The woman behind the iD International Emerging Designers Show says this year’s event will combine intimacy and spectacle to take the show to a new level.
Margo Barton, iD Dunedin Fashion Week committee chairwoman and Otago Polytechnic academic leader of fashion, told an audience at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery yesterday about the history of the event.
Dr Barton took over the lead role on the committee late last year, and has since announced the Dunedin Railway Station show will be no longer.
Instead, the emerging designer show at the town hall will take over as the main event.
Dr Barton said the original emerging designer show in 2005 was "a very small event" in a marquee in the Octagon’s central carriageway.
It had its genesis in Mittelmoda, an Italian show Dr Barton entered in 1999 in a town about the size of Oamaru.
"I thought ‘Why can’t we do that’?"She raised the idea with iD Dunedin and was told "go on the committee and make it happen".
Despite its small beginnings, it has helped launch the career of plenty of designers now working around the world, from Croatia to Paris and Melbourne.
The show was "a crossover between fashion and art", and had also been held at the Edgar Centre, the town hall and the railway station.
Along the way there were plenty of unusual backstage occurrences; the designer who had to be told he could not smear models with mud from a bag he brought for the purpose, models intimidated by following statuesque Chinese models down the catwalk, and judges who wanted to change their decision as the show went on.
Dr Barton said people had told her they wanted both the intimacy of the railway station, where people sat within metres of the catwalk, and the spectacle of the town hall.
With the new catwalk taking models to two levels of the town hall, both could be provided for in the show’s 14th year.
Judges would view garments on display and meet designers of the 44 collections, but not make a decision until they had seen the designs on the catwalk.
"It is something that hopefully can give people intimacy and spectacle."
The fashion week begins officially tomorrow.
