Fashion in reflection

Fash­ion­ably late is usu­al­ly a term reserved for the tru­ly glam­ourous, so per­haps it is apt that this belat­ed post is a snap­shot of Welling­ton Fash­ion Week.

Group A – April 19

After a well-groomed schmooz­ing open­ing par­ty, things tru­ly kicked off – with stilet­tos on – with the Group A show on Thurs­day night.

Staged with­in the Bru­tal­ist exte­ri­or of Massey Uni­ver­si­ty’s Muse­um Build­ing, the show was any­thing but tough, unrav­el­ling a cat­a­logue that includ­ed a stal­wart of NZ fash­ion in Trelise Coop­er, equal­ly rich in her­itage is Ash­ley Fogel — a man and label that has been dress­ing NZ woman in clas­si­cist fash­ion for decades.

The Muse­um Build­ing is the per­fect inte­ri­or venue for fash­ion, with an art deco nod to the past and a cool bridge to the present.

Hermione Fly­nn’s col­lec­tion kicked off the show with naive charm, a col­lec­tion that show­cased eclec­tic inspi­ra­tion rang­ing from beat­nik polo necks, to jodh­purs and Hin­du bindis on all the mod­els. While the east­ern influ­ence was inspired, the exe­cu­tion was a lit­tle scat­tered.

Ash­ley Fogel’s col­lec­tion fol­lowed with a show that high­light­ed qua­si ani­mal prints, Bowiesque jack­ets and the good side of 80s pow­er dress­ing, plus pol­ka dots aplen­ty. Fogel’s col­lec­tion sur­pris­ing­ly showed up the youth with a sharp sense of nos­tal­gia — updat­ed to a mod­ern tem­plate — with the time­less back­drop of beau­ti­ful fab­rics. 

Lucy McIn­tosh approached the floor with a mix of Nordic goth­ic out­fits that remind­ed of Ingrid Bergman movies, i.e. ‘The Sev­enth Seal’. 

Nou­veau was next to grace the stage, seem­ing­ly chan­nelling ‘The Great Gats­by’ and Bowie’s ‘Aladdin Sane’ in equal mea­sure.

moochi mixed things up too, with Noir touch­es, pop­ping with neon trim­ming, also loud plaid fab­rics and gen­er­al­ly play­ing hop­scotch through the decades, cher­ry pick­ing details that made for a cohe­sive eccen­tric col­lec­tion rather than a bland theme park of ideas.

Mar­dle sent us on a cos­mic jour­ney through a Mary Quant vor­tex that end­ed up in Janis Joplin’s wardrobe… a curi­ous place to be!

Tay­lor bou­tique took to the cat­walk in the rich, creamy tones of wool, embrac­ing the thought of win­ter with flow­ing gar­ments that sung of warmth & ele­gance in the same stride. Though the chunky lay­er­ing got a lit­tle like Swan­dri off cuts merged with duvet inner at times.

The show fin­ished with the exper­tise of Trelise Coop­er and her army of work­er bees who always put on a tru­ly the­atri­cal event. With a roman­tic sense of fash­ion through the cen­turies, Trelise Coop­er took us on a jour­ney through an imag­i­nary land­scape where the Bronte sis­ters rode bare­back with Coco Chanel, an eques­tri­an themed won­der­land where the rich tones of the coun­try­side were embell­ished with del­i­cate lace, fas­ci­na­tors and impec­ca­ble detail. It was a les­son about how to con­duct a fash­ion show, let the clothes speak for them­selves and leave the the­atri­cal aspects to the music and art direc­tion of the show.