KEY POINTS:
She is the proud overseer of more than 500 garments - everything from Zambesi to Trelise Cooper to vintage garments in the most perfect condition. Yet she can't wear a single one of those outfits.
"It's like having the most amazing wardrobe that you can never wear," sighs
Angela Lassig, senior curator in history at the national museum, Te Papa Tongarewa, in Wellington.
Luckily she is, she admits, "one of those women that can just go and open the wardrobe doors, look at all the clothes and go `ahhh!"'
Lassig, whose interests lie in fashion and textiles and who is writing a book on contemporary New Zealand fashion, is talking about the fashion collection at Te Papa. For the seven years she has been at the museum, Lassig has been steadily acquiring garments for the fashion and textiles collection, making it, she believes, the largest in the country. Her passion for textiles sparked the whole thing off, and she has been attending New Zealand Fashion Week annually and visiting designers' workrooms to interview them, buy from their current collections and rifle through their archives.
In fact, if you're in the right place at the right time, you may even overhear some proud local designer boasting that "Darling! We've been bought by Te Papa."
But when you ask Lassig why Te Papa buys what it does, it turns out that, unlike the rest of us, the museum doesn't just buy clothes because they think they are pretty.
It's a historical mission, rather than one concerned with trends or popularity or a certain designer's skills, Lassig explains.
"We never buy an object just for the sake of it. There has to be a narrative around it - although often there's more than that, too."
For example, Lassig has some of the first garments on the runway in the first show at the first New Zealand Fashion Week, in 2001.
They were from the Gubb & Mackie collection designed by the two young men, Wayne Sorenson and Jonathon Duder, who started the label but who have since sold the brand.
Te Papa also has some clothes from the first show by New Zealand designers in London; named the New Zealand Four, that group outing, sponsored, in part, by the New Zealand Government, included the labels Zambesi, Nom*D, Karen Walker and World.
The oldest commercial New Zealand fashion in the collection dates to the late 19th century and includes garments made by such household names as Hallenstein Brothers and Farmers, back when those companies first started making clothing.
In the middle of the collection's time line is a variety of garments from the 20th century. There is a former Wool Board promoter's collection of incredible couture - Pierre Balmain, Hardy Amies and more, all shipped back from France and England in the 1940s and 50s.
There are garments local manufacturers made under licence, mid-century - New Zealand had one of the world's longest-running licences to make clothes under the name Dior. That's why Dior frocks and bags, "Made in New Zealand" still turn up in vintage stores.
A little further up the time line are collections of crazily inventive outfits from 70s and 80s designers such as Annie Bonza and Doris de Pont.
And there are even some of the spunky frocks that won what was once New Zealand's premiere fashion competition, the Benson & Hedges, as well as the results of Lassig's devoted research into designers most of us have probably never heard of.
"I keep coming across the same names, yet there's nothing written about them - even though maybe in their time, they were considered as hot as Karen Walker," she says. "It's important for me, and for the museum, that those people don't become invisible, because they are part of our history."
But it's not like she gets a blank cheque from the museum and goes on a shopping spree.
"I tend to work with the designers because they know their own work and their archives the best. But really we need factual, concrete reasons for including something. After all, it is public money. You need to be able to justify the purchase."
Although she might not put it this way, Lassig and her employer have become the infallible memory of New Zealand's local fashion industry. Sometimes the memories will be pretty, other times you'll need to look away from the pink flares and Perspex dresses. Sometimes the outfits will take onlookers back to a specific time or place; at others they'll simply reflect a general social movement.
Says Lassig: "It's important because although fashion can be so ephemeral, it's also an important document of our heritage. Basically," she concludes simply, "the clothes that are here tell a story."
GET YOUR PIECE OF HISTORICAL ACTION
* Part of Te Papa's collection of fashion is permanently on show in the Eyelights Gallery on Level 4 inside the museum.
* It is also possible to see other clothes from the archive that are not on display but you have to make an appointment. Most of the fashion collection is kept in a storage facility onsite at Te Papa, and the most people allowed into the collection at any one time is 10. Groups are charged a fee, but for individuals making an appointment it's free. Call Te Papa on (04) 381 7000.
* Other museums also collect fashion. Auckland Museum's clothing can be viewed in the Applied Arts collection, the Dowse Museum in Lower Hutt often puts on great fashion-focused exhibitions, and the Canterbury Museum has the Mollie Rodie McKenzie collection, one of the most exceptional collections of vintage fashion in the country.
