What to do instead of NZ Fashion Week

Fashion Week, Paris. Photo / Supplied

New Zealand Fashion Week was due to kick off on Monday. This year is Fashion Week's platinum anniversary – the week-long celebration of our local rag trade is now 20 years in the making, designing, stitching and beading. Fate had other ideas however and so the event has been postponed, but that's no reason you can't scratch your fashion itch. There is a plethora of great fashionista documentaries online, and the public library's online system is the first place to start. Beamafilm is digital documentary service that is free to use – all you need is a library membership.

To sign up, go to beamafilm.com (have your library membership number handy), select your library (Auckland, for example), and create your account.

And then the fun starts.

I'd start on The September Issue is a must-see – it's a look at the inner workings of Vogue magazine, as Anna Wintour and her staff piece together the biggest issue of the year.

Bill Cunningham is also essential, a portrait of the gentle and influential fashion photographer whose street-style photography was beloved of fashionistas, including Wintour (who said, "We all get dressed for Bill".

The life of Londoner Alexander McQueen is told in McQueen, an East End boy who rose from poverty to be one of the world's most successful bespoke designers. His work was full of sex, romance and darkness, and his life behind the scenes reflected the same. There are also films on punk fashion icon and activist Vivienne Westwood, Yellow is Forbidden (the story of designer Guo Pei and a 50kg gold-spun dress created by 300 embroiderers), and Dior and I, which covers Raf Simon's first collection for Dior.

It's an absolute treasure trove, and there's enough there to see you through until Fashion Week returns.