MERE Keating was just a teenager when Maureen Kingi won Miss New Zealand in 1962.
At the time Keating, then aged 13, dreamed she wanted to make a piu piu for the 19-year-old from Rotorua, who had been crowned the most beautiful woman in New Zealand, to wear at the Miss
World contest in London.
Now, 45 years later at the Sarjeant Gallery, Keating's vision of an indigenous design was realised, when another Maori woman who had also won a beauty pageant, turned up to model the fashions of local designers in the Manawa Ora Tohu Kakahu fashion parade.
Miss Wanganui, Amanda Hiroti, stepped into Keating's silk-and- harakeke three-piece, which she said, "fit perfectly as though I had made it for her".
No-one had tried the three-piece before, Keating said. Keating dyed pieces of harakeke and raw silk and then plaited the harakeke. The other harakeke she sewed together to wrap around the bodice.
The silk skirt, harakeke overskirt and bodice was topped with a hat of dyed harakeke.
Ornamental poi hung from the waistband, reminiscent of the former beauty queen who was expert with the double and triple poi.
Another interesting link to the volcanic plateau and Tuwharetoa is Miss Kingi's whakapapa to Sir Hepi Te Heu Heu.
Miss Kingi's grandmother was the daughter of Te Whataiwi, a first cousin to Tureiti Te Heuheu.
