Ball season highlights changing styles

Year 13, it’s their final ball, they tend to go a little bit more edgy.

Saejung Oh

Flashing some skin is in this ball season. Floorlength gowns with thigh-high splits, backless dresses, plunging cleavage and midriff cutouts are all in fashion — at least among Year 13 girls.

But Saejung Oh, founder of OhRentMe, said younger students were still looking for elegant, simple gowns.

“Their mums have had a say. They don’t want see their 16 or 17-year-old daughter in a cleavagey or cutout dress,” she said.

“Whereas Year 13, it’s their final ball, they tend to go a little bit more edgy.”

Last year bright pink was popular but this year more muted, elegant colours such as champagne were in, Oh said.

A ball gown could be rented for about $80, plus a compulsory damage waiver of $7.

“A lot of mums come in and they say how much of a game-changer it is that they don’t have to spend hundreds on a dress that their daughters are only going to wear once.”

At designer rental store Style Starter in Newmarket the “dress of the season” was a floor-length lace-back gown, according to alterations specialist Jasmine Karsten.

The La Lune lace-back maxi dress from Australian designer Shona Joy was now almost impossible to get, especially in smoke blue.

Most ballgoers were hiring floor-length gowns but “some girls are starting to go for a more midi-length gown — it’s a more hands-free, stress-free kind of style”, Karsten said.

Both businesses have been run off their feet, and Nicki Collett, owner of the Beauty Hub in Auckland, said her 15 mobile hair and makeup artists were fully booked out within days of a ball date being announced.

Most clients requested their hair down with loose waves, but messy buns and ponytails remained popular.

A hair and makeup combo cost $160, and many students were using credit from cancelled 2021 events.