Former supermodel Kylie Bax and documentary-maker Neil Gussey. Photo / Supplied
Former supermodel Kylie Bax and documentary-maker Neil Gussey. Photo / Supplied
Former supermodel Kylie Bax will star in a double-feature documentary about her life as New Zealand’s first supermodel.
Photographer and documentary-maker Neil Gussey — fresh from the success The Rise and Fall of Miss New Zealand, which had its cinematic release last year, and he says will screen on SkyTV and TVNZ+ this year - is behind the camera and also making a companion documentary about the Auckland fashion scene in the 1990s.
The first half — which will start filming in autumn — is a standalone feature on Bax’s career, called Bax and Beyond.
“Kylie achieved massive success appearing on the cover of Vogue 12 times, so I thought she really deserved a documentary all by herself,” he says.
“What Kylie has achieved has never been matched by any other model from NZ.”
He says her contemporary, Rachel Hunter, was on the cover of Vogue three times and found fame in the 90s — but Bax was the first New Zealand model to shoot a lot of the big worldwide campaigns for fashion brands such as Versace.
The second part of the cinematic double-feature will be The Great 90s Rewind and will focus on interviews with fashion industry figures from a time of brick-sized phones, no social media and when magazines ruled.
“I was going through a lot of old work and was really shocked that my first Fashion Quarterly cover of a 16-year-old Elizabeth Charleston was 30 years ago and did not look that dated,” Gussey tells Spy.
He says he always resisted the idea of a documentary about the 90s but the more he thought about that decade — he saw there was a story to tell.
“The film will be a light-hearted look back at a time we feel is quite recent — but in our hearts know was a long time ago now,” he says.
Gussey will interview fashion editors and top models of the day such as editor and photographer Karen Inderbitzen-Waller and models, Angela Dunn, Delyse Nottle and Andrew Couling, who all started in 1980s but stormed into the 1990s.
“Internationally, Angela was Queen of the catwalk — walking for YSL — and Delyse completed more than 50 TV commercials,” he says.
Gussey recalls the world of advertising was huge in the 90s and household names of the day — including former models Brigette Berger and Pip Mayne — will feature. He will also cover the new breed of models that were emerging such as a young Colin Mathura-Jeffree and Kim Smythe.
Another 90s Auckland icon Anne Batley Burton will be involved taking audiences through what, where and who was hot and not.
Gussey — who is based in Sweden — will travel to New Zealand in May and start production and expects to be finished by the end of the year.
