Miromoda Fashion Heads to the Waikato

Miromoda Fashion Heads to the Waikato

After six years of Wellington playing host to the annual Miromoda Fashion Design Competition, designers vying for a spot in the popular Miromoda Showcase at New Zealand Fashion Week (NZFW) late August, will face a panel of judges, headed by Dame Pieter Stewart, at Novotel Tainui in Hamilton for the 2015 competition.

As part of the celebrations to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Waikato-Tainui signing their treaty settlement, Miromoda was invited to present an evening fashion show in Hamilton in late June.

The timing, however, clashed with the scheduled annual competition, so it was mutually agreed to shift the venue of Miromoda’s all day competition to Hamilton, to accommodate a Miromoda invitation designer show, as part of the ‘Celebrating Raupatu Women’ evening event at the Waikato Museum on 27 June.

Waikato Raupatu Lands Trust Chief Executive Parekawhia McLean said the Miromoda Fashion Design Competition and a Miromoda fashion designer show, in the 20th anniversary year since the settlement of the tribe’s Treaty Claim was a great coup for the tribe and the Waikato region.

“Miromoda is a celebration of Maori fashion, innovation and success, and both events gives us the opportunity to align that with a celebration of Waikato women. We are proud to be involved,” she said.

The Miromoda (Indigenous Maori Fashion Apparel Board) entity which formed in 2008 and debuted at NZ Fashion Week, with eight competition winners and runners up across four categories in 2009, will head to NZ Fashion Week for its seventh year.

As an avid Miromoda supporter, founding director of NZFW, Dame Pieter Stewart was motivated in 2008 to show international media and buyers something they would not see at any other international

Fashion Week around the world. Miromoda Event Manager, Montess Hughes says it’s likely Stewart initiated a new indigenous awareness and genre in the New Zealand fashion industry and “as usual, she’s really looking forward to judging the competition in Hamilton on June 27.”

Hughes says the opportunity to work with, and be apart of the Waikato Tainui celebrations is a wonderful honour for Miromoda, as well as an opportunity to host the popular Miromoda competition in the Waikato area.

“The number and calibre of entrants increases each year, with this year marked by a common thread: diversity. We have shortlisted 20 designers who will endure the nerve wracking task of presenting their collection to a panel of judges, led by fashion icon Dame Pieter Stewart,” says Hughes.

The project runway styled judging is not for the faint hearted says Hughes “most entrants tell us the opportunity to get feedback on their designs from Dame Pieter Stewart is something most budding fashion designers never get to experience.”

Seven designers from the Miromoda stables invited to show collections for the Celebrating Raupatu Women event include Australian based, Kylie Mangan of Tainui descent, Auckland’s Dmonic Intent sisters who are Ngati Maniapoto, Mitchell Vincent who is of Ngati Tuwaharetoa descent. Others include Adrienne Whitewood (Rotorua), Pia Boutique (Auckland), Oobyn Ryn (Cambridge), Jill and Ange (Hamilton) as well as the 2015 Miromoda Competition Overall winner.

ENDS

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