iD Dunedin Emerging Designer Awards

I spent last week in New Zealand at the iD Dunedin Fashion week to take part in the Emerging Designer Awards on Thursday night. Despite the freezing weather all week I had a lot of fun and enjoyed being part of such a great show.

Having finished the collection almost 6 months ago the judging day and awards night was relatively stress-free for me as I already know that the collection 'works' and I'm not as emotionally attached to it as I was when I'd just spent three solid months making it. So it was easy to talk about to the judges & media (I'd be pretty happy if I never had to sum up my inspiration ever again) and didn't really require any pre-show prep like ironing, steaming, mending etc. Opening the show also meant that I had plenty of time to get the models ready, and I was able to just enjoy the rest of the night taking photos backstage. I should also mention that students from Otago Polytechnic volunteered as dressers and assistants (yes, I got my own assistant!) so that was a huge help in making the night run smoothly.
No prizes for me, which was a shame but I did enjoy the honour of opening the show and finding my work in various media publications around Dunedin!
I haven't found too many photos of my work from the night, but then that might be a good thing because this blog is pretty much filled with photos of this collection! I did like the natural hair & makeup much more than our grad show so I'm glad I found a few photos.

Photo: Seen in Dunedin
Models (L-R): Clementine, Tara, Nicole, Cecily & Christina from Ali McD

Photo: NZ Herald
Model: Tara from Ali McD

Photo: Otago Daily Times
Model: Nicole from Ali McD


Otago Tourist Times

Air New Zealand in-flight magazine


Remix Magazine


A couple of articles that mentioned me:

Fashion NZ
"It is possible that this reviewer likes sci fi a bit too much, but with Alexandra Kenworthy’s (Aus) Pierre Cardin-esque/2001 A Space Odyssey sixties space age future wear to the Dune stylings of Marie Kelly (NZ), Sarah Peterson (Netherlands) and Jo Templin (Aus) – Hollywood need look no further for innovative costume designers for their next film." (Miranda Likeman)
NZ Herald
"Amelia Boland's white baby doll dress and Alexandra Kenworthy's fun Carnaby Street-inspired yellow jacket had me scribbling 'I WANT' in my notes." (Zoe Walker)

Also, while shamelessly googling myself to find media about the show I found a blog post on Flaming Hippo Lips with photos from last year's grad show. Because clearly you haven't seen enough photos of this collection...

Edit - Mum just let me know that I was also mentioned on the Vogue Italia website when the finalists were first announced!

These are some of the other collections that showed on Thursday night:

I'm not usually into all-black collections but I loved Marielle Van De Ven's styling.

Miyoko Kamijo's collection had amazing accessories and one of my current favourite colour combinations - yellow and grey.

Hui Vivien Zhang went to uni with me - I love the purple dress in the middle, it has a gorgeous back view too.

Laura Poole also went to UTS, and did a zero-waste collection using digital prints.

The other UTS rep was Sarah Mok who won 3rd Prize.

I thought Julia Campbell's collection was particularly good because her collection was very diverse yet still worked together beautifully - very hard to achieve in only five looks!

All photos from Seen in Dunedin