iD Fashion Week is Dunedin’s own annual celebration of New Zealand fashion. It presents two major Fashion shows; the iD International Emerging Designer Awards and the iD Dunedin Fashion Show otherwise known as Railway Each year designers from all over the world are invited to put forward their designs for The iD International Emerging Designer Awards. As New Zealand’s largest design competition, this year’s designers were selected out of 150 applicants from 15 countries. Designers come forward from many schools including The Otago Polytechnic, giving each competitor the opportunity to showcase their work and win cash prizes and internships. Academic leader for Fashion at The Otago Polytechnic and deputy chair of iD Fashion week Margo Barton has previously stressed the importance of such shows: “Fashion has a long history of emerging fashion designers taking part in international awards such as the iD International Emerging Designer Awards, and whilst winning is of course the main aim for designers, the reality is that the most important outcome for the finalists, and for the students and staff working on the event is the international networking opportunity. It’s a chance to share and learn from each other and to plan future collaborations and fashion adventures.” This year, four Otago Polytechnic students were selected; Myself (Brittany Pooley), Andrea Short, Shelby Tuinman-Bell, and Sophie Ball. The show takes place on Thursday the 17th of March and a free exhibition of the garments will be held from Friday March 18th to Saturday 19th March at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.
The second annual show is the iD Dunedin Fashion Show, presenting the top fashion labels from our nation. Each year, iD invites two major labels to feature as their special guests. This year we will have the opportunity to see New Zealand designer Kate Sylvester and New Zealand born british based designer Emilia Wickstead. Alongside these, and many other big names, stand six of the 2015 Otago Polytechnic graduates selected by an anonymous panel of designers. Myself (Brittany Pooley), Amy Dunn, Joseph Hollebon, Kenya Quin, Sharlee Ghent and Andrea Short were all chosen based on our graduate collections during the 2015 Otago Polytechnic Collections show. iD is an opportunity that can give designers crucial national and international visibility. Local designer Charmaine Reveley is a Dunedin success story that proves the potential importance of iD on design careers. In a recent social media interview she said that her first iD experience was as a polytechnic student. “I got selected as one of the three students to represent the polytech. It was really exciting and cool.” She is looking forward to “showing a collection on the runway as a whole”: “it’s really exciting to show the public what we do.” This year’s iD Dunedin Fashion Show will run over two nights, Friday the 18th and Saturday the 19th of March. The show will also feature the winner of the iD International Emerging Designer Awards.
To give you an insight into this year’s show and the concepts behind some of the collections, we’ve supplied profiles of the emerging and railway designers’ collections.
Name: Brittany Pooley
Hometown: Christchurch
Show: iD Dunedin Fashion Show, iD International Emerging Designer Awards
Collection: “The Next Day”
My 2015 Artisanal Collection “The Next Day” is an artefact collection composed of five contemporary tailored coat designs styled with linen, wool and silk garments. I draw primarily from the album cover for David Bowie’s “Heroes” and its amendment for The Next Day, as well as Albert Camus’s absurdism. I fortify the presence of the Absurd within Bowie and his work by showing how Camus’s philosophy can be compatible with the ways in which we police our own behaviour and form our identities. The Absurd is a key theme in David Bowie’s 2013 album The Next Day that comes across as Bowie attempts to depict the absurdist nature to persist ever forward. Two conceptual goals of this collection are the portrayal of existential crises shown primarily through distressed textiles, and to pay homage to Bowie’s album covers as cultural artefacts featured through a series of portraiture on the back of the coats.
Name: Sophie Ball
Hometown: Wanaka
Show: iD International Emerging Designer Awards
Collection : Welcome to Sophie's World
Inspired by the silly notion that Wanaka is hiding it’s own mythical creatures, Welcome to Sophie’s World is a textile driven collection that brings to life the inner world and imagination of a designer looking to escape the mundane reality of life and share a bit of silliness and quirk with the world. Fashioned after the Lochness Monster and The Abominable Snowman, the stars of the collection are Locky and Snowy, they make their debut throughout the collection in digitally printed fabrics, screen prints and quilted pieces that they are each individually free motion quilted.
What do you think will make you stand out as a designer competing in the iD International Designer Awards?
I think I stand out because of my textiles and prints. I draw characters that are weird hybrids of animals and fruit, I don’t even understand what my brain thinks, it just happens! I think I am so bad at drawing what I want and what my hand draws never quite align but I just go with it. I love what I do and I have so much fun and I laugh at how silly my designs are and I really hope that comes through in my prints. I think they are very unique and have a childlike quality that isn’t seen in a lot of fashion for women. I also design for a younger target market in mind so my collections are often very youthful and commercial; I have designed casual Activewear and comfortable pieces with a lot of personality and quirk. I channel my love of cartoons and am influenced by Kpop music, Japanese anime, and food. I have a huge imagination and I hope that sets me apart. I feel that on an international level.
Name: Amy Dunn
Hometown: Dunedin
Show: iD Dunedin Fashion Show
Collection: Amy Dunn A/W 2016.
Based in Dunedin, Amy Dunn believes that a designer garment should be an investment. With emphasis on a minimalist yet innovative approach, her designs possess qualities that allow for experimentation, ensuring versatility. Dunn aims to appeal to an intergenerational market, inspired by the wardrobe swapping relationship between a Mother and Daughter. Garments are timeless and easy to wear, with a focus on fluid natural fibres and subtle geometric prints. The Graduate 2015 Winter collection was developed through the exploration of Buddhism and Perspective Art. These themes were composed into key words such as purity, fragility, fluidity, versatility and minimalism. This season’s print emerged from an interest in perspective and motion. A circular motif sits delicately screen-printed on multiple layers of fabric, which overlap through sheer silks when hanging from the body.
Why do you think iD is of such massive importance to the New Zealand fashion industry?
iD is an amazing platform that is able to expose local and up and coming designers work to not only the rest of New Zealand but also internationally. It shows off Dunedin’s very distinctive fashion aesthetic and as a designer I feel honoured to be a part of this.
Name: Sharlee Ghent
Hometown: Whanganui
Show: iD Dunedin Fashion Show
Collection: The Pathos of Being
“Mono no aware” is a Japanese design concept, which roughly translates as “the pathos of things”. This feeling of empathy is expressed throughout my collection through hard and soft fabrications, a personal and meaningful representation of refined sensitivity and the sorrowful and transient nature of beauty. Experimental design and to fashion disorder on existing silhouettes was my purpose. To create garments through a bricolage process with the placement of unique fabrications means each piece is individual and can never be replicated exactly. This collection is both delicate and tough; brooding yet tender and seeking to convey a metaphoric illusion of mortality.
What is your philosophy as a designer and why do you feel this is important to New Zealand Fashion?
As a designer I gravitate towards a melancholic moody aesthetic, with a touch of romanticism. I seek to invoke a feeling of casual chic by combining complex and simple design. This is achieved by making bold and subtle fashion statements simultaneously. The majority of my design work is fabric focused; with the materials I use dictating my design direction. I feel my philosophy is important to New Zealand because it is a unique and innovative contribution to the fashion industry.
Name: Joseph Hollebon
Hometown: Christchurch
Show: iD Dunedin Fashion Show
Collection: Joseph Hollebon S/S 16
Joseph Hollebon’s collection suggests simplicity, freshness as well as understated sophistication. Finding inspiration through the Japanese perspective wabi-sabi, it is the embodiment of a desire to create garments less confined by perfection. The aesthetic, steeped in minimalism, is wearable yet demonstrates an exceptional eye for detail. Hidden closures are substituted for the ornate while ties are bandaged around the body falling down past the knee. Garments are neither distinctly masculine nor feminine and would rather be defined by their softly squared, loose silhouettes that reject the notion of rigidity. The collection appreciates that it is just a stage within a much larger process, trusting that everything is in its right place, for now. Accepting the imperfect and incomplete, every garment embodies a part of a natural cycle of growth undertaken by the designer.
What are your plans following your graduation and how do you feel showing at iD will help you toward these goals?
I have just started Honours at Otago Polytechnic and intend on writing about/exploring ergonomic, functional and aesthetic possibilities of construction based upon unconventional approximations of the human body. iD will expose me as a designer and give me insight behind the scenes of the fashion industry.
Name: Kenya Quin
Hometown: Dunedin
Show: iD Dunedin Fashion Show
Collection: In the Making
In the Making is a visual representation of mental illness in the creative industry combined with an expressive textile manipulation of embroidery showing the idea of craft therapy, a healing creative outlet. The silhouettes are a combination of loose and fitted garments that portray conflicting ideas of feeling overwhelmed and constricted and feeling relaxed and unrestrained. The minimal silhouettes are influenced by my own personal take on traditional Chinese garments and more modern styles of Chinese work wear, following a muted colour pallet. The collection has raw edges that unravel to express the theme of an unravelling mind and represent an unfinished state of creating. The embroidery that is present within the collection is messy, unplanned and unravelling showing the endless cycle of disappointment, recognition and satisfaction that the creative process follows.
How would you describe your aesthetic and what reaction do you hope to get at the iD Railway show?
The aesthetic I follow is timeless, clean and minimal with Eastern influences inspired from my Chinese heritage. Silhouette and the human form influence my design process, using layers to reveal and conceal the body in different ways, focusing on how people choose to wear garments and how the clothing affects the way they feel. I hope that when people view my collection at the iD Railway show they feel a sense of calm and enjoy what they see, I wanted my collection to help people see the beauty of imperfection.
Name: Andrea Short
Hometown: Dunedin
Show: iD Dunedin Fashion Show, iD International Emerging Designer Awards
Collection: Remnants of Retrospection
Andrea’s collection Remnants of Retrospection tells the story of innocence and the passage of time, how delicate we can become when exposed to outside forces. The fragile fabric represents our ever-changing directions in life. Some things will fall away but what remains of the structure, whispers memories of time, damage, and the strength that it takes to pull things back together? This collection is about letting go of perfection and embracing the process that goes along with being a creative soul. She explains “Your experiences make you who you are; the intention for this collection is to tell my personal story and to begin conversations in order to make meaningful outcomes for others.”
Who have been your biggest supporters throughout the development of your collection/selection for Railway and Emerging?
My biggest supporters while developing my collection have definitely been my friends and family, I wouldn’t have pushed myself so far without their kind words and reassurance.
Name: Shelby Tuinman-Bell
Hometown: Queenstown
Show: iD International Emerging Designer Awards
Collection: Half-Sleep
Based around the idea of dreams, Shelby’s graduate collection Half-Sleep unites the surrealism of dreams and reality together with inspiration from bedding and sleepwear. Their focus was to bring these ideas together to create a collection to intrigue, both avant-garde and ready to wear pieces that would exude luxury and comfort.
What do you hope to gain by showing your work at the 2016 iD Emerging Designer awards?
I hope to gain connections with the other finalists but having my work shown to a larger fashion audience might also help me to make connections with industry professionals. Getting selected for the Emerging Designer awards has also given me the confidence to apply for other opportunities and to continue to push myself with my design in the future.