant dogs to Te Radar the mas­ter of cere­mon­ies in a fried-egg bra.

WOW will be back for 2011, run­ning for an extra week to cap­ture the curi­ous part of the Rugby World Cup crowd that inter­sects with Wear­ableArt. Can they top ele­phant dogs? I hope so!