Still wearing her art on her sleeve
As wearable design enterprise hits 30, creator’s favourite aspect remains its power to ignite people’s creativity
How do you keep a 30-yearold creative design show, already seen by some 700,000 people, fresh, relevant and jaw-droppingly good so even its creator remains surprised by what she sees?
Dame Suzie Moncrieff, the founder of the World of Wearable Arts, says it’s a combination of legacy and ensuring you have people with innovative ideas, who can stay at the cutting edge of fashion, art, design, costume and theatre.
This year, Moncrieff reflects on 30 years at the helm of a creative endeavour which now includes an annual awards show, a travelling international exhibition and, in Nelson, a museum of classic cars and unforgettable outfits.
As she and a team ready the 2018 show, a second squad is preparing to take the international touring exhibition of 32 garments from North America to Russia, where it opens next month at the Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art in St Petersburg.
Designers’ creations continue to amaze Moncrieff, once a sculptor and solo parent who launched a wearable arts show to drum up
HRead the full story at nzherald.co.nz publicity for the gallery she started in the late 1980s on the outskirts of Nelson. “Every year, I am completely blown away by the entries coming in because, every year, you think, ‘how much better can they get?’” she says. the behaviour of neurons at the corner of the cerebral cortex in baboons. But she used to say to him jokingly “medicine was just fancy plumbing”. Sadly, my mother died from a heart condition a few years back. The last thing I said to her was: “I love you, Mum!”
My big sisters are a couple of capable and caring humans, they’re also forceful siblings. Anne-Louise often imposed effeminate horserelated activities on me. Katharine liked to dress me as a girl. Once she hit my head with a saucepan. Fair enough, too. I had let rip into a jar, put the lid back on, wrote “open me” on the side and left it on the mantelpiece in her room. Amazing how you can bottle that potency. It came out as strong as it went in.
The other day I had lunch with my little sister Imogen. She overruled all my wine and food suggestions. I wasn’t qualified in her eyes to order. She was right, she knows her grape booze. She can handle it too. She had
Moncrieff says successful designers well and truly grasp the concept of taking unbelievable art and putting it on the body. In WOW’s 30 years, she acknowledges there have been some standout creations which have left her speechless.
They include Lady of the Wood ,a 17th century-style ballgown made of to help me into the Uber.
So what did this upbringing surrounded by powerful females mean for my masculinity?
I grew up loving cricket and collecting war comics. I organised neighbourhood clod fights. I was obsessed with cars and spent time trying to build amateur explosives. At high school, I had great mates. We made Back of the Y Masterpiece Dame Suzie Moncrieff says every year she wonders how the designs could get better only to be blown away anew.
wood by Alaskan artist and carpenter David Walker. In 2009, Walker was the first international WOW winner; he was back three years later — and won the Wellington International Award for the Americans Region — with Beast in the Beauty, a highly personal work which referenced his wife’s ultimately unsuccessful fight Television. The most offensive, violent and manly show to grace the national broadcaster’s screens.
Nowadays I’m a breakfast host on the male-orientated Radio Hauraki and the sideline commentator for the wildly successful but almost entirely male-downstairs-focused sports commentary team, The ACC . . .
By this stage of my life story, my prominent broadcaster mate had zoned out. Rightly so. It was a boring, self-saucing yarn. No fun in a bar (or the paper, for that matter). Full of humblebrags too. He left before I could get to the bit about the mother of my children. She had the No 1 album in the country when we met. My band was only at 24 on the charts.
Anyway, the point of my inebriated autobiography was this: My masculinity has never been under threat from powerful females. I enjoyed their company in life and employment. But I worked hard, cut my own path and reckon I grew up to be a nice guy, great provider and What: World of Wearable Arts
Where & when: TSB Arena, Wellington; September 27-October 14
against cancer. Then there’s Susan Holmes’ Dragon Fish which carried off the WOW supreme award in 1996 as Holmes, now in her late 70s and the record-holder for the most WOW wins, was on her way to becoming one of New Zealand’s most highly recognised fabric artists. Moncrieff laughs when she recalls Simon Hames’ Superminx, a pair of lively chairs that the movie prop-maker and float designer made out of opossum fur: “When those fabulous chairs came galloping in . . .
“We’ve certainly created, I believe, a new genre of art not only unique to New Zealand but overseas,” she says. “We’ve got that wide and eclectic mix of people entering from fashion designers, who are in London Fashion Week, to boatbuilders in Motueka.
“That’s the thing I love most about it; it’s accessible and it gives everybody the chance to reignite the creativity they might have had within them but was doused early in their lives by having to go on and do other things. WOW certainly gives an opportunity to so many people to find their creative spirit.”
What did this upbringing surrounded by powerful females mean for my masculinity? I grew up loving cricket and collecting war comics . . . spent time trying to build amateur explosives..
an awesome dad. The old rules work.
Nowadays we have male/female equality at the starting gates. Awesome. After that, in my opinion, it’s up to the individual. There are no excuses, victim cards or free passes when you’re out on the playing field. Equality of opportunity is the goal but enforced equality of outcome isn’t fair. That leads to the horrors of 20thcentury Russia, China and Germany.
New Zealand will go well if males and females are thought of and rewarded as individuals for their talent, heart and hard work.
Surely my sons can handle that. The message for males in 2018 should be the same as when I was a kid. Work your arse off but don’t be an a-hole. Do that and your masculinity will be sweet as, whoever is PM.
So 125 years after women got the vote, being a dude is just fine. Of course, when artificial intelligence takes over it won’t matter what flavour flesh bag you are. We’ll all be useless to them.