Art Deco event organisers should see fine weather as thousands stream into Napier for the first “full” festival since Cyclone Gabrielle cancelled the annual event two years ago.
The Art Deco dog parade had something for everyone last year.
The festival is all about celebration and commemoration,” Art Deco Trust chairwoman and former Napier mayor Napier Barbara Arnott said as the city finalised preparations for the four-day festival, starting on Thursday.
Regarded as the first full programme festival since Hawke’s Bay’s four-year double-whammy of Covid and Gabrielle, there are signs of growing new interest.
Air New Zealand is reporting about 6000 passenger arrivals in Napier this week — a 10% increase over the average of the last four weeks, although no extra have been needed.
Thursday, is the busiest day, Air NZ general manager domestic Kate O’Brien said.
Among other things, the festival marks a century since the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, the 1925 Paris World Fair that introduced the world to the movement that became known as Art Deco.
It was at the same stage two years ago that, with marquees already being erected in the city, Cyclone Gabrielle devastated Hawke’s Bay, forcing the festival’s last-minute cancellation.
“Napier had lost almost all communication (with the outside world),” she said.
The festival, which also doffs its hat to the 1931 Hawke’s Bay Earthquake, that recreated the city in the architecture of the Art Deco era, was “off”.
“We couldn’t tell anybody. Even in Hastings they didn’t know, and they didn’t know that we had no communication,” Arnott said.
MetService is forecasting a fine opening day with temperatures up to 22C and creeping to 24C on Sunday, with easterlies and northeasterlies predominating.
Art Deco garb in demand as Barry Lynch woos the customers at the Decorum pop-up in a former used books store in Dalton St, Napier. Photo / Doug Laing
It’s made it to 40 years since Napier’s visionaries and enthusiasts formed their own Art Deco group in 1985, leading to the first Art Deco Weekend four years later, and now marks a first birthday of its return as the full festival after four years of Covid and then cyclone disruption and features 200 events linked to the theme.
The trust, staff and volunteers, Arnott said, were always thinking and considering ideas for future Art Deco festivals, but it still has its staples, such as the aircraft over Napier, the Saturday parade, and Sunday morning’s Soap Box Derby and Gatsby Picnic in the afternoon, along with the return this year of the steam train for the first time in a decade in a programme where events stretch from mainly in Napier to includes Hastings and Central Hawke’s Bay.
A French theme includes the unveiling of a replica 1936 Bugatti Coupe, built in New Zealand by and for Hamilton enthusiast, Classics Museum founder and regular Art Deco Festival visitor Tom Andrews.
There is something for everyone, and everything, a point made with the Deco Dog Parade, with a canine-version of wine and food tasting as Hawke’s Bay pet food giant Ziwi goes local with what it now offers to markets in 35 countries, with a sampling stand for “doggie divas” ahead of the dog parade at the Soundshell on Sunday morning.
The parade will be judged by Ziwi chief science officer Julian Dirks, alongside colleagues Hannah Christensen and Janette Cook, looking for the best-dressed dogs, the best dog-and-owner “lookalike” and the best-dressed child and dog, but the entries have to be nominated by 3pm on Saturday.
The era garb is the first sign of the festival, with year-round Art Deco specialist Decorum extending its operation in a lane off Lower Emerson St to a pop-up men’s specific array to meet the demand in a former used-books shop in Dalton St, where Tuesday shoppers included visitors from Mackay, reputed home to the biggest collection of Art Deco buildings in Queensland.
Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today, and has 52 years of journalism experience, 42 of them in Hawke’s Bay, in news gathering, including breaking news, sports, local events, issues, and personalities.
