Soft Sculpture Fashion Parade
Sculpture Garden Restaurant, NGA
Thursday July 2
I've always read the NGA Members' Events calendar with great relish, thinking 'oooh that looks interesting'; but somehow, throughout the entirety of my no-longer-young adult life and despite my best intentions, I have never gotten along to any of them. Luckily, I finally broke my Members' cherry last week, at the Soft Sculpture Fashion Parade presented in collaboration with über-swank Manuka boutique Department of the Exterior.
Members were first ushered through the oddball, unconventional sculptures in the exhibition before wending their way through descending mists to the Sculpture Garden restaurant. There, Susan Taylor of Department of the Exterior had assembled a melange of designs, which models sashayed down the catwalk accompanied by music from Hippo regular DJ Bucky.
The parade exhibited, in Taylor's words, "ideas based design". Pieces from established brands such as Munk and Dogstar were shown alongside some amazing work from new design labels handpicked from Taylor's 'all-star cast' of CIT design graduates. The outstanding piece of the night was the asymmetric padded collar top from Sebastian's Sister, the label of CIT grad Francesca Altenberg - a beautifully draped, patterned black and white piece reminiscent of Yohji Yamamoto.
The most consistently desirable and (for this unadventurous fashionista) wearable pieces, however, were from accessory label Yellow Mule, whose Radius neckpieces and brooches dramatically set off the sculptural shapes of the paraded designs.
