NZ Fashion On Screen: From Power Suits To Pop Stars, New Zealand Style Shines Online

Just in time for New Zealand Fashion Week, NZ On Screen has launched its NZ Fashion On Screen Collection – a curated celebration of how fashion has lit up our screens through the decades, across television, film, and music videos. The collection showcases the bold, the glamorous, and the era-defining moments of New Zealand style.

Featuring more than 40 titles, the collection captures Aotearoa’s style evolution in motion. Viewers can explore iconic TV moments from Gloss, C’mon, and the Benson & Hedges Fashion Design Awards, to vintage runway favourites like the Wella Fashion Report, Corbans Fashion Collections, and Style Pasifika.

The collection also features standout documentaries, including Made in Dunedin and the docuseries FAFSWAG Vogue. New to the site are all eight episodes of Unzipped, following designers such as Trelise Cooper and Stolen Girlfriends Club in the lead-up to New Zealand Fashion Week 2010.

Iconic local labels including WORLD, Zambesi, NOM*d, Kate Sylvester, Tanya Carlson, and Workshop are featured throughout, offering a rare glimpse at their early work. You'll also find plenty of retro gems, from TV catwalk shows stretching back to the late 1970s to Koha – Māori Fashion Design (1986), which serves up powerful 80s looks from three local designers — blending traditional style with bold prints and global ambitions.

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Reality TV features, with season one of New Zealand’s Next Top Model. Thirteen aspiring models compete under the watchful eyes of agency head Sara Tetro and model-turned-presenter Colin Mathura-Jeffree. With little experience, they’re thrown in the deep end — making for a high-stakes, emotional ride.

A highlight of the collection is a new piece by stylist and creative director Dan Ahwa, who curates a stylish list of New Zealand music videos that have impacted both culture and fashion. His selections – spanning artists including Shona Laing, Che Fu, Bic Runga, Sisters Underground, Lorde, and Aldous Harding – offer a nostalgic and insightful look at how music has shaped our sense of style. As Ahwa writes, “[Music videos] were a portal to the future – to worlds beyond my imagination that challenged the way society sounded, acted, behaved and dressed.”

The collection also includes two insightful backgrounders: one by Claire Regnault, fashion historian and Senior Curator at Te Papa, charting the evolution of New Zealand fashion on screen, and a personal reflection by former Fashion Quarterly editor Fiona Hawtin, exploring how television shaped her own fashion sensibilities.

Other collection highlights include:

• The New Zealand Wearable Art Awards (1995, 1998, 2007)
• This Day: Māori Fashion Design (1970)
• Midweek with Holmes – walk shorts (1989)
• Country Calendar – Rural Fashions (1978)
• New Boots and Pants (1983)

Whether it’s supermodels on catwalks, fashion editors in shoulder pads, or musicians in velvet suits and baggy jeans, the NZ Fashion On Screen Collection is a stylish deep dive into Aotearoa’s screen and style history.

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