Colin Mathura-Jeffree says Fashion Week is as much about being seen as seeing. Photo / Janna Dixon

Colin Mathura-Jeffree says Fashion Week is as much about being seen as seeing. Photo / Janna Dixon

It's Tuesday evening at Fashion Week and Colin Mathura-Jeffree is late.

The venue, a warehouse smelling of pine disinfectant and a cocktail of perfumes, is close to logistical breaking point.

Invite-only punters are arriving for the Coca Cola Little Black Dress show and a queue stretches out of the door and 60m down Halsey St.

Promo girls in black dresses offer sponsors beverages. The beverage offered, given the calorie-counting inherent in this industry, is Diet.

Jason Gunn queued for almost an hour to get his ticket, but Mathura-Jeffree skips the line entirely and waltzes into the bar with Mrs World New Zealand 2009 on one arm and front-row tickets in the other hand.

Mathura-Jeffree, model, critic and creature of the industry, is fashionably late.

He seems prone to weekly reinvention and has legions of lovers and haters. And this is just his hair.

With impossibly high cheekbones and polished stubble, the man looks like a cross between a Bollywood starlet and Russell Brand.

While Mathura-Jeffree's career as a model and dedicated follower of fashion has spanned more than a decade, he appeared to spring fully formed into the public consciousness this year as a judge on TV3's New Zealand's Next Top Model.

Before television, he was a model and catwalked his way through India and Europe.

And since? His star has gone supernova. Publisher Random House has approached him to write a style guide and his presence has become almost a prerequisite to any event the fashion industry holds.

He has even achieved enough profile to rate the attentions of Metro magazine - albeit in its "worst dressed" list.

While he expects to appear in another season of Next Top Model late next year, he's also letting himself be courted by TV3's rivals. "They wanted to talk about fashion," he says of a recent meeting with TVNZ. "They're interested in me. Everyone is interested in me."

Last year, Fashion Week kicked off on September 15, the same day that investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed and triggered the start of a global economic collapse not seen since the Great Depression.

Herald columnist Noelle McCarthy, a veteran of Fashion Week, says the economy has squeezed the industry.