According to Te Kiri, the show was a tribute to the important role of women in Maori culture.
“We can be these violent, powerful beings in a parliamentary area, and yet we go home and we are these nourishing mothers, daughters or partners.”
But in the context of the Fashion Week “it is less a protest than a celebration,” she says.
The Maori designer and entrepreneur Kiri Nathan opens the Kahui collective show.Credit: Ryan Patrick
Kiri Nathan, one of the most important Maori fashion designers and entrepreneurs in the country, founded the Kahui collective in 2017 with the aim of promoting indigenous talents in an industry that was switched off and closed for newcomers.
After experiencing the industry first -hand, she felt that she played an important role in the management of the collective. One day she hopes that it will only be a pillar of a ecosystem of Kauri – An ecosystem of Maori designers.
“Many people are promoters, so they are not fashion designers,” she says.
“People use Maori, Pasifika and indigenous fashion designers to advertise everything their thing is, or to be entertainment without recipration and zero support, it was the same.”
Since her label was founded in 2010, Nathan Global personalities such as Barack and Michelle Obama, Beyoncé, Meghan Markle and in 2022, the then new Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, dressed for the funeral of Elizabeth II.
In 2023 she became the first Maori designer to open NZFW since her first iteration in 2001. This year there was an exhibition of their work on the front doors of scales 10, where most of the start and runways of the week took place.
Jacob Coutie, who has been producing men's fashion under his label J'ake since 2023, sent models in soft pieces of linen and gumboots, which were inspired by the work clothes worn by the men, which he grew up.
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“When I started to design, I wanted to do things that I couldn't find. It became a journey in which he realized that for Maori men there was a room for a development of men's fashion, in a way that felt like it was not only involved in ordinary western suits,” he says.
The generation of the collection was a love work, with members of his community coming together. His cousin created the woven hats, bags and skirts worn by models.
The men's clothing was particularly strong during the show, with the Fijische Designer Temesia Tuicumia reunited BracketA traditional skirt for men, with a sharp suit and brave accessories.
“I would often be considered our work as a show pony like a” ethnic “or” costume “and not recognized as independent as fashion.”
Designer Czarina Wilson
The designer Czarina Wilson referred to her mixed cultural heritage, which mixed Monomono Pani (or roll -quilt), a technique that is often used in Tongan communities, Tartan, Paisley, leather and jeans to create something fresh and modern.
“This collection was a greeting for the past and gave the line of women in front of me, not only my Tonga page, but also my Scottish and English heritage,” she says.
Her mother, who hiked from Tonga and worked in factories, was another core inspiration.
“For me, the uniform of the work became a core memory of childhood, and I wanted to reinterpret this garment as something powerful, an allusion to survival and strengthen,” she says.
While she says that the recognition for first nations designers – as through Kahui collective – grows, there is still work to do. She produced her collection with a minimal budget because she could not secure a financing for the show.
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“When I took part in the scene for the first time through competitions like Style Pasifika … there were very few rooms in which Pacific and Maori votes were centered outside of these platforms. I would often be considered a show pony like a show pony, regarded as” ethnic “or 'costume' and not recognized as independent.”
“NZFW was about pushing this door further – not only for the next generation, but also for people here now.”
Like Te Kiri, Mitchell Vincent, who has been working in the industry for decades, also worked a celebration.
“For Teo Maori, we have had a lot in the air with the government in the past two years in the sense of many changes,” he said, adding that gender -specific styles are alluded to the Homosexual (LGBTQ community).
For Katherine Indians, whose elegant, body-related collection of draped jersey dresses in a monochrome palette was a way to explore them Lineage (Genealology), the debut of her label Katherine Anne at Fashion Week with Kahui Collective was a special moment.
“We not only represent culture. We also build up companies, grow in an industry that has not always made space for us.”
“It turned out that when we move together, we continue to move,” she says.
The author was a guest of New Zealand Fashion Week
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