Deborah Hill Cone: Comfort in the art of darkness

Opinion

Last night Zambesi changed my life. Well actually it was last Saturday. I was feeling fragile as a kitten, two days after my husband and I decided to separate. Anyway, I dragged my sorry arse along to the Zambesi retrospective show to celebrate 30 years of the label.

Oh, and relax, this isn't going to be one of those bollocky Fashion Week columns. I don't care whether shoulders are the new hips or how Dickensian squalor is chic. This is far, far more important than that. It's about how we do things here in Godzone, namely surviving grief and loss. And any old bad feelings.

Anyway, after a day of howling, going to a bloody fashion show was the last thing I felt like doing. I so much didn't feel like going that I couldn't even care what I wore. This is an advantage when getting dressed actually. It's the only way you ever get that Kate Moss just-threw-on-any-old-thing insouciance. You can't pretend not to care. You actually have to be so distracted that you could accidentally put on last year's hotpants with a granny cardie. So I was rocking a lezzy chic look - Dries van Noten shirt, op shop men's suit, my usual Belgian glasses, Dries shoes. A little bit k.d. lang maybe. But sadder. So, very much not gay in either meaning of the word.

The retrospective was at the Halsey St America's Cup sheds. When we arrived Zambesi founder Neville Finlay came up to the doorman and asked, "You are checking tickets, aren't you?" which didn't make me feel all that spesh. But the crowd was not your usual fashionista bunch - the average age was about 40.

Oh, there were all the usual glamorous foxes. Petra Bagust looked otherworldly in a strapless sheath. But because my emotional radar was on heightened alert it was amazing what a buzz of warmth and, yes, love I felt in the room.

Forget that Anna Wintour stereotype of fashion people being emotionless and chilly - I'm starting to think many of them are the most uniquely equipped to be able to accept and appreciate people in all our stuffed-up messy oddball freakishness. "I'm not feeling it," as designers are wont to say.

Anyway, the show started with Black Grace. Writing about creative endeavours is a bit like dancing about architecture so I won't attempt to capture the emotional power of their work. But the most wopbopaloola moment came when the show opened with Zambesi's own muse Briar Neville - the goddess of Tokoroa. The music, the attitude, the commitment: it made my neck go all prickly. Briar perfectly captured the Zambesi look - stony-faced, stoic, tough and sensual.

I'm not going to bother describing the clothes. They were black. They were beautiful. (A couple of New Zealand women were backpacking in Croatia. Someone who hadn't heard them talk came up to them and said: "Are you from New Zealand?" "Why, how did you know?" "Because you're dressed all in black.")

The clothes had an attitude that included an element which was ugly. Harsh. Dark. And here's what I think. In New Zealand we are not good at feelings. We are particularly not good at expressing painful feelings like sadness. They frighten us. So that is why when you have suffered a loss people are prone to say things like, "Don't feel bad." We tend to replace the loss as quickly as possible with anything that will fill the vacuum - binge drinking, anyone? We will do anything not to have to actually feel the feeling. We would rather drown kittens than admit we're feeling weak as a kitten ourselves. But ask Jung - those feelings have got to go somewhere. No wonder as a nation we are attracted to the creativity that expresses that darkness: the Zambesi aesthetic.

After the show finished and I was almost swooning with the thrill of feeling human again, I filed out with the punters and happened to be standing next to Sir Michael Fay. He said he had enjoyed the show. But not, I think, as much as I had. It made me come alive. And then I went and got maggoted at SPQR. Old habits.

deborah@coneandco.com