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.