There goes Fashion Week again, and with it that decadent little mid-year rev-up for the soul, writes Rebecca Barry.
Fashion Week is so over. Forgive me for going there after the fact but the hangover is still showing.
No more free champagne at lunchtime. No more taunting the models with lamingtons, lemon meringue pies and whipped cream scones as they parade World's latest confections down the runway at the
Langham.
No more standing around makeshift bars reacquainting with acquaintances busy texting their acquaintances. No more wondering where to stick the goodie bag - it goes under the seat like an aeroplane lifejacket, not beside it, I'm told, where it could obscure take-off.
No more wondering what's in the goodie bag and whether it deserves to be called a goodie bag or merely an alrighty bag - it's uncouth to pull out the free water bottle and metrosexual product until you've left the venue (this might explain why there were lip balms bobbing in the harbour on Friday afternoon).
No more trying to make out why those in the front row often look as though they're giving the once-over to a criminal lineup or a potentially salmonella-infested conveyer belt of seafood at a sushi bar.
That doesn't look very fresh to me.
Neither. No one's eating anymore anyway darling.
Clearly. Lamington?
No thanks, I'm too busy pretending to write things down on my notepad.
Take a picture, it lasts longer.
We're all terribly saddened by the conclusion of this most auspicious of events, especially those who love nothing more than hearing Aucklanders wax on about what we're wearing, an event so exclusive that the public are invited to fight over the designers' sale items at the end of it.
Perhaps we're all so downtrodden at the middle of the year, so sapped with recessionary angst, so in need of a break that we go a little gaga for escapism in the form of a trade show. Now Auckland's biggest mutual back-slapping (save, perhaps, the music awards) has sent us back to sober reality with a thud, and a few questions.
Where was the ubiquitous Rhys Darby? I didn't spot him at any of the Fashion Week events I made it to - but who knew Taika Waititi was such a fashion slut? He was here, there and everywhere. Also spotted at Halsey St: Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Paul Rutherford, who now lives on Waiheke Island.
Relax - he's been living in New Zealand for eight years. What a nice man he is too.
I didn't spot any vegan TV reporters in leather jackets but I couldn't help but wonder why someone didn't send up those poor dead lambs from down south. Stolen Girlfriends could have done something fabulous with them in time to fend off that gusty wind.
Because it's always awful weather during Fashion Week, a real test for hairspray brands. Go on, get your hair blow-waved. I looked as though I was attempting to smuggle a southern lamb every time I entered The Tent.
The good news: Douglas Lloyd Jenkins, Claire Regnault and Lucy Hammonds have written a book about the New Zealand fashion scene as it was well before Fashion Week was even invented.
The Dress Circle, out next month, is a fascinating insight into the clothing industry since 1940. Those were the days when Auckland ladies dressed like ladies, when the country's first bikini for sale drew a crowd and when it took a lot more than a well-sewn garment to impress as most women back then could sew.
That was when New Zealand didn't think of itself as having a design culture as such; our clothing was considered "dull, conformist, derivative".
Aside from the sugar high I got stuffing myself with cream puffs as skinny clotheshangers showed off angular bodies in billowing silk-satin at the World show - complete with high tea - Fashion Week elevated the spirit, at least for a few days.
Now we can all go back to being dull, conformist and derivative. The world goes on, in flats, shirts and ill-fitting jeans.
Bored Auckland taxi drivers can now get the hell off the Groundhog Day of the fish market route. And we can finally catch up on deleting all that Viagra spam now the party's over.
Oh well. Only three more months until you-know-what. Yippee.
