Three mem­bers of the Welling­ton­ista are already glee­ful­ly plan­ning our out­fits for the open­ing of the Mon­tana World of Wear­ableArt Awards Show in on the 24th of Sep­tem­ber at TSB are­na.  The huge mar­ket­ing push has begun with ads pop­ping up near the air­port and the details of the WOW wan­der are being ham­mered out as I type.  The show is worth around 10 mil­lion dol­lars to the Welling­ton econ­o­my and we will no doubt see cre­ative lunges for our atten­tion on a par with ‘that ice­berg’ and ‘those reapers’.  Let’s hope they do Welling­ton proud with more cre­ativ­i­ty and less brand­ed bumpf. 

Last year the supreme award went to Welling­ton­ian Nadine Jag­gi and this year sees Welling­to­ni­ans dom­i­nat­ing the field again with 40 out of the 165 gar­ments from locals.  Last year Aun­ty Helen (or her COMMS peo­ple) did a mighty job of writ­ing a speech on the fly but although I am sure the awards will be “World Class”™ I am not sure that we need John on stage with giant paua encrust­ed key for the occa­sion this year (but if he wants to give the paua dress anoth­er out­ing.…)

The press release shows the scale and cre­ativ­i­ty of a few local entries:

  • Leonar­do Da Vinci’s many tal­ents as a skilled painter, sculp­tor, inven­tor, math­e­mati­cian, draughts­man, fash­ion­ista and sci­en­tist are hon­oured in Heather Wallace’s extra­or­di­nary entry, Da Vinci’s Dandies.  The Welling­ton indus­tri­al design­er has fash­ioned an entry that needs to be worn by three men, mod­eled on the draw­ing of the Vit­ru­vian Man, “cel­e­brat­ing Da Vinci’s amaz­ing and diverse tal­ents in a the­atri­cal and ele­gant way.”  Wal­lace was run­ner up in the 2007 Cen­tre­Port Shades Of White Sec­tion.
  • Hun­dreds of coins from dif­fer­ent coun­tries have been hand stitched into the bodice of Kate Smith’s gar­ment, Do Your Arrears Hang Low?, to sym­bol­ise the impor­tance of hold­ing onto your cash in an eco­nom­ic down­turn.  The art and fash­ion stu­dent believes the reces­sion, “is a big prob­lem, yet peo­ple are still spend­ing and ignor­ing it” and has cre­at­ed a large white elephant’s head on her gar­ment to ham­mer home this point.  
  • Emma White­side was smit­ten with the Eng­lish Queen Ade­laide (1830 – 1849, who, sur­pris­ing­ly for roy­al­ty, hat­ed unnec­es­sary expen­di­ture) and has fash­ioned a regal 18th Cen­tu­ry gown out of dis­card­ed auto­mo­tive radi­a­tor cop­per.  The indus­tri­al design stu­dent at Vic­to­ria Uni­ver­si­ty has been cre­at­ing things out of radi­a­tor parts for years as her par­ents used to oper­ate a radi­a­tor man­u­fac­tur­ing plant.  “I used to pol­ish up the best pieces with nail pol­ish.  The men in the fac­to­ry thought I was crazy,” con­fess­es White­side, who spent over 200 hours sewing togeth­er indi­vid­ual cop­per radi­a­tor rosettes for her gar­ment, Queen Ade­laide.

 Sold out signs are mush­room­ing on the WOW site so get in now if you have been pre­var­i­cat­ing.