In 2004, broadcaster Jeremy Wells was Eating Media Lunch and drinking Fashion Week wine. Photo / Nicola Topping
If Dan Carter, Nicky Watson or (insert minor Shortland Street celeb here) wasn’t in the front row and nobody was there to photograph it, did New Zealand Fashion Week even happen?
From a pre-Hollywood Taika Waititi to a pre-Prime Ministerially adjacent Clarke Gayford, the audience has always attracted as many cameras as the runway. (Witness Mike Hosking in a questionably embossed suit, Lucy Lawless in a moustache and Alison Mau, snapped at the very first event in 2001).
The event’s 21st iteration opens tomorrow in Auckland – and New Zealand Herald photographers have been there from the beginning.
Scroll down for an archival look at front rows past, featuring All Blacks, actors, politicians, presenters, supermodels, musicians and absolutely anybody who ever said more than three words on a locally made reality television show.
Kim Knight joined the New Zealand in 2016 and is a senior journalist on its lifestyle desk.