Small-town designer cut silky line in city style

By LEANNE MOORE

For more than five decades, dress designer Michael Mattar put a sleepy little North Island town on New Zealand's fashion map.

At the peak of his career in the 1960s, fashionable women from Auckland and Wellington travelled four hours by train to his Taumarunui salon to be fitted for one of his exquisite cocktail gowns.

The 69-year-old designer hung up his shears this year and sold his Taumarunui boutique, but not before leaving an indelible mark on this country's fashion history.

Mattar, who created classically elegant dresses with a touch of Hollywood glamour, has been honoured with his inclusion in the Auckland Museum's After Six Before Eight cocktail dress exhibition, which opened on Thursday.

Two of his signature little black dresses are featured: a silk cocktail dress from 1961 and a silk crepe and lace cocktail mini-dress from 1969.

But when the self-taught, award-winning designer is asked to recall his favourite frock, he names an ivory pure-silk lace gown he designed for the final Smokefree Fashion Awards in 1998. "It was a knockout. It had a slip-top, a silk chiffon full-length stole edged in pure silk lace, and a trumpet-style skirt.

"It's my dream gown. It's gorgeous - it looks like it's luminous," says Mattar, who has the gown stored, with other fashion memorabilia, at his Taumarunui home.

There were no fashion schools around when Mattar wanted to learn dress design in the 1950s. Instead, he experimented by making outfits for his sisters, Zeph and Adele. "They used to wear the outfits I'd made into town in Taumarunui and people would ask them where they got them from, and that's how people started coming to me for dresses."

Despite his small-town location, Mattar's clients were surprisingly diverse, ranging from Miss New Zealand to a British film producer.

"Last year a lady spied a jacket and a dress in the window of my shop, which she came in and bought. She was a London film producer and she wanted the outfit to wear to the Baftas."

Mattar, who plans to spend his retirement playing golf, listening to jazz music and travelling, is unimpressed by the hip-hop streetwear and sportswear influences on fashion. "I've never followed trends and I don't like to dress down at any time.

"Fashion has become too laid-back. It's too easy to put on a pair of slacks and a boob tube. People have got to be brave and dress up. I'm all for femininity. I like to celebrate womanhood."

New Zealand fashion doyenne Paula Ryan remembers the days when dressing for cocktails required a two-hour makeup job, high heels and a fabulous frock.

Ryan, who spoke at the museum exhibition opening, says dress codes have relaxed considerably since the cocktail heyday.

"Today if you go to a cocktail party a lot of people will wear what they wore to work," says Ryan, who founded Fashion Quarterly magazine with her husband, Don Hope, in 1980. She now produces Simply You magazine, and her own clothing range.

From the 1960s to the 1980s, she regularly wore exquisite cocktail gowns by Auckland designers Vinka Lucas and Gus Fisher, whose work features in the exhibition.

"Gus Fisher was the godfather of New Zealand fashion," says Ryan.

His El-Jay label was established in 1945 under licence from Christian Dior in Paris.

"You could have worn his garments inside out, the seams were so beautifully mitred."

The Auckland Art Gallery is also celebrating beautifully made clothing with Flaunt, another exhibition to co-incide with Fashion Week this month.

Works by top designers such as Karen Walker, World and Nicholas Blanchet feature alongside more traditional art, including 16th-century oil paintings and sculptural pieces.

Blanchet is rapt that his piece, a hand-slashed black leather skirt with a fabric lining, is on display.

"It's rare to see clothing in an art gallery because it's not generally accepted as contemporary art. It's seen as a commercial enterprise."

But the skirt took four hours of painstaking slashing with a scalpel to form the three-dimensional design.

Co-curator Laura Jocic says the exhibition aims to break down the boundaries between art and fashion. "It's an art exhibition that refers to fashion, it's based around fashion, but what it's really saying is art and fashion create culture."

Your chance to catch up with style statements

What: After Six Before Eight cocktail dress exhibition.

Where: Auckland Museum.

When: Now through to November 9.

Cost: Donation to museum requested.

What: Flaunt: Art/Fashion/Culture.

Where: Auckland Art Gallery.

When: From now through to February 8, 2004.

Cost: $7 (adult) $5 (student/unwaged).


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