Sneak Peek Offers Unique Insight into Maori Design Stories

Sneak Peek Offers Unique Insight into Maori Design Stories
Designers in the MIROMODA Showcase at New Zealand Fashion Week
will be sharing what inspired their collections at a pre-show event

Next Thursday marks the ninth consecutive year at Fashion Week for MIROMODA; the show put on by the Indigenous Māori Fashion Board (IMFAB) featuring 10 designers of Māori descent who won or were runners up in the organisation’s coveted annual fashion design competition.

But select members of the public will have the opportunity to meet the designers, see their collections up close and learn about the inspirations behind them at a pre-show event in St Kevin’s Arcade. The evening will include a demonstration by Award winning hair stylist and WETA makeup artist Warren Dion Smith, who has created the hair look for the MIROMODA runway to reflect it’s 2018 theme acknowledging the 125 Anniversary of Women's Suffrage.

It was thanks to MIROMODA’s head judge and NZ Fashion Week founder, Dame Pieter Stewart, that the idea of a sneak peek before the Fashion Week showcase came about. “Over the years I have been lucky enough to hear the creative influences behind the collections as part of the MIROMODA competition judging process,” she says. “The concepts and stories that inspire the garments add a depth that isn’t always conveyed during their few minutes on the runway.”

“The design concepts mostly draw on narratives from Māori culture and can be difficult to fully comprehend when the collections are presented on the catwalk,” agrees MIROMODA founder Ata Te Kanawa. “It seemed logical to invest in a Sneak Peek pre-show and share those amazing design stories, as opposed to an after party where they could be easily lost amoungst celebration and socialising.”

Trialed last year for the first time, Te Kanawa says feedback confirmed that for those in the showcase audience who had attended the Sneak Peek made the experience far more connected and meaningful.

Scheduled for the afternoon of Thursday 30th August, the Miromoda Showcase will feature previous emerging now established designers Misty Ratima, Jimmie MacKay, AJ Bradley and invited Singapore based guest designer, Taranaki’s Tessa Bailey-Lont.

ENDS

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