The lipstick’s thick but not everyone’s smiling at New Zealand Fashion Week, Kim Knight reports.
It happens every year. Somewhere between the runway model in the black pants and the runway model in the off-black pants, a fashionable front-rower sighs.
She shrugs (gently, because otherwise that camel coat she never actually sticks her arms in will slip from her narrow shoulders) and she declares: "Fashion Week. It's just not the same.''
Set your Marc by Marc Jacobs rose gold bracelet watch by it: the annual declaration that the annual event is possibly dead, and is definitely Not What It Used to Be. To which the only educated response is: "Well, duh.''
Because if the internet has changed everything, then why wouldn't it have had an impact on the fashion world?
The industry that used to change its pants twice a year now drops new styles into stores on a daily-weekly-monthly basis. The designers who used to get their make-or-break moments via glossy magazines can now bypass print and go straight to the consumer democracy of digital.
And the public? Well, we're loving it.
"We just all want instant s...,'' says Rebecca Weinberg, the former Sex and the City costume designer who sat front row at New Zealand's 2002 Fashion Week. "We just want the whore. We want the hooker. We want the quick fix. And it'll never go back to what it was.''
Earlier this year, a report on the future of the New York event summarised the issues that are facing all fashion weeks.
"Technology and social media have rewired the fashion system as everyone knows it,'' it said. "Images and livestreams from shows are accessible worldwide in real time, exposing consumers to designs months before they are available for purchase and providing sufficient time for so-called fast fashion brands to manufacture and deliver such trends ... trends and designs can seem out-of-date or stale by the time they reach stores, causing general consumer confusion and fatigue and ultimately hurting designer full-price retail.''
Fashion weeks used to be trade-only events (for media, buyers, stylists and selected celebrities). They featured clothes the public wouldn't see in stores until the following season.
It is a risky model. Designers have to fund the production of collections they can't make money off for months and then present them in a 20-minute lights-music-makeup extravaganza that, in New Zealand, can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $60,000. Designers send their clothes down a runway and hope for follow-up appointments from major retailers or an influential stylist. They pray they don't get a bad headline or, worse, are ignored.
Today, says Francis Hooper, co-owner of fashion label World, "That wholesale model is broken. Everything is sold online and you're doing business with your wholesale customers all the time over the internet. Old-fashioned dinosaur events still exist in Paris and Milan and to a certain extent they work because they're so iconic and established, but all the other fashion weeks ...''
And yet, for the first time in five years, World is showing at the New Zealand event. Well, sort of. Because while New Yorkers read reports on How to Save Fashion Week, many of the suggested solutions (in-season "shop now'' shows that are open to the public, for example) have been happening here for years.
World is not showing a forward season collection. Instead, like Trelise Cooper and other established names, it is sending its buy-now summer clothes down a publicly ticketed runway.
"It's for our customers,'' says Hooper. "A show is just an extravagant way for us to get our customers in the room and for them to just fall in love with us for another season.''
His advice to young designers considering showing at Fashion Week?
"I would say why are you doing this? Is it for ego? Do you just want people to say you're f...ing amazing? Well, why don't you just keep the money? But if it's part of a plan, if they have a business plan that says we've got a really good chance of getting a media story or a fashion spread; it's a real risk, you're gambling, but go for it. And, of course, maybe there's potentially going to be a buyer.''
Wynn Hamlyn Crawshaw is a 26-year-old Te Puke-born former land surveyor who used to work on large-scale construction projects. In 2014, he launched the label Wynn Hamlyn. This year, he spent about $10,000 showing solo in the "contemporary salon'' section of NZ Fashion Week.
"It's 100% a marketing tool,'' he says. "Ingraining yourself in people's minds as a certain thing, a certain luxury, a certain reason to spend $500 on a dress is your presence at things like this, in magazines, or otherwise ... I'm just basically trying to break into those wholesale accounts.
"The likes of Trelise and Stolen Girlfriends, they can show in-season because they've been doing it so long. They've got all their wholesale accounts and what they're trying to do is drive people in store.''
The 16th annual NZ Fashion Week has been running all week at the Auckland Viaduct Events Centre, winding up on Sunday with a weddings show, swimwear and the Fashion Quarterly show. It's about ridiculous shoes and the right shade of lipstick; sneers, stares and All Blacks in the front row (and, for the past two years at least, on the catwalk). It will cost ratepayers $200,000.
It's not everyone's cup of Champagne. Morrinsville-based designer Annah Stretton estimates she's shown at 13 Fashion Weeks. She has not been back this year.
"I've never felt like a valued customer,'' she said. "You do business with people you like, and for me it was always just a wonderful gift to our customers, and the team who loved the project, but it just became more and more difficult to do business with Fashion Week.
"I've always known that Fashion Week believed we weren't a fit ... but they were kind of happy to take our money. We're always the poor cousin coming up from the Waikato. There was always comments about our customer base, and after a while ... I think fashion exists right across the demographics.
"Whether you're EziBuy or Karen Walker, we've all got a place to play in this market. I'm challenged by some of the disconnect that happens across the demographics of fashion. We don't support or embrace. We're not nice to each other.''
United States costume designer Rebecca Weinberg says fashion weeks are still relevant. They're just not as much fun.
"Unfortunately, all the celebrities are getting all the hoo-ha now. It's no longer the stylists, it's what celebrity can you get to the show. I think that's what's hurting New York Fashion Week. It's become this s...-show of celebrity. And really, it's not like Sophia Loren is coming to your f...ing fashion show. You're getting the Kardashians.
"This young generation, they're looking at their phone. They're not connecting. This stuff is going down the runway and no-one's even looking. They're looking through a lens, through a small screen.''
So, why would a designer spend money on Fashion Week when the modern customer is just as happy to look online?
"It's not always about the pieces,'' Weinberg says. "It's about the presentation. It's the vehicle. It's the truck that drives into the fireworks. It's the aha moment.''
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Comments
Do the American fashionistas talk like that at home? EFF this, S that. You're being interviewed, not on social media.
The conditions described apply to Auckland Fashion Week. 'Sexy' Aucklanders are 60 years old and wear the Daria Halpin™ outdoors dress with a maxi coat.
You want a hooker or a hooar, go to the Rugby. If you think the Fashion World will work as mere digital media, and not as crowd work networking, you're kidding yourselves.
Moreover, we have noticed that you've put one long suffering member of Equity into a bikini. A bikini, I ask you. Let's be clear. Fashion is design, design is Applied Science, and Craft is Art. Togs is swimwear, swimwear is an excuse.