I’ve heard the com­plaints; World of Wear­able Arts — WOW is for women of a cer­tain age and is far too expen­sive. I’d not been to the show before so I could­n’t con­firm or deny, but oh wow are those peo­ple wrong. To start with WOW to me was two expe­ri­ences seam­less meld­ed togeth­er, and also a mark­ing of Spring in our city.

First the com­pe­ti­tion itself (which is what you think WOW is sole­ly about but you’d be wrong), where some tru­ly amaz­ing gar­ments go up against each oth­er in eight Sec­tions, with a Supreme Win­ner being named best of the best. For 2014 the Bran­cott Estate Supreme WOW Award went to ‘Poly Nation’ by Kate MacKen­zie of Hawkes Bay.

I’m a fan of vin­tage and sec­ond hand, but Kate’s manip­u­la­tion of leather and card­board suit­cas­es to cre­ate two wear­able and func­tion­al gar­ments along with a cycle wheel-pow­ered Waka, is fan­tas­ti­cal. That some­one even thinks to do that, is one thing, that they then do it and its fin­ish­ing is impec­ca­ble (it does­n’t come across as a mess of hot glue or bits of string bare­ly hold­ing things togeth­er) feels like crazy genius ter­ri­to­ry. In both the con­struc­tion of the gar­ment and in the mes­sage it con­veyed par­tic­u­lar to post-colo­nial NZ and our myr­i­ads of tourists, this is Art. Not some­thing pret­ty, not some­thing kooky or fun but actu­al art. Art that fits on a body and can with­stand being worn night after night for 15 shows.

That’s just the win­ner; the oth­er 166 entries work with tex­tiles and trans­form mate­ri­als into a tex­tile in a myr­i­ad of ways. Could you imag­ine a bra — a func­tion­al bra — made out of skate­boards? Not me, but yes it’s pos­si­ble. ‘Re-Decked’ by Sebas­t­ian Denize, New Zealand won the ever pop­u­lar Bizarre Bra Sec­tion which returned after a break in 2013.

Re-Decked_Sebastian Denize_New Zealand. Photo credit: World of WearableArtTM Ltd
Re-Decked_Se­bas­t­ian Denize_New Zealand. Pho­to cred­it: World of Wear­ableArtTM Ltd

The sec­ond expe­ri­ence is a whole oth­er thing. A fan­tas­ti­cal show fea­tur­ing 42 of NZ’s best and emerg­ing mod­ern dancers per­form­ing to chore­og­ra­phy by Malia John­ston (WOW® Artis­tic Direc­tor and Prin­ci­pal Chore­o­g­ra­ph­er since 2002) and lead­ing New Zealand dancer and chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Tanemahuta Gray. It’s very infre­quent­ly that NZ dancers are giv­en such an expan­sive stage to per­form on, so it’s a real treat see­ing how they leap and move across the stage. Add to that eight aeri­al­ists and 28 spe­cial per­form­ers, which includes an amaz­ing feat of no hands, upside down feet-only archery. Final­ly add to the mix some Shaolin Monks and NZ’s Strike ensem­ble and you have a stage show big­ger than any­thing Broad­way could ever offer in one night.

I loved how WOW mag­i­cal­ly mixed those two expe­ri­ences to cre­ate their won­der­ful world of gar­ment com­pe­ti­tion and stage show. It’s like noth­ing I’ve seen before and as the lights came up all I could think was “again, again!’