Girls just wanna have fun

By CATHRIN SCHAER

Beth Ellery never used to play with Barbie dolls when she was a girl.

"But here I am at the age of 27 trying to cut my doll's hair into a bob," says the fashion designer, who has been working with designer Marilyn Sainty and releasing her own first collection this summer.

Today her partner in fun, designer Julia Fong, who also produces her eponymous collection through Sainty's Ponsonby workshop, is sitting in front of her own sewing machine armed with tweezers and a pointy stick.

While Ellery tries to perfect her doll's hairdo, Fong has been trying to produce several miniature versions of her summer collection, so they will fit another doll.

"I've been doing microscopic surgery on these clothes," says Fong, laughing. "It's quite fun but it takes a while. The fabrics are much thicker and things like armholes are really quite difficult."

By now, fans of Fong's beautifully made and usually artistically-inspired clothing, which has been around since summer 1999, may be wondering what on earth is going on. No, the two women are not branching out into dolls' clothes because it's more profitable. They're simply doing something a little different during New Zealand Fashion Week.

"We would have had a show [at Fashion Week] if it was practical, but it wasn't," says Fong. "However, we still wanted to participate or do something to celebrate Fashion Week, something that was relatively easy and on a minimal budget."

The pair thought they would simply put on a window display in Sainty's inner city boutique, Scotties on Lorne St, where both their designs and others, such as Sainty's, Akira Isogawa and Comme Des Garcons are sold. They hoped that passers-by, and in particular international media and buyers in town for Fashion Week, might take notice. But they also knew they could fit only two of their life-size outfits in the shop window.

Instead, they've decided to do something much more attention-grabbing: a miniature catwalk show, playing in the boutique window. "Basically the models will go round this track, a bit like a conveyor belt," Fong says. The lucky mannequins are Anita dolls from The Warehouse, complete with hair extensions attached by Fong and Ellery. "They're great - our models all have the same name, they're cheap and they never complain," jokes Ellery. "Even when they have to go round in circles for hours."

The clothes the dolls will be wearing are miniature versions of garments from their summer collections. Fong, who is a mistress of unusual garment construction, says her summer range is slightly more feminine this season but will feature her trademark offbeat touches such as a tailored jacket with double lapels and a slouchy masculine pair of pants which appear visually off centre and skewed around the body.

Meanwhile Ellery, a former architect, has been meditating on the difference between clothes we wear out and to work and those we wear at home. "You know how when you get home, you take off your good clothes and you put something more comfortable on. Historically there are all kinds of associated conventions, such as the smock that a housewife would put over her good dress when she made dinner. I've been trying to meld both public and private clothes."

Which is why her collection includes garments such as a summer party frock that ties like an apron at front and back.

And the dolls wearing scaled-down versions of these will be parading continually on what the girls are calling their fashion machine which was made by Ellery's father in Christchurch out of the remnants of an old sewing machine.

"I think the fashion machine thing can be seen not only as a comment on the fashion industry in general but on Fashion Week," Ellery philosophises. "In a sense it's demonstrating not just the show but the machinations going on underneath," she says, referring to the fact that the industrial undercarriage of the novel runway-conveyor belt will be visible underneath the glamorous upper half of the display.

But neither Fong nor Ellery are taking it all that seriously. "It would be nice if it helps raise our profile a little," Fong says. "But really we just hope it makes people laugh."

"It's been fun doing this," agrees Ellery, wielding some plastic doll's hair that yesterday Fong tried to make her put in one of their co-workers' lunches, "and hopefully it will be funny, too."

The Fashion Machine will be on display at Scotties, 3 Lorne St, City, for the next two weeks.

Herald Feature: New Zealand Fashion Week

L'Oreal New Zealand Fashion Week official site