2025 WOW awards: US designers’ Japanese-inspired work crowned supreme winner

A husband-and-wife design team from the United States have taken out the top prize in the 2025 World of WearableArt (WOW) Awards, announced at the TSB Arena in Wellington on Friday night.

Dawn Mostow and Ben Gould’s intricate latex creation, Tsukumogami, drew on Japanese classical, centuries-old blue ceramics crowned with blue and white ikebana flowers. Traditionally, these ceramics are said to be imbued with a live spirit.

Describing it as a blend of the past and the future, WOW judges stated the creation was “radically innovative and future forward, while at the same time paying exquisite homage to centuries-old artistic and cultural traditions.

“A work that captivates the eye and refuses to let it go.”

The strong Japanese influence reflected in the couple’s designs stems from Mostow’s years of living in Japan, fascination with the Japanese belief that objects can be imbued with spirit and kintsugi, the practice of repairing broken ceramics with golden seams to enhance their value.

Although the couple have been regular finalists since 2017, this year’s victory marks the first time they have taken out the Supreme WOW Award.

Runner-up to the award was Wellingtonian Fifi Colston’s 30th WOW creation, Meine Erste Liebe.

Inspired by a 19th-century tale about the ill-fated love between a German botanical artist and his wife, judges described the garment as “a work that takes your breath away. A living archive of hundreds of years of artistic technique and a divinely composed ode to love, loss and art.”

In an interview with RNZ, Colston said: “I’m going to draw and sketch every day and move away from digital, and then I’ll just see what comes out of that … something will come up for me.“

Winner of the Wētā Workshop Award for Outstanding Design, Cantabrian Cushla O’Connell’s garment, Worn Landscape, featured a landscape image created from more than 6000 upcycled buttons.

Wētā Workshop founder and chief executive Sir Richard Taylor, who judged the award, said O’Connell’s creation was “imbued with the spirit of a Hayao Miyazaki-inspired world”.

The inaugural Te Tohu Toi Rākei - a new WOW Competition award recognising and celebrating excellence in Māori art, craft and design when translated into a work of wearable art - was awarded to Anna Hayes-Moeau (Ngati Kahungunu ki te Wairoa) for her work, Ko au ko Harakeke, Ko Harakeke ko au.

Category judges Karl Chitham (Te Uriroroi and Ngā Puhi) and Isaac Te Awa (Ngāpuhi, Kāti Māmoe, Kai Tahu, Waitaha) said the entry stood out for “elevating traditional materials and techniques with exquisite attention to detail”.

“The incorporation of whakapapa and pūrākau transforms the work from something familiar to something extraordinary.”

WOW head of competition Sarah Nathan said there was again an extraordinary level of creativity and technical skills evident in the finalist garments.

Across 25 awards, 85 finalists created by 100 designers from 17 countries competed for a prize pool of more than $200,000.

2025 World of Wearableart winners

Section winners

Special awards