Final Word: The fashion of the times

Opinion

I think it is fair to say that I love Fashion Week — or to give it its full corporate due, Air New Zealand Fashion Week.

Where possible, I will be there with bells on this coming week. Well, not literally with bells on, because even if bells were the fashion for Fashion Week I wouldn't wear them — there is a line between "fashionable" and "stupid" and bells would, I feel, definitely cross that line, especially with my skin tones.

Instead, I'll be the rather bemused, a bit pudgy and slightly dodgy-looking bloke trying to fly under the radar as he checks out the beautiful people. Not that I mean "check out" in a pervy way. I mean it in a more matter-of-fact sense, in that the tents and bars and over-crowded corridors of Fashion Week are full of people for whom beauty is a way of life; for whom dressing to impress is an everyday occurrence, which makes them great fodder for an inveterate people-watcher such as myself.

All shapes, all sizes, all colours — it really is great fun watching the fashion cavalcade scurry past, being important. I know it's easy to take the piss out of the fashion world, but I do think the fashion industry has a very important function in society, over and above that of merely making the clothes that mean we're not all walking around naked and cold.

Fashion, to me, should hold up a mirror to society; a mirror that reflects who we are. Society then needs to look into that mirror and to have a massive insecurity attack about what it sees looking back at itself, then to go away and have a little cry and seek solace in cake.

Thus, at Air New Zealand Fashion Week 2009, I shall be on the lookout for the designers who are truly making a fashion statement about New Zealand today.

For instance, we have a National Government now, so I would expect that at least one collection should hark back to the glory days of National under Keith Holyoake in the 60s. This would be a very different collection to what we're used to from 60s-inspired fashion in that it would take its inspiration less from Twiggy and hippy chic and more from the civil service as portrayed in a Roger Hall play. Walk shorts, walk socks, rugby club jerseys worn under the tweed jacket, roman sandals and socks for weekend casual wear. This would be a collection that would make the statement: "this is what we were once and, guess what, it still looks tragic now and if we're not careful, we could end up back there".

Thought provoking and fear-inspiring — everything fashion should be. We are also allegedly coming out of a recession, so I hope the designers will pay due respect to that. Distressed business suits and a new sense of power dressing that says "you, too, can look like a million dollars, as long as you had $100 million when you first invested with us" would be the order of the day here. To drive this point home, the models could scatter those in the front row with shredded Hanover and Blue Chip investment propaganda.

The environment, of course, is very important to everyone these days, so I hope the designers will give that the appropriate weight it deserves — in a fashionable way. I'm not just talking here about making sure all the lights in the workroom have eco-friendly bulbs or even by consuming no power at all by moving the workroom to Southeast Asia and having people peddling their lungs out on bicycles to power the generators that power the sewing machines.

No, I want to see a real commitment to the environment by making sure all the clothes are made out of 100 per cent renewable materials, like grass or twigs. My ideal would be the evening dress that, by the time the model has galumphed down the catwalk and back, has already bio-degraded to the point that she is, essentially, wearing compost. Sure, that is highly impractical in an evening dress, but this is Fashion Week, not the Home Show.

Fashion should embrace the impractical and the impractical should air-kiss fashion right back.

Ah, Air New Zealand Fashion Week, where the beautiful people gather and gossip and pass judgment in hushed tones and sip bubbles through a straw. And, in among them, the gods of fashion willing, you will find me, soaking it all up, looking for inspiration in the most inspiring of places.

All I have to figure out now is what to wear while I watch. Oh, the pressure.