What were the highlights and lowlights of RAFW?
Highlights: seeing a collection as progressive as Gareth Pugh, but as clean as Prada from Dion Lee; going to a real life 40s style salon presentation at Jayson Brundson; the new social media running circles around the old schoolers in terms of speed, accessibility and all round coverage of RAFW; and of course meeting my new best good friend Steve Wood - photographer extraordinaire. Lowlights: Having a breakdown due to everything going wrong on the second day - internet went down, security were being big bums and no food all day all got a bit much.
Source: Vogue Australia
Trend wise - what were the biggest and what were your personal favorites?
The Balmain shoulder - seen on almost all of the catwalks, all week I was shaking my head at the blatant copying going on, then I suddenly thought to myself - hey, somebody's gotta do it first - then other people start doing it, then it becomes a trend - and that's where we're at now. Harem pants for Africa, but my favourite pants were the cropped cigarette pants, the best of which were pleated. I love girls in pants.
What looks/trends do you think will translate best over here in little old NZ?
That's a hard one because the Sydney style is such a different one to what we wear here. Almost all the designers cater largely to PYTs - think bleach blonde, big boobs, see through skirts - cocktail frocks and the like, which is something very few NZ designers do. Sydney designers seem to be far more trend driven that NZ designers too - I think we're not quite so influenced by international trends down here, which has its positives and its negatives. Positives are that we're sometimes more original, negatives are that many of our designers put the same thing down the runway year in and out. It will be very interesting to see how many of the NZers get into the Balmain shoulder come NZFW.
Who was the best dressed person you saw?
My friend Nadia. I love how she dresses like a schoolboy/sailor boy, and everything she buys is like $3 from a thrift store. I never find anything at thrift stores! The standard of dress over in Sydney was really quite incredible - the magazine girls were wearing the most amazing clothes at 9am every morning, and lots of them got changed over the course of the day. Once again, I loved the girls in pants. So hot.
Speaking of which, is Scott Schuman sartorially exceptional in real life?
Scott Schuman is exceptionally small of stature in real life, I'd say he must only be about 5'4 or 5'5 at the most. He generally wears pretty standard American style stuff . That was the first photo taken of him at RAFW that I know about - I got him at about 8:45 am on the first day.
Source: Isaac Likes
What were the most noticeable signs of the recession?
There weren't many that I could see, nobody talked about it too much, everyone was still wearing crazy expensive clothes and the catwalk shows were still pretty big events, so I don't think there were many at all. Maybe less international media than usual? Certainly less NZ media presence than normal.
What effect/influence do you you thing blogging and twitter has had on RAFW?
So much effect and so so much influence! After the first day of what we were doing - live video interviews, twit pics while catwalk shows were taking place, videos of the shows and backstage photos up within 15 minutes of them finishing - a lot of the traditional media started getting pretty snarky towards us, and most of our traffic levels doubled and even tripled. I think this was the first ever fashion week to be Twittered and Blogged on such a massively quick scale like what we did, and I think it's changed the nature of the game forever. At the same time, the traditional media still has its place - doing things so quickly means not being able to review collections with the same depth a newspaper or online magazine does. So I think we have our place, and they have theirs. But they didn't know what had hit them.
What's in your Fashion Week Survival tool kit?
Gum, Burt's Bees, laptop, camera, video camera, media pass. Water if I can get my hands on it.
Image Sources: Antipodes, Source, Source
Most “Ocker” fashion piece?
I don't know about ocker, but there was a hell of a lot of extreme Sydney pieces - entirely see through dresses worn with nothing underneath. Almost every designer did at least one of those. Oh, and bikinis. Those Australians don't know how to do a catwalk show without one.
Thanks Isaac! And thanks for the great (and tres speedy) coverage of RAFW.
