Hagley School of Fashion students, Louis Nel and Lucy Hill, recently attended New Zealand Fashion week in Auckland.

As part of my prize from winning the Young Designer's Award at Hokonui Fashion Awards I was made a delegate of New Zealand Fashion Week. These are some of my reviews from the shows at NZFW. 

After waiting in the cold outside for 15 minutes to be let in, the show started with two young girls in wholesome floaty dresses and a synthesiser, although they looked like they should have been singing Hank Williams's 40 greatest hits. The music was nice and reminiscent of a beach house. There was what I assumed were paper towels (which turned out to be old love letters) flying everywhere BUT NOT VERY ENVIRONMENTAL OF YOU KATE! There were a lot of doilies in the models' pockets and in their sleeves, which was an interesting touch. There were two diverse models, one of whom was a glorious 50 year old with the body of a 12 year old, and the other was probably half a size bigger than the rest - wow, we love a diverse fashion week. 

The collection was bland, consisting of the usual Kate staples, turtlenecks, trench coats, 1940s military style berets and dresses that looked like they had been dug out of the op shop. A lot of the models looked too young to be wearing trench coats and suits. The walk was very slow and boring - bring back the 90s or even better the 60s where everyone danced down the runway and it was exciting. This was not worth walking down K Road in the dark for, and in retrospect my time would have been much better spent in bed. The location was a big ugly tent which hardly felt glamorous. There wasn’t champagne, which surely would have made it, and I had to stand!! I overheard a kooky looking man who was standing beside me saying the best part about the show was "watching the intern put paper from a box into the wind machine" and I agree. And surely we don’t need any more turtlenecks on this planet, although Luke might disagree with me.

We queued for ‘Hailwood’ until someone gave us tickets. The music was incredible and one of the older models apparently had an affair with David Bowie and is in the music for China Girl by him. The clothes were very nice if I remember rightly. We got tickets to Paris Georgina which said to come at 7.30 and the show was to start at 8.30 so we arrived at 7.45. The show started at 8.50 in the end and to make matters worse it was only 13 minutes long. We were at the front of the GA line and managed to get seats for the show - others were not so lucky as the line was miles long and the tent was completely full - I can’t imagine everyone got in. The clothes were glorious, although all the models were very thin except for one who was plus size and wearing a very unflattering yellow dress. It seems that the dressers think that a dress that will look good on a size 0 model will look good on a size 16 model which, because of the size difference, usually doesn’t! So instead of inclusivity, the designers are just making fun of minorities by not knowing how to dress them to make them look good - which isn’t inclusivity, they are insulting models who aren’t the norm.