Rookie Show
Photos by Erin Gaffney
last week In Unison checked out the latest talent to come from Auckland University of Technology’s fashion department. The Rookie Show, an annual event is about profiling final year fashion student’s hard work. It was held at Saint Paul’s on Symonds Street in the city. There were 24 different designers showing their winter collections. There were generally themes that ran through plenty of the collections; dark or neutral colours, draping fabrics, layering and harem pants were all popular, but the ones that really jumped out, mainly for being different from all the sameness on the runway, were most impressive.
The best outfits were the ones that were a little bolder than what co-students were doing, while I cannot imagine who would wear it, especially in New Zealand where it seems we are allergic to bold colours, the men’s red/pink suits was delightful. Designed by Glenn Yungnickel his suits pushed the envelope and were well-tailored, the pants sitting above the ankle (this was big at fashion week) and long bright shirts were worn under suit jackets of an even brighter colour. It’s something I can imagine the Sartorialist would snap on the streets of New York.
Though I’m not personally a fan of leather, there were a few collections that used it well, particularly Megan Hemmings’s luxurious statement jackets from full ostrich hides.
Towards the end of the show Lan Ching Fu’s collection was unveiled; this was probably my favourite. Called Bright Eyes it was inspired by characters from the poem ‘Midnight Maiden’ and “their neurotic obsession with jewel-like beauty.” Lan used chain mail inspiration to combine metal and cloth. She used a selection of metals to create jewellery like embellishments over top of black tops, pants and skirts. They were incredibly well made with amazing details, well worth watching this one.
Comments
Erin Gaffney
October 23rd, 2009 at 2:34 pm
I loved Lan Ching Fu’s collection too, it was stunning!
Simon
February 9th, 2010 at 1:27 am
While others do the bare minimum and are content on scraping by, Lan admits she has an odd penchant for making things a little bit more difficult for herself by going that extra mile. Forgoing sleep and running on the fuel of passion instead, for her most recent collection, “Bright Eye”, Lan wrote a poem for inspiration. “Midnight Raven” is a sombre and eerie account of a love for shiny, beautiful things and reads almost like a fable “Beware naughty boys and girls…your bright little eyes for her taking.”
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