There will always be room on the red carpet to ask ‘who are you wearing?’ But in a scene built as much on relationships as runway looks, perhaps we should be adding ‘and what does this look tell us about you?’
Fashion may start with clothes, but at its heart
it’s a way for people to find their scene, their people, and their place in the room.
In every corner of New Zealand’s fashion scene, little worlds form. They exist in fitting-room conversations, social media comments, Fashion Week queues, and the stores people return to as much for the vibe of space as the clothes on the racks.
On the latest episode of This Is A Fashion Show, a New Zealand Fashion Week podcast made in partnership with Viva, fashion journalist Zoe Walker-Ahwa says that sense of community is what she admires about Crushes boutique on Karangahape Rd in Auckland.
“They are a store that sells vintage clothing and New Zealand-made things, but they really get people into the space,” says Walker-Ahwa.
“They have a social club, and they have Nana Night coming up and lots of craft things, and they really, really speak to their community so beautifully.”
Zoe Walker-Ahwa is a guest on the latest episode of This is a Fashion Show. Image / NZME
It’s easy for ‘community’ to feel like a buzzword in the modern fashion landscape. With brands making engagement growth part of their strategic plans, authentic connection can be hard to find.
For Emily Miller-Sharma, who has spent 18 years helping grow Ruby into one of New Zealand’s most influential fashion brands, genuine community flourished during the pandemic, at a time when we’d never felt more isolated.
“Before Covid, you had to get a proper writer to write your press releases. And we didn’t have time to do that, and so I just started writing.”
What Miller-Sharma thought was one-way communication soon turned into something much more rewarding.
“It’s mutually nourishing. You put something out, and then something comes back, and you put something back out again … just having that genuine conversation.
“You say community, you say conversation, you say connection, and it’s like these words have been AI’d into meaninglessness. But actually these were true feelings that I was having, and it just kept building.”
Emily Miller-Sharma from Ruby features on the latest episode of This is a Fashion Show. Image / NZME
That idea of fashion as an exchange, rather than a broadcast, also shaped Walker-Ahwa’s work on Ensemble, the platform she co-founded with Rebecca Wadey in 2020. Although Walker-Ahwa had spent years in fashion media, she says she still felt like “a bit of an awkward weirdo” in the industry.
“We wanted to make a space that welcomed, and was for, people like that, who were a little bit messy and not, you know, minimalist.”
As Ensemble grew, its events became a key part of its community-building. The point wasn’t to make fashion feel more exclusive, but to make it easier for people to enter.
“We just wanted people to come to things and feel comfortable to be themselves, whoever they were.”
For Miller-Sharma, the in-person side of fashion does not need to be overly polished to matter. If anything, she is suspicious of the kind of immaculate event that seems designed more for documentation than experience.
“We’re so used to looking at polished imagery. So then community, in-person events, there’s a tendency to want to make it perfect. And actually, really all that matters is the experience,” she says.
“There’s definitely been a trend of fashion lunches, and they’re perfectly art directed … I know if I was there I would probably accidentally knock something over, and then I get kind of bored and to me it’s like, well, what’s the purpose? Are you having a good time together? Because that, to me, is the point of an in-person event.”
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This Is A Fashion Show is hosted by stylist and creative director Sammy Salsa, and brought to you by New Zealand Fashion Week in partnership with Viva.
Celebrate 25 years of New Zealand Fashion Week, on from August 17-22 at Auckland’s Shed 10. Tickets available here.