In 2010 We Will See the First Auckland Autumn Fashion Festival
The organisers of New Zealand Fashion Week, Pieter and Myken Stewart, will take a plunge in 2010 and host the first ever Auckland Autumn Fashion Festival in March.
In what will be the 10th year of the New Zealand Fashion Week trade event, held in September, the Stewarts are organising the fashion festival to capitalise on the huge growth of the public side of their event.
In 2006 Air New Zealand Fashion Week launched the 'Fashion Weekend', giving the public the opportunity to attend the event which had previously been widely publicised but normally out of bounds for Joe Public. Fashion Festivals in cities such as Melbourne have for a long time been hugely popular, and this success also inspired the Auckland based event to kick off.
Off the back of Auckland Race Week in March, the Auckland Autumn Fashion Festival will aim to include group and solo fashion shows, designer after parties, fashion films, seminars (including top international fashion heads), wedding shows, garage sales, student shows, beauty events and more.
I believe this event will work for two reasons: firstly our fashion industry isn't big enough to handle two annual trade fashion weeks, so hosting a public event at the time we would otherwise host a spring/summer trade fashion week makes sense to me (and anyway, Sydney is the go-to spring fashion event for this hemisphere, so why battle it?). And secondly, the public interest in fashion is and always has been high, so putting the activities and the attendance in the hands of the public will not only produce an energetic and exciting schedule of events, but the retail sector will benefit from punters being able to interact with brand new product on one day, and buy it the next.
Give your thoughts below on how you think the fashion festival should and could work, and what you'd like to see take place.
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