KEY POINTS:
OMG it's Fashion Week again. And not in a good way. Don't get me wrong. I love New Zealand clobber - I am writing this wearing a black silk Zambesi dress that makes me feel insouciant like Virginia Woolf, a Marilyn Sainty cardie that looks like I borrowed it from Noddy's cupboard and some lezzy biker-esque Kathryn Wilson boots. (Hey, I'm five months pregnant; I'm hardly going to go all Yvonne Bennetti va-va-voom.)
But despite being simpatico with our design aesthetic, I find Fashion Week embarrassing, like a fourth form panto. I feel as squirmy as a stage mother, fingers plastered over her eyes, watching a school play (although at most school plays you wouldn't have to wait an hour beforehand standing in a hallway where surly fashionistas stare at your shoes and Ricardo Simich rushes around waving his hands). It's all so ... parochial. The hyperventilating coverage Fashion Week gets doesn't help; neither does the fact that there are never any hard figures about how much product the designers managed to flog. It leaves one with a sneaking sense that the whole thing is a con.
Of course in one way it obviously is a fake; it's a wee trade show with pretensions to grandeur. You don't see the boatbuilders' expo getting fawned over on a national scale. Maybe that has given the organisers - entrepreneur Pieter Stewart and her family - a wonky view of the event's importance. And they don't aid their cause by being so chippy about criticism.
Last year I wrote a story questioning whether the event might be up for sale, since as far as I could make out it hardly covers its costs. They were as defensive as a finance company with its debenture flow under threat - or maybe that was simply because I mentioned Pieter's age (60, if you must know, and she looks 20 years younger, the cow). If the aim of our fashion ambassadors is really to flog our clothes and rack up the export dollars, they would care less about the glamour quotient and more about making money.
Otherwise Fashion Week should admit it is just a photo op for local celebs.
You can't escape the uncomfortable truth: if you want Anna Wintour to notice you, you've got to get out there in the big wide world. Deep down, our designers know there is no shortcut to fame and fortune. It is no accident that our most original and brave design export, Karen Walker, has chosen New York Fashion Week over New Zealand Fashion Week the last few seasons. Well, why wouldn't she? If we really want to be seen as the next hotbed of design talent our designers should be showing alongside the big names in Paris and New York, where you live or die on the quality of your work. Over there no one is slow to tell you which it will be.
But getting out on the world stage is too scary for a nation still attached to the "all must win prizes" egalitarian ideal. Instead, our designers show in a draughty old yachting hall in front of their family and friends who ignore the spotty models, the puckering seams and the obvious Vivienne Westwood knock-offs and always say "it was fabulous, darling".
