There is some­thing quite spe­cial when The World of Wear­able Arts sea­son lands in Welling­ton. Shop win­dows trans­form and restau­rants do delight­ful meal & cock­tail spe­cials and the City Coun­cil puts on free events around town. Then for almost 3 hours every night those of us lucky enough to see the show are whisked away into a stun­ning­ly exe­cut­ed world of imag­i­na­tion and delight.

The gar­ments that make it to the stage are a feast for the eyes and mind, and fea­ture a stun­ning array of skills and mate­ri­als to make move­able art­works. The Supreme WOW® Award “Diva’s Dream­scape” by Nel­son based design­er Peter Wake­man was the ulti­mate exam­ple. Made of stain­less steel, wood and fibre­glass, it’s strong sim­ple clear lines dis­guised what in real­i­ty is a mind bend­ing­ly com­plex cre­ation.

Diva’s Dream­scape, Peter Wake­man, New Zealand. Pho­to cred­it: World of Wear­ableArtTM Ltd

WOW always, always sells out, because it’s always, always an excit­ing, won­der­ful show and 2015 was no excep­tion. One thing that’s now hap­pened to me  is the imme­di­ate desire to go home and start mak­ing things. If you feel a bit of cre­ative inspi­ra­tion rum­bling and think you have a WOW gar­ment inside you (some peo­ple have books inside them some of us have WOW gar­ments) infor­ma­tion for 2016 entries is avail­able now over at WWOW Entry Kitt — yup they have a whole sep­a­rate web­site devot­ed to the entry process and help­ing you through it.

If you haven’t had the chance to see the show, or score some of the pre­cious sin­gle tick­ets avail­able each day at the box office from 11am till 2pm. You can take a step back in time and check out a dis­play of gar­ments out­side the TSB Are­na until 11 Octo­ber. Or set a reminder to buy tick­ets for the 2016 Show sea­son which runs from Thurs­day 22 Sep­tem­ber 2016 — Sun­day 9 Octo­ber 2016.