This isn\u2019t Jack\u2019s first time as a WoW finalist. She\u2019s been entering the competition on and off for about 12 years, returning this year after a three-year hiatus. <\/p>\n
The creative sisters-in-law with their previous WoW entries: Sacha Mail (left) with A Bird’s Eye View, Lisa Vanin with The Cloak of P\u012bwakawaka, modelled by Olivia Vanin, and Jenny Jack with Revenge of the Paper Clip.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the Waikato Herald before the awards, she said her creative activity took a back seat while raising her three sons, who are now grown.<\/p>\n
With more time and space, she said she was able to return to what she loves.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could put the time into it and I could get back into [my] creative side,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Creative childhood<\/p>\n
Designing has been part of Jack\u2019s life since she was a little girl.<\/p>\n
Her mum was a textiles teacher who sewed a lot and always had fabric on hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cI grew up sewing and creating as long as I can remember.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jack remembers the first item she designed from that fabric was a dress for her doll, which she remade differently each time she got a new one.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I got a doll, I would make clothes for them, and I absolutely loved it.\u201d<\/p>\n
She pursued that love, going on to study fashion and design before scoring her first job in the industry as a clothing pattern maker at 19. <\/p>\n
After getting married and having children, Jack looked for work that fitted around her family, and her creative activities took a backseat.<\/p>\n
She worked at a sewing shop for a while, where she got the opportunity to teach others how to sew, and from there, she began helping more adults get creative by holding sewing classes at a local high school. <\/p>\n
Jenny Jack of Tamahere is a finalist in the 2026 World of Wearable Art Show. Photo \/ Malisha Kumar <\/p>\n
New business<\/p>\n
Jack learnt that people came to sewing for all sorts of reasons \u2013 even men.<\/p>\n
\u201cOften I have young mums who just want to do something for themselves, or people who are retired and looking for something to do,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI had this one man come to me who was making a bag for his bike. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnother man sold fabric, and he sewed T-shirts out of his fabric and sold them.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Jack loves designing, she said her real passion was \u201cseeing creativity in other people\u201d. <\/p>\n
The classes were a stepping stone to opening her home-based business, Sew Fab, this year, where she continues teaching people how to sew and pattern-make. <\/p>\n
\u201cI really enjoy it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone does creativity differently, and that\u2019s the part I love. It\u2019s like we all have it, but in a different way.\u201d <\/p>\n
Bizarre bra<\/p>\n
It was her love for creativity that took Jack back to WoW this year.<\/p>\n
She said she was proud to be a finalist, and a lot of hard work goes into designing a wearable art piece. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re a finalist, it means your garment gets into the show. So … just having it on stage, because it\u2019s quite hard to get into, is great.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will be really neat to get back in there again.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bra Jack made from more than 17,000 paper clips was a 2016 WoW entry in the special section of the Bizarre Bra category. <\/p>\n
Waikato designer Jenny Jack’s Revenge of the Paper Clip entry in the Bizarre Bra category in 2016. <\/p>\n
Each year, the awards have special sections encouraging designers to take on creative challenges they usually wouldn\u2019t, and the two themes for 2026 are Metallic and Kinetic. <\/p>\n
While Jack\u2019s 2026 finalist garment is top secret, she said it was her \u201cmost enjoyable\u201d piece yet. <\/p>\n
\u201cSome of the [previous] entries have been so consuming, and when kids were young, it was like \u2018the kids are in bed, and now we can spend some hours on this\u2019, because you just wouldn\u2019t have time throughout the day,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis one wasn\u2019t my most time-heavy one … but it was one I could fit around life well.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was actually finished before time, which is unheard of,\u201d she said, laughing.<\/p>\n
The 2026 World of Wearable Art Show takes place at the TSB Arena in Wellington from September 17 to October 4.<\/p>\n
Malisha Kumar is a multimedia journalist based in Hamilton. She joined the Waikato Herald in 2023 after working for Radio 1XX in Whakat\u0101ne.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This isn\u2019t Jack\u2019s first time as a WoW finalist. She\u2019s been entering the competition on and off for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":600828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[80514,2246,1228,10779,1558,77437,28145,156,41550,71,22259,39164,1362,130,10136,111,139,69,1118,6029,45644,131,1524,1801,377],"class_list":["post-600827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-80514","tag-2246","tag-art","tag-awards","tag-been","tag-clips","tag-designer","tag-entertainment","tag-finalist","tag-from","tag-jack","tag-jenny","tag-made","tag-more","tag-named","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-once","tag-paper","tag-than","tag-waikato","tag-wearable","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}