Bet­ter than Christ­mas morn­ing was how this non fash­ionista* described Monday morn­ing at Te Papa when Tom and  I wit­nessed Keira Miller from Lon­don’s Vic­tor­ia & Albert Museum unpack­ing an embroidered silk sat­in wed­ding dress designed by Nor­man Hart­nell in 1933.

Keira is in Wel­ling­ton to super­vise the unpack­ing and set­ting up of Unveiled: 200 years of wed­ding fash­ion which opens at Te Papa tomor­row and runs till April. This is no ordin­ary frock or bridal show but a selec­tion of stun­ning gar­ments that are each works of art. Many with  amaz­ing per­son­al stor­ies behind their cre­ation, some of which were shared by Te Papa’s Claire Reg­nault Seni­or Cur­at­or His­tory.

 


(If this does­n’t play on your mobile device, you can see it on Vimeo here.)

 

Keira will be talk­ing more about the whole pro­cess of Pack­ing and Mount­ing Unveiled at Te Papa on Sat­urday and that’s free, so you might want to turn up early to grab a seat.

Te Papa have embraced the inter­net this exhib­i­tion with blog posts and audio of  Con­ver­sa­tions between cur­at­ors Edwina Ehr­man of the V&A and Claire Reg­nault of Te Papa. You can listen to these for  free before or after the exhib­it or if you have a smart­phone with wifi stream them dur­ing the exhib­i­tion.

As a die hard Viviene West­wood fan i have to say  her gown for Dita von Teese dress was close to being my favour­ite dress. How­ever as a Abso­lutely Fab­ulous fan, it’s a bit hard to not stop and stare in awe at a Chris­ti­an Lacroix and then men­tally start scream­ing Lacroix sweetie. But I’ll decide for sure on Christ­mas day becuase it’s the one day a year when TePapa is a little more quiet than nor­mal so it’s my favour­ite time to go explor­ing.

*fash­ionista’s are the ones who may or may not turn up to events wear­ing the same dress 😉