“They set up this store with clothes laid out on tables and a couple of garments on racks. Customers saw it as an art gallery.”
Roil’s first brush with the fashion world began when he worked in the PR department of Wellington’s high-end Park Royal Hotel. His boss wanted to hold a fashion show at the hotel and handed the job of organising it to Roil.
“I’d never done anything like this before. I had to design the layout the way the models wanted it and I was suddenly responsible for $300,000 worth of garments.
“The fashion show was an ordeal. I didn’t want to do it again, but it gave me a base for what I’m doing now.”
While working in the hotel’s corporate environment Roil held a part-time job at the Costume Cave, a costume and clothing hire service for company film, theatre, school and events.
“That was my fashion school. I had to learn how to put things together. I learned about authentic costume at the Costume Cave.”
He landed part-time work with a theatre where he hung and steamed costumes, but when he volunteered to work with a designer from the Costume Cave he learned from her how to upcycle.
From late 2007 Roil worked for three years at The Freak Space where he designed alternative clothing for men.
“I take the corporate uniform . . . the suit, and cut it, change it around and sew it back together,” says Roil on his LinkedIn page.
The fashion design and photography collaboration was Lockett’s idea/brainchild.
“I met her three years ago,” says Roil. “She’d been stalking me on the Internet. She took some photos and next minute she’s got me on a Marquis magazine cover, my first ever.”
Shooting for the prints was often stalled due to Covid, but over the past three years Lockett amassed images of Roil’s designs. To showcase her fashion-styled shooting, and to make 14 fine art images to complement Roil’s work, she used local models and locations to create the images.
“I created specific imagery from garments Dave has made for this project,” says Lockett.
“The 14 prints feature local people as models and locations such as Ulverstone and Titirangi-Kaiti Hill. Each of these images will be printed on silk to be hung as large-scale works at the museum during the fashion show.”
The Deal, a collaborative project between anti-fashion designer Dave Roil and Gisborne photographer Tink Lockett, Tairāwhiti Museum. Opening night April 21, 6.30pm. Roil’s outfits and Lockett’s prints will remain on display in the main gallery until June 18.
Cold case
Blood-stained floorboards, documentation and magnified photographs that include images of where Roil’s mother’s body was found in a Wellington boarding house in 1972 will also feature in The Deal.
Roil will display the material as part of his quest to bring to light the truth about how his mother died.
Although the cause of Margaret Walker’s death was officially recorded as the result of asphyxiation due to acute alcohol poisoning,
Roil firmly believes his mother was murdered and has collected material over close to four decades to prove it.
The mystery of his mother’s death has been covered in TV shows 2020 and Sensing Murder.
Born in Gisborne, Margaret was 23 years old when she died in the unlicensed boarding house. She had evidently fallen from the top of a staircase.
Roil never met his mother; he was taken from her by the Department of Social Welfare “which was concerned a young woman estranged from her husband would not be able to care properly for her new child and his twin sister,” reported New Zealand Herald journalist David Fisher in 2005.
He also says he has documentary evidence revealing a possible reason for police to avoid looking too closely into her death.
“I asked to have the floorboards for evidence,” says Roil.
“I still have them. They are soaked in blood right to the other side. The floorboards will be in the show. I’m also bringing back blown-up evidence. It has nothing to do with the dresses or models, but it is the centrepiece.”
