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!